# A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life



## pemerton

This thread is a spin-off of this thread. Its immediate trigger is the following post:



pemerton said:


> Bedrockgames said:
> 
> 
> 
> they take the immediate step toward that goal "I go down the street to Lofty Silkworm Teahouse and look for people who might be part of Bone Breaking Sect".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is an interesting example.
> 
> In B/X or Gygax's AD&D, this is Mother May I - there is no rule for resolving this beyond the GM's decision about whether or not sect members may be found at the Teahouse.
> 
> In Oriental Adventures there is a mechanic for this, available through the otherwise rather weak yakuza class. In Classic Traveller, this can be done via the Streetwise skill. Neither offers any guidance for how to establish or handle consequences of failure.
> 
> In Burning Wheel there is a mechanic for this (Circles and -Wises checks) and also a clear procedure for establishing and handling consequences.
> 
> If a group _doesn't _want Mother May I, but _does_ want hunting down sect members to be part of play, then it makes sense to choose a system that will facilitate this. (As [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] suggested in his post.)
Click to expand...




Bedrockgames said:


> It is no more mother may I than real life is mother may I. The players are going to a specific place looking for something. It isn’t binary. Anything could be there, including other leads. The GM isnt playing mother may I, the GM is serving as the mechanic to determine the outcome.



In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of _request_, _permission_, _decision_ etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).

At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.

That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.

Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.


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## Bedrockgames

I am not going to participate in this thread like I told you in the Original, but I will respond here since you quoted me and started a thread with it. 

I think we just have a fundamental disagreement about what an RPG is trying to do and how much it can _feel_ like a real world experience. Obviously the GM isn't a going to run a simulation of reality, but a GM can emulate the physics of reality, genre, etc. Different GMs will be using different logic and be emulating different concepts. But there is nothing in the GM fielding players going to a tea house looking for people that needs to be different than me going to a tea house looking for people in real life (or different from characters in a movie going to a tea house looking for people). You are insisting on the primacy of the GM weighing the suggestion. The GM isn't under an obligation to do so. A GM might simply ask him or herself "what is reasonably at the teahouse". It doesn't have to connect to the player's suggested course of action. It can, but it doesn't have to. My issue is you are making a very binary, yes or no, proposition. And you are failing to capture the full nuance and immersion of this style of play, while reducing it to the pejorative label "Mother may I". 

And my point wasn't about reality simulation. It was just that the tea house example isn't any more mother may I, than a person going to a teahouse and not finding what they are looking for is mother may I. A good GM is trying to create a world that feels authentic and real, or that feels like it sufficiently emulates the genre that he setting is set in. You are focusing on why the players want to go to the teahouse, but another way to describe what is going on is "Players go to the teahouse and the GM decides what is there". That isn't like a game of mother may I. Especially if the GM populates the teahouse with all kinds of possibilities (which often happens). Framing it as 'request, permission and decision' just doesn't reflect what this style is about. Again, you make good arguments, but nothing you say at all matches what I see at the table. 



> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse._




Not really. The GM just decides what is at the Tea House. He isn't necessarily weighing what the players suggest at all. The players are not really suggesting anything either. That is just their reason for going to the tea house. Just like in real life. When I go to the store because I am hoping to run into my friend Marco, doesn't mean I won't bump into something equally engaging that I wasn't expecting, or bump into Marco's wife instead and hear news that he is in the hospital. I think you are assuming I am there to try to meet dramatic expectations that the players have in their minds, and that anytime they suggest something, that is what I am considering. But I am not. I don't shy away from drama. I just don't look to the players for the dramatic suggestions in that way. 

Note: not going to respond any further to this one.

EDIT: Also just want to note, while a game world isn't physical like the real world, part of world building is developing the geography, the institutions, etc. So there is still a sense of movement through physical space and a sense of people being connected to various things. In the tea house example one of the first things I am going to consider when I decide what is in the teahouse is what groups and organizations are active nearby. That will give me an idea of who is likely to be present. It might not be someone from Bone Breaker sect like the players want, but there is a reasonable chance someone useful will be there. Again though, the guiding factor is going to be who is in the region. Sometimes I will consider dramatic reasons as well. But I am more sparing with those.


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## Immortal Sun

This thread needs a big fat "If you assume all RPGs and all tables function in this manner."

They don't.

So, I guess we're done?


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## S'mon

If the GM already has the tea house detailed, it functions exactly like real life - the PCs find what is already there.

Otherwise the GM can wing it, perhaps by setting a reasonable probability. This can be done with a purely world-simulationist mindset, which emulates real life fairly closely in outcomes though not in process. Or it can be done with a dramatist mindset, considering what would be cool/dramatic. Or a gamist mindset, what would be a good challenge for the players.


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> If the GM already has the tea house detailed, it functions exactly like real life - the PCs find what is already there.



I don't think it's exactly like real life at all! Bracketing complex theological questions, the occupants of a teahouse in real life aren't there because someone thought that was a worthwhile exercise of his/her creative imagination.



S'mon said:


> Otherwise the GM can wing it, perhaps by setting a reasonable probability. This can be done with a purely world-simulationist mindset, which emulates real life fairly closely in outcomes though not in process. Or it can be done with a dramatist mindset, considering what would be cool/dramatic.



The fact that these aesthetic choices have to be made (whether expressly or implicitly) is a big part of what marks the contrast with real life. Bracketing some complex philosophical questions, real life isn't primarily an aesthetically-governed lesure time activity.


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I don't think it's exactly like real life at all! Bracketing complex theological questions, the occupants of a teahouse in real life aren't there because someone thought that was a worthwhile exercise of his/her creative imagination.




I said it _functions like_ real life. Whatever the pre-game process that created the teahouse.


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## pemerton

Walking through a physical space and experiencing it has very little in common with imagining or pretending one is walking through a physical space while actually sitting around with friends and having one of them recite a descritption of what is there.

I'd also like to suggest that this thread is not about what a "good GM" does or doesn't do. It's about analysis of gameplay, not preferences for gameplay.


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## Sadras

Pemerton some of us prefer to focus on the ROLEplaying part of the game rather than the rolePLAYING part of the game.

Hence we enjoy the RL sim of it rather than just risks and compliations in terms of x and y.


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I said it _functions like_ real life. Whatever the pre-game process that created the teahouse.



But in that case it functions like real life if the GM makes it up on the spot based on a sense of what will be fun; or if the occupants of the teahouse are determined by resolving a "Luck at finding foes in teahouses" check. That is, some process or other invovling one or more of the people at the table determines who/what is in the teahouse, and then the PCs encounter that person/thing.

To add a bit more analytical detail: the _already there_ always obtains in the fiction. So for it to be significant in respect of GM prep vs GM improv, it has to be talking about the real-world process of content creation. And none of those processes functions like the real life process of going to a teahouse and checking it out.


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Pemerton some of us prefer to focus on the ROLEplaying part of the game rather than the rolePLAYING part of the game.
> 
> Hence we enjoy the RL sim of it rather than just risks and compliations in terms of x and y.



I have no idea how this bears on the thread topic. It seems to be about what I said, a few posts up, the thread is _not_ about, namely, your RPGing preferences.


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## Sadras

Ok, let us go back to your OP.



pemerton said:


> In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of _request_, _permission_, _decision_ etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).




The causal process for which the sect is at the teahouse in RL, is because 
x sect members requested each other to be there and meetup;
y sect members decided to go;
z sect members were permitted to go by their respective partners...etc 

The DM determines the presence of absence of sect members either at a whim or by roll. So RL is simulated (request, permission, decision) as best he/she can within the gameworld, providing the illusion of RL. 



> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they *suggest* that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table.




Emphasis mine.
I thought you said this was not about preferences.  The players do not suggest anything. They declare actions. Maybe in your games they suggest but again we would be going down the hole of preferences which is something you state you do not want. 



> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.




You have no idea as a character or a RL person if those people are going to be there, so it is exactly like it is in RL.
Which perspective are you debating this from? Because it seems to me like you're jumping all over the place on a topic that for many of us, is a non-issue.

Hence my comment earlier ROLEplaying = the character or rolePLAYING = the gamist (player).
If you are the former, you will see an illusion of RL (if you will), the latter will likely see probabilities, numbers, grids and the DM.

Hope  this makes it clearer.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table.



And already here's the first error: it should read "our PCs TRY TO find some sect members at the teahouse".  If the players have already determined out-of-game that there will be sect members at the teahouse then what's the point - much of the mystery is gone, and mystery is why the exploration pillar of the game exists.



> The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.



Yes.



> Walking through a physical space and experiencing it has very little in common with imagining or pretending one is walking through a physical space while actually sitting around with friends and having one of them recite a descritption of what is there.



But it is the same - or close to the same - as imagining myself walking through the James Bay Tea Room, a very real teahouse here in town which, alas, recently closed for good.  (or remembering same, memory and imagination sometimes go hand in hand)

The only difference between imagining myself walking through a real-world teahouse that I've seen and a game-world teahouse that I haven't is that someone else has to describe the game-world one to me.



> It seems to be about what I said, a few posts up, the thread is not about, namely, your RPGing preferences.



But it does seem to be about yours, I think.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> But it is the same - or close to the same - as imagining myself walking through the James Bay Tea Room, a very real teahouse here in town which, alas, recently closed for good.  (or remembering same, memory and imagination sometimes go hand in hand)
> 
> The only difference between imagining myself walking through a real-world teahouse that I've seen and a game-world teahouse that I haven't is that someone else has to describe the game-world one to me.



That's already a difference which can be interesting in many contexts - _recollection_ is not the same thing as _pretending_, and neither is the same as _listening to someone else's story_.

But these all have more in common, as processes, than actually going out into the world and exploring a teahouse. For instance, they are all to some extent subject to the will in a way that exploring a teahouse is not.


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## Bedrockgames

I am not weighing in on any posts further. But I want to point out my original statement was (paraphrasing) 'it is no more mother may I than real life'. I never, ever, said anything approaching 'it is exactly the same as the real world'. I never argued that the processes underlying reality are the same as the process underlying a game. That is a big fat straw man.


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> You have no idea as a character or a RL person if those people are going to be there, so it is exactly like it is in RL.



Suppose that whether or not a sect member is in the teahouse is determined by making a "Luck at finding foes in teahouses" check. Prior to making the check, I have no idea as a character or a RL person whether or not those people are going to be there, so that would be exactly like RL also.

So if _every_ method of resolution that allows for player-side uncertainty is exactly like RL, then the distinction between eg ROLEplaying and rolePLAYING goes away.

But the point of my OP is this: whether or not I find someone in a teahouse in real life isn't the result of someone exercising their creative decision-making powers in respect of the contents of my life. Whereas whether or not my PC findis someone in a teahouse in a game where that outcome is decided unilaterally by the GM _is_ the result of someone exercising their creative decision-making powers in respect of the contents of the gameworld. _Those two states of affairs are very different._



Sadras said:


> The causal process for which the sect is at the teahouse in RL, is because
> x sect members requested each other to be there and meetup;
> y sect members decided to go;
> z sect members were permitted to go by their respective partners...etc
> 
> The DM determines the presence of absence of sect members either at a whim or by roll. So RL is simulated (request, permission, decision) as best he/she can within the gameworld, providing the illusion of RL.



In RL, sect members might be in a teahouse because it started raining and they took shelter; or because one of their mums was having a birthday party at the teahouse; or any myriad reasons that no one has ever thought of yet (because there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of even in my philosophy!).

The sheer causal variety and complexity of the world, and its causal autonomy from human cogniition and expectation, is one of the things that makes RL processes radically different from exercises of narrative power.

Even in your examples: _the thing that, in RL or in the imagined fiction, makes a cultist leader grant permission to some cultists to take time off and visit the teahouse_ is completely different from _the thing that, in ROL, makes a GM decide that a cultist leader granted such a permission_. Maybe the cultist leader granted permission because of the look of longing in the eyes of the young cultist. But the GM didn't decide to make it part of the fiction that the leader grants permission because s/he was moved by a subordinate's look of longing.

The GM's cognitive and creative processes don't simulate or mirror the imagined ingame causal processes (which are, in most non-surreal games, intended to simulate or mirror RL causal processes).



Sadras said:


> The players do not suggest anything. They declare actions.



When a player declares "I go to the teahouse to look for cultists", that puts a possibility on the table that wasn't there before - namely, that the PC in question goes to the teahouse and finds some cultists there. An action declaration makes some possible evolution of the fiction salient in a way that, prior to the declaration, it wasn't. If you don't like to call that a _suggestion_ then I'm open to other terminology.

(I'm using the word "suggestion" because Vincent Baker does: "When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not. . . . Mechanics . . . exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table.")


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## Bedrockgames

Guys just want to point out once again, Pemerton is forcing you into a rhetorical position where you are defending that reality and the game are the same. This isn't really addressing the assertion originally made, and is just being used to weaken the position. Saying something is like something, something feels like something, etc, isn't the same as saying they are identical (or subject to the same processes). Also, he is using a lot of buzz terms and jargon to confuse the debate and get people to accept his assumptions. Again, not responding to this thread specifically, but since my post started it, I think it is worth pointing out the kind of tactics being employed. Don't fall for the straw man.


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## S'mon

Is going to a tea house in a computer game like going to a tea house IRL, or going to a tea house in a TTRPG?

The CRPG tea house was created by the programmer. He didn't create it based on the desires of the player. He decided to make a tea house independent of player preference, just like the IRL creators of a tea house made it without reference to my preference.

Likewise, in some TTRPGs a tea house may be created as in the CRPG - independent of player desire/preference.

Pemerton you seem to see the TTRPG world as something that is always and necessarily created in a manner I recognise from Ron Edwards posts and Nar games, but is not really how simulationist play creates the world. And you seem to want to erase the distinction between the two approaches, or are confused about the difference. Hopefully the videogame example makes it clearer.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> That's already a difference which can be interesting in many contexts - _recollection_ is not the same thing as _pretending_, and neither is the same as _listening to someone else's story_.
> 
> But these all have more in common, as processes, than actually going out into the world and exploring a teahouse. For instance, they are all to some extent subject to the will in a way that exploring a teahouse is not.




The point you are missing is the GM is trying to emulate the experience of exploring the tea house. It isn't meant to be a full simulation of real life. It is meant to capture the feel and to emulate it in a simplified manner. It may not have all the complexity of the real world (which is vast with too many moving parts and unknowns to quantify for game purposes), but you can reduce it to a pretty simple logical process going on in the GMs brain and accept that that is a good approximation of the experience for game purposes. Obviously you don't. That is fine. But you are telling people something that completely goes against their experience at the game table (and you are doing it in a way that casts their experience as childs play). Innerdude isn't looking for the experience I am advocating, so I am happy to let him have fun however he wants without characterizing his style as something negative. I am just weighing in because in the process of this discussing, a style and approach I enjoy was mischaracterized. And that does matter because these kinds of conversations shape peoples' expectations. Eventually we run into people who get their idea about exploration play from Pemerton and we have to demonstrate that it isn't as bad or silly as he made it out to be.

And again have to emphasize, this tangent was brought on as result of me simply saying something to the effect of "it is no more mother may I than real life".


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't think it's exactly like real life at all! Bracketing complex theological questions, the occupants of a teahouse in real life aren't there because someone thought that was a worthwhile exercise of his/her creative imagination.
> 
> The fact that these aesthetic choices have to be made (whether expressly or implicitly) is a big part of what marks the contrast with real life. Bracketing some complex philosophical questions, real life isn't primarily an aesthetically-governed lesure time activity.




While it's not exactly like real life at all, it is similar to real life in that the PCs may or may not find what they are looking for based off of the likelihood that what they seek is there.  

In real life if I go to the local tea house looking for members of the mafia, I may or may not find some there.  If the mafia runs the tea house, the chances that I will find members there are high.  If the mafia does not run the local tea house, then it's still possible that some member of the mafia likes tea and just happens to be there, but the odds are fairly slim that I will just happen to be there at the same time.  Similarly, in the game if I am looking for sect members at the local tea house and the sect operates and owns it, the DM will give it a very high likelihood, possibly even auto success.  Otherwise, there would be a chance of finding a sect member who happens to be there due to enjoyment of tea, but it will be unlikely that I happen to be there at just the right moment.  

Obviously the DM cannot hope to mirror all of the real life factors that go into the possibility if meeting a mafia member at the local tea house, but he can approximate the process through his knowledge of the game world.  This is NOT mother may I.  Mother may I would require the DM being a gate keeper to the actions of the PCs.  A DM whose player has to ask the DM if he can go to the local tea house to look for sect members at all would be playing mother may I.  Simply adjudicating the results of the player's declaration based on the DM's knowledge of the game world does not gate keep the action.  It's how rules state that the game is played.

Mother May I

Player: DM, may I go to the local tea house to look for some sect members.

DM: Yes/No.

Not Mother May I

Player:I go to the local tea house and see if I can find some of the local sect members.

DM:  (thinking to self) the tea house isn't run by the sect, but it's the only leisure food place in town.  I'd give it a 15% chance that there happens to be a sect member present.  (rolls some dice and determines that none are currently there).

DM: (narrates response to PC action)


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## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> This can be done with a purely world-simulationist mindset, which emulates real life fairly closely in outcomes though not in process. Or it can be done with a dramatist mindset, considering what would be cool/dramatic. Or a gamist mindset, what would be a good challenge for the players.




These are not even necessarily mutually exclusive. The GM could pick the result that is all three, is two of the three, or mostly one of the three with a little of the other two.


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## Arilyn

If our reality is indeed a computer simulation, who knows for sure how tea houses pop up?

Maybe rpgs have gotten so good, we don't even know we're in a game. Some days I really want to switch tables though...

Now I'm craving tea, and I don't even like tea. I also have to go grocery shopping. I'm going to be eying my fellow shoppers very carefully, for signs of sect activity. No, GM. I don't want to find any sect members here.


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## 5ekyu

pemerton said:


> This thread is a spin-off of this thread. Its immediate trigger is the following post:
> 
> 
> In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of _request_, _permission_, _decision_ etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).
> 
> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.
> 
> That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.
> 
> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.



I have had plenty of situations like the tea room hunt for cultists occur in RPGs of many types as player and gm.
Never had problem resolving them.
So, not seeing much of a dispute ever coming from such in actual play.


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## pemerton

5ekyu said:


> I have had plenty of situations like the tea room hunt for cultists occur in RPGs of many types as player and gm.
> Never had problem resolving them.



Nor have I had problems resolving these situations.



S'mon said:


> Is going to a tea house in a computer game like going to a tea house IRL, or going to a tea house in a TTRPG?
> 
> The CRPG tea house was created by the programmer. He didn't create it based on the desires of the player. He decided to make a tea house independent of player preference, just like the IRL creators of a tea house made it without reference to my preference.
> 
> Likewise, in some TTRPGs a tea house may be created as in the CRPG - independent of player desire/preference.
> 
> Pemerton you seem to see the TTRPG world as something that is always and necessarily created in a manner I recognise from Ron Edwards posts and Nar games, but is not really how simulationist play creates the world. And you seem to want to erase the distinction between the two approaches, or are confused about the difference. Hopefully the videogame example makes it clearer.



If I've understood you correctly, you are suggesting that _is established/narrated without regard to player preferences_ as _functions like real life_. I don't agree with that suggestion. One main reason is that real life is indepenedent of _anyone's_ will.

A further consideration is that, in a TTRPG, it is relatively uncommon for a GM's notes or a setting book to specify every patron of a teahouse at all times. Or to have an encounter table for each teahouse. (I own many setting books. None of them purports to offer comprehensive coverage of the teahouses and the like that they describe.) So the action declaration _We go to the innhouse looking for sect members_ triggers a decision-making process on the GM's part which is more than just looking up and reciting a note, or even looking up and rolling on a table (eg even if the encounter table has a "cult" entry, the GM has to decide if the rolled cultist is a sect member).

There are many principles that can govern the GM in making those decisions. But my contention is that none of them makes it like real life. A further point - related, but not the same: I think that, in practice, most of those principles make the gameworld far less varied and far more predictable than real life generally is.

This comes out in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s post not far upthread:



> In real life if I go to the local tea house looking for members of the mafia, I may or may not find some there. If the mafia runs the tea house, the chances that I will find members there are high. If the mafia does not run the local tea house, then it's still possible that some member of the mafia likes tea and just happens to be there, but the odds are fairly slim that I will just happen to be there at the same time.



On Friday I left some friends to head off and do my own thing. My own thing was a bust, so I went into a nearby library. I sat in there for about half-an-hour until my laptop battery went dead. Then, just as I was leaving, my friends were coming in so that I bumped into them at the entrance.

This is a very big library on a very large university campus, so a minute either way for me or them and we would not have bumped into one another. Not to mention this was the first time I'd been in that library for over ten years, and the first time ever one of my friends had been in there - so neither of us would be on the other's library encounter table.

Having re-met, we then were walking back to where one of my friends was parked when we bumped into another firend as he was leaving work. Our paths were only going to cross on a 50 metre stretch of footpath, so again a minute either way and that encounter wouldn't have happened. Whereas, as it was, I eneded up getting a lift home with him and then talking to him in his car outside my house for about half-an-hour.

My view is that for a RPG experience to be like real life even in outcome, it at least has to produce these sorts of events.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> My view is that for a RPG experience to be like real life even in outcome, it at least has to produce these sorts of events.



Well, not quite: it has to have the potential to produce these sort of events.  That's where dice come in.


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## Manbearcat

I've just read the lead post so I have no idea what the following 3 pages says, but the lead post made me think of something.

Ouija is basically a game whereby participants fake lack of volition and create a narrative about a spirit.  A question is asked (not unlike "are there members of sect x at the teahouse?"), the planchette moves around the board (a form of mechanical resolution via the agency of one of the players who secretly takes the initiative) and answers the question.  Another question is asked, mood is set, rinse-repeat, and at the end you get a story.

In TTRPGs, just like in Ouija, there is no paranormal volition.  There is merely the volition of participants at the table (and perhaps some math).  

The illusion of lack of (material) worldly volition is just that; illusion.  The illusion of causal processes underpinning the outputs, which are discrete from a singular participant/the collective/or from mathematical output is just that; illusion.

The illusory process of content creation may engender a neat feeling within the participants of "paranormal-ey-ness" or "immersive-ey-ness"...but its just an illusion.  Someone is expressing agency over content introduction.  There is no disembodied will providing the necessary energy for play to persist.

Because a shared imagined space isn't a real thing (a computer game's setting isn't a shared imagined space...its a real space, with encoded boundaries, parameterized to some degree of resolution or another to persist and interact "physically" with inhabitants), and because for the purposes of TTRPGs humans can't parameterize a shared space at anything remotely nearing the resolution of the physical world (without encoding it...and even then we aren't even close currently...or at least nothing brought to market), we're going to have to have questions answered that are without prior parameterization or consideration.  When we do that, something/someone (content introduction procedure/table participant) mediates and the agency of that thing/person is expressed.  We feel one way or another about this (immersed, empowered, disempowered, regretful, bored, excited,  disgruntled, anticipatory, etc).  Rinse and repeat and the shared imaginary space develops.

One person at the table may "feel" that they had a paranormal experience or an immersive experience while another may feel silly or disgruntled...but fundamentally, the machinery of output is the same; someone (be it a participant at the table or the designer) is guiding the planchette through their personal volition (unlike actual life where many concrete, established causal forces and varying wills are integrated on multiple timescales).


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> If I've understood you correctly, you are suggesting that _is established/narrated without regard to player preferences_ as _functions like real life_. I don't agree with that suggestion.




I think everyone agrees that playing an RPG is not exactly like experiencing real life. This seems a trivial observation.

The problem seems to be that there are several very different approaches to generating the contents of the tea house, and it feels as if your central paradigm is the GM deciding it in the moment with a "what would be cool?" type question. Which is a fine way to do it, but can lead to a less real-feeling world than "what would likely be there?" Most games tend to encourage a mix of the two.


----------



## S'mon

Manbearcat said:


> In TTRPGs, just like in Ouija, there is no paranormal volition.  There is merely the volition of participants at the table (and perhaps some math).




You're omitting the role of the dice roll. 

As GM I tend to find answering "what would I like to happen?" type questions exhausting, and I prefer something which takes control out of my hands. A bit like my Parliament voting for a referendum and agreeing to abide by the result - it's most satisfying if the outcome isn't fudged.  

One thing I often do is use published site-based adventures, seed the world with them and run them as-is. I very rarely make a decision to alter the content, usually only in extremis ("Oh no, no babau stat block in my 5e MM! I guess bar-lgura is close...") - and the players decide where to go and what to ignore. I find this creates more of an objective living-world feel for me and for them.

Eg yesterday my Runelords group could have followed the tracks to Runeforge, or go straight to Xin-Shalast, but instead decided to build a boat and sail it to Guiltspur. I have all three sites detailed in Paizo adventures but I have only a general idea what is in each, and as I play I'll be surprised at what happens. I like that feeling.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I think everyone agrees that playing an RPG is not exactly like experiencing real life. This seems a trivial observation.
> 
> The problem seems to be that there are several very different approaches to generating the contents of the tea house, and it feels as if your central paradigm is the GM deciding it in the moment with a "what would be cool?" type question. Which is a fine way to do it, but can lead to a less real-feeling world than "what would likely be there?" Most games tend to encourage a mix of the two.



My contention is that the _what would likely be there_ approach is not an approximation to real life. And thus that whatever experience it engenders in those who enjoy it, _like real life_ or _more like real life than (say) declaring and resolving a Streetwise check_ is not an appropriate description for that experience.



Lanefan said:


> Well, not quite: it has to have the potential to produce these sort of events.  That's where dice come in.



As I said, my friend and I wouldn't be on the typical GM's library encounter table, given that I have been in that library once in the past 10 or so years, and one of the friends whom I bumped into there has never been in there.

And _potential_ is not enough. They actually have to happen. The real world is something in which I am intimately embedded and have repeated experiences which are coincidences, but reaffirm my myriad connections to the world. Many RPG settings are incredibly sparse in comparison.


----------



## Manbearcat

S'mon said:


> You're omitting the role of the dice roll.




I was folding that into math:

* The designer (Moldvay) has decided x aspect of play has a (just above) 16 % chance while the GM who sets a DC and gives Disadvantage (where the player now needs a 13 or better twice) is the volitional force of that 16 %. The players can express their own by choosing Elf (if it’s Secret Doors) or by deploying Inspiration or some other means to offset the Disadvantage (if they have it).

I liked your post. I do agree that there is a spread of volitional force (or planchette moving) in orthodox adventuring site/module play (designer, GM, player). I think it’s just that, were we able to (not that it can’t be done...just that it would require extreme computing power), we could build a model that could discern the precise % of volitional force of those 3 - 10 (ish) humans for every moment of play...and that would add up to 100 %...in the same way that Ouija or real life doesn’t have a _provable_ external volitional force (paranormal or metaphysical)...but different from real life in that the number of participating volitional forces in the system is extreme (which is not something a GM can approximate in any real sense...we’re all just doing our Knuckledragger Best to abstract it and pretend to tease out, but inevitably fail to do so, our cognitive biases).


----------



## Numidius

Always IME, the problem I encountered with Gms explicitly self proclaiming Keepers of Reality/Causality/Plausibility (which nonetheless implicitly they are and should be, in classic Gm driven style) is that they tend to the extremes in enforcing the proclaim: 
either by running a too strict railroad kind of game, in which the drama, the turning points are already established during prep, not accepting off the rails Pcs' declarations and course of action statements, 
or, on the other side, 
by a sandboxy style game where, though, nothing interesting really happens, and when one asks for "stuff" to happen, or Npcs to actively interact, they just dismiss it as naive requests of drama in their world of pure immersion and realistic (read boring) display of setting.

Interesting the fact that both behaviours don't like nor allow backgrounds for Player Chararcters, dismissing them as burdens soon to be relieved of as the game/story begins to unfold. 

My opinion is that a component of apprehension, almost fear, is preventing a more collaborative and enjoyable playstyle; a deep concern about sharing some narrative aspects of Rpg, about listening to inputs from the table and adding those to the usual output of being a Gm, so to enrich the experience. 

Again, IME in actual play: nothing to do with the ongoing diatribe in the OP, which I find interesting to read, btw. 

Anyway I understand that in a long campaign, with players coming&going, the Gm is the Keeper of Continuity, and rightfully so; I'm ranting about the rigid, fringe behaviours that role, more often than not, leads to.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Always IME, the problem I encountered with Gms explicitly self proclaiming Keepers of Reality/Causality/Plausibility (which nonetheless implicitly they are and should be, in classic Gm driven style) is that they tend to the extremes in enforcing the proclaim:
> either by running a too strict railroad kind of game, in which the drama, the turning points are already established during prep, not accepting off the rails Pcs' declarations and course of action statements,
> or, on the other side,
> by a sandboxy style game where, though, nothing interesting really happens, and when one asks for "stuff" to happen, or Npcs to actively interact, they just dismiss it as naive requests of drama in their world of pure immersion and realistic (read boring) display of setting.
> 
> Interesting the fact that both behaviours don't like nor allow backgrounds for Player Chararcters, dismissing them as burdens soon to be relieved of as the game/story begins to unfold.
> 
> My opinion is that a component of apprehension, almost fear, is preventing a more collaborative and enjoyable playstyle; a deep concern about sharing some narrative aspects of Rpg, about listening to inputs from the table and adding those to the usual output of being a Gm, so to enrich the experience.
> 
> Again, IME in actual play: nothing to do with the ongoing diatribe in the OP, which I find interesting to read, btw.
> 
> Anyway I understand that in a long campaign, with players coming&going, the Gm is the Keeper of Continuity, and rightfully so; I'm ranting about the rigid, fringe behaviours that role, more often than not, leads to.




This is a post I would like to respond to because you raise concrete things about table play that I can wrap my mind around. This is much better in my opinion than a discussion about how like or unlike the real world a game setting is or can be. 

I think you raise interesting points. I will give my take based on what I have seen at the table and in online discussion. I think the extreme cases of this do exist, just like they can in any style, and any GM who is overly rigid about play style is eventually going to run into tension with the right player or group. However, I think one thing that can often feed this extreme adherence to playstyle, where things that once may have been totally permissible within it are now forbidden because of ideas that have taken root as guiding principles or pillars, is online discussion and gaming theorizing itself. I've seen it on the immersive end and the sandbox end, where, because our style frequently clashes with more narrative styles online, as discussion unfolds, we tend to define ourselves against them. Which almost leads to an inverse GNS theory like mindset at times. Personally I am more in favor of rolling back the clock before these discussions, and simply asking whether we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater at various points when it comes to adventure structures, tools, and approaches to GMing. I also always try to keep in mind, there is more than one way to run a successful campaign or game session, and at the end of the day, anything you embrace has to pay dividends towards that end at the table. Sometimes you hit on an idea, and it works great for a year, two or three, but something in the group changes, you change, etc and what was working, stops working. So my only real guiding principle here is to do what I can to continue having successful play at the table. 

That said, I think critiquing a play style by its extremes isn't terribly productive. It can be useful to caution against the more extreme ends, or at least be aware that not everyone is going to have fun at those extreme ends. But I run a lot of sandbox campaigns where the GM is the one who essentially plays the setting, and they just don't look like what you are describing. I am not averse to incorporating emulative genre elements, and I also don't mind working with player character background. However I do tend to draw more of a line there. I'll happily take suggestions from players and I may let them in whole or recommend changes so they fit the setting. The reason I do this isn't because of some blind adherence to "The GM is God", it is because I was miserable as a GM and Player in the 2000s 3E era when it just became normal to let players allow all of their background, character concepts, etc into gaming (at least in many of the groups I played with). I am absolutely happy if a player says something that fits and is cool. I will allow. I will even allow powerful backgrounds. For example the other day I had a player ask to be the prefect of the region the adventure was taking place. This was well outside the normal allowance of the system (players in the game I am running can start as rank 9B officials and prefects are much higher than that). But I understood the player's ability to run such a character, and knew it would be used to make things more interesting and add layers to the campaign, so I allowed it. And it worked great. He elaborated on some of the details and those were all permitted into the campaign. The thing I think is important to retain here is the GM needs to be able to say no. Whether it is because of power concerns, or because of things not jiving well with the setting or campaign (these latter two are particularly important to me), I think that is a key function that, at least for how I like to play, I don't want to relinquish (or see relinquished when I am a player). Again, I just want to emphasize, I am talking about my bread and butter, weekly campaign preference. I am totally open to other possibilities when we are not trying to keep our long term groups intact. 

Just one other example here that may shed light on why some players actually like to feel like the world is external to their character. Again I really do have to advise against rigid adherence to this. There will always be things like edge case mechanics that deviate from this concept, but are not so overwhelming, so they add to the game with their presence. I have been play testing a new system. And the players in one of the groups are people I've gamed with for about two years. They are pretty mixed in terms of preferences. They seem to like drama. They are not afraid of words like plot or story. And so I made a new ability in the game (largely because of their tastes) that was called something like "Master Schemer". It allowed characters after the fact to make a roll and declare they had dome something devilishly deceptive like poison the very wine the NPC is drinking. This was meant to emulate something that comes up a lot in wuxia. I was very surprised by the strong negative and cautious reaction it received across several groups, but even among the more story oriented group. The reasons for disliking it did vary, but one of them was the players were being given control of what happened in the setting without having to walk through the steps of doing it. I thought it worked great from a story point of view, but because I think it stuck out because it didn't jive with the style we had developed together as a group (even though preferences were all over the map). 

Just to defend sandbox, I want to say, what you are describing sounds like a failed sandbox to me, not a well run one. I mean, if you are running a game and nothing is happening, then that is a bad session (unless you literally have five players totally content to do nothing). This is something plenty of sandbox GMs have written about and talked about. I would point people to Bat in the Attic (Rob Conley's blog) for some good advice on that. I've played in Rob's games and seen his advice in action. It is easy to mischaracterize his advice, or misunderstand and assume it leads to what you are talking about, but if you pay attention to his real points, you see he advocates avoiding that very problem. In fact, one of the things he advises is throwing more hooks and leads for groups that might not be as accustomed to taking initiative. I played in a real gritty medieval adventure with him, which is a campaign concept that could easily fall into the extreme you laid out. However there wasn't a dull moment. I worked out my character background with him. We tied it to the setting material (which was important because this was an attempt to do an authentic medieval campaign), and it worked great. He didn't shy away from making our backgrounds relevant. It is just rather than have us declare things and those things be reality, he fit our concepts to the setting and brought the setting to life enough that we could use our backgrounds well in interactions. We were free to do what we wanted, but stuff still happened in the setting. 

A sandbox isn't supposed to be static. There are pages of advice online regarding this. And there are any number of approaches to handle it (from countdown clocks to adventure seed tables to encounter tables to world in motion). My advice to anyone who is thinking of playing or running a sandbox but might be hesitant is to get information from the horse's mouth. Go to the places where people enjoy that style of play and learn what they do. Getting that kind of information from a thread like this or a venue where it isn't really the norm, is sort of like me getting all my information about narrative play from a sandbox GM or forum. You are going to get a misleading perspective on the matter (not saying you are doing that as I don't know your background with sandbox play, just making a general point). 

That said, if you don't like sandbox, it might not be for you. If you don't like GM as final arbiter, it may not be for you. These are just play style preferences. And they don't have to be all or nothing. You can easily take elements of a sandbox and mix them with other things if you like the idea of the openness and freedom but worry about the adventure not having enough sense of direction or excitement. Also, you can honestly run a sandbox with any kind of 'setting physics' you want. A lot of people run settings like they are the real world. Not everyone does. I run my wuxia campaigns using wuxia logic (my players like to say "Chang Cheh physics are now in play"). This means it isn't at all unlikely that when they sneak into the brothel ship to investigate the sleeping weasel of a scholar who has been spying on them, a bunch of sect henchmen jump out from the cabinets and attack. A lot of my choices in this kind of campaign are often guided by that kind of genre logic. I am somewhat sparring in its use. I try to give it the feel of a grounded wuxia. But it still has dramatic flare.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There are many principles that can govern the GM in making those decisions. But my contention is that none of them makes it like real life. A further point - related, but not the same: I think that, in practice, most of those principles make the gameworld far less varied and far more predictable than real life generally is.
> 
> This comes out in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s post not far upthread:




Yep!  I believe I also mentioned that even though you can't mirror real life, you can approximate it, making this style of play similar to real life. 



> On Friday I left some friends to head off and do my own thing. My own thing was a bust, so I went into a nearby library. I sat in there for about half-an-hour until my laptop battery went dead. Then, just as I was leaving, my friends were coming in so that I bumped into them at the entrance.
> 
> This is a very big library on a very large university campus, so a minute either way for me or them and we would not have bumped into one another. Not to mention this was the first time I'd been in that library for over ten years, and the first time ever one of my friends had been in there - so neither of us would be on the other's library encounter table.
> 
> Having re-met, we then were walking back to where one of my friends was parked when we bumped into another firend as he was leaving work. Our paths were only going to cross on a 50 metre stretch of footpath, so again a minute either way and that encounter wouldn't have happened. Whereas, as it was, I eneded up getting a lift home with him and then talking to him in his car outside my house for about half-an-hour.
> 
> My view is that for a RPG experience to be like real life even in outcome, it at least has to produce these sorts of events.




I also covered this when I said that there's no way a DM can hope to mirror all of the possibilities that real life comes up with.  However, that doesn't mean that the approximation we come up with shouldn't be done.  Nor does it make it Mother May I.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Well, not quite: it has to have the potential to produce these sort of events.  That's where dice come in.




But only the ones that the DM thinks of.  For instance, going back to the tea house.  The mayor might be there, as might the warlock's patron waiting to give him a task, or the wizard's master, or...  There are waaaaay too many possibilities for the DM to be able to think of, let alone spend hours rolling the thousands or millions of them to see if any of the really long shots happen.  

There is no potential for this method to mirror real life, but that's okay.  It can approximate things and give the game a similar feel to real life.  If the DM only thinks of a few possibilities and one of them hits, say the warlock's patron waiting at a table for the warlock to get there, that's enough to give it the real life feel.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> ..but different from real life in that the number of participating volitional forces in the system is extreme (which is not something a GM can approximate in any real sense...we’re all just doing our Knuckledragger Best to abstract it and pretend to tease out, but inevitably fail to do so, our cognitive biases).




I just want to make one minor point about this: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Responding because I think this connects to a much broader discussion of GMing, fairness, and arbitration in general. No GM is going to be perfectly X in anything. Whether X represents fairness, real world physics emulation, etc. That is obvious. No one would seriously suggest that. Doesn't mean it isn't worth the attempt or worth holding up X as the goal. You see this in sports for example. No referee is perfectly fair. But some referees are more fair than others. No writer has created a fully functional world, but some writers create more plausible and deeper worlds than others. When it comes to GMing to create a sense of a living setting (and I am not talking about a simulation of the real world) what matters is the GM is effectively functioning as the physics in the places where the mechanics are not used. A GM can be biassed and flawed, just like a theoretical universe could have wonky physics. What matters is the consistency. A GM's quirks and flaws become part of the physics of the setting. So that actually does give it a senes of being a concrete real place over time. And yes, it is a vast simplification when the GM tries to emulate real world physics. But it doesn't have to match reality 100% for it to feel like something real, or to be real enough for people to make informed decisions about where they are looking for members of Bone Breaking sect. 

My issue with the premise of this thread is it is basically a reductio ad absurdum argument. Would definitely encourage posters not to fall for the bait.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Always IME, the problem I encountered with Gms explicitly self proclaiming Keepers of Reality/Causality/Plausibility (which nonetheless implicitly they are and should be, in classic Gm driven style) is that they tend to the extremes in enforcing the proclaim:
> either by running a too strict railroad kind of game, in which the drama, the turning points are already established during prep, not accepting off the rails Pcs' declarations and course of action statements,
> or, on the other side,
> by a sandboxy style game where, though, nothing interesting really happens, and when one asks for "stuff" to happen, or Npcs to actively interact, they just dismiss it as naive requests of drama in their world of pure immersion and realistic (read boring) display of setting.




My experience has been the opposite.  I've never encountered that issue you describe with sandbox games, and I've rarely encountered the railroad you describe.  I have however encountered many DMs who run the game and attempt to model real world possibilities as best as they can.



> Interesting the fact that both behaviours don't like nor allow backgrounds for Player Chararcters, dismissing them as burdens soon to be relieved of as the game/story begins to unfold.




About half of those DMs I encountered, including sandbox DMs, wanted backgrounds.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> My experience has been the opposite.  I've never encountered that issue you describe with sandbox games, and I've rarely encountered the railroad you describe.  I have however encountered many DMs who run the game and attempt to model real world possibilities as best as they can.
> 
> 
> 
> About half of those DMs I encountered, including sandbox DMs, wanted backgrounds.



Glad to hear it. I'm complaining about my generation of friends / local gamers, say in their forties - late thirties - in Italy.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> This is a post I would like to respond to because you raise concrete things about table play that I can wrap my mind around. This is much better in my opinion than a discussion about how like or unlike the real world a game setting is or can be.
> 
> I think you raise interesting points. I will give my take based on what I have seen at the table and in online discussion. I think the extreme cases of this do exist, just like they can in any style, and any GM who is overly rigid about play style is eventually going to run into tension with the right player or group. However, I think one thing that can often feed this extreme adherence to playstyle, where things that once may have been totally permissible within it are now forbidden because of ideas that have taken root as guiding principles or pillars, is online discussion and gaming theorizing itself. I've seen it on the immersive end and the sandbox end, where, because our style frequently clashes with more narrative styles online, as discussion unfolds, we tend to define ourselves against them. Which almost leads to an inverse GNS theory like mindset at times. Personally I am more in favor of rolling back the clock before these discussions, and simply asking whether we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater at various points when it comes to adventure structures, tools, and approaches to GMing. I also always try to keep in mind, there is more than one way to run a successful campaign or game session, and at the end of the day, anything you embrace has to pay dividends towards that end at the table. Sometimes you hit on an idea, and it works great for a year, two or three, but something in the group changes, you change, etc and what was working, stops working. So my only real guiding principle here is to do what I can to continue having successful play at the table.
> 
> That said, I think critiquing a play style by its extremes isn't terribly productive. It can be useful to caution against the more extreme ends, or at least be aware that not everyone is going to have fun at those extreme ends. But I run a lot of sandbox campaigns where the GM is the one who essentially plays the setting, and they just don't look like what you are describing. I am not averse to incorporating emulative genre elements, and I also don't mind working with player character background. However I do tend to draw more of a line there. I'll happily take suggestions from players and I may let them in whole or recommend changes so they fit the setting. The reason I do this isn't because of some blind adherence to "The GM is God", it is because I was miserable as a GM and Player in the 2000s 3E era when it just became normal to let players allow all of their background, character concepts, etc into gaming (at least in many of the groups I played with). I am absolutely happy if a player says something that fits and is cool. I will allow. I will even allow powerful backgrounds. For example the other day I had a player ask to be the prefect of the region the adventure was taking place. This was well outside the normal allowance of the system (players in the game I am running can start as rank 9B officials and prefects are much higher than that). But I understood the player's ability to run such a character, and knew it would be used to make things more interesting and add layers to the campaign, so I allowed it. And it worked great. He elaborated on some of the details and those were all permitted into the campaign. The thing I think is important to retain here is the GM needs to be able to say no. Whether it is because of power concerns, or because of things not jiving well with the setting or campaign (these latter two are particularly important to me), I think that is a key function that, at least for how I like to play, I don't want to relinquish (or see relinquished when I am a player). Again, I just want to emphasize, I am talking about my bread and butter, weekly campaign preference. I am totally open to other possibilities when we are not trying to keep our long term groups intact.
> 
> Just one other example here that may shed light on why some players actually like to feel like the world is external to their character. Again I really do have to advise against rigid adherence to this. There will always be things like edge case mechanics that deviate from this concept, but are not so overwhelming, so they add to the game with their presence. I have been play testing a new system. And the players in one of the groups are people I've gamed with for about two years. They are pretty mixed in terms of preferences. They seem to like drama. They are not afraid of words like plot or story. And so I made a new ability in the game (largely because of their tastes) that was called something like "Master Schemer". It allowed characters after the fact to make a roll and declare they had dome something devilishly deceptive like poison the very wine the NPC is drinking. This was meant to emulate something that comes up a lot in wuxia. I was very surprised by the strong negative and cautious reaction it received across several groups, but even among the more story oriented group. The reasons for disliking it did vary, but one of them was the players were being given control of what happened in the setting without having to walk through the steps of doing it. I thought it worked great from a story point of view, but because I think it stuck out because it didn't jive with the style we had developed together as a group (even though preferences were all over the map).
> 
> Just to defend sandbox, I want to say, what you are describing sounds like a failed sandbox to me, not a well run one. I mean, if you are running a game and nothing is happening, then that is a bad session (unless you literally have five players totally content to do nothing). This is something plenty of sandbox GMs have written about and talked about. I would point people to Bat in the Attic (Rob Conley's blog) for some good advice on that. I've played in Rob's games and seen his advice in action. It is easy to mischaracterize his advice, or misunderstand and assume it leads to what you are talking about, but if you pay attention to his real points, you see he advocates avoiding that very problem. In fact, one of the things he advises is throwing more hooks and leads for groups that might not be as accustomed to taking initiative. I played in a real gritty medieval adventure with him, which is a campaign concept that could easily fall into the extreme you laid out. However there wasn't a dull moment. I worked out my character background with him. We tied it to the setting material (which was important because this was an attempt to do an authentic medieval campaign), and it worked great. He didn't shy away from making our backgrounds relevant. It is just rather than have us declare things and those things be reality, he fit our concepts to the setting and brought the setting to life enough that we could use our backgrounds well in interactions. We were free to do what we wanted, but stuff still happened in the setting.
> 
> A sandbox isn't supposed to be static. There are pages of advice online regarding this. And there are any number of approaches to handle it (from countdown clocks to adventure seed tables to encounter tables to world in motion). My advice to anyone who is thinking of playing or running a sandbox but might be hesitant is to get information from the horse's mouth. Go to the places where people enjoy that style of play and learn what they do. Getting that kind of information from a thread like this or a venue where it isn't really the norm, is sort of like me getting all my information about narrative play from a sandbox GM or forum. You are going to get a misleading perspective on the matter (not saying you are doing that as I don't know your background with sandbox play, just making a general point).
> 
> That said, if you don't like sandbox, it might not be for you. If you don't like GM as final arbiter, it may not be for you. These are just play style preferences. And they don't have to be all or nothing. You can easily take elements of a sandbox and mix them with other things if you like the idea of the openness and freedom but worry about the adventure not having enough sense of direction or excitement. Also, you can honestly run a sandbox with any kind of 'setting physics' you want. A lot of people run settings like they are the real world. Not everyone does. I run my wuxia campaigns using wuxia logic (my players like to say "Chang Cheh physics are now in play"). This means it isn't at all unlikely that when they sneak into the brothel ship to investigate the sleeping weasel of a scholar who has been spying on them, a bunch of sect henchmen jump out from the cabinets and attack. A lot of my choices in this kind of campaign are often guided by that kind of genre logic. I am somewhat sparring in its use. I try to give it the feel of a grounded wuxia. But it still has dramatic flare.



Well said.
Now I should contact all the Gms I met in the past and have them read that. 
Myself in primis. 
But I already agreee with you, otherwise I'd not be complaining in here. 

My search for the right party, to run or to play with, continues...


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Glad to hear it. I'm complaining about my generation of friends / local gamers, say in their forties - late thirties - in Italy.




Maybe DMs in Italy are different, then.  I'm in the same age range here in America.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> As I said, my friend and I wouldn't be on the typical GM's library encounter table, given that I have been in that library once in the past 10 or so years, and one of the friends whom I bumped into there has never been in there.



To that level of granularity, perhaps not; but having as a low-but-not-zero percentage option on a table "You bump into someone you know" makes sense.  Put another way, were you a PC in a game your action is to go to the library; the DM then rolls to determine if anything interesting happens there - and in this case, it did.

Were the table much more granular - say, using a d-10000 instead of d% - then maybe there'd be a 1-chance that you bump into someone you haven't seen in ages and who otherwise never goes there; but most games (Hackmaster perhaps excepted) don't tune things that finely.



> And _potential_ is not enough. They actually have to happen. The real world is something in which I am intimately embedded and have repeated experiences which are coincidences, but reaffirm my myriad connections to the world. Many RPG settings are incredibly sparse in comparison.



Potential is all there is.  Saying as an absolute "they have to happen" starts to push things into unbelievability, but saying "they have to be able to happen" is bang on.  Why?  Because they also have to be able to not happen.

An example of "not happen" might be there's someone you haven't seen in ages who is working in the building next to yours, but by random chance your paths just never happen to cross and thus you never realize he's there.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Maybe DMs in Italy are different, then.  I'm in the same age range here in America.



 i better not generalize. I'm sure there's plenty of valid Gms in Italy. Let's say: the ones I've met, then. 

Sometimes I just wonder why is it so hard (for me) to just sit down, roll some pc, agree on an initial set-up/situation, generate background accordingly, and start rolling dice


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## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> But only the ones that the DM thinks of.  For instance, going back to the tea house.  The mayor might be there, as might the warlock's patron waiting to give him a task, or the wizard's master, or...  There are waaaaay too many possibilities for the DM to be able to think of, let alone spend hours rolling the thousands or millions of them to see if any of the really long shots happen.
> 
> There is no potential for this method to mirror real life, but that's okay.  It can approximate things and give the game a similar feel to real life.  If the DM only thinks of a few possibilities and one of them hits, say the warlock's patron waiting at a table for the warlock to get there, that's enough to give it the real life feel.



This is, of course, quite right: no DM is ever going to think* of everything, and any expectation that she will is doomed to failure.

* - be it during prep or on the fly.

As long as a DM can think of enough things, however, to keep the game going and provide within the setting some interesting and reasonable options, choices, consistency, and consequences then all is probably good.


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## FrogReaver

pemerton said:


> This thread is a spin-off of this thread. Its immediate trigger is the following post:
> 
> 
> In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of _request_, _permission_, _decision_ etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).
> 
> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.
> 
> That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.
> 
> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.




In RPG's time is rarely tracked down to the second or the minute.  So we can't determine that an NPC is there at exactly 8:22 to 8:53 and then the players don't say we arrive at 8:49, thus allowing the DM to simply deduce that they met.  Instead because time isn't tracked to that degree of precision (and shouldn't be IMO) then the only way the DM can answer the question of whether you meet a person at a particular place is by assigning a DC and rolling a die to determine if you do.  In that way it's not like real life.  You don't really have a chance of meeting someone at any particular location in real life, the timings are already determined by the other things that you are doing and that happened that day and thus you either meet or don't meet.  We simplify all those calculations into a simple probabilistic d20 roll.

If you are focused on simulating the process then I think I might agree that it's not much like real life.  But it very much provides real life like outcomes (at least to whatever dXYZ granularity you are using).

The question I'm curious about is why do you care whether the process for determining something in game mimics the procress something would be determined by in real life?  What benefit is there to that?


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## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> i better not generalize. I'm sure there's plenty of valid Gms in Italy. Let's say: the ones I've met, then.
> 
> Sometimes I just wonder why is it so hard (for me) to just sit down, roll some pc, agree on an initial set-up/situation, generate background accordingly, and start rolling dice




Sounds good, and where I was ultimately going.  Whether you have been unlucky or I've been lucky, I think there are DMs out there that will have what you want.  There may also be some cultural differences at play.  Try getting into a roll 20 game with a group in the U.S. and see if there are any differences that you like.  In any case, I wish you the best of luck finding what you need.


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## Shasarak

I think, if anything, pemertons example about going to the library proves that a DM telling the players about the gameworld is *exactly* like real life.

I mean he went to the library, failed to find anyone from the Bone Breaking Sect then he got sidetracked by a bunch of other NPCs ad wasted half an hour talking about something completely unrelated to the game.  So how is that not exactly the same as a real game?


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I made a new ability in the game (largely because of their tastes) that was called something like "Master Schemer". It allowed characters after the fact to make a roll and declare they had dome something devilishly deceptive like poison the very wine the NPC is drinking. This was meant to emulate something that comes up a lot in wuxia. I was very surprised by the strong negative and cautious reaction it received across several groups, but even among the more story oriented group. The reasons for disliking it did vary, but one of them was the players were being given control of what happened in the setting without having to walk through the steps of doing it.



I have never played a game with a mechanic of the sort you describe. As you describe it it seems a little weak as a mechanic, becuase it appears not to connect the action either to the character or the situation; but perhaps there was more to it than your brief sketch has set out.



Bedrockgames said:


> If you don't like GM as final arbiter, it may not be for you.



The GMing technique that is mentioned in the OP is not _GM as final arbiter_. It is _GM as initial and sole arbiter_. Those two things are very different.



Maxperson said:


> there's no way a DM can hope to mirror all of the possibilities that real life comes up with.  However, that doesn't mean that the approximation we come up with shouldn't be done.



But it does raise the possibility of (i) not characterising one's techniques by reference to their approximation of real life, and (ii) if the desire _is_ to approximate real life, look for other systems that might do that.



Numidius said:


> My opinion is that a component of apprehension, almost fear, is preventing a more collaborative and enjoyable playstyle; a deep concern about sharing some narrative aspects of Rpg, about listening to inputs from the table and adding those to the usual output of being a Gm, so to enrich the experience.



I agree that some GM-driven play does seem to be motivated at least in part by a fear of what will happen to the setting, and the shared fiction more generally, if the players are allowed to exercise significant influence over it.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I have never played a game with a mechanic of the sort you describe. As you describe it it seems a little weak as a mechanic, becuase it appears not to connect the action either to the character or the situation; but perhaps there was more to it than your brief sketch has set out.




I think you and I would have very different definitions of weak mechanics. But it may well have been. The important point though wasn't the lack of heft, it was that this mechanic crossed a line that even my story friendly players didn't want me to cross (because it was effectively giving them retro-active control over something that had already occurred). In a wuxia film this happens all the time. In that context it would make sense. In a game, I think I failed to appreciate how jarring it might be. Here is the full text I had. Note I haven't decided what to do with it yet, so it very well could be removed, altered, etc. Also it is worth keeping in mind, this is a rules light dark wuxia game intended to be far less crunchy than my other wuxia game. So all of the styles are designed with GM Rulings being the assumed approach (meaning we tried to keep them light and open in the manner of say the white box spells, with the understanding that the GM is meant to interpret their broader application rather than spell out all the different cases and uses). Also the tag, "optional-style" just indicates it is an optional rule due to campaign style considerations. *EDIT:* This mechanic is a Signature Ability which is something every character can select at character creation (they get up to three, five if they take  some serious Qi-based flaws; and each of the Signature Abilities are usually pretty broad, often approaching something more like a martial style or philosophy, but narrowing in some instances to fit other wuxia concepts): 

_Master Deceiver (Optional-Style) 
You are skilled at deception and poison use and can reveal your schemes at any moment. You may freely announce (in or out of combat) that you have placed a trap or poison in a location or on an object. You must still make a relevant skill roll against the Target's Wits to deceive them into being poisoned or trapped. This ability can only be used within the bounds of reason, and the GM has the final say. 

Examples: as an NPC is drinking a cup of alcohol, you tell the GM that you gave the inn’s staff poisoned powder to put in the cup._





> The GMing technique that is mentioned in the OP is not _GM as final arbiter_. It is _GM as initial and sole arbiter_. Those two things are very different.




This strikes me as a bit pedantic


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But it does raise the possibility of (i) not characterising one's techniques by reference to their approximation of real life, and




Not for me and the other supporters here in this thread.  What we do is a fine approximation of real life.  



> (ii) if the desire _is_ to approximate real life, look for other systems that might do that.




I'm quite happy with D&D which allows me to approximate things quite well.  Even if another system is better at it, I don't want to have to learn a new system and persuade all my players to make a switch that just isn't necessary.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> My contention is that the _what would likely be there_ approach is not an approximation to real life. And thus that whatever experience it engenders in those who enjoy it, _like real life_ or _more like real life than (say) declaring and resolving a Streetwise check_ is not an appropriate description for that experience.




I don't think you have any real basis for denying the subjective experience of other people who say they do experience it that way.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The GMing technique that is mentioned in the OP is not GM as final arbiter. It is GM as initial and sole arbiter. Those two things are very different.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This strikes me as a bit pedantic
Click to expand...


Why? It's pretty fundamental to some key differences in RPG techniques, and corresponding differences in RPG preferences. Most of the RPGs I run involve GM as final arbiter. But I would never play or run a system in which the GM is initial and sole arbiter of action declaration outcomes.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Why? It's pretty fundamental to some key differences in RPG techniques, and corresponding differences in RPG preferences. Most of the RPGs I run involve GM as final arbiter. But I would never play or run a system in which the GM is initial and sole arbiter of action declaration outcomes.




I am just finding your approach to language in the discussion, excessively precise. You are so hyper focused on language in the other thread you didn't even answer my question but instead took issue with how my question was presented. I just don't appear to have an issue conveying my meaning in plain english to other posters like I do with you.


----------



## Imaculata

pemerton said:


> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.




I'm not sure if I've ever played in a group that plays this way. In all of the games I have played, or been the DM for, the DM already has an idea what is at the teahouse. Any suggestions made by the players may, but won't necesarily change his preestablished ideas.

*For example:*

My players are currently inside an underground cathedral, where they see evil monks carrying a coffin around with their dead high priest. They are about to start a fight with them, which will be the start of our next session. But before the last session, one of the players said _"It would not surprise me if that high priest isn't entirely dead"_. Of course I know the answer to this, and whether I change my mind is entirely up to me. But I don't generally change the fiction based on ideas that my players randomly spout during the session. 

If the highpriest was intended to be still alive (or undead), I won't just change it just because my players correctly guessed my intentions. Nor do I now make him alive, when he was originally dead. I suppose I have until our next session to change the fiction any way I like, but I usually don't. Not that I don't appreciate player-input, but I kind of like the idea that what's there is there, and what isn't, is not. I don't mind _not_ surprising my players, when it was my original intention to do so. Because guessing a trap correctly, can also be satisfying to the players.

I get the impression that none of the DM's that I have played with, change their mind like that either. Of course, this is merely my impression, I didn't ask them.


----------



## Sadras

Pemerton may be right, I imagine a DM telling a PC that the whench has just straddled their character's lap is not the same as a having your lap straddled in RL. To be fair, none of my characters have been straddled, so this is just a hunch on my part.


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## Umbran

S'mon said:


> I said it _functions like_ real life. Whatever the pre-game process that created the teahouse.




It functions like real life *if* the GM has any knowledge about how sects of the appropriate sort work.  Which is unlikely.  It functions, at best, like the GM thinks "real life" works.

There is a solid point to be made that the characters live in the world 24/7, but the players and GM live there for only a few hours here and there.  A real world has tons, oodles, and boatloads of detail, while the GM has a sketch, maybe not even written down.  But even if it is written down, it is still a sketch.


----------



## Maxperson

Umbran said:


> It functions like real life *if* the GM has any knowledge about how sects of the appropriate sort work.  Which is unlikely.  It functions, at best, like the GM thinks "real life" works.




Which is one of the reasons why it works as an approximation of real life and not an exact duplicate of real life.  I don't think I've seen a single person on my side of the issue claim that it mirrors real life.  Only that it approximates and/or is similar to real life.


----------



## Umbran

Imaculata said:


> I'm not sure if I've ever played in a group that plays this way. In all of the games I have played, or been the DM for, the DM already has an idea what is at the teahouse.




"An idea," is not, "the life story of every person within."    An idea may not even be knowing how many people are actually there at any given time.  The typical RPG "an idea" is a listing of the people who the GM thinks is important at the time they wrote it.  

If they wrote it.  Many is the time when the procedure is more like, "Hm.  We want to find members of this sect.  Where are they likely to hang out?  In this culture... maybe a teahouse?  Hey, GM, we go look for a teahouse to see if we can find some members of this sect!"  And, this idea is *entirely reasonable*, but the GM didn't think of it beforehand, and so there is no teahouse detailed in the campaign setting, though there are plenty of them implied.  The GM has the choice of winging it, or shooting down a reasonable idea because they didn't think of it.

This latter is, long run, a losing proposition.  The players literally have more brains than the GM.  They will think of things the GM hasn't considered, as the GM is one person with a day job and other things to do with their time than detail out everything to the finest detail.  The GM is well-served to answer most incidents of , "Mother, may I?" with the improv technique of, "Yes, and..."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> It functions like real life *if* the GM has any knowledge about how sects of the appropriate sort work.  Which is unlikely.  It functions, at best, like the GM thinks "real life" works.
> 
> There is a solid point to be made that the characters live in the world 24/7, but the players and GM live there for only a few hours here and there.  A real world has tons, oodles, and boatloads of detail, while the GM has a sketch, maybe not even written down.  But even if it is written down, it is still a sketch.




This idea stems from a post of mine that was quoted and, in my view, muscharacteruzed. I never said that the game works is exactly like the real world. I said a GM telling a player who is at the tea house, when players say they are going there to look for members of Bone Breaker sect, is no more mother may I than if someone went somewhere looking for people in real life. I never said they followed the same process either. All I was saying is, like in real life, sometimes you go to a location to find someone and they are not there. That doesn’t sound at all like mother may I to me. 

Also I added all kinds of caveats, including the world could be emulating anything (a genre universe rather than real world cause and effect). Basically I was saying it is entirely okay for the GM to make a determination of what is there based on his or her knowledge of the setting, sect, etc. other approaches are totally fine to. I have no issue with pemerton wanting more mechanics and/or procedure. I just think calling that style mother may I is not a fair characterization (and somehow we ended up in a debate about real world determinism and physics).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> If they wrote it.  Many is the time when the procedure is more like, "Hm.  We want to find members of this sect.  Where are they likely to hang out?  In this culture... maybe a teahouse?  Hey, GM, we go look for a teahouse to see if we can find some members of this sect!"  And, this idea is *entirely reasonable*, but the GM didn't think of it beforehand, and so there is no teahouse detailed in the campaign setting, though there are plenty of them implied.  The GM has the choice of winging it, or shooting down a reasonable idea because they didn't think of it.
> 
> This latter is, long run, a losing proposition.  The players literally have more brains than the GM.  They will think of things the GM hasn't considered, as the GM is one person with a day job and other things to do with their time than detail out everything to the finest detail.  The GM is well-served to answer most incidents of , "Mother, may I?" with the improv technique of, "Yes, and..."




I strongly disagree with this. "Yes and" just allows anything the players want to unfold in the campaign. As a player this is the last thing I want, which was why I was so against "Yes and" when I first heard of it. I think the issue here is you are being overly reductive. It isn't simply a choice between 'winging it' with a mother may I approach or "yes and". I do agree with you that when this comes up, it is often around things the GM hasn't thought of in advance. But the GM is the one making the campaign material and knows the organizations, the places, the cultures involved. The GM instead of 'winging it' or saying 'yes' can think it through and try to come up with the most reasonable result to the question "what is there?". If he or she wants, they can factor in the question of Bone Breaking Sect being there, since that is a legitimate thing to look for. But I'd personally not have the answer be based on the player's desire to see them as much as whether it is plausible they'd be there in the first place. Of course this is a campaign set in Jianghu, so there would be a strong possibility of someone being there who knows where Bone Breaking Sect might be found. 

In the Bone Breaker example, that comes from my campaign. I know the sect, I know its hierarchy and leadership as well as its general procedures for things. I also know the Tea House the players are going to and what kind of clientele tend to be there. My honest solution to the problem would probably to guesstimate a probability and roll for it based off of that information or just make a decision about it. The reason why I do this is I want to preserve the feeling of exploring a real world that operates external to the characters, so it has a sense of realness and immersion. That is not a style that everyone wants, nor is it the only way to get realness and immersion. But it works for me, and it absolutely isn't mother may I. My players are not going around obsequiously asking if they can do this or that, they are earnestly exploring the setting. And believe me, if my judgements start to feel like mother may I, my players let me know. They are not a shy lot.


----------



## TwoSix

I'm going to try to isolate some points of contention.  I'll probably fail, but points for effort, right?

1)  Zooming out, real life is of course driven by trillions upon trillions of subtle actions that lead to an indecipherable web of consequences.  Zoom in, though, and any one consequence usually looks pretty goddamn random.  If I get hit by a truck, the fact that the truck driver had an argument with his father 30 years ago that lead to a chain of events that caused him to fall asleep at the wheel that day is both absolutely true and utterly meaningless to my mangled corpse.

2)  The fact that life appears random means that random determination of events can make a fictional playspace seem more like a real-life space, driven by the aforementioned web of consequences.

Now, for the teahouse example, I think virtually every playgroup accepts that, _for the characters_, the teahouse was always an extant part of their reality.  No one is positing that the characters know the teahouse is being apparated into existence in response to the characters deciding to go there.

Likewise, I think everyone accepts that for this example, the teahouse was already located in the fiction during prior play, so that "going to the teahouse" is a valid action declaration for everyone.  (A narrative group might simply assume that a teahouse is a valid location to visit in their current genre of play, while a simulationist group might wait for the DM to declare the existence of a teahouse before making action declarations involving it.)

Additionally, I don't think anyone outside the most hardcore preppers of DMs has a detailed rendering of any one teahouse in the city and the schedules of who comes and goes already assigned.  And I think this where the break occurs.

A simulationist group knows that the DM probably doesn't have the exact location of the sect members known at all times.   If the sim DM says "There are no sect members in the teahouse, and the owner has no memory of ever seeing any", then the sim group assumes that the DM already knows where the sect members hang out.  Or if the answer is "There aren't any here right now, but I have seen them come and go", then the assumption is the DM used some kind of random process to determine if they were there right now.

But what they do expect is the appearance of extrapolation from prior knowledge, and the use of algorithm and procedure to derive the answer.  Even if the DM is just deciding extemporaneously, it's assumed that the DM is reasoning based on an already extant structure of the game world.  What this is trying to prevent is the appearance of contrivance, which is the bane of simulationist play and simultaneously the heart of narrative play.

tl;dr:  Randomness makes things look more real.  Sim minded players value the appearance of process and derived results in their play, even if the derivation is purely a mental construct of the DM calculating odds and rolling dice.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> The GM has the choice of winging it, or shooting down a reasonable idea because they didn't think of it.




I just want to point out, this isn't why the GM might rule they are not there. It isn't about shooting down ideas you don't think about. I take great pains to carefully consider what the players are trying to do. I also take pride in not having my decisions about this stuff cater to what I want to see, or what outcomes help me keep going in a particular direction (and I've had a lot of players thank me for this approach). If the players raise the question of whether Bone Breaking sect members are there, or if there is even a Tea House to be found, it is just that, if this stuff hasn't been hashed out in advance, the GM now needs to apply some logic to thing it through and decide what the case is or what resolution method to employ. There is a style of play that is based on the GM being familiar with the setting, taking established facts about the setting, and extrapolating based off those facts. But the purpose isn't for the GM to be a jerk and just shoot down ideas. And the players in such campaigns are usually not viewing it as some kind of social negotiation, they are usually just interested in exploring, investigating, etc and feeling like they are doing so in a concrete world. If you have a GM who is trying to be fair, logical, and familiar with the setting, it really does feel that way. And your decisions as players can genuinely matter. Also, in such a campaign, there is a perfectly good chance the GM does know who frequents that Tea House and whether members of Bone Breaking Sect are there (for example many of my Tea Houses have contacts from different sects present or operating the place as a front). 

I will say, given what I know of Bone Breaker sect, a tea house is probably one of the least likely places you would find them. They tend to be found more in brothels, gambling halls, and other places where the criminal underworld has a strong presence. It isn't impossible though. So I would probably assign a flat probability of 2-10% that someone from Bone Breaker sect or a group from bone breaker sect, are meeting at the tea house for some reason. If the player just wants to go around the city looking for rumors and information, I'd probably call for a City Survival roll. But the result would just be whatever information is available in the city, not information created because of the roll.


----------



## Bedrockgames

TwoSix said:


> A simulationist group knows that the DM probably doesn't have the exact location of the sect members known at all times.   If the sim DM says "There are no sect members in the teahouse, and the owner has no memory of ever seeing any", then the sim group assumes that the DM already knows where the sect members hang out.  Or if the answer is "There aren't any here right now, but I have seen them come and go", then the assumption is the DM used some kind of random process to determine if they were there right now.
> 
> But what they do expect is the appearance of extrapolation from prior knowledge, and the use of algorithm and procedure to derive the answer.  Even if the DM is just deciding extemporaneously, it's assumed that the DM is reasoning based on an already extant structure of the game world.  What this is trying to prevent is the appearance of contrivance, which is the bane of simulationist play and simultaneously the heart of narrative play.
> .




Very few of the GMs I know who engage in this style even call it simulationist. That is usually a term leveled at the style from outside. But that said, this isn't even about simulating real world stuff. There are a cluster of styles that engage in this sort of thing, and not all of them are interested in portraying reality. For example there is the Living Adventure style, which was elaborated on in Feast of Goblyns and originally showcased (I believe, though it may have earlier roots) in the original Ravenloft module---going by memory here. That is merely about treating the NPCs as live actors in the game the same as you treat PCs. The Gm is encouraged to have them move around, plot and plan, and react, the same way player characters do. This has nothing to do with simulating a world. It has eveything to do with running a character focused campaign where the villains do all kinds of clever things and are not pinned to a particular location.


----------



## TwoSix

Bedrockgames said:


> Very few of the GMs I know who engage in this style even call it simulationist. That is usually a term leveled at the style from outside. But that said, this isn't even about simulating real world stuff. There are a cluster of styles that engage in this sort of thing, and not all of them are interested in portraying reality. For example there is the Living Adventure style, which was elaborated on in Feast of Goblyns and originally showcased (I believe, though it may have earlier roots) in the original Ravenloft module---going by memory here. That is merely about treating the NPCs as live actors in the game the same as you treat PCs. The Gm is encouraged to have them move around, plot and plan, and react, the same way player characters do. This has nothing to do with simulating a world. It has eveything to do with running a character focused campaign where the villains do all kinds of clever things and are not pinned to a particular location.



You're free to call it whatever you want, of course, but that kind of play (where NPCs operate under a DM controlled paradigm of action, independent of the players or PCs) is straight up simulationism.  Simulationism really has nothing to do with the real world, it has to do with designing probabilistic rules of action and extrapolating to see what happens.  

Random encounter charts, organized by biome?  Simulationist.  Weapon dice, derived from a sense of how much damage the real-world equivalent would do?  Simulationist.  You can't really play D&D in any form and not be a little simulationist.


----------



## Bedrockgames

TwoSix said:


> You're free to call it whatever you want, of course, but that kind of play (where NPCs operate under a DM controlled paradigm of action, independent of the players or PCs) is straight up simulationism.  Simulationism really has nothing to do with the real world, it has to do with designing probabilistic rules of action and extrapolating to see what happens.
> 
> Random encounter charts, organized by biome?  Simulationist.  Weapon dice, derived from a sense of how much damage the real-world equivalent would do?  Simulationist.  You can't really play D&D in any form and not be a little simulationist.




Well it is a category that comes of RPG theory. Not everyone thinks it is useful. Personally I don’t think it is (particularly under GNS). Most tables don’t conform neatly to those divisions in my opinion.


----------



## TwoSix

Bedrockgames said:


> Well it is a category that comes of RPG theory. Not everyone thinks it is useful. Personally I don’t think it is (particularly under GNS). Most tables don’t conform neatly to those divisions in my opinion.



Sure.  In general, most things in life don't fit neatly into categories, but that doesn't mean describing categories isn't useful.  I don't think you're purely a simulationist gamer, but the aesthetic desires that drive simulationism appear to apply more strongly to you (based on your statement of preferences) than they do [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], just as an example.


----------



## Bedrockgames

TwoSix said:


> Sure.  In general, most things in life don't fit neatly into categories, but that doesn't mean describing categories isn't useful.  I don't think you're purely a simulationist gamer, but the aesthetic desires that drive simulationism appear to apply more strongly to you (based on your statement of preferences) than they do @_*pemerton*_, just as an example.




I just feel these terms are part of a model that is hard to prove. You can group gamers into all different types. My feeling is even by participating in this discussion, I almost fall into the habit of accepting part of that model as I make and defend claims against pemerton. I have seen this happen many times innonline discussions (with myself and others) where you start to form principles out of the discussion, that you carry to the game table. But these don’t tend to reflect the realities of play. They are part of an idealized model. With simulationism my issue is two fold—you can lose sight of your natural style and stiffly try to be simulationist....but more important I think in GNS it felt like a leftover category describing s style of play that the theorists had very little real interest in. I don’t view what I do as simulationist. I view it as running dramatic sandboxes in living settings. And my style is open to change.

EDIT: Pardon typos. Was on iPhone


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> I just want to make one minor point about this: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Responding because I think this connects to a much broader discussion of GMing, fairness, and arbitration in general. No GM is going to be perfectly X in anything. Whether X represents fairness, real world physics emulation, etc. That is obvious. No one would seriously suggest that. Doesn't mean it isn't worth the attempt or worth holding up X as the goal. You see this in sports for example. No referee is perfectly fair. But some referees are more fair than others. No writer has created a fully functional world, but some writers create more plausible and deeper worlds than others. When it comes to GMing to create a sense of a living setting (and I am not talking about a simulation of the real world) what matters is the GM is effectively functioning as the physics in the places where the mechanics are not used. A GM can be biassed and flawed, just like a theoretical universe could have wonky physics. What matters is the consistency. A GM's quirks and flaws become part of the physics of the setting. So that actually does give it a senes of being a concrete real place over time. And yes, it is a vast simplification when the GM tries to emulate real world physics. But it doesn't have to match reality 100% for it to feel like something real, or to be real enough for people to make informed decisions about where they are looking for members of Bone Breaking sect.
> 
> My issue with the premise of this thread is it is basically a reductio ad absurdum argument. Would definitely encourage posters not to fall for the bait.




All GMs are biased and flawed.  A very typical problem is a blinkered view of one's capabilities in rendering an extremely complex system in a way that is inferrable from first principles or by weight of evidence by the other participants at the table.

That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do their best and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't attempt it at all (perfect being the enemy of the good), but perhaps they need to consider (a) their limitations and (b) other sources of input (be it procedures, a slight shift in priorities, or principles, or other table participants) to play which will correct for their biases and flaws.

Coincidentally, a few other typical problems with GMs is their investment in their work/creation/prep (and the perceived value of it), their perceived status as alpha chimp (I'm using that descriptively; in an evolutionary, dominance hierarchy way), and their entitlement to absolute authority over content introduction.  These 3 work in conjunction to be extremely sensitive to (b) above.

If I'm holding a GMing workshop, those 4 flaws are right at the top of the heap of things I would deconstruct and teach how to be aware of each of those lurking beasts while also maintaining confidence in your GMing product.

Interestingly, I'd say that once those flaws are beaten back, a GM becomes infinitely better at erecting a shared imaginary space for the players to explore, suss out its machinery, and make informed action declarations they can be secure in.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> All GMs are biased and flawed.  A very typical problem is a blinkered view of one's capabilities in rendering an extremely complex system in a way that is inferrable from first principles or by weight of evidence by the other participants at the table.
> 
> 
> 
> Coincidentally, a few other typical problems with GMs is their investment in their work/creation/prep (and the perceived value of it), their perceived status as alpha chimp (I'm using that descriptively; in an evolutionary, dominance hierarchy way), and their entitlement to absolute authority over content introduction.  These 3 work in conjunction to be extremely sensitive to (b) above.
> 
> If I'm holding a GMing workshop, those 4 flaws are right at the top of the heap of things I would deconstruct and teach how to be aware of each of those lurking beasts while also maintaining confidence in your GMing product.
> 
> Interestingly, I'd say that once those flaws are beaten back, a GM becomes infinitely better at erecting a shared imaginary space for the players to explore, suss out its machinery, and make informed action declarations they can be secure in.




Again, I think people are projecting here. None of what I am talking about has anything to do with being the alpha chimp or oblivious to one’s own biases. It is about a style of play that likes having the GM take on this role to help create a sense of a world that is both believable and external to the characters. It isn’t the only way to do it, and it isn’t at all how people are characterizing, even pathologizing it. When I GM I am mindful of my biases, humble, and totally open to the idea that I made a bad it inaccurate call. But this is a set up for adjudication me and my players enjoy. What I don’t understand is why it is so hard for people to accept without attributing flaws to us as people. We are not unenlightened just because we take a different approach to GMing, and just because we take this approach, that doesn't mean we run the game like the worst caricature imaginable of such a GM (which seems to be how people are presenting it). 



> That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do their best and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't attempt it at all (perfect being the enemy of the good), but perhaps they need to consider (a) their limitations and (b) other sources of input (be it procedures, a slight shift in priorities, or principles, or other table participants) to play which will correct for their biases and flaws.




Sure you should account for your biases and work hard to strive for more fair-minded rulings. But you are slipping in a complete style change with (B). If such procedures work for you, that is great. I encourage you to use them, and I think it is fine to explore alternatives. But you are talking to someone who has looked at different ways of running the game, been in all kinds of campaigns, and is using a way that works very well at his table. I don't think a shift in priorities or procedures is required simply because it is a fact that no GM is perfect. That doesn't mean you have to throw away the play style. I get it might not work for you, or for some others. Maybe they do want more player input in the judgement, or maybe they want a clearer procedure. But for those of us who like the way these kinds of games feel (on both the GM and Player side) that kind of change disrupts the enjoyment. There are all kinds of games, gamers and play styles. This is a good thing. We should encourage it. But I get the feeling there are some here who want everyone to run the game using the same 'best practices', which I think is a terrible idea for something as subjective as RPGs.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> All GMs are biased and flawed.  A very typical problem is a blinkered view of one's capabilities in rendering an extremely complex system in a way that is inferrable from first principles or by weight of evidence by the other participants at the table.




Except I talk with my players, I get regular feedback. I am not saying what I do is a perfect simulation of reality (and frankly I'd never want it to be). But I feel we've reached a point where it is an adequate emulation of genre-infused living world, where the players can get the information they need to make informed decisions (and when they don't they are always free to ask questions---I am not rigidly imposing some kind of artificial wall so they can't inquire further or must only do so through their character). And, very very importantly, I do this because this is what I want GMs to do when I am a player. I like when GMs run games this way. No one is claiming that makes them masters of logic, or masters of emulating an artificial world. But what they do is enough for our purposes.


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> Except I talk with my players, I get regular feedback. I am not saying what I do is a perfect simulation of reality (and frankly I'd never want it to be). But I feel we've reached a point where it is an adequate emulation of genre-infused living world, where the players can get the information they need to make informed decisions (and when they don't they are always free to ask questions---I am not rigidly imposing some kind of artificial wall so they can't inquire further or must only do so through their character). And, very very importantly, I do this because this is what I want GMs to do when I am a player. I like when GMs run games this way. No one is claiming that makes them masters of logic, or masters of emulating an artificial world. But what they do is enough for our purposes.




Brendan, that was in no way an attack on your preferred playstyle nor projection.  That was just analysis of inherent GMing flaws (all GMs must push back against these characteristics...so I'm not excluded from this) and how they intersect with the creation of a (lets forget interesting for a moment) coherent, complex system that is able to be inferred through play (an intrigue, a biome, a social system). 

You have to understand that some people (myself included) have a variety of playstyles that they engage with.  Every time I run a Blades in the Dark sandbox game (in Duskvol), or a D&D hexcrawl, or a dungeoncrawl, or a Cortex+ heist, or create a Town in Dogs...I have to deploy many of the skills (perhaps with subtle differences) you have espoused as important in this thread.  So I don't diminish their importance nor was that prior post a declaration of them being outmoded.  Where we differ is their portrayal, some procedural elements that help to best accomplish the mission...and apparently (after that defense you just levied) the inherent flaws to be wary of (the GMs themselves so they can avoid those pratfalls) with GMs in setting/intrigue/metaplot-based games.


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## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> Brendan, that was in no way an attack on your preferred playstyle nor projection.  That was just analysis of inherent GMing flaws (all GMs must push back against these characteristics...so I'm not excluded from this) and how they intersect with the creation of a (lets forget interesting for a moment) coherent, complex system that is able to be inferred through play (an intrigue, a biome, a social system).
> 
> You have to understand that some people (myself included) have a variety of playstyles that they engage with.  Every time I run a Blades in the Dark sandbox game (in Duskvol), or a D&D hexcrawl, or a dungeoncrawl, or a Cortex+ heist, or create a Town in Dogs...I have to deploy many of the skills (perhaps with subtle differences) you have espoused as important in this thread.  So I don't diminish their importance nor was that prior post a declaration of them being outmoded.  Where we differ is their portrayal, some procedural elements that help to best accomplish the mission...and apparently (after that defense you just levied) the inherent flaws to be wary of (the GMs themselves so they can avoid those pratfalls) with GMs in setting/intrigue/metaplot-based games.




I am not 100% sure what you mean in the last paragraph. But my only real point was, these sorts of things are just tools. They are neutral. They don't have moral weight and using one over the other isn't what makes someone a good GM. A good GM makes good use of the tools they use, and uses the right tools for the situation. In some styles, the tools described are not suitable. I play different games and know what you are talking about there. But I have in mind a particular style of play and method of adjudicating, that in this and the other thread (and not saying you are doing it) gets dismissed as Mother May I, or somehow inferior to the other approaches). My tool box for this kind of campaign generally includes things like rulings, encounter tables, sandbox structure, living NPCs, and trying to fairly respond to player actions. I use the dice for plenty of things. But for a question like "What is inside the teahouse", I will typically make a judgement based on the circumstances and what I know or use that to generate a probability if the likelihood seems smaller. Where I think I differ from a lot of people, is I believe the GM can serve as a valid mechanism in play for determining these things. And that doesn't make it mother may I. If I am a player for example, and Bill is running a world. I am fine with the idea that Bill's brain effectively is the universe. There are quirks that are unique to Bill that will consistently come up for sure. But that world is going to have its own internal logic and rhythm because it is all coming from Bill. And Bill is a real GM. I remember a campaign where we were in a city where all the magic users were treated like gods, and I got it into my head to become the local god of Coffee and start a temple. Every time I went somewhere to find out if some resource or potential ally or worshipper was available, he didn't 'say yes or roll', he didn't 'say yes', nor did he have a set of clear procedures. He just decided in most cases. But it never became mother may I. His decision were clearly a product of thought and deliberation and not some shell game or a game where I had to guess what he was thinking. I could tell, if I asked if a certain type of person could be found in a certain part of town, he'd think it through and come up with a response. I think it really only becomes mother may I, if he has a finite set of possibilities in his head, and I only succeed when I happen to land on one of them.


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## pemerton

FrogReaver said:


> The question I'm curious about is why do you care whether the process for determining something in game mimics the procress something would be determined by in real life?  What benefit is there to that?



I don't know that there's any benefit to it. My claim is that when the RPG process is so different from the real life process, it's a mistake to characterise it as being like real life.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I never said that the game works is exactly like the real world. I said a GM telling a player who is at the tea house, when players say they are going there to look for members of Bone Breaker sect, is no more mother may I than if someone went somewhere looking for people in real life. I never said they followed the same process either. All I was saying is, like in real life, sometimes you go to a location to find someone and they are not there. That doesn’t sound at all like mother may I to me.



It all depends on _how it comes about that the PCs do not find any cultists at the teahouse_.

Here is one way: _the GM decides_. That is what, in the other thread, I have characterised as "Mother may I".

Here is another way: _A check is made_. If it fails, the GM narrates the consequence (which may include an absence of cultists at the teahouse); if it succeeds, the PCs find some cultists at the teahouse.

I think you think the difference between those two approaches is "pedantic". But there are whole RPGs and schools of play (Dungeon World, Burning Wheel and a common approach to 4e D&D among them) that are premised on adopting the second way rather than the first.



Bedrockgames said:


> "Yes and" just allows anything the players want to unfold in the campaign.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The GM instead of 'winging it' or saying 'yes' can think it through and try to come up with the most reasonable result to the question "what is there?"



This is why I am not persuaded that you really appreciate the difference between "saying 'yes'" and "say 'yes' or roll the dice. Because every time you present a range of approaches, and talk about the role of GM judgement, and the like, you seem to disregard the possibility of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", even though that is very close to a standard alternative to GM-driven play,


----------



## Thyrwyn

pemerton said:


> ....In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes.



I'll stop you at your premise: This is a nice opinion, and could just as easily turn out to be "how you hope it is". It is conjecture and hypothesis: it cannot be proven. Your experience of the "real world" would be completely identical if your experience were being shaped intentionally by something outside of yourself. Your experience would be exactly the same if that "something" considered your "suggestions" or even your "expectations", either supportively or oppositionally.

There are people that believe in agentic higher powers and believe that actions and aspirations and desires influence those powers to affect the world around themselves. People believe in karma and prayer and blessings and curses. You may not. Doesn't make them wrong, nor does it make them right. 

[FWIW - I do not believe in an agentic higher power. It doesn't change the fact that "free will" could be a complete illusion created by causal processes we don't understand]


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It all depends on _how it comes about that the PCs do not find any cultists at the teahouse_.
> 
> Here is one way: _the GM decides_. That is what, in the other thread, I have characterised as "Mother may I".
> 
> Here is another way: _A check is made_. If it fails, the GM narrates the consequence (which may include an absence of cultists at the teahouse); if it succeeds, the PCs find some cultists at the teahouse.
> 
> I think you think the difference between those two approaches is "pedantic". But there are whole RPGs and schools of play (Dungeon World, Burning Wheel and a common approach to 4e D&D among them) that are premised on adopting the second way rather than the first.




I get that they are substantially different. I think they are very different, so much so that whole play styles are developed around them. I only said your fine toothed combiing of my language was pedantic. But from the very beginning I've seen these stylistic differences as major distinctions. Where I disagree with you is I don't think the GM deciding what is at the Tea House is mother may I, in any way. I get that you have another approach, that you use, and you feel it gets around mother may I. That is fine. It isn't a method I tend to use (though occasionally my decision will be to make a probability roll or roll on a table). I really don't understand why we are having this protracted level of disagreement. I think we both acknowledge there are different styles here. I think we both understand our gaming philosophies are quite different from one another. And I think we disagree on what constitutes mother may I. Personally, I'm fine with your style. I have no issue it, and I have no desire to characterize it as a negative thing. You persist in labeling this style that you seem to have an axe to grind with, as a negative. 



> This is why I am not persuaded that you really appreciate the difference between "saying 'yes'" and "say 'yes' or roll the dice. Because every time you present a range of approaches, and talk about the role of GM judgement, and the like, you seem to disregard the possibility of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", even though that is very close to a standard alternative to GM-driven play,




I am not disregarding it at all. I get that it is an option. It just isn't one I would tend to use. I really don't understand why this is becoming a point of contention here. I mean, if you think I am not sufficiently informed about this possibility, that is fine. I don't think I need to spend time persuading you that I am or am not. It obviously isn't something that would, for me, be a suitable alternative for the GM being able to decide. I get that my approach could include saying yes, or include rolling the dice. But those are not requirements of my approach (and I am not even really even thinking of it as saying yes or no, I just try to figure out what would be there). I don't know. I feel like I have a good handle on what you are doing and how you do it. I don't feel like you have a real understanding of what it is I am trying to do.


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not 100% sure what you mean in the last paragraph. But my only real point was, these sorts of things are just tools. They are neutral. They don't have moral weight and using one over the other isn't what makes someone a good GM. A good GM makes good use of the tools they use, and uses the right tools for the situation. In some styles, the tools described are not suitable. I play different games and know what you are talking about there. But I have in mind a particular style of play and method of adjudicating, that in this and the other thread (and not saying you are doing it) gets dismissed as Mother May I, or somehow inferior to the other approaches). My tool box for this kind of campaign generally includes things like rulings, encounter tables, sandbox structure, living NPCs, and trying to fairly respond to player actions. I use the dice for plenty of things. But for a question like "What is inside the teahouse", I will typically make a judgement based on the circumstances and what I know or use that to generate a probability if the likelihood seems smaller. Where I think I differ from a lot of people, is I believe the GM can serve as a valid mechanism in play for determining these things. And that doesn't make it mother may I. If I am a player for example, and Bill is running a world. I am fine with the idea that Bill's brain effectively is the universe. There are quirks that are unique to Bill that will consistently come up for sure. But that world is going to have its own internal logic and rhythm because it is all coming from Bill. And Bill is a real GM. I remember a campaign where we were in a city where all the magic users were treated like gods, and I got it into my head to become the local god of Coffee and start a temple. Every time I went somewhere to find out if some resource or potential ally or worshipper was available, he didn't 'say yes or roll', he didn't 'say yes', nor did he have a set of clear procedures. He just decided in most cases. But it never became mother may I. His decision were clearly a product of thought and deliberation and not some shell game or a game where I had to guess what he was thinking. I could tell, if I asked if a certain type of person could be found in a certain part of town, he'd think it through and come up with a response. I think it really only becomes mother may I, if he has a finite set of possibilities in his head, and I only succeed when I happen to land on one of them.




Let me just say one thing about "Bill" and:



> I am fine with the idea that Bill's brain effectively is the universe. There are quirks that are unique to Bill that will consistently come up for sure. But that world is going to have its own *internal logic and rhythm because it is all coming from Bill.*




There is a problem with this that is similar to the error classical economists have made when assuming free markets are efficient and self-regulating because of the belief that individual people and collectives (a) can model the volatility of complex downstream interactions, (b) respond coherently to incentives and disincentives, and (c) tend toward a process of optimal decision-making (cost-benefit analysis, opportunity cost) for their (including themselves and their immediate social body) well-being.

"Bill" is a lot of people.  He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others).  There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.  

Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is).  As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced.  Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement.  All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.

There are so many snares set for Bill and his group.  This is why the overwhelming % of intrigues and metaplots end up with several/all players at the table in an utter confounded and ultimately disconnected state...and just looking for the nearest thing to attack (because the combat mechanics and their outputs are the only thing that aren't opaque).  This harkens to  @_*Numidius*_ 's experience in Italy above.  This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem.  It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem.  This is a human problem.  Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.  

Those that do and can confront them with a longterm group of allies (players/friends) can pull it off.  But these are extreme edge cases.  Therefore, its a good thing to do the analysis on why these things occur, how to recognize them, how to confront them, and how to work around them.


* I say all of the above with all of the confidence in the world that I can pull off the phenomenon you are prescribing to Bill as well as any human can...which is to say...I'm quite aware of my own strengths and my own (very human) shortcomings.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> Let me just say one thing about "Bill" and:
> 
> 
> 
> There is a problem with this that is similar to the error classical economists have made when assuming free markets are efficient and self-regulating because of the belief that individual people and collectives (a) can model the volatility of complex downstream interactions, (b) respond coherently to incentives and disincentives, and (c) tend toward a process of optimal decision-making (cost-benefit analysis, opportunity cost) for their (including themselves and their immediate social body) well-being.
> 
> "Bill" is a lot of people.  He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others).  There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.
> 
> Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is).  As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced.  Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement.  All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.
> 
> There are so many snares set for Bill and his group.  This is why the overwhelming % of intrigues and metaplots end up with several/all players at the table in an utter confounded and ultimately disconnected state...and just looking for the nearest thing to attack (because the combat mechanics and their outputs are the only thing that aren't opaque).  This harkens to  @_*Numidius*_ 's experience in Italy above.  This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem.  It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem.  This is a human problem.  Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.
> 
> Those that do and can confront them with a longterm group of allies (players/friends) can pull it off.  But these are extreme edge cases.  Therefore, its a good thing to do the analysis on why these things occur, how to recognize them, how to confront them, and how to work around them.




I think you are way, way, way over thinking this. And I think bringing in economics, just clouds the issue. In economics they are talking about how rationally people behave in a market, here we are just talking about how consistent a person's personality and judgements are---it is Bill, so you get a world run by the physics of Bill think. And Bill Think can produce all kinds of different content, but I can get a handle on it, the same way I can get a handle on how things tend to work around me in the real world. They are by no means the same ,and I don't ever expect the level of granularity from the real world to enter the game world. Like others have said, Bill is providing an approximation that is adequate. You and others keep saying how impossible the is, and hold up all kinds of clever but overly complex examples. But those posting on this thread who have played this style and enjoyed it, have seen it work in action and understand how easy it can be. Now if you come to a game like this with an axe to grind, of course you'll find issues with it. If you come to have fun, like with most styles, you should be able to enjoy yourself if it is a good fit for what you are after. 

You assert that most players end up confused in a game run by Bill. I can assure you no one ever had the problem you described in the games I played with him. Not that every session was perfect, but the baffled state of aggression you describe never once arose that I saw. Again, I think people are projecting problems they've experienced and assume they are the norm. This just isn't what Ive seen. And what i see at the table, what works at the table, those are always more important to me than nice sounding arguments on a gaming thread.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem.  It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem.  This is a human problem.  Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.
> .




Again, just to highlight, you are asserting that something is prevalent because you've heard people complain about. I hear people complain about all kinds of things that are not real problems. And frankly a red flag that they are full of it, is they frame it in hysterical terms. These are not horror stories and no one is a refugee. These are games that people either had fun at or they didn't, and moved on with their lives. Trust me we get people in our groups too coming from other styles of play (even the ones people like Pemerton advocates for). I don't assume it is because there is a flaw with the style, or that there is some deep human flaw that needs to be held in check at the gaming table. I assume it is because the tastes of that player didn't align with the tastes of the GM and or group. Which is fine. People should seek tables that match their interests. But claiming there is something fundamental to humans that makes this very simple, common and longstanding style of GMing either impossible or horrific, doesn't pass the smell test for me.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> "Bill" is a lot of people.  He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others).  There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.
> 
> Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is).  As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced.  Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement.  All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.




Okay, you are getting very esoteric. I am not going to debate whether a single person, is actually a single individual. I actually understand philosophy pretty well, but I think it has very little place in this kind of discussion. But just to use a relevant philosophical example, the argument you lay out here is incredibly unconvincing to me. It actually reminds me a lot of Zeno's Paradox of Motion. But your running counter to what I've seen at the table. It may be if we analyzed Bill's brain and how it functioned (which by the way I think we are still pretty far off from truly understanding), we'd find issues at the micro level. At the macro level of our experience, he ran a game that felt like a real place, and where our decisions clearly mattered. I get that you are drawing on different fields of inquiry here to make an assertion. I think there is a danger there though in taking from highly specialized fields that require real expertise to understand and just loosely applying them to something like GMing a session of D&D. It is very easy to cherry pick to advance a position that style X is impossible, bad, immoral, etc. I frankly think that is all that is going on here. If you don't like the style, that is fine. Admit you don't like the style. But constructing an elaborate argument for why it is an impossible style like this strikes me as a profound waste of your time.


----------



## Numidius

Manbearcat said:


> Let me just say one thing about "Bill" and:
> 
> 
> 
> There is a problem with this that is similar to the error classical economists have made when assuming free markets are efficient and self-regulating because of the belief that individual people and collectives (a) can model the volatility of complex downstream interactions, (b) respond coherently to incentives and disincentives, and (c) tend toward a process of optimal decision-making (cost-benefit analysis, opportunity cost) for their (including themselves and their immediate social body) well-being.
> 
> "Bill" is a lot of people.  He isn't just one person (that is the first mistake a lot of people make in their conception of self and their conception of others).  There may not be an outright discontinuity in Bill's conscious mind, but there are many "Bills" which he will pivot from as cause/stress takes him.
> 
> Bill almost surely is average to poor at (a) above (no matter how good you or he thinks he is).  As Bill pivots mentally as cause takes him, his decision-making (volatility, presence of various biases) will be subtly influenced.  Social incentives and disincentives will arise in the course of play (the want to move the game along, the want to clarify a point, the sense that social capital is on the line, etc) which will impact Bill's judgement.  All of the above will create subtle incoherency-creep due to Bill's information-retention (either due to perception bias or merely due to forgetting something or the day's fatigue), Bill's mood, Bill's forensic knowledge-base (and the errors therein), Bill's ability to cogently (which is key....as length expository dialogue will cause players to mentally check-out) and accurately portray individual gamestates (ethos, pathos, physical characteristics, NPC dispositions) so players can make informed action declarations that they are secure in.
> 
> There are so many snares set for Bill and his group.  This is why the overwhelming % of intrigues and metaplots end up with several/all players at the table in an utter confounded and ultimately disconnected state...and just looking for the nearest thing to attack (because the combat mechanics and their outputs are the only thing that aren't opaque).  This harkens to  @_*Numidius*_ 's experience in Italy above.  This isn't an Italian RPG macro-culture problem.  It isn't a "little corner of Rome" micro-culture problem.  This is a human problem.  Its why we hear these horror stories all the time and why so many refugees flee games with GMs who don't understand their own limits, don't possess the humility or awareness to confront them...and therefore cannot confront them.
> 
> Those that do and can confront them with a longterm group of allies (players/friends) can pull it off.  But these are extreme edge cases.  Therefore, its a good thing to do the analysis on why these things occur, how to recognize them, how to confront them, and how to work around them.
> 
> 
> * I say all of the above with all of the confidence in the world that I can pull off the phenomenon you are prescribing to Bill as well as any human can...which is to say...I'm quite aware of my own strengths and my own (very human) shortcomings.



This. Precisely. (A long, slow applause follows)


----------



## Manbearcat

1)  I don't dislike the style.  I have run sandbox campaigns repeatedly in my life in multiple systems (as I said above..did you miss that?).

2)  On refugees:  The overwhelming majority of players in my games (70+ for sure) over the last 35 years have been refugees from games of the precise style we're speaking about that have failed due to GM issues (of which I've spoken a bit about).  I've probably introduced 30ish people to TTRPGing, so the significant majority of players I've GMed for have been refugees that fled failed games (for the reasons I spoke to...and some I haven't).

3)  I mentioned above and then in (1) above that I don't dislike the style.  I run it.  Hopefully, we can move beyond that at this point.  Of the GMs I'm familiar with in my personal life (myself included), only 4 have been successful (myself included) in running long-term campaigns of the variety we're talking about where (a) it hasn't fizzled out due to overwhelming overhead or (b) disgruntled/revolting players.  The number of GMs who have failed/fizzled is 30+.  That % is extremely poor and begs analysis.

4)  We hear all of the time from users on these boards about users personal struggles/failures at GMing (or outright horror stories...yes horror...and you've been in some of these conversations) or their dissatisfaction with their home game's GM.

5)  Following from 3 and 4 above, I think you suffer from a serious selection bias issue (I don't know if you've been lucky enough to not run into refugee players or if you've had a stable homegame of mates for decades and/or you've just ignored the amount of evidence we have available that pushes back against your hypothesis that the sort of functional game you're describing is normative).  It is extremely difficult to run these sorts of games and have longterm satisfied players.  It requires a seriously talented GM who possesses significant creativity, humility, a forensic knowledge-base, the ability to read social cues and empathize, and the ability to convey information and mood cogently and to a wide array of mental frameworks (as players vary widely in the way they process information).

6)  Regarding our "conceptual Bill", my point is two-fold:

a)  Whether you like it or not, you are playing a game of "Bill, I would like to do this thing _x _and it would certainly be preferable if your mental model of the gamestate/fictional positioning matched up with my own conception....therefore _x _happens" (I'm dispensing with "Mother May I"...I'm just trying to break down the machinery at work in any player action declaration).  That is basically the order of operations; ingest Bill's information regarding the shared imagined space, propose a change to the shared imagined space, find out if Bill's mental model matches up to your own and/or consult the dice if Bill decides that is the best arbiter.

b)  Bill, no matter how super awesome Bill is, will suffer from various cognitive biases and other human-driven-problems that will lend themselves toward some measure of tension between how Bill perceives the gamestate and how player x, y, and z (each with their own individual perception due to their own biases and human-driven-problems) perceive the gamestate.

c)  Hopefully, all players at the table are humble, understanding, and mature enough to sort through that tension and arrive at some equitable solution when those moments arise.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> 1)  I don't dislike the style.  I have run sandbox campaigns repeatedly in my life in multiple systems (as I said above..did you miss that?).
> 
> 2)  On refugees:  The overwhelming majority of players in my games (70+ for sure) over the last 35 years have been refugees from games of the precise style we're speaking about that have failed due to GM issues (of which I've spoken a bit about).  I've probably introduced 30ish people to TTRPGing, so the significant majority of players I've GMed for have been refugees that fled failed games (for the reasons I spoke to...and some I haven't).
> 
> 3)  I mentioned above and then in (1) above that I don't dislike the style.  I run it.  Hopefully, we can move beyond that at this point.  Of the GMs I'm familiar with in my personal life (myself included), only 4 have been successful (myself included) in running long-term campaigns of the variety we're talking about where (a) it hasn't fizzled out due to overwhelming overhead or (b) disgruntled/revolting players.  The number of GMs who have failed/fizzled is 30+.  That % is extremely poor and begs analysis.
> 
> 4)  We hear all of the time from users on these boards about users personal struggles/failures at GMing (or outright horror stories...yes horror...and you've been in some of these conversations) or their dissatisfaction with their home game's GM.
> 
> 5)  Following from 3 and 4 above, I think you suffer from a serious selection bias issue (I don't know if you've been lucky enough to not run into refugee players or if you've had a stable homegame of mates for decades and/or you've just ignored the amount of evidence we have available that pushes back against your hypothesis that the sort of functional game you're describing is normative).  It is extremely difficult to run these sorts of games and have longterm satisfied players.  It requires a seriously talented GM who possesses significant creativity, humility, a forensic knowledge-base, the ability to read social cues and empathize, and the ability to convey information and mood cogently and to a wide array of mental frameworks (as players vary widely in the way they process information).
> 
> 6)  Regarding our "conceptual Bill", my point is two-fold:
> 
> a)  Whether you like it or not, you are playing a game of "Bill, I would like to do this thing _x _and it would certainly be preferable if your mental model of the gamestate/fictional positioning matched up with my own conception....therefore _x _happens" (I'm dispensing with "Mother May I"...I'm just trying to break down the machinery at work in any player action declaration).  That is basically the order of operations; ingest Bill's information regarding the shared imagined space, propose a change to the shared imagined space, find out if Bill's mental model matches up to your own and/or consult the dice if Bill decides that is the best arbiter.
> 
> b)  Bill, no matter how super awesome Bill is, will suffer from various cognitive biases and other human-driven-problems that will lend themselves toward some measure of tension between how Bill perceives the gamestate and how player x, y, and z (each with their own individual perception due to their own biases and human-driven-problems) perceive the gamestate.
> 
> c)  Hopefully, all players at the table are humble, understanding, and mature enough to sort through that tension and arrive at some equitable solution when those moments arise.




I am on a phone so can’t redpond to every point. The last part is just a reiteration of prior points you’ve made. So will focus on first part:

1-I wasn’t just talking about sandbox, I was talking about sandboxes where the method of adjudication is the one under fire in this thread.

2-you are still just asserting things based on your experience. I have been playing since 86, I’ve games st all kinds of tables, using all kinds of systems. I’ve run games with local people, run convention games, played at stores and run numerous online games with people in different countries. I haven’t seen any more dissatisfaction with this approach than I have with adventure paths, narrative games, etc. people have preferences and sometimes encounter table play they don’t like.

3-Our experiences here are just very different. I know many GMs successfully running this kind of campaign. One reason I like it, is it tends to work well over the long haul. 

4-I am ok lots of different online gaming communities. You see all kinds of complaints about all kinds of styles online. I can’t say I have seen more complaints about the style in question than I have about any other. Different online communities have different tendencies. However at enwotld, on this subject there really only seems to be a handful of posters who regular post about it. I think it can create a distorted impression of the reality if you rely too much on online impressions (especially when some discussions are propelled by a small number of dedicated participants). 

5- I don’t think I am suffering from any more selection bias than you are. Please stop attributing things to me you can’t possibly know.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> 1)
> 
> a)  Whether you like it or not, you are playing a game of "Bill, I would like to do this thing _x _and it would certainly be preferable if your mental model of the gamestate/fictional positioning matched up with my own conception....therefore _x _happens" (I'm dispensing with "Mother May I"...I'm just trying to break down the machinery at work in any player action declaration).  That is basically the order of operations; ingest Bill's information regarding the shared imagined space, propose a change to the shared imagined space, find out if Bill's mental model matches up to your own and/or consult the dice if Bill decides that is the best arbiter.
> 
> b)  Bi.




No, this isn’t what is going on at all. You are looking at everything through a very specific lens that conceived of play through a theoretical model I don’t subscribe to and reject. This is so condescending it is infuriating as a poster to contend. There was never any sense on my part that it were preferable for X to happen. I tried to do stuff, bill told me what happened. I wasn’t viewing it as a negotiation to controlling ‘ a shared fictional space’. All you are doing is throwing in game terms and asserting I am doing something ‘because’. And it is very obvious to me these are self serving frameworks and arguments. Believe me, I’ve seen RPG theorizing on the other side that is equally self serving and works to define away some of the styles mentioned. Those arguments are equally compelling and convincing, because thry’ve Been honed many years online in the trenches. But they are still self serving playstyles arguments meant to give primacy to a particular approach to play or to a particular way of thinking about play. I suspect that is what is going on here. If the style under discussion is so impossible and burdened with problems, it will naturally take care of itself and fade. But a slender group of posters seem obsessed with ensuring people believe all these negative assumptions about the style. Again, I see it work too frequently, know too many people running successful campaigns using this approach to buy the apocalyptic predictions you are offering. Perhaps I am not the one suffering from bias or over confidence?


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> It all depends on _how it comes about that the PCs do not find any cultists at the teahouse_.
> 
> Here is one way: _the GM decides_. That is what, in the other thread, I have characterised as "Mother may I".
> 
> Here is another way: _A check is made_. If it fails, the GM narrates the consequence (which may include an absence of cultists at the teahouse); if it succeeds, the PCs find some cultists at the teahouse.
> 
> I think you think the difference between those two approaches is "pedantic". But there are whole RPGs and schools of play (Dungeon World, Burning Wheel and a common approach to 4e D&D among them) that are premised on adopting the second way rather than the first.
> 
> This is why I am not persuaded that you really appreciate the difference between "saying 'yes'" and "say 'yes' or roll the dice. Because every time you present a range of approaches, and talk about the role of GM judgement, and the like, you seem to disregard the possibility of "say 'yes' or roll the dice", even though that is very close to a standard alternative to GM-driven play,




Even with rolling the dice, for an awful lot of systems, you're still running a variation on what you characterize as "Mother May I" because the GM is setting the ultimate difficulty target. Rolling dice isn't necessarily any guarantee of getting a result free of some kind of GM bias.
And then, even if there's some kind of rule-set difficulty that a player can beat indicating there are cultists at the teahouse, the GM is still deciding how significance a presence it is (is it a company dinner-level of cultist presence, or a part time cultist who washes dishes in the kitchen to pay the rent) which continues us along the trail of GM bias to the point I really have to wonder what the big deal is about the different play styles. One - you're relying on the GM to make a decision based on his knowledge of the campaign, or Two - you're rolling dice to force the GM to put a cultist there but he can still make it a pain in the ass to find. In either event, if the GM's judgment is problematic, it's problematic.


----------



## Maxperson

TwoSix said:


> You're free to call it whatever you want, of course, but that kind of play (where NPCs operate under a DM controlled paradigm of action, independent of the players or PCs) is straight up simulationism.  Simulationism really has nothing to do with the real world, it has to do with designing probabilistic rules of action and extrapolating to see what happens.
> 
> Random encounter charts, organized by biome?  Simulationist.  Weapon dice, derived from a sense of how much damage the real-world equivalent would do?  Simulationist.  You can't really play D&D in any form and not be a little simulationist.




Another word for it is realism.  I've been stoned here for suggesting that D&D has some realism in it.  "What do you mean D&D has realism?!  There are dragons and magic!  Does that sound realistic to you?"


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> All GMs are biased and flawed.  A very typical problem is a blinkered view of one's capabilities in rendering an extremely complex system in a way that is inferrable from first principles or by weight of evidence by the other participants at the table.
> 
> That doesn't mean that they shouldn't do their best and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't attempt it at all (perfect being the enemy of the good), but perhaps they need to consider (a) their limitations and (b) other sources of input (be it procedures, a slight shift in priorities, or principles, or other table participants) to play which will correct for their biases and flaws.
> 
> Coincidentally, a few other typical problems with GMs is their investment in their work/creation/prep (and the perceived value of it), their perceived status as alpha chimp (I'm using that descriptively; in an evolutionary, dominance hierarchy way), *and their entitlement to absolute authority over content introduction.*  These 3 work in conjunction to be extremely sensitive to (b) above.
> 
> If I'm holding a GMing workshop, those 4 flaws are right at the top of the heap of things I would deconstruct and teach how to be aware of each of those lurking beasts while also maintaining confidence in your GMing product.
> 
> Interestingly, I'd say that once those flaws are beaten back, a GM becomes infinitely better at erecting a shared imaginary space for the players to explore, suss out its machinery, and make informed action declarations they can be secure in.




I take exception to describing how the game is intended to be played as a DM flaw.  It's not a flaw to be in charge of content introduction.  It's the rules.  It's also a style of play different from yours, but no less valid of fun(for those that like the style).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It all depends on _how it comes about that the PCs do not find any cultists at the teahouse_.
> 
> Here is one way: _the GM decides_. That is what, in the other thread, I have characterised as "Mother may I".




Yes, but it's not "Mother may I."  Nobody is asking permission to have their PC take an action.  They are telling the DM, "I am going to the tea house to look for cultists."  Now the DM has to figure out(if he doesn't know already) if they are there and then narrate the result of the action.



> Here is another way: _A check is made_. If it fails, the GM narrates the consequence (which may include an absence of cultists at the teahouse); if it succeeds, the PCs find some cultists at the teahouse.




Since the rule is that you only roll when the outcome is in doubt, this is part of the same way.  If the outcome is not in doubt, the DM has decided.  If it is in doubt, then a check is made.  This is all in the 5e rules and is not "Mother May I" in any way.


----------



## Sadras

I propose we change the term "Saying yes"  to _Daddy thankyou_


----------



## FrogReaver

pemerton said:


> I don't know that there's any benefit to it. My claim is that when the RPG process is so different from the real life process, it's a mistake to characterise it as being like real life.




I don't think anyone characterizes any RPG process that determines if person X was at the tea-house as similar to the real life processes that determine if person X is at the tea house.

Instead we all understand that we are using a probabilistic model to determine if person X was there in the RPG and that real life doesn't use probabilistic models to make such determinations (philosophical questions about knowledge etc aside)

However, the uncertainty, the random outcome where you might find them or might not and the notion that such an event in real life could be modeled with probabilities all play into it "being like real life".  Don't you agree that these things are our perception of what's happening in real life (even if the actual processes involved are totally 100% deterministic)?  If you are causing these same perceptions to the players watching their characters in the game world then isn't it fair to say that finding person X at the tea-house in the game world is like finding some specific person at the tea house in the real world?


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> I strongly disagree with this. "Yes and" just allows anything the players want to unfold in the campaign.




Setting aside the discussion of exactly how bad that would be...

You may have forgotten what the players actually asked.  
_"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."

"Yes, and... please roll Streetwise-equivalent skill...  *roll*.... you don't find any of them there, but there's this other interesting thing that happens..."_

This is contrasted with...
_"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."

"No, you may not.  There are no tea houses here."_

Yes and... does not imply success at the attempt.  It merely implies that the players can stipulate the existence of a heretofore unnamed or un-detailed tea house.  The first example allows flow to continue, where the second gives them no setup for continued narrative.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Another word for it is realism.  I've been stoned here for suggesting that D&D has some realism in it.  "What do you mean D&D has realism?!  There are dragons and magic!  Does that sound realistic to you?"



Even ignoring the fantastical elements within the most popular genre of TTRPG play, I'm not sure if I would call it 'realism' by any reasonable metric. Often that appeal to realism is selectively applied, if not prejudiciously, by both the game system and the participants, typically with some other goal or value in mind. 'Realism' is likely a smokescreen for some other issue(s). This is to say, I don't necessarily think that 'realism' is the genuine goal of people who claim they desire 'realism' in their TTRPG, especially D&D. 

But yes, D&D has some realism in it. For example, it depicts the average human with five fingers on each hand. REALISM! So I suppose we should pat D&D on the back for having "some realism in it"? But we should also be clear here. Having "some realism" is not the same thing as valuing or desiring realism. Realism is, to reiterate, likely not the actual goal people drive at when making appeals to it. And valuing realism is not the same thing as attaining or applying it reasonably. Applying notions of realism to D&D is an inherently failed enterprise because our biased notions of 'realism' are woefully stuck in a position of ignorance (and irrationality) about a wide variety of pertinent subjects that would inform our preparation and play about the game world. 

What makes for "realistic" imagining of hit points? What makes for "realistic" falling damage? What makes for a realistic damage for a longsword? What makes for realistic natural healing rules? Or Armor Class rules? "Realism" is lipstick on the pig of D&D's gamism. "Realism" is the Emperor's New Clothes: We all know that the emperor is naked, but some people go along with the farce and pretend that he is cloaked with "realism" all the same. Because if they didn't they would have to admit that they are looking at the naked imperfections of an emperor.


----------



## pemerton

Thyrwyn said:


> I'll stop you at your premise: This is a nice opinion, and could just as easily turn out to be "how you hope it is". It is conjecture and hypothesis: it cannot be proven.



This is why, in the OP, I bracketed some theological questions. If we want to talk about the role of providence in the context of a RPG, that's an interesting discussion: but based on my experience I think it takes us even further away from a "GM decides everything that occurs" approach.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> Setting aside the discussion of exactly how bad that would be...
> 
> You may have forgotten what the players actually asked.
> _"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."
> 
> "Yes, and... please roll Streetwise-equivalent skill...  *roll*.... you don't find any of them there, but there's this other interesting thing that happens..."_
> 
> This is contrasted with...
> _"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."
> 
> "No, you may not.  There are no tea houses here."_
> 
> Yes and... does not imply success at the attempt.  It merely implies that the players can stipulate the existence of a heretofore unnamed or un-detailed tea house.  The first example allows flow to continue, where the second gives them no setup for continued narrative.




No, that isn't what was being contrasted. In both cases the GM was letting the players go to the Tea House. What was in question was whether bone breaking sect was present at the tea house. In my games the players are free to go to the tea house, but just because they ask if Bone Breaking sect is there, that doesn't mean I am going to say they are. And this wasn't originally a thread about the GM making a judgment on the matter versus 'yes and'. It as a thread where the style of play that i've been describing has been cast as mother may I. But as your example shows, it isn't, because the players are being allowed to go to the tea house.

The area of the debate that was in focus was whether bone breaking sect is there or not, simply because the players raised the possibility, and how that is resolved. The big point of contention is some posters say if the GM is free to decide what is present at the teahouse, that this constitutes mother may I. And they were contrasting it with approaches they regarded as not mother may I, which included Yes and, say yes or roll the dice, and other mechanics or procedures that take that decision away form the GM or force the GM to think through a process before arriving at the decision. This is essentially not really an argument about mother may I. It is another play style debate masquerading as a topic (not the original OP, but the conversation that evolved and was raised in this thread). Mother May I is being used to dismiss any approach where the GM makes a decision about these matters. People are free to do that if they want, but when others realize what is going on, I think it is fair for us to comment on the kind of rhetoric being used. The whole mother may I thing, probably doesn't even matter. All that matters is points are being scored against style X in favor of style Y (and I think this is a reasonable conclusion to draw because so many of these threads just happen to be the same kind of point scoring between these two styles).


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> but based on my experience I think it takes us even further away from a "GM decides everything that occurs" approach.




This is a mischaracterization of the style. Another straw man. Even in the approach I and others are talking about, there are times when the GM defers to a procedure or a dice roll (many of us may still believe the GM has final say on whether those outcomes fly, but they still are not simply deciding everything in the game).


----------



## Imaculata

Umbran said:


> Many is the time when the procedure is more like, "Hm.  We want to find members of this sect.  Where are they likely to hang out?  In this culture... maybe a teahouse?  Hey, GM, we go look for a teahouse to see if we can find some members of this sect!"  And, this idea is *entirely reasonable*, but the GM didn't think of it beforehand, and so there is no teahouse detailed in the campaign setting, though there are plenty of them implied.  The GM has the choice of winging it, or shooting down a reasonable idea because they didn't think of it.
> 
> This latter is, long run, a losing proposition.  The players literally have more brains than the GM.  They will think of things the GM hasn't considered, as the GM is one person with a day job and other things to do with their time than detail out everything to the finest detail.  The GM is well-served to answer most incidents of , "Mother, may I?" with the improv technique of, "Yes, and..."




No, you're conflating two entirely different points here. The DM is not saying "No, you can't go to the teahouse", nor is he saying "No, there is no teahouse". Those two things would be examples of a DM going against the idea of "Yes, and...".

But whether the teahouse is actually a location where the players may run into members of this sect, is a whole different matter. I could allow the players to visit the teahouse and still rule that no members of the sect are present. As a DM I am not (always) well-served to just put the sect-members whereever the players decide to go. In fact, I think this is a pretty bad idea. 

However what I could do instead, is have the players gather information at the teahouse, which may award them with a clue to where the sect is actually hiding.

As a DM I shouldn't always be rewarding every ludicrous action of my players. Instead, I should try my best to provide interesting interactions/gameplay for them, or provide other plothooks/clues for them to pursue, if they happen to be looking in the wrong place for the sect. As a DM I know where the sect is hiding, and that is where they (probably) are. They are not a quantum sect, they don't just teleport into the players path. If I make the sect just pop wherever the players go, this could seriously break their suspension of disbelief, which may not be what I want to do.

This doesn't mean that I am above moving bits of plot directly in the players path, in fact, I do that all the time. As long as something has not been revealed by me, it could be anywhere really. But it has to make sense. If all the clues point towards the sect hiding underneath the old opera house, I shouldn't be moving them to the teahouse, just because that's where the players decide to go. Instead, I should be coming up with something interesting they find there, and possibly something to help them get back on the right track.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Imaculata said:


> But whether the teahouse is actually a location where the players may run into members of this sect, is a whole different matter. I could allow the players to visit the teahouse and still rule that no members of the sect are present. As a DM I am not (always) well-served to just put the sect-members whereever the players decide to go. In fact, I think this is a pretty bad idea.
> 
> .




This is an important point. When I am playing a game like this, I want to feel like I am exploring a place and being rewarded for making sound choices. If there is no good reason for me to believe they are at the tea house, and they are just there because that is where I go looking for them, that is all a bit quantum ogre to me. I don't care as a player if they are there or not, I care that the GM is actually thinking about whether they should be there, and not just having it be so because that is where I went. And I am not saying this is the only way to do it, the best, or even the most popular way. I am just saying it is a perfectly fine way to run a game that many people find satisfying. But others in the thread insist that it is mother may I. And again, I have to point out, mother may I is a criticism. It is a complaint players make about play when it is not fun and feels like a game of mother may I. What I keep seeing happening in these discussion with this group of posters is they are they are consistently using terminology in this way, to play up their preferred styles while knocking down others. I think any lexicon of gaming that is that biased, has to have its utility questioned. If you are going to use terms that liken an entire approach to a child's game, or if you are going to attribute positive moral qualities to one style and negative ones to a contrasting style, it isn't a particularly objective lexicon.


----------



## Sadras

Hard No's in the Combat Pillar (i.e. immunity to x damage) are A-ok, however 
Hard No's in the Exploration or Social Pillar = Mother May I


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> But yes, D&D has some realism in it. For example, it depicts the average human with five fingers on each hand. REALISM! So I suppose we should pat D&D on the back for having "some realism in it"? But we should also be clear here. Having "some realism" is not the same thing as valuing or desiring realism. Realism is, to reiterate, likely not the actual goal people drive at when making appeals to it. And valuing realism is not the same thing as attaining or applying it reasonably. Applying notions of realism to D&D is an inherently failed enterprise because our biased notions of 'realism' are woefully stuck in a position of ignorance (and irrationality) about a wide variety of pertinent subjects that would inform our preparation and play about the game world.




Yes, having some realism is the same as valuing realism.  It's just that the value is variable.  If it wasn't valued, it wouldn't be used in nearly the amounts that it is, or even at all.  There's a lot more than just humans with 5 fingers.  Grass, swords, spears, wolves, horses, eating food, breathing air, and much more is all realism in D&D.  Realism just isn't all or nothing like many want to portray it.  It's a point on a spectrum and the value you place on it, the value I place on it, and the value the game designers place on it are probably all different.  You don't have and use something if there's no value to it.



> What makes for "realistic" imagining of hit points? What makes for "realistic" falling damage? What makes for a realistic damage for a longsword? What makes for realistic natural healing rules? Or Armor Class rules? "Realism" is lipstick on the pig of D&D's gamism.




Simply having falling and falling damage at all is a level of realism, as are the existences of the long sword and healing.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is why, in the OP, I bracketed some theological questions. If we want to talk about the role of providence in the context of a RPG, that's an interesting discussion: but based on my experience I think it takes us even further away from a "GM decides everything that occurs" approach.




There isn't a "DM decides everything that occurs" approach to the game, unless the DM is the only one playing the game.  The players decide what their PCs are going to do, and how they go about doing it.  That's a significant amount of the game.


----------



## Maxperson

Umbran said:


> This is contrasted with...
> _"Hey, GM, we'd like to go to a tea house and search for members of the sect."
> 
> "No, you may not.  There are no tea houses here."_
> 
> Yes and... does not imply success at the attempt.  It merely implies that the players can stipulate the existence of a heretofore unnamed or un-detailed tea house.  The first example allows flow to continue, where the second gives them no setup for continued narrative.




The "No,  you may not." portion is unfair.  They can still go look for a tea house in search of members of the sect.  The story continues and can also give them a setup for the continued narrative.  While looking for the tea house they may run across some other type of restaurant, or perhaps a different kind of building altogether that seems like it might have sect members in it.  Or maybe while asking around town they come across an interesting character who has some information, or make themselves known to agents of the sect who then report the PCs actions to it.  

You don't have to say yes and allow the PCs to create a tea house in order for the story to move forward.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> This doesn't mean that I am above moving bits of plot directly in the players path, in fact, I do that all the time. As long as something has not been revealed by me, it could be anywhere really. But it has to make sense. If all the clues point towards the sect hiding underneath the old opera house, I shouldn't be moving them to the teahouse, just because that's where the players decide to go. Instead, I should be coming up with something interesting they find there, and possibly something to help them get back on the right track.




Yep.  They could see Enrico Palazzo sitting at a table with another opera member and overhear them complaining about seeing odd people at the opera lately.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> You don't have to say yes and allow the PCs to create a tea house in order for the story to move forward.




I think this is a really key point. There is a big difference between 'we go to the tea house we already knows exist" and the GM creating a teahouse simply because the players say they go to one (again, if that fact hasn't yet been established, it is perfectly reasonable for the GM to decide whether there is one or not---in my wuxia setting, Tea Houses in big cities are pretty ubiquitous, so it is probably going to be something like 'why yes there are eight tea houses in this city---and I will usually make them up there on the spot so the players can choose). One trick to making this style work is to take notes in advance of what is happening and also make some decisions about those things. If I sense the players are going into the city to look for Bone Breaking sect, I migth start scribbling notes to myself about where bone breaking sect members are in the setting, what they are presently doing, if there is anything going on in the city involving them. I don't have to do any of these things. But it is something I tend to do so when players do ask, there is a concrete response. Again, if the stuff hasn't already been established in some way. And the world is always bigger than just bone breaking sect. The players might go looking for them at the tea house. They might find someone else with an interest in the sect, a former member of the sect, or a group of students from a rival sect who are planning on finding some bone breaking sect members themselves (who might prove useful allies, but whose aggression could pose a problem if the players are trying to be tactful).


----------



## Umbran

Bedrockgames said:


> No, that isn't what was being contrasted.




With respect, I am the one who brought it up.  So I don't think you get to tell me what I meant by it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Umbran said:


> With respect, I am the one who brought it up.  So I don't think you get to tell me what I meant by it.




But that isn’t relevant to points being made in the thread. Like I said, I was responding to a particular kind of scenario, and the example that came up was my tea house and what is st the tea house. 

I can try to address your position if you like, but when I was responding to you, it was in the context of  Penerton’s position. Can you clarify your reason for raising that issue? Do you think a GM shouldn’t be able to say ‘No there isn’t a tea house there’? 

I have no problem letting the players try anything that would be feasible in the setting. If they there is a tea house and they go to it, I will let them. But that isn’t ‘say yes’ to me. Say yes tends to pertain to things like whether the tea house is even there or what can be found inside the tea house. I don’t subscribe to Just Say Yes for this reason. I think it is important for ‘no’ to be on the table when it comes to setting content. If you like, that is fine. I can see it’s utility. It just isn’t something I like to do (and I don’t think I should have to just because other GMs out there have had successs with it).


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Yes, having some realism is the same as valuing realism.



How? I have _some lint_ in my pocket. Does it stand to reason then that I value lint?  

Have you considered that "realism" is simply a byproduct of some other game value and not an end value in itself? My contention is that I believe that most proponents of "realism" in TTRPGs mistakenly confuse "realism" as an end value in TTRPGs. 



> It's just that the value is variable.  If it wasn't valued, it wouldn't be used in nearly the amounts that it is, or even at all.  *There's a lot more than just humans with 5 fingers.  Grass, swords, spears, wolves, horses, eating food, breathing air, and much more is all realism in D&D.*  Realism just isn't all or nothing like many want to portray it.  It's a point on a spectrum and the value you place on it, the value I place on it, and the value the game designers place on it are probably all different.  You don't have and use something if there's no value to it.



You are missing the forest for the trees here. 



> Simply having falling and falling damage at all is a level of realism, as are the existences of the long sword and healing.



Many video games have "healing," but pretensions of "realism" are typically absent in how it is done. It is primarily a gaming pacing mechanism rather than a desire for emulating reality. This is largely true as well for D&D. Similar criticisms could be directed towards the other listed items. 

Or let's go to the longsword. It does d8 damage. Would it be less realistic if it was changed to d6 damage? How about if a hand ax did d8 damage? How do these mechanics connect to any meaningful notions of valuing realism? Again, I don't really think that realism really pushes, pulls, or drives the mechanics of these games. Usually other things get cited instead, such as the designers' desire to have variable weapon types, playstyles, damages, aesthetics, etc. The presence of these things do not make them realistic, especially since they are largely divorced from their actual use in reality.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> How? I have _some lint_ in my pocket. Does it stand to reason then that I value lint?
> 
> Have you considered that "realism" is simply a byproduct of some other game value and not an end value in itself? My contention is that I believe that most proponents of "realism" in TTRPGs mistakenly confuse "realism" as an end value in TTRPGs.
> 
> You are missing the forest for the trees here.
> 
> Many video games have "healing," but pretensions of "realism" are typically absent in how it is done. It is primarily a gaming pacing mechanism rather than a desire for emulating reality. This is largely true as well for D&D. Similar criticisms could be directed towards the other listed items.
> 
> Or let's go to the longsword. It does d8 damage. Would it be less realistic if it was changed to d6 damage? How about if a hand ax did d8 damage? How do these mechanics connect to any meaningful notions of valuing realism? Again, I don't really think that realism really pushes, pulls, or drives the mechanics of these games. Usually other things get cited instead, such as the designers' desire to have variable weapon types, playstyles, damages, aesthetics, etc. The presence of these things do not make them realistic, especially since they are largely divorced from their actual use in reality.




I think D&D isn't the best example of a game striving for realism. I do think there is an expectation though that certain things will be believable. This is an old debate. But there is no reason that magic nullifies the desire for people to see plausible cause and effect and have boulders dropped on peoples heads do more damage than a pocket knife. I think you can accept that magical healing is an exception to the general laws of physics we are used to, but expect things that are not magic to abide by some kind of logic. Even in genres where physics seem to get broken, like wuxia, there are reasons for why people are able to do things like walk up buildings, generate Qi energy attacks and exude poisoned needles from their bodies. But gravity still plays a role in such a world. I don't realism is the best word, because that only captures a narrow slice of what people are after. Some folks want realism. Most expect a certain degree of believability. That said, I think you can ruin a perfectly good game obsessing over this stuff. Plausible enough for our purposes, is about what I expect in most games (and clearly there will be exceptions to that, depending on the type of game, setting, genre, etc). People can hand wave realism though if they want That is not a problem. I just think it is reasonable for a person to say they value realism, verisimilitude, plausibility, etc (even if Dragons exist int he setting). 

What I think is important here is hashing out this stuff in advance. Because it isn't just about system. It is also about how the GM makes judgments. I usually explain to the group "what movie franchise they are in". Basically how grounded things will be, so they can get a sense of things like how plausible or strained their schemes can be.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> But that isn’t relevant to points being made in the thread. Like I said, I was responding to a particular kind of scenario, and the example that came up was my tea house and what is st the tea house.
> 
> I can try to address your position if you like, but when I was responding to you, it was in the context of  Penerton’s position. Can you clarify your reason for raising that issue? Do you think a GM shouldn’t be able to say ‘No there isn’t a tea house there’?
> 
> I have no problem letting the players try anything that would be feasible in the setting. If they there is a tea house and they go to it, I will let them. But that isn’t ‘say yes’ to me. Say yes tends to pertain to things like whether the tea house is even there or what can be found inside the tea house. I don’t subscribe to Just Say Yes for this reason. I think it is important for ‘no’ to be on the table when it comes to setting content. If you like, that is fine. I can see it’s utility. It just isn’t something I like to do (and I don’t think I should have to just because other GMs out there have had successs with it).



"Saying Yes" per se doesn't mean much: it was originally phrased Say yes or roll the Dice, and in that game was RAW, not a suggestion. The Dice were lots btw, not for immediate resolution ala D20, but in order to start a potentially broad series of conflicting actions in different arenas to win whatever was at stake.  Anyway in that game the Gm had to be adversarial against the players (so the use of many dice to have a fair "fight" without pulling punches), including bits of metagame strategy. Also the Gm had to prep the adventure before hand, like a small sandbox module, in which Npcs and backstory were very important to unfold events/investigation/decision making in game. But not even there players had the authority to create new content about the setting/situation out of their head, because prep & plot by Gm.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> "Saying Yes" per se doesn't mean much: it was originally phrased Say yes or roll the Dice, and in that game was RAW, not a suggestion. The Dice were lots btw, not for immediate resolution ala D20, but in order to start a potentially broad series of conflicting actions in different arenas to win whatever was at stake.  Anyway in that game the Gm had to be adversarial against the players (so the use of many dice to have a fair "fight" without pulling punches), including bits of metagame strategy. Also the Gm had to prep the adventure before hand, like a small sandbox module, in which Npcs and backstory were very important to unfold events/investigation/decision making in game. But not even there players had the authority to create new content about the setting/situation out of their head, because prep & plot by Gm.




I get that, but that isn't what Umbran was talking about in the post I responded to.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> Not for me and the other supporters here in this thread.  What we do is a fine approximation of real life.



Er...what I do is at best a rather vague approximation of real life; with a fine approximation of course being the goal.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> I take exception to describing how the game is intended to be played as a DM flaw.  It's not a flaw to be in charge of content introduction.



I'm not sure all that many here (other than some hard-core story-now types) would say that it is - you're on solid ground here.

The flaw comes when the GM also tries to be or remain in charge of everything that happens to that content after introduction.


----------



## Lanefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I think D&D isn't the best example of a game striving for realism. I do think there is an expectation though that certain things will be believable. This is an old debate. But there is no reason that magic nullifies the desire for people to see plausible cause and effect and have boulders dropped on peoples heads do more damage than a pocket knife. I think you can accept that magical healing is an exception to the general laws of physics we are used to, but expect things that are not magic to abide by some kind of logic. Even in genres where physics seem to get broken, like wuxia, there are reasons for why people are able to do things like walk up buildings, generate Qi energy attacks and exude poisoned needles from their bodies. But gravity still plays a role in such a world. I don't realism is the best word, because that only captures a narrow slice of what people are after. Some folks want realism. Most expect a certain degree of believability. That said, I think you can ruin a perfectly good game obsessing over this stuff. Plausible enough for our purposes, is about what I expect in most games (and clearly there will be exceptions to that, depending on the type of game, setting, genre, etc). People can hand wave realism though if they want That is not a problem. I just think it is reasonable for a person to say they value realism, verisimilitude, plausibility, etc (even if Dragons exist int he setting).



Substitute the phrase "internal logic" for "realism" and you're probably gold.

Magic isn't realistic in the earth-based sense but we still kind of expect it and its effects to have a consistent internal logic wthin that setting or game world.  Every time I cast a fireball, for example, it's going to take me x-amount of time to cast and have y-series of effects when it resolves - incuding among other things setting stuff on fire rather than freezing it cold.

Then, if something happens in the game to change that internal logic it becomes obvsious that this is in fact a change to the norm (e.g. we're off-world and closer to the plane of fire, so my fireball takes less time to cast and has a more damaging effect than I'm used to).


----------



## Imaro

Bedrockgames said:


> This is an important point. When I am playing a game like this, I want to feel like I am exploring a place and being rewarded for making sound choices. If there is no good reason for me to believe they are at the tea house, and they are just there because that is where I go looking for them, that is all a bit quantum ogre to me. I don't care as a player if they are there or not, I care that the GM is actually thinking about whether they should be there, and not just having it be so because that is where I went. And I am not saying this is the only way to do it, the best, or even the most popular way. I am just saying it is a perfectly fine way to run a game that many people find satisfying. But others in the thread insist that it is mother may I. And again, I have to point out, mother may I is a criticism. It is a complaint players make about play when it is not fun and feels like a game of mother may I. What I keep seeing happening in these discussion with this group of posters is they are they are consistently using terminology in this way, to play up their preferred styles while knocking down others. I think any lexicon of gaming that is that biased, has to have its utility questioned. If you are going to use terms that liken an entire approach to a child's game, or if you are going to attribute positive moral qualities to one style and negative ones to a contrasting style, it isn't a particularly objective lexicon.




Well this here is a big part of the disconnect... I, like you actually enjoy exploration games, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has made it clear in other threads that he doesn't particularly value exploration in his games (and please correct me if I am mistaken here).  Personally I see that as a gigantic flaw and a limitation in his style and techniques of play, as well as something that isn't really addressed or explored in any of his arguments (except to dismiss it as something he is not interested or frame it negatively... as opposed to exploring it's actual merits and flaws in a neutral manner).


----------



## innerdude

Exploration is such a weird, interesting thing for me, because I've always LOVED the sense of exploration in every aspect of gaming. 

Take two recent video game examples:

I've been playing through the nearly-25-year-old game, Crusader: No Remorse which I picked up on GOG.com a while ago. I played it waaaaay back in the day when it first game out, and from the first time I played it, THE MOST ENGAGING THING about the whole experience was the sense of _exploration_. How did I get from A to B? Where did that blind hallway actually go? The whole idea was just to poke into every corner I could, because . . . it made me happy. 

Reading through some GameFAQs walkthroughs, several of the guides pointed out that you can totally "shortcut" through the levels to get to the end faster. Which is the exact OPPOSITE of the type of experience I was wanting to have with the game. 

I'm also a big fan of the Trine game series (Trine 1 and 2). A few days ago I was playing while two of my daughters watched and hung out with me, and there were several moments where they were saying, "Dad, you don't HAVE to get every single flask of XP in the game!" To which I immediately replied, "Yes, I do!" I would spend 15-20 minutes trying to figure out how to capture one small, relatively insignificant item in the game, but just HAD to prove to myself that I could do it. 

So I am completely drawn in by the concept of exploration in pen-and-paper RPGs as well.

I think for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], though, the draw isn't to just "see what's around the next corner." There's exploration-for-exploration's sake, and there's exploration-for-the-sake-of-revealing-character-driven-stakes. 

And even in spite of my love of exploration in gaming, I can sort of see his point. Exploration-for-exploration's sake in TTRPGs is ultimately a zero sum game. The very open-ended nature of the enterprise basically ensures you'll never run out of un-poked corners. I think for anyone other than a very small subset of gamers who are wholly committed to "The Sandbox" as an end of its own, this kind of exploration-for-exploration's sake gameplay wears thin rather quickly.

TTRPG play becomes more interesting when there's something of value at stake for the characters within the fiction, and the pursuit of those stakes gets expressed by the players.


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> I think for @pemerton, though, the draw isn't to just "see what's around the next corner." There's exploration-for-exploration's sake, and there's exploration-for-the-sake-of-revealing-character-driven-stakes.
> 
> And even in spite of my love of exploration in gaming, I can sort of see his point. Exploration-for-exploration's sake in TTRPGs is ultimately a zero sum game. The very open-ended nature of the enterprise basically ensures you'll never run out of un-poked corners. I think for anyone other than a very small subset of gamers who are wholly committed to "The Sandbox" as an end of its own, this kind of exploration-for-exploration's sake gameplay wears thin rather quickly.
> 
> TTRPG play becomes more interesting when there's something of value at stake for the characters within the fiction, and the pursuit of those stakes gets expressed by the players.




It is fine that Pemerton has this preference. I think if he likes that, he should continue to game that way and post about it. My issue in this thread is the way our style is being characterized, and the way their style if being presented as an almost more enlightened approach to gaming. I also should say, this isn't just about exploration. I've said over and over, my games are drama and sandbox they are living adventures that largely are character driven. In my present wuxia campaign, I do create a JIanghu, a martial world to explore, but there are people in it with goals, and the players have goals and these things constantly intersect, clash and lead to drama. But I still tun things in the traditional way. It is a method that works well for me. I get some people want to do things like set stakes. That is fine. My interest is in immersive play. I do realize, based on previous posts and interactions I've with Pemerton and others, there are some big disagreements on what immersion means. But I can tell you, the way I play is so I can experience the immersion I want in a game. And it leads to a lot of fun evenings for me. So it is just incredibly frustrating to be told, over and over, that our style is either some how broken (mother may I), or not really what we think it is, or that we secretly want some other approach. Like I've said countless times, I am not very rigid about how I run a game. I adapt to my group, I try out different things. And one of the reasons I avoid discussions like this is the longer I participate the more I find my self being forced to stake positions for the sake of building an argument, and I think it leads away from regular table play. I don't even think this conversation is at all about table play. It is about people winning a style argument and controlling the dialogue about gaming. I don't honestly believe anything good has come from this or the other thread. There hasn't been any increased understanding of peoples styles. It has just seen an increase in hostility and divisive rhetoric. And it is all to serve the interests of promoting one play style over another.

Edit: And just to be clear Innerdude, I am not directing this post at you. I don't think I had any trouble interacting with you in that thread. You had your position, but you were still open to what I was saying and there was a legitimate give and take. But this thread, was started as an attack on one of my posts in that thread. And it the OP of this thread is a level of navel gazing I didn't think was possible in the hobby.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Imaro said:


> Well this here is a big part of the disconnect... I, like you actually enjoy exploration games, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has made it clear in other threads that he doesn't particularly value exploration in his games (and please correct me if I am mistaken here).  Personally I see that as a gigantic flaw and a limitation in his style and techniques of play, as well as something that isn't really addressed or explored in any of his arguments (except to dismiss it as something he is not interested or frame it negatively... as opposed to exploring it's actual merits and flaws in a neutral manner).




If he doesn't like  it that is fine. My problem isn't him wanting to play another kind of game. I've said that countless times.  My issue is he keeps framing these discussion in a way that is totally dismissive of things other people do that obviously work at the table the for them. And he builds these crazy arguments around each word that comes out of your mouth. This is not a normal conversation.


----------



## Manbearcat

Sadras said:


> Hard No's in the Combat Pillar (i.e. immunity to x damage) are A-ok, however
> Hard No's in the Exploration or Social Pillar = Mother May I




That's interesting.  This is actually a really good point and a good contribution.  It would have been nice if discussion emerged around it.

I have some underdeveloped thoughts on why that is (in standard D&D), but I'm not certain.  I'll have to think on it some more.


----------



## Manbearcat

Sadras said:


> I propose we change the term "Saying yes"  to _Daddy thankyou_




Although I know this is snark, I have two thoughts:  

1)  "Daddy" here would be the designer, not the GM (it only works that way).

2)  It does actually carry explanatory power that way if the intent is being appreciative of a certain sort of empowerment.


----------



## Manbearcat

Maxperson said:


> I take exception to describing how the game is intended to be played as a DM flaw.  It's not a flaw to be in charge of content introduction.  It's the rules.  It's also a style of play different from yours, but no less valid of fun(for those that like the style).




Let me clarify what my intent was with that post (and the other posts around it).

When I invoked "entitlement to absolute authority over content introduction", I wasn't referring to an inevitable outgrowth of a regime of GMing of the sort we're discussing here.

I was invoking the possible operant conditioning landmine of such a regime (particularly for evolved chimps like us that have stratified their social groups via establishment of various dominance hierarchies)...and how that force-multiplies, or pushes back against, other behaviors.

GMing under the burden of such a responsibility can induce a sense of duty and sacrifice to the betterment of the collective (as both an exemplar to aspire to and simply as a vessel for enjoyment)...or a sense of entitlement (which can then be abused to the detriment of the whole).


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> If I am a player for example, and Bill is running a world. I am fine with the idea that Bill's brain effectively is the universe. There are quirks that are unique to Bill that will consistently come up for sure. But that world is going to have its own internal logic and rhythm because it is all coming from Bill. And Bill is a real GM. I remember a campaign where we were in a city where all the magic users were treated like gods, and I got it into my head to become the local god of Coffee and start a temple. Every time I went somewhere to find out if some resource or potential ally or worshipper was available, he didn't 'say yes or roll', he didn't 'say yes', nor did he have a set of clear procedures. He just decided in most cases.



This is exactly why I describe the focus of player activity in these games _learning what is in Bill's notes_. Some of those notes are literally such. Some are notional notes - ie Bill hsan't thought about it before, and so hasn't yet written it into his notes, but when prompted to decide makes a decision which then becomes part of the GM's setting notes.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> "Saying Yes" per se doesn't mean much: it was originally phrased Say yes or roll the Dice, and in that game was RAW, not a suggestion.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> not even there players had the authority to create new content about the setting/situation out of their head, because prep & plot by Gm.



Right. This is why I've said multiple times in this thread and the companion thread that a discussion which proceeds in disregard of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is pretty close to useless.

The notion that the alternative are _GM unilaterall decision-making_ or _player unilateral decision-making_ is ridiculous: it's not how any part of AD&D combat works, for example, just to point to probably the best-known mechanical framework in the history of RPGing.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> This is exactly why I describe the focus of player activity in these games _learning what is in Bill's notes_. Some of those notes are literally such. Some are notional notes - ie Bill hsan't thought about it before, and so hasn't yet written it into his notes, but when prompted to decide makes a decision which then becomes part of the GM's setting notes.




That doesn't capture what is going on in my opinion. But I am not going to argue with you about the point because I honestly don't think there is any convincing you. 

You can describe virtually any play style in dismissive or negative terms. Doing so just ensures you will probably never really understand or appreciate where people who enjoy that style are coming from. All it seems you have been doing is finding ways to negatively characterize this style of play.


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> Well this here is a big part of the disconnect... I, like you actually enjoy exploration games, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has made it clear in other threads that he doesn't particularly value exploration in his games (and please correct me if I am mistaken here).





innerdude said:


> Exploration is such a weird, interesting thing for me, because I've always LOVED the sense of exploration in every aspect of gaming.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], though, the draw isn't to just "see what's around the next corner." There's exploration-for-exploration's sake, and there's exploration-for-the-sake-of-revealing-character-driven-stakes.
> 
> And even in spite of my love of exploration in gaming, I can sort of see his point. Exploration-for-exploration's sake in TTRPGs is ultimately a zero sum game. The very open-ended nature of the enterprise basically ensures you'll never run out of un-poked corners. I think for anyone other than a very small subset of gamers who are wholly committed to "The Sandbox" as an end of its own, this kind of exploration-for-exploration's sake gameplay wears thin rather quickly.
> 
> TTRPG play becomes more interesting when there's something of value at stake for the characters within the fiction, and the pursuit of those stakes gets expressed by the players.



To be frank, I'll put the richness and colour of my gameworlds up against those of anyone else posting in this thread. I've got lots of actual play threads on these boards, and have linked to some in this thread.

Here's a quote from one of them (on rpg.net):



			
				pemerton posting as thurgon said:
			
		

> I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)
> 
> My memory of the precise sequence of events is hazy, but in the context the peddler was able to insist on proceeding with the sale, demanding 3 drachmas (Ob 1 resource check). As Jobe started haggling a strange woman (Halika) approached him and offered to help him if he would buy her lunch. Between the two of them, the haggling roll was still a failure, and also the subsequent Resources check: so Jobe got his feather but spent his last 3 drachmas, and was taxed down to Resources 0. They did get some more information about the feather from the peddler, however - he bought it from a wild-eyed man with dishevelled beard and hair, who said that it had come from one of the tombs in the Bright Desert.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Jobe, having both nobility and sorcerers in his circles, and a +1D affiliation with both (from Mark of Privilege and a starting affiliation with a sorcerous cabal), initially thought of trying to make contact with the Gynarch of Hardby, the sorceress ruler of that city. But then he thought he might start a little lower in the pecking order, and so decided to make contact with the red-robed firemage Jabal (of the Cabal). With Circles 2 he attempted the Ob 2 check, and failed.
> 
> So, as the 3 PCs were sitting in the Green Dragon Inn (the inn of choice for sorcerers, out-of- towners and the like), putting out feelers to Jabal, a thug wearing a rigid leather breastplate and openly carrying a scimitar turned up with a message from Jabal: Leave town, now. You're marked. Halika noticed him looking at the feather sticking out from Jobe's pouch as he said that: it seemed that the curse had already struck!
> 
> Argument ensued, but attempts to persuade, and to intimidate, both failed, and they didn't want to start a fight in the inn. Once they got outside, however, with Athog (the thug) ready to escort them to the East Gate, the elf said something to provoke him to draw his scimitar by way of threat. The player of the elf decided that this was enough provocation to justify an honourable elf striking a blow, and brought his Brawling 5 to bear on the situation. This was the first and only combat of the session, which I decided to resolve as Bloody Versus. The elf had a 1D advantage from skills, plus the same from greater Reflex, and another bonus from somewhere else that I'm forgetting, although I gave Athog +1D for sword vs fist. In any event the elf won outright, successfully evading the sword and delivering a superficial wound to Athog as he grabbed his sword hand and forced him to the ground.
> 
> Halika helped herself to Athog's purse (+1D cash, and no longer being penniless) and scimitar, and they insisted that Athog take them to Jabal.
> 
> The trip to Jabal's tower took them through the narrow, winding streets of the city. When they got there, Jabal was suitably angry at his Igor-like servitor for letting them in, and at Athog for not running them out of town. They argued, although I don't think any social skill checks were actually made. Jabal explained that the curse on the feather was real, from a mummy in a desert tomb, and that he didn't want anything to do with Jobe while he was cursed. Jobe accepted his dressing down with suitable Base Humility, earning a fate point. (The second for the session from a character trait. During the exchange in the bar Halika, who as a one-time wizard's apprentice is Always in the Way, got in the way of Jobe doing something-or-other to earn a point.)
> 
> As the PCs left Jobe's tower, they noticed a dishevelled, wild-eyed figure coming down the stairs. This caused suitable speculation about the nature of Jabal's conspiracy with the person who had sold the feather to the peddler.
> 
> As they were walking to the East Gate their path took them back through the market, where they saw that peddler packing up: he had just had news that his wife and daughter, in a town to the south, had fallen gravely ill, and he was finishing his business in the city before taking a boat south at dawn. The players took this as a sign of the curse being at work on the feather's former owner. Jobe also took the time to make a Perception check to see if there was anything else valuable or magical among the things the peddler was packing up. I can't remember the Ob, but it was quite high, and the check failed: with his Second Sight he noticed, instead, a sending from Jabal which branded him with a +1 Ob penalty to sorcery while in the town, for having dallied on his way to the gate.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Jobe and Halika sneaked into Jabal's tower to try and overhear dinner-time conversations between Jabal and the dishevelled man. Witch's Flight took Halika over the walls, and then - after moving Inconspicuously through town - the same spell took her to the top of Jabal's tower. Jobe, meanwhile, followed in falcon form.
> 
> From the top of the tower Halika used the knife from her traveller's gear to lift open the bar of the shutters (scoring the first Beginner's Luck test for Lockpicking). She went in, and the falcon flew in after her. They were in the classic wizard library and laboratory - beakers, retort stands, braziers with burning charcoal, etc, plus - away from the fires - shelves of books.
> 
> The falcon peered at the books and recognised (successful Perception) that one of them bore the symbols favoured by her brother. Squawking and fluttering in the general direction of the book, the falcon got Halika's attention. An Observation check revealed that the book had been placed on the shelf very recently, and a Symbology check revealed that, while the symbols on the book were unfamiliar, they were written in the hand of her former teacher. Just as she had taken the book from its shelf and shoved it into her pack, she heard a sound of wings coming down to the windowsill.
> 
> She hid (successful Stealth against the homunculus’s Perception). The falcon, with a +1D advantage for being small, made an untrained Stealth check which tied with the homunculus’s Perception, but then won on contested Speed check to get to cover before the homunculus had landed comfortably on the sill.
> 
> As the homunculus (which I described as crow-like, but with a human-ish face and all bones and feathers with little or no flesh) sat on the sill, they heard footsteps coming up the tower stairs, and Jabal opened the door. He seemed surprised that the window was open, but had a brief conversation with the homunculus - the homunculus spoke in a strange magical tongue, but from Jabal's side of the conversation the PCs could work out that the homunculus had been checking that they had left town, and so knew where they were camped outside the walls.
> 
> Jabal then shut the window, and went to take the book from the shelf. When it wasn't there, seemed puzzled again but muttered that he must have left it downstairs, and went down again with the homunculus. The PCs decided to take this chance to leave. Halika opened the windows, the falcon flew out, and then she climbed out. But before using Witch's Flight to leap down to the ground, she decided to shut the window behind her.



There's a town, a market, an inn and a street thug, a wizard's guild and tower, a mysterious peddler and a mysterious stranger, a curse from out of the Bright Desert, and more, all in two or three hours of play. If that doesn't count as establishing and exploring a setting, then I want to see actual play posts that will show us what is.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> You can describe virtually any play style in dismissive or negative terms.



It's not dismissive to describe what is going on in that sort of play. You said it yourself - _Bill's thoughts about the setting are the setting_. Exploring the setting = learning Bill's thoughts about it. What is being dismissed?



Bedrockgames said:


> this thread, was started as an attack on one of my posts in that thread.



It was started to express _disagreement_ with you saying that a certain playstyle is _no more mother may I than real life_.

Real life does not involve a world whose content and behaviour is chosen by someone in expression of creative inclinations. Whereas that is central to the playstyle you are describing - it is _Bill's creative inclinations_ that establish the gameworld.

Expressing that opinion isn't an "attack" on anything or anyone.


----------



## Imaro

innerdude said:


> I think for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], though, the draw isn't to just "see what's around the next corner." There's exploration-for-exploration's sake, and there's exploration-for-the-sake-of-revealing-character-driven-stakes.
> 
> And even in spite of my love of exploration in gaming, I can sort of see his point. Exploration-for-exploration's sake in TTRPGs is ultimately a zero sum game. The very open-ended nature of the enterprise basically ensures you'll never run out of un-poked corners. I think for anyone other than a very small subset of gamers who are wholly committed to "The Sandbox" as an end of its own, this kind of exploration-for-exploration's sake gameplay wears thin rather quickly.




See and here I'd strongly disagree.  I'd say for the vast majority of players, and especially casual players that don't hangout on rpg forums dissecting roleplaying games and learning forge terminology and so on... exploration is the driver for their fun, whether that is exploration of a setting, the DM's plot or a pre-written module that is what they expect and have fun with.  In fact I would say it's a smaller subset that are interested in character-driven-stakes (oe would even know what you are talking about if you said that).



innerdude said:


> TTRPG play becomes more interesting when there's something of value at stake for the characters within the fiction, and the pursuit of those stakes gets expressed by the players.




If that's your preference then cool but for some/many... maybe most it doesn't necessarily make it more interesting.  If it did I doubt inspiration would be forgotten so often in games of D&D and background (outside of mechanical abilities) would be referenced much more.  Just saying...


----------



## Imaro

innerdude said:


> Exploration is such a weird, interesting thing for me, because I've always LOVED the sense of exploration in every aspect of gaming.
> 
> Take two recent video game examples:
> 
> I've been playing through the nearly-25-year-old game, Crusader: No Remorse which I picked up on GOG.com a while ago. I played it waaaaay back in the day when it first game out, and from the first time I played it, THE MOST ENGAGING THING about the whole experience was the sense of _exploration_. How did I get from A to B? Where did that blind hallway actually go? The whole idea was just to poke into every corner I could, because . . . it made me happy.
> 
> Reading through some GameFAQs walkthroughs, several of the guides pointed out that you can totally "shortcut" through the levels to get to the end faster. Which is the exact OPPOSITE of the type of experience I was wanting to have with the game.
> 
> I'm also a big fan of the Trine game series (Trine 1 and 2). A few days ago I was playing while two of my daughters watched and hung out with me, and there were several moments where they were saying, "Dad, you don't HAVE to get every single flask of XP in the game!" To which I immediately replied, "Yes, I do!" I would spend 15-20 minutes trying to figure out how to capture one small, relatively insignificant item in the game, but just HAD to prove to myself that I could do it.
> 
> So I am completely drawn in by the concept of exploration in pen-and-paper RPGs as well.




I just wanted to comment here as well and say perhaps your videogame examples are a little outdated.  Grand Theft Auto Online a game where you explore an online virtual world with no character driven stakes has 90 million sales worldwide and over 6 billion in revenue.  It is a sandbox and it is one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time... not videogame... products.

Edit: This also ignores the rise in populareity of MMO lites with open worlds such as Destiny & Destiny 2, The Division and the upcoming Division 2 & Anthem.  These games are wildly popular and have little if any character driven stakes... just exploration, looting and combat.  The fact that these games are so popular always makes me wonder at people who claim D&D is only dominant because it was first... no it basically created this style of play that is the blueprint to making tons of money for a videogame when done right... and D&D has a content generator that can actually keep up with it's players.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It's not dismissive to describe what is going on in that sort of play. You said it yourself - _Bill's thoughts about the setting are the setting_. Exploring the setting = learning Bill's thoughts about it. What is being dismissed?




You can't possibly believe this. This is always what you keep claiming. You say you are simply describing things. You are simply stating what is occurring. But you'er are not simply describing, you are describing in a way that consistently paints these styles and approaches in an inferior or undesirable light. Why is this dismissive? Because 'learning Bill's notes' is the most boring way, the least accurate way to describe the style. Learning Bill's notes doesn't exactly sound like fun. And it isn't what is going on. The notes are tools. But they are about 30% or less of what is going on at the table.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It was started to express _disagreement_ with you saying that a certain playstyle is _no more mother may I than real life_.
> 
> Real life does not involve a world whose content and behaviour is chosen by someone in expression of creative inclinations. Whereas that is central to the playstyle you are describing - it is _Bill's creative inclinations_ that establish the gameworld.
> 
> Expressing that opinion isn't an "attack" on anything or anyone.




You highlighted my post in its own thread for the purposes of disagreeing with it, when I said to you I had no interest in that discussion. And you mischaracterized my argument and created the whole straw man about real world processes versus fictional ones. 

I get that you want to keep arguing the specifics of this. But You've already made your points, and they've been responded to (and in my view fairly conclusively defeated). You can keep making the same points, but we are just going around in circles at this point. I don't see any purpose in continuing to talk about this with you.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> you are describing in a way that consistently paints these styles and approaches in an inferior or undesirable light. Why is this dismissive? Because 'learning Bill's notes' is the most boring way, the least accurate way to describe the style. Learning Bill's notes doesn't exactly sound like fun. And it isn't what is going on. The notes are tools. But they are about 30% or less of what is going on at the table.



Given the number of people who buy RPG modules and setting books to read them (this is Paizo's subscriptin business model), it seems that a lot of people think it is fun to learn what someone else made up about an imagined world. I've read the Appendices to LotR more times than I can remember, and most of those are learning what JRRT made up about his imagined world.

As for the rest of what is going on at the table that is not related to Bill telling you the gameworld content - that happens at other tables too, so doesn't seem unique to playing in the Bill-driven style.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Given the number of people who buy RPG modules and setting books to read them (this is Paizo's subscriptin business model), it seems that a lot of people think it is fun to learn what someone else made up about an imagined world. I've read the Appendices to LotR more times than I can remember, and most of those are learning what JRRT made up about his imagined world.
> 
> As for the rest of what is going on at the table that is not related to Bill telling you the gameworld content - that happens at other tables too, so doesn't seem unique to playing in the Bill-driven style.




Pemerton. I am done having this conversation with you.


----------



## Manbearcat

Let me just say one thing.

This head-on-a-swivel, constantly fretting over shadows of Forge bogeyman framing of this conversation is completely absurd.

There is nothing I've written in here that is Forge inspired or really even relates to any "mainstream" (yeah, I know) Forge essays or posts.

The term "gamestate" isn't Forge jargon and is pretty universal in any game theory analysis (for any games, board, TTRPG, CRPG, sports, etc).  "Shared imagined space?"  Is that seriously triggering?  What in the world would you like me to call it?  I could use a hell of a lot more than 3 words if that wouldn't freak some people out because of their Forge hostilities that seem to be so central to analysis on these boards (and work to make analysis impossible).

How about:

"The imaginary stuff that we collectively talk about at our table?"  

Just let me know.  I'll scribe that monster on a notepad so I can Control C and Control V it every time I want to talk about "shared imagined space."


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> Given the number of people who buy RPG modules and setting books to read them (this is Paizo's subscriptin business model), it seems that a lot of people think it is fun to learn what someone else made up about an imagined world. I've read the Appendices to LotR more times than I can remember, and most of those are learning what JRRT made up about his imagined world.
> 
> As for the rest of what is going on at the table that is not related to Bill telling you the gameworld content - that happens at other tables too, so doesn't seem unique to playing in the Bill-driven style.




Wait... this example seems to equate playing a traditional style rpg with the act of reading a book... is that the correct takeaway here?  I hope not since I would argue they are totally different experiences.  If that is the takeaway I would also say perhaps your view/descriptions/definitions of traditional styles of play just aren't nuanced enough to be useful.


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> Wait... this example seems to equate playing a traditional style rpg with the act of reading a book... is that the correct takeaway here?



Or watching a film. Or being told a story. There are many ways to learn someone's ideas about something they made up.

Of coures in RPG it's a _series_ of things that are said to the players by the GM, each triggered by a request (express or implied) that something be said.

I'm sure that many people would say that "I am learning how the sect members behave in Bill's world." Like I can say that, by reading LotR, I learn how elves behave in JRRT's world. But _learning how elves behave in JRRT's world'_ is exactly the same thing as _learning what JRRT made up about elves_.



Imaro said:


> I would argue they are totally different experiences.



They clearly have some things in common that neither has in common with (say) changing a washer on a dripping tap. They clearly are different also - for instance, most of what you are calling "traditional" RPGing (I use scare quotes because Traveller is a very old RPG but doesn't tend to exhibit the features you are fastening on as part of the tradition) involves the solving of puzzles, by putting together clues or prompts that are obtained from the GM by performing the right moves to obtain them.

For instance, in the sect example, to learn where their PCs might find sect members the players the players have to obtain background information about the sect, which they obtain by declaring moves for their PCs which will trigger narration from the GM of the appropriate information - this could be anything from interrogating captives to searchingin libraries to casting Commune spells, depending on how the details of play and of system are interacting with the creative decisions that the GM has made and is making.

There is a large amount of evidence that many people enjoy solving puzzles as a pastime (eg newspapers the world over carry crosswords and sudokus in large numbers, but not so much poetry or randomly chosen encyclopedia entries), and I believe that this is what some people enjoy in "traditional" RPGing.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> Or watching a film. Or being told a story. There are many ways to learn someone's ideas about something they made up.




Again these things are fundamentally different from playing in a traditional style rpg... oir any rpg for that matter 



pemerton said:


> Of coures in RPG it's a _series_ of things that are said to the players by the GM, each triggered by a request (express or implied) that something be said.




This defintion is so broad and non-descriptive as to be useless unless one is purposefully trying to make no distinction between a variety of things and it would at a high level include your own playstyle as well.



pemerton said:


> I'm sure that many people would say that "I am learning how the sect members behave in Bill's world." Like I can say that, by reading LotR, I learn how elves behave in JRRT's world. But _learning how elves behave in JRRT's world'_ is exactly the same thing as _learning what JRRT made up about elves_.




We've gone down this road before and this is where the distinction always gets fuzzy.  You make a statement like the above... but readily admit you yourself use geography, races, etc. from pre-made campaign settings so again, for at least some parts of your game this also applies to your playstyle.   




pemerton said:


> They clearly have some things in common that neither has in common with (say) changing a washer on a dripping tap. They clearly are different also - for instance, most of what you are calling "traditional" RPGing (I use scare quotes because Traveller is a very old RPG but doesn't tend to exhibit the features you are fastening on as part of the tradition) involves the solving of puzzles, by putting together clues or prompts that are obtained from the GM by performing the right moves to obtain them.




Or it could involve negotiation for the answer... or a rolling of the die for an answer...or a known chance for the answer... and I think even your playstyle requires specific "moves" to attain certain results, right?  I mean would you allow a player to make an Athletics role to determine what they know about the Red Duke's parentage?   



pemerton said:


> For instance, in the sect example, to learn where their PCs might find sect members the players the players have to obtain background information about the sect, which they obtain by declaring moves for their PCs which will trigger narration from the GM of the appropriate information - this could be anything from interrogating captives to searchingin libraries to casting Commune spells, depending on how the details of play and of system are interacting with the creative decisions that the GM has made and is making.




Yes they interact with the relevant fiction to attain their goals... is it different in your playstyle?



pemerton said:


> There is a large amount of evidence that many people enjoy solving puzzles as a pastime (eg newspapers the world over carry crosswords and sudokus in large numbers, but not so much poetry or randomly chosen encyclopedia entries), and I believe that this is what some people enjoy in "traditional" RPGing.




I'm sure some people do...and some enjoy acting in character...and some enjoy combat... and some enjoy exploration...and some, well I think you get the point. Puzzles can be a part of traditional play, but it's not a defining feature or even required for play.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Have you considered that "realism" is simply a byproduct of some other game value and not an end value in itself? My contention is that I believe that most proponents of "realism" in TTRPGs mistakenly confuse "realism" as an end value in TTRPGs.




Realism is what allows you to play an RPG. 



> You are missing the forest for the trees here.




Pot, meet kettle.



> Or let's go to the longsword. It does d8 damage. Would it be less realistic if it was changed to d6 damage? How about if a hand ax did d8 damage? How do these mechanics connect to any meaningful notions of valuing realism? Again, I don't really think that realism really pushes, pulls, or drives the mechanics of these games. Usually other things get cited instead, such as the designers' desire to have variable weapon types, playstyles, damages, aesthetics, etc. The presence of these things do not make them realistic, especially since they are largely divorced from their actual use in reality.




So let's look at a game without realism in it.  There are no swords, spears, or any other weapon that can resemble an earth weapon.  There can be no dragons, plants, unicorns, elves, humanoids, or animals.  Hell, there can't even be things with limbs.  Nor can you have anything living or dead.  No matter, energy or magic.  All of those things have their roots in the real world, and therefore have realism.

Realism may not be the primary drive to an RPG, but there isn't an RPG that can exist without tons of realism all over the place.  Realism is critical to their existence, so while the mechanics may not use realism as the primary driver, realism is hardly pocket lint.


----------



## Immortal Sun

Maxperson said:


> So let's look at a game without realism in it.  There are no swords, spears, or any other weapon that can resemble an earth weapon.  There can be no dragons, plants, unicorns, elves, humanoids, or animals.  Hell, there can't even be things with limbs.  Nor can you have anything living or dead.  No matter, energy or magic.  All of those things have their roots in the real world, and therefore have realism.




I have my original 1984 boxset of "Old Ones & Eternities" right here!


----------



## Maxperson

Immortal Sun said:


> I have my original 1984 boxset of "Old Ones & Eternities" right here!




Heh!!  Can't be played without realism being present.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Realism is what allows you to play an RPG.
> 
> So let's look at a game without realism in it.  There are no swords, spears, or any other weapon that can resemble an earth weapon.  There can be no dragons, plants, unicorns, elves, humanoids, or animals.  Hell, there can't even be things with limbs.  Nor can you have anything living or dead.  No matter, energy or magic.  All of those things have their roots in the real world, and therefore have realism.
> 
> Realism may not be the primary drive to an RPG, but there isn't an RPG that can exist without tons of realism all over the place.  Realism is critical to their existence, so while the mechanics may not use realism as the primary driver, realism is hardly pocket lint.



Why are you using the term "realism" in such a meaningless way?


----------



## Imaculata

Aldarc said:


> Why are you using the term "realism" in such a meaningless way?




Max has a habit of making commonly understood terms so broad, that they lose a lot of their discussion-value, and this keeps coming up again and again in lots of discussions on this board. Perhaps it would be more constructive to stick with the convential way in which the term is used, Max?

I think you (Max) know that when we use the word realism, we are referring to a style of play that mimics real life in more detail then conventional modes of play. So maybe it would help, for the sake of discussion, to use this commonly understood definition instead, and continue from there?

For example, when I say my roleplaying game uses a 'realistic approach' to combat-injuries, I think most people on this board would take that to mean that the game mimics certain aspects of how injuries in real life tend to affect a person. That is usually how we use the word 'realism' in regards to a roleplaying game.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> Max has a habit of making commonly understood terms so broad, that they lose a lot of their discussion-value, and this keeps coming up again and again in lots of discussions on this board. Perhaps it would be more constructive to stick with the convential way in which the term is used, Max?
> 
> I think you (Max) know that when we use the word realism, we are referring to a style of play that mimics real life in more detail then conventional modes of play. So maybe it would help, for the sake of discussion, to use this commonly understood definition instead, and continue from there?




I am using it in the way it's commonly used.  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] seems to be intentionally minimizing realism in order to win a point, so I demonstrated the importance of realism in RPGs in the hope that he would at least acknowledge that realism has more meaning than "pocket lint."  Alas, he seems to be one of those who would rather stick his head in the sand and sing la la la, than to admit when he is wrong about something.

Realism is present everywhere in an RPG.  Once people realize that, then it's pretty easy for them to understand the concept that realism isn't all or nothing and that the only difference between [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] and I is where on the realism line we each prefer things.  Let's say that D&D sits at X amount of realism on the line.  I prefer to add a bit more realism to the game, making it Y.  He may like to keep it the same or perhaps even reduce it.  

Realism does have value for him, though, even if he won't admit to us or himself.  Something that is necessary to even be able to play the game has value.  Period.



> For example, when I say my roleplaying game uses a 'realistic approach' to combat-injuries, I think most people on this board would take that to mean that the game mimics certain aspects of how injuries in real life tend to affect a person. That is usually how we use the word 'realism' in regards to a roleplaying game.




Right, you want to increase the amount of realism that is in combat.  The thing to remember is that realism isn't binary, i.e. having no tie to reality at all or absolutely mirroring reality.  It exists as a line between those two points, which makes what I described to him in my post last night correct and helps understand what those of us who enjoy adding more realism to D&D are about.


----------



## Manbearcat

@_*Maxperson*_

Do you mean something like “baseline familiarity centered around our own physical systems?” Gravity is a thing, some interactions transfer more energy than others, nonparasitic plants need light for photosynthesis, humans (and animals like them) express themselves based on biological and social imperatives. Stuff like that?

I don’t think (broadly) that anyone would disagree with that (@Aldarc included). 

I think the friction arises when we try to sort out the nature of a certain paradox that seems to violate our baselines arbitrarily, what to extrapolate from it, what is the consequence/utility (from a gameplay perspective) of digging too deeply or hewing too closely/granularly (to our baselines). Further still, the more Through the Looking Glass components get ported to our games, the more friction there is (as even our seemingly trivially “true” baselines become challenged).

EDIT - That isn’t even touching on the questions of:

1) Does hewing to x too closely cause gameplay issues (balance, overhead)?

2) Does hewing to x too closely interfere with having interesting inputs to gameplay (framed conflicts, proposed action declarations, exciting obstacles).


----------



## Immortal Sun

Maxperson said:


> Heh!!  Can't be played without realism being present.




I know, and he always shows up late.


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> @_*Maxperson*_
> 
> Do you mean something like “baseline familiarity centered around our own physical systems?” Gravity is a thing, some interactions transfer more energy than others, nonparasitic plants need light for photosynthesis, humans (and animals like them) express themselves based on biological and social imperatives. Stuff like that?
> 
> I don’t think (broadly) that anyone would disagree with that (@Aldarc included).
> 
> I think the friction arises when we try to sort out the nature of a certain paradox that seems to violate our baselines arbitrarily, what to extrapolate from it, what is the consequence/utility (from a gameplay perspective) of digging too deeply or hewing too closely/granularly (to our baselines). Further still, the more Through the Looking Glass components get potted to our games, the more friction there is (as even our seemingly trivially “true” baselines become challenged).
> 
> EDIT - That isn’t even touching on the questions of:
> 
> 1) Does hewing to x too closely cause gameplay issues (balance, overhead)?
> 
> 2) Does hewing to x too closely interfere with having interesting inputs to gameplay (framed conflicts, proposed action declarations, exciting obstacles).




Yes.  That familiarity ties game correlations to reality.  Realism exists everywhere you look inside of RPGs.  It's only the level of realism that's at issue, not whether or not it exists.  The problems encountered in discussions about realism here on the forum stem from the fact that we all have different baselines of realism that we like on any particular topic.  Some may like more realism in weaponry, others in damage, yet others in how gravity works.  Others will like less.  

I think the other questions you mention in your edit affect where we place our limits.  For example, while I enjoy more realism in D&D than is present in the rules, I wouldn't want to have to have my PCs go to the bathroom multiple times a day.  That bogs the gameplay down with uninteresting inputs and increases the overhead(time used).


----------



## Maxperson

Immortal Sun said:


> I know, and he always shows up late.




True, but he keeps it real.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> @_*Maxperson*_
> 
> Do you mean something like “baseline familiarity centered around our own physical systems?” Gravity is a thing, some interactions transfer more energy than others, nonparasitic plants need light for photosynthesis, humans (and animals like them) express themselves based on biological and social imperatives. Stuff like that?
> 
> I don’t think (broadly) that anyone would disagree with that (@Aldarc included).
> 
> I think the friction arises when we try to sort out the nature of a certain paradox that seems to violate our baselines arbitrarily, what to extrapolate from it, what is the consequence/utility (from a gameplay perspective) of digging too deeply or hewing too closely/granularly (to our baselines). Further still, the more Through the Looking Glass components get ported to our games, the more friction there is (as even our seemingly trivially “true” baselines become challenged).
> 
> EDIT - That isn’t even touching on the questions of:
> 
> 1) Does hewing to x too closely cause gameplay issues (balance, overhead)?
> 
> 2) Does hewing to x too closely interfere with having interesting inputs to gameplay (framed conflicts, proposed action declarations, exciting obstacles).




In my experience, a lot of this can be sorted out quickly by saying to the players "This is the movie franchise you are in"( in terms of what physics and plausibility to expect). James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, and the Venom Mob, all have different levels of adherence to real world physics and causality.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> I am using it in the way it's commonly used.  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] seems to be intentionally minimizing realism in order to win a point, so I demonstrated the importance of realism in RPGs in the hope that he would at least acknowledge that realism has more meaning than "pocket lint."  Alas, he seems to be one of those who would rather stick his head in the sand and sing la la la, than to admit when he is wrong about something.



Your personal attacks and strawmen aside, if you read my arguments in good faith, you would know that it is not about minimizing realism, Max. It's about acknowledging how "realism" itself is typically not the actual goal for self-professed advocates of "realism." This is why I asked you: 


Aldarc said:


> Have you considered that "realism" is simply a byproduct of some other game value and not an end value in itself? My contention is that I believe that most proponents of "realism" in TTRPGs mistakenly confuse "realism" as an end value in TTRPGs.



And similarly before: 


Aldarc said:


> Even ignoring the fantastical elements within the most popular genre of TTRPG play, I'm not sure if I would call it 'realism' by any reasonable metric. Often that appeal to realism is selectively applied, if not prejudiciously, by both the game system and the participants, typically with some other goal or value in mind. 'Realism' is likely a smokescreen for some other issue(s). This is to say, I don't necessarily think that 'realism' is the genuine goal of people who claim they desire 'realism' in their TTRPG, especially D&D.



The point is not that realism is not present in RPGs (that's your strawman) - and arguing that realism is a component of games is just a meaningless platitude - but, rather, that (1) notions of realism are _prejudiciously applied_ (this is also a key point), and (2) this is typically for the sake of other underlying game design goals. IMHO, the underlying design goals within calls for "realism" serve as the actual end and value rather than "realism" itself. I think that both   [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]'s excellent response here and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s suggestion to replace "realism" with "internal logic" allude to this issue. Both seem to acknowledge the deficiency of the term "realism" in describing the actual desired good here. The actual "good" or "value" is not so much "realism," but with how the players engage with the environment (or game) as part of cultivating the desired play experience. Based upon past conversations, I suspect that for the "Old School play" of Bedrockgames and Lanefan, the point is not "realism," but, instead, in having "known knowns" that help players make informed decisions conducive of skilled play. (If I am mistaken in summarizing their preferences here, I will gladly admit my error and welcome clarification.) This is also why I find appeals to "realism" in a system to be a smokescreen that masks the actual underlying issues of the desired game play. It would be easier to identify, design, and cultivate for that desired play experience without hiding it behind vague and prejudiciously applied notions of "realism" obscuring that process. 

So, again, for example if we take the matter of healing. To me its inclusion as part of a game is not a matter of "realism," but, rather, of pacing and tone. We advocate different types of healing mechanics because we want different things out of the game experience rather than "realism." If we want something "Grim 'n' Gritty" where we want to emphasize character attrition, resource management, or the dangerous, survivalist tone of the imaginative play space, then we may desire to make healing slower or more difficult to come by. But it would be far more difficult to discuss how we would potentially design healing in such a game if it is obscured behind appeals to "realism." "Realism" almost becomes a red herring in the discussion.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Your personal attacks and strawmen aside, if you read my arguments in good faith, you would know that it is not about minimizing realism, Max. It's about acknowledging how "realism" itself is typically not the actual goal for self-professed advocates of "realism." This is why I asked you:
> And similarly before:
> The point is not that realism is not present in RPGs (that's your strawman) - and arguing that realism is a component of games is just a meaningless platitude - but, rather, that (1) notions of realism are _prejudiciously applied_ (this is also a key point), and (2) this is typically for the sake of other underlying game design goals. IMHO, the underlying design goals within calls for "realism" serve as the actual end and value rather than "realism" itself. I think that both  [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]'s excellent response hereand  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s suggestion to replace "realism" with "internal logic" allude to this issue. Both seem to acknowledge the deficiency of the term "realism" in describing the actual desired good here. The actual "good" or "value" is not so much "realism," but with how the players engage with the environment (or game) as part of cultivating the desired play experience. Based upon past conversations, I suspect that for the "Old School play" of Bedrockgames and Lanefan, the point is not "realism," but, instead, in having "known knowns" that help players make informed decisions conducive of skilled play. (If I am mistaken in summarizing their preferences here, I will gladly admit my error and welcome clarification.) This is also why I find appeals to "realism" in a system to be a smokescreen that masks the actual underlying issues of the desired game play. It would be easier to identify, design, and cultivate for that desired play experience without hiding it behind vague and prejudiciously applied notions of "realism" obscuring that process.
> 
> So, again, for example if we take the matter of healing. To me its inclusion as part of a game is not a matter of "realism," but, rather, of pacing and tone. We advocate different types of healing mechanics because we want different things out of the game experience rather than "realism." If we want something "Grim 'n' Gritty" where we want to emphasize character attrition, resource management, or the dangerous, survivalist tone of the imaginative play space, then we may desire to make healing slower or more difficult to come by. But it would be far more difficult to discuss how we would potentially design healing in such a game if it is obscured behind appeals to "realism." "Realism" almost becomes a red herring in the discussion.




Just to clarify. I think realism is a perfectly valid expectation. My point was just most groups are made up of people whose expectations differ on this and are part of a spectrum. So it is good to settle and clarify whether this will be realism in the sense of our everyday world, one of the movie franchises I pointed out, or some particular genre. Wanting realism is fine. Lots of people want that. But I think most people come in with a more nuanced exception.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> The point is not that realism is not present in RPGs (that's your strawman) - and arguing that realism is a component of games is just a meaningless platitude - but, rather, that (1) notions of realism are _prejudiciously applied_ (this is also a key point), and (2) this is typically for the sake of other underlying game design goals. IMHO, the underlying design goals within calls for "realism" serve as the actual end and value rather than "realism" itself. I think that both  [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]'s excellent response hereand  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s suggestion to replace "realism" with "internal logic" allude to this issue. Both seem to acknowledge the deficiency of the term "realism" in describing the actual desired good here. The actual "good" or "value" is not so much "realism," but with how the players engage with the environment (or game) as part of cultivating the desired play experience. Based upon past conversations, I suspect that for the "Old School play" of Bedrockgames and Lanefan, the point is not "realism," but, instead, in having "known knowns" that help players make informed decisions conducive of skilled play. (If I am mistaken in summarizing their preferences here, I will gladly admit my error and welcome clarification.) This is also why I find appeals to "realism" in a system to be a smokescreen that masks the actual underlying issues of the desired game play. It would be easier to identify, design, and cultivate for that desired play experience without hiding it behind vague and prejudiciously applied notions of "realism" obscuring that process.
> .




I don't think the term is deficient. And I don't think we need to shift focus onto how players interact with the setting or build a theoretical model around it (in fact, please, please don't build theoretical models around something I happen to utter online in passing). I think you just need to take the step of clarifying what 'realism' means. And if realism isn't the expectation, you need to take the time to clarify what are the believability expectations in the setting. There are definitely players who want the game to reflect reality. They want wounds to heal at the rate they would in real life (barring magical healing of course because as we've established, that is an exception). We shouldn't act like these players don't exist, are misguided, or misunderstand what they really want. At the same time, we can acknowledge that and see there is a spectrum of expectation. Some people want real world healing rates (true realism), some people want healing rates that are plausible but don't get int the way of things moving forward (more like action movie realism). And the list goes on. Not a zero sum game. All these things can exist in the gaming hobby.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't think the term is deficient. And I don't think we need to shift focus onto how players interact with the setting or build a theoretical model around it (in fact, please, please don't build theoretical models around something I happen to utter online in passing).



My apologies then. I perhaps inferred too much from your response to my post here: 


> I think D&D isn't the best example of a game striving for realism. I do think there is an expectation though that certain things will be believable.



... where you seem to downplay D&D as a game striving for realism while shifting the terms of discussion to "believable." And your final point here: 


> Basically how grounded things will be, so they can get a sense of things like how plausible or strained their schemes can be.



Seemed congruent with my point about how this was a matter of setting expectations of "knowns" in game play for players. 

That said, I do hope that my own argument is clear enough for you. 



> I think you just need to take the step of clarifying what 'realism' means.



I did not introduce "realism" into the discussion so the clarification for the meaning of 'realism' is not mine to make. 



> And if realism isn't the expectation, you need to take the time to clarify what are the believability expectations in the setting. There are definitely players who want the game to reflect reality. They want wounds to heal at the rate they would in real life (barring magical healing of course because as we've established, that is an exception). We shouldn't act like these players don't exist, are misguided, or misunderstand what they really want. At the same time, we can acknowledge that and see there is a spectrum of expectation. Some people want real world healing rates (true realism), some people want healing rates that are plausible but don't get int the way of things moving forward (more like action movie realism). And the list goes on. Not a zero sum game. All these things can exist in the gaming hobby.



I do not agree with you here, and my different experiences with such discussions of "realism" may contribute to our different sense of whether underlying issues exist or not.


----------



## innerdude

Imaro said:


> I just wanted to comment here as well and say perhaps your videogame examples are a little outdated.  Grand Theft Auto Online a game where you explore an online virtual world with no character driven stakes has 90 million sales worldwide and over 6 billion in revenue.  It is a sandbox and it is one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time... not videogame... products.
> 
> Edit: This also ignores the rise in populareity of MMO lites with open worlds such as Destiny & Destiny 2, The Division and the upcoming Division 2 & Anthem.  These games are wildly popular and have little if any character driven stakes... just exploration, looting and combat.  The fact that these games are so popular always makes me wonder at people who claim D&D is only dominant because it was first... no it basically created this style of play that is the blueprint to making tons of money for a videogame when done right... and D&D has a content generator that can actually keep up with it's players.




Maybe six or seven years ago I had a conversation on these forums about this very topic around why I felt 4e was giving me such a poor play experience. 

My view at the time (and still remains) was that CRPGs have now vastly exceeded TTRPGs' ability to plug in to this kind of input/reward/feedback loop. The games you've mentioned, plus things like Diablo, Torchlight---oh, and dare I say World of Warcraft?---are all vastly _better_ at expediting the explore/reward/feedback loop than TTRPGs are.

Even CRPGs that go for bigger, broader storylines like the Baldur's Gate series, Pillars of Eternity, Knights of the Old Republic, Skyrim, etc., still have a much _faster_ action/reward/feedback loop than TTRPGs.

And it's my considered opinion that 4e failed in large part because it was trying to replicate this action/reward/feedback loop as a tabletop experience, but it was doomed to fail from the start, because it neither A) differentiated itself from CRPG products that were already doing this, and doing it well, and B) the actual gameplay experience couldn't "complete the loop" fast enough to engage the player base it was ostensibly targeting.

You don't pull in a World of Warcraft player into the TTRPG market by saying, "It's just like WoW, only you roll dice!" You pull them into the market because it offers a DIFFERENT experience.

Am I saying that TTRPGs can't offer some of this same feedback loop? Well, yes of course it can. I mean, the entire OSR movement is a testament to this fact. But trying to distill TTRPG play into this kind of action/reward/feedback loop _indefinitely_ I think is ultimately a lost cause. Because CRPGs simply do this better, faster, and with less upfront investment in time, money, and required social capital. 

I'd be infinitely curious to hear from the One-True-Sandboxers out there if they really do like "sandboxing" the whole time----or if the "sandboxing" portion of the campaign is just a ramp-up to get their hooks into the game world / plot so they can start pursuing stuff that matters to their character.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I do not agree with you here, and my different experiences with such discussions of "realism" may contribute to our different sense of whether underlying issues exist or not.




you don't believe there are players who actually want realism?


----------



## billd91

Bedrockgames said:


> Just to clarify. I think realism is a perfectly valid expectation. My point was just most groups are made up of people whose expectations differ on this and are part of a spectrum. So it is good to settle and clarify whether this will be realism in the sense of our everyday world, one of the movie franchises I pointed out, or some particular genre. Wanting realism is fine. Lots of people want that. But I think most people come in with a more nuanced exception.




It is one of the essential and fundamental disputes among D&D players and is at the heart of the martial vs spellcaster fight (because it's well beyond debate at this point). How much a game nods to realism in general and realism as filtered through the genre it models while balancing game playability is the art of RPG design.


----------



## innerdude

Bedrockgames said:


> you don't believe there are players who actually want realism?




I'm certain there's a player base out there that actually wants "really real realistic reality realism" as the sole and complete focus of their gaming experience. 

For all seventeen of those people, they already have GURPS. The rest of us have to make do with other systems that are, you know, actually fun.


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> I'm certain there's a player base out there that actually wants "really real realistic reality realism" as the sole and complete focus of their gaming experience.
> 
> For all seventeen of those people, they already have GURPS. The rest of us have to make do with other systems that are, you know, actually fun.




I just think it is very dismissive for people to assume their preferences are prevalent, but assume someone who says they want realism doesn't really know what they want (or assume there is a minuscule number of them). Also, I don't think anyone is saying they want it as a sole and complete focus, just that they want it present (I honestly don't understand why it would need to be the sole focus for it to be important to someone). That is totally reasonable. The said, 100% realism isn't something I am generally after. But I have met tons of players who want it (and yes they do often gravitate toward GURPS ) But there are also plenty in the D&D pool who expect more realism than others. And a lot of the debates over editions arise over perceived issues around realism and plausibility.


----------



## Imaro

innerdude said:


> Maybe six or seven years ago I had a conversation on these forums about this very topic around why I felt 4e was giving me such a poor play experience.
> 
> My view at the time (and still remains) was that CRPGs have now vastly exceeded TTRPGs' ability to plug in to this kind of input/reward/feedback loop. The games you've mentioned, plus things like Diablo, Torchlight---oh, and dare I say World of Warcraft?---are all vastly _better_ at expediting the explore/reward/feedback loop than TTRPGs are.
> 
> Even CRPGs that go for bigger, broader storylines like the Baldur's Gate series, Pillars of Eternity, Knights of the Old Republic, Skyrim, etc., still have a much _faster_ action/reward/feedback loop than TTRPGs.
> 
> And it's my considered opinion that 4e failed in large part because it was trying to replicate this action/reward/feedback loop as a tabletop experience, but it was doomed to fail from the start, because it neither A) differentiated itself from CRPG products that were already doing this, and doing it well, and B) the actual gameplay experience couldn't "complete the loop" fast enough to engage the player base it was ostensibly targeting.
> 
> You don't pull in a World of Warcraft player into the TTRPG market by saying, "It's just like WoW, only you roll dice!" You pull them into the market because it offers a DIFFERENT experience.
> 
> Am I saying that TTRPGs can't offer some of this same feedback loop? Well, yes of course it can. I mean, the entire OSR movement is a testament to this fact. But trying to distill TTRPG play into this kind of action/reward/feedback loop _indefinitely_ I think is ultimately a lost cause. Because CRPGs simply do this better, faster, and with less upfront investment in time, money, and required social capital.
> 
> I'd be infinitely curious to hear from the One-True-Sandboxers out there if they really do like "sandboxing" the whole time----or if the "sandboxing" portion of the campaign is just a ramp-up to get their hooks into the game world / plot so they can start pursuing stuff that matters to their character.




I'll keep this brief since I doubt I'm going to change your opinion on this but...

As an avid (video) gamer I think you've got some real faulty premises going on in your logic here, I think it's exactly D&D's ability to do the input/reward/feedback loop (that is the basis of it's play) so well that has kept it (and still keeps it) the #1 rpg for most of it's entire lifetime.  


IMO some areas where 4e broke this was... too much balance (especially around magic items, encounters, etc.) in these videogames the rewards for exploration are real, you want a god roll weapon or a rare perk or powerful armor that actually powers you up and gives you a real advantage in the game... and if you're good enough, lucky enough or have a good enough team you'll risk more difficult areas of play to get a chance at better rewards.    4e instead gave us the expectation of balanced encounters, bland pseudo rewards that could easily be substituted out with a +x modifier, a set # of treasure parcels at every level, and a power curve that kind of dropped to super easy through paragon and epic tier.  Not to mention it then created a combat engine that instead of being exciting, fast paced and easily resolved was sloooowwwww (another area where videogames were already ahead that 4e just made worse). It basically, when played as presented, made exploration, at least from a reward perspective, pointless that's why these videogames do it so much better than 4e. 

Now honestly I think anything done in perpetuity is going to get boring at some point and I also think your are drawing a false dichotomy between exploration and story/plot... they aren't mutually exclusive or at odds with each other and my preferred method is a combination of the two.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> you don't believe there are players who actually want realism?



I believe that there are people who say that they do, but then apply that broad (if not exceedingly vague) criteria selectively in their games, and that this tells us more about their preferences for the actual play experience they want the game to cultivate. And I believe that this latter point is more meaningful and practical than the call for realism itself or offering the trite remark that some realism exists in roleplaying games. It's a shift from the vague "I want 'realism' in my game" to the more concrete "I want my game to simulate X sort of play experience."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I believe that there are people who say that they do, but then apply that broad (if not exceedingly vague) criteria selectively in their games, and that this tells us more about their preferences for the actual play experience they want the game to cultivate. And I believe that this latter point is more meaningful and practical than the call for realism itself or offering the trite remark that some realism exists in roleplaying games. It's a shift from the vague "I want 'realism' in my game" to the more concrete "I want my game to simulate X sort of play experience."




I don't think you are basing this on much. I think if you parse anyone's claims you can probably find reason to be suspect about them, because most people are not constantly on the look out for lack of X in the games. But when they notice breaches of realism it is going to matter to them. Just because they don't notice every instance, or only get upset when it is very obvious, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Frankly I think this is one of the big issues with discussions on topics like this here. If you can't take peoples' word about what they like, that is extremely arrogant and dismissive. And again, saying this as someone who isn't particularly interested in pure realism. But no one likes their style to be put to the inquisition. And I think a lot of posters are hiding behind a veneer of theory or analysis, but really just trying to argue against play styles they don't like or have had bad experiences talking with in edition wars.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't think you are basing this on much. I think if you parse anyone's claims you can probably find reason to be suspect about them, because most people are not constantly on the look out for lack of X in the games. But when they notice breaches of realism it is going to matter to them. Just because they don't notice every instance, or only get upset when it is very obvious, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Frankly I think this is one of the big issues with discussions on topics like this here. If you can't take peoples' word about what they like, that is extremely arrogant and dismissive. And again, saying this as someone who isn't particularly interested in pure realism. But no one likes their style to be put to the inquisition. And I think a lot of posters are hiding behind a veneer of theory or analysis, but really just trying to argue against play styles they don't like or have had bad experiences talking with in edition wars.



It seems as if you are looking past my words so you can preach from atop your soap box. I'm not trying to play the sort of "you don't know any better" gotcha game that you are depicting this as here, and it is hardly an inquisition. I would personally appreciate a modicum of good faith from you. So please stop trying to presume my argument as being rooted in arrogance or a desire to be dismissive of others.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> It seems as if you are looking past my words so you can preach from atop your soap box. I'm not trying to play the sort of "you don't know any better" gotcha game that you are depicting this as here, and it is hardly an inquisition. I would personally appreciate a modicum of good faith from you. So please stop trying to presume my argument as being rooted in arrogance or a desire to be dismissive of others.




This is a door that swings both ways. If you want me to presume good faith, then maybe you should presume posters are accurately reporting on their tastes. I am not trying to be rude. But it is also getting very difficult to ignore the insulting way some of the posters here are talking about other styles of play. I hope you appreciate my tone isn't meant to be hostile. I think part of it is the text based medium, we are able to project whatever tone we want. But what bothers me is the dismissive nature of the posts I am seeing. It is possible I am misreading them. But I think it is even more possible, people just don't realize how dismissive they are being. If people want a conversation we can have it. I am just not going to lie about my reaction to some of the ways people are wading into this topic with assumptions that, to me, seem really unfounded, and appear to come more from a play style conflict than any real analysis.


----------



## innerdude

Apologies, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I should have added like, ten or twelve more smiley faces to the GURPS comment. It didn't come off nearly as lighthearted in writing as it sounded in my head.  

Mostly I was just tweaking a far,far,far extreme subset of the gaming populace who really does think "realistic realism" is the absolute, uttermost virtue of any game system. Part of the humor was my unspoken assumption that there's a near-zero chance that any of those kinds of players would be present on this forum, because most players who are like that do seem to A) gravitate to GURPS, and B) generally would not deign to give so much as the barest hint that any other system could possess any merit whatsoever.  

But the "point-behind-the-point" in my lightheartedness was to say that I think most of us on these boards recognize that "realism" in TTRPG play (however we define/view it) is absolutely a valid component for play consideration. I don't think anyone who looks for consistency, verisimilitude, coherence, immersion, "living world" sensibilities, etc., would ever argue that these things do not have a fundamental place in the enjoyment of our play. I'm certainly not arguing that.

One of the reasons I'm drawn to Savage Worlds is that its abstractions/shorthand for doing discrete task resolution have a very clear sense of how to plug in the results into the type of game world it assumes. Savage Worlds by default operates fantastically well at the "John McClain/Die Hard/James Bond" level of "world consistency," and I think this is one of its major strengths. Much of Savage Worlds' perceived elegance lies in the ability of players, within just a few hours of play, to get a strong sense for how the assumed "game world physics" reacts to what they do. By clearly communicating this to the players, it frees them to be creative within the boundaries of the system's assumed limits.


----------



## Lanefan

Though I'm not the person to whom this was directed, a few thoughts anyway:


Manbearcat said:


> Do you mean something like “baseline familiarity centered around our own physical systems?” Gravity is a thing, some interactions transfer more energy than others, nonparasitic plants need light for photosynthesis, humans (and animals like them) express themselves based on biological and social imperatives. Stuff like that?
> 
> I don’t think (broadly) that anyone would disagree with that (@Aldarc included).



Let's hope not. 



> I think the friction arises when we try to sort out the nature of a certain paradox that seems to violate our baselines arbitrarily, what to extrapolate from it, what is the consequence/utility (from a gameplay perspective) of digging too deeply or hewing too closely/granularly (to our baselines). Further still, the more Through the Looking Glass components get ported to our games, the more friction there is (as even our seemingly trivially “true” baselines become challenged).



You're on to something, but I'll jump it one step further: the friction comes from how (or even if) we try to import or overlay or integrate those components with the baselines we already have in place; and whether people agree both on the approach being used and on the results thus obtained.

For my part, I try to think how those components would work and what they would do were they to exist in the real world, and go from there: an integration approach.  I even go so far as to think about how magic could be made to fit in to our baseline physics, admittedly using a rather big shoehorn in the process.  The results inform the setting as to how things (usually) work when magic gets involved e.g. a fireball, lacking constraints, will expand to a spherical shape rather than a cube (and the heat thus generated will tend to rise); _Reverse Gravity_'s duration has to be rewritten such that someone outdoors hit by the spell isn't sent into low orbit (seriously, read the spell carefully in any edition then do the math!), and stuff like that.

That said, a few baselines still get chucked in favour of fun and-or tradition: lightning bolts in reality don't rebound off walls, for example, but they will in any game I ever DM. 



> EDIT - That isn’t even touching on the questions of:
> 
> 1) Does hewing to x too closely cause gameplay issues (balance, overhead)?



Balance, schmalance.  And while it can cause a bit more overhead I feel the not-much-extra effort is more than worth it.



> 2) Does hewing to x too closely interfere with having interesting inputs to gameplay (framed conflicts, proposed action declarations, exciting obstacles).



Not entirely sure this would ever be an issue; for the most part this isn't changing anything very much within the setting, rather it's simply trying to give a firm and consistent foundation for explaining how it all functions.

Lan-"depending on edition Reverse Gravity as written can send the target somewhere between 25 and 42 miles up, given normal earthlike fall-acceleration rates, before its duration expires"-efan


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> This is a door that swings both ways. If you want me to presume good faith, then maybe you should presume posters are accurately reporting on their tastes.



I'm afraid this is a false equivalence, and it's framed such that only way that you will show me good faith is if accept a certain premise as true and you are also presuming in bad faith that I am not showing good faith in my argument. So no, this does not swing both ways. It swings with you showing bad faith towards me and then doubling down on it as if they held equivalent moral weight.  



> I am not trying to be rude. But it is also getting very difficult to ignore the insulting way some of the posters here are talking about other styles of play. I hope you appreciate my tone isn't meant to be hostile. I think part of it is the text based medium, we are able to project whatever tone we want. But what bothers me is the dismissive nature of the posts I am seeing. It is possible I am misreading them. But I think it is even more possible, people just don't realize how dismissive they are being. If people want a conversation we can have it. I am just not going to lie about my reaction to some of the ways people are wading into this topic with assumptions that, to me, seem really unfounded, and appear to come more from a play style conflict than any real analysis.



You may not be trying to be rude, but you're nevertheless doing a darn good job of it. In the same breath that you preach this call to good faith, you also accuse your opponents as being dismissive and arrogant, lacking good faith, holding unfounded assumptions, and engaging in insulting behavior. And then you suggest that while you could be wrong, it's likelier that others are actually the ones in the wrong. Geez. I would hate to see how rude and hostile in tone you could be when you are actually trying. This sort of patronizing doublespeak comes across knowingly or not as hypocritical. And if you have no real interest in engaging with what I wrote so you can just repeat your refrain that I am being dismissive of others, exhibiting arrogance, and speaking in bad faith, then we are pretty much done here. I'm sorry, but that's not looking for a conversation; that's looking to condemn.


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> Apologies, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I should have added like, ten or twelve more smiley faces to the GURPS comment. It didn't come off nearly as lighthearted in writing as it sounded in my head.
> 
> Mostly I was just tweaking a far,far,far extreme subset of the gaming populace who really does think "realistic realism" is the absolute, uttermost virtue of any game system. Part of the humor was my unspoken assumption that there's a near-zero chance that any of those kinds of players would be present on this forum, because most players who are like that do seem to A) gravitate to GURPS, and B) generally would not deign to give so much as the barest hint that any other system could possess any merit whatsoever.
> 
> But the "point-behind-the-point" in my lightheartedness was to say that I think most of us on these boards recognize that "realism" in TTRPG play (however we define/view it) is absolutely a valid component for play consideration. I don't think anyone who looks for consistency, verisimilitude, coherence, immersion, "living world" sensibilities, etc., would ever argue that these things do not have a fundamental place in the enjoyment of our play. I'm certainly not arguing that.
> 
> One of the reasons I'm drawn to Savage Worlds is that its abstractions/shorthand for doing discrete task resolution have a very clear sense of how to plug in the results into the type of game world it assumes. Savage Worlds by default operates fantastically well at the "John McClain/Die Hard/James Bond" level of "world consistency," and I think this is one of its major strengths. Much of Savage Worlds' perceived elegance lies in the ability of players, within just a few hours of play, to get a strong sense for how the assumed "game world physics" reacts to what they do. By clearly communicating this to the players, it frees them to be creative within the boundaries of the system's assumed limits.




I got that in your post (which is why I included one in my GURPS comment). I was thinking specifically of the comments Aldarc had made, and others had made, calling into question whether people even really wanted realism. And I like Savage Worlds too. However, for someone like Maxperson, it would be one of the last games I'd recommend based on him valuing genuine realism. Savage Worlds is great for genre. And it is nice system in general in my opinion. 

I think D&D occupies an odd space here because it is The Game. It kind of has to be everything to everyone. So it is natural that this will be a point of contention among D&D players (and like others have pointed out, it has always been so). I remember when I first started playing the realism debates. With D&D it was interesting because realism seemed to be present in some places and not in others. I think with D&D it is about how noticeable it is. In some editions it feels more noticeable that realism is being breached than others. I think with a game like that, where they have to cater to multiple types of players and play styles, it is a question of how prevalent each thing in the system. I am willing to bet someone like MaxPerson can stomach an edition that to him feels realistic the majority of the time, but not an edition that feels like he is constantly running into realism issues. Would be curious of his feelings on this.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> The point is not that realism is not present in RPGs



Oh, I dunno - there's a few where it takes a rather distant back seat...  



> The actual "good" or "value" is not so much "realism," but with how the players engage with the environment (or game) as part of cultivating the desired play experience. Based upon past conversations, I suspect that for the "Old School play" of Bedrockgames and Lanefan, the point is not "realism," but, instead, in having "known knowns" that help players make informed decisions conducive of skilled play.



Maybe not so much "conducive of skilled play", as that's not really the point in this case.  I'd like to think, perhaps naively, that internal logic helps players make decisions and take actions consistent with what the setting expects and its internal physics can handle, while at the same time helping me-as-DM present that setting in a consistent and halfway-logical manner.




> (If I am mistaken in summarizing their preferences here, I will gladly admit my error and welcome clarification.) This is also why I find appeals to "realism" in a system to be a smokescreen that masks the actual underlying issues of the desired game play. It would be easier to identify, design, and cultivate for that desired play experience without hiding it behind vague and prejudiciously applied notions of "realism" obscuring that process.



I'm not sure here.  "It's the same as reality unless something says it isn't" is a perfectly good and simple foundation to start from.



> So, again, for example if we take the matter of healing. To me its inclusion as part of a game is not a matter of "realism," but, rather, of pacing and tone. We advocate different types of healing mechanics because we want different things out of the game experience rather than "realism." If we want something "Grim 'n' Gritty" where we want to emphasize character attrition, resource management, or the dangerous, survivalist tone of the imaginative play space, then we may desire to make healing slower or more difficult to come by. But it would be far more difficult to discuss how we would potentially design healing in such a game if it is obscured behind appeals to "realism." "Realism" almost becomes a red herring in the discussion.



Oddly enough, healing is one instance where realism is anything but a red herring.  Natural healing and recovery is something we've all directly experienced at some point and that works at a more-or-less consistent rate in real life; and this then becomes a familiar baseline for where one wants to scale it in the game system.  "More realistic" implies something closer to this baseline, "less realistic" implies something farther away e.g. in D&D 4e and 5e healing rates are a long way from realistic while 1e by RAW is much closer; no system will ever get it bang on and - given the various oddities and assumptions of the nigh-universal hit point system - is likely well advised not to try.

Another example: one approach to hit points that generally adds some realism at cost of some extra effort is any sort of wound-vitality or body-fatigue system.  Wound/body points are actual physical injury, to which we can if desired then apply real-world healing rates or some approximation; while vitality/fatigue points are just that and thus can be recovered fairly quickly.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> But no one likes their style to be put to the inquisition. And I think a lot of posters are hiding behind a veneer of theory or analysis, but really just trying to argue against play styles they don't like or have had bad experiences talking with in edition wars.




No one? Really? I think part of the problem here (generally speaking when it comes to these debates) is that some of us _do_ enjoy very much interrogating our own and other styles to better understand our desires/motivations and those of others, how these intersect with game mechanics and principles. Yet your posts here dismiss this kind of interrogation from a seemingly anti-intellectual stance.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> I believe that there are people who say that they do, but then apply that broad (if not exceedingly vague) criteria selectively in their games, and that this tells us more about their preferences for the actual play experience they want the game to cultivate. And I believe that this latter point is more meaningful and practical than the call for realism itself or offering the trite remark that some realism exists in roleplaying games. It's a shift from the vague "I want 'realism' in my game" to the more concrete "I want my game to simulate X sort of play experience."



Fair enough, but not all players know how to put terms to describing said play experience, and so they couch it in terms they can understand: more realistic or less, more magical or less, more heroic or less, etc.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> No one? Really? I think part of the problem here (generally speaking when it comes to these debates) is that some of us _do_ enjoy very much interrogating our own and other styles to better understand our desires/motivations and those of others, how these intersect with game mechanics and principles. Yet your posts here dismiss this kind of interrogation from a seemingly anti-intellectual stance.




I think your failing to see how some people see that interrogation, when directed at their own posts (particularly when it questions their own assertions about what they like) as hostile. I am not anti-intellectual. But I am anti-elitism and arrogance. And I think, whether it is intended or not, a lot of the ways people are talking about gaming preferences here, come across as arrogant and dismissive. And I am not sure it is warranted. Intellectualism is good, but I don't think simply using jargon-y language or drawing on various online gaming theories makes on intellectual. And if one is intellectual, using that knowledge to humiliate other people (and I think a lot of posters are being humiliated by this process), is something I don't think you should be doing. If you want to interrogate a concept fine, but do understand that you are dealing with other people here, and it is insulting to be told you really don't understand your own preferences (especially when the people asserting that, are just asserting it without really providing any kind of evidence at all).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I'm afraid this is a false equivalence, and it's framed such that only way that you will show me good faith is if accept a certain premise as true and you are also presuming in bad faith that I am not showing good faith in my argument. So no, this does not swing both ways. It swings with you showing bad faith towards me and then doubling down on it as if they held equivalent moral weight.




Fair enough, I will try to assume good faith. But I still maintain that the position you hold, where you think you can understand what is going on in other peoples' heads, and where you think you have special insight into how prevalent the desire for realism is in the hobby, comes of as incredibly arrogant. 



> You may not be trying to be rude, but you're nevertheless doing a darn good job of it. In the same breath that you preach this call to good faith, you also accuse your opponents as being dismissive and arrogant, lacking good faith, holding unfounded assumptions, and engaging in insulting behavior. And then you suggest that while you could be wrong, it's likelier that others are actually the ones in the wrong. Geez. I would hate to see how rude and hostile in tone you could be when you are actually trying. This sort of patronizing doublespeak comes across knowingly or not as hypocritical. And if you have no real interest in engaging with what I wrote so you can just repeat your refrain that I am being dismissive of others, exhibiting arrogance, and speaking in bad faith, then we are pretty much done here. I'm sorry, but that's not looking for a conversation; that's looking to condemn.




I am not trying to be rude, I am trying to be honest (which I think is what you are saying as well). But I will try to moderate my tone here. A conversation is fine. But you got to understand you can't have a conversation where what you are saying is irritating and insulting (which I think your dismissal of peoples stated preferences are) and expect people not to say something about it. And it isn't like they are just stopping at voicing frustration, they are giving you a responding indicating they know what they like, and you keep persisting. It would be like me saying something akin to 'your desire to dismiss realism, reveals a deep subconscious desire to play a deeply simulationist GURPS campaign based on pure, unadulterated, realism. Prove me wrong!". I am not trying to be ridiculous, and I am really not trying to be insulting, but it is a very difficult for me to give anything but my honest reaction to what you are saying.

And I have to emphasize here, I am not the proponent of realism in this thread. I just think it is fair for someone who expresses a desire for realism in the game, to expect other posters to believe them.


----------



## innerdude

It's funny, I was going to make a similar comment about how D&D often feels at-odds with itself when it comes to realism. Some of its mechanics are clearly trying to present real-world analogues; some of them are much more . . . inscrutable, shall we say?

Arguing about realism in TTRPG play generally is an interesting, if occasionally contentious topic of theoretical conversation.

Arguing about realism in D&D specifically feels like cognitive dissonance. I mean, if you squint your eyes and turn your head just so, I suppose you could kind-of, sort-of argue that there's hints of realism in D&D, especially the 3.x line and its treatment of basic skill task resolution. But you'd have to ignore huge swaths of its inner workings to claim that it's simulating "the real world" in anything but the broadest sense.

So what, then, are proponents of realism actually wanting D&D to be more realistic about?

Combat? Exploration? Social encounters? Basic skill checks? What the core attributes mean relative to the real world? The social/economic ramifications of rampant, widely available magic?

If it's purely just combat, the easiest solution is to play something else. 

P1: "I want to play a super-realistic combat version of D&D! Why can't D&D be more realistic?"

P2: "Well, there's just so many compromises and holdovers from old war games, and the whole hit points / armor class thing, the lack of realistic wound modeling, the list goes on . . . ."

P1: "I don't care about any of that, just, why can't D&D be better at modeling an actual one-on-one sword duel? How hard can it be?"

P2: "Have you considered GURPS, or Mythras, or Runequest, or Riddle of Steel?"

P1: "No, because I want to play D&D!"

P2: ......


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> It's funny, I was going to make a similar comment about how D&D often feels at-odds with itself when it comes to realism. Some of its mechanics are clearly trying to present real-world analogues; some of them are much more . . . inscrutable, shall we say?
> 
> Arguing about realism in TTRPG play generally is an interesting, if occasionally contentious topic of theoretical conversation.
> 
> Arguing about realism in D&D specifically feels like cognitive dissonance. I mean, if you squint your eyes and turn your head just so, I suppose you could kind-of, sort-of argue that there's hints of realism in D&D, especially the 3.x line and its treatment of basic skill task resolution. But you'd have to ignore huge swaths of its inner workings to claim that it's simulating "the real world" in anything but the broadest sense.
> 
> So what, then, are proponents of realism actually wanting D&D to be more realistic about?
> 
> Combat? Exploration? Social encounters? Basic skill checks? What the core attributes mean relative to the real world? The social/economic ramifications of rampant, widely available magic?
> 
> If it's purely just combat, the easiest solution is to play something else.
> 
> P1: "I want to play a super-realistic combat version of D&D! Why can't D&D be more realistic?"
> 
> P2: "Well, there's just so many compromises and holdovers from old war games, and the whole hit points / armor class thing, the lack of realistic wound modeling, the list goes on . . . ."
> 
> P1: "I don't care about any of that, just, why can't D&D be better at modeling an actual one-on-one sword duel? How hard can it be?"
> 
> P2: "Have you considered GURPS, or Mythras, or Runequest, or Riddle of Steel?"
> 
> P1: "No, because I want to play D&D!"
> 
> P2: ......




Like it or not, D&D is The Game. If you want a group of players, your best bet is to play D&D. If you want to play in a group, if you are willing to play D&D your chances of finding people go way, way up. I don't really play D&D anymore that much, so I am not the best person to answer, and I am not really looking for realism as much as plausibility, but I think with D&D it really has to do with quantity. When things exist in the corners of D&D, are not terribly intrusive, aren't super obvious when they do arise or only come up here and there, it isn't a huge deal. There is always going to be some amount of lack of realism in D&D. I don't think you would find GURPS level realism in D&D. I think what people are talking about those mechanics or moments when the game impales realism. Healing rates would be a big issue like others have mentioned. Anytime something happens, but then it has to be described or leads to an illogical outcome, that might another. Again, I think it really comes down to the quantity. A person might not be troubled by Barbarian Rage because it is limited to one class and adds something. They might be bothered if every class has that kind of ability. Or a person might not be troubled by some of the weapons being a little eye balled in terms of damage. But they would have a problem in cases where the damage output discrepancy is impossible to ignore. 

Also, I don't think people are saying they want a super realistic version of D&D. I think they are saying please don't add more unrealistic things to the system (or pick an edition that has the least amount of unrealistic things).


----------



## S'mon

innerdude said:


> I'd be infinitely curious to hear from the One-True-Sandboxers out there if they really do like "sandboxing" the whole time----or if the "sandboxing" portion of the campaign is just a ramp-up to get their hooks into the game world / plot so they can start pursuing stuff that matters to their character.




By 'sandboxing' you mean random exploration? Like random wandering in Skyrim? For me, all play in the sandbox is sandboxing.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Fair enough, but not all players know how to put terms to describing said play experience, and so they couch it in terms they can understand: more realistic or less, more magical or less, more heroic or less, etc.



That is absolutely true, and I earnestly believe that is valid for those people. But if a player approaches us and tells us that they want us to run a game with greater realism, then we are placed in the position of having to unravel and tease out from them _how_ that means for them and _how_ they want that realism applied more palpably. 



Lanefan said:


> Maybe not so much "conducive of skilled play", as that's not really the point in this case.  I'd like to think, perhaps naively, that internal logic helps players make decisions and take actions consistent with what the setting expects and its internal physics can handle, while at the same time helping me-as-DM present that setting in a consistent and halfway-logical manner.



Fair enough. 



> Oddly enough, healing is one instance where realism is anything but a red herring.  Natural healing and recovery is something we've all directly experienced at some point and that works at a more-or-less consistent rate in real life; and this then becomes a familiar baseline for where one wants to scale it in the game system.  "More realistic" implies something closer to this baseline, "less realistic" implies something farther away e.g. in D&D 4e and 5e healing rates are a long way from realistic while 1e by RAW is much closer; no system will ever get it bang on and - given the various oddities and assumptions of the nigh-universal hit point system - is likely well advised not to try.



I agree that natural recovery is something that we experience in life; however, I still think that it exists as smokescreen for discussion about healing in games where health points are primarily an abstracted pacing mechanic. I see the emphasis of most game design discussion not on "how realistic do we want healing in our games?" but on "what sort of pacing do we want for our games?" 

Overnight healing in 5e, for example, does not seem to stem from any debate about the degree of realism, but, rather, from the degree of pacing: i.e., how they quickly they wanted characters back up on their feet for adventurous gameplay. Even with 1e, I suspect that it was less about realism and more about game pacing as well. "If you don't want to be out of action of a long time, play smart and avoid combat!" Any approximation to realism may have been incidental. 

So when designing games, this is often a question of "how do we want this mechanic to reflect the tone or desired play experience of the game?" or "How does this mechanic reinforce the themes of the game?" So I don't necessarily assume that realism is the baseline presumption in game design. I do assume, however, that the baseline presumption of game design is a desire to cultivate a "fun" experience. 



darkbard said:


> No one? Really? I think part of the problem here (generally speaking when it comes to these debates) is that some of us _do_ enjoy very much interrogating our own and other styles to better understand our desires/motivations and those of others, how these intersect with game mechanics and principles. Yet your posts here dismiss this kind of interrogation from a seemingly anti-intellectual stance.



I personally think that pemerton becomes easier (and less abrasive) to read when one understands his academic background in philosophy. "Academese" can come across as more abrasive than it really is. His posting style is more akin to a Hegelian dialectic that seeks to derive some form of synthesis or understanding through conflicting points of discussion.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I personally think that pemerton becomes easier (and less abrasive) to read when one understands his academic background in philosophy. "Academese" can come across as more abrasive than it really is. His posting style is more akin to a Hegelian dialectic that seeks to derive some form of synthesis or understanding through conflicting points of discussion.




I know about his background. I minored in philosophy. So, while I won't pretend I have his level of expertise in i, I am not ignorant of that kind of discussion or language. Yet I find the way it is used here highly abrasive. Especially when there doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement of valid points made by people he disagrees with it. It just seems like he is trying to win the conversation, not arrive at a synthesis of understanding through conflicting viewpoints.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Hey, [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], you're killing it the last few posts.


----------



## innerdude

Aldarc said:


> So when designing games, this is often a question of "how do we want this mechanic to reflect the tone or desired play experience of the game?" or "How does this mechanic reinforce the themes of the game?" So I don't necessarily assume that realism is the baseline presumption in game design. I do assume, however, that the baseline presumption of game design is a desire to cultivate a "fun" experience.




I've bagged on GURPS a bit in this thread already, but to me GURPS is an exception. It very much feels designed with "realism first" as a primary goal, with the assumption that "realism" and "fun" will be naturally and harmoniously synonymous.

And I think this is a common, and largely appealing impulse for certain types of players. _If we're going to change something, it should be with the goal of being more realistic._ Whereas there are lots of other options, as you've outlined. It can be rules design with the goal of creating a very specific tone and vibe. It can be rules design with the goal to highlight specific aspects of play, or to reinforce certain thematic material. GURPS is devoid of nearly all of this, unless you're willing to spend vast amounts of time carefully poring over the thousands of pages of supplements to build your own "perfectly tuned" version of GURPS . . . and even then, it's still going to basically just feel like GURPS always does anyway, most of the time.

For certain types of players, this experience is rapturous, because they can play with absolute certitude that they're using the most "realistic" set of gameplay options for RPG play on earth. If the resulting game is less fun in practice than say, D&D 5, well, then it should still be applauded for its high-brow, vigilant adherence to its principles.

(I honestly know several of my old GURPS' group players that have this attitude. It didn't matter if playing another system was actually more fun. Since GURPS was clearly the "mechanically superior choice," they blindly stuck with it. Because otherwise they were somehow cheating themselves by using something "objectively inferior."


----------



## Immortal Sun

Maxperson said:


> True, but he keeps it real.




It's funny that's the phrase you used, because originally I had intended to say reality always showed up stoned.

"My hands are so REAL man!"


----------



## Lanefan

innerdude said:


> So what, then, are proponents of realism actually wanting D&D to be more realistic about?
> 
> Combat?



While this would be nice, the result would also quickly become a complete morass of rules, counter-rules, and picky systems that very few (including me) would want to use.  1e D&D tried for some of this with weapon-v-armour-type and assorted other rules, most of which fell to the wayside at most tables.



> Exploration?



Not just exploration, but the setting we're trying to explore: yes.  Fine - it's a magic-based setting.  Now seamlessly integrate those magical elements into the reality we already know and are familiar with so we can know what to expect from them and why.  Then, tell us the exceptions.



> Social encounters?



As far as reasonably possible, yes.  What gets in the way here is most often the acting, emoting, and sometimes thinking skills of the players at the table; but if it can be done in LARPing it can be done at a table, says I. 



> Basic skill checks?



The phyiscal ones, if done right, already do a vaguely reasonable job of mirroring reality.  Chuck the social ones out.



> What the core attributes mean relative to the real world?



Yes.



> The social/economic ramifications of rampant, widely available magic?



Assuming it's both rampant and widely available then yes, and this is one area that many systems and-or settings don't look into very well at all.  Eberron did, to its credit; and while I'm not otherwise fond of that setting it's got some good ideas in this regard.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> if you read my arguments in good faith, you would know that it is not about minimizing realism, Max.




Calling realism a smokescreen and saying you "wouldn't call it realism," followed by equating it to pocket lint is minimizing it.  Perhaps you didn't intend to minimize it, but you did.



> but, rather, that (1) notions of realism are _prejudiciously applied_ (this is also a key point), and (2) this is typically for the sake of other underlying game design goals. IMHO, the underlying design goals within calls for "realism" serve as the actual end and value rather than "realism" itself. I think that both   [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]'s excellent response here and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s suggestion to replace "realism" with "internal logic" allude to this issue. Both seem to acknowledge the deficiency of the term "realism" in describing the actual desired good here. The actual "good" or "value" is not so much "realism," but with how the players engage with the environment (or game) as part of cultivating the desired play experience. Based upon past conversations, I suspect that for the "Old School play" of Bedrockgames and Lanefan, the point is not "realism," but, instead, in having "known knowns" that help players make informed decisions conducive of skilled play. (If I am mistaken in summarizing their preferences here, I will gladly admit my error and welcome clarification.) This is also why I find appeals to "realism" in a system to be a smokescreen that masks the actual underlying issues of the desired game play. It would be easier to identify, design, and cultivate for that desired play experience without hiding it behind vague and prejudiciously applied notions of "realism" obscuring that process.
> 
> So, again, for example if we take the matter of healing. To me its inclusion as part of a game is not a matter of "realism," but, rather, of pacing and tone. We advocate different types of healing mechanics because we want different things out of the game experience rather than "realism." If we want something "Grim 'n' Gritty" where we want to emphasize character attrition, resource management, or the dangerous, survivalist tone of the imaginative play space, then we may desire to make healing slower or more difficult to come by. But it would be far more difficult to discuss how we would potentially design healing in such a game if it is obscured behind appeals to "realism." "Realism" almost becomes a red herring in the discussion.




For myself, realism is always the goal when I talk about it and include more of it in my games.  For example, I think going from literally dying to full health after 8 hours to be highly unrealistic, so I'm slowing down healing to give it more realism.  There is no other goal for me than added realism.  I suspect that's the case for most people who like more realism.


----------



## Shasarak

Aldarc said:


> Even ignoring the fantastical elements within the most popular genre of TTRPG play, I'm not sure if I would call it 'realism' by any reasonable metric. Often that appeal to realism is selectively applied, if not prejudiciously, by both the game system and the participants, typically with some other goal or value in mind. 'Realism' is likely a smokescreen for some other issue(s). This is to say, I don't necessarily think that 'realism' is the genuine goal of people who claim they desire 'realism' in their TTRPG, especially D&D.
> 
> But yes, D&D has some realism in it. For example, it depicts the average human with five fingers on each hand. REALISM! So I suppose we should pat D&D on the back for having "some realism in it"? But we should also be clear here. Having "some realism" is not the same thing as valuing or desiring realism. Realism is, to reiterate, likely not the actual goal people drive at when making appeals to it. And valuing realism is not the same thing as attaining or applying it reasonably. Applying notions of realism to D&D is an inherently failed enterprise because our biased notions of 'realism' are woefully stuck in a position of ignorance (and irrationality) about a wide variety of pertinent subjects that would inform our preparation and play about the game world.
> 
> What makes for "realistic" imagining of hit points? What makes for "realistic" falling damage? What makes for a realistic damage for a longsword? What makes for realistic natural healing rules? Or Armor Class rules? "Realism" is lipstick on the pig of D&D's gamism. "Realism" is the Emperor's New Clothes: We all know that the emperor is naked, but some people go along with the farce and pretend that he is cloaked with "realism" all the same. Because if they didn't they would have to admit that they are looking at the naked imperfections of an emperor.




Maybe you are right that people dont actually want "realism".  Probably they want something that makes sense, something that they can identify with either from real life or at least from some kind of story.  A good word is verisimilitude and on the other hand it is $5 word and realistic is so much easier to spell.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> I think D&D occupies an odd space here because it is The Game. It kind of has to be everything to everyone. So it is natural that this will be a point of contention among D&D players (and like others have pointed out, it has always been so). I remember when I first started playing the realism debates. With D&D it was interesting because realism seemed to be present in some places and not in others. I think with D&D it is about how noticeable it is. In some editions it feels more noticeable that realism is being breached than others. I think with a game like that, where they have to cater to multiple types of players and play styles, it is a question of how prevalent each thing in the system. I am willing to bet someone like MaxPerson can stomach an edition that to him feels realistic the majority of the time, but not an edition that feels like he is constantly running into realism issues. Would be curious of his feelings on this.




4e was the only edition I had so much trouble with that I just didn't play it.  I tend to house rule the heck out of any game I come across, so it's no big deal to me to modify things that I don't find realistic enough and move on.  I start by playing the game as is with no modifications, then as I discover how things work and which things I have issues with, I either modify things on the spot if it's major, or wait until the next campaign if it's not.  I don't like modifying minor things in the middle of a campaign, so as to not cause too much disruption to the players in how things work.  

I also don't mind things that are unrealistic and/or downright silly as a one shot game, or a few short sessions.  They can be really fun and I kind of handwave away my expectations on realism and just have fun.  Long term, though, I want the game to fit my preferred style of play, which tends to be a bit more realistic in multiple areas than D&D has as its baseline.


----------



## Maxperson

innerdude said:


> It's funny, I was going to make a similar comment about how D&D often feels at-odds with itself when it comes to realism. Some of its mechanics are clearly trying to present real-world analogues; some of them are much more . . . inscrutable, shall we say?
> 
> Arguing about realism in TTRPG play generally is an interesting, if occasionally contentious topic of theoretical conversation.
> 
> Arguing about realism in D&D specifically feels like cognitive dissonance. I mean, if you squint your eyes and turn your head just so, I suppose you could kind-of, sort-of argue that there's hints of realism in D&D, especially the 3.x line and its treatment of basic skill task resolution. But you'd have to ignore huge swaths of its inner workings to claim that it's simulating "the real world" in anything but the broadest sense.
> 
> So what, then, are proponents of realism actually wanting D&D to be more realistic about?
> 
> Combat? Exploration? Social encounters? Basic skill checks? What the core attributes mean relative to the real world? The social/economic ramifications of rampant, widely available magic?
> 
> If it's purely just combat, the easiest solution is to play something else.
> 
> P1: "I want to play a super-realistic combat version of D&D! Why can't D&D be more realistic?"
> 
> P2: "Well, there's just so many compromises and holdovers from old war games, and the whole hit points / armor class thing, the lack of realistic wound modeling, the list goes on . . . ."
> 
> P1: "I don't care about any of that, just, why can't D&D be better at modeling an actual one-on-one sword duel? How hard can it be?"
> 
> P2: "Have you considered GURPS, or Mythras, or Runequest, or Riddle of Steel?"
> 
> P1: "No, because I want to play D&D!"
> 
> P2: ......




Some of us actually enjoy the way D&D is set up.  We like the D&D specific mechanics and systems.  Those are not present in other games, so even if those other games are more realistic than D&D, they won't feel right or be as enjoyable to us as modified D&D.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I agree that natural recovery is something that we experience in life; however, I still think that it exists as smokescreen for discussion about healing in games where health points are primarily an abstracted pacing mechanic. I see the emphasis of most game design discussion not on "how realistic do we want healing in our games?" but on "what sort of pacing do we want for our games?"




I think this may be where you are going wrong when we talk about realism.  We are not designing a game, so it's not a game design discussion.  Were I designing a game, then yes, I would look at hit points as part of the pacing and take that into consideration when figuring out the level of realism I wanted in that game.  However, when I am just playing a game and I want to tweak hit points to be more realistic with regard to healing, I don't give a flying fig about pacing.  Sure, the pacing will change, but that's not even a remote concern of mine.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I think this may be where you are going wrong when we talk about realism.  We are not designing a game, so it's not a game design discussion.  Were I designing a game, then yes, I would look at hit points as part of the pacing and take that into consideration when figuring out the level of realism I wanted in that game.  However, when I am just playing a game and I want to tweak hit points to be more realistic with regard to healing, I don't give a flying fig about pacing.  Sure, the pacing will change, but that's not even a remote concern of mine.




You're fooling yourself if you think game design isn't a part of you sitting down to play on game night.  Game design runs through adventure design, and definitely through consideration of house rules or rulings at the table -- you're engaged in game design at all of those points because you're making decisions that change how the game plays.  Note, not is played, but plays -- how the mechanics work to achieve a goal.

When you talk about how you want your game to have more realism, that's game design -- you're taking the general rules of 5e, say, and adding your design layer on top to achieve your play goals.  Game design isn't just creating a new ruleset, it's also in how choose to use a ruleset.  Frex, I know for a fact that when you sit down to play a game, for instance, it doesn't play like my game does, even if we both use the same system.  Why?  Game design choices we're both making for our different tables.

As for 'realism', that cannot be a goal for you in a game with elves and magic.  What you're looking for is a game that is as close to normal assumptions except where specifically detailed otherwise.  So, people can't "heal" overnight because that's bad, except magic.  Just like hitpoints must be some kind of wounding because how else can you fight dragons and knights that "hit" you and not take wounds, which don't heal overnight, so they can't, except magic.  You're bringing a lens of "as much like the world as possible so magic can be more magical" without ever examining why or what you get from doing this.  Heck, you're outright hostile when even asked to consider you might be looking for some other thing and realism is just a means to that end.  Why would that question make you hostile?  It isn't challenging your preferences, it isn't saying you're wrong to want to play how you play, it's asking you to consider if there's another goal you're aiming for but misidentifying because you haven't stopped to really think it through.  I used to be you, man, used to fret of realism, used to fret over how much my game "made sense".  So, I get it.  And, it's likely we want different things, even when I thought like that, and I certainly don't think my current play is in any way better or superior to how I used to play except that it's better _for me_.  Still, being able to actually talk about how games work, what they incentivize, how they do it, is very interesting because I'm still on my journey, but you get mad when asked what your journey is.  I don't get it.  Or, rather, I do, but I hope you might realize how silly it is to be mad about this kind of question.

 [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] has been pleasant in his posts.  If you're taking offense, you're looking for it.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> You're fooling yourself if you think game design isn't a part of you sitting down to play on game night.  Game design runs through adventure design, and definitely through consideration of house rules or rulings at the table -- you're engaged in game design at all of those points because you're making decisions that change how the game plays.  Note, not is played, but plays -- how the mechanics work to achieve a goal.
> 
> When you talk about how you want your game to have more realism, that's game design -- you're taking the general rules of 5e, say, and adding your design layer on top to achieve your play goals.  Game design isn't just creating a new ruleset, it's also in how choose to use a ruleset.  Frex, I know for a fact that when you sit down to play a game, for instance, it doesn't play like my game does, even if we both use the same system.  Why?  Game design choices we're both making for our different tables.




If it's game design, it's at best secondary or tertiary to everything else that is going on.  I don't give a fig about the design when I'm modifying things to make them more realistic.  I care that it's more realistic.



> As for 'realism', that cannot be a goal for you in a game with elves and magic.




Yes.  Yes it can, and it's a fact that it is.  You don't get to tell me what my goals are.  Realism is not an all or nothing thing. That's a False Dichotomy.  I can have realism in some parts of my game, and have elves and Tarrasques in other parts.



> What you're looking for is a game that is as close to normal assumptions except where specifically detailed otherwise.  So, people can't "heal" overnight because that's bad, except magic.




This is false.  It's because I want more realism.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.



> You're bringing a lens of "as much like the world as possible so magic can be more magical" without ever examining why or what you get from doing this.




So first, I'm not trying to make it as much like the world as possible.  I like a lower level of realism than that.  Second, whatever else I get is secondary to the fact, and it is a fact, that I want more realism in parts of the game.



> it's asking you to consider if there's another goal you're aiming for but misidentifying because you haven't stopped to really think it through.




There isn't.  The goal is more realism.  Anything else that comes as a result of adding that additional realism is secondary.  I know why I do things.  I know what my goal is.  There's no chance of it being anything else.


----------



## Enthusiastic Grog

By definitions, RPGs are narratives. Simulationism is inherently flawed because by defintion a GMs sandbox is _their narrative about a world_, not an actual world itself. Most notions of what people assume are "common sense" are simply collections of their own personal cultural biases. GM-as-owners-of-narrative, aka most hardcore OSR style approaches, refuse to acknowledge that the narrative can only really exist _by player narrative labor and player ownership of the game world_. Anything else is simply a novellist inviting people to play-act the role of incidental, secondary characters in their free form novel, and not really gaming. Remember, rules, not rulings. Without democracy and player control at the table, it's merely one person's novel play acted out, not actually gaming.


----------



## Enthusiastic Grog

Maxperson said:


> If it's game design, it's at best secondary or tertiary to everything else that is going on. I don't give a fig about the design when I'm modifying things to make them more realistic. I care that it's more realistic.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes. Yes it can, and it's a fact that it is. You don't get to tell me what my goals are. Realism is not an all or nothing thing. That's a False Dichotomy. I can have realism in some parts of my game, and have elves and Tarrasques in other parts.
> 
> 
> 
> This is false. It's because I want more realism. Nothing more. Nothing less.
> 
> 
> 
> So first, I'm not trying to make it as much like the world as possible. I like a lower level of realism than that. Second, whatever else I get is secondary to the fact, and it is a fact, that I want more realism in parts of the game.
> 
> 
> 
> There isn't. The goal is more realism. Anything else that comes as a result of adding that additional realism is secondary. I know why I do things. I know what my goal is. There's no chance of it being anything else.




Non-sequitir. Replace "my narrative." All actual RPGs are narrative. Unless you have an actual physics machine (aka, hardcore sim system like Runequest or Aftermath!), it's essentially novel writing. The only differences between the storygame and sandbox approaches is the distribution of at-table politcal power between the GM and the players. Further, players create the narrative space - without players, a GM is nothing. You don't want "realism", you want your narrative vision. It's a great thing! Own it.


----------



## pemerton

Enthusiastic Grog said:


> By definitions, RPGs are narratives. Simulationism is inherently flawed because by defintion a GMs sandbox is _their narrative about a world_, not an actual world itself.



I don't think I agree that _simulationism is inherently flawed_ - though if it was what I wanted, I'm not sure that I'd use _GM decides_ as my method for achieving it!

I think that some RPG mechanics attempt to provide resolution procedures _for use at the table_ that map onto _causal processes that are occurring in the shared fiction_. For instance, in Classic Traveller if you try to do a funky manoeuvre while wearing a vacc suit, first you make a check to see if you get into any sort of trouble; then, if you do, you make a follow-up check to see if you can sort out the problem.

There's a "world-tracking" logic to that approach that is different from (say, and thinking of Maelstrom Storytelling as the system) resolving an EVA scene by pooling all your dice (from agility, vacc suit training, tethering etc) and then rolling, getting a success or failure, and narrating an appropriate fiction to match that outcome.

I don't think the Traveller approach delivers more (or less) realistic results than the fortune-in-the-middle/scene-resolution approach - in either case that will depend on the details of the fiction that is being established. But in my experience it is different in play, and - for lack of a better word - more "gritty". (Thus, and contra to something I read from Marc Miller, I don't think that Classic Traveller can do Star Wars very well.)



Enthusiastic Grog said:


> GM-as-owners-of-narrative, aka most hardcore OSR style approaches, refuse to acknowledge that the narrative can only really exist _by player narrative labor and player ownership of the game world_. Anything else is simply a novellist inviting people to play-act the role of incidental, secondary characters in their free form novel, and not really gaming.



I'll leave the OSR bit untouched, but otherwise I agree.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> I was going to make a similar comment about how D&D often feels at-odds with itself when it comes to realism. Some of its mechanics are clearly trying to present real-world analogues; some of them are much more . . . inscrutable, shall we say?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I mean, if you squint your eyes and turn your head just so, I suppose you could kind-of, sort-of argue that there's hints of realism in D&D, especially the 3.x line and its treatment of basic skill task resolution.



There are many reasons why I'm not very keen on 3E, but one of them is that sometimes it wants to be gritty/simulationist (eg skill rules; combat manoeuvres; casting spells from the back of a moving wagon) but other times it wants to be classic gonzo D&D (eg basic combat rules; the fact that under normal conditions casters never have trouble with their magic; healing rules). A related issue is that it uses things like "natural armour bonuses" to give a veneer of simulation to what are in fact features of the game driven purely by system maths (eg dragons have +30 "natural armour" bonuses to their ACs, but a +5 suit of plate armour ie the best that a mage can forge, gives +15 or so to AC - what does that "natural armour" actually consist in, not in system maths terms but in in-fiction terms?).

I see 4e as having made a clear call in this respect, and that's one thing I like about it.



Aldarc said:


> I agree that natural recovery is something that we experience in life



Although not in the same way that it happens in any published version of D&D. In real life a sword blow can cause an injury (dismemberment, for instance; and infection) that doesn't cause immediate unconsciousness yet may be fatal unless treated and that is permanently disabling.

In D&D (any edition, although not every edition has every option), PCs suffer injuries that are immediately fatal, injuries that cause unconsicousness and (in some cases) may turn out to be fatal, and injuries that can be completely recovered from with no need for treatment and never taking more than a few weeks or so. That is not a very _realistic_ range of possible injuries.

Hence I agree with this



Aldarc said:


> Even with 1e, I suspect that it was less about realism and more about game pacing as well. "If you don't want to be out of action of a long time, play smart and avoid combat!"


----------



## Lanefan

Enthusiastic Grog said:


> By definitions, RPGs are narratives.



Among other things, sort-of yes.  They're games out of which one or more narratives may arise over time, said narratives sometimes only really becoming clear after the fact in hindsight.



> Simulationism is inherently flawed because by defintion a GMs sandbox is _their narrative about a world_, not an actual world itself. Most notions of what people assume are "common sense" are simply collections of their own personal cultural biases.



As long as these remain internally consistent within themselves when they interact with the players, why does it matter?



> GM-as-owners-of-narrative, aka most hardcore OSR style approaches, refuse to acknowledge that the narrative can only really exist _by player narrative labor and player ownership of the game world_. Anything else is simply a novellist inviting people to play-act the role of incidental, secondary characters in their free form novel...



Which, by the way, is still a narrative.  The only real difference is that it comes mainly from a single source.

If you're limiting your definition of "narrative" to only include "narrative arrived at in an equally-shared-by-all-participants manner" please try again.



> ...and not really gaming.



You're treading in deep water with this one.  To say (or even suggest) a GM-driven game is "not really gaming" is liable to risk offending a considerable number of people in here, and their offense would be valid.



> Remember, rules, not rulings.



Meaning, you prefer neutral mechanics control the game rather than a possibly-biased GM?  If no, please rephrase. (and note that one of the tenets of true old-school gaming is that the GM is in fact intended to be a neutral arbiter - check yer 1e DMG for verification here)



> Without democracy and player control at the table, it's merely one person's novel play acted out, not actually gaming.



And a second shot goes flying across the bow...

Lan-"you've come out swinging, I'll give you that"-efan


----------



## Sadras

innerdude said:


> I'd be infinitely curious to hear from the One-True-Sandboxers out there if they really do like "sandboxing" the whole time----or if the "sandboxing" portion of the campaign is just a ramp-up to get their hooks into the game world / plot so they can start pursuing stuff that matters to their character.




I'd like to think I run a very Sandbox-styled game and the reason for this is twofold: 
(1) To truly give the PC's choice to pursue their desires; and 
(2) To, for lack of a better word/phrase - don't kill me @_*Aldarc*_, run a _realistic_ or the _illusion of realistic_ styled campaign.

I run a mish-mash of storylines and published modules/AP all happening concurrently, but I provide opening for the PCs to 'escape' all that. It could perhaps mean a lot of effort lost on my part, nevermind the AP's purchased, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for our table. So far the PCs have decided to remain on the train (many tracks). 

EDIT: To answer your question - For a campaign, it is the style I prefer to run, so the answer is yes. 

If I were only running a module then it would be less sandbox-y and that would be established at session 0 where you'd get everyone's buy-in.


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> If it's game design, it's at best secondary or tertiary to everything else that is going on.  I don't give a fig about the design when I'm modifying things to make them more realistic.  I care that it's more realistic.




I will have to take you at your word on the above, but it is hard to fathom and this from my own experience when tinkering.

I imagine when one tinkers, one also looks how the change will affect the game - is it fair, is it balanced, how does it interact with other mechanics of the game, what is its effect at low/medium/high levels...etc. It doesn't make sense for me to modify something in a vacuum cause more than likely you're going to make a mess of things.


----------



## Alexander Kalinowski

Enthusiastic Grog said:


> By definitions, RPGs are narratives. Simulationism is inherently flawed because by defintion a GMs sandbox is _their narrative about a world_, not an actual world itself. Most notions of what people assume are "common sense" are simply collections of their own personal cultural biases. GM-as-owners-of-narrative, aka most hardcore OSR style approaches, refuse to acknowledge that the narrative can only really exist _by player narrative labor and player ownership of the game world_. Anything else is simply a novellist inviting people to play-act the role of incidental, secondary characters in their free form novel, and not really gaming. Remember, rules, not rulings. Without democracy and player control at the table, it's merely one person's novel play acted out, not actually gaming.




By definition RPGs are Games, LOL. And all games produce narratives by virtue of changing states. Simulationism comes in due to the open-ended nature of potential RPG narratives as well as providing immersion to players. If a cut with a non-magical knife makes that enemy bandit EXPLODE, it'd be nonsensical and players would probably be turned off, left scratching their heads. 

Other than that, this is a black-and-white view you are presenting. First of all, you're acknowledging RPGs as games in the last clause. Secondly, if RPGs were just narratives, having no player agency at all would be no problem. People have enjoyed story-telling in various forms without having any control over narrative at all for millenia. The ability to impact the story comes in exactly because it's a game and you want to influence the course of the game as a participant. 

And commonly, in traditional RPGs, players do have some hand in the outcome of an adventure. Perhaps not as much as proponents of more narrative games fancy but that's largely a matter of taste. The equation "more player agency = more fun" is not universally true.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> For myself, realism is always the goal when I talk about it and include more of it in my games.  For example, *I think going from literally dying to full health after 8 hours to be highly unrealistic*, so I'm slowing down healing to give it more realism.  There is no other goal for me than added realism.  I suspect that's the case for most people who like more realism.



So does this mechanic disrupt your prioritization and sense of roleplaying immersion? 



Maxperson said:


> I think this may be where you are going wrong when we talk about realism.  We are not designing a game, so it's not a game design discussion.  Were I designing a game, then yes, I would look at hit points as part of the pacing and take that into consideration when figuring out the level of realism I wanted in that game.  However, when I am just playing a game and I want to tweak hit points to be more realistic with regard to healing, I don't give a flying fig about pacing.  Sure, the pacing will change, but that's not even a remote concern of mine.



Then what kind of game discussion is it? 



pemerton said:


> Although not in the same way that it happens in any published version of D&D. In real life a sword blow can cause an injury (dismemberment, for instance; and infection) that doesn't cause immediate unconsciousness yet may be fatal unless treated and that is permanently disabling.
> 
> In D&D (any edition, although not every edition has every option), PCs suffer injuries that are immediately fatal, injuries that cause unconsicousness and (in some cases) may turn out to be fatal, and injuries that can be completely recovered from with no need for treatment and never taking more than a few weeks or so. That is not a very _realistic_ range of possible injuries.



Quite true. And this says nothing about the diseases involved in healing from combat. I know that I have mentioned it before, but a member of my group is a surgical nurse who complains about healing in D&D. Though for him the deeper issue of "realism" is the sense that D&D neither understands nor respects his medical profession, particularly given the prevalence of healing magic, which literally hand waves the issue away. Though from what I gather in discussion, it's less about the lack of realism and more about the lack of cognizance regarding the issue. 



Sadras said:


> I'd like to think I run a very Sandbox-styled game and the reason for this is twofold:
> (2) To, for lack of a better word/phrase - don't kill me @_*Aldarc*_, run a _realistic_ or the _illusion of realistic_ styled campaign.



There's no need for bloodshed. My only questions would then be for further clarification about what what running a "realistic styled campaign" means for you in this context? And how does that contribute to the play goals of your sandbox games? You don't even have to answer these questions in a reply. I don't doubt that you have thoughtful answers. The point being is that I don't know what a realistic campaign means for you, and so I am unclear about how or where you will apply it. If I want to decide whether or not I want to play in your game or adopt a similar approach for my own games, then understanding your idiomatic application of "realism" is more palpable for me than simply tagging the project as more "realistic."


----------



## Imaculata

pemerton said:


> A related issue is that it uses things like "natural armour bonuses" to give a veneer of simulation to what are in fact features of the game driven purely by system maths (eg dragons have +30 "natural armour" bonuses to their ACs, but a +5 suit of plate armour ie the best that a mage can forge, gives +15 or so to AC - what does that "natural armour" actually consist in, not in system maths terms but in in-fiction terms?).
> 
> I see 4e as having made a clear call in this respect, and that's one thing I like about it.




As I understand it, natural armor is not only the material, but also the thickness of a creature's tough skin, as well as a way to balance its difficulty. But I don't think it was meant to give 'a veneer of simulation' at all. It's part of 3rd edition's armor mechanic, and that's it.

Why do you need to make an exact call about what it is? Does it change anything about the gameplay?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Enthusiastic Grog said:


> By definitions, RPGs are narratives. Simulationism is inherently flawed because by defintion a GMs sandbox is _their narrative about a world_, not an actual world itself. Most notions of what people assume are "common sense" are simply collections of their own personal cultural biases. GM-as-owners-of-narrative, aka most hardcore OSR style approaches, refuse to acknowledge that the narrative can only really exist _by player narrative labor and player ownership of the game world_. Anything else is simply a novellist inviting people to play-act the role of incidental, secondary characters in their free form novel, and not really gaming. Remember, rules, not rulings. Without democracy and player control at the table, it's merely one person's novel play acted out, not actually gaming.




OSR games and GMs who abide by rulings over rules, still roll the dice, still use the rules. If you play in such games there is no sense that you are merely playing in a person's novel acted out. That just isn't what these games are about at all.


----------



## pemerton

Imaculata said:


> As I understand it, natural armor is not only the material, but also the thickness of a creature's tough skin, as well as a way to balance its difficulty. But I don't think it was meant to give 'a veneer of simulation' at all. It's part of 3rd edition's armor mechanic, and that's it.
> 
> Why do you need to make an exact call about what it is? Does it change anything about the gameplay?



Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?

To me it makes no sense at all.


----------



## Maxperson

Enthusiastic Grog said:


> Non-sequitir. Replace "my narrative." All actual RPGs are narrative. Unless you have an actual physics machine (aka, hardcore sim system like Runequest or Aftermath!), it's essentially novel writing. The only differences between the storygame and sandbox approaches is the distribution of at-table politcal power between the GM and the players. Further, players create the narrative space - without players, a GM is nothing. You don't want "realism", you want your narrative vision. It's a great thing! Own it.




And you apparently buy into the False Dichotomy as well.  Realism isn't an all or nothing thing.  I don't have to want an actual physics machine or nothing resembling anything in the real world.  Realism is just an approximation of real world things inside of the game.  But at least you recognized that your response to mine was a non-sequitur.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> I will have to take you at your word on the above, but it is hard to fathom and this from my own experience when tinkering.
> 
> I imagine when one tinkers, one also looks how the change will affect the game - is it fair, is it balanced, how does it interact with other mechanics of the game, what is its effect at low/medium/high levels...etc. It doesn't make sense for me to modify something in a vacuum cause more than likely you're going to make a mess of things.




It really depends on if you're okay with things being imbalanced.  I am.  I thought 3e went a bit too far with the imbalance, but I definitely don't need things to be as balanced as 5e is.  When I tinker I'm more concerned with whether it will be fun for the players or not, not if it will unbalance things.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> So does this mechanic disrupt your prioritization and sense of roleplaying immersion?




Secondary to being unrealistic, sure.  It's not, "disrupts my sense of immersion, therefore it's unrealistic."  It's, "It's unrealistic, therefore it disrupts my sense of immersion."  Realism is the primary issue and motivator.  



> Then what kind of game discussion is it?




It was right there in the first sentence.  Realism.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Secondary to being unrealistic, sure. *[1]* It's not, "disrupts my sense of immersion, therefore it's unrealistic."  *[2]* It's, "It's unrealistic, therefore it disrupts my sense of immersion."  Realism is the primary issue and motivator.



I am not suggesting phrasing [1] with my inquiry, especially since it puts the cart before the horse. But when I read [2], it seems like what proceeds from the "therefore" is the actual underlying issue. In fact, my question to you is more in line with [2]. This is to say that the "unrealism" creates cognitive dissonance that disrupts your play priority of immersion. So there are things that disrupt your sense of immersion that you would like to rectify. These may be a range of factors: realism, metagame mechanics, etc. But immersion seems like the actual play priority that you are trying to maximize. The realism is the means to maintain that play immersion. 



> It was right there in the first sentence.  Realism.



So you corrected me by saying I was in error for thinking that it was a game discussion about realism in game design because it's actually a game discussion about (unspecified) realism?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Secondary to being unrealistic, sure.  It's not, "disrupts my sense of immersion, therefore it's unrealistic."  It's, "It's unrealistic, therefore it disrupts my sense of immersion."  Realism is the primary issue and motivator.
> 
> 
> 
> It was right there in the first sentence.  Realism.



So, to understand correctly, you do realism for the sake of realism, but where you do realism is arbitrary.  Further, you do not want to discuss or contemplate the reasons for the arbitrary realism, or what gets realism and what doesn't .  Also, those arbitrary choices are not design, even if you're modifying nechanics to achieve a play goal.

Have I captured this correctly?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> But immersion seems like the actual play priority that you are trying to maximize. The realism is the means to maintain that play immersion.
> 
> :




Just a thought on priorities in general, and not saying this applies to Maxperson as he may well be motivated soley by realism or immersion. But this is one of the reasons I mentioned these kinds of discussions sometimes lead to inverse GNS theory on the other side of the debate, and why I've moved away from putting as much stock in online gaming discussion as I once did. Before in this sort of exchange, I would embrace immersion as my priority without questioning the assumption of priories themselves. Just based on my own observations in play and my own personal experience of games, I don't think most people have a single priority. I think most people have a list of things they like and things they dislike. As those things come up, it impacts enjoyment of the game. Just like I might have a list of ten things that I find irritating when I watch movies (and the more they come up the more my interest wanes). And like I might have 10 things I really like and the more they come up, the more my interest is piqued (for instance, if a movie does a great job of packing drama on the turn of a dime, and uses compelling music to back it up, that always gets me as a viewer; if a movie has dialogue that sounds like it is just coming from the mouth of a writer trying to persuade me about something, that reduces my interest; if I see a blatant break down in internal logic, that also reduces my enjoyment). In gaming, I think most players are usually juggling a number of things they value. And it only really matters when those things are obvious in play. This is why bringing up obscure corners of the system or aspects of the game that are not immediately obvious to counter someone's stated preference, is not a terribly persuasive course. Add to that you usually have five different people at the table with different lists, and I think you can see why a game like D&D (which has to appeal to the biggest possible audience because it is THE ROLEPLAYING GAME) has to keep a certain level of plausibility and realism to retain crowd A, but not so much that it turns off crowd B. If you are someone for whom realism, or plausibility or immersion are important, D&D tends to hit the good enough mark. Plus you are probably also playing it for all other kinds of reasons. I think the games that can afford to have priorities are smaller RPGs that don't need the whole market. But even there, I think it is misguided to view systems that deliver prioritized play experience as better than those that don't. Most of my campaigns have people who want different things, and I can only think of one or two players who have a single overriding priority in my groups. For the most part, it is like when you go to a movie and you want a range of experiences. If you just focus on one, that can actually miss the point for a large number of people.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> There's no need for bloodshed. My only questions would then be for further clarification about what what running a "realistic styled campaign" means for you in this context? And how does that contribute to the play goals of your sandbox games? You don't even have to answer these questions in a reply. I don't doubt that you have thoughtful answers. The point being is that I don't know what a realistic campaign means for you, and so I am unclear about how or where you will apply it. If I want to decide whether or not I want to play in your game or adopt a similar approach for my own games, then understanding your idiomatic application of "realism" is more palpable for me than simply tagging the project as more "realistic."




Let me take a stab at it, as I used the word _realistic_ in haste.

So (1) was free for the PCs to pursue other goals should they want to alongside the main campaign or exclusively from it.
(2) Was so that the setting would appear less contrived if that makes any sense.

So yes I ramshod a few AP's and modules onto the setting, they're adventure hooks, I have no idea if the PC's will pursue any or how they will pursue them. But the setting has to feel like it isn't only about these AP's and modules which often seem to manufacture a particular square of exploration all to do with the AP's and modules which seems uncharacteristically contrived.
There are many more things happening along the Sword Coast besides say the ToD and SKT storylines. Some complex and some less so and anytime spent away from the main setting's storyline pursuing other adventures affects the plot line of the AP's. Time marches on, Council Meetings are missed, opportunities to capture a Wyrmspeaker, obtain a Dragon Mask, halt marauding Giants...all these adventures are lost as we get closer to Chaos. 

So there is a sense that the stakes are high and decisions taken matter more so because everything doesn't remain static until the PCs arrive. The setting is not turn-based. It is my humble attempt to make it a living breathing world, more _realistic_ in the common tongue.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> So, to understand correctly, you do realism for the sake of realism, but where you do realism is arbitrary.  Further, you do not want to discuss or contemplate the reasons for the arbitrary realism, or what gets realism and what doesn't .  Also, those arbitrary choices are not design, even if you're modifying nechanics to achieve a play goal.
> 
> Have I captured this correctly?




Nothing I do is arbitrary.  I have reasons for all of it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?
> 
> To me it makes no sense at all.




It has been a while since I've played 3E (I think my last 3E campaign was in 2014-2015, and it was a gonzo wuxia one, so I wasn't employing all the standard rules). But I do think there are a number of things in 3E and in 2E and 1E that stand out as odd in terms of realism. I remember having all kinds of discussions about them in the 90s for example after sessions. I can't recall specific rules as much as a player saying something like 'isn't it odd that X does this much damage but a dragon swallowing you whole does Y'. Things like that (I remember there being a moment in one of our games where a paladin got smashed by something and the damage made very little sense). But I think the key here is, these are areas that crop up once in a while, or that you don't notice until someone point them out. This example, is one I don't think I've ever noticed before but it does sound like something that might emerge in 3E. But 3E is so comprehensive, I can totally understand how an oversight like that might emerge (I've made a pretty robust rules system myself and this is genuinely one of the hardest kind of things to track IMO). My expectation here though is, it is an oversight, that if it were brought to their attention it is the sort of thing they might fix in a future edition (unless fixing it raises other types of issues). I totally agree, stuff like this can be spotted all over 3E, in part because there are just so many rules. My personal experience of 3E, is these things don't intrude too often into my experience of play though. Not to revisit the 4E versus 3E debate, because I think we've all expressed our full views and evolved on that front. But when 4E came out, one of the reasons I had a hard time with it, was the way healing worked in some instances tripped up how I tended to describe damage, and how my group tended to describe and conceive of HP loss in the game. That certainly could have been a product of our approach to play. But in that case, it felt intrusive because it came up frequently and I found myself either having to retcon a description or suddenly have a break down in internal logic where a massive wound was really just a scratch. I'd probably have an easier time with that today because my games tend to lean more on being cinematic. At the time, though, it stuck out a lot. I think with a game like 3E the things that intruded into my experience of play were more issues of balance or issues of how the game system tended to herd people into action i found a little on the ridiculous side (I remember finding Buffing to be a very puzzling and bizarre way for characters to behave for example----at least in a standard campaign that wasn't meant to feel like Dragon Ball). I realize you might have a very different conception of 4E and its HP system (if I recall your position in previous conversations). Not saying I am right, just using this as an example of how striking an intrusion would have to be to trip up my realism concerns at the time (contrasted with something that needs to be pointed out to me after the fact, or that I notice after the session).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Nothing I do is arbitrary.  I have reasons for all of it.



If your reason is preference then it's still arbitrary.  Unless you have an objective, systemmic process for determining what's realistic or not, in which case I'd be very interested in hearing it.

The point here isn't to bag on you.  I make tons of arbitrary choices in my gaming, as does everyone else.  I try to stick to a few sets of principlea to reduce it, but that's where the game design comes in, and I don't do realism for the sake of realism, I do it if it helps a play goal, like immersion.

You've been treating this discussion as if it's a trap, somehow; that admitting game design is occurring or that you're using realism to bolster a play goal is leading go a counter to discredit your choices.  It's not.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> If your reason is preference then it's still arbitrary.  Unless you have an objective, systemmic process for determining what's realistic or not, in which case I'd be very interested in hearing it.
> 
> The point here isn't to bag on you.  I make tons of arbitrary choices in my gaming, as does everyone else.  I try to stick to a few sets of principlea to reduce it, but that's where the game design comes in, and I don't do realism for the sake of realism, I do it if it helps a play goal, like immersion.
> 
> You've been treating this discussion as if it's a trap, somehow; that admitting game design is occurring or that you're using realism to bolster a play goal is leading go a counter to discredit your choices.  It's not.






> ar·bi·trar·yDictionary result for arbitrary
> /ˈärbəˌtrerē/Submit
> adjective
> adjective: arbitrary
> based on random choice or *personal whim*, rather than any reason or system.




Something done on a whim is arbitrary.  Simply being personal preference is not.  A preference is not a whim.

Example.  If I'm at a supermarket and I decide on a moments notice to grab a bag of M&Ms, that's a personal whim and is arbitrary.  However, if I like M&Ms and I decide that I am going to get one bag whenever I go to the store, then it's not arbitrary.

When it comes to realism, I don't just decide to change anything on a whim.  I keep the rule the same for quite a while while I assess what it is that I don't like about it, if it's enough to warrant a change, and in what way it will be changed if and when I do decide to change it.  

Nothing I do with the game is arbitrary.


----------



## Imaculata

pemerton said:


> Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?
> 
> To me it makes no sense at all.




It does not need to make sense. It is merely a means of scaling up the combat difficulty of a tough monster. Players are not meant to be upscaled as such, since they already have plenty of other power boosts in the form of spells and other equipment. If they allowed players to obtain similar amounts of armor, it would lead to infinite power creep that is impossible to balance encounters for.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I make tons of arbitrary choices in my gaming, as does everyone else.  I try to stick to a few sets of principlea to reduce it, but that's where the game design comes in, and I don't do realism for the sake of realism, I do it if it helps a play goal, like immersion.



There's always going to be some things in the game (any system) that flat-out don't or can't match reality, and I think almost everyone accepts this.  Examples: hit points; fireballs.

But there's also going to be lots of places in any system where there's a more or less even-up choice between a more realistic or less realistic option, and for these I'll nearly always advocate for the more realistic option.  Example: hit points being a complete abstract (less realistic) vs hit points being to some degree reflective of physical harm and-or fatigue (more realistic).  Example: fireballs expanding to fill a cube (less realistic) vs fireballs expanding to fill a sphere (more realistic).

Note that neither of the "more realistic" options above in fact achieve complete realism.  They just get closer to it than the other option, which is all I can hope for.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> There's always going to be some things in the game (any system) that flat-out don't or can't match reality, and I think almost everyone accepts this.  Examples: hit points; fireballs.
> 
> But there's also going to be lots of places in any system where there's a more or less even-up choice between a more realistic or less realistic option, and for these I'll nearly always advocate for the more realistic option.  Example: hit points being a complete abstract (less realistic) vs hit points being to some degree reflective of physical harm and-or fatigue (more realistic).  Example: fireballs expanding to fill a cube (less realistic) vs fireballs expanding to fill a sphere (more realistic).
> 
> *Note that neither of the "more realistic" options above in fact achieve complete realism.  They just get closer to it than the other option, which is all I can hope for*.




And that's the key.  People on the realism side of things are not trying to achieve complete realism.  Far from it.  They just want to move a bit farther down the line towards the complete realism end of the spectrum.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Lanefan said:


> There's always going to be some things in the game (any system) that flat-out don't or can't match reality, and I think almost everyone accepts this.  Examples: hit points; fireballs.
> 
> But there's also going to be lots of places in any system where there's a more or less even-up choice between a more realistic or less realistic option, and for these I'll nearly always advocate for the more realistic option.  Example: hit points being a complete abstract (less realistic) vs hit points being to some degree reflective of physical harm and-or fatigue (more realistic).  Example: fireballs expanding to fill a cube (less realistic) vs fireballs expanding to fill a sphere (more realistic).
> 
> Note that neither of the "more realistic" options above in fact achieve complete realism.  They just get closer to it than the other option, which is all I can hope for.




This is something I think people all around have trouble remembering. Just because there is a thing in a system a person doesn't normally like, it doesn't mean that small presence ruins the game for them, nor does it mean that their acceptance of this thing means they want a whole game comprised of it. I can handle a modicum of immersion breaking mechanics here or there, especially if they add to the overall experience. But when games start getting deeply into stuff that breaks my immersion, I have a much harder time grokking them and enjoying them. And at the end of the day, gaming is a bit like pizza. I don't like Greek pizza one bit (regional name for pizza with crispy buttery crust and a mix of mozzarella and cheddar cheese---that simply doesn't adhere to the crust), but it is still pizza and I will gladly eat it if that is what people are ordering. Still, I make my opinions about Greek pizza well known.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?
> 
> To me it makes no sense at all.




In ADnD a +5 Plate gives you an AC of -2 which is just less then a Platinum Dragons AC of -3.

In 4e a +6 Battleforged God Plate Armour gives you +20 to your AC (so base AC 30) which is much less then an Ancient Red Dragons AC of 48.

So what is wrong with Armour in 3e again?


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Shasarak said:


> In ADnD a +5 Plate gives you an AC of -2 which is just less then a Platinum Dragons AC of -3.
> 
> In 4e a +6 Battleforged God Plate Armour gives you +20 to your AC (so base AC 30) which is much less then an Ancient Red Dragons AC of 48.
> 
> So what is wrong with Armour in 3e again?




Everything's fine.

An ancient red dragon has a natural armor bonus of +33 in 3.5; that’s the equivalent of +25 full plate – it’s worth about 6.25Mgp. 

Epic wealth guidelines suggest that this would be appropriate for a character of 50th level – it would represent around 25% of their gear value.

Creating it would require a caster with the Craft Epic Arms and Armor feat. The creator would need to be 75th level to have sufficient burnable XP; if the cooperative XP variant on p. 125 of the ELH is used, then 25th level is the minimum requirement - you still need 28 ranks in Spellcraft.


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> In 4e a +6 Battleforged God Plate Armour gives you +20 to your AC (so base AC 30) which is much less then an Ancient Red Dragons AC of 48.



I've played a lot of epic tier 4e. PC ACs are in the same general vicinity as monsters. I think  yiour calculation of the +6 Armour AC is not factoring in the level bonus. (Eg the 30h level paladin PC in my game wears plate armour and carries a shield and has an AC of 47; the scale-wearing fighter has an AC of 45.)


----------



## pemerton

Imaculata said:


> It does not need to make sense. It is merely a means of scaling up the combat difficulty of a tough monster.



I've got no objection to scaling. What makes no sense to me is that attempt to overlay the veneer of simulation - by calling the upscaling "natural armour" rather than (say) a level bonus.

I appreciate that not everyone has these issues with 3E - it's quite a popular system. But they are significnat contributors to my dislike of it.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> There's always going to be some things in the game (any system) that flat-out don't or can't match reality, and I think almost everyone accepts this.  Examples: hit points; fireballs.



What part of Cthulhu Dark doesn't match reality? (I've linked to the system, which you can read before answering: it's free and very short.)


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> I've played a lot of epic tier 4e. PC ACs are in the same general vicinity as monsters. I think  yiour calculation of the +6 Armour AC is not factoring in the level bonus. (Eg the 30h level paladin PC in my game wears plate armour and carries a shield and has an AC of 47; the scale-wearing fighter has an AC of 45.)




If your only restriction is getting an AC over a Dragons AC then you can do that in every edition of DnD once you start adding up Armour, Shield, Dex, Magic, Feats.

But that is not what you wanted though, you wanted an Armour that was better then a Dragons Armour.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

pemerton said:


> Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?
> 
> To me it makes no sense at all.




This was your original question. 



Do you understand how you shifted the goalposts?


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> If your only restriction is getting an AC over a Dragons AC then you can do that in every edition of DnD once you start adding up Armour, Shield, Dex, Magic, Feats.
> 
> But that is not what you wanted though, you wanted an Armour that was better then a Dragons Armour.



The paladin I mentioned has no source of AC besides his armour and shield. And it is on a par with a dragon.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> What part of Cthulhu Dark doesn't match reality? (I've linked to the system, which you can read before answering: it's free and very short.)




Is it the part where you go insane by knowing too much?


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> The paladin I mentioned has no source of AC besides his armour and shield. And it is on a par with a dragon.




I thought you said that he was getting a +15 bonus from his level?


----------



## pemerton

Sepulchrave II said:


> This was your original question.
> 
> 
> 
> Do you understand how you shifted the goalposts?



In AD&D and in 4e a character who wears the best possible armour can have an AC on a par with a dragon. I posted a 4e example of this just above.

In 3E a character can't have a +30 bonus to AC from armour. (I'm not having regard to the epic rules in making that claim. The epic rules for 3E are, in my experience, widely criticised, and the post upthread indicates that by the time an epic character has armour that will grant a bonus to AC comparable to a great wyrm dragon, s/he will be of a level that makes great wyrm dragons irrelevant in play.)


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> I thought you said that he was getting a +15 bonus from his level?



So is the dragon. That's just a generic part of 4e.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

pemerton said:


> In AD&D and in 4e a character who wears the best possible armour can have an AC on a par with a dragon.




That's all dandy and all. The problem is that



> Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?
> 
> To me it makes no sense at all.




You shifted the goalposts.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> So is the dragon. That's just a generic part of 4e.




So his armour is as good as a dragon....as long as he is also 30th level.

In ADnD you can get armour that is a little bit less then a Platinum Dragon for any level character.

In 3e you can get armour as good as a Dragon for any level character.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> In AD&D and in 4e a character who wears the best possible armour can have an AC on a par with a dragon. I posted a 4e example of this just above.
> 
> In 3E a character can't have a +30 bonus to AC from armour. (I'm not having regard to the epic rules in making that claim. The epic rules for 3E are, in my experience, widely criticised, and the post upthread indicates that by the time an epic character has armour that will grant a bonus to AC comparable to a great wyrm dragon, s/he will be of a level that makes great wyrm dragons irrelevant in play.)




Why is a level 30 Paladin is OK for 4e but not for any other edition?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I've played a lot of epic tier 4e. PC ACs are in the same general vicinity as monsters. I think  yiour calculation of the +6 Armour AC is not factoring in the level bonus. (Eg the 30h level paladin PC in my game wears plate armour and carries a shield and has an AC of 47; the scale-wearing fighter has an AC of 45.)




That wasn't the criteria you set, though.  You said armor equal to the dragon's armor.  If you add in spells and other things, then you are no longer talking about armor.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

pemerton said:


> In 3E a character can't have a +30 bonus to AC from armour.




Yes, they can. The epic item creation rules are here http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/basics.htm



> I'm not having regard to the epic rules in making that claim. The epic rules for 3E are, in my experience, widely criticised




Lots of rulesets are criticized, pemerton. That's hardly germane. You're just poisoning the well.



> and the post upthread indicates that by the time an epic character has armour that will grant a bonus to AC comparable to a great wyrm dragon, s/he will be of a level that makes great wyrm dragons irrelevant in play.)




Right. But that has nothing to do with your question, which was:



> Why can a mage or godling not forge armour that is as tough as the "natural" hide of a dragon? This is possible in AD&D, and in 4e, but not in 3E. What is going on with dragons in the fiction of that edition?




3.X is in fact the _only_ edition in which this is explicitly possible.

Can you understand why this interaction is frustrating?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The paladin I mentioned has no source of AC besides his armour and shield. And it is on a par with a dragon.




Strange.  I could have sworn you mentioned a level bonus, which is a source of AC other than armor and shield.


----------



## pemerton

Sepulchrave II said:


> You shifted the goalposts.



Alterantively, I don't consider the epic rules to be relevant to my point. As I posted in reply to you already, with some explanation.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

pemerton said:


> Alterantively, I don't consider the epic rules to be relevant to my point. As I posted in reply to you already, with some explanation.






> The epic rules for 3E are, in my experience, widely criticised...





This is your explanation?

You might be surprised to learn that _your experience of other people's criticism_ does not move me much in terms of the 3.x epic ruleset.


----------



## pemerton

Shasarak said:


> So his armour is as good as a dragon....as long as he is also 30th level.
> 
> In ADnD you can get armour that is a little bit less then a Platinum Dragon for any level character.
> 
> In 3e you can get armour as good as a Dragon for any level character.



If the dragon is 1st level, its AC is 23.

What's your point? Mine is clear, and was a reply to a post from (I think)  [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]: that 3E is what I regard as an unhappy mix of gritty and gonzo, and deploys what I find an irritating degree of simulation by applying what appear to be ingame explanatory labels like "natural armour" to phenomena which clearly have a purely mecanical function and rationale.

The fact that 4e uses level-based adjustments to its stats is a well-known feature of that system. It doesn't bear in any way on my point.



Maxperson said:


> That wasn't the criteria you set, though.  You said armor equal to the dragon's armor.  If you add in spells and other things, then you are no longer talking about armor.



What spells?



Maxperson said:


> Strange.  I could have sworn you mentioned a level bonus, which is a source of AC other than armor and shield.



Does the level bonus and the base 10 need calling out? The dragon's AC has those in there as well. My point is that in 4e the high level paladin, whose only non-system-mandated AC components are plate armour and a shield, has an AC on a par with the dragon's. There is no "natural armour" that outstrips what is feasible from magic armour.



Sepulchrave II said:


> Can you understand why this interaction is frustrating?



I know why it's frustrating to me. You're pointing to an optional rulest which allows a 75th level character to emulate the armour of a dragon of an insignificant level relative to that character. According to 3E DDG, Hephaestus can forge items up to 200,000 gp in value. The +25 armour you mentioned is a lot pricier than that. And the d20SRD tells me that "a dragon’s natural armor bonus increases by +1 for every Hit Die it gains beyond the great wyrm stage" which is an exact illustration of the phenomenon I dislike; while the epic dragons with CRs in the 50s and 60s have natural armour bonuses in the 60s and 70s. Which again is an illustration of the very point I'm making.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

pemerton said:


> I know why it's frustrating to me. You're pointing to an optional rulest which allows a 75th level character to emulate the armour of a dragon of an insignificant level relative to that character.




Why are you so fixated on what is power level x as compared to power level y? I don't understand.


----------



## pemerton

Sepulchrave II said:


> Why are you so fixated on what is power level x as compared to power level y? I don't understand.



Because if I introduced 75th level characters into a game then I would also be introducing 75th level (or thereabouts) dragons, which - as I pointed out - would have natural armour bonuses that exceed the most powerful armour that can be forged by mages and godlings in the setting.

Which is to say, the issue that I dislike - the simulationist veneer of "natural armour" - would still be there.

If you're still confused by my concern, I recommend [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION]'s posts above. Imaculata doesn't get irritated in the way I do because he (? I apologise if that's an erroneous gender attribution) is able to treat the natural armour bonuses as purely mechanical devices to ensure the game maths works properly. I can't muster the same sanguinity, but Imaculata's response shows a clear understanding of the issue I'm raising and addresses it completely sensibly (and without any frustration on my part at least).


----------



## Sepulchrave II

pemerton said:
			
		

> Because if I introduced 75th level characters into a game then I would also be introducing 75th level (or thereabouts) dragons.




Ah. I see we play different games. All is clear.

Best to you.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> If the dragon is 1st level, its AC is 23.
> 
> What's your point? Mine is clear, and was a reply to a post from (I think)  [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]: that 3E is what I regard as an unhappy mix of gritty and gonzo, and deploys what I find an irritating degree of simulation by applying what appear to be ingame explanatory labels like "natural armour" to phenomena which clearly have a purely mecanical function and rationale.




My point is that your example was incorrect.  My apologies if I was not clear.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> What part of Cthulhu Dark doesn't match reality? (I've linked to the system, which you can read before answering: it's free and very short.)



At first glance that's not a bad little system for thems as likes their Cthulhu.

I guess most of the "outside human capabilities" stuff (the spells, dream work, etc.) wouldn't always match reality.  Then again, Lovecraft - of whom I'm not a huge fan - lived in his own rather unique version of reality anyway, I think.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Alterantively, I don't consider the epic rules to be relevant to my point. As I posted in reply to you already, with some explanation.



Was it you or someone else who used the Platinum Dragon - a rather epic creature - as the comparison point?  I honestly forget.

But either way, taking an epic-level creature and comparing it to a non-epic-level character in a system that scales as steeply as 3e or 4e is kind of unfair to the character, hm?.  Particularly when level is a direct factor, as it is in 4e.

And in 3e doesn't the dragon lose some AC before anything else just because it's so damn big?


----------



## Imaculata

pemerton said:


> If you're still confused by my concern, I recommend [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION]'s posts above. Imaculata doesn't get irritated in the way I do because he (? I apologise if that's an erroneous gender attribution) is able to treat the natural armour bonuses as purely mechanical devices to ensure the game maths works properly. I can't muster the same sanguinity, but Imaculata's response shows a clear understanding of the issue I'm raising and addresses it completely sensibly (and without any frustration on my part at least).




"He" is the correct gender attribution, and you are entirely correct in your description of my position on this issue. For me the mechanics are just that, mechanics. I don't need an explanation for how it works within the fiction of the game. Though I can understand why someone may prefer a system that also makes sense within the game's fiction. Sometimes I think about how it might be fun to play a horror-campaign with more realistic mechanics in regards to how armor and injuries work, but since me and my group are pretty much all-in when it comes to 3rd edition's rules, I don't see how I could deal with all the bookkeeping involved to make that work within 3rd edition rules without needlessly overcomplicating it. I would have to switch to a completely different system to do so. But I prefer to handwave the way it currently works, because it doesn't bother me personally.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Does the level bonus and the base 10 need calling out? The dragon's AC has those in there as well. My point is that in 4e the high level paladin, whose only non-system-mandated AC components are plate armour and a shield, has an AC on a par with the dragon's. There is no "natural armour" that outstrips what is feasible from magic armour.




Yes it does need to be called out.  If you are trying to compare PC armor to dragon armor, anything other than armor is right out.  No base 10.  No level bonus.  No shield bonus.  Yes, a PC can get an AC on par with a dragon's.  No a PC cannot get armor that is a as good as a dragon's, which is the criteria you set.



> I know why it's frustrating to me. You're pointing to an optional rulest which allows a 75th level character to emulate the armour of a dragon of an insignificant level relative to that character. According to 3E DDG, Hephaestus can forge items up to 200,000 gp in value. The +25 armour you mentioned is a lot pricier than that. And the d20SRD tells me that "a dragon’s natural armor bonus increases by +1 for every Hit Die it gains beyond the great wyrm stage" which is an exact illustration of the phenomenon I dislike; while the epic dragons with CRs in the 50s and 60s have natural armour bonuses in the 60s and 70s. Which again is an illustration of the very point I'm making.




So pointing to a optional rule set that allows armor that is strong enough to match a dragon, even an epic dragon's natural armor is frustrating, but pointing to an optional rule set that says Hephaestus has a 200k gp cap is okay?



> If the dragon is 1st level, its AC is 23.




So I just went and looked at 3e and the weakest dragon I could find(white) at the lowest level(hatchling) is CR 2, so it's not 1st level.  And it has an AC of 14, 2 of that is from natural armor, so for a PC to equal that at 2nd level he would have to be wearing non-magical leather.


----------



## Aldarc

Outsider Perspective: Is this line of debate going anywhere productive? It seems like instead of debating the placement of goalposts or the number of angels that can dance on the AC of dragons, that the participants should reset and refocus their lines.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Because if I introduced 75th level characters into a game then I would also be introducing 75th level (or thereabouts) dragons, which - as I pointed out - would have natural armour bonuses that exceed the most powerful armour that can be forged by mages and godlings in the setting.




You are making an error here.  It doesn't require a 75th level PC to make that armor.  It takes a 75th level being to create that armor.  Just like PCs cannot create all of the items that they are finding up to and including 20th level, at 75th level they will be finding armor that they cannot create.  For example, you can find a robe of useful items at 1st level as a minor item, but it cannot be created until 9th level.

If you want your 75th level PCs to have armor as strong as epic dragons, give it to them.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> Outsider Perspective: Is this line of debate going anywhere productive? It seems like instead of debating the placement of goalposts or the number of angels that can dance on the AC of dragons, that the participants should reset and refocus their lines.



From my point of view I've made my points and think they're clear. My exchange with [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION] was brief but sensible, and I think we understand one another and our different ways into, and hence responses to, the issue.

If you'd like me to elaborate or explain again, though, I'm happy to.


----------



## Imaculata

Aldarc said:


> Outsider Perspective: Is this line of debate going anywhere productive? It seems like instead of debating the placement of goalposts or the number of angels that can dance on the AC of dragons, that the participants should reset and refocus their lines.




Well, it was originally about the perception of realism in a roleplaying game. I can certainly see why a combat/armor system that has no clear explanation within the fiction of its setting, can ruin the sense of realism in a game. It doesn't ruin it for me personally, but I can certainly imagine how the alternative: a system that works both mechanically and narratively, can greatly add to the perceived realism of a game.

The game is never going to be entirely realistic and I don't think anyone is arguing for that. But I do see how there are degrees of realism, both within the fiction and the mechanics of the game. Having the way armor works make sense, can add to that experience.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Didn't get on much this weekend, but it appears that most of the discussion is about dragon and paladon armor(?), so I'll come back to this. 


Maxperson said:


> Something done on a whim is arbitrary.  Simply being personal preference is not.  A preference is not a whim.
> 
> Example.  If I'm at a supermarket and I decide on a moments notice to grab a bag of M&Ms, that's a personal whim and is arbitrary.  However, if I like M&Ms and I decide that I am going to get one bag whenever I go to the store, then it's not arbitrary.



Can alway count on you to go to tge dictionary, and then focus like a laser on a narrow part of that.  Here, you've turned arbitrary into "on a whim", which is true, but not the only meaning of arbitrary.  If you're designing to personal preference vice an objective or systematic goal, that's also arbitrary.  The proof of this pudding is that everyone has different standards of personal preference, meaning making a choice based on it for one person is arbitrary.

But, I don't need to argue definitional semantics.  You seem to prefer "based on my personal preference" to "arbitrary", and that works for me.  Just replace "arbitrary" for "based on Max's personal preference" in my posts and my points don't change.


> When it comes to realism, I don't just decide to change anything on a whim.  I keep the rule the same for quite a while while I assess what it is that I don't like about it, if it's enough to warrant a change, and in what way it will be changed if and when I do decide to change it.
> 
> Nothing I do with the game is arbitrary.



This sounds an awful lot like game design, Max.  Which has been a long running point:  the way we play and what we value in games is often not what we think it is.  Here, you go on about how you do realism for the sake of realism, and you don't do game design because that implies considering multiple goals of play and balancing them, which can't be because realism for realism.  But, right above, you show that it's only where a game system doesn't feel right to you that you start your realism pass, so that's personal preferemce, not realism driving.  You then consider the change carefully, presumably weighing against ease of play and other objectives of play, before naking any changes. This is exactly what you've rejected!  

You don't realism for realism's sake, you use realism where and as much as appropriate to achieve your play goal of immersion, the threshold of which is personal taste.  You balance this against ither play goals, like ease of play, and ignore realism where it conflicts too much but still allows for immersion.  This was the point.

And, non-existent-trap sprung, that's aces, man!  That's how it should be.  Recognizing this doean't make it wrong, or lesser, it just shows you more clearly where the potholes are so you can better play around them.  You get so busy winning a battle that you lose sight of the war.  Pyrrhus may have some advice for you.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> This sounds an awful lot like game design, Max.  Which has been a long running point:  the way we play and what we value in games is often not what we think it is.  Here, you go on about how you do realism for the sake of realism, and you don't do game design because that implies considering multiple goals of play and balancing them, which can't be because realism for realism.  But, right above, you show that it's only where a game system doesn't feel right to you that you start your realism pass, so that's personal preferemce, not realism driving.  You then consider the change carefully, presumably weighing against ease of play and other objectives of play, before naking any changes. This is exactly what you've rejected!
> 
> You don't realism for realism's sake, you use realism where and as much as appropriate to achieve your play goal of immersion, the threshold of which is personal taste.  You balance this against ither play goals, like ease of play, and ignore realism where it conflicts too much but still allows for immersion.  This was the point.




Realism is why I am looking at it.  Not game design.  Not other things.  However, fun is the key to play.  If realism is going to reduce the enjoyment of the game, then I'm going to grit my teeth and bear it.  Realism was and is the goal.  It just doesn't do me any good to make a change that is more realistic if we are then going to stop playing the game.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Realism is why I am looking at it.  Not game design.  Not other things.  However, fun is the key to play.  If realism is going to reduce the enjoyment of the game, then I'm going to grit my teeth and bear it.  Realism was and is the goal.  It just doesn't do me any good to make a change that is more realistic if we are then going to stop playing the game.




Goodness, Max, you're so intent on not giving ground you're now directly contradicting yourself to stay true.  Using realism as a tool is fine, but insisting it's a _goal_ in a pretend elf game is silly.

You just admitted that 'fun' is your goal, not realism.  I propose that this is entirely wrong:  to you, some amount of realism that meets your personal preference threshold is part of the "fun".  Not to mention that RPGs are a leisure activity to begin with, so "fun" is a uselessly broad objective in the context of this discussion. It's all for "fun."


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Goodness, Max, you're so intent on not giving ground you're now directly contradicting yourself to stay true.  Using realism as a tool is fine, but insisting it's a _goal_ in a pretend elf game is silly.
> 
> You just admitted that 'fun' is your goal, not realism.  I propose that this is entirely wrong:  to you, some amount of realism that meets your personal preference threshold is part of the "fun".  Not to mention that RPGs are a leisure activity to begin with, so "fun" is a uselessly broad objective in the context of this discussion. It's all for "fun."




False.  If fun were my goal, I would be looking at rules and saying, how is the rule fun and what can I do to make it more fun.  I don't do that.  I look at rules with realism in mind, and fun secondary.  It needs to be both, but realism is my goal.  An example of fun being the primary goal would be the "Rule of Cool" that many here and on other gaming sites use. I've seen them allow highly unrealistic things to occur, because cool.  I don't use the Rule of Cool and never will.  I'm not going to allow something that is highly unrealistic to happen just because it's "cool."


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> False.  If fun were my goal, I would be looking at rules and saying, how is the rule fun and what can I do to make it more fun.  I don't do that.  I look at rules with realism in mind, and fun secondary.  It needs to be both, but realism is my goal.  An example of fun being the primary goal would be the "Rule of Cool" that many here and on other gaming sites use. I've seen them allow highly unrealistic things to occur, because cool.  I don't use the Rule of Cool and never will.  I'm not going to allow something that is highly unrealistic to happen just because it's "cool."



Okay, Max, why?  Why realism?


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, Max, why?  Why realism?




Because I like things to make sense.  That's why I'm going to allow Shield Master to be used after the first attack, rather than after the complete attack action.  That way when you have extra attack, you can use it.  It makes no sense(is unrealistic) that someone could shove with Shield Master after 1 attack up until they get their second attack and then suddenly be unable to do so.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Because I like things to make sense.  That's why I'm going to allow Shield Master to be used after the first attack, rather than after the complete attack action.  That way when you have extra attack, you can use it.  It makes no sense(is unrealistic) that someone could shove with Shield Master after 1 attack up until they get their second attack and then suddenly be unable to do so.



Wait, that's what you call realism?!  Maybe we need to agree on a definition.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> Wait, that's what you call realism?!  Maybe we need to agree on a definition.



It's up there with "your dad beating up my dad is unrealistic, so I changed the rules to allow my dad to beat up your dad."


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Wait, that's what you call realism?!  Maybe we need to agree on a definition.




In the real world, if you can do something 100% of the time after one try, it's unrealistic to think that they will suddenly fail 100% of the time after one try just because they got better at it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> In the real world, if you can do something 100% of the time after one try, it's unrealistic to think that they will suddenly fail 100% of the time after one try just because they got better at it.



What I understand right now is that Max's personal preference on realism is a very malleable bar.  Your stand out example of how you do realism for the sake of realism is a partial adjustment of a timing issue inside of an arbitraily designated 6 second block of time (the arbitrariness here is the designers and 6 seconds) where you already have an unrealistic I-go-U-go timing mechanism and the general assumption that each turn takes 6 seconds, but it's all the same six seconds despite being adjudicated sequentially.  And, your adjustment is that you still can't do the special thing until after you do the first thing, but, at a certain point, for some claases only, the first thing becomes interruptable by the special thing.

I get and follow all the rules arguments, here, but they have absolutely nothing to do with realism.  Internal rules consistancy, maybe, but nit realism.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> What I understand right now is that Max's personal preference on realism is a very malleable bar.  Your stand out example of how you do realism for the sake of realism is a partial adjustment of a timing issue inside of an arbitraily designated 6 second block of time (the arbitrariness here is the designers and 6 seconds) where you already have an unrealistic I-go-U-go timing mechanism and the general assumption that each turn takes 6 seconds, but it's all the same six seconds despite being adjudicated sequentially.  And, your adjustment is that you still can't do the special thing until after you do the first thing, but, at a certain point, for some claases only, the first thing becomes interruptable by the special thing.




No unrealistic thing outside of what I am altering is relevant.  Realism isn't a dichotomy.  It isn't all or nothing, so whether there is still things that are not realistic involved in other ways just doesn't matter.  What I am doing still improves realism by some amount.



> I get and follow all the rules arguments, here, but they have absolutely nothing to do with realism.  Internal rules consistancy, maybe, but nit realism.




The ones about realism do, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.  You have no ability to change that with your declarations.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> No unrealistic thing outside of what I am altering is relevant.  Realism isn't a dichotomy.  It isn't all or nothing, so whether there is still things that are not realistic involved in other ways just doesn't matter.  What I am doing still improves realism by some amount.



You really think that's adding realism?  Thar's rearrangung deck chairs, man.

If you really were interested on realism, you'd just completely uncouple the shield shove from attack actions instead of continuing to pretend it makes sense to shackle a special maneuver learned through extra training to a game mechanic.  Instead, you say your into realism for the sake of and you picked that as your grand example.



> The ones about realism do, whether you want to admit it to yourself or not.  You have no ability to change that with your declarations.



If that's your realism, Max, I'm not sure there's a useful conversation to be had here.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> If you really were interested on realism, you'd just completely uncouple the shield shove from attack actions instead of continuing to pretend it makes sense to shackle a special maneuver learned through extra training to a game mechanic.  Instead, you say your into realism for the sake of and you picked that as your grand example.




That would be even more realism, sure.  And you can repeat it all you want, but it won't make what I said my "grand example."  It was just a little example I tossed out, not some grand thing to present to you.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> That would be even more realism, sure.  And you can repeat it all you want, but it won't make what I said my "grand example."  It was just a little example I tossed out, not some grand thing to present to you.



You had the entire bredth of your experience, Max, yet you chose to put tgat example forward as your point's champion.  It's really not my responsibility to imagine you a better one.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> You had the entire bredth of your experience, Max, yet you chose to put tgat example forward as your point's champion.  It's really not my responsibility to imagine you a better one.



As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.



Thank you, you've made me realize I misspelled breadth, which has, despite the normally high frequency my typos, specifically disheartened me.


----------



## Alexander Kalinowski

Aldarc said:


> As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.




Well, sure. But we've got to acknowledge that realism is a continuum and where it starts is highly subjective. Some HEMA folks, for example, seem to have pretty high standards.
Otoh, I can see why, for example, someone would consider an axe strike on average doing more damage than a knife cut a mechanical attempt at realism. 
That said, I guess realism in games generally requires some consistency across the entire system or at least across a subsystem.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Alexander Kalinowski said:


> Well, sure. But we've got to acknowledge that realism is a continuum and where it starts is highly subjective. Some HEMA folks, for example, seem to have pretty high standards.
> Otoh, I can see why, for example, someone would consider an axe strike on average doing more damage than a knife cut a mechanical attempt at realism.
> That said, I guess realism in games generally requires some consistency across the entire system or at least across a subsystem.



Yes, but the argument here is about changes to the game to increase realism, done for the sake of realism.  If the baseline for this is "longswords," we're at a point of no discussion.  Firstly because that's not realism and secondly because it's utterly banal as an example of realism in RPGs.  A "longsword* in D&D is a loose grouping of weapons given arbitrary* game mechanics.  "But we have swords, that's realism!"

*and they are arbitrary, if you doubt it give me the reason that they do a d8 without indexing to anything else in D&D.  That was picked out by indexing to an arbitray baseline of damage and could just as easily have been a d6.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> As a general reminder, Max previously cited the simple fact that an RPG has a longsword listed as a weapon and the mere presence of healing mechanics as evidence of realism in RPGs and the valuing thereof. Max may be genuinely employing an exceedingly large, if not vague, sense of what constitutes realism.




Realism is not an all or nothing thing.  You don't have to be attempting to mirror the real world exactly in order to be on the realism spectrum.  All that you need to do to be on that spectrum somewhere is have something, anything that corresponds to some degree with something from the real world.  If you then move that thing farther down the realism spectrum towards the "mirrors reality" end, you have increased the realism in the game.  If you move it farther away, you have decreased it.  My definition while large, is neither vague, nor without meaning.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Realism is not an all or nothing thing.  You don't have to be attempting to mirror the real world exactly in order to be on the realism spectrum.  *All that you need to do to be on that spectrum somewhere is have something, anything that corresponds to some degree with something from the real world.*  If you then move that thing farther down the realism spectrum towards the "mirrors reality" end, you have increased the realism in the game.  If you move it farther away, you have decreased it.  My definition while large, is neither vague, nor without meaning.



So any and everything? Again, you seem to argue using self-redundant words devoid of practical discursive meaning.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> So any and everything? Again, you seem to argue using self-redundant words devoid of practical discursive meaning.




It's broad yes, but that still doesn't make it vague as it's easily defined and understandable, nor useless as once you understand it, which everyone here in the thread easily does, then you can discuss how adding or subtracting from aspects of realism as a goal, is something that some people have.  Broad does not equal vague or useless.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> It's broad yes, but that still doesn't make it vague as it's easily defined and understandable, nor useless as once you understand it, which everyone here in the thread easily does, then you can discuss how adding or subtracting from aspects of realism as a goal, is something that some people have.  Broad does not equal vague or useless.



But, it doesn't, really.  If you're on the end of the spectrum where having longswords is the benchmark, adding incremental realism isn't very meaningful at all. For adding realism to be meaningful, large strides are needed from the shallow end of the realism pool.  It's really hard to meaningfully claim you lurve the realism enough for it to be a design goal in and of itself when your wearing floaties in the shallow end.

To whit, despite your claim above that your modification to shield master incrementally increased realism, it really doesn't do so at all.  It remains just as gamey as it was before, you've just modified the rules a bit.  It's functionality to the game is improved, as it now benefits the user more directly in game terms, but it  hasn't noticably increased realism at all.  It has improved your feeling of internal consistency, but that's not synomymous with realism (even if they may often correlate). A magic system, for instance, is not realistic, but removing contradictions makes it more consistent.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> But, it doesn't, really.  If you're on the end of the spectrum where having longswords is the benchmark, adding incremental realism isn't very meaningful at all. For adding realism to be meaningful, large strides are needed from the shallow end of the realism pool.  It's really hard to meaningfully claim you lurve the realism enough for it to be a design goal in and of itself when your wearing floaties in the shallow end.




Um, why on earth would you think that longswords are at any end of the spectrum?  If you aren't even going to make an attempt to discuss in good faith, why are you even here discussing at all?


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> To whit, despite your claim above that your modification to shield master incrementally increased realism, it really doesn't do so at all.  It remains just as gamey as it was before, you've just modified the rules a bit.  It's functionality to the game is improved, as it now benefits the user more directly in game terms, but it  hasn't noticably increased realism at all.  It has improved your feeling of internal consistency, but that's not synomymous with realism (even if they may often correlate). A magic system, for instance, is not realistic, but removing contradictions makes it more consistent.




I'm thinking the phrase more applicable is logical sense (or internal logic) as opposed to internal consistency. Maybe that is part of where you guys may be missing one another.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Um, why on earth would you think that longswords are at any end of the spectrum?  If you aren't even going to make an attempt to discuss in good faith, why are you even here discussing at all?



Sigh.  It was recently mentioned and was used as an illuminating example for my point.  If you are going to demand good faith, practice it yourself.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I'm thinking the phrase more applicable is logical sense (or internal logic) as opposed to internal consistency. Maybe that is part of where you guys may be missing one another.



I honestly don't see a difference between internally consitent and having internal logic, so I don't really care which is used.  Pick one.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> It's broad yes, but that still doesn't make it vague as it's easily defined and understandable, nor useless as once you understand it, which everyone here in the thread easily does, then you can discuss how adding or subtracting from aspects of realism as a goal, is something that some people have.  Broad does not equal vague or useless.



I think that other people in this thread are operating from their own notions of realism rather than yours. You seem to constantly move the goalposts regarding what constitutes "realism," so it does become quite vague, useless, and meaningless. You have suggested, for example, that the presence of dragons in D&D also constitutes "realism," as the idea for dragons exists in the real world. This is a bizarre criteria for realism, a sort of chimera argument combining solipsism, Platonic Idealism, and Anselm's ontological argument. So I have a question: "What isn't realism?" or "What is not within the parameters or spectrum of realism?"


----------



## pemerton

I tend to think of "realism" as meaning something like _in play, the events and outcomes in this game are somewhat like real life._

D&D tends to be somewhat realisitic, at least at lower levels, insofar as fighting things can get your killed, people tend to go from place to place in much the same way as people did in pre-modern real life, and water is wet. Even at low levels there are elements of D&D that are obviously unrealistic: the social and economic presuppositions of the game; magic; dungeons. And then there are mechanical conventions that are clearly not intended to evoke real life but rather serve a mix of gameplay and genre purposes: combat rounds, hit points and healing, etc.

Systems like Runequest and Rolemaster try to reduce the scope of that last category by itroducing more granular and combat rules that allow for attacks and parries and the infliction of wounds; and try to reduce the middle category as well, by offering gameworlds that offer more coherence in their geographic and social elements.

One feature of these more "simulationist" games is that resolution can become slower than in more simple systems. Is it realistic to take 5 minutes to resolve 10-seconds of action? And what about mechancial features like bird's/general's eye-view vs blind declaration - is the latter more realistic because it emulates the uncertainy of a real fight?

Is Classic Traveller realistic? As a member of our grouip put it, it has a very 60s'/70s social science view of the social aspects of the gameworld - true to a certain conceptoin of life, but perhaps not true to life as such. But it does have rules for dealing with bureaucrats, which is a realistic thing in a modern-world game.

It has FTL travel, and by contemporary standards very backwards infotech - but is that unrealistic, or a realistic example of a society that devoted all its innovative and industrial resources to some aspects of cosmology rather than to computing?

In the end I'm not persuaded that _realism_ serves as a very useful descriptive or evaluative category for RPG systems.


----------



## Shasarak

Ovinomancer said:


> *and they are arbitrary, if you doubt it give me the reason that they do a d8 without indexing to anything else in D&D.  That was picked out by indexing to an arbitray baseline of damage and could just as easily have been a d6.




Everything that humans do is arbitrary so indexing longswords to a d8 is realistic like indexing a second to "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) is realistic.


----------



## innerdude

Shasarak said:


> Everything that humans do is arbitrary so indexing longswords to a d8 is realistic like indexing a second to "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) is realistic.




Wow, I . . . actually learned something today. Atomic clocks.  Who knew?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Shasarak said:


> Everything that humans do is arbitrary so indexing longswords to a d8 is realistic like indexing a second to "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K) is realistic.




I don't agree.  Indexing a made up number to represent a fictional effect is pretty different on the arbitrary scale from setting the already existing and defined second (which could be traced back to an arbitrary decision, yes) to a measurable, physical phenomenon.  That assignation was actually removing arbitrariness from the definition of a second.

The history of time is actually pretty interesting, and is much less based on arbitrary decisions as it was on astronomical observations and daily usefulness.  It was a considered choice, based on serious thought and physical observation.

Also, not 0 Kelvin, _near _0 Kelvin.  We can't get to 0 Kelvin, maybe ever.


----------



## Shasarak

Ovinomancer said:


> I don't agree.  Indexing a made up number to represent a fictional effect is pretty different on the arbitrary scale from setting the already existing and defined second (which could be traced back to an arbitrary decision, yes) to a measurable, physical phenomenon.  That assignation was actually removing arbitrariness from the definition of a second.
> 
> The history of time is actually pretty interesting, and is much less based on arbitrary decisions as it was on astronomical observations and daily usefulness.  It was a considered choice, based on serious thought and physical observation.




I am not saying that there was not serious thought put into it and on the other hand it is as arbitrary as hell.



> Also, not 0 Kelvin, _near _0 Kelvin.  We can't get to 0 Kelvin, maybe ever.




I dont make the definitions, I just think them up and write them down.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Shasarak said:


> I am not saying that there was not serious thought put into it and on the other hand it is as arbitrary as hell.



Um.  You know Max posted the definition of arbitrary upthread, right?  I prefer Merriam-Webster, myself, but the dictionary.com version does okay.  You should have another look.

Gah, now I feel dirty.  I hate arguing definitions.



> I dont make the definitions, I just think them up and write them down.




Another one you  might want to double check.  I looked at Wikipedia, and it doesn't say 0 K, either.


----------



## Shasarak

Ovinomancer said:


> Um.  You know Max posted the definition of arbitrary upthread, right?  I prefer Merriam-Webster, myself, but the dictionary.com version does okay.  You should have another look.
> 
> Gah, now I feel dirty.  I hate arguing definitions.
> 
> 
> 
> Another one you  might want to double check.  I looked at Wikipedia, and it doesn't say 0 K, either.




Ok so we wont debate the whose arbitrary definition of arbitrary is correct but I really do have to laugh when in a thread about how the game world is not like real life someone tells me that the definition that I literally cut and paste from the Wiki does not say what the Wiki says.

So tell me again how real is real life when that happens?


----------



## Neonchameleon

Maxperson said:


> For myself, realism is always the goal when I talk about it and include more of it in my games.  For example, I think going from literally dying to full health after 8 hours to be highly unrealistic, so I'm slowing down healing to give it more realism.  There is no other goal for me than added realism.  I suspect that's the case for most people who like more realism.




For myself being on the verge of dying from injury but those injuries in no way slowing you down or making it harder for you to climb or swing a sword is far more unrealistic than merely recovering fast. When I want realism I break out a system that wasn't originally written by someone who called realism "the refuge of scoundrels". GURPS or Apocalypse World for preference but even the World of Darkness rules are significantly more realistic than D&D.

And going right back to the start of the thread no a GM telling the players about the gameworld isn't like real life. There are however two different approaches - do you go for an extremely low rez version of real life (which the GM telling matches) or do you go for something that rhymes with real life (when the players get to specify things because their characters know the setting and know what to expect).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Shasarak said:


> Ok so we wont debate the whose arbitrary definition of arbitrary is correct but I really do have to laugh when in a thread about how the game world is not like real life someone tells me that the definition that I literally cut and paste from the Wiki does not say what the Wiki says.
> 
> So tell me again how real is real life when that happens?




Cool.  Enjoy!


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I think that other people in this thread are operating from their own notions of realism rather than yours. You seem to constantly move the goalposts regarding what constitutes "realism," so it does become quite vague, useless, and meaningless.




In my first response to you I gave the broad definition of what realism is.  I'm still giving the same definition.  If I've moved any goal posts, it's to move them back to where they belonged after some here have moved them first.



> You have suggested, for example, that the presence of dragons in D&D also constitutes "realism," as the idea for dragons exists in the real world. This is a bizarre criteria for realism, a sort of chimera argument combining solipsism, Platonic Idealism, and Anselm's ontological argument. So I have a question: "What isn't realism?" or "What is not within the parameters or spectrum of realism?"




Pretty much everything is on the spectrum since it covers 100% unrealsitic to 100% realistic.  All that's left to do is take something on the spectrum and either leave it where it's at, make it less realistic, or make it more realistic.  Let's take D&D magic.  Magic exists as a concept in the real world, so there's X level of realism involved with D&D magic.  However, just because it's magic doesn't mean that you cannot make it more realistic.  You could for example, remove the magic mechanics as D&D provides them, and in their place put in a magic/worship system called Voodoo, then do research and make the new system closely mirror what real world Voodoo is supposed to be able to do.  Bam!  A more realistic magic system.

If I wanted to do that, it doesn't matter than ultimately my magic system will still not mirror the real world version of voodoo, or that magic doesn't exist in the real world.  It still has a measure of realism due to it's relation to the real world Voodoo religion/magic and the closer I make it in the game, the more realistic it will be.


----------



## Maxperson

Neonchameleon said:


> For myself being on the verge of dying from injury but those injuries in no way slowing you down or making it harder for you to climb or swing a sword is far more unrealistic than merely recovering fast. When I want realism I break out a system that wasn't originally written by someone who called realism "the refuge of scoundrels". GURPS or Apocalypse World for preference but even the World of Darkness rules are significantly more realistic than D&D.




This is true, but we then go back to some unrealistic things being necessary for the game to play.  Let's talk combat.  It's unrealistic in the extreme that my PC standing 10 feet from the door can't get out before the 20 goblins who won initiative all move 30 feet and dash 30 more to cut off my escape.  However, if we start trying to play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable.  

Introducing a wound system where the pain from injuries starts to inhibit PCs to the point anywhere near what happens in the real world would make combat miserable for most people.  Some intense simulationists might enjoy it, but most of us would rather scratch a chalkboard with our fingernails 10 times in a row.  Making healing a bit more realistic, though, that's going to be acceptable to a good percentage of people who play the game.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> This is true, but we then go back to some unrealistic things being necessary for the game to play.  Let's talk combat.  It's unrealistic in the extreme that my PC standing 10 feet from the door can't get out before the 20 goblins who won initiative all move 30 feet and dash 30 more to cut off my escape.  However, if we start trying to play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable.



This is an empirical claim, about what is possible in game design and game play, and I don't think it's true. It's not that hard to have a combat resolution system that gives the goblins a chance to cut you off, but equally gives you a chance to escape. Modern D&D stop-motion resolution is a very particular way of doing combat resolution, that is far from universal and that I don't think I had even come across before 3E was published.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is an empirical claim, about what is possible in game design and game play, and I don't think it's true. It's not that hard to have a combat resolution system that gives the goblins a chance to cut you off, but equally gives you a chance to escape. Modern D&D stop-motion resolution is a very particular way of doing combat resolution, that is far from universal and that I don't think I had even come across before 3E was published.




That isn't what I said, though.  This is what I said, "However, if we start trying to *play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them*, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable."

That involves a lot more than just having a chance to escape.  Goblin one moves, then 19 other goblins and the PCs have a chance to react to what is happening.  Then all the goblins and the PC start reacting to each other.  Perhaps the goblins all start to rush.  But what if 3 pull out crossbows?  Goblins will react by getting out of the way.  The PC will react by trying to get to cover or low to the ground.  The crossbow goblins maybe aim lower, or maybe move to get better position.  And on and on.  That just can't be effectively modeled and even if you try, it will take huge amounts of real time to play out a combat like that.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> That isn't what I said, though.  This is what I said, "However, if we start trying to *play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them*, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable."
> 
> That involves a lot more than just having a chance to escape.  Goblin one moves, then 19 other goblins and the PCs have a chance to react to what is happening.  Then all the goblins and the PC start reacting to each other.  Perhaps the goblins all start to rush.  But what if 3 pull out crossbows?  Goblins will react by getting out of the way.  The PC will react by trying to get to cover or low to the ground.  The crossbow goblins maybe aim lower, or maybe move to get better position.  And on and on.  That just can't be effectively modeled and even if you try, it will take huge amounts of real time to play out a combat like that.



There's a strong argument to be made that the extra time taken would be worth it.

And even if one can't model it all perfectly there's some easy steps to take that'll at least get you closer:

- use a much smaller die for initiatives (I suggest unmodified d6) and allow simultaneous rolls to all resolve at once
- reroll initiatives every round for every participant
- add in a body-fatigue system for hit points where b.p. are harder to cure/rest back
- don't have movement be mini-teleports, work out where each participant is each segment to determine who is getting in the way of who
- etc.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> There's a strong argument to be made that the extra time taken would be worth it.
> 
> And even if one can't model it all perfectly there's some easy steps to take that'll at least get you closer:
> 
> - use a much smaller die for initiatives (I suggest unmodified d6) and allow simultaneous rolls to all resolve at once
> - reroll initiatives every round for every participant
> - add in a body-fatigue system for hit points where b.p. are harder to cure/rest back
> - don't have movement be mini-teleports, work out where each participant is each segment to determine who is getting in the way of who
> - etc.



- decouple Dexterity from Initiative


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> That isn't what I said, though.  This is what I said, "However, if we start trying to *play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them*, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable."
> 
> That involves a lot more than just having a chance to escape.  Goblin one moves, then 19 other goblins and the PCs have a chance to react to what is happening.  Then all the goblins and the PC start reacting to each other.  Perhaps the goblins all start to rush.  But what if 3 pull out crossbows?  Goblins will react by getting out of the way.  The PC will react by trying to get to cover or low to the ground.  The crossbow goblins maybe aim lower, or maybe move to get better position.  And on and on.  That just can't be effectively modeled and even if you try, it will take huge amounts of real time to play out a combat like that.



Hogwash, Max.  You just got done saying realism is a spectrum and any move towards the deep end is good enough for you to satisfy your goal of realism (for the sake of realism).  Yet, here, you've set up another new (false) dichotomy that games either have to be gamey UGoIGo or there has to be constant reaction abilities (which  you still see as just a finer grained UGoIGo for some reason).  You just said it's not enough to move towards the deep end of the realism pool, you have to meet your new goalpost of high fidelity realism or you've failed. 

That's why [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] said you move goalposts.

In reality, many systems do a better job of simultaneous combat.  HERO, Powered by the Apocalypse, etc.  Many of these also model injury better. Some are more granular thar D&D (HERO), some less (PbtA).


----------



## Imaculata

Maxperson said:


> This is true, but we then go back to some unrealistic things being necessary for the game to play.  Let's talk combat.  It's unrealistic in the extreme that my PC standing 10 feet from the door can't get out before the 20 goblins who won initiative all move 30 feet and dash 30 more to cut off my escape.  However, if we start trying to play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable.





There are systems that allow simultaneous combat resolution just fine, and are faster than D&D. Like the game Crossfire for example, which simulates WWII era battles.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> There are systems that allow simultaneous combat resolution just fine, and are faster than D&D. Like the game Crossfire for example, which simulates WWII era battles.




I just looked at those rules, and while they are better than D&D at combat realism, it's still not really simultaneous combat.  If your side rolls badly, the other side can keep moving and moving before you get to move.  The reactive fire helps try and minimize that, though.


----------



## Shasarak

Lanefan said:


> There's a strong argument to be made that the extra time taken would be worth it.




We already have 30 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours so I really dont think arguments for taking extra time is as strong as you imagine.

Take 4th edition for example, that definitely had longer fights that were maybe half as enjoyable as a normal DnD fight.  So now we are down to 15 minutes of fun.


----------



## Lanefan

Shasarak said:


> We already have 30 minutes of fun packed into 4 hours so I really dont think arguments for taking extra time is as strong as you imagine.
> 
> Take 4th edition for example, that definitely had longer fights that were maybe half as enjoyable as a normal DnD fight.  So now we are down to 15 minutes of fun.



Ah, but I somehow don't think attention to realism was the reason for those particular combats taking longer.


----------



## Shasarak

Lanefan said:


> Ah, but I somehow don't think attention to realism was the reason for those particular combats taking longer.




Mmm rolling hit location *yawn* rolling secondary chart *yawn* sorry cant hear you over the combat drag *yawn* oh so realis *sleep*


----------



## innerdude

Shasarak said:


> Mmm rolling hit location *yawn* rolling secondary chart *yawn* sorry cant hear you over the combat drag *yawn* oh so realis *sleep*




I should report you for trespassing, for clearly you were lurking in the room during every GURPS campaign I ever participated in*. 


*(not as the GM, for the record).


----------



## Imaculata

Maxperson said:


> I just looked at those rules, and while they are better than D&D at combat realism, it's still not really simultaneous combat.  If your side rolls badly, the other side can keep moving and moving before you get to move.  The reactive fire helps try and minimize that, though.




Yeah, I really like the reactive fire rule. The system steps away from the idea of everyone taking turns, and instead allows actions based on what is happening during a fight. If one squad moves forward, they move forward until they are stopped, and enemies can respond to this by making attacks as the squad moves out of cover.

It's not perfect, but its a lot closer to modeling the chaotic nature of combat, where people don't just take turns attacking. And a reaction basically takes place simultaneously with another squad's movement. I think this shows that you can create a rulesystem that comes a bit closer to realism than most other systems that I know of, and that plays faster as well.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> This thread is a spin-off of this thread. Its immediate trigger is the following post:
> 
> 
> In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of _request_, _permission_, _decision_ etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).
> 
> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.
> 
> That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.
> 
> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.




Ok, something that interests me greatly, but I don’t have time to go through all the posts now, so I apologize if I’m repeating others’ positions.

To me the crux of the matter is the perception of the players. 

I’m not concerned whether the causal processes of the game world mirror that of our world. My concern is that it seems like they are. 

For example a common leadership technique to help build buy-in and consensus is to make somebody else think an idea is theirs. It doesn’t really matter if it is, as long as they think it is. Because people tend to be more invested in things that are. 

So when a scenario like your example comes up, I don’t care whether I had written up the people that are present ahead of time, determine it randomly, decide on the spot, or any combination of these and other approaches and techniques.

What I care about is how the players/PCs experience it. And that essentially comes down to being believable, which is a bit of an art.

For example, something nature is good at, but people aren’t, is being sufficiently random. For example, if you were to build a model of terrain of a small field and part of a forest, it often looks “not quite right.” Not because of the textures, materials, and such, but because we have a hard time being random in our placement, but not too random. The art is in making it look appropriately random. 

But the reality is, it’s not really entirely random. There is a causal process at work, which is what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is referring to. 

So when a player says they want to go to the tea room to see if so-and-is is there, I can consider that causal process. It’s not a question of going through every potential activity and interaction that person might have made to place them in the tea room or not. But we can consider that process when setting a probability between yes, no, or it’s not obvious enough so I’ll roll. 

As GM I might have considered this process ahead of time, and already have an answer. We’re not really modeling the causal process per se, but using our understanding of the existence and general nature of that causal process to model the results. 

This is part of what I’d consider realism. That is. The part that the players experience feels like they experience the real world. In other words, it generally makes sense based on how they experience life in this world. Even with elements of fantasy, magic, etc., the events presented by the GM “make sense.”

To me it’s similar to what a writer might describe as “the story writing itself.” When the player asks goes to the tea room, the rules of the game frame how to determine whether or not they are there. That impacts who provides input into that decision, but it can still be made to model “reality.”

Now I get that to some players that the process is as important if not more important. This too is a perception thing, and that is the perception of whether the cool thing that happens in the story is more or less important to how that result was accomplished. And thinking about it, they are kind of focusing on two different things. If it’s the results that matters more - the focus is on the characters. If the process matters more, then the focus is on the players and/or the game. 

To some, a TPK at the hands of the monster is fine if that’s the way the dice fell. 

To others, they don’t want a TPK even if that’s what the dice say. 

Another group are fine with the TPK regardless of dice or not, as long as it was interesting. 

So I get the sense, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], that your measure of realism is more about the process rather than the result. But I disagree. I think that for many (most?) the experience is what matters. TV shows, movies, books, rtfs can all be experienced as “realistic” whether they are an account of actual events or fiction.

The show Westworld is also a great study of what’s real and what’s not. The guests can experience, for example, a train robbery. One guest might experience it as a game, because they know that it’s not real, and they focus in part on the fact that it isn’t. But another can be fully immersed, and experience it as real. If a guest wasn’t informed how the park worked, the event would be real, as far as they were concerned. 

I think that realism is a matter of perception, and focus. Do you choose to experience the game as if things were happening due to normal causal processes? If the GM is good at simulating the results of these processes it might be very easy to suspend your disbelief and experience it from that perspective. 

In the time I’ve known you on the forums, you seem particularly opposed to GM secrets, and characterizing techniques such as “mother may I,” or, “playing to learn what’s in the GM’s notes,” etc. I find those as a superficial short-hand that fails to acknowledge that, say, a GM’s prepared material isn’t always fixed, isn’t independent of ongoing activities in the game, and is able to incorporate player input.

But without getting into where I might disagree, I think it highlights that your perception of, and the way you experience the game is centered around the process, at least in part. There isn’t anything wrong with this, and I’d go so far to say it’s probably a characteristic and part of who you are. And there are games designed specifically for that playstyle.

I don’t fully “get it” because it’s not the way I experience it. For example, there are people that will say a DM fudging a die roll invalidates their success and ruins the game. From an intellectual standpoint I understand what they are saying. But I don’t “get it.” Because it’s not a feeling I’ve ever experienced. I enjoy knowing what happened behind the curtain. Wow, we were about to die 27 times and you altered things to make sure we didn’t? Cool! Nicely done! In other words, I just don’t care about that. At all.

That’s just part of who I am.

And I think that’s part of the disconnect between players like you and me. We can agree on lots of things. But a lot of threads like these (another example - What is World Building For?) not only highlight philosophical differences, but experiential differences.

I also think we can still learn a lot from each other. My approaches to GMing have changed from discussions with you and others.

For a person like me, who values “realism,” it’s about the experience. It’s more important than the process. It’s more important than “The Rule of Cool,” or “Just Say Yes,” and doesn’t condemn illusionism, fudging,or similar techniques. It’s not my job to ensure you can succeed in an encounter, and balance is not fetishized. A half-orc with a penalty in Intelligence can still strive to be a wizard, and while I try to provide an interesting experience, I can’t be entirely responsible for your fun. No, you don’t need to be able to buy magic items with your treasure, but you will pay taxes, money-changing fees, and for food, and other necessities. You’ll probably be targeted by thieves as you flaunt your new wealth. Poison can be save or die. And if you fall in a 50’ pit by yourself with no rope, no way to fly, and break a leg and can’t climb, you might just die in a couple of days at the bottom of a pit. And even if you get out, that broken leg will be a problem for a while unless you have access to 7th level or better spells (and you probably don’t). Sometimes it sucks to be an adventurer. 

It’s also not about me, the GM. Yes, I’ll provide plot hooks and threads, events, etc. Yes, it’s a creative process for me. But it’s also an impartial process for me. The giants stealing sheep from the local farmers are doing it because the winter has been unusually harsh. And if you, the PCs, decide to do something about it. Great. Or not. It doesn’t matter to me, although what you choose to do or not will have consequences.

Although it acknowledges the existence of the process, it’s not about modeling the causal process itself, it’s about modeling the results of the process.


----------



## pemerton

It seems to me that, if the players declare _We go to the teahouse to look for sect members_, then clearly it is believable to them that the sect members might be in the teahouse. 

So it seems to me that, whatever method is used to work out whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse, it won't contradict _believability_ for them to be their.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ilbranteloth said:


> Ok, something that interests me greatly, but I don’t have time to go through all the posts now, so I apologize if I’m repeating others’ positions.
> 
> To me the crux of the matter is the perception of the players.
> 
> I’m not concerned whether the causal processes of the game world mirror that of our world. My concern is that it seems like they are.
> 
> For example a common leadership technique to help build buy-in and consensus is to make somebody else think an idea is theirs. It doesn’t really matter if it is, as long as they think it is. Because people tend to be more invested in things that are.
> 
> So when a scenario like your example comes up, I don’t care whether I had written up the people that are present ahead of time, determine it randomly, decide on the spot, or any combination of these and other approaches and techniques.
> 
> What I care about is how the players/PCs experience it. And that essentially comes down to being believable, which is a bit of an art.
> 
> For example, something nature is good at, but people aren’t, is being sufficiently random. For example, if you were to build a model of terrain of a small field and part of a forest, it often looks “not quite right.” Not because of the textures, materials, and such, but because we have a hard time being random in our placement, but not too random. The art is in making it look appropriately random.
> 
> But the reality is, it’s not really entirely random. There is a causal process at work, which is what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is referring to.
> 
> So when a player says they want to go to the tea room to see if so-and-is is there, I can consider that causal process. It’s not a question of going through every potential activity and interaction that person might have made to place them in the tea room or not. But we can consider that process when setting a probability between yes, no, or it’s not obvious enough so I’ll roll.
> 
> As GM I might have considered this process ahead of time, and already have an answer. We’re not really modeling the causal process per se, but using our understanding of the existence and general nature of that causal process to model the results.
> 
> This is part of what I’d consider realism. That is. The part that the players experience feels like they experience the real world. In other words, it generally makes sense based on how they experience life in this world. Even with elements of fantasy, magic, etc., the events presented by the GM “make sense.”
> 
> To me it’s similar to what a writer might describe as “the story writing itself.” When the player asks goes to the tea room, the rules of the game frame how to determine whether or not they are there. That impacts who provides input into that decision, but it can still be made to model “reality.”
> 
> Now I get that to some players that the process is as important if not more important. This too is a perception thing, and that is the perception of whether the cool thing that happens in the story is more or less important to how that result was accomplished. And thinking about it, they are kind of focusing on two different things. If it’s the results that matters more - the focus is on the characters. If the process matters more, then the focus is on the players and/or the game.
> 
> To some, a TPK at the hands of the monster is fine if that’s the way the dice fell.
> 
> To others, they don’t want a TPK even if that’s what the dice say.
> 
> Another group are fine with the TPK regardless of dice or not, as long as it was interesting.
> 
> So I get the sense, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], that your measure of realism is more about the process rather than the result. But I disagree. I think that for many (most?) the experience is what matters. TV shows, movies, books, rtfs can all be experienced as “realistic” whether they are an account of actual events or fiction.
> 
> The show Westworld is also a great study of what’s real and what’s not. The guests can experience, for example, a train robbery. One guest might experience it as a game, because they know that it’s not real, and they focus in part on the fact that it isn’t. But another can be fully immersed, and experience it as real. If a guest wasn’t informed how the park worked, the event would be real, as far as they were concerned.
> 
> I think that realism is a matter of perception, and focus. Do you choose to experience the game as if things were happening due to normal causal processes? If the GM is good at simulating the results of these processes it might be very easy to suspend your disbelief and experience it from that perspective.
> 
> In the time I’ve known you on the forums, you seem particularly opposed to GM secrets, and characterizing techniques such as “mother may I,” or, “playing to learn what’s in the GM’s notes,” etc. I find those as a superficial short-hand that fails to acknowledge that, say, a GM’s prepared material isn’t always fixed, isn’t independent of ongoing activities in the game, and is able to incorporate player input.
> 
> But without getting into where I might disagree, I think it highlights that your perception of, and the way you experience the game is centered around the process, at least in part. There isn’t anything wrong with this, and I’d go so far to say it’s probably a characteristic and part of who you are. And there are games designed specifically for that playstyle.
> 
> I don’t fully “get it” because it’s not the way I experience it. For example, there are people that will say a DM fudging a die roll invalidates their success and ruins the game. From an intellectual standpoint I understand what they are saying. But I don’t “get it.” Because it’s not a feeling I’ve ever experienced. I enjoy knowing what happened behind the curtain. Wow, we were about to die 27 times and you altered things to make sure we didn’t? Cool! Nicely done! In other words, I just don’t care about that. At all.
> 
> That’s just part of who I am.
> 
> And I think that’s part of the disconnect between players like you and me. We can agree on lots of things. But a lot of threads like these (another example - What is World Building For?) not only highlight philosophical differences, but experiential differences.
> 
> I also think we can still learn a lot from each other. My approaches to GMing have changed from discussions with you and others.
> 
> For a person like me, who values “realism,” it’s about the experience. It’s more important than the process. It’s more important than “The Rule of Cool,” or “Just Say Yes,” and doesn’t condemn illusionism, fudging,or similar techniques. It’s not my job to ensure you can succeed in an encounter, and balance is not fetishized. A half-orc with a penalty in Intelligence can still strive to be a wizard, and while I try to provide an interesting experience, I can’t be entirely responsible for your fun. No, you don’t need to be able to buy magic items with your treasure, but you will pay taxes, money-changing fees, and for food, and other necessities. You’ll probably be targeted by thieves as you flaunt your new wealth. Poison can be save or die. And if you fall in a 50’ pit by yourself with no rope, no way to fly, and break a leg and can’t climb, you might just die in a couple of days at the bottom of a pit. And even if you get out, that broken leg will be a problem for a while unless you have access to 7th level or better spells (and you probably don’t). Sometimes it sucks to be an adventurer.
> 
> It’s also not about me, the GM. Yes, I’ll provide plot hooks and threads, events, etc. Yes, it’s a creative process for me. But it’s also an impartial process for me. The giants stealing sheep from the local farmers are doing it because the winter has been unusually harsh. And if you, the PCs, decide to do something about it. Great. Or not. It doesn’t matter to me, although what you choose to do or not will have consequences.
> 
> Although it acknowledges the existence of the process, it’s not about modeling the causal process itself, it’s about modeling the results of the process.




I think the argument that the process needs to be the same for realism across mediums is actually highly fallacious. That would be like arguing for realism to be portrayed correctly in film, it would have to follow the same process as reality. But films are edited and put together in ways that follow processes demanded by the medium, not by real world physics (though they intersect at obvious moments). The same thing for a book or a comic. What matters is the result, its impact on the audience, and the amount of internal consistency/logic you can find when examining it closely (or by asking the GM questions after the session).


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It seems to me that, if the players declare _We go to the teahouse to look for sect members_, then clearly it is believable to them that the sect members might be in the teahouse.
> 
> So it seems to me that, whatever method is used to work out whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse, it won't contradict _believability_ for them to be their.




I think the method can matter. A lot of this would pivot though on why they suggested the tea house. If they suggested the tea house because they had good reason to suspect the people were there, then sure they probably won't find anything a miss when they go there and the bone breaking sect is present. I think though if the GM is frequently having things happen simply because the PCs suggest it, over time, they may start to suspect their ideas are driving the reality of the campaign. And I think that is the crux of it. If their ideas are not actually the thing making that determination, there isn't really anything to hide in terms of believability. The GM is honestly making that determination based on existing material or reasoning his/her way to a conclusion about it based on criteria like what makes sense based on what is going on. Generally when believability collapses in a campaign, it isn't a certainty, it is more like a dawning realization. Similar to how you sometimes slowly realize you've been in a railroad if no matter what direction you go, you were bound to face that same plot hook or adventure. If no matter where we decide to go, what we are looking for is there, it is kind of the quantum ogre problem, just in reverse.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> It seems to me that, if the players declare _We go to the teahouse to look for sect members_, then clearly it is believable to them that the sect members might be in the teahouse.
> 
> So it seems to me that, whatever method is used to work out whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse, it won't contradict _believability_ for them to be their.



Context matters.

If the PCs in the fiction have already found or suspected a connection between the sect and the teahouse the expectation of finding sect members there would (or should!) quite reasonably be somewhat higher than if the teahouse visit was purely speculative.

It's when a disproportionate number of purely speculative actions pay off - i.e. coincidence gets stretched too far - that things quickly start becoming less believable.  This can happen in a few different ways:
- the players are more or less subtly being led by the nose and don't realize it; or
- the GM says yes far too often, and-or
- the GM is letting the players make up the story and just going with whatever they suggest rather than enforcing setting constraints and-or plausibility.

All three of these are bad for believability - and thus playability - in their own ways.


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## Shasarak

I think we should educate our players not to hold racist stereotypical beliefs about how all sect members are some kind of tea drinking miscreants with nothing better to do with their time but to hang around at tea houses.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> IMO some areas where 4e broke this was... too much balance (especially around magic items, encounters, etc.) in these videogames the rewards for exploration are real, you want a god roll weapon or a rare perk or powerful armor that actually powers you up and gives you a real advantage in the game... and if you're good enough, lucky enough or have a good enough team you'll risk more difficult areas of play to get a chance at better rewards.    4e instead gave us the expectation of balanced encounters, bland pseudo rewards that could easily be substituted out with a +x modifier, a set # of treasure parcels at every level, and a power curve that kind of dropped to super easy through paragon and epic tier.




I find this to be a fallacy. In ANY game system, if certain capabilities are available to the players then said game is going to assume the presence of those capabilities. There is, thus, no such thing as an 'actual power up' as opposed to a pseudo reward'. In AD&D if the DM rewards the PCs with the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords and a Holy Avenger +5, then surely the following challenges they are matched against from that point onward will scale to take those things into account. Thus it may be true that "Level 10" in AD&D by itself means less than it does in 4e, as there are relatively few guidelines as to what sort of rewards PCs should get at any given point in the level system of that game. It is fair to say that all level 10 4e PCs have roughly the same potency against a given encounter budget or SC of a given level/complexity, but is this really a bad thing? 

Beyond that, how does this logic play out? If we accept that AD&D allows for these 'big rewards' then surely if a DM steadfastly withholds them, then aren't they denying their players an element of the game which they can expect? This leads us right back to the fallacy of 'actual power up', the existence of such power ups implies they will be used. Its an open question of pacing as to when (this really is not too much tied to what level they come into play, as in AD&D the DM is relatively free to provide for slow or fast level advancement). 



> Not to mention it then created a combat engine that instead of being exciting, fast paced and easily resolved was sloooowwwww (another area where videogames were already ahead that 4e just made worse). It basically, when played as presented, made exploration, at least from a reward perspective, pointless that's why these videogames do it so much better than 4e.




This one is of course a matter of lived experience, so I'm in no way going to dispute what you experienced. My own experience with running 4e was that I was able to create exciting and engaging 'action scenes' pretty easily, and that these didn't have any specific tendency to bog down. I mean, I can remember several combats where things got 'stuck' for this or that reason, but I wouldn't say it was worse than in AD&D especially (where you could easily have encounters that were filled with 'whiff fest' where everyone needed at least a 15 or more to hit and 10 rounds could go by with nothing much happening). Moreover AD&D (and 3.x even more so) often commits the sin of leaving some of the PCs with nothing significant to do at all. The wizard without a useful spell, the thief once he did his one backstab, sometimes a fighter vs certain types of opponent, anyone that failed on a SOD. Nothing is slower than watching from the sidelines...



> Now honestly I think anything done in perpetuity is going to get boring at some point and I also think your are drawing a false dichotomy between exploration and story/plot... they aren't mutually exclusive or at odds with each other and my preferred method is a combination of the two.




Can't disagree with this  Everything is story! If exploration is there, it is because it is what the players WANT in their story!


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I find this to be a fallacy. In ANY game system, if certain capabilities are available to the players then said game is going to assume the presence of those capabilities. There is, thus, no such thing as an 'actual power up' as opposed to a pseudo reward'. In AD&D if the DM rewards the PCs with the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords and a Holy Avenger +5, then surely the following challenges they are matched against from that point onward will scale to take those things into account. Thus it may be true that "Level 10" in AD&D by itself means less than it does in 4e, as there are relatively few guidelines as to what sort of rewards PCs should get at any given point in the level system of that game. It is fair to say that all level 10 4e PCs have roughly the same potency against a given encounter budget or SC of a given level/complexity, but is this really a bad thing?
> !




I think it is fair to say 4E was very balanced (way more than 3E was in my opinion). I don't that is bad. It is just where things were at the time. On the heels of 3E, making a more balanced game made some kind of sense. I did want more balance. I think I didn't realize that I just wanted a tad more balance (less optimized builds, for instance). I think where 3E and 4E are similar is this idea of building encounters around the party's ability (scaling and balancing encounters to the party). this did kind of exist in AD&D but you really had to eye ball it, and it wasn't an assumption at most tables I played at that the encounters were that tailored to the group. I think the issue of 'automated balance and scaling' are a different thing entirely. That is a matter of how much you want the system to play to the conceit of game balance automatically. Personally I like rough edges in games, and I like things that are external to the characters (like magic weapons) to not be automatically assumed. But that does lead to less certain outcomes for the party.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> That is absolutely true, and I earnestly believe that is valid for those people. But if a player approaches us and tells us that they want us to run a game with greater realism, then we are placed in the position of having to unravel and tease out from them _how_ that means for them and _how_ they want that realism applied more palpably.



It is worse than just that, because there are all these vast dimensions to the 'unreality' of D&D. When a person is insisting on 'realism' and 'D&D' at the same time, they MUST perforce be using an EXTREMELY selective definition of realism! 

Most of D&D, frankly, simply cannot be gauged on a scale of realistic to unrealistic at all, because it is entirely fantastic. Even the most generous interpretation of hit points as luck/skill/chutzpah/whatever with a little 'meat' thrown in is still completely crazy. Its impossible to imagine high level characters, there's simply nothing even vaguely like a person of 4th or higher level (in most classes) in AD&D. Sure, sometimes people are lucky and survive crazy things like falling 10 stories, or being mauled by a bear, or maybe sometimes we hear a story of a soldier who defeats 100 enemies single-handedly. However, there are NO stories about real people who do this kind of thing again and again. Luck isn't some sort of attribute that people have; in the real world its simply a statement about probabilities and our perception of certain outcomes as unusual. Likewise no amount of skill allows you to fall 30' over and over again onto hard surfaces and not die. 

But this is only one SMALL example. I could point out 100 more, but they should be pretty obvious. Most of it ends up falling under the rubric of "but it is magical." So, why is it only certain things are allowed to be magical in this type of analysis? Oddly they generally seem to be selected such as to allow only for the 'traditional play' of D&D! It seems to me that, in general, the 'realism argument' is really an argument for playing D&D in a certain specific style. So it would be more effectively framed that way!



> I agree that natural recovery is something that we experience in life; however, I still think that it exists as smokescreen for discussion about healing in games where health points are primarily an abstracted pacing mechanic. I see the emphasis of most game design discussion not on "how realistic do we want healing in our games?" but on "what sort of pacing do we want for our games?"
> 
> Overnight healing in 5e, for example, does not seem to stem from any debate about the degree of realism, but, rather, from the degree of pacing: i.e., how they quickly they wanted characters back up on their feet for adventurous gameplay. Even with 1e, I suspect that it was less about realism and more about game pacing as well. "If you don't want to be out of action of a long time, play smart and avoid combat!" Any approximation to realism may have been incidental.




Healing in AD&D isn't any more realistic than it is in 4e or 5e. I mean, spend even a few hours around people recovering from serious injuries such as would almost inevitably result from (and historically DO result from) melee combat. AD&D's model of recovery is preposterously unrealistic, in every particular. It is at least an order of magnitude too fast, for all but the most trivial injuries which would hardly inconvenience a hard-core combatant. It utterly ignores the devastatingly disabling nature of the vast majority of such injuries. Sure, people recover pretty well from a lot of injuries, EVENTUALLY and with lots of PT and whatnot, but they don't just get perfectly better after lying down for a week without significant care. Most often there is at least some permanent disability. This is not even to address the lack of realism in modeling injury to begin with.

I am always left questioning just what is any more unrealistic about healing at the end of a single day. Really, after all of the above THAT is the one straw that broke the camel's back? Again, I am left mostly with the impression that it is disliked merely because it isn't how EGG did it in 1974. That is FINE, really, but should more profitably be described as such, and not as some mythical search for 'realism'. 



> So when designing games, this is often a question of "how do we want this mechanic to reflect the tone or desired play experience of the game?" or "How does this mechanic reinforce the themes of the game?" So I don't necessarily assume that realism is the baseline presumption in game design. I do assume, however, that the baseline presumption of game design is a desire to cultivate a "fun" experience.




I think there IS a principle that is engaged in terms of making things COHERENT. This isn't the same as realistic, but there are some parallels. Players need to be able to reason about the situations which their characters find themselves in, so that they can come up with mutually acceptable decisions about what is implied by the fictional positioning. This is important to the GM, in order to communicate what the meaning of a given scene is (IE what is at stake, how does the situation bear on the PC's interests/character/plans/resources). It is important to the players in terms of what they see as being 'in bounds' in terms of the actions they can take, realistic possible fiction they could introduce (in some games, not all allow this), etc. 

Examples are of course trivial but could include:

1) Is this pit in the floor in front of me hazardous? To what degree? What is involved in climbing down into it?

2) Is it acceptable for me to leverage a game mechanic to produce a laser pistol which I find in the Duke's bathroom?

3) Am I risking my character's health if he plunges into the city sewers? 

All of the above are questions which could be asked. #1 and #3 are significantly impacted by questions of 'realism' (IE how does gravity work, how does damage work, is disease a consideration and how does it work, etc.). It is certainly helpful, at a default baseline level, if the players can reason about these things in terms they are familiar from in the real world. Of course, few of us are well-versed in what the chances of infection are from plunging into real-world sewage, so the value of this approach is finite, but it still has value as a baseline. This is why you will see very few RPGs which don't at least begin by establishing their relation to real-world elements, nor do many assume that the most common fundamental elements of the world are radically different (IE they pretty much all assume gravity works like in reality). 

#2 is a different question of course, but is still closely related in that it deals with 'genre coherency' which is a way of simplifying the task of deciding what the world is like even in unrealistic terms.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I think the method can matter.



I also think the method can matter. Some other posters seem to disagree, though.




Bedrockgames said:


> I think though if the GM is frequently having things happen simply because the PCs suggest it, over time, they may start to suspect their ideas are driving the reality of the campaign.





Lanefan said:


> It's when a disproportionate number of purely speculative actions pay off - i.e. coincidence gets stretched too far - that things quickly start becoming less believable.  This can happen in a few different ways:
> - the players are more or less subtly being led by the nose and don't realize it; or
> - the GM says yes far too often, and-or
> - the GM is letting the players make up the story and just going with whatever they suggest rather than enforcing setting constraints and-or plausibility.



Both these posts seem to asssume that there are only two possible resolution systems for determining if the PCs find sect members at the teahouse: the GM decides based on his/her beliefs about the gameworld, or the GM "says 'yes'".

That is, they seem to assume that play will be driven simply by GM decision-making.

I find that to be an odd assumption to make, but unsurprisingly I agree that _running a game that way_ will tend to make for a mediocre play experience.

(One reason I find it an odd assumption: the first RPG system I know of that explicitly deals with the issue of trying to find certain sorts of people in urban situations is Traveller (1977), and it assumes that the outcome of such attempts will be affected by rolls that are affected by skills like Admin, Streetwise and Leadership, with subsequent supplements adding further relevant skills like Carousing and Recruiting. It doesn't say anything about the referee just decding what happens.)


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I find that to be an odd assumption to make, but unsurprisingly I agree that _running a game that way_ will tend to make for a mediocre play experience.




Permerton, I would really like to have a genuine discussion on this issue with you. But when you do things like this putting words in our mouths and taking things we say to draw conclusions we never asserted or even suggested, it makes it very hard to have a dialogue with you about games. It just doesn't feel like it is being done in good faith.


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## Manbearcat

One quick comment on balance.  This comment will be invoking 4e (because that is what has been invoked), but at its heart, its a design question (as an input) and the related product of play (output).

*4e's balance often gets invoked as if its (a) some sort of retardent to dynamism and (b) some form of perpetuator of status quo.*

That isn't correct for 4e (its actually not even in the realm of correct and the inverse is provably so) and its not correct as a product of design aimed at balance.

4e has balance on 4 different axes:

1)  Broad intraparty balance at the site of the encounter.

2)  Broad intraparty balance at the site of the adventuring day.

3)  Expectant results of a 5 player party (which covers all the Roles) vs unremarkable deployment of a same level encounter budget.

4)  Expectant results of an archetypal workday for a 5 player party (which covers all the Roles).


Because these 4 design aims are explicit and were achieved, there seems to be this designation by some (typically those that didn't play it very much or didn't play it at all), that such (achieved) design aims must yield a play culture that stays tightly within the boundaries of (3) and (4).  Then, following from that, there is this assumption of my (a) and (b) above (lack of dynamism and boring, uninteresting status quo).  

The problem with this is simple.   The idea that (3) and (4) are actual play culture fundamentals is absolutely wrong.  They are balance calibration features of design.  Further, those two as play culture artifacts are completely at at tension as (4) assumes you aren't doing 3!  Further still, both DMGs go on at length of how to perturb that balance calibration archetype and what the implications of such perturbance will be...therefore assuming you're going to be doing just that!

Further, further, further, still...

If each Role can be thought of as a different Magic the Gathering deck (and that is exactly how they should be thought of - I guarantee that was a design impetus if not THE design impetus; eg a "Monored Aggro Burn vs Jeskai Midrange"), then significantly varying the exact same encounter budget and using different battlefield qualities (terrain, obstacles, distances, terrain powers, Hazards/Traps) and different objectives (eg "Hold the Line vs Waves", "Escort/Protect the Minion from here to there", "Deal with Interference While Completing/Foiling the Ritual", "Defeat the Enemy Before X Rounds", etc) is going to change the dynamics of the combat significantly and introduce variables that will play to the strengths or to the weaknesses of different character builds and group builds!

Just because the baseline has been calibrated such that the GM can predict the outputs within a reasonable margin-of-error, doesn't mean that there ceases to be variables x, y, and z that can be perturbed to create significant dynamism at the encounter level and for the adventuring day.  If anything, it *emboldens GMs to perturb that x, y, and z* because they can foresee the potential outputs of those inputs within a reasonable margin-of-error.

That is why GMs such as myself appreciate rigorous baseline calibration, especially if a system has a robust range of x, y, and z.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I think it is fair to say 4E was very balanced (way more than 3E was in my opinion). I don't that is bad. It is just where things were at the time. On the heels of 3E, making a more balanced game made some kind of sense. I did want more balance. I think I didn't realize that I just wanted a tad more balance (less optimized builds, for instance). I think where 3E and 4E are similar is this idea of building encounters around the party's ability (scaling and balancing encounters to the party). this did kind of exist in AD&D but you really had to eye ball it, and it wasn't an assumption at most tables I played at that the encounters were that tailored to the group. I think the issue of 'automated balance and scaling' are a different thing entirely. That is a matter of how much you want the system to play to the conceit of game balance automatically. Personally I like rough edges in games, and I like things that are external to the characters (like magic weapons) to not be automatically assumed. But that does lead to less certain outcomes for the party.




OK, this is true, I concede that 4e has a tremendous degree more balance _between characters _than AD&D (or 3e for that matter). In AD&D it is trivial to give the Paladin the Holy Avenger and give the thief NOTHING, or a '+1 ring of protection' or something. In fact, the random treasure tables that figure heavily in 1e, in particular, almost guarantee this if used as designed.

So, 4e has not only balanced builds, but balance in terms of distribution of rewards. In AD&D this is probably something to consider as an ideal, but it isn't ever discussed or articulated (beyond the section in the PHB advocating for equal treasure shares). 

I think all editions of D&D _assume _encounters are built around party ability. AD&D modules all, every single one AFAIK, have a level band printed on them. Clearly TSR assumed that DMs wanted to pit their players PCs against challenges that were well matched for their abilities. It isn't a RULE in the sense that the game can enforce this, but it is only barely more so a rule in 4e, where the DMG tells you what the potency of encounters SHOULD be, and clearly is written around the assumption the DM will run a game based on that, yet the actual mechanics of the game won't be violated by pitting level 3 PCs against a level 9 adventure. 

In fact I can easily imagine a DM running a campaign in which the threats are often, even typically of significantly higher level. That would make a different experience in 4e, but it could be quite workable if the participants can work out how to approach play in the right fashion (IE the DM probably needs to also give out items in a different way, use consumables differently, maybe rely differently on allied NPCs, create more 'operational' levels of play that 4e typically affords, etc.).


----------



## Manbearcat

In relation to my post above regarding balance and 4e, I'm going to invoke Blades in the Dark (seeing as we have a current Blades thread going).

The rigorously calibrated baseline of that game is centered around early Scores (Encounters in 4e parlance) being against Of-Tier Gangs or Tier+1 Gangs.  

However, Harper's advice and all of the design (Character progression, Crew progression, Resources, Loadouts, et al) creates an expectation of boldness and the Crew "punching above its weight", even though the baseline calibration is that of Tier equal or Tier +1.  Someone who hasn't played Blades much (or has just read the rulebook) would look at going up against Tier +2 Gangs as tantamount to suicide.  However, (a) there are so many varying aspects of resolution that players can call upon to increase their prospects (and getting good at that and leveraging the fiction is the "skilled play" Blades analog) and (b) the game expects your scoundrel to struggle...to take Trauma...and to likely change for the worse or life fast/die young.  This is fundamental to the premise of the game.

The exact same thing goes for 4e, except the premise is different.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Permerton, I would really like to have a genuine discussion on this issue with you. But when you do things like this putting words in our mouths and taking things we say to draw conclusions we never asserted or even suggested, it makes it very hard to have a dialogue with you about games. It just doesn't feel like it is being done in good faith.



How many times have I posted about there being resolution systems besides _GM decides_ - and you keep replying "Yes, I'm aware of that" yet continue to make posts which only make sense on the premise that _GM decides_ is the only resolution option.

If, in fact, you are aware that there are ways of deciding whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse that are neither _GM decides based on his/her opinion about the gameworld_ nor _GM says "yes"_, then why not post something about how those systems - of which Classic Traveller is the earliest example I'm familiar with - affect gameplay.

And if you don't know how they affect gameplay because you've never tried them, well, that's fine - not everyone has done everything - but then maybe a bit of curiosity about new possibilities would make sense?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> How many times have I posted about there being resolution systems besides _GM decides_ - and you keep replying "Yes, I'm aware of that" yet continue to make posts which only make sense on the premise that _GM decides_ is the only resolution option.
> 
> If, in fact, you are aware that there are ways of deciding whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse that are neither _GM decides based on his/her opinion about the gameworld_ nor _GM says "yes"_, then why not post something about how those systems - of which Classic Traveller is the earliest example I'm familiar with - affect gameplay.
> 
> And if you don't know how they affect gameplay because you've never tried them, well, that's fine - not everyone has done everything - but then maybe a bit of curiosity about new possibilities would make sense?




Pemerton, I really don't know how to engage you at this point. I don't know how you are getting that from my post. It seems you just keep seeing the conclusions you want in order to belittle people (by labelling them various things). Look even on my end of the discussion where the GM decides I have also repeatedly mentioned the use of other tools. I am not assuming it is just a product of the GM deciding. You are taking small portions of conversation and painting pictures of people to suit your argument. I am not going to suggest my posts are always the best phrased. I certainly don't have the most precise posting style. But it just feels like all you are doing is looking for the angle of attack. This isn't a conversation. This is you trying to embarrass other posters so you can make your point.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> How many times have I posted about there being resolution systems besides _GM decides_ -




Many, many, many times. So many, it is impossible for me to not be aware of them, even if I walked into the conversation with no knowledge of them and full commitment to remaining ignorant of them.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Both these posts seem to asssume that there are only two possible resolution systems for determining if the PCs find sect members at the teahouse: the GM decides based on his/her beliefs about the gameworld, or the GM "says 'yes'".




Here's what's interesting, your Traveler "random dicing" method aside, that is EXACTLY what ALL OTHER METHODS ARE. The 'realism proponents' talk about some sort of 'realistic assessment of what is likely', but I call that unrealistic. That is, I don't think anyone is BSing anyone, deliberately, but I don't think that's EVER what happens in real play in any RPG game which continues on successfully at all. I don't think it is even plausible, or possible. 

We simply cannot know enough about the world in which the game is taking place. It is in fact whole cloth made up of nothing BUT our feelings and gut instincts, mixed with a thin bit of basic causal reasoning and 99% "it is this way because it will make it fun." 

That is, in all cases, in all games, the Sect is either met in the Inn or not because that is the option which the GM decided was going to be a better game than any other. Heck, I even put paid to the dice here to a large extent. Yeah, GMs 'follow the dice', but they also ignore them, and probably more often in this sort of case than would be admitted by people invested in that as a concept. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] rolled dice to 'find certain kinds of people' in his Traveler game, but did he simply accept every result literally with no interpretation? Of course not. First of all, no chart can give you enough information to run with. You have to fill in a LOT of blanks! This is all done by figuring out what is going to be interesting and 'viable' in play. No GM decides that "Organized Crime" means 50 of your worst enemies show up and pump the party full of lead in an unsurvivable hail of bullets. Maybe its 10 guys, or they show up with derringers "because you can't get anything bigger into town" or whatever 100 other things the GM can say to make it sound logical. Maybe he decides your worst enemies just got a bigger enemy and they let you off the hook if you will take those guys for them. You can make it interesting in a lot of ways, but you will never, ever, in a thousand years, exterminate the party in a hail of lead.

Actually I did once run a Traveler campaign where the premise was a doomed space station. Death was 100% inevitable, but even then it was a device in that it was a stated fact that was made apparent to the characters in the first scene and was known by the players when they agreed to play that game. You CAN do anything, and make anything fun, but not often or all the time. The hail of lead might work too as the very last scene of a campaign that is guaranteed to be coming to an irrevocable end for whatever reason. It won't happen in ongoing play. Certainly not often. 

It isn't realism that rules, it is fun, always. Dig far enough down and its all turtles!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Manbearcat said:


> Just because the baseline has been calibrated such that the GM can predict the outputs within a reasonable margin-of-error, doesn't mean that there ceases to be variables x, y, and z that can be perturbed to create significant dynamism at the encounter level and for the adventuring day.  If anything, it *emboldens GMs to perturb that x, y, and z* because they can foresee the potential outputs of those inputs within a reasonable margin-of-error.
> 
> That is why GMs such as myself appreciate rigorous baseline calibration, especially if a system has a robust range of x, y, and z.




I took things in a literally direction of dynamism. While 4e's encounter design guidelines, in DMG1, are written with an obvious basic assumption of sort of AD&D-esque 'site based encounters' where the action takes place in a fairly static location with set goals and resources, I quickly found that it was best to greatly expand encounter design in a much more dynamic fashion. Not only was every encounter itself radically different in terms of its trajectory, plot significance, opponents, but they all evolved quickly and it was usually within the players means to make decisions which would affect that trajectory substantially (IE you can set the place on fire, that will create a new situation, or release the giant wasps, that will create a different one).


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You can make it interesting in a lot of ways, but you will never, ever, in a thousand years, exterminate the party in a hail of lead.




I will exterminate the party in a hail of lead if that is the logical consequence of prior events. I did exterminate one 4e party in a hail of 1,000 ghouls - the party were tasked with holding the only river bridge against the Necromancer's ghoul horde until it could be collapsed, giving the town time to evacuate. The PCs decided to stake out position on the north (ghoul) side of the bridge, which meant their inevitable death. They did hold it just long enough that the workers collapsed the south pylons as the last PC, Varek, died to the Necromancer's death wand.  Varek's player Jasper was absolutely delighted by that whole 20-session campaign, at the end he shook my hand and congratulated me, his eyes shining.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here's what's interesting, your Traveler "random dicing" method aside, that is EXACTLY what ALL OTHER METHODS ARE. The 'realism proponents' talk about some sort of 'realistic assessment of what is likely', but I call that unrealistic. That is, I don't think anyone is BSing anyone, deliberately, but I don't think that's EVER what happens in real play in any RPG game which continues on successfully at all. I don't think it is even plausible, or possible.
> 
> We simply cannot know enough about the world in which the game is taking place. It is in fact whole cloth made up of nothing BUT our feelings and gut instincts, mixed with a thin bit of basic causal reasoning and 99% "it is this way because it will make it fun."
> 
> That is, in all cases, in all games, the Sect is either met in the Inn or not because that is the option which the GM decided was going to be a better game than any other. Heck, I even put paid to the dice here to a large extent. Yeah, GMs 'follow the dice', but they also ignore them, and probably more often in this sort of case than would be admitted by people invested in that as a concept. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] rolled dice to 'find certain kinds of people' in his Traveler game, but did he simply accept every result literally with no interpretation? Of course not. First of all, no chart can give you enough information to run with. You have to fill in a LOT of blanks! This is all done by figuring out what is going to be interesting and 'viable' in play. No GM decides that "Organized Crime" means 50 of your worst enemies show up and pump the party full of lead in an unsurvivable hail of bullets. Maybe its 10 guys, or they show up with derringers "because you can't get anything bigger into town" or whatever 100 other things the GM can say to make it sound logical. Maybe he decides your worst enemies just got a bigger enemy and they let you off the hook if you will take those guys for them. You can make it interesting in a lot of ways, but you will never, ever, in a thousand years, exterminate the party in a hail of lead.
> 
> Actually I did once run a Traveler campaign where the premise was a doomed space station. Death was 100% inevitable, but even then it was a device in that it was a stated fact that was made apparent to the characters in the first scene and was known by the players when they agreed to play that game. You CAN do anything, and make anything fun, but not often or all the time. The hail of lead might work too as the very last scene of a campaign that is guaranteed to be coming to an irrevocable end for whatever reason. It won't happen in ongoing play. Certainly not often.
> 
> It isn't realism that rules, it is fun, always. Dig far enough down and its all turtles!




People are basically just advocating for plausibility, not real world physics and realism. And no one is saying the things that happen can't also be fun. An outcome can be both fun and plausible. I would point out as well, I've been advocating for not being overly rigid about approaches and playstyles and instead, focusing on keeping the table going over the long haul. But the notion that it was even possible for the GM to make judgements on this sort of thing with plausibility in mind, without it being mother may I, was attacked in the OP. This argument is stemming from that debate. I said from very early on in this thread, I wasn't advocating for anything approaching real world physics. This whole arguments is because of a post I made, where I said that the scenario I described was no more mother may i, than real life is mother may I. I never, ever suggested, that the ideal should therefore be for the game to model real life. I was merely talking about how the game can feature real life-like crossing/missing of paths (and that doesn't make it mother-may-I).


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## Ovinomancer

So, has it been agreed then that it's not "realism," but rather "plausibility," "coherence," or "consistancy (internal)?"


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> .
> 
> If, in fact, you are aware that there are ways of deciding whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse that are neither _GM decides based on his/her opinion about the gameworld_ nor _GM says "yes"_, then why not post something about how those systems - of which Classic Traveller is the earliest example I'm familiar with - affect gameplay.




I just want to take this one in isolation. I don't know why you keep banging this drum. But I have no issue with other methods of reaching these conclusions. My purpose in this thread was never to attack alternatives to the GM deciding. I've told you, if you have a great way of handling it, by all means engage it and share it. My problem with your approach is not your play style, it is how you advocate for your play style by dismissing other approaches and even attempting to humiliate other posters. You will hone in on something I say, like "this is no more mother may I than real life" and build a hug argument that doesn't even really address the point I was making. This post is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. I don't know why you think  this kind of antagonism is useful or even relevant. I am in no way presenting myself as an expert on Burning Wheel or PbtA. With Traveller I already mentioned, I have played it, but I haven't run it, so I am not in a position to comment on the GM tools in the system (I just know I liked how character creation worked and I really had fun whenever I played it). But you seem to want to make me look like I am a gaming bumpkin. But in terms of other tools, I have pointed to them. I mentioned encounter and event tables. I think you can also use deeper tables that plant seeds for various developments. These are all entirely fine And they can contribute to building a plausible experience. But keep in mind this whole thread was started because you felt that the example I raised was evidence of a style steeped in mother-may-I-play. I have been defending against that claim. If I defended too strongly in moments, and suggested your style of play can't be believable, that wasn't my intention. Sometimes we get boxed into positions in these discussions. I was just trying to explain why I think the GM making the determination can be highly plausible, fun, and not mother may I. 



> but then maybe a bit of curiosity about new possibilities would make sense?




I have plenty of curiosity. But we obviously have different tastes. Some of the games you have mentioned I've looked into or even played, but they just haven't connected with me. Doesn't mean they are bad. There are different games that I enjoy though. I loved Hillfolk. I found it very immersive. I really love a lot of the Cubicle 7 Games (particularly the Doctor Who system). I like Numenera (though haven't had nearly enough opportunities to play it). But I do mainly come from a point of view that is more in the OSR. So obviously our tastes, what we read regularly, what we run, are going to be different. 

If you want a real conversation, I am happy to have one with you. You are a smart guy, you obviously know how to make an argument. But I am not going to have a conversation with you, where you just crap all over someone else's taste and call it superior design. Especially when you keep making posts like this or like the OP (which I objected to when you proposed it, and when you posted it). I don't know if I made this clear or not, but I really didn't appreciate having you highlight one post I made to start a thread (it felt like you were trying to get a whole forum to disagree with me).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It seems to me that, if the players declare _We go to the teahouse to look for sect members_, then clearly it is believable to them that the sect members might be in the teahouse.
> 
> So it seems to me that, whatever method is used to work out whether or not the PCs find sect members in the teahouse, it won't contradict _believability_ for them to be their.




While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme.  I mean, it's also one in ten thousand believable that a cult member will walk past them where they are standing, so why even bother to go looking.  Just tell the DM that you wait where you are at and see if a cult member walks by, and one will.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here's what's interesting, your Traveler "random dicing" method aside, that is EXACTLY what ALL OTHER METHODS ARE. The 'realism proponents' talk about some sort of 'realistic assessment of what is likely', but I call that unrealistic. That is, I don't think anyone is BSing anyone, deliberately, but I don't think that's EVER what happens in real play in any RPG game which continues on successfully at all. I don't think it is even plausible, or possible.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That is, in all cases, in all games, the Sect is either met in the Inn or not because that is the option which the GM decided was going to be a better game than any other. Heck, I even put paid to the dice here to a large extent. Yeah, GMs 'follow the dice', but they also ignore them, and probably more often in this sort of case than would be admitted by people invested in that as a concept. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] rolled dice to 'find certain kinds of people' in his Traveler game, but did he simply accept every result literally with no interpretation? Of course not. First of all, no chart can give you enough information to run with. You have to fill in a LOT of blanks! This is all done by figuring out what is going to be interesting and 'viable' in play.



Apropos of this, I just posted an actual play report of today's Traveller session.

Random table results that generated a need for interpretation included an encounter with a group of rowdies (religious zealots burning down an antiquities shop), an encounter with a group of fugitives (a group of people trying to escape from their local religious dictatorship to learn the *truth* about psionics), and a government official as a patron (a government official wanting to hire the PCs to use their surveillance satellite capabilities to gather intelligence about "pathfinder' forces in a neighbouring, enemy countery). There was also the need to decide exactly what followed from various reaction rolls, and to decide what the consequence was for a failed roll to escape conviction at trial (in that latter case, banishment).

In each of these instances plausibility, in the form of consistency with established fiction and with expectations around the table driven by genre and by the game's implied backstory (which eg has very primitive IT, due to its 1970s authorship, compared to what we are used to in our non sci-fi real world) is obviously important. So is game play - hence the conviction at trial did not result in (say) immediate execution.

This same session also saw multiple attempts to do things analogous to finding sect members in a teahouse - looking for dealers in old artefacts, trying to gather intelligence from government officials, etc - and in those cases I set a DC where the rules don't specify one and called for appropriate throws.

I see all this as pretty standard stuff in any sort of "intent and task" and "fail forward" approach to resolution. (Which I think Classic Traveller is absolutely fine with.) It's why I take objection to casual equations of _GM judgement_ with _GM decides outcome_.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme.



I'll ignore the alleged contrast between _believable_ and _unrealistic_, because all that means is that we have a disagreement at the table as to what is or isn't believable. There are various ways to resolve such disagreements, of which _GM decides unilaterally_ is one but not the only one.

But as far as "every time they go looking" is concerned,  (i) as I've already posted, why are assuming that the only resolution options here are _GM says no_ or _GM says yes_, and (ii) how many times are you expecting the PCs to go looking for sect members in teahouses? In my experience, the action in RPGs tends to be quite varied rather than having that sort of repetition.


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme.  I mean, it's also one in ten thousand believable that a cult member will walk past them where they are standing, so why even bother to go looking.  Just tell the DM that you wait where you are at and see if a cult member walks by, and one will.




I'm pretty sure the whole "argument by degenerate example" was covered awhile ago.  Yes, ANY method becomes bad if allowed to degenerate, this is trivial.  No one is suggesting you only say yes, so let's not use that as an example. 

Further, if you're playing where players only have a 1 in 10k random chance of advancing their goal, that's another pretty useless example of bad play.  

The discussion here is really that none of us are using realism to decide outcomes, we're using systems (from random to GM decides) to present a coherent fictional world in-line with the themes and tropes we'd like to play.  "Seems like a real world" is a laudable trope, but it's not realism, and no method we have can make it so.  What we have are various means of applying judgement that create believable outcomes, where "believable" is largely subjective based on group tastes.

Why is this important?  Well, it seems obvious, but what happens is that people start using terms to bolster their preferences and nake them sound as if they're more betterer.  Like "realism." Or, "playing to find out what's in the GM's notes."  It's all petty one-up-manship. If you take a different playstyle at it's best when discussing it, and are honest about the foibles of your own, most of this conversation wouldn't happen.  It's okay that your play has potholes -- they all do.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Most of D&D, frankly, simply cannot be gauged on a scale of realistic to unrealistic at all, because it is entirely fantastic. Even the most generous interpretation of hit points as luck/skill/chutzpah/whatever with a little 'meat' thrown in is still completely crazy. Its impossible to imagine high level characters, there's simply nothing even vaguely like a person of 4th or higher level (in most classes) in AD&D. Sure, sometimes people are lucky and survive crazy things like falling 10 stories, or being mauled by a bear, or maybe sometimes we hear a story of a soldier who defeats 100 enemies single-handedly. However, there are NO stories about real people who do this kind of thing again and again. Luck isn't some sort of attribute that people have; in the real world its simply a statement about probabilities and our perception of certain outcomes as unusual. Likewise no amount of skill allows you to fall 30' over and over again onto hard surfaces and not die.




This perception of yours reminds me of someone who is very depressed and perceives that life simply cannot get better.   Despite that person's perception, yes, yes it can.

Let's take that falling example.  If I decide that I want to add more realism to falling, I can require a death save from any fall of 20 feet or higher, with a -1 penalty for each additional 10 feet.  That would give your 30 story fall(300 feet) a -28 penalty to the death save.  Good luck surviving that fall over and over again.  It still won't mirror reality, but it is in fact more realistic.

D&D is not now, nor has it every been "entirely fantastic."  It has many fantastic elements to it, but there has always been a good measure of realism to it.



> But this is only one SMALL example. I could point out 100 more, but they should be pretty obvious. Most of it ends up falling under the rubric of "but it is magical." So, why is it only certain things are allowed to be magical in this type of analysis? Oddly they generally seem to be selected such as to allow only for the 'traditional play' of D&D! It seems to me that, in general, the 'realism argument' is really an argument for playing D&D in a certain specific style. So it would be more effectively framed that way!




Sure you can, and I can make all 100 of those examples more realistic, because despite your claim, realism can be gauged on a scale of unrealistic to mirrors reality.  You might not be able to attach an exact number to it, but you can certainly tell which way on the scale you are moving any particular example.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm pretty sure the whole "argument by degenerate example" was covered awhile ago.  Yes, ANY method becomes bad if allowed to degenerate, this is trivial.  No one is suggesting you only say yes, so let's not use that as an example.




Maybe there's a roll or some other method of determining success or failure, but it still becomes highly unrealistic since unless the roll is almost always doomed to failure, you will hit successes far more often than are plausible.



> Further, if you're playing where players only have a 1 in 10k random chance of advancing their goal, that's another pretty useless example of bad play.




This is a Strawman.  I never claimed that the tea house was the only way to advance their goal.  I said the odds of encountering a sect member at the Tea House at the moment they go there would be long odds.  Please don't attribute arguments to me that I did not make. 



> The discussion here is really that none of us are using realism to decide outcomes, we're using systems (from random to GM decides) to present a coherent fictional world in-line with the themes and tropes we'd like to play.  "Seems like a real world" is a laudable trope, but it's not realism, and no method we have can make it so.  What we have are various means of applying judgement that create believable outcomes, where "believable" is largely subjective based on group tastes.




Those systems make the given event or rule more or less realistic, so yes realism is involved.



> Why is this important?  Well, it seems obvious, but what happens is that people start using terms to bolster their preferences and nake them sound as if they're more betterer.  Like "realism." Or, "playing to find out what's in the GM's notes."  It's all petty one-up-manship. If you take a different playstyle at it's best when discussing it, and are honest about the foibles of your own, most of this conversation wouldn't happen.  It's okay that your play has potholes -- they all do.




No it's not.  "Playing to find out what's in the DM's notes." or "Playing Mother May I." are derogatory statements about a methods of play  other than your own.  Realism is not such a derogatory statement.  It makes no value judgement about someone else's playstyle.  I simply enjoy more realism in my game that D&D has at its baseline.  If you don't, I'm truly happy for you and I hope you have great games.


----------



## Manbearcat

Maxperson said:


> Let's take that falling example.  If I decide that I want to add more realism to falling, I can require a death save from any fall of 20 feet or higher, with a -1 penalty for each additional 10 feet.  That would give your 30 story fall(300 feet) a -28 penalty to the death save.  Good luck surviving that fall over and over again.  It still won't mirror reality, but it is in fact more realistic.
> 
> D&D is not now, nor has it every been "entirely fantastic."  It has many fantastic elements to it, but there has always been a good measure of realism to it.




The problem with adjustments like the above, Max, is that the rider effects to stuff like this quickly either becomes clearly arbitrary or “not D&D.”

The kinetic energy of a body at terminal velocity has less kinetic energy than that of an Ancient Dragon swinging its tail (even if for some strange reason you assume 2/3 the acceleration of a human punch). I think people can intuit that without performing any math.

So if the mechanics dictate your heroes die at an extremely high rate due to high falls, they better not be wading into melee with Ancient Dragons. So that ceases to become one of the foundational tropes of D&D.


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> The problem with adjustments like the above, Max, is that the rider effects to stuff like this quickly either becomes clearly arbitrary or “not D&D.”
> 
> The kinetic energy of a body at terminal velocity has less kinetic energy than that of an Ancient Dragon swinging its tail (even if for some strange reason you assume 2/3 the acceleration of a human punch). I think people can intuit that without performing any math.
> 
> So if the mechanics dictate your heroes die at an extremely high rate due to high falls, they better not be wading into melee with Ancient Dragons. So that ceases to become one of the foundational tropes of D&D.




Sure, enough drastic changes will change the feel of the game.  Most particular change like the one above isn't enough.  The point, though, is that you can move things closer to realism.  There are a plethora of lest drastic falling changes that make falling more realistic, but perhaps not as realistic as the one I just described.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Sure, enough drastic changes will change the feel of the game.  Most particular change like the one above isn't enough.  The point, though, is that you can move things closer to realism.  There are a plethora of lest drastic falling changes that make falling more realistic, but perhaps not as realistic as the one I just described.



But it's not moving towards realism.  It's just as unrealistic as it was before, somewhat moreso as it's now even more conflicting with ither abstractions.  What it may be is more evocative of deadly falls tropes, or increasing overall lethality, neither of which are realism.

You went on above about how realism isn't a claim to being betterer, but you fight tooth and nail to keep it as describing what you do.  Can you honestly ask yourself why that is?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> People are basically just advocating for plausibility, not real world physics and realism. And no one is saying the things that happen can't also be fun. An outcome can be both fun and plausible. I would point out as well, I've been advocating for not being overly rigid about approaches and playstyles and instead, focusing on keeping the table going over the long haul. But the notion that it was even possible for the GM to make judgements on this sort of thing with plausibility in mind, without it being mother may I, was attacked in the OP. This argument is stemming from that debate. I said from very early on in this thread, I wasn't advocating for anything approaching real world physics. This whole arguments is because of a post I made, where I said that the scenario I described was no more mother may i, than real life is mother may I. I never, ever suggested, that the ideal should therefore be for the game to model real life. I was merely talking about how the game can feature real life-like crossing/missing of paths (and that doesn't make it mother-may-I).




Fair enough, and I don't think there's anything wrong with asking the question "what might happen here?" or "what might be the consequences of this action?" I mean, at some level those are questions that HAVE to be asked. Again, there's a need for coherency, so at least some sort of plausibility is implicit in that. 

I do rebel against this notion, which is pretty commonly brought up here, that somehow GM's are "just figuring out what would really happen" or that they "must simply follow the consequences" with the idea there is even any way to determine that which is not 99% simply what they want to see happen next (for whatever reason, fun presumably). I'd say that this stance is not based on 'physics' (of any kind particularly) either. It seems to be based on, actually I don't know what. It claims literally that there is some 'natural progression' of a given 'world state' that can be 'worked out', at least in some degree.

Honestly, I'm not sure where you fall in this, and I'm not that interested in lambasting or jousting with anyone over these sorts of things. We all have various notions, and if we have fun playing based on them who really cares, right? I have just felt a bunch of heat for pointing out this "but he's not wearing any clothes!" thing (in a few threads, this one, and the parent thread probably, maybe a couple others over the past few years).


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> But it's not moving towards realism.  It's just as unrealistic as it was before, somewhat moreso as it's now even more conflicting with ither abstractions.  What it may be is more evocative of deadly falls tropes, or increasing overall lethality, neither of which are realism.




You can repeat that false mantra all you want, but it still won't be true.  It's not just as unrealistic as it was before, and realism doesn't become better or worse because of issues with other abstractions.  Realism is relative to how things happen in real life.  If your new rule more closely matches how things happen in real life, it's more realistic.  If it less closely matches what happens in real life, it's less realistic.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> While it may be believable for that one in a thousand or one in ten thousand change to hit, if it hits every time they go looking for it, it quickly becomes unbelievable or even if they believe it, unrealistic in the extreme.  I mean, it's also one in ten thousand believable that a cult member will walk past them where they are standing, so why even bother to go looking.  Just tell the DM that you wait where you are at and see if a cult member walks by, and one will.




But what makes you think it is 'one in a thousand?' A perfectly reasonable person might conclude, on the same relatively thin evidence that an FRPG setting and play history is going to present some entirely different probability, anywhere from 100% to zero has a reasonable chance of being plausible. Usually nobody will even be equipped to really come up with some sort of 'probability'. There's a group of people who apparently are located to some degree or other in a given area where there is an inn. Is this sect hostile to inns? OK, maybe they won't be found there, sure! You'd have to establish a lot of, generally kind of obscure, facts about this group. Just going by modules, and the play of them which I've experienced, it would be pretty unlikely that the writers would say something like "this group definitely hangs out exactly here, here, and over here." In fact usually most of what is known about a location, say a town where an inn might be, is that so-and-so IS in a certain exact spot when the PCs show up, even though it must be true that only a part of his time is spent there. 

So this whole "it won't hang together believably unless we try to pretend we're real people in this place and make up chances that things happen" just doesn't hang together, AT ALL. I mean, sure if you want to write a 5000 page encyclopedia of a town and tell us in detail everything each character or group does, how they would react to a myriad of things likely and unlikely, every bit of data about what is under the floorboards here and there, and who hates the neighbor kids, and on and on and on. If not then really there is just not the kind of detail and depth available to even know what is or is not plausible. All we can do is basically create a few general precepts and conventions and follow them, and decide what would be fun and make that happen. I still maintain that this is what people ACTUALLY do, and the logic that is used to make it plausible is, beyond a very basic level, just a lampshade.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This perception of yours reminds me of someone who is very depressed and perceives that life simply cannot get better.   Despite that person's perception, yes, yes it can.
> 
> Let's take that falling example.  If I decide that I want to add more realism to falling, I can require a death save from any fall of 20 feet or higher, with a -1 penalty for each additional 10 feet.  That would give your 30 story fall(300 feet) a -28 penalty to the death save.  Good luck surviving that fall over and over again.  It still won't mirror reality, but it is in fact more realistic.
> 
> D&D is not now, nor has it every been "entirely fantastic."  It has many fantastic elements to it, but there has always been a good measure of realism to it.
> 
> 
> 
> Sure you can, and I can make all 100 of those examples more realistic, because despite your claim, realism can be gauged on a scale of unrealistic to mirrors reality.  You might not be able to attach an exact number to it, but you can certainly tell which way on the scale you are moving any particular example.




TBH I am baffled at how any of this is engaging my argument. Of course we could make realistic RPGs. We could study medical texts for years, and make up computer simulations, and do tons of research and come up with 250 pages of detailed rules covering injuries and death. It might be quite realistic (there probably is still a corner case or two, but whatever). This is not relevant _because nobody does that._ It is a spherical cow. In actual games we play to have fun, and hit points is a fun way to play. Realism be damned. 

And sure, D&D has some level of realism, sword blows hurt you, so do falls, fire, etc. All drawn from true life at some basic level. This DOES establish what I call coherency, the ability to frame scenes so that the game participants can work out what is at stake, what their options are, etc. I would note though that you wouldn't expect a complete neophyte in the D&D game to make very good decisions. MUCH of the logic engaged in is heavily shaped and colored by rules which are not very realistic.

So, for example, once my 11th level Ranger leaped off a high cliff because he wanted to catch up with some bad guys. Sure, he knew he was going to take some damage, but I knew that the falling rules coupled with the height of the cliff meant death was vanishingly unlikely and the character possessed some magic which would make up for the hit point deficit later. No person unfamiliar with the rules of D&D would have understood that decision. Any reasonable person would call a 200' fall lethal 99.99% of the time.

The point is, the conventions and processes of game play are what is transcendent at the table. Internally consistent logic is pretty thin and the fact that we could in some theoretical white room try to make our game work in a logical or realistic fashion is irrelevant to any discussion of actual games at actual tables.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But what makes you think it is 'one in a thousand?' A perfectly reasonable person might conclude, on the same relatively thin evidence that an FRPG setting and play history is going to present some entirely different probability, anywhere from 100% to zero has a reasonable chance of being plausible. Usually nobody will even be equipped to really come up with some sort of 'probability'. There's a group of people who apparently are located to some degree or other in a given area where there is an inn. Is this sect hostile to inns? OK, maybe they won't be found there, sure! You'd have to establish a lot of, generally kind of obscure, facts about this group. Just going by modules, and the play of them which I've experienced, it would be pretty unlikely that the writers would say something like "this group definitely hangs out exactly here, here, and over here." In fact usually most of what is known about a location, say a town where an inn might be, is that so-and-so IS in a certain exact spot when the PCs show up, even though it must be true that only a part of his time is spent there.




The DM is perfectly equipped to come up with some sort of probability.  He's the one who knows what the cult is up to, and where it's located.  In a large town or city, the odds that a cult member will just  happen to be at some random tea place at the exact moment that the PC's walk are very long.  The DM knows that.  Unless of course the DM knows that the tea place is the base of operations for the cult, in which case it would be the 100%(or close to it) that you note.



> So this whole "it won't hang together believably unless we try to pretend we're real people in this place and make up chances that things happen" just doesn't hang together, AT ALL. I mean, sure if you want to write a 5000 page encyclopedia of a town and tell us in detail everything each character or group does, how they would react to a myriad of things likely and unlikely, every bit of data about what is under the floorboards here and there, and who hates the neighbor kids, and on and on and on. If not then really there is just not the kind of detail and depth available to even know what is or is not plausible. All we can do is basically create a few general precepts and conventions and follow them, and decide what would be fun and make that happen. I still maintain that this is what people ACTUALLY do, and the logic that is used to make it plausible is, beyond a very basic level, just a lampshade.




No.  It doesn't require anywhere NEAR that amount of detail to come up with the probability.  The DM sets probabilities and is uniquely equipped to estimate them based on his knowledge of what is going on.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> TBH I am baffled at how any of this is engaging my argument. Of course we could make realistic RPGs. We could study medical texts for years, and make up computer simulations, and do tons of research and come up with 250 pages of detailed rules covering injuries and death. It might be quite realistic (there probably is still a corner case or two, but whatever). This is not relevant _because nobody does that._ It is a spherical cow. In actual games we play to have fun, and hit points is a fun way to play. Realism be damned.




This is a False Dichotomy.  It's not either "totally unrealistic" or "mirrors reality."  Realism is present in D&D as it is currently written.  Lots of it.



> And sure, D&D has some level of realism, sword blows hurt you, so do falls, fire, etc. All drawn from true life at some basic level. This DOES establish what I call coherency, the ability to frame scenes so that the game participants can work out what is at stake, what their options are, etc. I would note though that you wouldn't expect a complete neophyte in the D&D game to make very good decisions. MUCH of the logic engaged in is heavily shaped and colored by rules which are not very realistic.




This isn't very relevant to my position.  All RPGs are a mix of some level or realism and some level of unrealism.  So what.  Moving something towards the "mirrors reality" end of the spectrum makes it more realistic.  Moving it towards the "doesn't bear any relation to reality whatsoever" end of the spectrum makes it less realistic.  



> The point is, the conventions and processes of game play are what is transcendent at the table. Internally consistent logic is pretty thin and the fact that we could in some theoretical white room try to make our game work in a logical or realistic fashion is irrelevant to any discussion of actual games at actual tables.




Yes, table preferences rule the game.  Some tables like things to be more realistic, and some less, yet others like it the way it is.  That doesn't alter my argument at all.


----------



## billd91

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I do rebel against this notion, which is pretty commonly brought up here, that somehow GM's are "just figuring out what would really happen" or that they "must simply follow the consequences" with the idea there is even any way to determine that which is not 99% simply what they want to see happen next (for whatever reason, fun presumably). I'd say that this stance is not based on 'physics' (of any kind particularly) either. It seems to be based on, actually I don't know what. It claims literally that there is some 'natural progression' of a given 'world state' that can be 'worked out', at least in some degree.




If you have a trust problem with GMs, then that sounds like a *you* issue to me. It may be safe to say there are some GMs out there who might choose what happens based on what they want to happen - but I also know there are a lot of GMs out there who take the idea that they should be impartial seriously. Frankly, I'm a little more suspicious of the "Say Yes or Roll" mentality than the "Say Yes or No when appropriate for the situation" mentality because I don't feel the former gives the setting/mysteries/NPCs an even break with the PCs.


----------



## Aldarc

That reading,  [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION], does not seem fair to any of the parties involved, whether in their favor or against them.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Fair enough, and I don't think there's anything wrong with asking the question "what might happen here?" or "what might be the consequences of this action?" I mean, at some level those are questions that HAVE to be asked. Again, there's a need for coherency, so at least some sort of plausibility is implicit in that.
> 
> I do rebel against this notion, which is pretty commonly brought up here, that somehow GM's are "just figuring out what would really happen" or that they "must simply follow the consequences" with the idea there is even any way to determine that which is not 99% simply what they want to see happen next (for whatever reason, fun presumably). I'd say that this stance is not based on 'physics' (of any kind particularly) either. It seems to be based on, actually I don't know what. It claims literally that there is some 'natural progression' of a given 'world state' that can be 'worked out', at least in some degree.
> 
> Honestly, I'm not sure where you fall in this, and I'm not that interested in lambasting or jousting with anyone over these sorts of things. We all have various notions, and if we have fun playing based on them who really cares, right? I have just felt a bunch of heat for pointing out this "but he's not wearing any clothes!" thing (in a few threads, this one, and the parent thread probably, maybe a couple others over the past few years).




I think you are taking things a bit too literally here. I am definitely not arguing that people are figuring out how it would really play out if this fictional setting was modeling real world causality. All I am saying is when the GM makes a determination, "What do I think would really happen here" is a perfectly valid way to decide, and it can result in a world that feels believable. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that the GM is somehow tapping into what would really happen. It is a judgement call. I think that you have the same person making this judgement over the course of the campaign does tend to produce a sense of a consistent world. But no one is claiming perfection here. We are just claiming it is perfectly fine and works for our purposes. Also you can make that judgement using any number of criteria: what would be most cinematic? What would be mosts genre appropriate? What would be the most exciting? What would be the most scary? etc. You can even combine these things: What would really happen and ALSO be exciting?


----------



## Imaculata

Frankly, I prefer to determine as many outcomes as I can without rolling dice, unless the outcome is uncertain. So while I 'could' determine randomly if a particular faction is at a specific location, as a DM I know if it is likely for the faction to be there. Just like I know if there are wandering monsters about. I could roll randomly to decide if the players encounter monsters, but my preference goes to simply deciding it myself, rather than the dice deciding it. I don't think either option is more or less realistic than the other.

What is far more important to me when determining the outcome, is the current *pacing* of the game, the *narrative* consequences, what seems *sensible/realistic* and *consistent* with the facts, and the *fun* factor. For example, if I feel that the players are taking too long to find the sect, and if I feel they may be looking in the wrong place, I could decide to have them stumble upon a clue, or the sect itself, wherever location they may happen to be going to. If on the other hand I have other plot points for them, I may make it more difficult for them to find the sect. Likewise, I won't serve up yet another battle with random monsters, just because a random dice roll said so. If the players are just recovering from a big fight, I can perfectly decide for myself what the likelyhood of another monster patrol showing up is going to be.

I do however use random dice rolls when determining what the players encounter while exploring. But I always give myself the freedom to ignore the outcome, if it doesn't seem fitting.


----------



## Sadras

Imaculata said:


> I do however use random dice rolls when determining what the players encounter while exploring. But I always give myself the freedom to ignore the outcome, if it doesn't seem fitting.




I will add this, because I prefer not to fudge die rolls I'm more likely to go into _yes_ or _no_ territory. Although even with die rolls one has the option of _yes but complication_ or _no but clue_ (fail forward) and this DM adjudication may often be influenced by pacing and plausibility.


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## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> I also think the method can matter. Some other posters seem to disagree, though.
> 
> 
> 
> Both these posts seem to asssume that there are only two possible resolution systems for determining if the PCs find sect members at the teahouse: the GM decides based on his/her beliefs about the gameworld, or the GM "says 'yes'".
> 
> That is, they seem to assume that play will be driven simply by GM decision-making.
> 
> I find that to be an odd assumption to make, but unsurprisingly I agree that _running a game that way_ will tend to make for a mediocre play experience.
> 
> (One reason I find it an odd assumption: the first RPG system I know of that explicitly deals with the issue of trying to find certain sorts of people in urban situations is Traveller (1977), and it assumes that the outcome of such attempts will be affected by rolls that are affected by skills like Admin, Streetwise and Leadership, with subsequent supplements adding further relevant skills like Carousing and Recruiting. It doesn't say anything about the referee just decding what happens.)




I may be contradicting my earlier post, but as I’ve tried to dig deeper into these concepts I’m finding that, like so many others, methodology and experience are two entirely separate entities that are sometimes intertwined. Certain methods may be more predisposed to a certain style of play, but I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s rare for it to be incapable of producing that style of play.

This isn’t entirely a surprise to me, because much of how we play our game is a mashup of other stuff I/we are learning from elsewhere.

For example, due in large part to discussions with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others, we handle things like critical hits, misses, and death quite differently than the usual approach in D&D, and this also addresses fudging.

The primary reason I fudge occasionally is because of a choice we’ve made on mechanics. We would prefer a bell curve for skill checks, combat, etc., but we like a d20 better. So instead of using 3d6, we accept that most of the time the d20 is fine, but in those circumstances where we decide it’s not, then we adjust the consequences. So they were fine with me fudging.

But some people are strongly against fudging. And if I know that, then I don’t fudge with that group.

So I started rolling attack rolls in front of the players, and they would know when I was fudging. There were still no objections, but occasionally somebody would say, “nah, that’s fine. Let it ride.”

An interesting thing is that the players who objected to fudging and wanted to “always let it ride” were usually not the ones accepting their character’s death under these circumstances. They would accept the fudging without question.

But it got me thinking. Who is better able to decide if it’s the character’s time than the player that created them? Why can’t the player decide to fudge the die? Would it be different if I let them make the initial decision?

We typically have at least three PCs each, but some characters are more precious than others. Also, sometimes the current fiction implies the characters’ survival is more important. 

A lot of the time it’s just death, but they have become more dramatic. We still have the underlying rules for guidance. Sometimes they let the death saves decide. Other times they have decided that even with help, they can’t be saved.

I can’t say that we experienced any of these to be “better” than the others. They didn’t affect the realism of our game, because we continued to make the experience - the content “realistic.”

I think our goal of a “realistic” game does have an impact on how these rules are used in our game. Our changes to the math of death saves was done to be “more realistic,” in that we felt it was unrealistic for a character who
Is reduced to 0 hp has a 60%+ chance of surviving without any assistance at all. Our falling rules were modeled after when science tells us you have a 50% chance of dying. But in all these cases it’s really just a feel, not true fact. And it’s generally more about the math than the method.

But others might argue our death mechanic is less realistic. That we don’t get to choose when we live or die and that it should be the dice that do so. 

I’d argue that the person (the character) isn’t. The player is making that decision*, and the only thing that changed is which player decides - the DM or the player who created the character. And for us, it’s sometimes a joint decision, even including other players.

But not every player will like it, or play in good faith, etc.

So I agree that the method might have an impact, or make it easier or more difficult, but ultimately I think the concept of realism in a game is more about the experience than the mechanics. But I’ll also acknowledge that for many players the mechanics have an equal or greater importance than realism for their gaming experience.




*This ties into my increasing belief that there is a difference between player agency and character agency, a topic for another day. Because it’s even more complicated than this one.


----------



## Shasarak

Ilbranteloth said:


> But others might argue our death mechanic is less realistic. That we don’t get to choose when we live or die and that it should be the dice that do so.




In real life there are examples of people choosing when to live or to die.


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## Ilbranteloth

Manbearcat said:


> One quick comment on balance.  This comment will be invoking 4e (because that is what has been invoked), but at its heart, its a design question (as an input) and the related product of play (output).
> 
> *4e's balance often gets invoked as if its (a) some sort of retardent to dynamism and (b) some form of perpetuator of status quo.*
> 
> That isn't correct for 4e (its actually not even in the realm of correct and the inverse is provably so) and its not correct as a product of design aimed at balance.
> 
> 4e has balance on 4 different axes:
> 
> 1)  Broad intraparty balance at the site of the encounter.
> 
> 2)  Broad intraparty balance at the site of the adventuring day.
> 
> 3)  Expectant results of a 5 player party (which covers all the Roles) vs unremarkable deployment of a same level encounter budget.
> 
> 4)  Expectant results of an archetypal workday for a 5 player party (which covers all the Roles).
> 
> 
> Because these 4 design aims are explicit and were achieved, there seems to be this designation by some (typically those that didn't play it very much or didn't play it at all), that such (achieved) design aims must yield a play culture that stays tightly within the boundaries of (3) and (4).  Then, following from that, there is this assumption of my (a) and (b) above (lack of dynamism and boring, uninteresting status quo).
> 
> The problem with this is simple.   The idea that (3) and (4) are actual play culture fundamentals is absolutely wrong.  They are balance calibration features of design.  Further, those two as play culture artifacts are completely at at tension as (4) assumes you aren't doing 3!  Further still, both DMGs go on at length of how to perturb that balance calibration archetype and what the implications of such perturbance will be...therefore assuming you're going to be doing just that!
> 
> Further, further, further, still...
> 
> If each Role can be thought of as a different Magic the Gathering deck (and that is exactly how they should be thought of - I guarantee that was a design impetus if not THE design impetus; eg a "Monored Aggro Burn vs Jeskai Midrange"), then significantly varying the exact same encounter budget and using different battlefield qualities (terrain, obstacles, distances, terrain powers, Hazards/Traps) and different objectives (eg "Hold the Line vs Waves", "Escort/Protect the Minion from here to there", "Deal with Interference While Completing/Foiling the Ritual", "Defeat the Enemy Before X Rounds", etc) is going to change the dynamics of the combat significantly and introduce variables that will play to the strengths or to the weaknesses of different character builds and group builds!
> 
> Just because the baseline has been calibrated such that the GM can predict the outputs within a reasonable margin-of-error, doesn't mean that there ceases to be variables x, y, and z that can be perturbed to create significant dynamism at the encounter level and for the adventuring day.  If anything, it *emboldens GMs to perturb that x, y, and z* because they can foresee the potential outputs of those inputs within a reasonable margin-of-error.
> 
> That is why GMs such as myself appreciate rigorous baseline calibration, especially if a system has a robust range of x, y, and z.




I’ve always thought it more closely resembled MtG rather than video games as so many conclude. 

It’s also an awesome description/explanation of why 4e never worked for me. I suck at MtG and that general design approach, and I could never really come to terms with the math/mechanics of 4e. My brain just dies it comprehend it well enough to be good at it.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

Maxperson said:


> That isn't what I said, though.  This is what I said, "However, if we start trying to *play combat like real life where everyone can react in real time to what creatures are doing near them*, the game would bog down to the point where combat is simply unplayable."
> 
> That involves a lot more than just having a chance to escape.  Goblin one moves, then 19 other goblins and the PCs have a chance to react to what is happening.  Then all the goblins and the PC start reacting to each other.  Perhaps the goblins all start to rush.  But what if 3 pull out crossbows?  Goblins will react by getting out of the way.  The PC will react by trying to get to cover or low to the ground.  The crossbow goblins maybe aim lower, or maybe move to get better position.  And on and on.  That just can't be effectively modeled and even if you try, it will take huge amounts of real time to play out a combat like that.




Actually that’s roughly how I run combat. Of course it’s not real time in terms of each swing, but we don’t use initiative and don’t really use rounds either. We go with a general idea how long an action might take, and if there is time before that action is completed other things happen.

And they are free to change their actions in response to other actions. It’s not unplayable at all, and helps move things along and keep people involved. It’s not as tough or complicated as it sounds.


----------



## Maxperson

Ilbranteloth said:


> Actually that’s roughly how I run combat. Of course it’s not real time in terms of each swing, but we don’t use initiative and don’t really use rounds either. We go with a general idea how long an action might take, and if there is time before that action is completed other things happen.
> 
> And they are free to change their actions in response to other actions. It’s not unplayable at all, and helps move things along and keep people involved. It’s not as tough or complicated as it sounds.




Yeah, but that's also not what I'm describing.  What I'm talking about is everyone being able to react to everyone else in roughly real time.  In a combat situation, as the party and the 20 goblins move, it's unlikely that they are going to be able to move more than 5 feet without the combat adjusting to what is going on.  So every 5 feet you have 20+ combatants reacting to each other moving, and to attacks, spells, and more.  

You can definitely get more realism out of combat than D&D has without bogging it down, but you can't get anywhere close to reality without it being a nightmare.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

billd91 said:


> If you have a trust problem with GMs, then that sounds like a *you* issue to me. It may be safe to say there are some GMs out there who might choose what happens based on what they want to happen - but I also know there are a lot of GMs out there who take the idea that they should be impartial seriously. Frankly, I'm a little more suspicious of the "Say Yes or Roll" mentality than the "Say Yes or No when appropriate for the situation" mentality because I don't feel the former gives the setting/mysteries/NPCs an even break with the PCs.




It isn't a trust issue. Its simply a judgement made by basic reasoning and experience.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I think you are taking things a bit too literally here. I am definitely not arguing that people are figuring out how it would really play out if this fictional setting was modeling real world causality. All I am saying is when the GM makes a determination, "What do I think would really happen here" is a perfectly valid way to decide, and it can result in a world that feels believable. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that the GM is somehow tapping into what would really happen. It is a judgement call. I think that you have the same person making this judgement over the course of the campaign does tend to produce a sense of a consistent world. But no one is claiming perfection here. We are just claiming it is perfectly fine and works for our purposes. Also you can make that judgement using any number of criteria: what would be most cinematic? What would be mosts genre appropriate? What would be the most exciting? What would be the most scary? etc. You can even combine these things: What would really happen and ALSO be exciting?




Sure, and as I say, I think there is coherency, which dictates that at the very least the players are able to look at what they know about the game world and come up with a determination of what they will find when they go into the inn. All of the possible criteria can be factored there too, though it is certainly a positive when you can say "well, the CHARACTERS line of reasoning was..." and it doesn't come across as completely absurd (because, again coherency, if my character's personality and story are based on internally inconsistent material its hard to understand or portray). 

I don't think you and I, and probably a lot of the other people around here, are really saying anything too different. I do think some people put more emphasis on this idea than seems needed by me, but its just different strokes.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

Maxperson said:


> Yeah, but that's also not what I'm describing.  What I'm talking about is everyone being able to react to everyone else in roughly real time.  In a combat situation, as the party and the 20 goblins move, it's unlikely that they are going to be able to move more than 5 feet without the combat adjusting to what is going on.  So every 5 feet you have 20+ combatants reacting to each other moving, and to attacks, spells, and more.
> 
> You can definitely get more realism out of combat than D&D has without bogging it down, but you can't get anywhere close to reality without it being a nightmare.




It’s pretty close to that. They are telling me what they are doing. I tell them what the monsters are doing, and they are changing what they are doing at that point in time. We’re not going around the table one at a time, it’s sort of a free conversation as it goes, rilling and resolving actions as we go. It’s not a nightmare, but it is sometimes chaotic. But that’s sort of the point.


----------



## S'mon

Imaculata said:


> I do however use random dice rolls when determining what the players encounter while exploring. But I always give myself the freedom to ignore the outcome, if it doesn't seem fitting.




Conversely, I love not giving myself the freedom, by telling the players in advance - "OK you make it safely to port - UNLESS I roll a 20 on this die...." (said on Sunday).

It's part of the Free Kriegsspiel approach I like to tell the players the odds.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm pretty sure the whole "argument by degenerate example" was covered awhile ago.  Yes, ANY method becomes bad if allowed to degenerate, this is trivial.  No one is suggesting you only say yes, so let's not use that as an example.
> 
> Further, if you're playing where players only have a 1 in 10k random chance of advancing their goal, that's another pretty useless example of bad play.



I didn't read what he wrote as saying either of these.  Instead I saw it as putting a point I made earlier into different words: coincidence (the 1-in-10000 occurrence) is fine once in a while and can make for a better story but when it happens too often it breaks plausibility, believability, realism, and-or whatever other term one wants to put to it.



> The discussion here is really that none of us are using realism to decide outcomes, we're using systems (from random to GM decides) to present a coherent fictional world in-line with the themes and tropes we'd like to play.  "Seems like a real world" is a laudable trope, but it's not realism, and no method we have can make it so.  What we have are various means of applying judgement that create believable outcomes, where "believable" is largely subjective based on group tastes.
> 
> Why is this important?  Well, it seems obvious, but what happens is that people start using terms to bolster their preferences and nake them sound as if they're more betterer.  Like "realism." Or, "playing to find out what's in the GM's notes."  It's all petty one-up-manship. If you take a different playstyle at it's best when discussing it, and are honest about the foibles of your own, most of this conversation wouldn't happen.  It's okay that your play has potholes -- they all do.



Of course it has potholes. 

All I try to do is identify a goal (a plausible-believable internally-consistent setting based on reality where possible) and then point out some means of getting closer to said goal.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, for example, once my 11th level Ranger leaped off a high cliff because he wanted to catch up with some bad guys. Sure, he knew he was going to take some damage, but I knew that the falling rules coupled with the height of the cliff meant death was vanishingly unlikely and the character possessed some magic which would make up for the hit point deficit later. No person unfamiliar with the rules of D&D would have understood that decision. Any reasonable person would call a 200' fall lethal 99.99% of the time.



And that is exactly the sort of thing I want to see gone from the game: that someone without magical flight or featherfall or whatever can jump off a 200' cliff (assuming earth-like gravity) in pretty much full knowledge that he's going to survive.



> The point is, the conventions and processes of game play are what is transcendent at the table. Internally consistent logic is pretty thin and the fact that we could in some theoretical white room try to make our game work in a logical or realistic fashion is irrelevant to any discussion of actual games at actual tables.



I disagree, in that I'd - perhaps naively - like to think that the contributions to the white room discussions are based on what actually happens at our tables...and or might give some ideas as to how to better adjudicate what happens.

Nothing's ever perfect, but we can always try to get closer.


----------



## Shasarak

Lanefan said:


> And that is exactly the sort of thing I want to see gone from the game: that someone without magical flight or featherfall or whatever can jump off a 200' cliff (assuming earth-like gravity) in pretty much full knowledge that he's going to survive.




I dont think that I would play a version of DnD where a high level Fighter could not survive jumping off a 200' cliff.  That just does not sound realistic to me.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Nothing's ever perfect, but we can always try to get closer.



A chief problem is that this presumes that there is a singular idea for what perfection entails or should entail. But based upon your own stated game preferences and ideals, that hypothetical game far from constitutes any notion of "perfect" that I would put forth. And I'll admit that this attitude also contributes to some of the aggravation I have our discussions.


----------



## pemerton

Adventure fiction - heck, fiction in general - depends on coincidence: people turn up, or fail to turn up, at the appropriate moment; opportunities arise, or fail to arise, at just the time that will drive the protagonist to action; etc.

That's not to say that fiction must be "unrealistic" in the sense of _wildly implausible_. It is to say that, if you looked at 1,000 human lives, few or even none of them would exhibit the same degree of dramatic "neatness" and development as one finds in fiction. For the same reason, even the lives of people who lived exciting and dramatic lives generally need editing to be rendered dramatically apt (eg for biopic films or historical novels). The editing needed to make real human lives dramatic can be large or can be small, but editing is required.

There are a range of techniques, in the context of RPGs, for managing the editing, the content introduction, etc. The most obvious and (I posit) universal one is that of choosing what events to spend time on in the context of play, and which ones to elide. Do we bother to play out all the time spent looking for the sect members, or do we just cut to the discovery of them? And if the latter, do we mark of "time spent" on a campaign tracker as part of the process, or not? Different systems suggest different answers.

In Classic Traveller, a PC or group of PCs spends a week looking for a patron to hire them to undertake some (typically exciting) mission, they have a 1 in 3 chance of finding such a person. Is that realistic? - We are marking off time on the campaign tracker, after all, and in Traveller that will cost you money for upkeep, berthing costs for your starship and ultimately ageing rolls for your PC. Or is it unrealistic? - I've got a skillset comparable to some of the characters the Traveller PC gen rules can yield, but I don't think if I spent a week hanging out in "bars, taverns, clubs . . . or any other likely places" (to quote from Book 3) that I would have a 1 in 18 chance of being approached by an Arsonist, Cutthroat, Assassin, Hijacker, Smuggler or Terrorist (to pluck the top line from the 6 lines of the random patron table).

In the Star Wars universe, how often are bar patrons maimed or killed in bar fights? We don't know - the inspiration for those scenes in the original movie is the western, not a bureau of statistics report on the incidence of drinking-hole violence. If I sit down to play a Star Wars game and there are none of those western-style tropes, then the game is going to suck.

In the universe of Classic Traveller, it's a given that dubious persons who hang out in "likely places" will be hired by somewhat shadowy, sometimes unlikely, patrons to undertake dubious, shadowy and unlikely tasks. That's what makes the game happen. (Or is at least one way the game happens. The other is to play a trading game. But that variant also rests on tropes that weren't conceived of via statistical analysis.)

If I was playing a game which features sect members and teahouses (or cultists and inns) then personally I would expect that from time to time a visit to the teahouse will result in a meeting with sect members. Different systems and different moods will affect how much we care about time spent waiting for sect members to show up, money spent bribing hospitality staff for tip-offs, etc - but that doesn't change the underlying expectation.


----------



## Imaculata

S'mon said:


> Conversely, I love not giving myself the freedom, by telling the players in advance - "OK you make it safely to port - UNLESS I roll a 20 on this die...." (said on Sunday).
> 
> It's part of the Free Kriegsspiel approach I like to tell the players the odds.




I love doing this as well. Or I'll ask my players to roll a D20 to determine what happens during their travels, and they know that a 20 means "YIKES!".
Telling the players the odds can create suspense, while also showing the players what rules you are using. I like to be as open as possible when it comes to my rulings as a DM.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> If I was playing a game which features sect members and teahouses (or cultists and inns) then personally I would expect that from time to time a visit to the teahouse will result in a meeting with sect members. Different systems and different moods will affect how much we care about time spent waiting for sect members to show up, money spent bribing hospitality staff for tip-offs, etc - but that doesn't change the underlying expectation.




That is an entirely reasonable expectation on your part. If you were in my group, I'd consider that kind of expectation when trying to figure out how to make the determination. The intent here isn't to clamp down on a gaming principle, even if it ruins everyone's fun. But that doesn't make it mother may I, if a GM reaches a decision by concluding based on what he or she thinks would be present at the Tea House. It makes it, a style of play Pemerton wouldn't particularly like. Which is entirely reasonable and it is even fair for you to expect the GM to not be a jerk about his style if other people want something different from what's being offered.

And like I said before, what is plausible might be one factor among many the GM is weighing. I have no issue with the GM thinking 'what is plausible AND what is genre appropriate' or 'what is plausible AND what is dramatically interesting'. That is all fine by me. I also have no problem with the GM saying 'I don't know so I am going to roll on this here chart'.


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## S'mon

If in doubt, I find 3 in 6 chance works really well - "hm, ok, 3 in 6 chance sect members at the tea house" - it's a nice compromise between cinematic reality and reality-reality.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Adventure fiction - heck, fiction in general - depends on coincidence: people turn up, or fail to turn up, at the appropriate moment; opportunities arise, or fail to arise, at just the time that will drive the protagonist to action; etc.
> 
> That's not to say that fiction must be "unrealistic" in the sense of _wildly implausible_. It is to say that, if you looked at 1,000 human lives, few or even none of them would exhibit the same degree of dramatic "neatness" and development as one finds in fiction. For the same reason, even the lives of people who lived exciting and dramatic lives generally need editing to be rendered dramatically apt (eg for biopic films or historical novels). The editing needed to make real human lives dramatic can be large or can be small, but editing is required.




It seems like you are back to the False Dichotomy that realism must be all or nothing.



> In Classic Traveller, a PC or group of PCs spends a week looking for a patron to hire them to undertake some (typically exciting) mission, they have a 1 in 3 chance of finding such a person. Is that realistic? - We are marking off time on the campaign tracker, after all, and in Traveller that will cost you money for upkeep, berthing costs for your starship and ultimately ageing rolls for your PC. Or is it unrealistic? -* I've got a skillset comparable to some of the characters the Traveller PC gen rules can yield, but I don't think if I spent a week hanging out in "bars, taverns, clubs . . . or any other likely places"* (to quote from Book 3) that I would have a 1 in 18 chance of being approached by an Arsonist, Cutthroat, Assassin, Hijacker, Smuggler or Terrorist (to pluck the top line from the 6 lines of the random patron table).




Have you asked Liam Neeson?  He may have a different experience with his skillset and being in bars.



> In the Star Wars universe, how often are bar patrons maimed or killed in bar fights? We don't know - the inspiration for those scenes in the original movie is the western, not a bureau of statistics report on the incidence of drinking-hole violence. If I sit down to play a Star Wars game and there are none of those western-style tropes, then the game is going to suck.
> 
> In the universe of Classic Traveller, it's a given that dubious persons who hang out in "likely places" will be hired by somewhat shadowy, sometimes unlikely, patrons to undertake dubious, shadowy and unlikely tasks. That's what makes the game happen. (Or is at least one way the game happens. The other is to play a trading game. But that variant also rests on tropes that weren't conceived of via statistical analysis.)




None of that means that a different DM's game of Star Wars or Traveller can't be made to be more realistic, while still keeping those tropes and having a game that doesn't suck.  Realism is not an all or nothing proposition.



> If I was playing a game which features sect members and teahouses (or cultists and inns) then personally I would expect that from time to time a visit to the teahouse will result in a meeting with sect members. Different systems and different moods will affect *how much we care about time spent waiting for sect members to show up, money spent bribing hospitality staff for tip-offs*, etc - but that doesn't change the underlying expectation.




From time to time, sure.  If the PCs go back daily and sit from opening until closing for a month or two or wait for a month or two for notification from a worker after a bribe, the odds of running into a sect member rise dramatically.  That's moving the goal posts, though.  The scenario was just walking down to the tea house and hoping to run into a sect member at a tea house.  The odds of that happening are very slim.  The odds are much more slim than the odds of methods used by games you like to determine if a sect member is there.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> I love doing this as well. Or I'll ask my players to roll a D20 to determine what happens during their travels, and they know that a 20 means "YIKES!".
> Telling the players the odds can create suspense, while also showing the players what rules you are using. I like to be as open as possible when it comes to my rulings as a DM.




I do both as well, though if I ask my players to roll, they don't want to see the dreaded 1 show up.  I have a personal thing where I don't think a player rolling a 20 should result in something negative for them.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It seems like you are back to the False Dichotomy that realism must be all or nothing.



I didn't say anything about whether "realism" is a matter of degree or a categorical thing. I said that real human lives don't have the same dramatic "neatness" and development as do those of characters in fiction. The truth of that claim doesn't turn on any view about whether "realism" is or is not a matter of degree.



Maxperson said:


> None of that means that a different DM's game of Star Wars or Traveller can't be made to be more realistic, while still keeping those tropes and having a game that doesn't suck.  Realism is not an all or nothing proposition.



I don't see how "more realistic" bears on this. How realistic is it to have a guy's arm cut off in an interstellar cantina? Or to have a guy shot? Jedi are supposedly extinct, and light sabers thus an ancient weapon, yet no one seems too shocked to see one pulled out - how realistic is that? The questions don't really make sense: the cantina scenes are not meant to be elements in an educational video, "A day in the life of an interstellar bar". They weren't authored on the basis of random sampling. They're deliberately-crafted scenes in a dramatic narrative.



Maxperson said:


> If the PCs go back daily and sit from opening until closing for a month or two or wait for a month or two for notification from a worker after a bribe, the odds of running into a sect member rise dramatically.  That's moving the goal posts, though.  The scenario was just walking down to the tea house and hoping to run into a sect member at a tea house.  The odds of that happening are very slim.  The odds are much more slim than the odds of methods used by games you like to determine if a sect member is there.



There aren't any goal posts here - we're neither literally nor metaphorically playing a game of football (or hockey etc). But in any even, how long do _you_, or any other poster, supppose the PCs who head down to the teahouse spend there waiting for a sect member to turn up? As far as I recall I'm the first person to even raise it as a consideration, in the post you quoted - so what goal posts am I supposedly moving? I mean, if the system were Traveller then the basic unit of time would probably be a week. In 4e D&D it could easily be a day.

But in any event, the notion of the odds being "very slim" misses my point about fiction. The odds of any particular thing happening are slim. When I go to the teahouse and someone else is there, the odds that it should be _just that very person_ who is there, rather than someone else who might have been there, are slim too. The thing about adventure fiction is that it tends to cash out these slim odds with the exciting rather than boring options. So instead of the extreme unlikelihood that person X is there, or person Y, we go with person Z who happens to be a dramatically interesting person in the context of the game.

And as I posted, how we gate this state of affairs - behind checks, behind ingame time and/or money spent as a resource, etc - is a matter of system and of mood. But it doesn't go to the fundamanental point that, in a satisfying adventure RPG, exciting things are going to happen in ways and at frequencies that are not consonant with most real human lives.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I didn't say anything about whether "realism" is a matter of degree or a categorical thing. I said that real human lives don't have the same dramatic "neatness" and development as do those of characters in fiction. The truth of that claim doesn't turn on any view about whether "realism" is or is not a matter of degree.




The truth of the claim is irrelevant to the discussion about realism, though.  It was a Red Herring.  Realism is a spectrum, so whether or not real human lives match up to NPCs lives doesn't matter.



> I don't see how "more realistic" bears on this. How realistic is it to have a guy's arm cut off in an interstellar cantina? Or to have a guy shot?




With a focused laser sword as opposed to a sword made of cheese?  It's much more realistic than a cheese sword.



> Jedi are supposedly extinct, and light sabers thus an ancient weapon, yet no one seems too shocked to see one pulled out - how realistic is that?




The entire cantina freezes and goes silent.  That's shock.



> But in any even, how long do _you_, or any other poster, supppose the PCs who head down to the teahouse spend there waiting for a sect member to turn up? As far as I recall I'm the first person to even raise it as a consideration, in the post you quoted - so what goal posts am I supposedly moving? I mean, if the system were Traveller then the basic unit of time would probably be a week. In 4e D&D it could easily be a day.




Time is something you specify if it's going to be longer than going down to see if one is there.  Nobody said they were going back day after day, so they weren't.  Nobody said that they were bribing the staff and waiting however long it takes, so they weren't.  It was just a short trip, because that's all anybody described.  You moved the goalposts by changing the scenario to fit your needs, rather than working within the scenario as it has been presented and used.



> So instead of the extreme unlikelihood that person X is there, or person Y, we go with person Z who happens to be a dramatically interesting person in the context of the game.




Which pushes the game further down towards the unrealistic end of the spectrum, as it happens quite a bit more often in your type of game than in mine.  That's fine, but it's far more unrealistic that you will find just who you need, much, MUCH more often than someone should.  You enjoy that sort of game and more power to you.  I wouldn't want to change how you have fun.  However, I enjoy a more realistic kind of game.


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## Satyrn

S'mon said:


> If in doubt, I find 3 in 6 chance works really well - "hm, ok, 3 in 6 chance sect members at the tea house" - it's a nice compromise between cinematic reality and reality-reality.




Coin flips work for me, too.


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## innerdude

billd91 said:


> If you have a trust problem with GMs, then that sounds like a *you* issue to me. It may be safe to say there are some GMs out there who might choose what happens based on what they want to happen - but I also know there are a lot of GMs out there who take the idea that they should be impartial seriously. Frankly, I'm a little more suspicious of the "Say Yes or Roll" mentality than the "Say Yes or No when appropriate for the situation" mentality because I don't feel the former gives the setting/mysteries/NPCs an even break with the PCs.




I realize the thread has moved on quite a bit from this post, but I'm feeling the need to "unpack" this a bit. 

To restate---in your view, "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" principles meaningfully diminish some combination of desirable gameplay qualities, including but not limited to: 


Maintaining "The mystery of the unknown".
Maintaining "causational realism" or "causational coherence".
Ensuring the PCs don't inhabit an artificial "protagonist bubble" / keeping NPCs' within the same "realistic," "naturalistic," or "causational" boundaries as the PCs.

Can you elaborate how or why this diminishing effect happens? 

Because in my view, the exact opposite is true. I would be deeply suspicious of any GM who loudly and continually proclaimed how "realistic" and "causationally consistent" their games were, because it would tell me that at the end of the day, (s)he is willing to set the "purity of fiction" above the fun of the players.

Does that mean that the GM is always and forever going to make that choice? Not necessarily, but it does tell me about the underlying motivation and gameplay principles the GM values. When push comes to shove, the players under this GM are going to be forced to subsume their wants and desires or end the relationship. (Sound familiar? "Don't like your GM? Leave the group, or just deal with it. Your choice!")

Do I think the listed items above have no merit, or that RPGs should be wholly devoid of "realism" and "causational consistency"? No. But beyond the point of establishing that purple worms won't randomly fall out of the sky and rocks don't randomly transmute into apple-pie-baking acrobats, what is the value of "causational consistency" anyway? Am I completely misreading the level of demand for games that insist upon strict, "living-breathing world" principles?

In my view GMs should be very, VERY judicious in swinging the Bludgeon of Fictional Purity, because it's indicative of an attitude that the GM's play agenda will ultimately and always be seen as more important than the players'. 

"Purity of fiction" is too often a cop-out for GMs who don't want to cede control and are overly invested in their pre-scripted fiction. And the reason they're overly-invested in their "game world" is because they tie their own emotional state, wants, and needs to their ability to be seen as "clever" or "imaginative" or "cool" within the context of their game. For how could a GM ever be seen as "clever" if (s)he can't show off the amazing worldbuilding they've done?

Given the choice between "purity of fiction" and re-configuring vast swaths of the GM's "world" because it would be massively more fun, I'd guess an overwhelming majority of players would choose the fun.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> That is an entirely reasonable expectation on your part. If you were in my group, I'd consider that kind of expectation when trying to figure out how to make the determination. The intent here isn't to clamp down on a gaming principle, even if it ruins everyone's fun. But that doesn't make it mother may I, if a GM reaches a decision by concluding based on what he or she thinks would be present at the Tea House. It makes it, a style of play Pemerton wouldn't particularly like. Which is entirely reasonable and it is even fair for you to expect the GM to not be a jerk about his style if other people want something different from what's being offered.
> 
> And like I said before, what is plausible might be one factor among many the GM is weighing. I have no issue with the GM thinking 'what is plausible AND what is genre appropriate' or 'what is plausible AND what is dramatically interesting'. That is all fine by me. I also have no problem with the GM saying 'I don't know so I am going to roll on this here chart'.




I guess my answer here in terms of the tea house and the sect is "OK, fine, its determined that the sect is NOT going to be found in the teahouse." Since the point of the game, IMHO is for interesting stuff to happen, then this particular teahouse, at least in the 'finding a sect' context is simply not going to even figure at all. So any decision I might make about it not having sect members, realistic or unrealistic, is going to have at most 2 seconds of table time, and probably none at all. I'm going to be going on to the place that DOES have the sect!


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The truth of the claim is irrelevant to the discussion about realism, though.  It was a Red Herring.  Realism is a spectrum, so whether or not real human lives match up to NPCs lives doesn't matter.



I didn't say anything about NPCs - I talked about characters in fiction. In the context of RPGing, the PCs are the most salient such characters.

And whether or not my claim is a Red Herring, it doesn't rely on any False Dichotomy about _realism_. Which is what you asserted. I take it that you now retract that assertion.



Maxperson said:


> Time is something you specify if it's going to be longer than going down to see if one is there.



What system are you talking about? Maxperson's table's approach to D&D? Classic Traveller doesn't require time to be specified in such a way - I GMed a session on the weekend and as I went around the table to find out what the players were having their PCs do one said "I'm looking for a patron." Which takes a week.

In real life, if I tell someone that I'm going to a cafe and nothing more, I don't generate an implication that I won't be sitting there for a while. From that description of my action, who knows whether I'm going to the cafe for a minute (eg to pick up someone who is waiting for me there) or three hours or as long as I feel like?

In a RPG, if a player says, speaking for his/her PC, _I'm going to the teahouse to look for sect members_ , how long are they hanging out there? If the system doesn't specify in the way that Traveller does, and I as GM think it matters, then I ask. But it may not. I've played games where an appropriate response would be _OK, you hang out at the teahouse for a little while with not much happening until a group of people enters looking rather furtive and obviously carrying knives under their shirts_. How long is _a little while_? Ten minutes? Three hours? In many RPG systems it doesn't matter.



Maxperson said:


> Which pushes the game further down towards the unrealistic end of the spectrum, as it happens quite a bit more often in your type of game than in mine.



More often per unit of play time? Per unit of action declaration? Per unit of ingame time?

If per unit of play time, then that suggest my game is more exciting than yours (given that what we are talking about is the PCs encountering _person Z who happens to be a dramatically interesting person in the context of the game_). But my game could potentially have more such encounters per unit of play time yet _fewer_ per unit of ingame time, because of particular system features (eg in Traveller, the tendency to use the week as the default unit of time for this sort of thing; in Prince Valiant, my fairly regular narration of seasons passing as the PCs hang out at castles doing their day-to-day knightly business). Which would make my game more exciting _and_ more realistic!


----------



## Sadras

Satyrn said:


> Coin flips work for me, too.




Aha, no more can you hide from us Harvey _Satyrn_ Dent!


----------



## Aldarc

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I guess my answer here in terms of the tea house and the sect is "OK, fine, its determined that the sect is NOT going to be found in the teahouse." Since the point of the game, IMHO is for interesting stuff to happen, then this particular teahouse, at least in the 'finding a sect' context is simply not going to even figure at all. So any decision I might make about it not having sect members, realistic or unrealistic, is going to have at most 2 seconds of table time, and probably none at all. I'm going to be going on to the place that DOES have the sect!



Well if we were going with emulating the genre of fiction, we could even employ the fairy tale Rule of 3 trope. The first two places you visit will not have what you seek, but the third time will be the charm.


----------



## Imaculata

Maxperson said:


> I do both as well, though if I ask my players to roll, they don't want to see the dreaded 1 show up.  I have a personal thing where I don't think a player rolling a 20 should result in something negative for them.




I am of the same mind. A 20 on a random encounter, means an exotic encounter in my campaigns. This can be good or bad, but it is usually something quite interesting.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I didn't say anything about NPCs - I talked about characters in fiction. In the context of RPGing, the PCs are the most salient such characters.
> 
> And whether or not my claim is a Red Herring, it doesn't rely on any False Dichotomy about _realism_. Which is what you asserted. I take it that you now retract that assertion.




It was also talking about the two extremes, rather than engaging the spectrum as it should with PCs, as well as NPCs.  A statement can qualify multiple fallacies.



> What system are you talking about? Maxperson's table's approach to D&D? Classic Traveller doesn't require time to be specified in such a way - I GMed a session on the weekend and as I went around the table to find out what the players were having their PCs do one said "I'm looking for a patron." Which takes a week.




Most, even the vast majority of them.  Exceptions don't disprove the rule.  Even with Traveller, it sounds like that time frame is built into the system, but as we did not specify the system, it wasn't specifically Traveller.  Absent a specific system, you go with the common usage, which is what the majority of systems use.



> In real life, if I tell someone that I'm going to a cafe and nothing more, I don't generate an implication that I won't be sitting there for a while. From that description of my action, who knows whether I'm going to the cafe for a minute (eg to pick up someone who is waiting for me there) or three hours or as long as I feel like?




I don't know about you, but when I tell my wife I'm going to the cafe, it's understood that it's a single instance of my going to the cafe.  It's also understood that if I was going to go there day after day for months, I would mention that.



> In a RPG, if a player says, speaking for his/her PC, _I'm going to the teahouse to look for sect members_ , how long are they hanging out there? If the system doesn't specify in the way that Traveller does, and I as GM think it matters, then I ask. But it may not. I've played games where an appropriate response would be _OK, you hang out at the teahouse for a little while with not much happening until a group of people enters looking rather furtive and obviously carrying knives under their shirts_. How long is _a little while_? Ten minutes? Three hours? In many RPG systems it doesn't matter.




But again, this is just another Red Herring to distract from what I am saying, as well as a Strawman, since I did not say they would go to the tea house and leave the instant they show up.  Going down to see if one is there involves more time than just popping your head in, but it does not involve multiple days or bribing the staff for months unless as you point out above, the PCs say so.  In the example we are discussing, nobody said so, so it wasn't happening.  Adding it later like you are doing is Moving the Goal Posts.



> If per unit of play time, then that suggest my game is more exciting than yours (given that what we are talking about is the PCs encountering _person Z who happens to be a dramatically interesting person in the context of the game_).




The only thing it suggests is that you knock off more time for events than I do.  It says nothing about which game is more or less exciting, and quite frankly a game which has unreasonably high chances of hitting long odds all the time would be boring is hell for me and my group.  If you and your group find it to be more exciting than my style of play, great for you, but it does not suggest that in general  your game is more exciting.

People would be more inclined to take what you say seriously if you weren't always putting other styles down with little smug comments like that all the time.  Those comments detract from what you say and make people resistant to it.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> I am of the same mind. A 20 on a random encounter, means an exotic encounter in my campaigns. This can be good or bad, but it is usually something quite interesting.




When I DM'd 3.5, I had a Fate Deck.  It was composed of a few hundred Magic the Gathering cards.  When a player rolled a 1 outside of initiative(unless it was an important initiative), they drew a card.  That card would be applied to the situation as the hand of fate.  For example, if a player was taking a swing at the enemy and rolled a 1, and drew say execute, they would either crit or kill outright the creature they were attacking, rather than auto missing.  Which result would depend on how powerful the creature was.  If they drew a shatter, their weapon would break if non-magical, or get an easy save to avoid breaking if it was magical.  If they were trying to sunder or break something, the shatter would work in their favor and there would be no further rolling.  The item in question would just break unless it was an artifact or something that can't break.  At the beginning of the game I would draw 4 cards that the players could not see and keep them behind the screen, to use if a perfect moment arose, or if a card drawn for a 1 just didn't apply at all and one behind the screen did.  The players loved it and the result was good or bad, and usually something interesting.


----------



## Sadras

innerdude said:


> To restate---in your view, "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" principles meaningfully diminish some combination of desirable gameplay qualities, including but not limited to:
> 
> Maintaining "The mystery of the unknown".
> Maintaining "causational realism" or "causational coherence".
> Ensuring the PCs don't inhabit an artificial "protagonist bubble" / keeping NPCs' within the same "realistic," "naturalistic," or "causational" boundaries as the PCs.
> 
> Can you elaborate how or why this diminishing effect happens?
> 
> I would be deeply suspicious of any GM who loudly and continually proclaimed how "realistic" and "causationally consistent" their games were, because it would tell me that at the end of the day, (s)he is willing to set the "purity of fiction" above the fun of the players.




I'm not sure if the below will satisfy your question. 

* I was a player in a game with a riddle/mystery element to it. 
* Stakes were high, the correct answer would return the character's spirit to his body. The PC was dead.
* The answer to the "riddle" was sealed in an envelope on the table at the start of the session.
* There were three possible answers.
* The PCs argued among themselves over which was the correct answer, as one could make a case for each. Nothing was certain.
* Through the adventure, it was revealed that the character did not want to return. Now this created a further conflict among the players. Did the PCs now answer _correctly_ and go against the wishes of the spirit, *OR* did they answer incorrectly and have the spirit return (a) to his homeworld or (b) the FR Fugue Plane and perhaps suffer on the Wall of the Faithless (since he was not a native of Faerun). 
A (b) result was definitely not wanted by any player.

Resolving this via _Say yes_ or _roll the dice_ would have diminished the mystery and fun of such a game. The DM was indeed the player of the PC and we agreed he would DM that once-off session while I, the campaign DM, would play an NPC. I was just as clueless to the answers as the rest of the players.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> I'm not sure if the below will satisfy your question.
> 
> * I was a player in a game with a riddle/mystery element to it.
> * Stakes were high, the correct answer would return the character's spirit to his body. The PC was dead.
> * The answer to the "riddle" was sealed in an envelope on the table at the start of the session.
> * There were three possible answers.
> * The PCs argued among themselves over which was the correct answer, as one could make a case for each. Nothing was certain.
> * Through the adventure, it was revealed that the character did not want to return. Now this created a further conflict among the players. Did the PC now answer _correctly_ and go against the wishes of the spirit, *OR* did they answer incorrectly and have the spirit return (a) to his homeworld or (b) the FR Fugue Plane and perhaps suffer on the Wall of the Faithless.
> A (b) result was definitely not wanted by any player.
> 
> Resolving this via _Say yes_ or _roll the dice_ would have diminished the mystery and fun of such a game. The DM was indeed the player of the PC and we agreed he would DM that once-off session while I, the campaign DM, would play an NPC. I was just as clueless to the answers as the rest of the players.



Hi Sadras. I don't get how would you resolve that situation with Say yes or roll the dice. 
Say yes to what? Roll the dice for what?


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Hi Sadras. I don't get how would you resolve that situation with Say yes or roll the dice.
> Say yes to what? Roll the dice for what?




I admit this may be a terrible example. 
My line of thought was a No (incorrect answer to the riddle) which my play example offered does not diminish the fun and maintains purity of the fiction.

EDIT: The PCs wishing to go to the teahouse and find x is like selecting an answer to the riddle where a No result can be a distinct possibility.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> I admit this may be a terrible example.
> My line of thought was a No (incorrect answer to the riddle) which my play example offered does not diminish the fun and maintains purity of the fiction.
> 
> EDIT: The PCs wishing to go to the teahouse and find x is like selecting an answer to the riddle where a No result can be a distinct possibility.



Terrible indeed!  No, I'm joking, and excuse me if I'm being pedantic:
"Say yes or roll" is assuming a game or situation without GM Veto, Necessary Prerequisites for pass/fail  and the like. 
It is meant also for conflict resolution in mind, but can be easily ported to task res. 
Anyway, in a d&d situation it would be like: We don't wake up the dragon and steal the treasure!
Gm: Dude... Roll for initiative and prepare for combat. 

Or: We use scouts and animals to open a way thru the jungle and arrive at the temple's gate.
Gm: Fine. / Not so fast: roll for every task you do, the forest is full of dangers. 

In your example it'd be something like:
We don't solve the riddle and instead use a magic ritual/thief skill to overcome it. 
Gm: roll your dice and let's see... 

Generally speaking SYORTD was intended for games in which the "information" is not only easily obtained by PCs, but rather given in advance by the Gm to favor choices, course of action, conflicting inter-party decisions to be made,  by the table. 

You can also use it like : 
I use streetwise to track down the sect when they go to a tea house. 
Gm: fine. They go around openly, you spot them easily. 
Or: Gm: they have spies around downtown that might spot you first: roll... (then anything might happen)


----------



## Satyrn

Sadras said:


> Aha, no more can you hide from us Harvey _Satyrn_ Dent!




It's a . . . *flips coin* . . . fair cop.


----------



## Numidius

Numidius said:


> Terrible indeed!  No, I'm joking, and excuse me if I'm being pedantic:
> "Say yes or roll" is assuming a game or situation without GM Veto, Necessary Prerequisites for pass/fail  and the like.
> It is meant also for conflict resolution in mind, but can be easily ported to task res.
> Anyway, in a d&d situation it would be like: We don't wake up the dragon and steal the treasure!
> Gm: Dude... Roll for initiative and prepare for combat.
> 
> Or: We use scouts and animals to open a way thru the jungle and arrive at the temple's gate.
> Gm: Fine. / Not so fast: roll for every task you do, the forest is full of dangers.
> 
> In your example it'd be something like:
> We don't solve the riddle and instead use a magic ritual/thief skill to overcome it.
> Gm: roll your dice and let's see...
> 
> Generally speaking SYORTD was intended for games in which the "information" is not only easily obtained by PCs, but rather given in advance by the Gm to favor choices, course of action, conflicting inter-party decisions to be made,  by the table.
> 
> You can also use it like :
> I use streetwise to track down the sect when they go to a tea house.
> Gm: fine. They go around openly, you spot them easily.
> Or: Gm: they have spies around downtown that might spot you first: roll... (then anything might happen)



As an aside: in games like Dungeon World and Traveller* (also maybe 4e?) there is no room for SYORTD, because their prescriptive rules cannot be ignored and already provide a range of different outcomes that change the ongoing fiction which again cannot be ignored (in a sense, these games might have already bolted-in the level of realism they want to provide)

On the other hand, old D&D was basically all Say Yes Or Roll: the dice to roll were those of Combat, in case the DM wasn't convinced of the players' alternative plans to it. (Here, your mileage may vary about realism) 

Makes sense? (Real question) 



*@pemerton, correct me if I'm wrong about Traveller and 4e


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> As an aside: in games like Dungeon World and Traveller* (also maybe 4e?) there is no room for SYORTD, because their prescriptive rules cannot be ignored and already provide a range of different outcomes that change the ongoing fiction which again cannot be ignored (in a sense, these games might have already bolted-in the level of realism they want to provide)
> 
> On the other hand, old D&D was basically all Say Yes Or Roll: the dice to roll were those of Combat, in case the DM wasn't convinced of the players' alternative plans to it. (Here, your mileage may vary about realism)
> 
> Makes sense? (Real question)
> 
> 
> 
> *@pemerton, correct me if I'm wrong about Traveller and 4e




Huh?  PbtA games are very much say yes or roll the dice style games.  Can you explain why you think DW is incompatible with SYORTD?

And, while you could do syortd with OD&D, the anticipated play doesn't work well with that, as the dungeon was built and play was solving it -- not much room for say yes.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Hi Sadras. I don't get how would you resolve that situation with Say yes or roll the dice.
> Say yes to what? Roll the dice for what?




That's kinda the point.  The "Say yes or roll the dice" method of play wouldn't have worked with that sort of game circumstance.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> old D&D was basically all Say Yes Or Roll: the dice to roll were those of Combat, in case the DM wasn't convinced of the players' alternative plans to it. (Here, your mileage may vary about realism)



I tend to agree with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] about this - as a general rule classic wargaming/dungeon-crawling D&D doesn't support "say 'yes' or roll the dice", because the GM is meant to have already mapped and "stocked" the dungeon and uses that to regulate what gets introduced into the fiction without being obliged to allow a die roll if s/he doesn't just want to say "yes". And even if you _wanted_ to play classic D&D in that way, it doesn't have the mechanical framework to support it - there's no general system of calling for checks.

I can see how classic D&D combat can be played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" fashion, though, and think that's an interesting take on it.



Numidius said:


> pemerton, correct me if I'm wrong about Traveller and 4e



4e D&D has two basic mechanical frameworks: combat, which in mechanical terms is highly structured; and non-combat, which in mechanical terms is very loose and based on either checks or skill challenges. (The skill descriptions in the PHB try to introduce some non-combat subsystems associated with particular skills, eg how much food can you get by foraging using your Nature skill, but as far as I can tell most successful 4e games ignore those subsystems as incompatible with the general spirit and best play of the game.)

Combat in 4e can have "say 'yes' or roll the dice" elements - eg if a player declares "I yell at the orc: surrender!" nothing obliges the GM to call for an Intimidate check as opposed to just have the orc surrender - but that isn't where it defaults to. Much more important for good 4e combat is framing rolls of the dice as an alternative to _no_ - which requires good working intuitions around p 42, what are suitable trade-offs in terms of spending resources to generate consequences outside the formal "power" framework, etc.

Non-combat in 4e can very much be played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" fashion. (Once you ignore those poorly-conceived bit of the PHB skill descriptions, and instead focus on the DMG and DMG2 advice for non-combat resolution.) It works fairly well, but has much lower failure rates than (say) Burning Wheel which makes it _much_ less gritty and less emotionally demanding on players.

Traveller I'll say something about below.



Numidius said:


> in games like Dungeon World and Traveller* (also maybe 4e?) there is no room for SYORTD, because their prescriptive rules cannot be ignored and already provide a range of different outcomes that change the ongoing fiction which again cannot be ignored (in a sense, these games might have already bolted-in the level of realism they want to provide)



I think the comparison of Classic Traveller to Dungeon World is an interesting one, because Traveller also has "moves" that - when they occur in the fiction - mandate the deployment of particular resolution subsystems. For instance, if a player declares (as his/her PC), "I'm hanging out at the bars etc hoping to meet a patron" then the next step is (i) to knock off a week of game time, and (ii) to make a patron encounter check. Likewise, if a player declares that s/he (as his/her PC) is performing some tricky manoeuvre while wearing a vacc-suit, then the rules prescribe the check (modified by Vacc Suit expertise) that needs to be made to avoid encountering some sort of difficulty (eg the last time that happened in our game, an oxygen hose got snagged on a rocky protrusion).

I think there are some differences from DW that are worth noting. Most obviously, the Traveller subsystems are all quite different from one another (in probabilities, in structuring outcomes, etc); and when they trigger a need for judgement it almost always goes back to the referee rather than the player (eg the referee decides what sort of difficulty results on a failed manoeuvring-in-vacc-suit check, although in practice of course the whole table might get to have input into that decision).

Another difference is that many of the triggers are much less clearly specified (not always: _when your activate your starship's jump drive_ is a pretty clear trigger), which means the referee has a bit more latitude in calling for checks - and this can allow the intrusion of a degree of "saying 'yes'" in lieu of calling for checks.

And then there are some domains of activity - most obviously procurement - which are clearly expected to be part of the game (it's full of price lists and expenses and ways to make money) but which don't say what happens (eg have no associated subsystem) if the referee is not just inclined to "say 'yes'" - eg there's no subsystem for being able to obtain fuel at a starport if supplies are running low and so it's not just freely available to those who can afford it. The system as written tends to assume the GM will just make something up to adjudicate this if necessary, which gets closer to some of the standard tools of early D&D refereeing. Another similarity in that respect is the existence of subsystems which sit on the cusp between genuine action resolution and GM scene-framing tools - like the person encounter rules, which state that a check should be made every day, but also at least imply that the GM might curate the making and outcome of at least some of those checks.

The lack of clear "say 'yes' or roll the dice" in Traveller was one of the things that led me to post a bit over a year ago that Classic Traveller is a dice driven game.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I tend to agree with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] about this - as a general rule classic wargaming/dungeon-crawling D&D doesn't support "say 'yes' or roll the dice", because the GM is meant to have already mapped and "stocked" the dungeon and uses that to regulate what gets introduced into the fiction without being obliged to allow a die roll if s/he doesn't just want to say "yes". And even if you _wanted_ to play classic D&D in that way, it doesn't have the mechanical framework to support it - there's no general system of calling for checks.
> 
> I can see how classic D&D combat can be played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" fashion, though, and think that's an interesting take on it.
> 
> 4e D&D has two basic mechanical frameworks: combat, which in mechanical terms is highly structured; and non-combat, which in mechanical terms is very loose and based on either checks or skill challenges. (The skill descriptions in the PHB try to introduce some non-combat subsystems associated with particular skills, eg how much food can you get by foraging using your Nature skill, but as far as I can tell most successful 4e games ignore those subsystems as incompatible with the general spirit and best play of the game.)
> 
> Combat in 4e can have "say 'yes' or roll the dice" elements - eg if a player declares "I yell at the orc: surrender!" nothing obliges the GM to call for an Intimidate check as opposed to just have the orc surrender - but that isn't where it defaults to. Much more important for good 4e combat is framing rolls of the dice as an alternative to _no_ - which requires good working intuitions around p 42, what are suitable trade-offs in terms of spending resources to generate consequences outside the formal "power" framework, etc.
> 
> Non-combat in 4e can very much be played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" fashion. (Once you ignore those poorly-conceived bit of the PHB skill descriptions, and instead focus on the DMG and DMG2 advice for non-combat resolution.) It works fairly well, but has much lower failure rates than (say) Burning Wheel which makes it _much_ less gritty and less emotionally demanding on players.
> 
> Traveller I'll say something about below.
> 
> I think the comparison of Classic Traveller to Dungeon World is an interesting one, because Traveller also has "moves" that - when they occur in the fiction - mandate the deployment of particular resolution subsystems. For instance, if a player declares (as his/her PC), "I'm hanging out at the bars etc hoping to meet a patron" then the next step is (i) to knock off a week of game time, and (ii) to make a patron encounter check. Likewise, if a player declares that s/he (as his/her PC) is performing some tricky manoeuvre while wearing a vacc-suit, then the rules prescribe the check (modified by Vacc Suit expertise) that needs to be made to avoid encountering some sort of difficulty (eg the last time that happened in our game, an oxygen hose got snagged on a rocky protrusion).
> 
> I think there are some differences from DW that are worth noting. Most obviously, the Traveller subsystems are all quite different from one another (in probabilities, in structuring outcomes, etc); and when they trigger a need for judgement it almost always goes back to the referee rather than the player (eg the referee decides what sort of difficulty results on a failed manoeuvring-in-vacc-suit check, although in practice of course the whole table might get to have input into that decision).
> 
> Another difference is that many of the triggers are much less clearly specified (not always: _when your activate your starship's jump drive_ is a pretty clear trigger), which means the referee has a bit more latitude in calling for checks - and this can allow the intrusion of a degree of "saying 'yes'" in lieu of calling for checks.
> 
> And then there are some domains of activity - most obviously procurement - which are clearly expected to be part of the game (it's full of price lists and expenses and ways to make money) but which don't say what happens (eg have no associated subsystem) if the referee is not just inclined to "say 'yes'" - eg there's no subsystem for being able to obtain fuel at a starport if supplies are running low and so it's not just freely available to those who can afford it. The system as written tends to assume the GM will just make something up to adjudicate this if necessary, which gets closer to some of the standard tools of early D&D refereeing. Another similarity in that respect is the existence of subsystems which sit on the cusp between genuine action resolution and GM scene-framing tools - like the person encounter rules, which state that a check should be made every day, but also at least imply that the GM might curate the making and outcome of at least some of those checks.
> 
> The lack of clear "say 'yes' or roll the dice" in Traveller was one of the things that led me to post a bit over a year ago that Classic Traveller is a dice driven game.




I always enjoy Pemerton's thoughts on 4e, and it's interesting to see Classic Traveller treated as a Dungeon World type game.  Obviously it's unlikely Marc Miller was thinking in those terms - 'moves' - I'd say he was looking to simulate 'a science fiction odyssey to the distant worlds of the Galaxy' from a you-are-there immersive standpoint, and just made up whatever sub-systems looked helpful. D&D of that era had plenty of similar subsystems, eg Spying & Assassination in 1e DMG, or the Territory Development process in the 1e DMG, or the Escape & Evasion checks in various editions.  I would probably include NPC reaction & morale checks, and hireling loyalty, in there too.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I always enjoy Pemerton's thoughts on 4e



This takes me back to those glorious, heady days of Permertonian scene-framing!



S'mon said:


> D&D of that era had plenty of similar subsystems, eg Spying & Assassination in 1e DMG, or the Territory Development process in the 1e DMG, or the Escape & Evasion checks in various editions.  I would probably include NPC reaction & morale checks, and hireling loyalty, in there too.



I agree AD&D has a lot of subsystems, many I suspect underused and underappreciated. To Spying as a means of information-gathering can be added sages (whose subsystem is hidden in the NPC hireling tables).

But many of the AD&D subsystems are quite clunky as written, and - at least in my experience with them, which is not extensive for some but is reasonably extensive for others - often quite clunky in play also. Part of the genius of Classic Traveller, in my view, is how playable it is for a sub-system heavy game.

Another part of its genius is its relative comprehensiveness - there is the procurement gap I mentioned, and over the past year or so I've often lamented that it's onworld exploration rules are pretty terrible, but it covers a _lot_ of stuff in its 3 books. Relative to genre, it is (in my view) far more comprehensive than AD&D despite the latter's much greater page size and page count.

I think it would be much harder to play AD&D as DW-like than Classic Traveller. (Though if anyone has tried and succeeded, it would be interesting to hear about it!)


----------



## S'mon




----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> But many of the AD&D subsystems are quite clunky as written, and - at least in my experience with them, which is not extensive for some but is reasonably extensive for others - often quite clunky in play also. Part of the genius of Classic Traveller, in my view, is how playable it is for a sub-system heavy game.




I think games like Traveller and Runequest reacted against D&D's ethos of "We made up some  we thought would be fun" with a much stronger emphasis on world simulation, with the aim of greater immersion. They are less 'gamey' than D&D - both in the sense of less emphasis on "What would be Fun?" and also less emphasis on player challenge & victory conditions. This tangentially leads in Traveller's case to the result you experienced.


----------



## Lanefan

Numidius said:


> As an aside: in games like Dungeon World and Traveller* (also maybe 4e?) there is no room for SYORTD, because their prescriptive rules cannot be ignored and already provide a range of different outcomes that change the ongoing fiction which again cannot be ignored (in a sense, these games might have already bolted-in the level of realism they want to provide)
> 
> On the other hand, old D&D was basically all Say Yes Or Roll: the dice to roll were those of Combat, in case the DM wasn't convinced of the players' alternative plans to it. (Here, your mileage may vary about realism)



Old D&D was and still is a combination of Say Yes, or Roll the Dice, or Say No.

I just don't understand why and how the idea of Saying No has become so unpopular.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Huh?  PbtA games are very much say yes or roll the dice style games.  Can you explain why you think DW is incompatible with SYORTD?
> 
> And, while you could do syortd with OD&D, the anticipated play doesn't work well with that, as the dungeon was built and play was solving it -- not much room for say yes.



My point is that SayYesOrRoll is Not meant for New Content introduction by the players, but only for action declaration & resolution. 
So, in DW, if a Pc says she wants to convince a big Npc to do something (for example), the Gm can't just say yes, but instead has to make the Pc roll Parley and follow the result of the check. 

In DW there's no roll to be made for new content intro by Pcs. The Gm decides and that's it. 
(Of course DW tells the Gm to ask the players questions and build on the answers, but that's a completely different story) 

On Od&d: no content intro by Pcs as well. If I'm playing B4-The Sunken Pyramid and encounter the spirit of Demetrius on floor level 2, the purpose is not just to kill him and gain PX. If I declare how I try to bring him on my side instead of fighting him, the Dm says Yes or we all Roll dice and enter the system resolution for the encounters (Combat...)


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> This takes me back to those glorious, heady days of Permertonian scene-framing!




BTW it seems to me that since 2013 the Pemertonian approach (eg GM-determined in media res scene start, player-determined open scene resolution) has had a good deal of influence on the hobby. I'm running 5e Primeval Thule (published 2013-16) currently, and it seems deliberately set up to support this style very well. It's also visible in the structure of the 5e WotC adventure books (published 2014-present). Whereas Paizo AP stuff (2007-present) seems to have stuck with the '90s linear-railroad approach, which may be the only way to keep the 6-book-AP format viable. I guess they stick to what they know.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> That's kinda the point.  The "Say yes or roll the dice" method of play wouldn't have worked with that sort of game circumstance.



Sigh.  The situation provided is an example of saying yes -- whatever option the players choose, the GM will say yes to it.  Trying to apply a GM tool to how players make a hard choice doesn't work, ever.  SYORTD applies after the players announce their choice.


----------



## Imaculata

Maxperson said:


> At the beginning of the game I would draw 4 cards that the players could not see and keep them behind the screen, *to use if a perfect moment arose*, or if a card drawn for a 1 just didn't apply at all and one behind the screen did.  The players loved it and the result was good or bad, and usually something interesting.




This bit is important I feel, and it is also how I run my random encounters. Just because the table says "_dragon cave_" or "_wizard's tower_", does not mean the players stumble upon this encounter right away when I roll it. I may keep the encounter for later, until a fitting moment arrives.


----------



## Ovinomancer

I think you're confused by a few things, here.  SYORTD is a tool used in games where the GM is discouraged from negating properly formed action declarations by players.  Proper formed here means within the genre and theme of the game, so no finding a laser pistol in an Aurthurian Legends game.  SYORTD then simply means that you allow the action (say yes) or that you use the game mechanics to determine the outcome (or roll the dice).

That said, here's my specific issues:



Numidius said:


> My point is that SayYesOrRoll is Not meant for New Content introduction by the players, but only for action declaration & resolution.
> So, in DW, if a Pc says she wants to convince a big Npc to do something (for example), the Gm can't just say yes, but instead has to make the Pc roll Parley and follow the result of the check.



One, there's no requirement for SYORTD to not include fiction creation.  The secret door example shows this.  If a player declares the look for a secret door, in SYORTD they either find one (yes) or they get a test where a success means they find one (or roll the dice).  This is an action declaration that includes fiction creation and SYORTD works swimmingly for it.

As for your DW example, you just say you can't say yes. But, you most definitely can, and that's perfectly within the rules.  What you seem to be confusing is that GM advice for DW is to drive conflict, so unless the request is trivial you probably should involve the dice so the core game engine of generating chaos can work.  But that's advice on when to ORTD, not to never SY.


> In DW there's no roll to be made for new content intro by Pcs. The Gm decides and that's it.



Huh?  Granted I play BitD, but this is wildly wrong.


> (Of course DW tells the Gm to ask the players questions and build on the answers, but that's a completely different story)



Yes, this is different and not related to SYORTD.


> On Od&d: no content intro by Pcs as well. If I'm playing B4-The Sunken Pyramid and encounter the spirit of Demetrius on floor level 2, the purpose is not just to kill him and gain PX. If I declare how I try to bring him on my side instead of fighting him, the Dm says Yes or we all Roll dice and enter the system resolution for the encounters (Combat...)



No, because here there's no SYORTD going on, there's a prescripted encounter where Yes is already approved if the players choose to parley.  The GM can say no if the players choose an unscripted action, like, say, searching for a secret door where the map key says none exist.  SYORTD is a universal GM tool, not one that works so long as the GM prep says it does.  In fact, SYORTD really doesn't function in games with heavy GM prep or with prepared modules at all.  It works very well in low/no myth games with fiction introduction by players.  Which is no surprise, as this kind of game is where SYORTD came to maturity as a GM tool.


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> Old D&D was and still is a combination of Say Yes, or Roll the Dice, or Say No.
> 
> I just don't understand why and how the idea of Saying No has become so unpopular.



The tendency I've seen in the last decade among "trad" Gms is the abuse of "No", sadly. 
Be it in long ongoing campaign (Vampire, Warhammer2ed, the No being enforced by the use of UberNpc or your Sire curiously appearing to put you back on the rails), or in new games (various D20 spinoff, Gumshoe etc, to the point of not allowing even Pc backgrounds).


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> I think you're confused by a few things, here.  SYORTD is a tool used in games where the GM is discouraged from negating properly formed action declarations by players.  Proper formed here means within the genre and theme of the gane, so no finding a laser pistol in an Aurthurian Legends game.  SYORTD then simply means that you allow the action (say yes) or that you use the gane mechanics to determine the outcome (or roll the dice).
> 
> That said, here's my specific issues:
> 
> 
> One, there's no requirement for SYORTD to not include fiction creation.  The secret door example shows this.  If a player declares the look for a secret door, in SYORTD they either find one (yes) or they get a test where a success means they find one (or roll the dice).  This is an action declaration that includes fiction creation and SYORTD works swimmingly for it.
> 
> As for your DW example, you just say you can't say yes. But, you most definitely can, and that's perfectly within the rules.  What you seem to be confusing is that GM advice for DW is to drive conflict, so unless the request is trivial you probably should involve tge dice so the cire gane engine of generating chaos can work.  But that's advice on when to ORTD, not to never SY.
> 
> In DW there's no roll to be made for new content intro by Pcs. The Gm decides and that's it.
> 
> Yes, this is different and not related to SYORTD.
> 
> No, because here there's no SYORTD going on, there's a prescripted encounter where Yes is already approved if the players choose to parley.  The GM can say no if the players choose an unscripted action, like, say, searching for a secret door where the map key says none exist.  SYORTD is a universal GM tool, not one that works so long as the GM prep says it does.  In fact, SYORTD really doesn't function in games with heavy GM prep or with prepared modules at all.  It works very well in low/no myth games with fiction introduction by players.  Which is no surprise, as this kind of game is where SYORTD came to maturity as a GM tool.



Actually SYOR was born, or heavily implemented, in a game with heavy Gm prep (DitV by V. Baker).

What I meant with Od&d is that the purpose was not to outright kill every creature in the dungeon, but to steal the loot (in simple words...), so thinking of plans outside combat was legit; in case Gm is not convinced s/he doesn't say No, instead dice are rolled for combat. 

About DW: if the Move says When you do this, roll that, the Gm can't just Say Yes by Raw, s/he must let the Pc roll. 

Since there are no dice to be rolled in DW for Content intro, SYORTD doesn't apply in this case (IMO)


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Sigh.  The situation provided is an example of saying yes -- whatever option the players choose, the GM will say yes to it.  Trying to apply a GM tool to how players make a hard choice doesn't work, ever.  SYORTD applies after the players announce their choice.




Did you read that example?  The answer to the riddle was pre-decided and in the envelope.  There was no ability to say yes to a wrong answer.  The players would have announced their answer and then looked into the envelope to see if they were right or wrong.  The DM wouldn't play into it, and neither would the dice.


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]

Why do you say I'm wrong about No dice for content intro in Dw? 

How does it work in BitD? A game I'd like to play one o'these days


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> Actually SYOR was born, or heavily implemented, in a game with heavy Gm prep (DitV by V. Baker).



Never played it, but I've read it and there's absolutely no way I'd even get close to calling Dogs a heavy GM prep game.  I'm curious if you'd care to expound why you say it is.



> What I meant with Od&d is that the purpose was not to outright kill every creature in the dungeon, but to steal the loot (in simple words...), so thinking of plans outside combat was legit; in case Gm is not convinced s/he doesn't say No, instead dice are rolled for combat.



This is oddly formed.  Your saying that only in cases where there is a possible fie present that SYORTD neans the GM outright allows your plan to succeed or combat ensues?  That's not even close to what SYORTD means. 

As an exercise, in an OD&D game, a player declares that they're going to find tge secret door into the guarded treasure room, bypassing the guards.  The map key the GM prepared shows no secret door into the treasure room.  How does this adjudicate?

My answers:
[/sblock] In OD&D, the action declaration fails; no secret door is found and no mechanics engaged (except for obfuscation). The answer is no.

In a SYORTD game, the DM can say yes, there is a secret door here, and set a new scene, or they can challenge the declaration by calling for a check.  But, success on the check means the player intent is realized, while failure means it is thwarted in some way.[/sblock]


> About DW: if the Move says When you do this, roll that, the Gm can't just Say Yes by Raw, s/he must let the Pc roll.



No, the GM can decide the result is trivial and say yes to the declaration without engaging the Move mechanics at all.  You can _always_ say yes.


> Since there are no dice to be rolled in DW for Content intro, SYORTD doesn't apply in this case (IMO)




Again, you seem to have a strange seperation of action declaration and content introduction.   It's legit in DW to search for a secret door, which introduces the fiction that a secret door is present.  The GM must honor thus by either saying yes, or calling for a check.  This is what SYORTD means -- it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not an action declaration involves fiction introduction or not.

I find it really odd that you cheer for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] but still maintain this thinking.  It's antithetical to how he plays.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Did you read that example?  The answer to the riddle was pre-decided and in the envelope.  There was no ability to say yes to a wrong answer.  The players would have announced their answer and then looked into the envelope to see if they were right or wrong.  The DM wouldn't play into it, and neither would the dice.




Making a choice between alternatives doesn't engage with SYORTD at all.  Your confusion here is, again, mistaking a GM tool for something the players have to engage to choose between alternatives.

The only way SYORTD would come into this is if the players make action declarations.  Choosing between options isn't an action declaration.  If the declared something other than choosing an option, then SYORTD would apply, and it would be a valid tool, here.  Frex, if the players decided to mount an offense against the Gods of Fate instead of choosing, that could be handled by SYORTD or not.  The answering a riddle, though, doesn't go there; it's orthogonal to SYORTD.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I guess my answer here in terms of the tea house and the sect is "OK, fine, its determined that the sect is NOT going to be found in the teahouse." Since the point of the game, IMHO is for interesting stuff to happen, then this particular teahouse, at least in the 'finding a sect' context is simply not going to even figure at all. So any decision I might make about it not having sect members, realistic or unrealistic, is going to have at most 2 seconds of table time, and probably none at all. I'm going to be going on to the place that DOES have the sect!




But that assumes a very binary set of possibilities: they are at the tea house, they are not at the tea house. All kinds of complications can arise in between. And I think a good GM will make sure that there are meaningful choices on the table. The very act of going around town asking about Bone Breaking Sect, might even trigger the sect to take an interest in the party. There could be real consequences for not finding them quickly. People might lie (sure I know where to find them, let me take you there). The GM knows, and the players don't, is useful for this kind of play. Not saying you can't do it another way. And I am not saying the other way is any kind of bad. I just think folks should genuinely try to understand why some of us might also enjoy this particular approach (because I can honestly tell you, it isn't because we like mother may I, or want to suffer under a GM who says 'no' all the time). So the conversation starts to feel very frustrating when we say, 'but we like it because X' and the response seems to be 'No you like it because Y and you refuse to see that A is a much better way to play the game'.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Never played it, but I've read it and there's absolutely no way I'd even get close to calling Dogs a heavy GM prep game.  I'm curious if you'd care to expound why you say it is.
> 
> 
> This is oddly formed.  Your saying that only in cases where there is a possible fie present that SYORTD neans the GM outright allows your plan to succeed or combat ensues?  That's not even close to what SYORTD means.
> 
> As an exercise, in an OD&D game, a player declares that they're going to find tge secret door into the guarded treasure room, bypassing the guards.  The map key the GM prepared shows no secret door into the treasure room.  How does this adjudicate?
> 
> My answers:
> [/sblock] In OD&D, the action declaration fails; no secret door is found and no mechanics engaged (except for obfuscation). The answer is no.
> 
> In a SYORTD game, the DM can say yes, there is a secret door here, and set a new scene, or they can challenge the declaration by calling for a check.  But, success on the check means the player intent is realized, while failure means it is thwarted in some way.[/sblock]
> 
> No, the GM can decide the result is trivial and say yes to the declaration without engaging the Move mechanics at all.  You can _always_ say yes.
> 
> 
> Again, you seem to have a strange seperation of action declaration and content introduction.   It's legit in DW to search for a secret door, which introduces the fiction that a secret door is present.  The GM must honor thus by either saying yes, or calling for a check.  This is what SYORTD means -- it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not an action declaration involves fiction introduction or not.
> 
> I find it really odd that you cheer for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] but still maintain this thinking.  It's antithetical to how he plays.



Dogs is heavy prepped. I run it, and I found it very difficult to prep properly, following the structure provided in the book by the author. Heck there is even a flow chart to follow for the Sins of the Npc involved. It is like an investigation rpg with guns&sins to judge, so plot and relationships must be prepped in advance and in detail. 

In Dw I encourage my players to bring content and ideas, nonetheless there are no rules for dice to roll in those moments; "only" the principle for the Gm Ask Questions and Build On Answers. (So say yes or roll can not apply, anyway, who cares, it's just my opinion) 

In my games I don't really care about minutiae (like secret doors or where to find people), I try to foster meaningful decision making at the table with hard choices that might change the setting (not an easy task btw and seldom achieved). 

All that is said with a light heart and for the pleasure of conversation, so please don't antagonize me


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Making a choice between alternatives doesn't engage with SYORTD at all.  Your confusion here is, again, mistaking a GM tool for something the players have to engage to choose between alternatives.
> 
> The only way SYORTD would come into this is if the players make action declarations.  Choosing between options isn't an action declaration.  If the declared something other than choosing an option, then SYORTD would apply, and it would be a valid tool, here.  Frex, if the players decided to mount an offense against the Gods of Fate instead of choosing, that could be handled by SYORTD or not.  The answering a riddle, though, doesn't go there; it's orthogonal to SYORTD.



I think we agree on this. I made a similar example in an earlier post


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Making a choice between alternatives doesn't engage with SYORTD at all.  Your confusion here is, again, mistaking a GM tool for something the players have to engage to choose between alternatives.
> 
> The only way SYORTD would come into this is if the players make action declarations.  Choosing between options isn't an action declaration.  If the declared something other than choosing an option, then SYORTD would apply, and it would be a valid tool, here.  Frex, if the players decided to mount an offense against the Gods of Fate instead of choosing, that could be handled by SYORTD or not.  The answering a riddle, though, doesn't go there; it's orthogonal to SYORTD.




The choice the players picked was their action declaration.  They were declaring that they act to answer the riddle with the answer they came up with.  The Say Yes or Roll the Dice Tool doesn't apply to that action.  It's okay to admit that not every action is appropriate for that tool.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> It's legit in DW to search for a secret door, which introduces the fiction that a secret door is present.  The GM must honor thus by either saying yes, or calling for a check.




AFAIK searching for a secret door in Dw does introduce nothing to the fiction. If the Gm likes the idea and thus decides to use it on the fly, why not, but there is no rule, nor indication whatsoever to do so, and moreover there is no check involved. 

The other way round might be legit: the Gm may asks the Thief if there are supposed to be secret doors present and how they work etc and build on that.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> The choice the players picked was their action declaration.  They were declaring that they act to answer the riddle with the answer they came up with.  The Say Yes or Roll the Dice Tool doesn't apply to that action.  It's okay to admit that not every action is appropriate for that tool.




So, Max, when the players choose does the GM say no to that declaration or do they say yes?

You're right, SYORTD doesn't apply to everything, and that's okay.  I'm not claiming it does, and, when I run 5e, I don't use it as a maxim.  I say "no" because that's what tgat gane calls for on occasion.  However, this example isn't a good one to show hiw SYORTD doesn't apply, because you can actually apply it.  Don't confuse my argument for how SYORTD works and can be applied here for any statement it always does.

SYORTD may also not be applied to this example.  Largely, my point here is that how you ise a GMing tool like SYORTD really doesn't apply at all to how players make decisions.  It's not a player tool.  SYORTD is a GM tool for adjudicating action declarations, period.  Any duscussion of other gane elements just diesn't engage SYORTD, including players making choices.


----------



## darkbard

[MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION], your broad descriptions of your DitV and DW play don't match any of my experiences or descriptions by others I've encountered over the years. It seems you may be operating from a very different principle than standard implementation of those games?


----------



## Numidius

darkbard said:


> [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION], your broad descriptions of your DitV and DW play don't match any of my experiences or descriptions by others I've encountered over the years. It seems you may be operating from a very different principle than standard implementation of those games?



Well, I don't know what to say... 

I own both rulebooks and I know for a fact that in Dogs there is the chapter for Gms to prep adventures (that are called Towns because every session involves a different town) along with Npc, ralationships, events and the infamous  hyerarchy of sins flowchart. 
I can show the pictures later on. 

About Dw, of course the first session Gm and Players are supposed to build the setting together, but I don't know of any rule that allows Pc to produce new content on the fly during the game and no check involved. Yes there is the Move called Spout Lore, but the info is given away by the gm.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> Dogs is heavy prepped. I run it, and I found it very difficult to prep properly, following the structure provided in the book by the author. Heck there is even a flow chart to follow for the Sins of the Npc involved. It is like an investigation rpg with guns&sins to judge, so plot and relationships must be prepped in advance and in detail.



There is prep in Dogs, yes, but not like a D&D module.  You chart out details to engage the PCs, but also have to be ready to ditch it all if the players run off script.  There's more prep than in, say, DW, but it's still not a heavily prepped game.


> In Dw I encourage my players to bring content and ideas, nonetheless there are no rules for dice to roll in those moments; "only" the principle for the Gm Ask Questions and Build On Answers. (So say yes or roll can not apply, anyway, who cares, it's just my opinion)



As I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], if you're not adjudicating an action declaration, SYORTD is moot.  You're talking about a different facet of play, here, namely finding out what's important to your players so you can use that to frame scenes.  This, however, isn't the only way to introduce new fiction.  New fiction (like the presence of a secret door not previously introduced) can be brought on through action declarations in DW, and should then be adjudicated using SYORTD as a maxim.



> In my games I don't really care about minutiae (like secret doors or where to find people), I try to foster meaningful decision making at the table with hard choices that might change the setting (not an easy task btw and seldom achieved).



I don't follow.  If the presence of a secret door is brought up in an action declaration and is minutia, then SYORTD says to say yes and move to a point that is important.  If, however, it's not minutia, then call for a check and use the results for the action snowball.  This is the exact kind of play that PbtA leverages to create meaningful moments in play.  

Dismissing this argument, which showcases SYORTD and fiction introduction by saying that it would be universally trivial is just sidestepping by hand waving.  If you can't imagine how the presense or absence of a secret door can be meaningful and impactful to play, okay, but it's pretty easy -- chases where being captured risks a PC goal; access to a resource a PC needs to accomplish a goal; as a shortcut that would allow a PC to rescue a hostage; etc, etc.

The systems that employ SYORTD do so in pursuit of creating dramatic story moments.  The SY part is to move past trivial moments to get to the dranatic bits.


> All that is said with a light heart and for the pleasure of conversation, so please don't antagonize me



Any antagozing is on your side? 

I disagree with you, but I've also been very clear as to where, why, and how, so you can engage my arguments, if you choose.


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] 
(Briefly) in Dw new fiction cannot be brought thru action declaration (apart from the action of pcs themselves of course)


----------



## Numidius

There are rpgs in which players can and are supposed to provide new fiction improvising on the fly. 
A couple that come to mind are Donjon by C. R. Nixon and Houses of the Blooded by John Wick...


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> There is prep in Dogs, yes, but not like a D&D module.  You chart out details to engage the PCs, but also have to be ready to ditch it all if the players run off script.  There's more prep than in, say, DW, but it's still not a heavily prepped game.
> 
> As I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], if you're not adjudicating an action declaration, SYORTD is moot.  You're talking about a different facet of play, here, namely finding out what's important to your players so you can use that to frame scenes.  This, however, isn't the only way to introduce new fiction.  New fiction (like the presence of a secret door not previously introduced) can be brought on through action declarations in DW, and should then be adjudicated using SYORTD as a maxim.
> 
> 
> I don't follow.  If the presence of a secret door is brought up in an action declaration and is minutia, then SYORTD says to say yes and move to a point that is important.  If, however, it's not minutia, then call for a check and use the results for the action snowball.  This is the exact kind of play that PbtA leverages to create meaningful moments in play.
> 
> Dismissing this argument, which showcases SYORTD and fiction introduction by saying that it would be universally trivial is just sidestepping by hand waving.  If you can't imagine how the presense or absence of a secret door can be meaningful and impactful to play, okay, but it's pretty easy -- chases where being captured risks a PC goal; access to a resource a PC needs to accomplish a goal; as a shortcut that would allow a PC to rescue a hostage; etc, etc.
> 
> The systems that employ SYORTD do so in pursuit of creating dramatic story moments.  The SY part is to move past trivial moments to get to the dranatic bits.
> 
> Any antagozing is on your side?
> 
> I disagree with you, but I've also been very clear as to where, why, and how, so you can engage my arguments, if you choose.




Fair enough. No offence meant or taken. 

On DitV: agreed. Maybe is heavy for me. 

On Dw: there is no check to make true a statement from the Pc. If you are talking about Spout Lore, as I said, the new content is brought by the Gm.

SYORTD and the dramatic bits: agreed.


----------



## Numidius

About the minutiae: I mean, I'm completely fine to let players describe whole sections of a dungeon, or entire new cities and their economic networks, or genealogy of gods, if they feel like it. For my part I try to mantain a sense of coherence in the setting and focus on the characters: I ask about religion to the cleric and traps to the thief. In my game no one ever played a Dwarf (sad but true), so anything related to dwarven society is on my side, I don't let them introduce new fiction about them. 

But I don't allow new fiction to be introduced on their part regarding something already established, like Npc, enemies, mosters appearing, or secret doors to pop out of nothing.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> I tend to agree with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] about this - as a general rule classic wargaming/dungeon-crawling D&D doesn't support "say 'yes' or roll the dice", because the GM is meant to have already mapped and "stocked" the dungeon and uses that to regulate what gets introduced into the fiction without being obliged to allow a die roll if s/he doesn't just want to say "yes". And even if you _wanted_ to play classic D&D in that way, it doesn't have the mechanical framework to support it - there's no general system of calling for checks.
> 
> I can see how classic D&D combat can be played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" fashion, though, and think that's an interesting take on it.
> 
> 4e D&D has two basic mechanical frameworks: combat, which in mechanical terms is highly structured; and non-combat, which in mechanical terms is very loose and based on either checks or skill challenges. (The skill descriptions in the PHB try to introduce some non-combat subsystems associated with particular skills, eg how much food can you get by foraging using your Nature skill, but as far as I can tell most successful 4e games ignore those subsystems as incompatible with the general spirit and best play of the game.)
> 
> Combat in 4e can have "say 'yes' or roll the dice" elements - eg if a player declares "I yell at the orc: surrender!" nothing obliges the GM to call for an Intimidate check as opposed to just have the orc surrender - but that isn't where it defaults to. Much more important for good 4e combat is framing rolls of the dice as an alternative to _no_ - which requires good working intuitions around p 42, what are suitable trade-offs in terms of spending resources to generate consequences outside the formal "power" framework, etc.
> 
> Non-combat in 4e can very much be played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" fashion. (Once you ignore those poorly-conceived bit of the PHB skill descriptions, and instead focus on the DMG and DMG2 advice for non-combat resolution.) It works fairly well, but has much lower failure rates than (say) Burning Wheel which makes it _much_ less gritty and less emotionally demanding on players.
> 
> Traveller I'll say something about below.
> 
> I think the comparison of Classic Traveller to Dungeon World is an interesting one, because Traveller also has "moves" that - when they occur in the fiction - mandate the deployment of particular resolution subsystems. For instance, if a player declares (as his/her PC), "I'm hanging out at the bars etc hoping to meet a patron" then the next step is (i) to knock off a week of game time, and (ii) to make a patron encounter check. Likewise, if a player declares that s/he (as his/her PC) is performing some tricky manoeuvre while wearing a vacc-suit, then the rules prescribe the check (modified by Vacc Suit expertise) that needs to be made to avoid encountering some sort of difficulty (eg the last time that happened in our game, an oxygen hose got snagged on a rocky protrusion).
> 
> I think there are some differences from DW that are worth noting. Most obviously, the Traveller subsystems are all quite different from one another (in probabilities, in structuring outcomes, etc); and when they trigger a need for judgement it almost always goes back to the referee rather than the player (eg the referee decides what sort of difficulty results on a failed manoeuvring-in-vacc-suit check, although in practice of course the whole table might get to have input into that decision).
> 
> Another difference is that many of the triggers are much less clearly specified (not always: _when your activate your starship's jump drive_ is a pretty clear trigger), which means the referee has a bit more latitude in calling for checks - and this can allow the intrusion of a degree of "saying 'yes'" in lieu of calling for checks.
> 
> And then there are some domains of activity - most obviously procurement - which are clearly expected to be part of the game (it's full of price lists and expenses and ways to make money) but which don't say what happens (eg have no associated subsystem) if the referee is not just inclined to "say 'yes'" - eg there's no subsystem for being able to obtain fuel at a starport if supplies are running low and so it's not just freely available to those who can afford it. The system as written tends to assume the GM will just make something up to adjudicate this if necessary, which gets closer to some of the standard tools of early D&D refereeing. Another similarity in that respect is the existence of subsystems which sit on the cusp between genuine action resolution and GM scene-framing tools - like the person encounter rules, which state that a check should be made every day, but also at least imply that the GM might curate the making and outcome of at least some of those checks.
> 
> The lack of clear "say 'yes' or roll the dice" in Traveller was one of the things that led me to post a bit over a year ago that Classic Traveller is a dice driven game.



Thanks for the detailed response. Traveller is one of those games we had bought in the 80's but never really played back then. 

Re: Say Yes or Roll
Seems like there a basic misunderstandig. To me SYOR regards only action declaration by players in the present situation, and in case the Gm does not agree, the table resorts to dice rolling to resolve it. Nothing to do with creating new fiction, new content, outside the range of Pc actions. 
Infact if a game does not have a resolution system for content creation/narrative authority etc, which dice is one supposed to roll if doesn't say yes? 
I don't get it. 

So regarding OD&D, I mean Say Yes, in a typical encounter, after the situation is introduced by the Dm, the Pcs declare they don't want to enter combat and propose a different plan, the Dm can say yes or let them roll = resolve the encounter via combat. Simple as that; and since PX were gained via Gold and not number of encounters cleared like today, combat was a sort of last resort. 

I hope I could explain myself properly


----------



## innerdude

Lanefan said:


> Old D&D was and still is a combination of Say Yes, or Roll the Dice, or Say No.
> 
> I just don't understand why and how the idea of Saying No has become so unpopular.




Because for nearly the entire history of RPGs, the authority to say "No" has been abused by far too many GMs, in far too many games, producing far too much un-fun, un-interesting, Mother-May-I? kinds of gameplay. 

Heavy-handed, railroad-y, "My way or the highway," selfishly-motivated GM-ing has done more damage to the tabletop RPG hobby than literally anything else. No other single factor---including whatever "Edition War" you want to point a camera at---has had nearly as negative an impact. Period.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Old D&D was and still is a combination of Say Yes, or Roll the Dice, or Say No.
> 
> I just don't understand why and how the idea of Saying No has become so unpopular.



Come now. It's not as if "Saying No" somehow represents an oppressed, pariah position in gaming. If it was really so unpopular as you woefully bemoan then there would be little need for a trifling handful of people to defend it. So "Saying No" has hardly become unpopular, given its continued hegemony in most games, but, rather, that some games outside of your self-imposed bubble have adopted other methods and modes of play and you find other ways foreign and perplexing. It may be to your benefit if you shifted your concern from "Why can't I say 'no' to players?" to "What is 'say yes or roll the dice' attempting to accomplish as an approach?" 

In my own reading of Vincent Baker's "roll the dice or say yes" (his phrasing), the point is that stakes and risks should be in play with any given roll. If there are no stakes, there is no tension, so he advises GMs to go along with saying "yes" to the player-generated narrative to push the game towards interesting points of conflict, tension, and risk. 

So it's possible that shift away from "Saying No" transpired when some people were not satisfied with playing all RPGs like puzzle-themed boardgames and instead wanted their RPGs centered around resolving points of player-pushed narrative tension, stakes, and conflict.


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> Because for nearly the entire history of RPGs, the authority to say "No" has been abused by far too many GMs, in far too many games, producing far too much un-fun, un-interesting, Mother-May-I? kinds of gameplay.
> 
> Heavy-handed, railroad-y, "My way or the highway," selfishly-motivated GM-ing has done more damage to the tabletop RPG hobby than literally anything else. No other single factor---including whatever "Edition War" you want to point a camera at---has had nearly as negative an impact. Period.




I am sorry but this is a ridiculous position. Yes, obviously, bad GMs exist. But there isn't a systemic problem of GMs abusing their authority. Perhaps when we were in grade school, this was something of a problem. I honestly can say I haven't had this issue the entire time I've played with other adults. I think people are projecting their own bad experiences onto posters here who are clearly stating to them: we don't have that problem. I have no issue with the alternative approaches being offered up here. They clearly answer a desire among many gamers. But this kind of thinking, that takes something as minor as a poorly run D&D campaign and paints it in terms more appropriate to society level oppression, I think is the very definition of hyperbole.


----------



## Maxperson

innerdude said:


> Because for nearly the entire history of RPGs, the authority to say "No" has been abused by far too many GMs, in far too many games, producing far too much un-fun, un-interesting, Mother-May-I? kinds of gameplay.




Bad DMs abuse all systems.  So what.  If you find a bad DM, leave the game and find a better one.


----------



## Lanefan

innerdude said:


> Because for nearly the entire history of RPGs, the authority to say "No" has been abused by far too many GMs, in far too many games, producing far too much un-fun, un-interesting, Mother-May-I? kinds of gameplay.



Depends on one's definition of "abused", maybe; or whether one sees a minority as "far too many" (which it probably is, but it's still the minority).  It also depends on what importance the GM and-or players - particularly the players - put on internal consistency and-or logic within the setting.



> Heavy-handed, railroad-y, "My way or the highway," selfishly-motivated GM-ing has done more damage to the tabletop RPG hobby than literally anything else. No other single factor---including whatever "Edition War" you want to point a camera at---has had nearly as negative an impact. Period.



I think you're a bit over the top on this one; never mind that it's just as true (if not more so) that good GMs have been more help to the tabletop RPG hobby than any other single factor, bar none.



			
				Aldarc said:
			
		

> Come now. It's not as if "Saying No" somehow represents an oppressed, pariah position in gaming.



Maybe, but my window on the greater gaming community these days is pretty much what I read in here - and saying no in these parts ain't so popular. 



> If it was really so unpopular as you woefully bemoan then there would be little need for a trifling handful of people to defend it. So "Saying No" has hardly become unpopular, given its continued hegemony in most games, but, rather, that some games outside of your self-imposed bubble have adopted other methods and modes of play and you find other ways foreign and perplexing. It may be to your benefit if you shifted your concern from "Why can't I say 'no' to players?" to "What is 'say yes or roll the dice' attempting to accomplish as an approach?"
> 
> In my own reading of Vincent Baker's "roll the dice or say yes" (his phrasing), the point is that stakes and risks should be in play with any given roll. If there are no stakes, there is no tension, so he advises GMs to go along with saying "yes" to the player-generated narrative to push the game towards interesting points of conflict, tension, and risk.



The only thing I see this approach accomplishing is the removal of some of the mystery from the game/setting.  Many times the tension and sense of mystery is increased when the DM calls for rolls for no reason whatsoever in order to disguise the real roll when it happens...just as one example.



> So it's possible that shift away from "Saying No" transpired when some people were not satisfied with playing all RPGs like puzzle-themed boardgames and instead wanted their RPGs centered around resolving points of player-pushed narrative tension, stakes, and conflict.



Which, taken to it's conclusion, means the players are each time setting both the problem (mystery) and its solution; and then hoping the dice co-operate and don't drag in too many complications.  Isn't that like reading the end of a murder novel to find out whodunnit and then reading through the rest to see how things got there?

With a "puzzle", as you call it, the players via their PCs have to think to find a solution; and have to accept 'no' sometimes when their ideas don't (or can't) work.  And by 'no' I don't mean 'no but something else happens', I mean a flat 'no, that doesn't work' or 'no, that's wrong'.  The simplest example is where the party have to solve a riddle in order to move forward - they either get the right answer or they (perhaps repeatedly) don't.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> Thanks for the detailed response. Traveller is one of those games we had bought in the 80's but never really played back then.
> 
> Re: Say Yes or Roll
> Seems like there a basic misunderstandig. To me SYOR regards only action declaration by players in the present situation, and in case the Gm does not agree, the table resorts to dice rolling to resolve it. Nothing to do with creating new fiction, new content, outside the range of Pc actions.
> Infact if a game does not have a resolution system for content creation/narrative authority etc, which dice is one supposed to roll if doesn't say yes?
> I don't get it.
> 
> So regarding OD&D, I mean Say Yes, in a typical encounter, after the situation is introduced by the Dm, the Pcs declare they don't want to enter combat and propose a different plan, the Dm can say yes or let them roll = resolve the encounter via combat. Simple as that; and since PX were gained via Gold and not number of encounters cleared like today, combat was a sort of last resort.
> 
> I hope I could explain myself properly




Hmm.  Some stuff to unpack, here.

Firstly, your characterization of SYORTD leaves out some important context, namely that if the GM doesn't say yes and instead goes to the mechanics, this still means that the player's action declaration comes true on a successful resolution of the mechanics.  The GM cannot substitute a check for a different outcome as the Roll The Dice option, they must instead address the intent of the player's action faithfully.  They must, if they roll the dice, fulfill the intent of the action declaration if the player is successful and thwart/complicate it if it isn't successful.  Carrying this through to your OD&D example, your examples fails at SYORTD because the mechanics do not honor the action declaration.  In this example, the player(s) declare that they wish to parley, the GM has denied that declaration (no say yes, no rolling the dice) and instead moved to combat, which is against the intent of the player(s).  If this was SYORTD, then even if the GM did not say yes, the appropriate roll of the dice would be to determine if the parley attempt was successful, or, at least, opened for further play.  If that check fails, then an appropriate resolution may indeed be the start of combat, as that definitely thwarts the intent of opening a parley.

I think you've internalized an incorrect formulation of SYORTD as it's meant to be applied.  You're close, but you've not stepped all the way across the threshold.  For example, you've said many times that DW doesn't allow players to insert new fictions through action declarations, and pointed to Spout Lore as an example.  What I think you may miss is that when a player makes the Move to Spout Lore, the GM is obligated to provide new fiction according to the intent of the player on a success (or partial success).  IE, the player prompts the GM on what new fiction they want, and the DM is required to provide it.  If the player asks, for instance, if secret doors are common in this area and succeeds, it would be a poor GM reply to answer 'No' because that thwarts the player's clear intent to learn more about secret doors in the area.  This isn't well expounded in the SRD materials, not sure about the actual book, but it goes with the GM's maxims for DW, namely, "leave blanks", "play to find out", "always speak true", and "let the players decide, sometimes."  The point of DW is to build the game in play, and if you really think that only the GM has the authority to author or direct new fiction in play, then you're missing out on a core part of what makes PbtA games really work.

As I said before, I'm much more familiar with Blades.  And you asked how it works there.  Simply, the player declares an action and what 'stat' they're rolling for it and the GM assigns position and effect, or, more simply, how dangerous that action is and how effective a success can be.  So, in Blades, a character can easily declare they're looking for a secret door to escape the guards closing in, and even choose Wreck as the method, deciding they're going to bash their way into the secret passage through brute force.  As a GM, I could say that this is a desperate move -- ie, if it doesn't work, the guard will be here and they're already mad -- with limited effect because I've already described the alley as brick walled.  The player then can choose to forgo this action as unwise and try something else, or roll, even choosing to Push for greater effect by spending Stress.  On a success (a die pool based on the stat is rolled, highest value taken, 6 succeeds outright, 4-5 succeeds with cost, 1-3 fails), the player bashes through a secret door into a new passage and the fiction moves on.  On a partial, the player maybe drops the loot in the impact, or takes a wound, or a guard is hot on his heels.  On a fail, they may bounce off the wall because that secret door is actually in a very similar alley, just not this one, and the guards are now here (and still angry).  

And, I see this working well in DW, as well.  The player makes the same declaration, but makes the Move to Discern Reality to find the door.  As a GM, you should honor this declaration by not refuting it on a success and saying 'no secret door here' but instead move the game forward by providing information on the door according to the questions asked.  Then play can be a Defy Danger to open and leap through the door before the guards can arrive and play a tattoo with their clubs.  There's nothing in DW that prohibits players from requesting specific outcomes or interests with their rolls, just that the GM must provide these results on a success.  This actually moves the game from puzzling out the GM's plans to free-wheeling finding out as you play.  I encourage you to try it.

Also, paging [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] for a sanity check on the above.


----------



## innerdude

Bedrockgames said:


> I am sorry but this is a ridiculous position. Yes, obviously, bad GMs exist. But there isn't a systemic problem of GMs abusing their authority. Perhaps when we were in grade school, this was something of a problem. I honestly can say I haven't had this issue the entire time I've played with other adults. I think people are projecting their own bad experiences onto posters here who are clearly stating to them: we don't have that problem. I have no issue with the alternative approaches being offered up here. They clearly answer a desire among many gamers. But this kind of thinking, that takes something as minor as a poorly run D&D campaign and paints it in terms more appropriate to society level oppression, I think is the very definition of hyperbole.




It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic. 

And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue. 

Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."

Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board _became GMs in the first place_ because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?

I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."  

And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives. 

But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done. 

The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest _somewhere_. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM. 

But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.

Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?

If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play. 

Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."


----------



## Manbearcat

Right quick.

Here is the origin point and the relevant bits of Vincent Baker's "Say Yes or Roll the Dice."



> *DitV *138
> 
> *Drive Play Toward Conflict*
> 
> Every moment of play, roll dice or say yes.
> 
> If nothing's at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they're doing.  Just plain go along with them.  If they ask for information, give it to them.  If they have their characters go somewhere, they're there.  If they want it, its theirs.
> 
> Sooner or later...sooner, because your Town is pregnant with crisis...they'll have their players do something that someone won't like.  Bang!  Something's at stake.  Launch the conflict and roll the dice.




So.

Is something at stake?  Yes?  Roll dice.

Is something not at stake?  No?  Say yes!

If there is no conflict, no danger, no threat...say yes.  Otherwise, roll dice.

The same thing goes for Apocalypse World and its derivatives.  For instance, every swing of a sword in DW isn't a "Hack and Slash" move.  Sometimes its "the thing is dead/destroyed" or "roll damage."  

There is plenty of advice in pretty much all PBtA games that speaks to eliding content, zooming in or out, and basically saying "yes."  Just like in Dogs, PBtA GMs are meant to drive play toward conflict, make the character's lives not boring, fill the character's lives with adventure, etc.  So the overwhelming majority of play is going to feature a gamestate that is threatening something the PCs' care about.  However, there will be moments where nothing is (or really should be, given context) at stake.  So you say yes rather than rolling the dice.


----------



## Manbearcat

Numidius said:


> Dogs is heavy prepped.




Hmmm...

I think you may be smuggling more into Dogs than Dogs has natively.  

I mean, you:

a)  Have a game with a focused premise (Gods watchdogs meting out justice in a wild west that never was that is shot through with (supernatural?) sin.  There is loads of conflict there.

b)  Have characters that have relationships and traits and stuff.  That will flag extra-Dogs premise stuff that conflict should be driven toward.

c)  You make a Town with the genre tropes of Dogs, the premise, and the characters' "stuff" in mind.  So you pick probably 3-4 sins that are relevant and create some NPCs (with stats) with machinations and weakness and wickedness and throw it in a blender.  And you don't want all of your NPCs to be too fixed before play because you aren't just revealing the towns to the players...you're revealing the town to yourself through play (there is no "plot").

d)  You let the players take the lead and then you drive play toward conflict and escalate things.  That is one session.  Afterward, you collectively Reflect and all of this stuff leads to the next session.

Its really not much different from Apocalypse World et al.  I mean, probably my longest pre-session prep for Dogs was...15 minutes?


----------



## Manbearcat

Unrelated to what I'm about to post, I just want to say that conversation has moved along rather well and looks to have been pretty profitable overall. 



innerdude said:


> Because for nearly the entire history of RPGs, the authority to say "No" has been abused by far too many GMs, in far too many games, producing far too much un-fun, un-interesting, Mother-May-I? kinds of gameplay.
> 
> Heavy-handed, railroad-y, "My way or the highway," selfishly-motivated GM-ing has done more damage to the tabletop RPG hobby than literally anything else. No other single factor---including whatever "Edition War" you want to point a camera at---has had nearly as negative an impact. Period.




While I agree with your post here, let me provide a quick angle of dissent (I was going to do a post on "The Utility of _No_", but this abridge version will suffice).

Skilled Play Dungeon or Hexcrawl games rely upon no.

Although Apocalypse World is neither a Skilled Play game nor does it entail a "The Utility of _No_" principle in its GMing, the below is apropos:



> AW p82
> 
> If you’re playing the game as the players’ adversary, your decision-making responsibilities and your rules-oversight constitute a conflict of interests. Play the game with the players, not against them.




GMing a Basic dungeon crawl requires neutral refereeing to achieve a particular end; "test a *player's skill* in dungeoneering with _this _ character within _this _group setup."  That test and that neutral refereeing require a preconceived gamestate (the stocked dungeon and its map + key) and a neutral adjudication of player interactions with that gamestate (interactions that wish to change it in a way that moves toward the game's "win condition").  In order to do that, an objective, and benign, "no" is an essential and natural component of play.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Maybe, but my window on the greater gaming community these days is pretty much what I read in here - and saying no in these parts ain't so popular.



There is only an exceedingly small sliver of people who participate in these sort of TTRPG philosophy discussions on an exceedingly small sliver of the online TTRPG community. If this is your window, you are basically looking though a needle's eye. 



> The only thing I see this approach accomplishing is the removal of some of the mystery from the game/setting.  Many times the tension and sense of mystery is increased when the DM calls for rolls for no reason whatsoever in order to disguise the real roll when it happens...just as one example.



We have had this disagreement before, and you didn't show much sign of listening before either, so this will likely be a dead end again.  



> *Which, taken to it's conclusion,* means the players are each time setting both the problem (mystery) and its solution; and then hoping the dice co-operate and don't drag in too many complications.  Isn't that like reading the end of a murder novel to find out whodunnit and then reading through the rest to see how things got there?



When you see someone lead off a point like this, then there is a good sign that a fallacy of reductio ad absurdum will follow, and you didn't disappoint on that front at least. But to answer your question, "no." Your question presumes a railroad-style play, as one would find in novels where there is (typically) a prescripted linear progression of plot. 



> With a "puzzle", as you call it, the players via their PCs have to think to find a solution; and have to accept 'no' sometimes when their ideas don't (or can't) work.



Yes, I understand that, which is why I acknowledged the utility of 'no' for such games, but not all games aspire to this schema or are designed around it. And incidentally,   [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] touches a bit on this point in his round of posts before mine.


----------



## Ovinomancer

innerdude said:


> It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic.
> 
> And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue.
> 
> Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."
> 
> Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board _became GMs in the first place_ because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?
> 
> I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."
> 
> And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives.
> 
> But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done.
> 
> The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest _somewhere_. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM.
> 
> But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.
> 
> Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?
> 
> If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play.
> 
> Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."



As someone who managed a successful hobby shop for half a decade and who is still very good friends with the owner of that shop, RPGs have about the average level of dysfunction among hobbies.  The only real difference is that RPGs are a social hobby so it's more on display.  Hit up a model train club sometime and you might be surprised/horrified.

My two biggest "problem" customer groups were train guys and Napoleonic wargamers, for largely the same reason -- obsessive attention to detail and a failure to understand why we would just order a pack of this expensive unique color of paint so they could buy one.   Now, most of my train guys were fantastic people, some of whom just made my day better when they stopped by.  Some of the Napoleonics were okay, too.  But, if it was gonna be a bad interaction, I'd have done well betting on it being a train guy.


----------



## Aldarc

Hardly a surprise, [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]. No one likes a railroader.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Well, I don't know what to say...
> 
> I own both rulebooks and I know for a fact that in Dogs there is the chapter for Gms to prep adventures (that are called Towns because every session involves a different town) along with Npc, ralationships, events and the infamous  hyerarchy of sins flowchart.
> I can show the pictures later on.
> 
> About Dw, of course the first session Gm and Players are supposed to build the setting together, but I don't know of any rule that allows Pc to produce new content on the fly during the game and no check involved. Yes there is the Move called Spout Lore, but the info is given away by the gm.



I own and have read rulebooks for both DitV and DW, but have never GMed either and have not played DitV at all.

I would like to GM DitV - not as a western but reflavouring as some sort of paladin-esque thing - and have thought about how the prep rules would work with my preferred style of play. It doesn't surprise me that you have found it challenging in actuality - to me it looks challenging when I think about how I would do it.

An intereseting feature of the DitV rulebook is the bit where Vincent talks about GM techniques for revealing the information about the town, and who is sinning in reltaion to whom, etc. He contrasts the proper approach for DitV with a more traditional approach where the GM doesn't reveal the secret information until the players declare the right sorts of actions to "naturalistically" uncover it. Speaking a bit loosely, and also without the benefit of actual play experience, I would say that the advice for the DitV GM is to treat the whole town as something like a framed scene, with the information being revealed by the GM to the player by way of presenting the situation - and hence as an input into action declaration - rather than the information being something that will be revealed to the players as part of the output of action resolution. I've tried to use a similar sort of approach in my Traveller game, although it hasn't got the same intricacy, nor the moral/dramatic heft, of DitV's sin-ridden towns.

With regard to DW and secret doors, it seems to me that if a player delcares that his/her PC is searching for secret doors then that would probably be Discern Realities (perhaps Spout Lore if the players approach is to reflect on his/her PC's knowledge of architecture and engineering) - which if it succeeds doens't grant the _player_ the authority to establish a secret door as part of the backstory. This is a contrast with (say) Burning Wheel, where a player can declare: _I am searcing the wall for signs of secret doors, drawing on my architectural training_ and then the GM sets a DC for the Architecture skill check - if the check succeeds, intent and task both succeed so the PC identifies an architecturally discernible secret door; if the check fails, the GM narrates some salient adverse consequence instead (eg mabye the archtiectral feature the PC noticed is actually the trigger for a trap!).

EDIT: More stuff along the same lines in reply to this subsequent post:



Numidius said:


> Re: Say Yes or Roll
> Seems like there a basic misunderstandig. To me SYOR regards only action declaration by players in the present situation, and in case the Gm does not agree, the table resorts to dice rolling to resolve it. Nothing to do with creating new fiction, new content, outside the range of Pc actions.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So regarding OD&D, I mean Say Yes, in a typical encounter, after the situation is introduced by the Dm, the Pcs declare they don't want to enter combat and propose a different plan, the Dm can say yes or let them roll = resolve the encounter via combat. Simple as that; and since PX were gained via Gold and not number of encounters cleared like today, combat was a sort of last resort.



In classic D&D, _I look for a secret door_ is a permissible action declaration. But it is not normally resolved via application of "say 'yes' or roll the dice". The GM is entitled to declare the attempt to find a secret door a failure without calling on the rolling of dice.

Maybe your phrase _action declaration by players in the present situation_ is meant to cover this - a secet door is not part of the present situation, because the GM's notes say the wall is solid wihout doors (secret or otherwise) - but then (trying to stick to my interpretation of your terminology) you get a dynamic of game play where the players are never quite sure what action declartions are genuinely feasible in the "exploration" parts of the game, because the GM does not make all the important elements of the situation overt in his/her framing.

It seems to me that this is what Vincent is getting at in his advice in DitV about revealing secrets - he is trying to avoid this sort of circumstance, where some action declarations will just fail because the present situation doesn't allow for them because of secret elements the GM hasn't revealed.



Numidius said:


> Infact if a game does not have a resolution system for content creation/narrative authority etc, which dice is one supposed to roll if doesn't say yes?



Well, that sort of game - eg 2nd ed AD&D - probably can't be run applying "say 'yes' or roll the dice"!


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I think games like Traveller and Runequest reacted against D&D's ethos of "We made up some  we thought would be fun" with a much stronger emphasis on world simulation, with the aim of greater immersion. They are less 'gamey' than D&D - both in the sense of less emphasis on "What would be Fun?" and also less emphasis on player challenge & victory conditions. This tangentially leads in Traveller's case to the result you experienced.



I think I'm in agreement up to the last sentence. But then I'm not sure - could you say more?

To elaborate a bit: to me, the loyalty subsystem and sage subsystem in Gygax's AD&D don't seem to me to examples of "We made stuff up we thought would be fun" - they have the feeling of not having been _played1_ much at all; or, perhaps, of attempts to present stuff that was done by Gygax and co in an ad hoc and improvisational fashion in post hoc systematic fashion, without regard to the fact that this pushed it towards the unplayable.

The stuff in AD&D that _does_ come across as having actually been played is also quite playable - eg the wandering monster charts, the rules for finding secret doors, really most of the dungeoneering stuff.

Writing this elaboration has maybe led me to unestand what your post is getting at, but I'll spell it out so you can tell me if I'm right or not: the world-simuation/non-gamey aspect of Traveller creates design/playtest pressure to have workable subsystems to do that - they're not just semi-hypothetical options for those who want to drift the game away from its core "gamey" experience.

Also, XP not Laugh for the other post because how to run 4e well is no laughing matter!


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> An interesting feature of the DitV rulebook is the bit where Vincent talks about GM techniques for revealing the information about the town, and who is sinning in relation to whom, etc. He contrasts the proper approach for DitV with a more traditional approach where the GM doesn't reveal the secret information until the players declare the right sorts of actions to "naturalistically" uncover it. Speaking a bit loosely, and also without the benefit of actual play experience, I would say that the advice for the DitV GM is to treat the whole town as something like a framed scene, with the information being revealed by the GM to the player by way of presenting the situation - and hence as an input into action declaration - rather than the information being something that will be revealed to the players as part of the output of action resolution.




This is exactly right.

Here is the thing.  Anyone that has GMed DitV and AW can see the obvious through-line between the two.  In so many ways you could crib the GMing advice from one directly to the other and you would have virtually the same play experience as you are currently (its just organized a bit differently).  

Follow the players lead = Ask provocative questions and use the answers

Play/Actively reveal the Towns = Barf forth apocalyptica and make everyone human

Do not have a solution in mind/there is no story/no plot points = Play to find out what happens

Escalation = Moves snowball

Towns/Sin = Threats



> With regard to DW and secret doors, it seems to me that if a player delcares that his/her PC is searching for secret doors then that would probably be Discern Realities (perhaps Spout Lore if the players approach is to reflect on his/her PC's knowledge of architecture and engineering) - which if it succeeds doens't grant the _player_ the authority to establish a secret door as part of the backstory. This is a contrast with (say) Burning Wheel, where a player can declare: _I am searcing the wall for signs of secret doors, drawing on my architectural training_ and then the GM sets a DC for the Architecture skill check - if the check succeeds, intent and task both succeed so the PC identifies an architecturally discernible secret door; if the check fails, the GM narrates some salient adverse consequence instead (eg mabye the archtiectral feature the PC noticed is actually the trigger for a trap!).




This is also correct.  Discern Realities has an exact example of secret doors.

But here is the thing on that.  You have to reflect back upon the game's Agenda and the GMing Principles.  What applies here is:

* Play to find out what happens

* Draw maps, leave blanks

* Ask questions and use the answers

* Begin and end with the fiction

So here is the likely course of events with a Dungeon World GM and a burned out tavern where the players hoping to find survivors or signs of what happened here.

1)  GM may have a rough idea of maybe 2-3 things that may have happened here but they aren't sure (because they're playing to find out).

2)  The player says something like "Inns have cellars for dry goods, spirits and the like.  Maybe someone hid in there and locked it when whatever went down.  I move all of the debris from behind the bar and look for some kind of pull or something on the seared floorboards."

3)  This is basically an "ask questions and use the answers" moment (but sort of inverted).  

4)  The GM will not have anything nearing a blueprint (if they have anything at all and aren't just ad-libbing it) of the inn; "leave blanks."  

5)  "Begin and end with the fiction" comes up here as the GM is using that input from the player and thinking yeah, the "begin with the fiction" proposition of a spirit/dry goods basement behind the bar makes sense in multiple ways.  

6)  Is something at stake?  Yeah.  Survivors.  The possible answer to whatever happened here (intel).  Possible assets (maybe a use of Adventuring Gear/Rations/Poutlice or a Cohort in this group of people since they owe the PCs their lives).  So we don't "say yes" we "roll the dice."

7)  What are we rolling the dice for?  To find out if there is this secret door/tavern cellar and what is in there.

So, by a collection of proxies, a player is basically being afforded the opportunity to stipulate fiction with a successful Discern Realities move.


----------



## Manbearcat

Ovinomancer said:


> As someone who managed a successful hobby shop for half a decade and who is still very good friends with the owner of that shop, RPGs have about the average level of dysfunction among hobbies.  The only real difference is that RPGs are a social hobby so it's more on display.  Hit up a model train club sometime and you might be surprised/horrified.
> 
> My two biggest "problem" customer groups were train guys and Napoleonic wargamers, for largely the same reason -- obsessive attention to detail and a failure to understand why we would just order a pack of this expensive unique color of paint so they could buy one.   Now, most of my train guys were fantastic people, some of whom just made my day better when they stopped by.  Some of the Napoleonics were okay, too.  But, if it was gonna be a bad interaction, I'd have done well betting on it being a train guy.




I just want to comment on this right quick.

I agree that RPGs have about "the average level of dysfunction among hobbies."  I also agree with the wargaming and train culture (and the whys that you explained).  I've known people in those communities as well.

I've known tons of people in various drug cultures, rave communities, writing workshops, archery, hunting, outdoorsmanship.

I've been deeply involved in various athletic communities from baseball (at all levels), to football, to basketball, to hockey, to golf, to tennis.  I've been deeply involved in the Brazilian Jiu jitsu community when it was first becoming popularized in the States (from 95 to 2001).  Believe it or not, the Jiu jitsu community is easily the most humble, kind, and least prone toward negative male traits of all of the communities I've ever encountered (despite the fact that it hooks directly into classical evolutionary male dominance hierarchy mechanics).

Our culture is no better or worse than any of these others, even though it gets a bad reputation for dysfunction (and in fact, there is a decent amount of "closet overlap" between our community and these other communities).

One thing that really frustrates me is our (humans) bias toward treating a dataset that features a few bad actors amongst a whole host of benign (or decent...or rigorously decent) actors and then representing the entirety of that dataset (therefore all members of the community by proxy) as _undesirable thing x_.  That is, definitionally, bigotry.  But that mental shorthand had its use for hundreds of thousands of years when humans needed decisive models (even if mostly wrong) to answer acute selection pressures inherent to being a social animal that competes for resources (which probably ramped up significantly about 12,000 years ago when we stopped our wandering hunter/gatherer ways and began developing fixed settlements and developing methods to work, and compete for, fertile land).  

While it will take a long, long, long time to undo that programming, even though it frustrates me, I wish we were (a) much more understanding of people who deploy it still (because of that profoundly deep heritage) while (b) we work (fairly and deliberately) to slowly undo its foothold as a reflexive mental model.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> This is exactly right.
> 
> Here is the thing.  Anyone that has GMed DitV and AW can see the obvious through-line between the two.  In so many ways you could crib the GMing advice from one directly to the other and you would have virtually the same play experience as you are currently (its just organized a bit differently).
> 
> Follow the players lead = Ask provocative questions and use the answers
> 
> Play/Actively reveal the Towns = Barf forth apocalyptica and make everyone human
> 
> Do not have a solution in mind/there is no story/no plot points = Play to find out what happens
> 
> Escalation = Moves snowball
> 
> Towns/Sin = Threats
> 
> 
> 
> This is also correct.  Discern Realities has an exact example of secret doors.
> 
> But here is the thing on that.  You have to reflect back upon the game's Agenda and the GMing Principles.  What applies here is:
> 
> * Play to find out what happens
> 
> * Draw maps, leave blanks
> 
> * Ask questions and use the answers
> 
> * Begin and end with the fiction
> 
> So here is the likely course of events with a Dungeon World GM and a burned out tavern where the players hoping to find survivors or signs of what happened here.
> 
> 1)  GM may have a rough idea of maybe 2-3 things that may have happened here but they aren't sure (because they're playing to find out).
> 
> 2)  The player says something like "Inns have cellars for dry goods, spirits and the like.  Maybe someone hid in there and locked it when whatever went down.  I move all of the debris from behind the bar and look for some kind of pull or something on the seared floorboards."
> 
> 3)  This is basically an "ask questions and use the answers" moment (but sort of inverted).
> 
> 4)  The GM will not have anything nearing a blueprint (if they have anything at all and aren't just ad-libbing it) of the inn; "leave blanks."
> 
> 5)  "Begin and end with the fiction" comes up here as the GM is using that input from the player and thinking yeah, the "begin with the fiction" proposition of a spirit/dry goods basement behind the bar makes sense in multiple ways.
> 
> 6)  Is something at stake?  Yeah.  Survivors.  The possible answer to whatever happened here (intel).  Possible assets (maybe a use of Adventuring Gear/Rations/Poutlice or a Cohort in this group of people since they owe the PCs their lives).  So we don't "say yes" we "roll the dice."
> 
> 7)  What are we rolling the dice for?  To find out if there is this secret door/tavern cellar and what is in there.
> 
> So, by a collection of proxies, a player is basically being afforded the opportunity to stipulate fiction with a successful Discern Realities move.




That's a great example of what I was getting at with how the general PbtA frameworks revolve around player intents.  And, now that I've written it, I look at the sentence and wonder what obscure demon inspired me to write that nearly unintelligible sentence.

More clearly, PbtA games' core conceit (at least to me) involve the intent of the players to do things.  You either say yes, or, if it feeds into the drama engine, you ask for a check.  But, if that check is successful, your job as GM isn't to provide the players with what you think, but instead with what they asked for -- ie, honor the intent of the action declaration.  On a fail, pervert/thwart/endanger the intent of the action declaration.  Or pay off a previous danger.  But, at all times, as GM, you really have to have the player's intent foremost in your mind when you narrate the outcome of an action declaration, pass or fail.  Not doing this really damages the core conceit of the game.


----------



## Manbearcat

Ovinomancer said:


> That's a great example of what I was getting at with how the general PbtA frameworks revolve around player intents.  And, now that I've written it, I look at the sentence and wonder what obscure demon inspired me to write that nearly unintelligible sentence.
> 
> More clearly, PbtA games' core conceit (at least to me) involve the intent of the players to do things.  You either say yes, or, if it feeds into the drama engine, you ask for a check.  But, if that check is successful, your job as GM isn't to provide the players with what you think, but instead with what they asked for -- ie, honor the intent of the action declaration.  On a fail, pervert/thwart/endanger the intent of the action declaration.  Or pay off a previous danger.  But, at all times, as GM, you really have to have the player's intent foremost in your mind when you narrate the outcome of an action declaration, pass or fail.  Not doing this really damages the core conceit of the game.




That is exactly right.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> I just want to comment on this right quick.
> 
> I agree that RPGs have about "the average level of dysfunction among hobbies."  I also agree with the wargaming and train culture (and the whys that you explained).  I've known people in those communities as well.
> 
> I've known tons of people in various drug cultures, rave communities, writing workshops, archery, hunting, outdoorsmanship.
> 
> I've been deeply involved in various athletic communities from baseball (at all levels), to football, to basketball, to hockey, to golf, to tennis.  I've been deeply involved in the Brazilian Jiu jitsu community when it was first becoming popularized in the States (from 95 to 2001).  Believe it or not, the Jiu jitsu community is easily the most humble, kind, and least prone toward negative male traits of all of the communities I've ever encountered (despite the fact that it hooks directly into classical evolutionary male dominance hierarchy mechanics).
> 
> Our culture is no better or worse than any of these others, even though it gets a bad reputation for dysfunction (and in fact, there is a decent amount of "closet overlap" between our community and these other communities).
> 
> One thing that really frustrates me is our (humans) bias toward treating a dataset that features a few bad actors amongst a whole host of benign (or decent...or rigorously decent) actors and then representing the entirety of that dataset (therefore all members of the community by proxy) as _undesirable thing x_.  That is, definitionally, bigotry.  But that mental shorthand had its use for hundreds of thousands of years when humans needed decisive models (even if mostly wrong) to answer acute selection pressures inherent to being a social animal that competes for resources (which probably ramped up significantly about 12,000 years ago when we stopped our wandering hunter/gatherer ways and began developing fixed settlements and developing methods to work, and compete for, fertile land).
> 
> While it will take a long, long, long time to undo that programming, even though it frustrates me, I wish we were (a) much more understanding of people who deploy it still (because of that profoundly deep heritage) while (b) we work (fairly and deliberately) to slowly undo its foothold as a reflexive mental model.




Heh.  I read an interesting article recently that touches on why martial arts communities tend to be very polite and well mannered.  It comes from a strong understanding of exactly what kind of damage angry people can do to each other, which leads to better non-physical conflict resolution skills.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> by a collection of proxies, a player is basically being afforded the opportunity to stipulate fiction with a successful Discern Realities move.



My feeling is the extent to which this would play similarly to (say) BW, or not - eg in terms of the degree of GM mediation, back-and-forth negotiation, etc - would depend heavily on table practices as much as abstract principles of play.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> My feeling is the extent to which this would play similarly to (say) BW, or not - eg in terms of the degree of GM mediation, back-and-forth negotiation, etc - would depend heavily on table practices as much as abstract principles of play.




I guess I just have two thoughts here.

1)  I just want to be clear that "stipulation by-proxy of confluence of integrated rules and agenda/principles" is different than outright "player fiat."  For instance, the procedural handling of Discern Realities as I've laid it out above is different (in nuance of formalities and feel) than, say, the Fighter's endgame move of Through Death's Eyes (name someone who will live and someone who will die) or the Dashing Hero's Plan of Action (stipulate swashbuckler-ey elements of a scene).

2)  I agree, insofar as all rulesets for all games rely upon social observance as much as they due integrated principles and rules.  If someone playing basketball decides they're going to try to gain a competitive advantage by fouling opposing players and then pathologically disputing their fouls, these unorthodox "table practices" become much more relevant than the coherency of the intent, design, and application of the contact rules!


----------



## Manbearcat

Ovinomancer said:


> Heh.  I read an interesting article recently that touches on why martial arts communities tend to be very polite and well mannered.  It comes from a strong understanding of exactly what kind of damage angry people can do to each other, which leads to better non-physical conflict resolution skills.




That's definitely a part of it.

I think another part is that males get to exorcise those primitive "establish dominance hierarchy through physical prowess" demons in an environment of low stakes...but still stakes.  People get hurt all of the time rolling with other people on the mat (often unintentionally) so there is always the specter of injury looming.

Getting that out of the system on a regular basis has a lot of positive knock-on effects.

Also (as I'm sure you know and everyone here knows), males are typically quite vulnerable, sensitive, fearful, confused, but wild and woolly creatures at ages 8 through early 20s when those dominance hierarchies are ever-present and in full-bore stratification mode. It becomes magnified when the nurture element of their lives is a cluster-eff.  Reliable love through brotherhood, structure, and practicing discipline does a huge amount of work toward taming that scary brew of attributes.

I've known a large number of guys who were "saved" (from themselves and their situation) by martial arts (and, in that saving, others were saved from "paying their dysfunction forward").

Mike Tyson is the perfect example of this.  His life until Cus D'Amato was a terribly sad thing, then it was a starkly the opposite direction, then, when Cus died, he completely and predictably went off the rails.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Aldarc said:
> 
> 
> 
> So it's possible that shift away from "Saying No" transpired when some people were not satisfied with playing all RPGs like puzzle-themed boardgames and instead wanted their RPGs centered around resolving points of player-pushed narrative tension, stakes, and conflict.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Which, taken to it's conclusion, means the players are each time setting both the problem (mystery) and its solution; and then hoping the dice co-operate and don't drag in too many complications.  Isn't that like reading the end of a murder novel to find out whodunnit and then reading through the rest to see how things got there?
Click to expand...


Lanefan, it seems to me strange to reply to a post about RPGing as something other than puzzle-solving to say _but then the puzzles won't work_.

More generally, instead of conjecturing about how a play style you're evidently not familiar with might work, why not engage with examples that are being posted by those who do have that familiarity. For instance, my most recent session of Traveller had mysteries, such as where the "pathfinders" in Suliman are from, and what they are planning towards Ashar.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> I guess I just have two thoughts here.
> 
> 1)  I just want to be clear that "stipulation by-proxy of confluence of integrated rules and agenda/principles" is different than outright "player fiat."  For instance, the procedural handling of Discern Realities as I've laid it out above is different (in nuance of formalities and feel) than, say, the Fighter's endgame move of Through Death's Eyes (name someone who will live and someone who will die) or the Dashing Hero's Plan of Action (stipulate swashbuckler-ey elements of a scene).
> 
> 2)  I agree, insofar as all rulesets for all games rely upon social observance as much as they due integrated principles and rules.  If someone playing basketball decides they're going to try to gain a competitive advantage by fouling opposing players and then pathologically disputing their fouls, these unorthodox "table practices" become much more relevant than the coherency of the intent, design, and application of the contact rules!



I think your (1) is more what I had in mind than your (2).

I'll give another illustration: in my Cortex+ Fantasy game, at one point the PCs found themselves deep in a dungeon, having been teleported there by a Crypt Thing (mechanically, that had been a spedning of 2d12 from the Doom Pool to end the scene). I had started the next scene with everyone subject to a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication. And I described a great hall with appropriate Scene Distinctions, including something like Runic Inscriptions.

One of the players decided that his PC would read the runes to see if they revealed where in the dungeon the PCs had ended up; mechanically, he made a check against the Doom Pool to step back his Lost in the Dungeon complication (ie it was a type of recovery action). Because that check succeeded handily, it was established in the fiction that the runes did indeed reveal information about the dungeon and the PCs' location.

I would see that sort of thing as a strong case of player authority to introduce new backstory as (part of) the outcome of action resolution. It could happen in 4e D&D too, but (I think) would require more player-and-GM back-and-forth. First, 4e doesn't have a formal notion of a Scene Distinction, and so it can require table negotiation to work out what is mutually interesting and what should just be left as mere colour (eg I've had players in 4e declare things like "We search the cupboards" and I tell them there's nothing interesting, or maybe provide a bit of colour, and then move on because no one really cares abouit the cupboards, but they're there in the narration as part of the framing and there is no system-level way of flagging them as mere colour). Second, 4e doesn't have a formal notion of a plot-level complication (like Lost in the Dungeon) nor the formal notion of a recovery action, and so a player has to spin a lot more from whole cloth in explaining that his/her PC wants to read the runes so as to learn where the PCs are (eg in a skill chalenge, is this a primary or secondary check?).

I've not played Fate, but I'm guessing that for this particular example it would be more like Cortex+ (eg incorproating the Runic Inscription aspect into a check to establish an I Know Where We Are In The Dungeon aspect).

In BW it would be different again - BW shares (1) and (2) in common with 4e, but is more overt about mechanics for player-driven backstory introduction. So it might be a Symbols check FoRKing in Rune-wise to establish some knowledge (mostly colour) but also to get an advantage die (a mechanical boost) for downstream dungeoneering checks.

On these boards, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is the poster who has pushed me the most to recognise that, while some general comments can be made when comparing the sort of thing I enjoy to stuff that I would see as pretty railroady-y, once we get to the detailed exposition of techniques and principles it's worth important to appreciate system differences.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Most, even the vast majority of them.  Exceptions don't disprove the rule.  Even with Traveller, it sounds like that time frame is built into the system, but as we did not specify the system, it wasn't specifically Traveller.  Absent a specific system, you go with the common usage, which is what the majority of systems use.



Which systems are you referring to. What "majority of systems"? What does "common usage" mean here other than _what Maxperson assumes_?

I'm familiar with a fair number of systems. None of them specifies what is meant, in terms of time spent, by "We are checking out the teahouse to see if there are sect members there." Traveller does suggest a week as the default time unit for doing this sort of stuff on-world.  But even AD&D, which has clear time-unit assumptions for combat (1 minute rounds), dungeon exploration (10 minute turns) and outdoor exploration (24 hour days), does not speciy a default time unit for urban exploration. (The closest thing to that is found in Appendix C of the DMG, which says that the GM should "[c]heck for encounters every three turns as normally, or otherwise as desired.")

If I was GMing such a system (which in _my_ experience would be one of the majority) and the time spent actually mattered, then I would ask the players how long they are intending to spend doing this thing.

EDIT: Taken literally, the AD&D City/Town Encounter Matrix suggests that someone wandering around the more desolate areas of a town at night will encounter some undead, demonic or similar sort of entity once every 4 hours or so (12% chance of such an encounter on the "Nighttime" column).

If that is the "reality" of a AD&D urban areas, it seems that it wouldn't be too out of character to fairly frequently encounter the sorts of cult and sect members who revere and summon such creatures!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Which systems are you referring to. What "majority of systems"? What does "common usage" mean here other than _what Maxperson assumes_?
> 
> I'm familiar with a fair number of systems. None of them specifies what is meant, in terms of time spent, by "We are checking out the teahouse to see if there are sect members there." Traveller does suggest a week as the default time unit for doing this sort of stuff on-world.  But even AD&D, which has clear time-unit assumptions for combat (1 minute rounds), dungeon exploration (10 minute turns) and outdoor exploration (24 hour days), does not speciy a default time unit for urban exploration. (The closest thing to that is found in Appendix C of the DMG, which says that the GM should "[c]heck for encounters every three turns as normally, or otherwise as desired.")
> 
> EDIT: Taken literally, the AD&D City/Town Encounter Matrix suggests that someone wandering around the more desolate areas of a town at night will encounter some undead, demonic or similar sort of entity once every 4 hours or so (12% chance of such an encounter on the "Nighttime" column).
> 
> If that is the "reality" of a AD&D urban areas, it seems that it wouldn't be too out of character to fairly frequently encounter the sorts of cult and sect members who revere and summon such creatures!




Yep.  That's exactly right.  They mostly don't have built in time frames, which means that you go with how things are commonly done.  When I'm at my place with a group of friends and one says, "Hey, I'm going to go to 7-11 and see if there is a Hershey Bar there," it's commonly understood that he doesn't mean that he's going to go down every day for two months to see if there's a candy bar there, we also understand that he isn't saying that he's going to bribe the guy behind the counter to call him when a Hershey Bar shows up.  

Absent a built in time frame like Traveller has, you have to specify unusual time frames and actions or else you are not doing them.  If the PCs say they are going to the Tea House to see if a cult member is there, that could mean 10 minutes, an hour, or even a few hours.  If it's any longer than that then it's an unusual amount of time to see if someone or something is present.  I know I wouldn't assume that the DM would just know that I meant I was going to be there all day, because that's not what is commonly understood by, "I'm going to go see if a cult member is at the tea house."  

This scenario as presented in this thread did not involve bribery or going back day after day for months in order to maximize chances of encountering a cult member.  The goal posts were therefore set at a short visit.  You moved them with your scenario alterations.



> If I was GMing such a system (which in _my_ experience would be one of the majority) and the time spent actually mattered, then I would ask the players how long they are intending to spend doing this thing.




I would, too.  That wasn't a part of the scenario here, though.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> I think I'm in agreement up to the last sentence. But then I'm not sure - could you say more?
> 
> To elaborate a bit: to me, the loyalty subsystem and sage subsystem in Gygax's AD&D don't seem to me to examples of "We made stuff up we thought would be fun" - they have the feeling of not having been _played1_ much at all; or, perhaps, of attempts to present stuff that was done by Gygax and co in an ad hoc and improvisational fashion in post hoc systematic fashion, without regard to the fact that this pushed it towards the unplayable.
> 
> The stuff in AD&D that _does_ come across as having actually been played is also quite playable - eg the wandering monster charts, the rules for finding secret doors, really most of the dungeoneering stuff.
> 
> Writing this elaboration has maybe led me to unestand what your post is getting at, but I'll spell it out so you can tell me if I'm right or not: the world-simuation/non-gamey aspect of Traveller creates design/playtest pressure to have workable subsystems to do that - they're not just semi-hypothetical options for those who want to drift the game away from its core "gamey" experience.
> 
> Also, XP not Laugh for the other post because how to run 4e well is no laughing matter!




I think you understand my point possibly better than I did when I made it - my flu is pretty bad.


----------



## Numidius

Just chiming in quickly to say thanks for the interesting reads and replies, forumers. 
Since the main example seems to be Finding Secret Doors  I'm posting the exact Move for that purpose: a Basic Move from the Thief:

Trap Expert
When you spend a moment to survey a dangerous area, roll+DEX.

 On a 10+, hold 3.

 On a 7–9, hold 1. Spend your hold as you walk through the area to ask these questions:

Is there a trap here and if so, what activates it?
What does the trap do when activated?
What else is hidden here?


Discern Realities Move is intended more broadly for the whole situation the Pc are in, with Npc, dangers etc
Spout Lore Move regards the memories of the Pc on a particular subject

Niche protection is part of Dw, also. 

Btw apart from SYOR the conflict resolution system of Dogs is a real jewel IMO
I used it for a star wars game and a gmless war of the gods kind of one.

Ps: I also practiced martial arts: Shorinji Kempo and some Aikido


----------



## Manbearcat

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

Absolutely the nuance and formal, overt systemization of things matters (and not by a little in a lot of cases) to play.

In the DW depiction above, the confluence of conversation procedures, GMing ethos, and specific action resolution mechanics can yield what is tantamount to a C+ Scene Distinction. However, the formalities and functionality (a deeply codified Scene Distinction hooks into subsequent action resolution mechanics, and therefore as a potential heftier input to fiction, differently than in a free form game like PBtA) matter to the feel of the play of the game, in the actual playing from one gamestate to another, and often (but not always) in the outputs of play as well.


----------



## Manbearcat

[MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] , I agree. DW cares a LOT about niche protection (Wizard isn’t a profession...it’s your character).

I would say the Discern Realities niche protection tension with the Thief is managed as follows:

1) Dex instead of Wis (which will be the prime req for Thiefs).

2) Although people often don’t understand why, move focus (rather than breadth) carries advantages in DW.

The player is cued to ask for hidden stuff which helps as mental shorthand. A GM with a Thief is going to be cued into this archetypal shtick and will feature it in play (ask questions, use answers) as complications, costs, and revealing unwelcome truths/approaching threats. 

Through the combination of 1 and 2, (a) archetypal Thiefey stuff will be prominent in the fiction and (b) the Thief will manifest as a competent hero in handling related conflicts.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> Lanefan, it seems to me strange to reply to a post about RPGing as something other than puzzle-solving to say _but then the puzzles won't work_.
> 
> More generally, instead of conjecturing about how a play style you're evidently not familiar with might work, why not engage with examples that are being posted by those who do have that familiarity. For instance, my most recent session of Traveller had mysteries, such as where the "pathfinders" in Suliman are from, and what they are planning towards Ashar.



This sort of circular reasoning actually puts a finger on what may also have been bugging me about the post in question. I don't mind D&D as a puzzle-game, and saying 'no' is often a valid necessity of play for such games. (I even plan on running an OSR-stylized dungeon crawl in the hopefully near future, likely using Black Hack.) But when other games are less designed as puzzle-games challenging player skill and more about character-propelled dramatic conflict, it seems peculiar to complain that "_then the puzzles won't work_" because puzzles aren't the point of play. 

This sort of thinking is rarely, if ever, applied similarly to boardgames. When we play card or boardgames, we almost instinctively understand that each particular game has its own idiomatic purposes, challenges, and strategies featured through its game design that we must learn. The conflict that drives gameplay will be set on different hinges, and we naturally adjust to that fact with minimal fuss. 

One would hardly go into playing Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic as if one were playing Monopoly. Nor would we play any of these games expecting the play assumptions of the other, though we may classify families of games with similar design principles. It would be an almost farcical argument to suggest that there must be something wrong with Pandemic because then Monopoly's bank would not work in the game or that the locations of Pandemic are not fixed in a linear fashion around the outer edge of the board. Or even to suggest (with equal parts absurdity and genuineness) that there is something intrinsically wrong with Pandemic because if its design principles or rules were applied to Monopoly, then the game play that results would fail spectacularly. The underlying presumption being, "What good is Pandemic if I can't use it to play Monopoly?" 

And yet we strangely and frequently encounter this attitude in TTRPG circles wherein people judge the merits of games (or design principles) in a manner that presumes "OneTrueWayism." And thus they _refuse_ (through almost intentional ignorance) to understand with any cordiality the idiomatic nature of TTRPG systems and their design principles because they see, analyze, and rationalize everything through Their One True Game. Is it any wonder why the conversation so readily breaks down when faced with this sort circular reasoning?


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> This sort of circular reasoning actually puts a finger on what may also have been bugging me about the post in question. I don't mind D&D as a puzzle-game, and saying 'no' is often a valid necessity of play for such games. (I even plan on running an OSR-stylized dungeon crawl in the hopefully near future, likely using Black Hack.) But when other games are less designed as puzzle-games challenging player skill and more about character-propelled dramatic conflict, it seems peculiar to complain that "_then the puzzles won't work_" because puzzles aren't the point of play.
> 
> This sort of thinking is rarely, if ever, applied similarly to boardgames. When we play card or boardgames, we almost instinctively understand that each particular game has its own idiomatic purposes, challenges, and strategies featured through its game design that we must learn. The conflict that drives gameplay will be set on different hinges, and we naturally adjust to that fact with minimal fuss.
> 
> One would hardly go into playing Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic as if one were playing Monopoly. Nor would we play any of these games expecting the play assumptions of the other, though we may classify families of games with similar design principles. It would be an almost farcical argument to suggest that there must be something wrong with Pandemic because then Monopoly's bank would not work in the game or that the locations of Pandemic are not fixed in a linear fashion around the outer edge of the board. Or even to suggest (with equal parts absurdity and genuineness) that there is something intrinsically wrong with Pandemic because if its design principles or rules were applied to Monopoly, then the game play that results would fail spectacularly. The underlying presumption being, "What good is Pandemic if I can't use it to play Monopoly?"




Board games and card games have very strong constraints on what you can or cannot do.  This is far different than an RPG where it's open ended and usually you can try things that the game itself hasn't spelled out for you. The open nature of RPGs lends itself to people tinkering with rules, and applying various playstyles to any given game.  



> And yet we strangely and frequently encounter this attitude in TTRPG circles wherein people judge the merits of games (or design principles) in a manner that presumes "OneTrueWayism." And thus they _refuse_ (through almost intentional ignorance) to understand with any cordiality the idiomatic nature of TTRPG systems and their design principles because they see, analyze, and rationalize everything through Their One True Game. Is it any wonder why the conversation so readily breaks down when faced with this sort circular reasoning?




This seems to contradict itself.  On one hand you are saying that a game is designed to be played this way, and not that(One True Way).  And on the other hand you are saying we are viewing the game through the lense of One True Wayism for wanting it to work with more than one style of play.


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic.
> 
> And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue.
> 
> Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."
> 
> Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board _became GMs in the first place_ because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?
> 
> I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."
> 
> And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives.
> 
> But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done.
> 
> The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest _somewhere_. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM.
> 
> But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.
> 
> Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?
> 
> If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play.
> 
> Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."




DOUBLE POST


----------



## Bedrockgames

innerdude said:


> It was definitely hyperbole. Purposefully hyperbolic.
> 
> And I'm not sure it's entirely untrue.
> 
> Look, I'm not equating bad GM-ing to any sort of actual social issue requiring philosophical examination or legal redress. But would anyone argue that the "jerk GM" isn't basically a foundational trope of the hobby? The most common narrative in all of RPG-dom goes something like this: "I left college/moved away and had to find a new game group. And it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass."
> 
> Or the converse, "My GM moved away and I had to find a new game group, and it took 3 or 4 tries until I could find a GM who wasn't a jackass." How many people on this board _became GMs in the first place_ because they were tired of playing RPGs with jerks?
> 
> I can't think of a single other hobby that comes with it a near 100% probability that at some point, participants will be forced to experience emotional dysfunction, awkwardness, and pain. Why? Because even if it happens infrequently, too often the primary locus of control for the shared social dynamic---for close to 50 years now!---ends up in the hands of emotionally stunted misanthropes. In some ways, it's basically the Murphy's Law of the hobby---"No matter how bad your current GM is, the one in your next group will be worse."
> 
> And yes OF COURSE there's the flipside of good GMs. GMs who make the hobby a joy and pleasure, who have given us some of the best social, competitive, dramatic, euphoric moments of our lives.
> 
> But RPGs are unique as a hobby in this way. Model airplane fliers and hobby fisherman don't face this dynamic, and even in the off chance that they run into a jerk, leaving them behind is as simple as walking/boating 100 yards farther away and continuing to do what they've always done.
> 
> The thing is, I completely agree that a hard "No" has a place in GM-ing. It's crazy to think otherwise. In any organizational hierarchy, the final power/arbitration of decision making has to rest _somewhere_. And I completely agree that in the final analysis, that final power of arbitration should rest with the GM.
> 
> But man oh man, a hard "No" should be used infinitely more judiciously than it usually is.
> 
> Think of it this way---what would do the hobby a greater service in promoting it as a viable, fun leisure activity? Creating the "perfect" marketing campaign to promote the "perfect" version of D&D? Or magically waving a wand and turning every jerk GM into a true ambassador for the hobby?
> 
> If I'm railing on GMs who insist on using the "Hard No" in their games, I'm really railing on those who insist that it's one of the fundamental tenets of play.
> 
> Because there's objectively better ways to have games that are more fun than falling back to "GM's way or the highway."




Something being a trope doesn't mean it is true (or at least doesn't mean it is ubiquitous). It is a trope because it is funny and Knights of the Dinner Table, and like in any other activity, there are occasionally people not good at it. Most people have encountered a bad GM. I just haven't encountered them as regularly as your post would suggest.


----------



## Manbearcat

What Aldarc is saying is simply “system matters.”

If I want to run a hex crawl, I’m not using Dungeon World, Torchbearer, 4e.

I’m using B/X or AD&D or 5e.

If I want to run a particular type of theme-light, not-rules-heavy dungeon crawl, I’m not playing Torchbearer.

I’m playing Moldvay Basic.

If I want to run a Story Now, rules-lite (ish) game that significantly curtails GM mandate and mediation in action resolution, I’m not running 5e.

I’m running Dungeon World.

Etc etc


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> Well if we were going with emulating the genre of fiction, we could even employ the fairy tale Rule of 3 trope. The first two places you visit will not have what you seek, but the third time will be the charm.




Indeed, this is a perfectly usable dramatic technique. Maybe the first place seems interesting at first, and there's a short moment of tension. In a film it might be that this IS the place, and the audience sees some sign of it that the characters miss. You could do this in an RPG too, depending on what sort of game it is. It could certainly work in a Story Now type of system where the players have input into the fiction. It could be something you retcon in as well! Maybe the retcon is the result of a player-side resource being expended or leveraging an aspect of a character, etc.

Anyway, the PCs go on to 'two more places' and the third one proves to be the gold mine (which may actually be the first place all over again, but dramatically it doesn't matter). These are dramatic elements that would be pretty far-fetched in terms of techniques like throwing dice at random. They could arise through "the GM decides what is realistic" but that technique is basically IMHO just "do what you feel like doing" so its hard to actually assess what its results are!


----------



## Numidius

Aldarc said:


> This sort of circular reasoning actually puts a finger on what may also have been bugging me about the post in question. I don't mind D&D as a puzzle-game, and saying 'no' is often a valid necessity of play for such games. (I even plan on running an OSR-stylized dungeon crawl in the hopefully near future, likely using Black Hack.) But when other games are less designed as puzzle-games challenging player skill and more about character-propelled dramatic conflict, it seems peculiar to complain that "_then the puzzles won't work_" because puzzles aren't the point of play.
> 
> This sort of thinking is rarely, if ever, applied similarly to boardgames. When we play card or boardgames, we almost instinctively understand that each particular game has its own idiomatic purposes, challenges, and strategies featured through its game design that we must learn. The conflict that drives gameplay will be set on different hinges, and we naturally adjust to that fact with minimal fuss.
> 
> One would hardly go into playing Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Pandemic as if one were playing Monopoly. Nor would we play any of these games expecting the play assumptions of the other, though we may classify families of games with similar design principles. It would be an almost farcical argument to suggest that there must be something wrong with Pandemic because then Monopoly's bank would not work in the game or that the locations of Pandemic are not fixed in a linear fashion around the outer edge of the board. Or even to suggest (with equal parts absurdity and genuineness) that there is something intrinsically wrong with Pandemic because if its design principles or rules were applied to Monopoly, then the game play that results would fail spectacularly. The underlying presumption being, "What good is Pandemic if I can't use it to play Monopoly?"
> 
> And yet we strangely and frequently encounter this attitude in TTRPG circles wherein people judge the merits of games (or design principles) in a manner that presumes "OneTrueWayism." And thus they _refuse_ (through almost intentional ignorance) to understand with any cordiality the idiomatic nature of TTRPG systems and their design principles because they see, analyze, and rationalize everything through Their One True Game. Is it any wonder why the conversation so readily breaks down when faced with this sort circular reasoning?



Well, I think of war boardgames, from Risk to the latest Rising Sun: the unwritten rule coming across the decades is Play to win or Do your Best trying. 
If a player stops to do it by the end of the game, becomes a sort of kingmaker, or simply breaks the game. 

One true way, or not, when one player breaks the game for the table, problems arise.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> Well, I think of war boardgames, from Risk to the latest Rising Sun: the unwritten rule coming across the decades is Play to win or Do your Best trying.
> If a player stops to do it by the end of the game, becomes a sort of kingmaker, or simply breaks the game.
> 
> One true way, or not, when one player breaks the game for the table, problems arise.



Yes, it's obvious that bad play leads to bad outcomes.  People behaving badly has absolutely nothing to do with game design or play goals, yet this obvious point keeps being brought up as if it's illuminating of something.

Apologies, you've been a very reasonable poster; I'm just reaching my exasperation limit with the "but bad play" statements, and this was a trigger.  My problem.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, it's obvious that bad play leads to bad outcomes.  People behaving badly has absolutely nothing to do with game design or play goals, yet this obvious point keeps being brought up as if it's illuminating of something.
> 
> Apologies, you've been a very reasonable poster; I'm just reaching my exasperation limit with the "but bad play" statements, and this was a trigger.  My problem.



Sorry, my "bad"  

To tell the truth some of my players want just plain old gm-driven rpg more often than not.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> Sorry, my "bad"
> 
> To tell the truth some of my players want just plain old gm-driven rpg more often than not.



That's awesome.  Mine, too.  Which is why I'm running 5e instead of Blades right now.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Board games and card games have very strong constraints on what you can or cannot do.  This is far different than an RPG where it's open ended and usually you can try things that the game itself hasn't spelled out for you. The open nature of RPGs lends itself to people tinkering with rules, and applying various playstyles to any given game.



That is how they are commonly written but that is not necessarily universally true. That said, tinkering has been a common feature of board games. Let us return to an earlier example!  

Parker Brothers once assumed that everyone was playing by the rules of Monopoly laid out in the game. What they discovered, only relatively recently, was how many people had their own house rules for the game. It turns out that Monopoly is a game with a longer legacy of people tinkering with rules than D&D! This was often a common source of conflict when one played the game with others, as people would bring their idiomatic assumptions about what the rules were and/or how the game played. It was only when they sought to accommodate the wider breadth of play that had emerged that Parker Brothers began also including common "house rules" as part of the game instructions.  

Furthermore, nothing stops you from roleplaying your "character" in Monopoly, and one could most definitely operate a character in D&D as one would a tin figure from Monopoly. And I have weirdly enough seen both performed in their respective games. However, whether these games are designed for such experiences is another matter entirely. 

And how many other card and board games came out of "people tinkering with the rules" from some other game? Probably far too many to count, with many more being lost in history to us. It ill behooves us to apply the all too common fallacious position of 'exceptionalism' to TTRPGs. 



> This seems to contradict itself.  On one hand you are saying that a game is designed to be played this way, and not that(One True Way).  And on the other hand you are saying we are viewing the game through the lense of One True Wayism for wanting it to work with more than one style of play.



Not quite. I am not so much talking about adhering to OneTrueWay to play _a game_, and more about adhering to OneTrueWay as the presumed norm for play in _all games_. I would say (more concretely) that one should not necessarily presume that one's experience (or preferred method) of playing 1e D&D, for example, should be the metric for analyzing the merits of other games, design principles, play priorities/values, campaigns, etc. 

I would further say (to the point of it being a platitude) that TTRPGs are designed to facilitate particular styles of play. The design of games may provide a greater latitude or scope for other styles than intended, and these other styles may only be discovered later through the process of play. I naturally hope that you would agree with me that it hardly seems controversial to suggest that Gygax et al. had a certain style of gameplay in mind (or range thereof) when they designed Original Dungeons & Dragons. (And I think that D&D has been subsequently written, much like Monopoly, with a contentious desire to accommodate other styles.) And it hardly seems controversial to suggest that Vincent Baker had a different style of gameplay in mind from OD&D when he designed respectively Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World. And that differences in the respective designs of these systems would result, on the aggregate, in different norms of play. This is not to suggest that these games should be played according to OneTrueWay, but, rather, simply recognizing the fact that game rules are designed to cultivate particular sorts of gameplay experiences. Rules impact the norms of play.

This assumption even forms a prominent part of the OSR movement game philosophy: i.e., "The game rules of 'old school' D&D resulted in games with a different feel from the D&D of nowadays; ergo, how can we intentionally facilitate 'old school' styles of play while emulating or modernizing the rules?"  

I probably could have said more if I had said less, as per [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s more succinct summation: "the system matters."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I
> Most, even the vast majority of them.  Exceptions don't disprove the rule.  Even with Traveller, it sounds like that time frame is built into the system, but as we did not specify the system, it wasn't specifically Traveller.  Absent a specific system, you go with the common usage, which is what the majority of systems use.



I disagree, the majority of systems IME don't even really talk about time. Gygax obsessed about it, but even 2e drops a lot of the mechanical baggage that 1e has around time. For example, the 10 minute turn is mentioned, but no movement rates are associated with it in 2e. Traveler, IMHO, simply calls all time periods "1 week" in strategic play because Marc Miller wanted an 'Age of Sail' feel to his Fifth Imperium. As such jumps take a week, and he simply set all other activities to that time period. It makes play simple, Alan, Beth, and Carl take the Beowulf to Extremis while Eddie and Darla remain on Durant and spend the week looking for a patron. The GM can move both timelines forward, each group gets to make one check/decision/deal with one situation. Beowulf jumps back to Extremis, the rest of the party shops for the equipment needed to carry out the mission assigned by the patron, and play can continue both plausibly and in a dramatically satisfying way. At the time when Traveler was written this was basically a state-of-the-art playing methodology. It sure beat Gygax's 'track every minute for every character'.

However, most other games, at that time or others, really didn't talk about time. Lets think about early RPGs. Boot Hill, no real mention of time outside of 'bullet time', and even that is rather vague IIRC. Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World, no mention of time at all, except maybe a healing rate (I don't have my GW softcover in front of me, it probably says something about hit point recovery). Other games I recall don't have a lot more to say than this either. I don't recall anything time-specific in RQ for instance. CoC doesn't really talk about time, except as a cost for recovering SAN after an adventure. This is a pretty common pattern for games in this time period. They may note some few specific situations where a time cost exists, but there isn't really a coherent concept in these games of time as a structured resource or some explicit way to manage it or use it dramatically (drama is rarely mentioned in these early games). It is generally just assumed that time is the purview of the GM and may come into play in whatever way he sees fit. Very few of these game diverge much from D&D's central concept of a GM as 'story driver' and referee all rolled into one.



> I don't know about you, but when I tell my wife I'm going to the cafe, it's understood that it's a single instance of my going to the cafe.  It's also understood that if I was going to go there day after day for months, I would mention that.



Sure, in real life, but even D&D has structures in which this is NOT the assumption. To whit look at the 1e henchman acquisition rules, which allow the PCs to declare (and pay for) specific activities which are then assumed to play out over a period of time during which they are repeated (IE the PCs go to every bar and dive in the town and post messages or something similar for a week). I think it is reasonable to assume that players often given fairly general and open-ended instructions about what their characters do. Traveling for instance, you don't require the players to constantly reiterate exactly how far and fast they're moving and every detail of what they do, nor describe the amount of time they spend. Instead its something like 'we travel down the road' and the GM says something like 'you arrive at the next town'. Maybe something else happens, a decision is required, etc. but barring that, there's no need for constant input. 



> But again, this is just another Red Herring to distract from what I am saying, as well as a Strawman, since I did not say they would go to the tea house and leave the instant they show up.  Going down to see if one is there involves more time than just popping your head in, but it does not involve multiple days or bribing the staff for months unless as you point out above, the PCs say so.  In the example we are discussing, nobody said so, so it wasn't happening.  Adding it later like you are doing is Moving the Goal Posts.



This is highly context-dependent but when the players state certain goals, say "we travel to the next town" then its pretty logical for the GM to assume that whatever time and resources are required to do that are expended and the goal is accomplished, or else the situation changes enough that the original instructions aren't relevant anymore or some new fictional element is present. I don't disagree that, in many cases, a GM is going to notify the players when he thinks a reasonable amount of time/resources is spent and that might justify a new fiction, but there are no hard and fast rules (in D&D anyway, some games like Traveler are bit more structured).



> The only thing it suggests is that you knock off more time for events than I do.  It says nothing about which game is more or less exciting, and quite frankly a game which has unreasonably high chances of hitting long odds all the time would be boring is hell for me and my group.  If you and your group find it to be more exciting than my style of play, great for you, but it does not suggest that in general  your game is more exciting.
> 
> People would be more inclined to take what you say seriously if you weren't always putting other styles down with little smug comments like that all the time.  Those comments detract from what you say and make people resistant to it.




But how do you know what 'long odds' are? I still have seen nothing justifying any assertion that you can tell what is long odds most of the time. Even when you can it is a product of decisions you have made yourself, so its not like those odds are 'natural' or unforced in any way.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> That's awesome.  Mine, too.  Which is why I'm running 5e instead of Blades right now.



And that's why I run Railroad World by now


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, in real life, but even D&D has structures in which this is NOT the assumption. To whit look at the 1e henchman acquisition rules, which allow the PCs to declare (and pay for) specific activities which are then assumed to play out over a period of time during which they are repeated (IE the PCs go to every bar and dive in the town and post messages or something similar for a week). I think it is reasonable to assume that players often given fairly general and open-ended instructions about what their characters do. Traveling for instance, you don't require the players to constantly reiterate exactly how far and fast they're moving and every detail of what they do, nor describe the amount of time they spend. Instead its something like 'we travel down the road' and the GM says something like 'you arrive at the next town'. Maybe something else happens, a decision is required, etc. but barring that, there's no need for constant input.



Our term for this is "rubber time".  It usually happens when a party's in town for some downtime, and instead of going day by day I'll go around the table and find out what the PCs are doing (if it's not already obvious e.g. training); and unless there's reason to worry about sequence or specifics it all just takes as long as it takes.  I'll work out how long the longest action will take, and once all the downtime stuff is figured out and resolved I'll say something like "Right.  You've spent a month in town and all of you are now finished whatever you were doing; it's now Coira 32 and in theory you're ready to go.  [followed by, if not already obvious] What do you do now?"

But in the field time is very important even when the mission itself isn't time-sensitive: spell or effect durations, resource consumption, time taken to recover from injury - all of these and a bunch of other things need to be somewhat carefully tracked.  Never mind tracking a split party so I know who is where when...




> This is highly context-dependent but when the players state certain goals, say "we travel to the next town" then its pretty logical for the GM to assume that whatever time and resources are required to do that are expended and the goal is accomplished, or else the situation changes enough that the original instructions aren't relevant anymore or some new fictional element is present. I don't disagree that, in many cases, a GM is going to notify the players when he thinks a reasonable amount of time/resources is spent and that might justify a new fiction, but there are no hard and fast rules (in D&D anyway, some games like Traveler are bit more structured).



The only rule I can think of that would matter, assuming no interruptions or unusual events, is daily movement rates for whatever mode of transport is being used; as that'll dictate a minimum length of time the trip will take.  You're not, for example, going to walk from Vancouver to Calgary in a day (it's about 600 miles).  But a quick ten-second calculation of trip distance divided by daily move rate* plus a small variable to account for delays or adverse weather and a DM - after rolling for interruptions and finding none but a weather delay - can say "OK, other than a few days stuck in the mountains due to a snowstorm it's a pretty smooth trip; it takes you about 5 weeks and you're now approaching Calgary.  What next?"

* - which can come from a rule or from the DM's best guess, whichever


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Terrible indeed!  No, I'm joking, and excuse me if I'm being pedantic:
> "Say yes or roll" is assuming a game or situation without GM Veto, Necessary Prerequisites for pass/fail  and the like.
> It is meant also for conflict resolution in mind, but can be easily ported to task res.
> Anyway, in a d&d situation it would be like: We don't wake up the dragon and steal the treasure!
> Gm: Dude... Roll for initiative and prepare for combat.
> 
> Or: We use scouts and animals to open a way thru the jungle and arrive at the temple's gate.
> Gm: Fine. / Not so fast: roll for every task you do, the forest is full of dangers.
> 
> In your example it'd be something like:
> We don't solve the riddle and instead use a magic ritual/thief skill to overcome it.
> Gm: roll your dice and let's see...
> 
> Generally speaking SYORTD was intended for games in which the "information" is not only easily obtained by PCs, but rather given in advance by the Gm to favor choices, course of action, conflicting inter-party decisions to be made,  by the table.
> 
> You can also use it like :
> I use streetwise to track down the sect when they go to a tea house.
> Gm: fine. They go around openly, you spot them easily.
> Or: Gm: they have spies around downtown that might spot you first: roll... (then anything might happen)




'say yes' is what the GM does when the characters are basically 'crossing the street', they're doing something where there's no essential dramatic element. This would be appropriate in a situation where, say, the PCs come to a locked door and there isn't really another way to go. Of course they're going to go through. In classic D&D the game envisaged nothing but to keep rolling and expending resources until something worked. In more story centered types of game the technique is just to say yes. Obviously 'or roll the dice' is also an option, for when there could be different results (IE different resource expenditure, or different fictional positioning as a result of how, or if, the door was opened). 
 [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]' example, IMHO, is intended to illustrate a situation where 'say yes' cannot possibly work. I'm not sure this is strictly the case, but in any event 'say yes' is not meant to convey that whatever plan the players come up with MUST succeed or be allowed. This is not how 'say yes' works! If the whole point of the adventure is to solve the riddle, then either its a player challenge (in which case 'say yes' and 'roll the dice' are both incoherent with the type of play) OR its a character challenge, in which case it would be pointless to just 'say yes' as soon as the players suggest a solution, the premise being that the correct solution must be arrived at via some process (going to the right location to get the right clues, passing certain checks, etc.).


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> In the DW depiction above, the confluence of conversation procedures, GMing ethos, and specific action resolution mechanics can yield what is tantamount to a C+ Scene Distinction. However, the formalities and functionality (a deeply codified Scene Distinction hooks into subsequent action resolution mechanics, and therefore as a potential heftier input to fiction, differently than in a free form game like PBtA) matter to the feel of the play of the game, in the actual playing from one gamestate to another, and often (but not always) in the outputs of play as well.



I've posted a few times that my group has had one of it's members AWOL a lot over the past couple of years as he has been buyiing and rebuilding a house. One session where he came along and joined in our Cortex+ game, he was struck by its formal use of the scene and Scene Distinction structure  - "Like a film" I think was what he said - although he'd been playing 4e for years and my approach to 4e had been heavily influenced - as you know - by my appreciation of other scene/"story now"-oriented games.

Which is to say, I'm agreeing with you about "feel"!



Aldarc said:


> This sort of circular reasoning actually puts a finger on what may also have been bugging me about the post in question. I don't mind D&D as a puzzle-game, and saying 'no' is often a valid necessity of play for such games. (I even plan on running an OSR-stylized dungeon crawl in the hopefully near future, likely using Black Hack.) But when other games are less designed as puzzle-games challenging player skill and more about character-propelled dramatic conflict, it seems peculiar to complain that "_then the puzzles won't work_" because puzzles aren't the point of play.
> 
> This sort of thinking is rarely, if ever, applied similarly to boardgames. When we play card or boardgames, we almost instinctively understand that each particular game has its own idiomatic purposes, challenges, and strategies featured through its game design that we must learn. The conflict that drives gameplay will be set on different hinges, and we naturally adjust to that fact with minimal fuss.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And yet we strangely and frequently encounter this attitude in TTRPG circles wherein people judge the merits of games (or design principles) in a manner that presumes "OneTrueWayism." And thus they _refuse_ (through almost intentional ignorance) to understand with any cordiality the idiomatic nature of TTRPG systems and their design principles because they see, analyze, and rationalize everything through Their One True Game. Is it any wonder why the conversation so readily breaks down when faced with this sort circular reasoning?



I thoiught I'd reply to this in the same post as the above because it touches on some similar points.

A first thought: my Google skills are failing me, but I believe a prominent designer (maybe John Harper?) made the point that no one sits down to play poker and starts talking about playing a trump and winning a trick and gathering all the cards up in front of him/her - so why do people approach RPGs like that?

A second thought: in the past week or so, in either this thread or its companion one, I commented that some posters post as if there is some a priori notion of _what it is to play a RPG_, and then read system details, techniques etc through that prism. Which is (I would say) exactly what you are pointing to. And as [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has pointed out, it's what Ron Edwards was disagreeing with 15+ years ago in his "System Matters" essays.

And, indeed, you can see it right here:



Maxperson said:


> Board games and card games have very strong constraints on what you can or cannot do.  This is far different than an RPG where it's open ended and usually you can try things that the game itself hasn't spelled out for you. The open nature of RPGs lends itself to people tinkering with rules, and applying various playstyles to any given game.



First, we see the move from _the open nature of RPGs_ to _tinkering with rules_. This already assumes a certain sort of game design - subsystem based, with the subsystems reflecting various sorts of activities identified by categories of inficiton task. As per my conversation with [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] upthread, classic D&D and Classic Traveller both exemplify this sort of design, though - in my view, for the reasons I explained - I find Traveller more successful.

But as soon as we look at a different sort of game design - say, Fate or Cortex+ Heroic - we see that the subsystems in those games are _not_ defined by reference to inficiton tasks but rather by reference to narrative or mechanical (typically the two are closely related) function. I can't remember all the Fate categories (I think there are 4) but they include Overcome an Obstacle and Create an Advantage (or stuff along those lines). In MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic there is Inflict Stress, Inflict Complication, Create Asset, or Step Bac a Trait (which includes Recovery actions). And every action that can be declared falls into one of those categories. So when a player comes up with a novel idea (_I read the rune to see if they tell us where we are in the dungeon_) that doesn't require a novel subystem, as that is easily resolved as an attempt to Step Back a Trait (namely, recovery from the Lost in the Dungeon complication).

Second, we see the claim about _applying various playstyles to any given game_. This may be true as a descriptive matter, but that doesn't make it a good idea. A fortiori, the fact that RPGs are open-ended in their permitted moves doesn't make it a good idea to try and use (say) Cortex+ Heroic to play a Gygaxian skilled-play game. And furthermore, "any given game" here means D&D, perhaps GURPS/HERO, maybe Rolemaster or Runequest. Whereas I don't think many people actually _are_ applying "various playstyles" to Cortex+ Heroic, trying to use it to run a ToH-type dungeon crawl; or to Torchbearer, trying to use it to run a 4e-type romp.

Returning to more general points: the reason RPG are "open ended" in their moves is because they involve a shared fiction as an essential element of and focus of play. Hence the permitted moves are as varies as will make sense in that shared fiction. But how far does this take us in telling us _why we play RPGs_, or _what sorts of things this type of game is good for_? My view is that it doesn't take us far at all. There are any number of reasons we might care to spend time with our friends and establishing and changing a shared fiction; and so any number of possible designs for RPGing, reflecting differences both of goal and of procedure.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I disagree, the majority of systems IME don't even really talk about time. Gygax obsessed about it, but even 2e drops a lot of the mechanical baggage that 1e has around time.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Traveler, IMHO, simply calls all time periods "1 week" in strategic play because Marc Miller wanted an 'Age of Sail' feel to his Fifth Imperium. As such jumps take a week, and he simply set all other activities to that time period. It makes play simple, Alan, Beth, and Carl take the Beowulf to Extremis while Eddie and Darla remain on Durant and spend the week looking for a patron. The GM can move both timelines forward, each group gets to make one check/decision/deal with one situation. Beowulf jumps back to Extremis, the rest of the party shops for the equipment needed to carry out the mission assigned by the patron, and play can continue both plausibly and in a dramatically satisfying way. At the time when Traveler was written this was basically a state-of-the-art playing methodology. It sure beat Gygax's 'track every minute for every character'.



Agreed on all three points: that most systems don't talk about it; that Gygax obsesses about it; and that Traveller's system is state-of-the-art for the period (and frankly, remains state-of-the-art for any game that is going to track time in "real life" rather than dramatic units).



AbdulAlhazred said:


> even D&D has structures in which this is NOT the assumption. To whit look at the 1e henchman acquisition rules, which allow the PCs to declare (and pay for) specific activities which are then assumed to play out over a period of time during which they are repeated (IE the PCs go to every bar and dive in the town and post messages or something similar for a week).



Good point. Which in my mind just reinforces the point I was making, that an action declaration _we look for sect members at the teahouse_ doesn't generally bring with it any particular assumption about how long is spent on the endeavour, and certainly doesn't imply a quick look for 10 minutes then heading off elsewhere.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> However, most other games, at that time or others, really didn't talk about time.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is a pretty common pattern for games in this time period. They may note some few specific situations where a time cost exists, but there isn't really a coherent concept in these games of time as a structured resource or some explicit way to manage it or use it dramatically (drama is rarely mentioned in these early games). It is generally just assumed that time is the purview of the GM and may come into play in whatever way he sees fit.



To me, at least, this connects to  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]'s recent post about system assumptions and the like: what we see in a lot of late-70s/early-to-mid-80s games is a "cargo cult"-like emulation of certain features of D&D without serious consideration of _why_ one would emulate them. So eg we get healing times in games like CoC, RM, etc which ultimately are mere colour in play, because the passing of time has no cost except insofar as the GM decides otherwise. (RQ is an exception, because time not spent healing can be spent training; and BW builds fairly extensively on this idea, further adding in a systematic living cost/maintenance system.)



Lanefan said:


> Our term for this is "rubber time".  It usually happens when a party's in town for some downtime
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But in the field time is very important even when the mission itself isn't time-sensitive: spell or effect durations, resource consumption, time taken to recover from injury - all of these and a bunch of other things need to be somewhat carefully tracked.  Never mind tracking a split party so I know who is where when.



There are so many assumptions here, from the distinction between "downtime" and "in the field", to the method used to manage separate groups.

For instance:



Lanefan said:


> I'll work out how long the longest action will take, and once all the downtime stuff is figured out and resolved I'll say something like "Right. You've spent a month in town and all of you are now finished whatever you were doing


Here, time is just colour. There's no reason it can't be colour "in the field" also. (D&D _pretends_ that it's not, by specifying spell durations. But as soon as one moves outside of a highly structure dungeon-crawl environment with very rigid movement rules, wandering monster clocks, etc -ie as soon as one moves into the 2nd ed AD&D era - then all the external moving parts are decided by the GM, which makes the players' choices about time mere colour.)


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I agree AD&D has a lot of subsystems, many I suspect underused and underappreciated. To Spying as a means of information-gathering can be added sages (whose subsystem is hidden in the NPC hireling tables).
> 
> But many of the AD&D subsystems are quite clunky as written, and - at least in my experience with them, which is not extensive for some but is reasonably extensive for others - often quite clunky in play also. Part of the genius of Classic Traveller, in my view, is how playable it is for a sub-system heavy game.
> 
> Another part of its genius is its relative comprehensiveness - there is the procurement gap I mentioned, and over the past year or so I've often lamented that it's onworld exploration rules are pretty terrible, but it covers a _lot_ of stuff in its 3 books. Relative to genre, it is (in my view) far more comprehensive than AD&D despite the latter's much greater page size and page count.
> 
> I think it would be much harder to play AD&D as DW-like than Classic Traveller. (Though if anyone has tried and succeeded, it would be interesting to hear about it!)




No, I never have played AD&D in that fashion... 2e at least has SOME of the sorts of mechanics you'd need, but for 1e you'd have to rely on DSG/WSG/OA subsystems.

Traveler is pretty easy in the sense that you can simply rely on its basic check mechanism, which is as comprehensive and straightforward as anything in existence. You could simply ignore most of the subsystems in favor of a DW-esque 'make a move' sort of concept where each skill is engaged by one or more such rules. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to basically reinterpret DW's moves into Traveler context either, and then just apply most apt skill/ability. It would be a little bit different game, but not vastly in genre terms.


----------



## Manbearcat

Great post above [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] .

I just wanted to drill down even harder on the point you made above that hooks into the point that has been expressed in many different ways by other posters in this thread ("system matters").

1) _*Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy*_, *Strike (!)* and *Dungeon World* both share a LOT in common with *4e*.  However, if you play any one of those 4 games and expect somehow the totality of the experience of either of the other 3 games is going to emerge from your RPGing (or...you're going to be able to impose/force it), you're going to be seriously disappointed.  

2)  *Torchbearer *shares a LOT in common with *Burning Wheel* and *Moldvay Basic*.  However, if you try to actually derive Burning Wheel or Moldvay Basic play from Torchbearer, you're going to be seriously disappointed.

3)  Finally, a more broad-use RPG like *Savage Worlds* certainly isn't going to be able to reproduce the holistic, yet focused experience of any of those 7 games above.


I'm not going to write another essay on it again, but this hooks into my premise from a bit ago about integrated, holistic, yet focused games and discretized games that decouple theme/premise from system (yielding agnostic machinery) and substitute GM oversight/quality control for integrated and focused design.


----------



## Manbearcat

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, I never have played AD&D in that fashion... 2e at least has SOME of the sorts of mechanics you'd need, but for 1e you'd have to rely on DSG/WSG/OA subsystems.
> 
> Traveler is pretty easy in the sense that you can simply rely on its basic check mechanism, which is as comprehensive and straightforward as anything in existence. You could simply ignore most of the subsystems in favor of a DW-esque 'make a move' sort of concept where each skill is engaged by one or more such rules. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to basically reinterpret DW's moves into Traveler context either, and then just apply most apt skill/ability. It would be a little bit different game, but not vastly in genre terms.




There are a few Travelleresque hacks for PBtA and, while I have yet to play any, I've read them through and they seem to be inspired efforts.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> But that assumes a very binary set of possibilities: they are at the tea house, they are not at the tea house. All kinds of complications can arise in between. And I think a good GM will make sure that there are meaningful choices on the table. The very act of going around town asking about Bone Breaking Sect, might even trigger the sect to take an interest in the party. There could be real consequences for not finding them quickly. People might lie (sure I know where to find them, let me take you there). The GM knows, and the players don't, is useful for this kind of play. Not saying you can't do it another way. And I am not saying the other way is any kind of bad. I just think folks should genuinely try to understand why some of us might also enjoy this particular approach (because I can honestly tell you, it isn't because we like mother may I, or want to suffer under a GM who says 'no' all the time). So the conversation starts to feel very frustrating when we say, 'but we like it because X' and the response seems to be 'No you like it because Y and you refuse to see that A is a much better way to play the game'.




That's fine, I don't think there's a problem here. I didn't delve into all the possible scenarios that could exist because I was merely talking about how to approach satisfying a particular request by the players to go in a direction. 

This ties into the later SYORTD discussion. The GM could simply 'say yes' and have the PCs run into the sect in the tea house, and this is valid. He could also RTD and thus potentially thwart the INTENT of the PCs in going to the tea house. This could result in most any of the complications and plot diversions which you have outlined. 

My point was simply that it wouldn't make sense to introduce the tea house as a place to find the sect unless it was going to be dramatically interesting to do so. The actual place of the tea house in the eventual playing out (to see what happens) of the scenario is unknown until things HAVE played out. At least that is my way.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> There are so many assumptions here, from the distinction between "downtime" and "in the field", to the method used to manage separate groups.



How would you manage separate groups, then, in such a way as to be able to determine when and where they might (or might not) meet - and without one group knowing what the other was doing or where they were?

For example - I'd say hypothetical but this actually happened last year in my game.  How would you handle:

A party of ten characters is in a large dungeon complex and an effect teleports each character to a random place in the dungeon.  None of the characters know where any of the others are; some recognize their new locations and some do not, and some of the locations arrived at already have other (hostile) occupants.  One character has scrying capability, another has "Locate Object" as a spell, and two have long-range communication but only with each other.  What do you-as-DM do now?



> Here, time is just colour. There's no reason it can't be colour "in the field" also. (D&D _pretends_ that it's not, by specifying spell durations. But as soon as one moves outside of a highly structure dungeon-crawl environment with very rigid movement rules, wandering monster clocks, etc -ie as soon as one moves into the 2nd ed AD&D era - then all the external moving parts are decided by the GM, which makes the players' choices about time mere colour.)



Even 2e had spell durations, and knowing when to get to the ground before your Fly spell ran out was still rather important. 

And though you like to categorize it thus, there's lots more to 1e than straight dungeon-crawling.  Wilderness adventures, city adventures, open-field (or open-plane) adventuring, and so forth; the game supports all of these and itme is important in all of 'em.  Even something as simple as managing your water resources while crossing a desert or food while sailing across a sea still has a time factor attached.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Even 2e had spell durations, and knowing when to get to the ground before your Fly spell ran out was still rather important.



My point is that it's all just colour plus GM-fiat. For instance (and using 1st ed AD&D rules, as they're the ones I know best): I'm walking through the town, and cast my fly spell so that I can fly to the barn of a farm outside a neighbouring village in time to intercept the cultists who are going to hold a ritual there. Let's suppose I'm a 5th level MU, so my Fly lasts 1 hour plus 0 to 50 minutes (in 10 minute blocks).

The speed of my flight is 12", and according to the DMG (p 30) every 3" is 1 mph, so I am flying at 4 mph, and can potentially cover 7+ miles with my spell.

What time is it when I cast my spell? How far away, exactly, is the barn from the farmhouse from the village from that part of the town I'm in when I cast? What time are the cultists holding their ritual? Will it all work out, will I be early, will I be late, will I crash? There's no mechanic for answering these questions, in the absence of a _very atypically detailed_ map drawn up by the GM in advance.

This is what I mean when I say that time is not a mechanic. It's just something for the GM to think about. Of course, we can use the spell duration rule to inform a _new_ mechanic: eg roll _4+ on 1d6 to make it there within the hour_, meaning that we treat the die roll as settling questions like _exactly how far is the barn from where I cast the spell in town?_ But D&D doesn't come with any such mechanics baked in. (Contrast Classic Traveller, which does - so it's not like the idea was completely alien in the early days of RPG design.)



Lanefan said:


> How would you manage separate groups, then, in such a way as to be able to determine when and where they might (or might not) meet - and without one group knowing what the other was doing or where they were?



Perhaps the same way you do it during "downtime" - an intuitive synthesis of convenience and dramatic necessity.

Or perhaps using the rule in Cortex+ Heroic which allows the GM to spend a die from the Doom Pool to split or to rejoin the PCs.

Or maybe the players make a check to rejoin the party, with appropriate modifiers applying eg for having access to Locate Object-type magic.

There are many possibilities that don't rely on a wargame-style combination of detailed maps, movement rate rules and tracking time, which is what one would use for this situation in classic D&D.


----------



## Sadras

@_*pemerton*_ everything can be colour including combat but the game provides

A means to measure the length of combat;
A means to measure duration of spell effect;
A means to measure distance travelled in a minute, hour, day;
A means to measure distance travelled via beast, vehicle or vessel in a hour or day;
A means to measure natural healing per day;
A means to measure the time taken to construct a building;
...and much much more
All of this is baked into the system. You can use it as a DM or you may not. 

So yes it CAN be colour, but it does not necessarily have to.

In my games _time_ plays a large factor. 
So PC choice of action and time taken to complete actions affect play in a large way. That is NOT colour. And the reason I can use time, is because the system provides for that measurement should one wish to use it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> @_*pemerton*_ everything can be colour including combat but the game provides
> 
> A means to measure the length of combat;
> A means to measure duration of spell effect;
> A means to measure distance travelled in a minute, hour, day;
> A means to measure distance travelled via beast, vehicle or vessel in a hour or day;
> A means to measure natural healing per day;
> A means to measure the time taken to construct a building;
> ...and much much more
> All of this is baked into the system. You can use it as a DM or you may not.
> 
> So yes it CAN be colour, but it does not necessarily have to.
> 
> In my games _time_ plays a large factor.
> So PC choice of action and time taken to complete actions affect play in a large way. That is NOT colour. And the reason I can use time, is because the system provides for that measurement should one wish to use it.



Okay, then answer the barn question [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] poses: how far/long to the barn?

I agree with you that "just color" is a bit hyperbolic, but tge underlying point that time is either an undefined or very poorly defined mechanic is true.  That doesn't mean that you, a GM, can't further refine or emphasize this but it does mean you're adding definition to your game to do so.  This is apparent because the next GM over doesn't have to focus on time and is still running the same set of mechanics.

To reiterate:  time is mostly a GM choice, not a well defined mechanic.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> the game provides
> 
> A means to measure the length of combat;
> A means to measure duration of spell effect;
> A means to measure distance travelled in a minute, hour, day;
> A means to measure distance travelled via beast, vehicle or vessel in a hour or day;
> A means to measure natural healing per day;
> A means to measure the time taken to construct a building;
> ...and much much more
> All of this is baked into the system. You can use it as a DM or you may not.



As far as movement is concerned, which was the example I gave, the only system in AD&D for determining how long it takes to get from A to B is to have a map, to which movement rates are applied. I've never encountered a GM or a supplement that has the requisite maps to apply a fly spell when the movement is overland at 4 mph. That's 2/3 of a mile per 10-minute turn, or approx 1 km. One of the more detailed maps I have is the one that came with my GH boxed set, and has various villages, hamlets, farmlets etc in the vicinity of GH marked. But it doesn't give the location of all these things to that sort of accuracy.

And here's another example: if the players have their PCs spend X weeks resting, or researching spells, or whatver, then their enemies can presumalby recruit Y new recruits. What is the value of Y? I don't know of any D&D rule that answers that question. (Traveller does have such a rule, in the Mercenary supplement. Whether that makes the game more or less realistic I'll leave as a judgement for others.)

Suppose X = 2 weeks: the GM can decide that the enemies get a sudden burst of recruits in that time. Suppose X = 10 weeks: the GM can decide that the recruitement pool is dry and the enemies get no more powerful.

Luke Crane's Adventure Burner discusses this issue, but because BW is no different from D&D in this particular respect all he has to offer is that the longer the player spend in "downtime", the more liberty the GM has to change the situation adversely without unfairly hosing the players - and he also gives a worked example of growing a nemesis NPC in accordance with the training rules that govern PCs.

This is what I mean when I say that time is colour. It suggests various possibilities to the GM, but it doesn't actually generate action resolution outcomes.

It's also interesting to notice that the 5e design team seem to have noticed this, and thus to have changed most spell durations to allow their in-game time to serve as narrative time without needing too much hand-waving: 1 minute = 1 combat, 10 minutes = 1 room/corridor's worth of exploration, 1 hour = 1 level/modern dungeon's worth of exploration, 8 hour = a day's active time.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> A first thought: my Google skills are failing me, but I believe a prominent designer (maybe John Harper?) made the point that no one sits down to play poker and starts talking about playing a trump and winning a trick and gathering all the cards up in front of him/her - so why do people approach RPGs like that?



I'm salivating to learn the source of this comparison, and if they expanded on what you say here.  

I agree with the rest of your excellent post, pemerton.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> That's fine, I don't think there's a problem here. I didn't delve into all the possible scenarios that could exist because I was merely talking about how to approach satisfying a particular request by the players to go in a direction.
> 
> This ties into the later SYORTD discussion. The GM could simply 'say yes' and have the PCs run into the sect in the tea house, and this is valid. He could also RTD and thus potentially thwart the INTENT of the PCs in going to the tea house. This could result in most any of the complications and plot diversions which you have outlined.
> 
> My point was simply that it wouldn't make sense to introduce the tea house as a place to find the sect unless it was going to be dramatically interesting to do so. The actual place of the tea house in the eventual playing out (to see what happens) of the scenario is unknown until things HAVE played out. At least that is my way.




I am not suggesting that alternatives to my proposed approach in the OP are wrong or bad. I've tried to make the point many times that you can make that determination with any number of methods, procedures or mechanics. The point of the thread though was whether my stated approach was mother may I or undesirable. For you the answer being dramatically interesting is important, and that is a fine way to run a game. Some of the other posters here though are saying that is less important to them than the sense that they are exploring a real place.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> Great post above [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] .
> 
> I just wanted to drill down even harder on the point you made above that hooks into the point that has been expressed in many different ways by other posters in this thread ("system matters").
> 
> 1) _*Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy*_, *Strike (!)* and *Dungeon World* both share a LOT in common with *4e*.  However, if you play any one of those 4 games and expect somehow the totality of the experience of either of the other 3 games is going to emerge from your RPGing (or...you're going to be able to impose/force it), you're going to be seriously disappointed.
> 
> 2)  *Torchbearer *shares a LOT in common with *Burning Wheel* and *Moldvay Basic*.  However, if you try to actually derive Burning Wheel or Moldvay Basic play from Torchbearer, you're going to be seriously disappointed.
> 
> 3)  Finally, a more broad-use RPG like *Savage Worlds* certainly isn't going to be able to reproduce the holistic, yet focused experience of any of those 7 games above.
> 
> 
> I'm not going to write another essay on it again, but this hooks into my premise from a bit ago about integrated, holistic, yet focused games and discretized games that decouple theme/premise from system (yielding agnostic machinery) and substitute GM oversight/quality control for integrated and focused design.




A lot of people prefer broad use RPGs. I play Savage Worlds. And it would be my pick from the list of RPGs you just posted.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> This sort of circular reasoning actually puts a finger on what may also have been bugging me about the post in question. I don't mind D&D as a puzzle-game, and saying 'no' is often a valid necessity of play for such games. (I even plan on running an OSR-stylized dungeon crawl in the hopefully near future, likely using Black Hack.) But when other games are less designed as puzzle-games challenging player skill and more about character-propelled dramatic conflict, it seems peculiar to complain that "_then the puzzles won't work_" because puzzles aren't the point of play.




I am a little puzzled by this post. This thread wasn't started form a critique of non-puzzle oriented games. It was a product of a conversation where the idea that the GM might say "No, bone breaker sect isn't at the Tea House" because the GM decided that was the most likely/best situation, was labeled mother may I. I stated this is no more mother may I than real life, and we've had a whole conversation defending that position because Pemerton believes 'like' means 'follows the same exact underlying process'. This hasn't been a debate where people are on the attack against your playstyle. I think the reverse is true. Countless times, posters have said, if you like X game, or want story, that is fine. They are just saying here is what I like to do, and then that approach gets put on trial in the thread. I told Pemerton many times, it sounds like his approach is working for him, and that is great. He should write about it. What ticks me off a bit, is he can't seem to do that without belittling or refusing to see how other people approach the game. And that mentality is prevalent in so many of these threads on this kind of topic. 

Obviously though, if players are there for the puzzles, they probably won't like a game that doesn't engage puzzle solving skill, but rather focuses on drama. The reverse is true as well.


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> A lot of people prefer broad use RPGs. I play Savage Worlds. And it would be my pick from the list of RPGs you just posted.




They do for sure. 

I believe you that you would pick SW out of the above games.

Savage Worlds is widely popular and, from what I can tell, accomplished it’s design goals.

But it’s design goals and implementation make it a very different game from the others (despite it being broad-use).


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> That is how they are commonly written but that is not necessarily universally true. That said, tinkering has been a common feature of board games. Let us return to an earlier example!
> 
> Parker Brothers once assumed that everyone was playing by the rules of Monopoly laid out in the game. What they discovered, only relatively recently, was how many people had their own house rules for the game. It turns out that Monopoly is a game with a longer legacy of people tinkering with rules than D&D! This was often a common source of conflict when one played the game with others, as people would bring their idiomatic assumptions about what the rules were and/or how the game played. It was only when they sought to accommodate the wider breadth of play that had emerged that Parker Brothers began also including common "house rules" as part of the game instructions.
> 
> And how many other card and board games came out of "people tinkering with the rules" from some other game? Probably far too many to count, with many more being lost in history to us. It ill behooves us to apply the all too common fallacious position of 'exceptionalism' to TTRPGs.




Okay, yes, people do create some house rules for board games.  They are not nearly as many, though, nor typically as game changing as those in RPGs.  There are differences in how one tinkers with board game rules, and how one tinkers with RPG rules.



> Furthermore, nothing stops you from roleplaying your "character" in Monopoly, and one could most definitely operate a character in D&D as one would a tin figure from Monopoly.




Sure, but this does absolutely nothing in board game.  Can you play the dog figure and bark as you go, or play the car an say *vroom!*?  Sure. It doesn't make Monopoly a roleplaying game.  Treating an RPG as a board game can be done, but in my experience it typically is not done for long.  Huge portions of the game are not played in a board game fashion(most things outside of combat) and the rest of the game is usually intensely boring if you aren't going to participate in the game as anything other than a Monopoly piece.



> Not quite. I am not so much talking about adhering to OneTrueWay to play _a game_, and more about adhering to OneTrueWay as the presumed norm for play in _all games_.




In all my time here, I have yet to see anyone presume One True Way in all games.



> I would say (more concretely) that one should not necessarily presume that one's experience (or preferred method) of playing 1e D&D, for example, should be the metric for analyzing the merits of other games, design principles, play priorities/values, campaigns, etc.




Why not?  Not only is this not One True Way, but it's pretty much required if you want to enjoy a game.  If I prefer 1e style games, I absolutely should be analyzing every RPG I come across on 1e design principles, play priorities/values, campaigns, etc.  To fail to do that will eventually result in my purchasing or playing a game that I won't like, wasting my money in the process.  Presumably people want to buy and play in games that they will enjoy, and the way to do that is to evaluate games on what they do that you enjoy vs. what you don't enjoy.



> I would further say (to the point of it being a platitude) that TTRPGs are designed to facilitate particular styles of play. The design of games may provide a greater latitude or scope for other styles than intended, and these other styles may only be discovered later through the process of play. I naturally hope that you would agree with me that it hardly seems controversial to suggest that Gygax et al. had a certain style of gameplay in mind (or range thereof) when they designed Original Dungeons & Dragons. (And I think that D&D has been subsequently written, much like Monopoly, with a contentious desire to accommodate other styles.)




Gygax may have had his personal preference on how to play D&D, but D&D was written in such a way as to enable it to pretty easily encompass many different playstyles.  It's the driving strength of D&D in my opinion.  

Since then many other RPGs have come out and many of them are not written in that way.  As you note above, they are designed with one particular playstyle in mind, making them poor games to use with differing playstyles.  You can force the square peg into the round hole with them, but it won't be as satisfying as playing a different game.  



> I probably could have said more if I had said less, as per [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s more succinct summation: "the system matters."




It does!  One True Way is just not a part of that.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I disagree, the majority of systems IME don't even really talk about time. Gygax obsessed about it, but even 2e drops a lot of the mechanical baggage that 1e has around time. For example, the 10 minute turn is mentioned, but no movement rates are associated with it in 2e. Traveler, IMHO, simply calls all time periods "1 week" in strategic play because Marc Miller wanted an 'Age of Sail' feel to his Fifth Imperium. As such jumps take a week, and he simply set all other activities to that time period. It makes play simple, Alan, Beth, and Carl take the Beowulf to Extremis while Eddie and Darla remain on Durant and spend the week looking for a patron. The GM can move both timelines forward, each group gets to make one check/decision/deal with one situation. Beowulf jumps back to Extremis, the rest of the party shops for the equipment needed to carry out the mission assigned by the patron, and play can continue both plausibly and in a dramatically satisfying way. At the time when Traveler was written this was basically a state-of-the-art playing methodology. It sure beat Gygax's 'track every minute for every character'.
> 
> However, most other games, at that time or others, really didn't talk about time. Lets think about early RPGs. Boot Hill, no real mention of time outside of 'bullet time', and even that is rather vague IIRC. Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World, no mention of time at all, except maybe a healing rate (I don't have my GW softcover in front of me, it probably says something about hit point recovery). Other games I recall don't have a lot more to say than this either. I don't recall anything time-specific in RQ for instance. CoC doesn't really talk about time, except as a cost for recovering SAN after an adventure. This is a pretty common pattern for games in this time period. They may note some few specific situations where a time cost exists, but there isn't really a coherent concept in these games of time as a structured resource or some explicit way to manage it or use it dramatically (drama is rarely mentioned in these early games). It is generally just assumed that time is the purview of the GM and may come into play in whatever way he sees fit. Very few of these game diverge much from D&D's central concept of a GM as 'story driver' and referee all rolled into one.




I'm not sure what any of this has to do with what I am talking about.  I 1e, the DM didn't go into rounds, minutes or turns when someone told him that they were going to the bar to get a drink.  You just went to the bar to get a drink and unless you said otherwise, it wasn't assumed that you would be there for a month or even all day.  

Pointing out how games have various time units for those times when it matters doesn't at all impact what I am talking about.  



> Sure, in real life, but even D&D has structures in which this is NOT the assumption. To whit look at the 1e henchman acquisition rules, which allow the PCs to declare (and pay for) specific activities which are then assumed to play out over a period of time during which they are repeated (IE the PCs go to every bar and dive in the town and post messages or something similar for a week). I think it is reasonable to assume that players often given fairly general and open-ended instructions about what their characters do. Traveling for instance, you don't require the players to constantly reiterate exactly how far and fast they're moving and every detail of what they do, nor describe the amount of time they spend. Instead its something like 'we travel down the road' and the GM says something like 'you arrive at the next town'. Maybe something else happens, a decision is required, etc. but barring that, there's no need for constant input.




I disagree.  It was the assumption, which is why when there was an exception to that assumption like the henchman rules, they called it out.

As for when they travel, if they tell me they are going from City A to Town B, I let them know how long it will take.  Just as the statement, "I go to the bar to get a drink," won't be commonly understood  mean, "I'm going to the bar to drink for the next two weeks," the statement, "We go to Town B," will be commonly understood to take a much longer time than going down to the local bar for a drink, so we need to know approximately how long.

Again, none of this impacts what I am talking about.  Exceptions do not disprove the rule.



> But how do you know what 'long odds' are? I still have seen nothing justifying any assertion that you can tell what is long odds most of the time. Even when you can it is a product of decisions you have made yourself, so its not like those odds are 'natural' or unforced in any way.




As I said earlier in the thread, it doesn't matter if I know exactly what the long odds are.  It's sufficient for me to know that there are long odds and then offer up what I think is a good approximation of them.  Realism isn't an all or nothing thing and asking me how I know what the long odds are implies that False Dichotomy.  So long as I offer up something more realistic than the short odds that most player facing games and even some DM facing games employ, I am adding more realism to my game.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> pemertom said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A first thought: my Google skills are failing me, but I believe a prominent designer (maybe John Harper?) made the point that no one sits down to play poker and starts talking about playing a trump and winning a trick and gathering all the cards up in front of him/her - so why do people approach RPGs like that?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm salivating to learn the source of this comparison, and if they expanded on what you say here.
Click to expand...


I've done some trawling through John Harper's old blog (The Mighty Atom) but can't find it.

 [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], can you help?


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> I am a little puzzled by this post. This thread wasn't started form a critique of non-puzzle oriented games. It was a product of a conversation where the idea that the GM might say "No, bone breaker sect isn't at the Tea House" because the GM decided that was the most likely/best situation, was labeled mother may I. I stated this is no more mother may I than real life, and we've had a whole conversation defending that position because Pemerton believes 'like' means 'follows the same exact underlying process'. This hasn't been a debate where people are on the attack against your playstyle. I think the reverse is true. Countless times, posters have said, if you like X game, or want story, that is fine. They are just saying here is what I like to do, and then that approach gets put on trial in the thread. I told Pemerton many times, it sounds like his approach is working for him, and that is great. He should write about it. What ticks me off a bit, is he can't seem to do that without belittling or refusing to see how other people approach the game. And that mentality is prevalent in so many of these threads on this kind of topic.
> 
> Obviously though, if players are there for the puzzles, they probably won't like a game that doesn't engage puzzle solving skill, but rather focuses on drama. The reverse is true as well.




Your perception of how this conversation has developed is so very different from mine. If I recall correctly, [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] started the OP with his belief that X implementation _could be_ mother-may-I, which he dislikes and was hoping to avoid, and so he was seeking out ways to make this so. Others (like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]) made suggestions to this end, which innerdude liked, but some (like you, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]) came in to defend the style of GM-fiat that innerdude already said he didn't want to rely upon!

If the OP clearly has a desire for gameplay and preference for certain principles or techniques, pop in to propose an alternative, by all means, but what seems to have happened here (predictably) is that those who disagree with the OP's persepective are trying to argue the OP into a perspective he doesn't agree with and works against the very gameplay and preferences his OP presents. This is like having started a post saying "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" and having opposing ideologues jump in again and again to tell you to write your own adventures rather than rely upon prewritten material or that gnolls are boring enemies  _even though that is expressly against the purpose of the thread._ It's reasonable to propose the OP consider writing their own material or choosing different enemies; one needs consider what motivations are really at work in continuing to argue against what the OP is asking for.


----------



## pemerton

darkbard said:


> "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies"



Night's Dark Terror.

(Sorry, I couldn't help it.)


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> If the OP clearly has a desire for gameplay and preference for certain principles or techniques, pop in to propose an alternative, by all means, but what seems to have happened here (predictably) is that those who disagree with the OP's persepective are trying to argue the OP into a perspective he doesn't agree with and works against the very gameplay and preferences his OP presents.




Well, perhaps a lesson can be learned from this.  If you come for help, just ask for help.  If instead of or in addition to asking for help, you negatively and incorrectly attribute something like Mother May I, you will end up derailing your own thread from the outset.



> This is like having started a post saying "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" and having opposing ideologues jump in again and again to tell you to write your own adventures rather than rely upon prewritten material or that gnolls are boring enemies  _even though that is expressly against the purpose of the thread._ It's reasonable to propose the OP consider writing their own material or choosing different enemies; one needs consider what motivations are really at work in continuing to argue against what the OP is asking for.




No, this is a False Equivalence.  Saying, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" is a fine way to go about asking for help.  If you instead say, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies, as nobody in their right minds would ever use any humanoid other than gnolls" you will derail your own thread and people will come in to argue with you.  You may still get a few of those people with, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies," but the number of them will be small easily ignored, preserving your thread.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I am a little puzzled by this post. This thread wasn't started form a critique of non-puzzle oriented games.



How the thread starts is not necessarily how discourse proceeds. And in this case, a new branch of discussion opened from Lanefan expressing vexation that "saying no" has somehow become unpopular, which I don't think that it has. Less popular maybe, particularly among indie games, but certainly not unpopular. 



> What ticks me off a bit, is he can't seem to do that without belittling or refusing to see how other people approach the game. And that mentality is prevalent in so many of these threads on this kind of topic.



In my own reading, I don't think that is the case. You may be making too much of too little offense, while also ignoring those with carry similar mentalities who are debating against pemerton. Though I also think that  [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] also has a good take on this situation. 



> Obviously though, if players are there for the puzzles, they probably won't like a game that doesn't engage puzzle solving skill, but rather focuses on drama. The reverse is true as well.



Most definitely, which ties back into my point that you quoted. SYORTD is a principle oriented towards a different play emphasis than games focused on player-skill overcoming puzzles. 



Maxperson said:


> Why not?  Not only is this not One True Way, but it's pretty much required if you want to enjoy a game.  If I prefer 1e style games, I absolutely should be analyzing every RPG I come across on 1e design principles, play priorities/values, campaigns, etc.  To fail to do that will eventually result in my purchasing or playing a game that I won't like, wasting my money in the process.  Presumably people want to buy and play in games that they will enjoy, and the way to do that is to evaluate games on what they do that you enjoy vs. what you don't enjoy.



I would suggest returning to my earlier analogy of Pandemic and Monopoly for a better idea of what I am talking about here. 



> Gygax may have had his personal preference on how to play D&D, but D&D was written in such a way as to enable it to pretty easily encompass many different playstyles.  It's the driving strength of D&D in my opinion.
> 
> Since then many other RPGs have come out and many of them are not written in that way.  As you note above, they are designed with one particular playstyle in mind, making them poor games to use with differing playstyles.  You can force the square peg into the round hole with them, but it won't be as satisfying as playing a different game.



It's odd to me that you are again wanting to create "exceptionalism" for D&D's design where you ascribe D&D as having "many different playstyles," but other games as having only "one" playstyle. Maybe though I am misunderstanding you, and you are not describing all non-D&D games but only a smaller subset of non-D&D games. That said, based upon what I have read and seen about these early days of D&D, these other playstyles may have arisen as an unintended but then swiftly capitalized upon once Gygax et al. realized the versatility of their rules set. I think D&D is less open than you suggest and that there are other games are more open than you suggest. So your reading seems to lack any nuance.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> Well, perhaps a lesson can be learned from this.  If you come for help, just ask for help.  If instead of or in addition to asking for help, you negatively and incorrectly attribute something like Mother May I, you will end up derailing your own thread from the outset.




Actually, I think a lesson that might be learned is that one need not jump at every opportunity to argue nigh till doomsday with someone who expresses different preferences and viewpoints. Has your virtue been offended, Max, by someone likening a certain playstyle to "Mother-may-I"? Can you no longer enjoy your own game when someone in the world hold such a view?


----------



## Campbell

pemerton said:


> I've done some trawling through John Harper's old blog (The Mighty Atom) but can't find it.
> 
> @_*Campbell*_, can you help?




The quote comes from Jesse Burneko's Play Passionately blog. He's a member of The Forge who just really grokked Sorcerer in the same way that John Harper just really got Apocalypse World. His blog just does a much better job of articulating the way I approach role playing games. 

Here's the post:



			
				 Encultured Systems said:
			
		

> Imagine for a moment that you are playing poker. After the round it’s revealed that you have the high hand with two pair when all of a sudden the guy across from you says, “Ah! I’ve got the Ace of Diamonds!” and collects all the cards on the table and places them in front of himself. Just to make it a little weirder he doesn’t even stop you from taking your winnings. You might rightfully ask, “What are you doing?” To which he replies, “I always like to take tricks in my card games.” You might then carefully go over the rules of poker and this individual smiles and nods and says, “Yes, I understand that you won the hand, I just find that trick taking really enhances card games.”
> 
> You would assume, I hope, that the person you were talking to was insane. So, why, I ask, do we as role-players not blink an eye when a fellow role-player says something like, “When I GM I usually have the players submit a detailed character write up for approval. I generally like at least two pages.” without any context as to what is being played? Role-playing games are the only games I can think of where players carry around with them huge systemic behaviors from game to game. The GM who *always* has his players submit detailed character write ups for approval is going to have a hard time with “In A Wicked Age…” in a shocking way and will probably be confused on a profoundly disappointing level with something more subtle like “Sorcerer.”
> 
> These encultured systems have their roots in the very dawn of the hobby where play was a highly individualized amalgam of rule-books, magazine articles and house rules. It probably reached the height of formalization with games like Vampire where rules to “do stuff” were provided but to what end, what emphasis and under what structure were *intentionally* left “up to the individual group.” Play groups *had* to develop individualized systemic techniques to make functional play happen at all. These personally developed techniques then got carried around from game to game as a matter of course often unacknowledged. Sometimes players would go so far as to claim these techniques were how the game was “supposed” to be played despite the total lack of (unified) textual backing.
> 
> Now some of you might be thinking, “Isn’t this just System Matters all over again?” or maybe the idea of purposeful design? Yes, yes it is. Then why bring it up? Because the community has forgotten. I see people carrying around Kickers, Bangs, Relationship Maps, Scene Framing and Stakes just likes Detailed Character Backgrounds, The Party, Faction Maps and Rule Zero got carried around. “Say Yes, or roll the dice” has become encultured as a particularly poisonous mantra. This has lead to the idea of “Forge-style” or “Story Game style” games. People aren’t playing the game at hand; they’re playing some weird amalgamation of every game they have ever played.
> 
> However just like it was toxic to bring all your Vampire techniques into Sorcerer it’s equally as toxic to bring all that “Story Game” stuff as some kind of unified play-style into other games. How many people know that The Producer always frames scenes in Primetime Adventures? Don’t believe me? Look it up. How many people know that there’s a perfectly functional and more basic way to play Sorcerer without a Relationship Map? Read Chapter 4 carefully. Look at how people’s ideas of Stakes has lead to mass confusion on how to play “In A Wicked Age…” and yet the text is rather clear on what to procedurally do.
> 
> To address this I offer two pieces of advice. To designers, I say consider what systemic (social and mechanical) techniques are required and/or work in your game and say that in the text explicitly. Don’t hand wave it away as, “It’s a story game. People know how to play those.” To players, I say read the text. Do what the text says. Don’t drag encultured rules into play. Stop taking tricks in your “card games.”


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> Well, perhaps a lesson can be learned from this.  If you come for help, just ask for help.  If instead of or in addition to asking for help, you negatively and incorrectly attribute something like Mother May I, you will end up derailing your own thread from the outset.
> 
> 
> 
> No, this is a False Equivalence.  Saying, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies" is a fine way to go about asking for help.  If you instead say, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies, as nobody in their right minds would ever use any humanoid other than gnolls" you will derail your own thread and people will come in to argue with you.  You may still get a few of those people with, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies," but the number of them will be small easily ignored, preserving your thread.




I generally found the OP the previous thread pretty reasonable. I can agree to to disagree with someone if there is a level of respect and politeness. I still maintain that mother may I started getting used in an insulting way toward a style of play that emphasizes exploration and immersion in a world, but it happened because of other posters. I think there is a game state that becomes mother may I. I also think people can disagree on what that line is. But if one side feels utterly belittled, dismisses, and/or condescended to, there will be bad blood in a thread. This thread based on my post I felt was particularly hostile and dismissive of the playstyle in question.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> Actually, I think a lesson that might be learned is that one need not jump at every opportunity to argue nigh till doomsday with someone who expresses different preferences and viewpoints. Has your virtue been offended, Max, by someone likening a certain playstyle to "Mother-may-I"? Can you no longer enjoy your own game when someone in the world hold such a view?




But surely posters have a right to disagree when their playstyle is labeled something that insulting. Especially when the overall tone of the discussion grows increasingly dismissive of other perfectly valid approaches to play. I can totally accept that people on this thread want some variation of say yes or, without attributing negative qualities to them or that style. But a substantial number of posts on this and the other thread can’t seem to acknowledge our playstyle without throwing in an insult or calling our level of gaming experience into questions (in many instances it feels like our intelligence is being called into question).


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> It's odd to me that you are again wanting to create "exceptionalism" for D&D's design where you ascribe D&D as having "many different playstyles," but other games as having only "one" playstyle. Maybe though I am misunderstanding you, and you are not describing all non-D&D games but only a smaller subset of non-D&D games.




I didn't ascribe one playstyle to other games.  I agreed with you guys that system matters.  D&D is leans towards DM facing games.  However, it does so weakly, not strongly.  That allows it to be easily fit into a myriad of playstyles that are both DM and Player facing.  

Other systems(not all of them by any stretch) are strongly leaning towards DM or Player facing games.  Those can easily be used for playstyles that match the facing of the system, but are less easily used for playstyles of the opposite facing.  You can do it, but it's really shoving a square peg into a round hole.  You will have to make more system changes than it is often worth.



> That said, based upon what I have read and seen about these early days of D&D, these other playstyles may have arisen as an unintended but then swiftly capitalized upon once Gygax et al. realized the versatility of their rules set. I think D&D is less open than you suggest and that there are other games are more open than you suggest. So your reading seems to lack any nuance.




I've seen many ways to play D&D, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have used it for even more of them if you believe their posts here(and I do).  That is pretty strong evidence that it's pretty easy to use D&D for virtually any playstyle you want to attempt.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> Actually, I think a lesson that might be learned is that one need not jump at every opportunity to argue nigh till doomsday with someone who expresses different preferences and viewpoints.




I covered that with, "You may still get a few of those people with, "I'm looking for a good prewritten adventure that features gnolls as enemies," but the number of them will be small easily ignored, preserving your thread."  Those are the people who need to not jump at every opportunity.  

Defending your playstyle against a blatant attack against it is not "jumping at an opportunity," but rather is just a normal reaction by people who are human.  Humans defend things that they like from attacks against those things.



> "Has your virtue been offended, Max,"




I lost my virtue a long time ago, and roleplaying was not a part of that at the time.  Hard to offend something that I no longer have.



> "by someone likening a certain playstyle to "Mother-may-I"? Can you no longer enjoy your own game when someone in the world hold such a view?




I don't care if they hold that view or not.  If they come to a semi-public place and attack my playstyle, though, I'm going to defend it.  If they want to have a clean(cleanish?) thread, they shouldn't be attack other styles, but rather just talk about what they like and how to achieve it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> AFAIK searching for a secret door in Dw does introduce nothing to the fiction. If the Gm likes the idea and thus decides to use it on the fly, why not, but there is no rule, nor indication whatsoever to do so, and moreover there is no check involved.
> 
> The other way round might be legit: the Gm may asks the Thief if there are supposed to be secret doors present and how they work etc and build on that.




The principle in DW is that there is a 'Map with holes in it' which describes the area in which the campaign's Fronts are interacting. This map MIGHT be pretty detailed in a specific area and thus rule out the possibility of a secret door, in which case the DM not really obliged to present one. 

Here's the main thing though, there is no MOVE 'search for secret doors', or even 'search' in DW. There is 'Discern Realities' and 'Spout Lore', either of which might elicit the description of a secret door by the DM (whether previously mapped into the DM's fiction or not isn't addressed). I suppose 'Defy Danger' might also be a way for the DM to introduce such an element. I would note however that DM's moves are ALL "create more pressure on the PCs." In each of these cases the DM needs to make some kind of a move (IE alter the fictional state of the game). This is never going to simply provide a solution for the players that doesn't put them in some kind of another bind. I guess you could interpret total success in one of the above move types to do something like that.

So, for example:

The characters are fleeing from a horde of orcs which they cannot defeat in outright combat (this probably was a result of a hard move by the DM previously). They come to a dead end in the corridor they are fleeing down. As the orcs torches appear around the bend 150' back the thief desperately attempts to use his wits and asks if he can use Evasion (a thief move) using INT. He rolls a 12, and informs the DM that he has achieved a 'sublime evasion', and the DM informs the party that the thief sticks his finger in a crack and pulls open a secret door. 

Note that it is perfectly possible for the DM to have simply said 'yes' and produced a secret door at this point without any checks. This would generally constitute part of a DM move, which would, as I said above, dump the PCs into a new and probably worse situation, but maybe would get them out of their current bind, for the moment. The Evasion check OTOH would produce good results for the PCs, reducing pressure on them, though the DM would likely respond with a soft move of some kind once they reached the next location.

DW doesn't exactly use the terminology or explicit process of Story Now, nor discuss saying yes vs checking, but there's certainly nothing antithetical to these concepts in its basic structure. It is certainly a game that wants you to 'play to find out what happens', and it doesn't seem to care much about 'simulationist' kinds of concerns like the DM neutrally arbitrating. It is heavily invested in the DM coming at the PCs with challenges to their plans, their person, and their values. It is a bit different from things like DitV which deal explicitly in stakes, but the bonds system certainly leads to a similar result.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The only thing I see this approach accomplishing is the removal of some of the mystery from the game/setting.  Many times the tension and sense of mystery is increased when the DM calls for rolls for no reason whatsoever in order to disguise the real roll when it happens...just as one example.



I see nothing in SYORTD which precludes this... I mean, if you over-literally assume the GM must utter the word "yes" without any ceremony, then sure, but I have not seen a game describe it that way. 



> Which, taken to it's conclusion, means the players are each time setting both the problem (mystery) and its solution; and then hoping the dice co-operate and don't drag in too many complications.  Isn't that like reading the end of a murder novel to find out whodunnit and then reading through the rest to see how things got there?



This is the old hoary time-honored blind alley which doubters of player-introduced goals constantly stumble down. Any game which is competently written/run doesn't have this issue. The GM introduces, via scene framing, challenges, NOT THE PLAYERS. These challenges are expected to relate to the player's interests, usually as evinced by the things their characters are, do, value, hate, etc. 

If players can introduce fiction into these sorts of setting, it is not in the context of "I am going to search for the gizmo. Oh look the gizmo is right here!" that would be a preposterous type of game, and it doesn't exist (except degenerately when something went terribly wrong with someone's reading of the rules). Instead players introduce fiction in terms of maybe acquiring a resource, or attaining progress towards a goal by some means. Finding a secret door which lets you evade the bad guys so you can achieve some goal is a good example. This would normally require a check, and failing would, perhaps, result in failing to evade said bad guys, or it might result in a secret door that dumps everyone into a pit on the next dungeon level when you close the door behind you! 



> With a "puzzle", as you call it, the players via their PCs have to think to find a solution; and have to accept 'no' sometimes when their ideas don't (or can't) work.  And by 'no' I don't mean 'no but something else happens', I mean a flat 'no, that doesn't work' or 'no, that's wrong'.  The simplest example is where the party have to solve a riddle in order to move forward - they either get the right answer or they (perhaps repeatedly) don't.




Usually these types of games are testing the CHARACTERS more than the players. This is because they are games in which the play is about producing dramatic play in which the characters' enter into conflict related to things interesting enough for the player to put them on the character sheet. So it isn't normally about the player being involved directly in the conflict. In this sense OD&D (which was often structured as a test of player skill) IS antithetical to this sort of play, entirely. I wouldn't generally create a scenario where the players must solve a puzzle in story now play. I'm not saying its impossible, and maybe there are games which have explored techniques for doing this. I don't think we have discussed this in any recent threads which come to mind. Certainly if some of the experts on this kind of play have something to add on that I'm curious.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Hmm.  Some stuff to unpack, here.
> 
> Firstly, your characterization of SYORTD leaves out some important context, namely that if the GM doesn't say yes and instead goes to the mechanics, this still means that the player's action declaration comes true on a successful resolution of the mechanics.  The GM cannot substitute a check for a different outcome as the Roll The Dice option, they must instead address the intent of the player's action faithfully.  They must, if they roll the dice, fulfill the intent of the action declaration if the player is successful and thwart/complicate it if it isn't successful.  Carrying this through to your OD&D example, your examples fails at SYORTD because the mechanics do not honor the action declaration.  In this example, the player(s) declare that they wish to parley, the GM has denied that declaration (no say yes, no rolling the dice) and instead moved to combat, which is against the intent of the player(s).  If this was SYORTD, then even if the GM did not say yes, the appropriate roll of the dice would be to determine if the parley attempt was successful, or, at least, opened for further play.  If that check fails, then an appropriate resolution may indeed be the start of combat, as that definitely thwarts the intent of opening a parley.
> 
> I think you've internalized an incorrect formulation of SYORTD as it's meant to be applied.  You're close, but you've not stepped all the way across the threshold.  For example, you've said many times that DW doesn't allow players to insert new fictions through action declarations, and pointed to Spout Lore as an example.  What I think you may miss is that when a player makes the Move to Spout Lore, the GM is obligated to provide new fiction according to the intent of the player on a success (or partial success).  IE, the player prompts the GM on what new fiction they want, and the DM is required to provide it.  If the player asks, for instance, if secret doors are common in this area and succeeds, it would be a poor GM reply to answer 'No' because that thwarts the player's clear intent to learn more about secret doors in the area.  This isn't well expounded in the SRD materials, not sure about the actual book, but it goes with the GM's maxims for DW, namely, "leave blanks", "play to find out", "always speak true", and "let the players decide, sometimes."  The point of DW is to build the game in play, and if you really think that only the GM has the authority to author or direct new fiction in play, then you're missing out on a core part of what makes PbtA games really work.
> 
> As I said before, I'm much more familiar with Blades.  And you asked how it works there.  Simply, the player declares an action and what 'stat' they're rolling for it and the GM assigns position and effect, or, more simply, how dangerous that action is and how effective a success can be.  So, in Blades, a character can easily declare they're looking for a secret door to escape the guards closing in, and even choose Wreck as the method, deciding they're going to bash their way into the secret passage through brute force.  As a GM, I could say that this is a desperate move -- ie, if it doesn't work, the guard will be here and they're already mad -- with limited effect because I've already described the alley as brick walled.  The player then can choose to forgo this action as unwise and try something else, or roll, even choosing to Push for greater effect by spending Stress.  On a success (a die pool based on the stat is rolled, highest value taken, 6 succeeds outright, 4-5 succeeds with cost, 1-3 fails), the player bashes through a secret door into a new passage and the fiction moves on.  On a partial, the player maybe drops the loot in the impact, or takes a wound, or a guard is hot on his heels.  On a fail, they may bounce off the wall because that secret door is actually in a very similar alley, just not this one, and the guards are now here (and still angry).
> 
> And, I see this working well in DW, as well.  The player makes the same declaration, but makes the Move to Discern Reality to find the door.  As a GM, you should honor this declaration by not refuting it on a success and saying 'no secret door here' but instead move the game forward by providing information on the door according to the questions asked.  Then play can be a Defy Danger to open and leap through the door before the guards can arrive and play a tattoo with their clubs.  There's nothing in DW that prohibits players from requesting specific outcomes or interests with their rolls, just that the GM must provide these results on a success.  This actually moves the game from puzzling out the GM's plans to free-wheeling finding out as you play.  I encourage you to try it.
> 
> Also, paging @_*Manbearcat*_ for a sanity check on the above.




I would just add that it is the INTENT which the GM must honor, not the specific action declaration. So in DW, for example, the player might be wanting to find a secret door, but the GM might supply a loose manhole cover, or a reachable fire escape ladder, instead. He could even go further afield and have some allies of the PC suddenly show up and chase off the bad guys. That might be taking the intent to a fairly abstract level, but it still accomplishes the goal the player was after, escaping (and now of course the GM can make a soft move and put forward the question of what the PC owes his new found friends...).


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would just add that it is the INTENT which the GM must honor, not the specific action declaration. So in DW, for example, the player might be wanting to find a secret door, but the GM might supply a loose manhole cover, or a reachable fire escape ladder, instead. He could even go further afield and have some allies of the PC suddenly show up and chase off the bad guys. That might be taking the intent to a fairly abstract level, but it still accomplishes the goal the player was after, escaping (and now of course the GM can make a soft move and put forward the question of what the PC owes his new found friends...).




Not sure if you're agreeing or not....


----------



## Aldarc

Campbell said:


> The quote comes from Jesse Burneko's Play Passionately blog. He's a member of The Forge who just really grokked Sorcerer in the same way that John Harper just really got Apocalypse World. His blog just does a much better job of articulating the way I approach role playing games.
> 
> Here's the post:



Thank you! 



Maxperson said:


> I've seen many ways to play D&D, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have used it for even more of them if you believe their posts here(and I do).  That is pretty strong evidence that it's pretty easy to use D&D for virtually any playstyle you want to attempt.



I'm not so much talking about how was D&D throughout its entire legacy, but, rather, more about its earliest days of OD&D and 1E. And I believe that Luke Crane even had a Google+ thread where he actually talks about his experiences running 1E Basic (?) as per its design intent, guiding principles, mechanical quirks, etc. That does engender a more particularized style of play.


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Usually these types of games are testing the CHARACTERS more than the players. This is because they are games in which the play is about producing dramatic play in which the characters' enter into conflict related to things interesting enough for the player to put them on the character sheet. So it isn't normally about the player being involved directly in the conflict.



Here is Ron Edwards on the challenge of "story now" play to the participants:

Given that theme arises during Narrativist play, what does it look like, and how limited or well-defined is it? This breaks down into three independent issues . . .

1) The potential for personal risk and disclosure among the real people involved.

* High risk play is best represented by playing _Sorcerer_, _Le Mon Mouri_, _InSpectres_, _Zero_, or _Violence Future_. You're putting your ego on the line with this stuff, as genre conventions cannot help you; the other people in play are going to learn a lot about who you are.

* Low risk play is best represented by playing _Castle Falkenstein_, _Wuthering Heights_, _The Dying Earth_, or _Prince Valiant_. These games are, for lack of a better word, "lighter" or perhaps more whimsical - they do raise issues and may include extreme content, but play-decisions tend to be less self-revealing.​
The test/challenge for the player is not so much _can you solve this puzzle_ as _can you take having to make this choice_? I would tend to put Burning Wheel into Ron Edwards's "high risk" category; and can testify from experience that he has correctly classified Print Valiant as "low risk". I think Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic also falls into the "low risk" category. I'll leave the classification of DW to others with more experience.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Here is Ron Edwards on the challenge of "story now" play to the participants:
> 
> Given that theme arises during Narrativist play, what does it look like, and how limited or well-defined is it? This breaks down into three independent issues . . .
> 
> 1) The potential for personal risk and disclosure among the real people involved.
> 
> * High risk play is best represented by playing _Sorcerer_, _Le Mon Mouri_, _InSpectres_, _Zero_, or _Violence Future_. You're putting your ego on the line with this stuff, as genre conventions cannot help you; the other people in play are going to learn a lot about who you are.
> 
> * Low risk play is best represented by playing _Castle Falkenstein_, _Wuthering Heights_, _The Dying Earth_, or _Prince Valiant_. These games are, for lack of a better word, "lighter" or perhaps more whimsical - they do raise issues and may include extreme content, but play-decisions tend to be less self-revealing.​
> The test/challenge for the player is not so much _can you solve this puzzle_ as _can you take having to make this choice_? I would tend to put Burning Wheel into Ron Edwards's "high risk" category; and can testify from experience that he has correctly classified Print Valiant as "low risk". I think Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic also falls into the "low risk" category. I'll leave the classification of DW to others with more experience.



I'd put DW in the low risk side; it's progenitor AW is surely more risky IME


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I didn't ascribe one playstyle to other games.  I agreed with you guys that system matters.  D&D is leans towards DM facing games.  However, it does so weakly, not strongly.  That allows it to be easily fit into a myriad of playstyles that are both DM and Player facing.
> 
> Other systems(not all of them by any stretch) are strongly leaning towards DM or Player facing games.  Those can easily be used for playstyles that match the facing of the system, but are less easily used for playstyles of the opposite facing.  You can do it, but it's really shoving a square peg into a round hole.  You will have to make more system changes than it is often worth.
> 
> 
> 
> I've seen many ways to play D&D, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have used it for even more of them if you believe their posts here(and I do).  That is pretty strong evidence that it's pretty easy to use D&D for virtually any playstyle you want to attempt.




Um, no, D&D is very strongly DM side.  The players have no authority (outside of spells) to introduce or enact new fictions, they must run all declarations past the GM.  Read the opening chapter of the 5e PHB for the core gameplay loop and it 1) players describe ther actions; 2) DM decides if the outcome is successful, failure, or uncertain, and, if uncertain, calls for a check named by the DM against a DC set by the DM; 3) the DM narrates the outcome.  ALL of the work there is on the DM side of the screen.  D&D is just about the definition of a DM facing game.

That doesn't mean you can't have some player input, but the resolution mechanics, core game loop, and the authority over the rules are all built into the DM roll.  You just flat out cannot argue that D&D is not a strongly DM facing ruleset, with the notable exception of 4e, which turned all player abilities into "spells."


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Um, no, D&D is very strongly DM side.  The players have no authority (outside of spells) to introduce or enact new fictions, they must run all declarations past the GM.




Which only makes it DM side, not strongly DM side.  D&D is weakly DM side, because all it takes to switch the facing of the game is for the DM to say, "Okay guys, you guys can create contents by doing X, Y and Z.  The game is now primarily in your hands."  It's that simple.  Were it strongly DM side, you'd have to change many rules for that to happen.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> As far as movement is concerned, which was the example I gave, the only system in AD&D for determining how long it takes to get from A to B is to have a map, to which movement rates are applied. I've never encountered a GM or a supplement that has the requisite maps to apply a fly spell when the movement is overland at 4 mph.



Raises hand.

If the situation is such that I (or the player) need to know precise distances, if I don't already have the requisite map to hand I very soon will; even if it means drawing out then and there a more detailed version of a general map I already have. (even better if it's a shoreline or marine setting; I've about a 6-inch-thick stack of old marine navigation charts of the coast here and if really stuck I'll just pull out one of those that looks close, tell the players to ignore any names of features or places, and use that.  )



> That's 2/3 of a mile per 10-minute turn, or approx 1 km. One of the more detailed maps I have is the one that came with my GH boxed set, and has various villages, hamlets, farmlets etc in the vicinity of GH marked. But it doesn't give the location of all these things to that sort of accuracy.



Fair enough, and sometimes that's all you need in any case.  But if there's a reason to go more detailed then why not make a more detailed map for that area?



> And here's another example: if the players have their PCs spend X weeks resting, or researching spells, or whatver, then their enemies can presumalby recruit Y new recruits. What is the value of Y? I don't know of any D&D rule that answers that question. (Traveller does have such a rule, in the Mercenary supplement. Whether that makes the game more or less realistic I'll leave as a judgement for others.)



A hard-and-fast rule here wouldn't be all that much use, really, as every situation is different.  One BBEG might be in a situation where there's a large pool of potential new recruits around her while another might not have access to any and a third can only "recruit" what she generates herself via Animate Dead.  And even then for me it'd come down to some sort of die roll just to inform me what actual recruitment was achieved vs. the best-case scenario for the BBEG.

That said, recruiting or "restocking" is something a DM ought to keep in mind if the PCs leave the area for any length of time.



> Suppose X = 2 weeks: the GM can decide that the enemies get a sudden burst of recruits in that time. Suppose X = 10 weeks: the GM can decide that the recruitement pool is dry and the enemies get no more powerful.



Decide, or roll for, whatever; yes - and again a hard-and-fast overall rule would tend to get in the way of this kind of fluidity.  A guideline in a specific module, however, where the BBEG's potential recruit pool is known and noted in the write-up, can be of great help.



> Luke Crane's Adventure Burner discusses this issue, but because BW is no different from D&D in this particular respect all he has to offer is that the longer the player spend in "downtime", the more liberty the GM has to change the situation adversely without unfairly hosing the players - and he also gives a worked example of growing a nemesis NPC in accordance with the training rules that govern PCs.



Makes sense.



> This is what I mean when I say that time is colour. It suggests various possibilities to the GM, but it doesn't actually generate action resolution outcomes.



As this recruitment is all happening "behind the scenes" anyway then for these purposes the suggesting or possibilities is all that's needed.  But from the PCs/player side it's still relevant to know how long they spent in town for reasons of calculating total expenses - and for this, learned and codified over far too many years of experience both as player and DM: 

The (unwritten) Rule of Settlements: "Any adventuring party entering any new city, town, village or hamlet is almost certainly going to cause, create, or get into trouble while there; and the general odds of such occurrence increase linearly per character in the party and exponentially per unit of time spent."


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Which only makes it DM side, not strongly DM side.  D&D is weakly DM side, because all it takes to switch the facing of the game is for the DM to say, "Okay guys, you guys can create contents by doing X, Y and Z.  The game is now primarily in your hands."  It's that simple.  Were it strongly DM side, you'd have to change many rules for that to happen.




You're defining "not DM facing" by saying that the DM can give players permission to add things.  Really?  

What game would you label strongly DM facing, then?  I'm curious what you think meets this criteria.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> You're defining "not DM facing" by saying that the DM can give players permission to add things.  Really?




No. 



> What game would you label strongly DM facing, then?  I'm curious what you think meets this criteria.




A game that cannot be easily altered to player facing.  D&D is easily altered like that, so it's not strongly DM facing.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> No.



Sorry, I missed where the _game rules_ say players can create content in X, Y, and Z.  According to what you said above, it was specifically the _DM giving the permission to the players_.  Unless the game gives that to the players, you're still at the _DM giving out power_, making that something the _DM can give away_, meaning it's still, ultimately, the _DM's power_.  I'm pretty sure that you'd argue that even with player content creation the DM retains veto power, right?  Or are you saying the D&D has, as part of it's mechanics, the ability for the player to create content without the DM having veto power?  Heck, that's not even true for spells, which is the only D&D mechanic where players actually have content control, if very narrow.



> A game that cannot be easily altered to player facing.  D&D is easily altered like that, so it's not strongly DM facing.




You're waving your hands, Max.  What game is this that cannot be easily altered so that the DM gives the players permission to add things?  Surely, since you've made this definition up yourself, you had an example in mind?  

And, D&D is only easily altered like that via DM houserule -- note the "DM" part there.  Your houserules are not a valid criteria for assessing how D&D is or is not a DM facing game.  They cannot be, because your houserules are not what D&D is, they're just your houserules (and fine houserules, I'm sure).

I'm really not understanding why you feel the need to say D&D isn't strongly DM facing.  This isn't a bad thing, unless you're looking to play games that aren't strongly DM facing.  D&D is still the single most popular RPG by far more than a country mile, so being strongly DM facing clearly isn't a detriment to having a good time playing.  Sure, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] (and others, sorry) prefers to play games that aren't strongly (or weakly) DM facing, but so what?  Not everyone needs to like D&D.  Not everyone needs to like Burning Wheel, either -- I'm sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] will _not _be by shortly to make claims that BW can be modified to be more DM facing because he's worried his game of choice won't measure up if it isn't.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Heh.  I read an interesting article recently that touches on why martial arts communities tend to be very polite and well mannered.  It comes from a strong understanding of exactly what kind of damage angry people can do to each other, which leads to better non-physical conflict resolution skills.




So, by extension, there is a direct correlation between the familiarity and exposure to the means of violence and the quality of non-violent conflict resolution skills. Samurai, gun fighters, 15th Century Italian Nobles, they all excelled at this! 

I guess what I'm hinting at is there must be some other element involved. Your point could be ONE FACTOR, but it logically cannot be a sufficient answer in and of itself.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, by extension, there is a direct correlation between the familiarity and exposure to the means of violence and the quality of non-violent conflict resolution skills. Samurai, gun fighters, 15th Century Italian Nobles, they all excelled at this!
> 
> I guess what I'm hinting at is there must be some other element involved. Your point could be ONE FACTOR, but it logically cannot be a sufficient answer in and of itself.




I'm not following you, here.  Are you mocking my post? Because there was a lot of non-violent conflict resolution with samurai, gun fighters, and 15th century Italian Nobles.  Politeness in all those cases was strongly emphasized.  A correlation doesn't mean that idiots and hotheads suddenly stopped existing, but the culture that existed around all of those was highly structured with many conflict de-emphasizing rituals and rules of behavior.

And, yes, of course there are multiple factors -- nothing in social interactions ever boils down to one factor.  Pointing out an interesting article that found and explained an interesting correlation isn't an argument for, "this is it, guys, the answer to all society's ills!"

Or did I misread you and owe you an apology?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, then answer the barn question @_*pemerton*_ poses: how far/long to the barn?
> 
> I agree with you that "just color" is a bit hyperbolic, but tge underlying point that time is either an undefined or very poorly defined mechanic is true.  That doesn't mean that you, a GM, can't further refine or emphasize this but it does mean you're adding definition to your game to do so.  This is apparent because the next GM over doesn't have to focus on time and is still running the same set of mechanics.
> 
> To reiterate:  time is mostly a GM choice, not a well defined mechanic.




Here we come to an example of why even D&D evolved. From OD&D up through 1e AD&D the trend was simply more precise and encompassing rules dictating durations, mapping techniques, exploration rules, etc. When employed in a dungeon type setting this can answer the 'barn question' quite effectively. The dungeon is a totally mapped space with all topography, locations, and situations within it precisely defined. AD&D (and even OD&D to some extent) also attempted to address these sorts of questions in less thoroughly structured contexts, such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example, but with limited success. 

2e, which was IIRC largely the work of Zeb Cook, clearly was designed with this understanding in mind. It is first and foremost designed with the idea in mind from the very start that the action will be more generalized, more dramatic and fiction-like, and take place in a wide variety of locations to a greater degree. It drops some important elements of 1e's exploration rules for example. There are no movement rates for exploration in dungeons in 2e. You could extrapolate them from knowledge of 1e play, no rule is actually changed, but no rates are actually stated. If you started play with 2e, then the fundamental rule for deciding how long your spell lasts during exploration is non-existent. It is now up to the DM to decide what he thinks is appropriate!

I believe there are still overland movement rates in 2e, and many of the trappings of 1e exploration-based play still exist, but any close consideration of the necessities of dramatic play is, as Pemerton explained, pretty much going to lead to DM determinations of time as simply a way of explaining, post-hoc, what happened.

4e has a sort of vestigial set of relict mechanics of this ilk, but most of the DMG's advice pretty much is incoherent with using them. For example, overland movement rates don't do much work in a game where travel is likely either to be elided (go to the action, skip the boring part) or handled by an SC, which is a pretty abstract story-centered type of mechanic. I do note that 4e also has durations on rituals, and these are equally 'color' since there are (ala 2e) no exploration movement rates (or really coherent exploration rules at all). At best they suggest the realms of problem solving in which a given ritual might find use.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not suggesting that alternatives to my proposed approach in the OP are wrong or bad. I've tried to make the point many times that you can make that determination with any number of methods, procedures or mechanics. The point of the thread though was whether my stated approach was mother may I or undesirable. For you the answer being dramatically interesting is important, and that is a fine way to run a game. Some of the other posters here though are saying that is less important to them than the sense that they are exploring a real place.




I've never really understood the way they fixated on this explanation of 'sense of exploring a real place', or at least that it is dependent on the specific type adjudication mechanics which they claim produces these 'realistic' results. I just cannot find the basis for this realism in anything that actually happens in the play of RPGS! At least not anything D&D-like. It is infinitely clear to me, and I think the posts regarding time and its place as a mechanic and significance in D&D play largely explain why. There is simply too little known about the world for it be determinable what is or isn't more or less realistic. Nor is it REALLY feasible to run a game in which something resembling realistic notions of frequency or causality can be maintained.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> As I said earlier in the thread, it doesn't matter if I know exactly what the long odds are.  It's sufficient for me to know that there are long odds and then offer up what I think is a good approximation of them.  Realism isn't an all or nothing thing and asking me how I know what the long odds are implies that False Dichotomy.  So long as I offer up something more realistic than the short odds that most player facing games and even some DM facing games employ, I am adding more realism to my game.




Maybe I'm not making myself clear. How do you justify that it is long odds, and that long odds produce this 'realism' vs short odds? Clearly you must have some objective model-driven basis for this kind of statement, or else it is mere conjecture. 

I am applying, basically, the criteria outlined over 2500 years ago by one Thales of Miletus when he discussed how to approach discerning the truth about the world. Throw out all conjecture, all statements of authority which cannot be shown to be founded entirely on a basis of direct experience. Create a theory, a model of how you expect the world will work in X is true, and then perform experiments and make observations to attempt to disprove X. In terms of deciding long vs short odds in an RPG I would take this discipline to mean showing how, based on the known factors in the game world, why it would be contradictory for it to be short odds that the sect is in the tea house. Failing that, we only have opinion.

I mean, it is perfectly OK to say "I feel like making it short odds disturbs my sense of immersion, but I don't have a logical reason for this feeling." but I don't get the impression that this is what people are saying. I would point to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s 'barn post' about time as another sort of example which, instead of talking about odds, talks about what can or cannot be measured in a game world in most cases. I would actually state that I don't think Thales' conditions for deciding true facts CAN be accomplished within game worlds, there is no truth there, no statements of 'odds' or times can really be made, except possibly in reference to a consistency with past experience in the same world (IE the sect has not been in the tea room the last 12 times we were there, they probably aren't there now is a pretty good logical induction).


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] will _not _be by shortly to make claims that BW can be modified to be more DM facing because he's worried his game of choice won't measure up if it isn't.



I guess it could be done - but then why not just play Runequest, which is a great game that already exists, has been around for a long time, and I think just had a successful Kickstarted relaunch!


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> To reiterate:  time is mostly a GM choice, not a well defined mechanic.




Fair enough.
I was only objecting to the blanket idea that time can only be colour in D&D and that PC choices, with regards to time, do not matter.



pemerton said:


> As far as movement is concerned, which was the example I gave, the only system in AD&D for determining how long it takes to get from A to B is to have a map, to which movement rates are applied. I've never encountered a GM or a supplement that has the requisite maps to apply a fly spell when the movement is overland at 4 mph. That's 2/3 of a mile per 10-minute turn, or approx 1 km. One of the more detailed maps I have is the one that came with my GH boxed set, and has various villages, hamlets, farmlets etc in the vicinity of GH marked. But it doesn't give the location of all these things to that sort of accuracy.




I find D&D has the minimum required to make time important should it matter for that scene, session, adventure or campaign. Maps with distance are available for settings, calendars available in various setting supplements and travel speeds are in the PHB. How far a barn is from x I can agree that is 100% colour, except when it is not due to GM fiat. And yes it sounds like Traveller, based on what you are saying, includes time in the action resolution mechanic, whereas I think that only occurs in D&D combat - using initiative, follow up saves, duration of spell effects and the like.



> And here's another example: if the players have their PCs spend X weeks resting, or researching spells, or whatver, then their enemies can presumalby recruit Y new recruits. What is the value of Y? I don't know of any D&D rule that answers that question. (Traveller does have such a rule, in the Mercenary supplement. Whether that makes the game more or less realistic I'll leave as a judgement for others.)




If that is the case, then that is pretty impressive for Traveller, although without having read such supplement I would imagine they have all sort of tables. I mean like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] says  later on, given the variations that exist (type and number of creature, motive/goals of BBEG...etc) it would be tricky to come up with a one-size-fits-all.



> This is what I mean when I say that time is colour. It suggests various possibilities to the GM, but it doesn't actually generate action resolution outcomes.




Understood.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> If the situation is such that I (or the player) need to know precise distances, if I don't already have the requisite map to hand I very soon will; even if it means drawing out then and there a more detailed version of a general map I already have.



If the GM draws the map already knowing what the relevant answer is in respect of (say) the Fly spell, then this is GM decision-making one way or another; and if the GM draws the map not knowing what the relevant answer is, then this is - in effect - a form of random determination. So why not just build that into the spell mechanics rather than mediating via at best partially-implemented wargame mechanics?


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I've never really understood the way they fixated on this explanation of 'sense of exploring a real place', or at least that it is dependent on the specific type adjudication mechanics which they claim produces these 'realistic' results. I just cannot find the basis for this realism in anything that actually happens in the play of RPGS! At least not anything D&D-like. It is infinitely clear to me, and I think the posts regarding time and its place as a mechanic and significance in D&D play largely explain why. There is simply too little known about the world for it be determinable what is or isn't more or less realistic. Nor is it REALLY feasible to run a game in which something resembling realistic notions of frequency or causality can be maintained.




I would argue this is a problem on your end, not on the end of people with this expectation (if only because I've played in enough games like this, and seen enough players with these expectations, to know it is a thing). That said, no one has argued for full realism. People have basically been arguing mainly for plausibility and a sense that the world is real. Pemerton created a straw man of that position in the OP (where a sentiment as'like it does in the real world' is taken to mean 'exactly the same as real life'). Further, I've actually been arguing for having more than one thing guide the GM determination of outcome (plausibility is important, but you can also include things like drama, excitement. etc in the decision making process). What people are saying isn't they want the GM to be a physics engine. They are saying they want the GM to create a setting that feels external to their character, consistent and real enough for the purposes of play. Those are not difficult things to achieve. Obviously people can nitpick all they want. If a player is intent on not believing the setting, the player won't believe the setting. But the people on this thread are not setting the high benchmark for realism that the Pemerton set at the start of the thread. And, more importantly, this whole conversation wasn't even about realism at all. It was about Pemerton saying that the GM making the determination "Bone Breaking Sect is/is not present" by simply deciding based on what he or she thinks ought to be, is Mother May I play. I said it was no more mother may I than real life. My point was, it wouldn't be mother may I unless the GM was forcing the players to keep asking about locations until they got the one that the GM had originally decided was the right one. But in my scenario, the GM is genuinely considering whether they would be at the tea house or not in good faith. That isn't mother may I. And this whole thread is just a straw man against that response where Pemerton was trying to rope people into defending the very strange position that game settings operate on the same causal principles as reality (which they obviously don't). That doesn't mean the situation is mother may I, nor does it mean settings can't feel like real places to people (or that GMs can't try to use plausibility in their determinations).


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There is simply too little known about the world for it be determinable what is or isn't more or less realistic.




I just never had this problem. Again, if you are hell bent on deciding this is impossible, fine. I could be equally hell bent on dismissing your playstyle (believe me, at other forums there are hundred page threads with equally strong arguments as the ones you and Pemerton make). But they are just good rhetorical arguments, they do nothing to diminish peoples' actual experience at the table. Here, it isn't about going crazy and literally thinking you are in a different world, it is about giving into the experience of immersion and feeling like you are in a real world where you can interact with the setting. Not only do I know this is possible. It was may very first experience when I first sat down to play an RPG in the mid-80s as a kid. Again realistic and 'feels like a real place' are not the same thing. 

That said, I do know plenty of players who do want more intense realism in the game, and they are able to achieve it to the level they desire. It isn't impossible. It is just that you are holding up that expectation against a straw man of people achieving an actual world simulation with a 1-1 connection to the real world. Obviously no one is expecting the GM to be a computer. But they might want a game where their perception of real world causality is important. This is honestly no different than a person who goes to a movie and expects realism or historical accuracy. I think it is the wrong expectation for every movie, but for certain movies it makes sense. And it isn't that hard to achieve (provided the audience isn't needlessly picky about it). A movie where a character falls off a cliff, shatters his femur and walks it off in ten minutes to a full recovery is less realistic than one where he doesn't. You can definitely have a system in an RPG that plays more to that kind of health recovery, and you can also run games when the health recovery is abstract enough in that way (in D&D for example when characters broke their legs, I've had GMs make rulings like '20 of those HP won't recover until the bone heals in X amount of time').

I honestly don't know why it is so important to you that this idea be considered untrue. After a while, in threads where people refuse to acknowledge the merit or even the feasibility of a given palystyle, it begins to look like people feel threatened by that playstyle for some reason. I personally don't even really care about realism all that much. I like settings that feel like living words where genre physics are in play. Sometimes I like historically realistic settings. But I am not particularly perturbed or suspicious if people say they want other things. And if they do say they want those things, I've learned it is much easier to not take my rhetorical knife to their claims, and instead try to see what they are looking for in their own terms. I would argue that people here are allowing their viewpoints on this matter to be imprisoned by playstyle bias and strong rhetoric.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> I guess it could be done - but then why not just play Runequest, which is a great game that already exists, has been around for a long time, and I think just had a successful Kickstarted relaunch!



I hear that Mythras, Runequest's Pathfinder, is pretty popular nowadays.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> If the GM draws the map already knowing what the relevant answer is in respect of (say) the Fly spell, then this is GM decision-making one way or another;



As are all setting-related things.  I-as-GM don't know if the PCs will ever even visit a particular part of the map, never mind whether they'll choose to use Fly to cover some of the ground and thus force the need to know how far they'll get before it expires.  But if-when this happens it's on me to either know the answer ahead of time or (much more likely) figure it out then and there.



> and if the GM draws the map not knowing what the relevant answer is, then this is - in effect - a form of random determination.



The random part is that this particular place is where they happened to decide to use Fly as a means of travel.



> So why not just build that into the spell mechanics rather than mediating via at best partially-implemented wargame mechanics?



In cases where precision isn't important (e.g. they're flying over farmland and it doesn't much matter if they land in this field, that field, or the next field over) then I don't care that much.  But where precision is important (e.g. they're flying over some nasty terrain and the spell might or might not last long enough to get them to a safe landing place) then I very much care, and it's on me not only to provide said precision regarding distance but to also factor in such things as wind direction/speed and how it might help/hinder their flight speed.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> this whole conversation wasn't even about realism at all. It was about Pemerton saying that the GM making the determination "Bone Breaking Sect is/is not present" by simply deciding based on what he or she thinks ought to be, is Mother May I play. I said it was no more mother may I than real life. My point was, it wouldn't be mother may I unless the GM was forcing the players to keep asking about locations until they got the one that the GM had originally decided was the right one. But in my scenario, the GM is genuinely considering whether they would be at the tea house or not in good faith. That isn't mother may I.



But it is clearly _more "Mother may I" than is real life_. Because where people are in real life doesn't depend on anyone's decision about what is or isn't plausible, what would or wouldn't make for good RPGing, etc. Whereas in your example of play it does depend on such things.

Which is the entirety of my point in the OP.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> But it is clearly _more "Mother may I" than is real life_. Because where people are in real life doesn't depend on anyone's decision about what is or isn't plausible, what would or wouldn't make for good RPGing, etc. Whereas in your example of play it does depend on such things.
> 
> Which is the entirety of my point in the OP.




Those things you listed might reflect differences between the real world and setting, but to my mind none of those things you listed make it more mother may I. Mother may I is when it becomes a guessing game to figure out the narrow path the GM determines is available to you or your goal. But in this example the GM is honestly considering the merit of the proposed location. If the GM is honestly asking him or herself whether the sect would be present, it isn’t mother may I. Nor is it more mother may I. But I want to point out something here, you are now just shifting your argument to focus on my use of the word ‘more’. And I think it is obvious that is basically the same tactic you used previously to get people to argue about real world process equally emulated worlds. Obviously when I said no more more mother may I than the real world I was speaking casually and pointing to the similarity between the two things, not making a claim they were identical. By your logic, every other possible approach mentioned is also more mother may I than life. I don’t really see the point to what hour are saying. It just seems like a purely rhetorical response at this stage. I get you like debate, and your smart. But you are so missing the point.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> As are all setting-related things.  I-as-GM don't know if the PCs will ever even visit a particular part of the map, never mind whether they'll choose to use Fly to cover some of the ground and thus force the need to know how far they'll get before it expires.  But if-when this happens it's on me to either know the answer ahead of time or (much more likely) figure it out then and there.
> 
> The random part is that this particular place is where they happened to decide to use Fly as a means of travel.
> 
> In cases where precision isn't important (e.g. they're flying over farmland and it doesn't much matter if they land in this field, that field, or the next field over) then I don't care that much.  But where precision is important (e.g. they're flying over some nasty terrain and the spell might or might not last long enough to get them to a safe landing place) then I very much care, and it's on me not only to provide said precision regarding distance but to also factor in such things as wind direction/speed and how it might help/hinder their flight speed.



So, you agree it's random (although you'd prefer to point to specific rationales for that) and you say that, when it's interesting, you'd do oots of other GM decision making to determine the outcome (which still has a random element), but you reject out of habd the idea of building this into the mechanics as a check.  Hmm.

I think this is a critical divide:  do you use fiction to determine the mechanics or the mechanics to determine the fiction?  To expand, the way you're approaching this is to say, "okay, all of these things may impact how this works, so let me figure out what all of these impacts are and how they apply to a check beforehand so I can tailor the check mechanics to best represent the fiction." On the other side, the idea is to use a fixed mechanic and the explain the results in the fiction as appropriate.  For example of this, you mentioned headwinds as a complication.  As you said, you'd determine the direction and severity and use that as an input to the check or determination (acknowledging that you may decide the outcome outright based on inputs). On the other side, the core resolution mechanics would be used first, and, on a fail, headwinds might be introduced as a cause.

To tie back to the OP, neither of these is more or less "realistic." In both cases, failure is caused by headwinds.  The difference is really on if you're using GM determined fictional inputs to the mechanics or providing GM determine fictional outputs from the mechanics.  It's worth noting that D&D strongky favors the former, as any given resolution first passes through a yes/no/maybe decision by the GM, and the the exact resolution mechanic and difficulty is determined by the GM.  Since choice to use and then choice of mechanic is gated by fictionsl inputs, the first style of play is strongly incentivized by the system choice.  Conversely, other systems use universal resolution mechanics that have built-in margins of pass/pass-with-complication/fail and the fiction flows out of the mechanics.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Sorry, I missed where the _game rules_ say players can create content in X, Y, and Z.




So did I.  Of course, that's not what you asked.  What you asked was, "You're defining "not DM facing" by saying that the DM can give players permission to add things. Really?" and that's not my definition.  There more involved than the DM just saying, "Hey guys, I give you permission to add things."



> I'm pretty sure that you'd argue that even with player content creation the DM retains veto power, right?




Of course not.  That would be silly and wouldn't happen in a player facing fame.  The DM is giving up the power and altering how the game is played.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Maybe I'm not making myself clear. How do you justify that it is long odds, and that long odds produce this 'realism' vs short odds? Clearly you must have some objective model-driven basis for this kind of statement, or else it is mere conjecture.




The DM knows where the cult is based, how many are in the cult, their motives and to a degree what their activities are.  The DM will based on what he knows, know if the cult is based in the tea house, is based near the tea house, or is not near the tea house.  He will use that knowledge to figure out the odds.  I live in a city of millions and I have over the last 30 years, run into friends randomly about 5 times.  Obviously the odds will be greater in a smaller city, but even so, they don't have cars like we do to make getting around as easy, so travel happens less frequently.  

The discussion here about the tea house has presumed that the cult is neither close to the tea house, nor based inside of it, so they are not close.  Some members would probably go occasionally to have tea there, but the odds of one being there just as the PCs arrive would be long.  Nobody has yet mentioned that the cult members wouldn't be there wearing their Cults 'R Us robes, so you wouldn't be able to tell who is a cult member anyway.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> So did I.  Of course, that's not what you asked.  What you asked was, "You're defining "not DM facing" by saying that the DM can give players permission to add things. Really?" and that's not my definition.  There more involved than the DM just saying, "Hey guys, I give you permission to add things."



Oddly, this forum allows us to scroll up and quote from earlier posts.  Here's what you said:



			
				Maxperson said:
			
		

> Which only makes it DM side, not strongly DM side. D&D is weakly DM side, because all it takes to switch the facing of the game is for the DM to say, "Okay guys, you guys can create contents by doing X, Y and Z. The game is now primarily in your hands." It's that simple. Were it strongly DM side, you'd have to change many rules for that to happen.




There's nothing else there except the DM giving permission to the players to create content in limited areas.  If you have more to your definition, Max, then you haven't shared it with the class.

Please, if you have more, expound.



> Of course not.  That would be silly and wouldn't happen in a player facing fame.  The DM is giving up the power and altering how the game is played.



I really don't see how you don't see that you saying "The DM is giving up power" is, in any way, NOT the DM giving out permissions, which means the power is the DM's and not the players.  This is the opposite of player-facing and is, in fact, the core definitional aspect of DM-facing -- ie, the DM has the power, the players do not.  

It's very hard for me to understand how you can say these things and then declare they mean the opposite of _what you just said._


----------



## chaochou

Bedrockgames said:


> Mother may I is when it becomes a guessing game to figure out the narrow path the GM determines is available to you or your goal.




No. That's your attempt to define MMI in a way which (you hope) doesn't include your own play because you won't accept other people applying an MMI label.



Bedrockgames said:


> But in this example the GM is honestly considering the merit of the proposed location. If the GM is honestly asking him or herself whether the sect would be present, it isn’t mother may I.




Player asks, but is powerless to invoke any mechanical resolution to ascertain outcome. GM decides. Absolute rock solid Mother May I play happening right there. To argue otherwise is nonsense.



Bedrockgames said:


> It just seems like a purely rhetorical response at this stage.




Again, no. The point is that there are styles which are definitely not Mother May I because, for example, an action resolution system is well enough described that it can answer the question 'Are there sect members at the teahouse?' without the GMs preferences or judgements being part of it.

There are also games which say 'If you can't agree, the table decides'. Which at most tables sees the GM outnumbered by players about 3 or 4 to 1.

There are systems where a player spends a bennie and says 'The sect members are drinking at the teahouse tonight' and it becomes true.

Definitionally, none of the above are Mother May I games.

But one can only discuss such systems _honestly_ if one is also honest about the playstyles which _don't _feature these properties.

So exactly why are you still participating in a thread which in post 2, page 1, you (falsely) said you weren't going to post in? Is it to learn something?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames

chaochou said:


> No. That's your attempt to define MMI in a way which (you hope) doesn't include your own play because you won't accept other people applying an MMI label.
> 
> 
> 
> Player asks, but is powerless to invoke any mechanical resolution to ascertain outcome. GM decides. Absolute rock solid Mother May I play happening right there. To argue otherwise is nonsense.
> 
> 
> 
> Again, no. The point is that there are styles which are definitely not Mother May I because, for example, an action resolution system is well enough described that it can answer the question 'Are there sect members at the teahouse?' without the GMs preferences or judgements being part of it.
> 
> There are also games which say 'If you can't agree, the table decides'. Which at most tables sees the GM outnumbered by players about 3 or 4 to 1.
> 
> There are systems where a player spends a bennie and says 'The sect members are drinking at the teahouse tonight' and it becomes true.
> 
> Definitionally, none of the above are Mother May I games.
> 
> But one can only discuss such systems _honestly_ if one is also honest about the playstyles which _don't _feature these properties.
> 
> So exactly why are you still participating in a thread which in post 2, page 1, you (falsely) said you weren't going to post in? Is it to learn something?




Those are some intense words, but all you are doing is asserting without supporting. I would definitely reject the definition you are using for mother may I as a valid playstyle description. Like Lowkey13 said, it is a pejorative. But even then, when it comes up, it is only useful in describing table disfunction where play starts to resemble the game mother may I in the way I described. Using it pejoratively to describe a large swath of RPGs or play styles, is pretty meaningless I think. Certainly isn't going to illuminate anything. If you see a playstyle you don't like and sum it up as mother may I, you will entirely miss the reason people are engaging it (and you will be lacking the curiosity that Pemerton seemed so concerned people retain when analyzing RPGs). It reeks of bias. It is up there with magic tea party in that respect. That would be like me insisting on referring to games with narrative elements as "story time" systems.


----------



## Bedrockgames

chaochou said:


> So exactly why are you still participating in a thread which in post 2, page 1, you (falsely) said you weren't going to post in? Is it to learn something?




Well, basically I changed my mind. When this thread started I was pretty ticked off about it (because I felt it was kind of an aggressive and insulting thing to launch a new thread just to attack my post). So that statement was more emotionally charged. But as I followed the discussion, I just found it hard to not weigh in. So I joined back. 

No, I am not here to learn something. More generally, I am on this forum to learn something. But in this particular case, I was drawn here by the fact that my post was used in the OP. I don't know, I'd feel kind of weird getting attacked like that, then coming in to meekly learn something from the poster attacking me. I am here because the thread was basically an attack against something I said on another thread, and an attack on a whole style of play. Plus, the OP is one of the more specious arguments I've seen in a long time (for the reasons I gave earlier).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Not sure if you're agreeing or not....




Violently agreeing of course!  Now, please open this crumbling worm-eaten tome bound in what looks like human skin to the indicated page....


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Which only makes it DM side, not strongly DM side.  D&D is weakly DM side, because all it takes to switch the facing of the game is for the DM to say, "Okay guys, you guys can create contents by doing X, Y and Z.  The game is now primarily in your hands."  It's that simple.  Were it strongly DM side, you'd have to change many rules for that to happen.




Hmmmm, what game prevents this? I mean, maybe you would find it unusual to do this in a game like Paranoia perhaps, but in a mechanical sense it is no more in favor of GM power than D&D is. The real difference is tone and genre. Paranoia expects the GM to screw over the PCs. Clearly this means putting content and story on the player side would mean having the players betray their own characters. Its possible, and might even be an amusing variation of an already rather whimsical game! 

I would classify 'classic' D&D (everything previous to 3e) as a hard DM-centered game. The DM makes up all content, the DM adjudicates all actions and is expected to deny them based purely on his own judgment and in accordance with his own pre-generated fiction if he wishes. OD&D even recommended that the players be denied access to their own hit point totals! There is no point in D&D where it is assumed that players will invent content, and the VERY few places where Gygax advises that they might make up something it is explicitly stated that this is entirely under the DM's aegis and the player is only exercising some delegated authority at the convenience of the DM. 

I understand it won't always be played this way, but that just goes to show that NO RPG can really enforce a certain mode of play. It is likely possible to craft a game that has mechanics which really are unworkable and nonsensical if the players are granted any access to the GM's prerogatives, and maybe such a game DOES exist. It would be 'harder' than D&D, but I have never seen it, and thus if I had to put D&D on a scale it would be a 9 in the 'DM is in charge' scale.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Raises hand.
> 
> If the situation is such that I (or the player) need to know precise distances, if I don't already have the requisite map to hand I very soon will; even if it means drawing out then and there a more detailed version of a general map I already have. (even better if it's a shoreline or marine setting; I've about a 6-inch-thick stack of old marine navigation charts of the coast here and if really stuck I'll just pull out one of those that looks close, tell the players to ignore any names of features or places, and use that.  )




IMHO this doesn't really change what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is saying. After the player decided his PC would use Fly, then you came up with a distance which needed to be covered. Either you made that distance within what the PC could achieve, or you didn't. Either way it was your choice and thus the time element of the spell is simply a hook upon which you chose whether or not the action could succeed. It explains the success/failure within the fiction, but a game which did this without reference to explicit values of time and distance would produce the same results. Thus time/distance is effectively 'color'. This is a common situation in 'wilderness' type play where completely systematic maps and keys are almost always lacking.



> Fair enough, and sometimes that's all you need in any case.  But if there's a reason to go more detailed then why not make a more detailed map for that area?



You can, but is it likely that you do this in all cases? Often players choose to follow courses of action which take them 'off the map'. This is (almost) impossible in the dungeon environment, but quite easy in 'wilderness' settings. You MIGHT have made such a map for the case depicted in Pemerton's post, and then maybe you wouldn't have considered Fly, and thus the deciding factor there COULD be effectively 'time as a resource'. Its just not consistently a resource, not in the way 'gold' is a resource, where there is in principle a completely specified system for determining how much gold you have, and how much you can acquire by various activities. 



> A hard-and-fast rule here wouldn't be all that much use, really, as every situation is different.  One BBEG might be in a situation where there's a large pool of potential new recruits around her while another might not have access to any and a third can only "recruit" what she generates herself via Animate Dead.  And even then for me it'd come down to some sort of die roll just to inform me what actual recruitment was achieved vs. the best-case scenario for the BBEG.
> 
> That said, recruiting or "restocking" is something a DM ought to keep in mind if the PCs leave the area for any length of time.



Of course, but what that 'rate' is will be entirely at the DM's discretion. Nobody else in the game has either the authority nor the access to whatever (however meager it might be) information which would make such a judgment possible. In effect it is "whatever the DM says it is." and usually its a choice made for dramatic reasons of some sort.



> Decide, or roll for, whatever; yes - and again a hard-and-fast overall rule would tend to get in the way of this kind of fluidity.  A guideline in a specific module, however, where the BBEG's potential recruit pool is known and noted in the write-up, can be of great help.



Why wouldn't it make sense to have a detailed list of recruits for a BBEG in a module? Heck, detail exactly what lair each one came from, and when and by what route they travel to the place where they're inducted into the ranks of the bad guys! I think we know the answer, it is just not important to have all this numerical precision, because the idea is to come up with fun numbers, not objectively sensible ones. Its also a waste of precious space in the module where it is, again, a lot more fun to add additional encounters and other goodies.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm not following you, here.  Are you mocking my post? Because there was a lot of non-violent conflict resolution with samurai, gun fighters, and 15th century Italian Nobles.  Politeness in all those cases was strongly emphasized.  A correlation doesn't mean that idiots and hotheads suddenly stopped existing, but the culture that existed around all of those was highly structured with many conflict de-emphasizing rituals and rules of behavior.
> 
> And, yes, of course there are multiple factors -- nothing in social interactions ever boils down to one factor.  Pointing out an interesting article that found and explained an interesting correlation isn't an argument for, "this is it, guys, the answer to all society's ills!"
> 
> Or did I misread you and owe you an apology?




heh, my comment was mostly just tongue-in-cheek. It is true though, and you note it yourself here, that there are a lot of factors. Sure, Samurai were fairly often polite, but they were also VERY often murderous and uncontrollable. Our histories of late Feudal Japan are replete with tales of murderous rampages and endless blood feuds. Heck, Musashi killed at least 100 people in duels, and 100's more in street fights and assassination attempts (reputedly 42 in a single incident in a garden!). 

Honestly, though it is aside from the topic here, the notion of the 'gentleman's peace' where everyone is armed and they're all peaceful is so much bollocks. Martial Arts may be different for various reasons, and I'm willing to believe it may well BE different, but I think it isn't really the fighting ability of its practitioners which makes it so. I would venture to guess that disciplined people are disciplined in all areas of their lives. This is really an example of 'Nicomachean Ethics'. "We are good not because of who we are, but because we have practiced goodness constantly."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> So did I.  Of course, that's not what you asked.  What you asked was, "You're defining "not DM facing" by saying that the DM can give players permission to add things. Really?" and that's not my definition.  There more involved than the DM just saying, "Hey guys, I give you permission to add things."
> 
> 
> 
> Of course not.  That would be silly and wouldn't happen in a player facing fame.  The DM is giving up the power and altering how the game is played.




Let me explain, for AD&D 1e, why I would call it DM-driven to the Nth degree. There is, AFAIK, TWO places in 1e where a player is explicitly pointed to as potentially generating some fiction:

1) when creating a new spell via spell research - The DM is then admonished to adjust the parameters of the spell as he sees fit, and then decide what level it is (IE how much it costs or if it is even possible to create). Or the DM can simply rule such a spell impossible, in which case he's admonished to let the player TRY to research it until he finally gives up in despair!

2) when a player's character establishes a stronghold - The DM is admonished to let the player submit designs, maps, etc. (based on existing information, just adding detail). Again, these are to be reviewed by the DM, who is to alter them as he sees fit, at least in terms of the initial conditions upon which building/clearing/etc. is to take place. In effect the DM is pretty free to veto a given stronghold entirely by simply putting too many obstacles in the way, though I accept that this would verge into 'bad DMing' at some point. Still, the DM's authority is entirely intact here even with good DMing.

This is pretty much it. I don't know of another example in 1e where the player is suggested as a source of fiction. Even 2e doesn't really relax this, and even makes some things more explicitly DM adjudicated, like magic item creation.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> There's nothing else there except the DM giving permission to the players to create content in limited areas.  If you have more to your definition, Max, then you haven't shared it with the class.




Oddly, your scroll up just confirmed what I said.  At no time was it simply the DM giving permission.  The DM in my example also gave rules.  Those rules removed his authority to override the players and set up a player facing game.



> I really don't see how you don't see that you saying "The DM is giving up power" is, in any way, NOT the DM giving out permissions, which means the power is the DM's and not the players.  This is the opposite of player-facing and is, in fact, the core definitional aspect of DM-facing -- ie, the DM has the power, the players do not.




Giving out a permission is saying, "Hey Tommy, you can go ahead and build the town your PC is from."  That's permission to add content while still keeping it a DM facing game.  Actually altering the game rules to make it a player facing game involves the DM being unable to give out permission.  Or put another way, it's no different than the DM just saying, "Hey, let's play <insert player facing game here> today instead of D&D."


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Hmmmm, what game prevents this? I mean, maybe you would find it unusual to do this in a game like Paranoia perhaps, but in a mechanical sense it is no more in favor of GM power than D&D is. The real difference is tone and genre. Paranoia expects the GM to screw over the PCs. Clearly this means putting content and story on the player side would mean having the players betray their own characters. Its possible, and might even be an amusing variation of an already rather whimsical game!
> 
> I would classify 'classic' D&D (everything previous to 3e) as a hard DM-centered game. The DM makes up all content, the DM adjudicates all actions and is expected to deny them based purely on his own judgment and in accordance with his own pre-generated fiction if he wishes. OD&D even recommended that the players be denied access to their own hit point totals! There is no point in D&D where it is assumed that players will invent content, and the VERY few places where Gygax advises that they might make up something it is explicitly stated that this is entirely under the DM's aegis and the player is only exercising some delegated authority at the convenience of the DM.
> 
> I understand it won't always be played this way, but that just goes to show that NO RPG can really enforce a certain mode of play. It is likely possible to craft a game that has mechanics which really are unworkable and nonsensical if the players are granted any access to the GM's prerogatives, and maybe such a game DOES exist. It would be 'harder' than D&D, but I have never seen it, and thus if I had to put D&D on a scale it would be a 9 in the 'DM is in charge' scale.




No RPG can enforce a certain mode of play, but how the game is constructed can make it more trouble than it's worth to retool it.  4e was like that for me.  I found myself having to re-write so many rules to make it playable by me that I just gave up and went back to 3e.  D&D is only mildly DM facing, because it's very, very easy to retool it to fit just about any playstyle.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> Those are some intense words, but all you are doing is asserting without supporting. I would definitely reject the definition you are using for mother may I as a valid playstyle description. Like Lowkey13 said, it is a pejorative. But even then, when it comes up, it is only useful in describing table disfunction where play starts to resemble the game mother may I in the way I described. Using it pejoratively to describe a large swath of RPGs or play styles, is pretty meaningless I think. Certainly isn't going to illuminate anything. If you see a playstyle you don't like and sum it up as mother may I, you will entirely miss the reason people are engaging it (and you will be lacking the curiosity that Pemerton seemed so concerned people retain when analyzing RPGs). It reeks of bias. It is up there with magic tea party in that respect. That would be like me insisting on referring to games with narrative elements as "story time" systems.




Folks (and I'm not singling you out by any means [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], you already made your annoyance at this phrase clear long since and people should be able to remember it), why don't we stop worrying about 'pejoritive' and whatnot? I mean, I accept you consider the term pejorative and I haven't used it (in a long time at least, maybe I did at some point way back when). 

My real point is, there is a sense to what [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is actually saying. There is a class of RPGs in which the GM can say 'no', as in a hard no which isn't disputable. The reasons for the 'no' are potentially various. It could be a rule about pre-established fiction, simple 'this guy is in charge, its his game' or intended as some sort of refereeing mechanism. It doesn't really matter what the origin is, and it doesn't really matter how frequently it is used, or to what effect. There are other games where such a thing is mechanically impossible, or there is a 'soft no' which the use of some process or resource by the players can revoke. These are two separate classifications of games (even if they weren't I just invented them, and I have stated a pretty reasonable classification rule, so we can assume these classes to be established, right?)

Again, I get that people get irritated, I'd just urge people to understand that there are meaningful distinctions which can be discussed, and that it should be possible to have a discussion about them, so maybe some curbing of people's urges to call each other out and insist on specific terminology, etc. can be mitigated. It would be a better thread


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> D&D is only mildly DM facing, because it's very, very easy to retool it to fit just about any playstyle.



I don't thin this is true at all. I've spent a lot of time playing, GMing, and thinking about the rules of classic D&D (in my case B/X and AD&D 1st ed). The only version I'm familiar with that comes close to supporting "story now" play is the mid-80s Oriental Adventures, and its retooling was very extensive - a whole new roster of PC build elements (class themes, ki powers, NWPs, ancestry, etc) and a whole new roster of GM-side elements (mostly but not exclusively monster descriptions).


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Folks (and I'm not singling you out by any means [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], you already made your annoyance at this phrase clear long since and people should be able to remember it), why don't we stop worrying about 'pejoritive' and whatnot? I mean, I accept you consider the term pejorative and I haven't used it (in a long time at least, maybe I did at some point way back when).
> 
> My real point is, there is a sense to what [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is actually saying. There is a class of RPGs in which the GM can say 'no', as in a hard no which isn't disputable. The reasons for the 'no' are potentially various. It could be a rule about pre-established fiction, simple 'this guy is in charge, its his game' or intended as some sort of refereeing mechanism. It doesn't really matter what the origin is, and it doesn't really matter how frequently it is used, or to what effect. There are other games where such a thing is mechanically impossible, or there is a 'soft no' which the use of some process or resource by the players can revoke. These are two separate classifications of games (even if they weren't I just invented them, and I have stated a pretty reasonable classification rule, so we can assume these classes to be established, right?)
> 
> Again, I get that people get irritated, I'd just urge people to understand that there are meaningful distinctions which can be discussed, and that it should be possible to have a discussion about them, so maybe some curbing of people's urges to call each other out and insist on specific terminology, etc. can be mitigated. It would be a better thread




I'd be happy to have a discussion. But this isn't a discussion about legitimate distinctions between play styles and systems (which I agree 100% do exist). This whole conversation is predicated on wanting to dismiss one style as Mother May I, and hold up another as the better answer. And that is clear from the OP (and the discussion in the other thread that lead us here). Why should any poster here who disagrees with the OP, trust that the OP is really interested in talking about the distinctions, when he won't even acknowledge that our preferences are grounded in anything real? If you really do want to have a conversation, I think that is great. But I'd ask yourself if that is really, truly what you want to have here. Or if you just want to debate which playstyle is better. I am content to see both as perfectly valid approaches. But what I often see from a certain cluster of posters here is fights over playstyle that just have a veneer of analysis.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Folks (and I'm not singling you out by any means [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], you already made your annoyance at this phrase clear long since and people should be able to remember it), why don't we stop worrying about 'pejoritive' and whatnot? I mean, I accept you consider the term pejorative and I haven't used it (in a long time at least, maybe I did at some point way back when).
> 
> My real point is, there is a sense to what  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is actually saying. There is a class of RPGs in which the GM can say 'no', as in a hard no which isn't disputable. The reasons for the 'no' are potentially various. It could be a rule about pre-established fiction, simple 'this guy is in charge, its his game' or intended as some sort of refereeing mechanism. It doesn't really matter what the origin is, and it doesn't really matter how frequently it is used, or to what effect. There are other games where such a thing is mechanically impossible, or there is a 'soft no' which the use of some process or resource by the players can revoke. These are two separate classifications of games (even if they weren't I just invented them, and I have stated a pretty reasonable classification rule, so we can assume these classes to be established, right?)
> 
> Again, I get that people get irritated, I'd just urge people to understand that there are meaningful distinctions which can be discussed, and that it should be possible to have a discussion about them, so maybe some curbing of people's urges to call each other out and insist on specific terminology, etc. can be mitigated. It would be a better thread



While I think it's perfectly rational to not expect others to try to reason out a point from a hostile and pejorative argument.  What's the reason you expect others to cope with hostility because there's a valid point undernearh it but not expect the point-maker to make the point in a non-confrontational manner?  To me, that answer is pretty much whether or not you agree with the point made or not.  I agree there's a point to [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s post, one I've been making as well, but that post was nakedly hostile and belittling.  I think it's perfectly fair for others to not wade through that to find the point.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Oddly, your scroll up just confirmed what I said.  At no time was it simply the DM giving permission.  The DM in my example also gave rules.  Those rules removed his authority to override the players and set up a player facing game.



Max, if the DM is giving things to the players, that means the game assigned those powers to the DM.  Which means, as designed, the game of D&D rests all of those powers in the DM.  That's makes D&D strongly DM facing.  Any houserule a DM makes that changes how D&D works at their table (ie, rewriting rules so players own them) is NOT how D&D is, it's how those houserules are.

Your argument boils down to "D&D is not strongly DM facing because the DM can houserule it."  Surely, you can see that this is a self-defeating argument?

And, before you yell strawman, you'll need to make your argument from the printed rules of D&D to claim things about D&D as a game.  You can't substitue your houserules for the entirety of D&D.




> Giving out a permission is saying, "Hey Tommy, you can go ahead and build the town your PC is from."  That's permission to add content while still keeping it a DM facing game.  Actually altering the game rules to make it a player facing game involves the DM being unable to give out permission.  Or put another way, it's no different than the DM just saying, "Hey, let's play <insert player facing game here> today instead of D&D."



A charitably as I can read this, you seem to be agreeing that altering the rules of D&D is harder than just finding a less DM facing game to play.  As that counters your own argument, I must not be understanding your point here.


----------



## Sadras

chaochou said:


> Player asks, but is powerless to invoke any mechanical resolution to ascertain outcome. GM decides. Absolute rock solid Mother May I play happening right there. To argue otherwise is nonsense.
> 
> ..(snip)...
> 
> There are also games which say 'If you can't agree, the table decides'. Which at most tables sees the GM outnumbered by players about 3 or 4 to 1.
> 
> There are systems where a player spends a bennie and says 'The sect members are drinking at the teahouse tonight' and it becomes true.




In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.

Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity? If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> heh, my comment was mostly just tongue-in-cheek. It is true though, and you note it yourself here, that there are a lot of factors. Sure, Samurai were fairly often polite, but they were also VERY often murderous and uncontrollable. Our histories of late Feudal Japan are replete with tales of murderous rampages and endless blood feuds. Heck, Musashi killed at least 100 people in duels, and 100's more in street fights and assassination attempts (reputedly 42 in a single incident in a garden!).
> 
> Honestly, though it is aside from the topic here, the notion of the 'gentleman's peace' where everyone is armed and they're all peaceful is so much bollocks. Martial Arts may be different for various reasons, and I'm willing to believe it may well BE different, but I think it isn't really the fighting ability of its practitioners which makes it so. I would venture to guess that disciplined people are disciplined in all areas of their lives. This is really an example of 'Nicomachean Ethics'. "We are good not because of who we are, but because we have practiced goodness constantly."



You seem very wedded to your opinion.  I would point out that arguing from the specific to the general is rarely accurate.  For instance, samurai were largely a very polite and rigidly structured society, especially based as it was on martial power and obligation.  The example of Musashi, whom you point out fought many duels, is a goid example of this.  Dueling in feudal Japan was part of the social rituals avoiding widespread violence and were formal affairs that where largely non-lethal.  Duels that were lethal avoided larger violence.  Your characterization is very shallow and dismissive of a complex society.

Gentlemen's Peace's, as you note, do not avoid violence.  They channel it and limit it's scope.  For someone that just said there are muktiple factors, you seem very eager to dismiss complex interactions on the basis of a few examples.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
> For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.
> 
> Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity? If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.



Use fire against Death Knights. 
 If you have to ask permission to do it, well, then...


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Use fire against Death Knights.
> If you have to ask permission to do it, well, then...




Perhaps I wasn't clear. No permission is required, we are talking about the resolution process.

Action Declaration: Character goes to Tea House to find sect.
DM: Despite the tea house being full of patrons, you find no sect member present.

Action Declaration: I cast Cause Fear on the Death Knight in my attempt to frighten him.
DM: (Without making a saving throw) You successfully cast it, but your spell appears to have no affect as the Death Knight keeps on advancing.

Both are automatic No's.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
> For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.
> 
> Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity? If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.



This has been discussed near-endlessly, and I would have thought you've been a participant in at least some of those threads. (Eg I discussed it in a thread a year or so ago about "secret backstory" and I'm pretty sure you posted in that thread.)

No one thinks that, if a GM narrates a room with a door but no windows, the action declaration "I climb through the window" is going to have a chance of success.

Instead of talking about death knights I'm surprised you're not at least pointing to a more contentious example, namely, the immunity of the Duke to Intimidate checks in the example of a skill challenge in the 4e DMG. The same example skill challenge also establishes a way of learning this immunity, namely, via an Insight check. In the past I've said that I regard this as borderline in terms of the balance between reasonable framing and GM fiat by way of secret backstory.

If a group of players were playing PCs who had no magical attack forms, and the GM framed those PCs into a situation which (i) very clearly invited a violent resopnse, and (ii) involved a being able to be hurt only by magical attack forms, then in my view that would be an instance of exactly what   [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is talking about. Ther proverbial ancient red dragon in the first room of a first level dungeon would be another example. (Although that example obviously rests on assumptions about the broader form of gameplay - eg it will involve exploring dungeons - which may not be true in many games.)



Sadras said:


> Perhaps I wasn't clear. No permission is required, we are talking about the resolution process.
> 
> Action Declaration: Character goes to Tea House to find sect.
> DM: Despite the tea house being full of patrons, you find no sect member present.
> 
> Action Declaration: I cast Cause Fear on the Death Knight in attempts to frighten him.
> DM: (Without making a saving throw) You successfully cast it, but your spell appears to have no affect as the Death Knight keeps on advancing.
> 
> Both are automatic No's.



In D&D, being told your fear effect doesn't affect the Death Kinght doesn't end the resolution process for fighting a death knight. (Unless the GM goes on to narrate _The Death Knight keeps advancing . . . . and suck up your soul! Roll a new PC._ Which would be a non-standard way of adjudicating combat in D&D, but would exemplify the same phenomenon  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is pointing to.)


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> No one thinks that, if a GM narrates a room with a door but no windows, the action declaration "I climb through the window" is going to have a chance of success.




The death knight has been narrated by the DM. Secret backstory the death knight is immune to x.
The tea house has been narrated by the DM. Secret backstory the sect are not at the tea house.



> Instead of talking about death knights I'm surprised you're not at least pointing to a more contentious example, namely, the immunity of the Duke to Intimidate checks in the example of a skill challenge in the 4e DMG.




My primary purpose in this line of debate, is to reflect that Hard No's exist in the combat pillar, which is the most detailed part of many RPG's. So it is fair to say if Hard No's can exist in the Combat pillar, why is MMI only attributed towards Social and Exploration pillars by some posters?


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> In D&D, being told your fear effect doesn't affect the Death Kinght doesn't end the resolution process for fighting a death knight.




Actually it does.
You're confusing the entire combat as the Action Declaration.
In that case, the Action Declaration is finding the Sect. Going to the Tea House is but one minor action in that process, just like one _Cause Fear_ casting is but minor action in the combat.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Use fire against Death Knights.
> If you have to ask permission to do it, well, then...




But there are some big differences here. One fire is something your character handles in the setting and tries to apply to the Death Knight. Like if you have a spell, that is an ability your character has that is defined in the setting. The sect being at the Tea House isn't something the character can control in that way. But the character can go to the tea house, the GM isn't going to stop them, unless something intercedes on the way (and I think if the GM is constantly blocking the party in that way, then something is up and the GM isn't doing a terribly good job of running the game). 

It is true that combat and non-combat stuff tends to function differently in most games. You usually have clear rules for combat, whereas you can run an RP moment in game with no mechanics at all. I think you can do either, but I don't think it is mother may I to have fewer mechanics or procedures on the non-combat side of play. It is just the nature of the medium: you can run that stuff without mechanics and the GM serving as the engine of the setting is perfectly viable. Not the only way to do it. It is a valid way to run a game and it has its advantages. People who like those advantages will go for it. The issue people are having in this discussion is this preference is being discussed as if it is based in delusion, a lack of courage to question assumptions, or even as a lack of gaming enlightenment (and the snark around peoples' intellect is really palpable here). If you like running a game where there are mechanics and procedures for non-combat stuff, and you want to include some variation of "Say yes or..." that is totally cool. I just think the attitude being expressed by certain posters, the condescension, is just getting under peoples' skin.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Perhaps I wasn't clear. No permission is required, we are talking about the resolution process.
> 
> Action Declaration: Character goes to Tea House to find sect.
> DM: Despite the tea house being full of patrons, you find no sect member present.
> 
> Action Declaration: I cast Cause Fear on the Death Knight in attempts to frighten him.
> DM: (Without making a saving throw) You successfully cast it, but your spell appears to have no affect as the Death Knight keeps on advancing.
> 
> Both are automatic No's.



This is taking tricks in poker, again.  Using an explicitly D&D mechanical example to ask how a non-D&D mechanic would work together will never illuminate anything.

/begin ramble
It's fair to point out that D&D relies heavily on the DM to adjudicate player actions according to the DM's judgement.  Calling this Mother May I is going straight to a degenerate example of play, which you should not do if your intent is to have productive discussion of play structures.  I think it should be fairly obvious that this kind of GM centered play is widely popular and not bad per se.  That doesn't mean it suits everyone or that a different center of play isn't worth doing an honest compare/contrast of styles.  I do think using bad examples of play and pejoratives is a poor way of doing that.

That said, I understand the frustration on the side of the non-DM-centered play.  If you question how D&D plays, even politely, you're met with a kind of unintentional hostility -- most posters aren't trying to he dismissive, but they're trying to understand the argument while firmly stuck within the franework of thinking native to D&D so tgey musunderstand and misrepresent those arguments.  You can see an echo of this in the threads where older edition D&D players clash with 5e players on mechanics that litter the rules forum.  And they're not disagreeing on fundamental play structures, just specific mechanics within the same general play structure.

This constant having to patiently reiterate your points while reading replies that badly misunderstand the points can lead to anger and frustration.  This is further exacerbated if you really don't like a DM-centered play structure.  

I don't condone it, though.  Engaging here is a choice, a choice to try to understand better both how others play and how you play.  I was on the "other" side of these discussions just a few years ago.  I didn't get it, yet; I was still firmly within the D&D paradigm of thinking.  I think my difference is that I was looking for a different play experience not because I was dissatisfied with D&D, but because I recognized that D&D doesn't do some things I wanted to try well at all.  I still very much like D&D, but I also very much like other games that use different play structures, like Blades on the Dark.  So, I have a foot on both camps. 

 This does not afford me any special authority, and I claim none, but I'm seeing valid arguments on both sides, here, and invalid ones.  I'd call on others to try to use the best examples of play from the other side to compare/contrast and not the bad ones.  Just doing that will naturally avoid pejorative language.

To bring this around, you really must consider how a mechanic works within its game alongside that game's other mechanics.  You can't isolate one and compare it within a different game to evaluate it's usefulness in its home game. 


/end ramble


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> A charitably as I can read this, you seem to be agreeing that altering the rules of D&D is harder than just finding a less DM facing game to play.  As that counters your own argument, I must not be understanding your point here.




Depends.  If you have to learn an entirely new system, then the minor rules changes for D&D will not be more difficult than switching.  If you already have it, then it will.  If it is, an altered D&D will still have a different feel than the other system, so you may want to go through the effort anyway.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
> For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.
> 
> Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity? If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.




What Chaochou is not seeing is that simply asking the DM about something and getting an answer does not qualify as Mother May I.  Mother May I involves needing permission to an absurd degree.  Mother May I go to the bathroom?  Mother May I breathe?  Mother May I have my PC take out his sword?  And so on.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Depends.  If you have to learn an entirely new system, then the minor rules changes for D&D will not be more difficult than switching.  If you already have it, then it will.  If it is, an altered D&D will still have a different feel than the other system, so you may want to go through the effort anyway.



So, then, we're agreed that D&D is strongly DM centered unless you make changes to the ruleset?


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> So, then, we're agreed that D&D is strongly DM centered unless you make changes to the ruleset?




Um, no.  A strongly DM centered game would require much more work to change, and very likely wouldn't be worth the effort no matter what the feel.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Um, no.  A strongly DM centered game would require much more work to change, and very likely wouldn't be worth the effort no matter what the feel.



Again, I must ask you for a specific example of a more GM centered game.  

I get you're trying to establish some hypothetical paragon of GM centered* that not only rests all authority in the GM but also, somehow, does so in a manner that resists change, but this has three problems.  Firstly, the centering of authority has really nothing to do with whether you can change that system.  Secondly, the diffuculty with which a system can be changed has no bearing on hiw it centers authority. 

And thirdly (new para because this is my main point), we can't play a hypothetical game, so in a useful discussion we have to be able to look at how real systems distribute authority.

So, arguing from the hypothetical isn't at all useful, we need concrete examples to examine play.  What's your example of a more GM centered game?


*I submit that the only example of such is writing a novel.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> My primary purpose in this line of debate, is to reflect that Hard No's exist in the combat pillar, which is the most detailed part of many RPG's. So it is fair to say if Hard No's can exist in the Combat pillar, why is MMI only attributed towards Social and Exploration pillars by some posters?



With good faith and respect to "some posters," why do you think that may be the case? Do you think there may be differences between those pillars that contextualize those differences when it comes to MMI?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> With good faith and respect to "some posters," why do you think that may be the case? Do you think there may be differences between those pillars that contextualize those differences when it comes to MMI?



To interpose, I think it's because D&D in general, and later editions specifically, have rules fir combat that empower players.  D&D has soecific "moves" that are generally accepted to be not in question.  However, this is an "as played" argument because as designed the DM still retains veto authority even over combat actions.  This is, however, rarely used in actual play, instead defaulting to the combat mechanics which are accessible to both DM and player.

In a sense, while in combat, D&D is more neutrally centered.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> But there are some big differences here. One fire is something your character handles in the setting and tries to apply to the Death Knight. Like if you have a spell, that is an ability your character has that is defined in the setting. The sect being at the Tea House isn't something the character can control in that way. But the character can go to the tea house, the GM isn't going to stop them, unless something intercedes on the way (and I think if the GM is constantly blocking the party in that way, then something is up and the GM isn't doing a terribly good job of running the game).
> 
> It is true that combat and non-combat stuff tends to function differently in most games. You usually have clear rules for combat, whereas you can run an RP moment in game with no mechanics at all. I think you can do either, but I don't think it is mother may I to have fewer mechanics or procedures on the non-combat side of play. It is just the nature of the medium: you can run that stuff without mechanics and the GM serving as the engine of the setting is perfectly viable. Not the only way to do it. It is a valid way to run a game and it has its advantages. People who like those advantages will go for it. The issue people are having in this discussion is this preference is being discussed as if it is based in delusion, a lack of courage to question assumptions, or even as a lack of gaming enlightenment (and the snark around peoples' intellect is really palpable here). If you like running a game where there are mechanics and procedures for non-combat stuff, and you want to include some variation of "Say yes or..." that is totally cool. I just think the attitude being expressed by certain posters, the condescension, is just getting under peoples' skin.




The above is very reasonable and agreeable. 
On the intellect part, actually my will to share the content introduction with the table, is because I'm not so smart and sparkling as I used to be, so letting others introduce new stuff is a relief, and also a welcomed surprise sometimes. 

I see the advantages of one man leading the game, I practice it, but when I tried to be a player, I've never found a Gm half as reasonable as you, or peolpe here, are, ; were they more D&D gamey or CoC immersive or VtM abusive types. Things go smoothly and well until one agrees, when not, all is lost. 

In conclusion I'd say, Full Gm driven games are fine, but with a caveat: to keep in mind it is always a teamwork game. IMO is important to prevent dispotic Gms as well as players becoming more and more lazy. 

So, I'm looking at it from both sides of the barricade.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> With good faith and respect to "some posters," why do you think that may be the case? Do you think there may be differences between those pillars that contextualize those differences when it comes to MMI?




Yes (for obvious reasons) and No.
Somehow the combat pillar is exempt from MMI because of contextual differences.

So let us talk about Fudging.
In the broad sense of MMI, per the definition of some posters, I would consider Fudging to form part of MMI.
Surely any attempt to subvert Say Yes or RtD, which Fudging does, will result in an MMI situation. 

Given that combat usually involves _secret backstory_ (the details of the opponent/s), I'm under the belief that unless combat is COMPLETELY transparent the game should be classified as MMI since you will never know if Fudging occurs.

Is seems somewhat hypocritical to exempt the combat pillar from MMI, when so many DM's Fudge (as is evident from Enworld's recent Fudge thread).
Furthermore it is much harder to identify a Fudge as opposed to a Say No. 
Most games therefore, under @_*chaochou's*_ definition are indeed MMI given that not everything is transparent and therefore fudging is indeed a high possibility. 
Ridiculous for sure, but that is the broad definition of MMI that some posters in this thread appear to be comfortable with.

Oh Fudge, what can of worms have I opened up now.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> So let us talk about Fudging.



Can we not? 



Sadras said:


> Is seems somewhat hypocritical to exempt the combat pillar from MMI, when so many DM's Fudge (as is evident from Enworld's recent Fudge thread).



That seems like too sandy of ground to build an argument on. Are the people who want "to exempt the combat pillar from MMI" the same people who advocated for fudging on that thread? (Or vice versa?) Because your moral accusation of hypocrisy seems to presuppose that those exempting the combat pillar from MMI are those who also fudge or advocate the use thereof.


----------



## Numidius

What Baker brilliantly solved with his player-facing-dice-rolling AW (and PbtA consequently) is the issue of fudging, while fostering a detailed action declaration by Pc and awareness of the fiction at the table in order to trigger those dice rolls.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Yes (for obvious reasons) and No.
> Somehow the combat pillar is exempt from MMI because of contextual differences.
> 
> So let us talk about Fudging.
> In the broad sense of MMI, per the definition of some posters, I would consider Fudging to form part of MMI.
> Surely any attempt to subvert Say Yes or RtD, which Fudging does, will result in an MMI situation.
> 
> Given that combat usually involves _secret backstory_ (the details of the opponent/s), I'm under the belief that unless combat is COMPLETELY transparent the game should be classified as MMI since you will never know if Fudging occurs.
> 
> Is seems somewhat hypocritical to exempt the combat pillar from MMI, when so many DM's Fudge (as is evident from Enworld's recent Fudge thread).
> Furthermore it is much harder to identify a Fudge as opposed to a Say No.
> Most games therefore, under @_*chaochou's*_ definition are indeed MMI given that not everything is transparent and therefore fudging is indeed a high possibility.
> Ridiculous for sure, but that is the broad definition of MMI that some posters in this thread appear to be comfortable with.
> 
> Oh Fudge, what can of worms have I opened up now.



I disagree, here.  Fudging dice rolls is essentially ignoring mechanics to supply your desired outcome, but this kind of bad play isn't limited to the GM.  It's just that we tend to call fudging by players "cheating."  I don't think conflating fudging die rolls with DM-centric adjudication of player actions  is at all useful or illuminating -- you're just adding an additional facet, not clarifying.

Again, the "Rule 0" of D&D is that the DM is always right, and that extends over the combat pillar as well.  It is within the rules for a DM to override a player combat action just as much as in the social pillar.  Again, the as-played version affords much more latitude to players for action resolution in combat, so this kind of overruling is rare (probably due to D&D's wargaming roots).  In fact, I'd say that it revolves mostly around the same issues as in the social and exploration pillars, in that the fiction prepped but not yet revealed to players is tge primary vector for overruling.  Like using fire spells on a Death Knight, or falling victim to a trap not yet detected while in combat.

Appropo of nothing in particular, apologies for my atrocious spelling errors in recent posts.  I'm on my phone and posting quickly.


----------



## chaochou

Sadras said:


> In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
> For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.




So name me the game that you're talking about which isn't D&D which features such things.



Sadras said:


> Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity?




Ah, well at least you're trying to ask a question that starts to address one of the issues at hand.

But your attempt to conflate them says that you suppose that the authority to author a monster and the authority  to author world backstory and the authority to unilaterally decide the outcome of action declarations or the authority to unilaterally overide agreed resolution mechanics (or not) - are all the same.



Sadras said:


> If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.




Firstly, you don't even know what games I might be talking about. You're stumbling around blind. But more pertinently - to argue as you have is to provide yet more evidence that you not only run MMI, but can't conceive of any other way to play. To lump together lots of types of authority and imagine they must all sit under the GM simply and clearly reiterates it.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> It is true that combat and non-combat stuff tends to function differently in most games. You usually have clear rules for combat, whereas you can run an RP moment in game with no mechanics at all.



What "most"? Fate, PbtA, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel, 4e D&D - these are just some of the RPGs I know of which don't fit your description - they have resolution systems for non-combat action declarations which aren't exhausted by "The GM decides". Even AD&D gestured towards this with the NWPs in Oriental Adventures, although there are obvious weaknesses in the mechanical implementation.



Sadras said:


> You're confusing the entire combat as the Action Declaration.



I'm not confusing. I'm observing.

If, in fact, player X is playing a PC whose wall raison d'etre is to drive a death knight away by causing fear, then your example would be analogous to the tea house example.

But in the typical D&D combat the goal of the player is to defeat the monster. The attempt to cause fear has _defeating the death knight_ as it's goal, and the failure of that spell doesn't bring the situation to an end.



Sadras said:


> The death knight has been narrated by the DM. Secret backstory the death knight is immune to x.
> The tea house has been narrated by the DM. Secret backstory the sect are not at the tea house.



The death knight's immunity to fear doesn't dictate the resolution of the scene, subject to some of the very atypical examples I've already suggseted which - if they are in play - _do_ give the death knight example the same character as [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has referred to.



Sadras said:


> So it is fair to say if Hard No's can exist in the Combat pillar, why is MMI only attributed towards Social and Exploration pillars by some posters?



It's not to do with the "pillar". It's to do with the structure of scene resolution. I don't think this is very obscure.



Bedrockgames said:


> But there are some big differences here. One fire is something your character handles in the setting and tries to apply to the Death Knight. Like if you have a spell, that is an ability your character has that is defined in the setting. The sect being at the Tea House isn't something the character can control in that way.



"Mother may I" and similar labels aren't intended to be descriptions of the imagined causal power of imagined PCs. They're descriptions of the actual causal power of the players in respect of the shared fiction.


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> So let us talk about Fudging.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Given that combat usually involves _secret backstory_ (the details of the opponent/s), I'm under the belief that unless combat is COMPLETELY transparent the game should be classified as MMI since you will never know if Fudging occurs.



In DW, the GM never rolls any dice. So how would fudging occur?

In the games I GM, I roll my dice like everyone else, and read out the results - exalting in my natural 20s (when GMing 4e).

I think you are making assumptions about play practices which don't extend to many RPG tables.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], what's your point? Are you denying that there are many RPG tables where GMs roll dice like everyone else, for the table to see? Or that there are many table playing games like DW in which the GM rolls no dice?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> What "most"? Fate, PbtA, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel, 4e D&D - these are just some of the RPGs I know of which don't fit your description - they have resolution systems for non-combat action declarations which aren't exhausted by "The GM decides". Even AD&D gestured towards this with the NWPs in Oriental Adventures, although there are obvious weaknesses in the mechanical implementation.




Pemerton, I wasn't particularly concerned with 'most' in this case. I was acknowledging the point the poster made, and responding by saying something to the effect of 'sure it is true that'. But I don't know whether it is most, a majority of games, or just a substantial number of mainstream games. But clearly there are RPGs where this is the case, because it is possible for it to be the case in the medium. That was my only. I don't know why you want to dig into every corner of a statement in order to point score.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No one thinks that, if a GM narrates a room with a door but no windows, the action declaration "I climb through the window" is going to have a chance of success.



I search for a secret window? 



> If a group of players were playing PCs who had no magical attack forms, and the GM framed those PCs into a situation which (i) very clearly invited a violent resopnse, and (ii) involved a being able to be hurt only by magical attack forms, then in my view that would be an instance of exactly what   [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is talking about.



Unless the challenge being put is actually for the players/PCs to look beyond the obviously-invited violent response, think outside the box a bit, and go to plan B; be it negotiation, flight, bribery, surrender, or whatever.  And this can come before or after the PCs realize their weapons can't harm the Knight.

As for whatever chaochou might have said, I didn't see it as I think s/he has me blocked.



> In D&D, being told your fear effect doesn't affect the Death Kinght doesn't end the resolution process for fighting a death knight.



Of course not*.  It's just one of many little resolutions that add up to the overall resolution of the combat.

* - unless you're the last PC standing and the fear effect is your last-ditch desperation move in certain knowledge that if it fails you won't last out the round.


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## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> Well, you said that Sadras was making assumptions about play practices.
> 
> I think that his assumptions are somewhat well-founded.
> 
> I am sure that there are some tables that play diceless games.
> 
> I am sure that there are some tables that play games with dice with no fudging.
> 
> I think based on the available evidence that Sadras's questions about fudging do, in fact, "extend to many RPG tables."



Sure. There are many restaurant tables at which meat is eaten. There are also many restaurant tables at which meat is not eaten. Hence an assumption that _eating at a restaurant_ entails _eating meat_ will not be true at many restaurant tables. The fact that there are many other tables at which the assumption holds is beside the point.

There are many tables to which [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]'s assumptions do not extend. That is quite compatible with there being many to which they do extend. Given that I'm pretty confident that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] would characterise the tables to which they do extend as "Mother May I", I don't see how Sadras thinks that pointing to them undermines chaochou's analysis.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> No RPG can enforce a certain mode of play, but how the game is constructed can make it more trouble than it's worth to retool it.  4e was like that for me.  I found myself having to re-write so many rules to make it playable by me that I just gave up and went back to 3e.  D&D is only mildly DM facing, because it's very, very easy to retool it to fit just about any playstyle.




You are of course welcome to your opinion. IMHO 'classic' D&D is a pretty rigid game which really only works as what it was designed to be, an FRPG with a DM entirely in charge of content, and with a steep power curve and a lot of fairly gonzo kitchen-sink fantasy elements. It can bend a bit in higher or lower magic directions, slightly, but its not a real flexible game.

Note how TSR never attempted to use D&D as an engine for other games. The closest was Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World, but even there the game is VERY different in several important particulars (PCs have MUCH more hit points for example, and level advancement is practically non-existent, there are no classes, etc.). That's it, every other TSR game uses entirely different mechanics (of many sorts, they never did seemingly believe in a generic system, unless you count Alternity, and that was a minor blip at the end of TSR). 

Nor does classic D&D have a lot of the subsystems you really NEED to even run most types of game. It has very little in the way of explicit character elements, nothing you can really use for a meta-game resource, and doesn't even have a skill or 'power' type of system that grants characters something they can use to make checks or carry out actions. Some classes have 'stuff' that KINDA does that, but you have to go to after 1986 to find generally applicable skill systems, and they're not even really workable until 3e, which is hardly classic.

EDIT: In fact, 3e is a very informative edition in terms of indicating what WotC thought the limitations of 2e were. Lack of a generic skill system and common resolution system! Overly rigid class system, etc. D20 Modern and the 'D20 System' in general takes this even further, finally ACTUALLY giving us a modestly generic system based on a rule set which can trace its descent from classic Gygax D&D in a fairly straight path. It is a LOT different from Gygax, and yet STILL suffered from enough of the same limitations that it never really took off (I mean, there was a rush of D20-ized game books that came out, and then they all rapidly faded away as designers and players quickly found out it wasn't a great idea).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
> For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.
> 
> Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity? If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.




I would argue that there are other ways to defeat these monsters. It may be a bit of a puzzle, but 2 things make it not MMI. First you can reason about this, everyone knows, or can learn, that Shambling Mounds and lightning are a bad mix! Once you know this, they're not hard to defeat. Heck, you might not even stumble upon this at all! When the DM says "no, you can't find a way through obstacle X, period." that's a LOT harder constraint. 

I'd say that monster immunities COULD become something abusive, if they are presented in specific ways (IE by the nature of the situation they are bound to make fighting the monsters basically impossible). Its not a perfectly black and white thing.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> You seem very wedded to your opinion.  I would point out that arguing from the specific to the general is rarely accurate.  For instance, samurai were largely a very polite and rigidly structured society, especially based as it was on martial power and obligation.  The example of Musashi, whom you point out fought many duels, is a goid example of this.  Dueling in feudal Japan was part of the social rituals avoiding widespread violence and were formal affairs that where largely non-lethal.  Duels that were lethal avoided larger violence.  Your characterization is very shallow and dismissive of a complex society.
> 
> Gentlemen's Peace's, as you note, do not avoid violence.  They channel it and limit it's scope.  For someone that just said there are muktiple factors, you seem very eager to dismiss complex interactions on the basis of a few examples.




I would instead argue that they perpetuate violence because they undermine the means and the habit of coming to mutually beneficial and acceptable arrangements. Arming oneself is fundamentally a statement "I will kill you rather than deal with the issues which create hostility." I argue this is a fundamental issue in contemporary society, though I think we should not pursue that discussion here, it would be best taken elsewhere.


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## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would instead argue that they perpetuate violence because they undermine the means and the habit of coming to mutually beneficial and acceptable arrangements. Arming oneself is fundamentally a statement "I will kill you rather than deal with the issues which create hostility." I argue this is a fundamental issue in contemporary society, though I think we should not pursue that discussion here, it would be best taken elsewhere.




History is replete with armed men of violence coming to mutually beneficial and acceptable arrangements, though.  Feudal Japan is not remarkable in it's time for it's level of violence.  Neither was the Wild West.  Both were largely peaceful and most people got along just fine, including the armed ones.  You seem to have a Hollywood version of history.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> But there are some big differences here. One fire is something your character handles in the setting and tries to apply to the Death Knight. Like if you have a spell, that is an ability your character has that is defined in the setting. The sect being at the Tea House isn't something the character can control in that way. But the character can go to the tea house, the GM isn't going to stop them, unless something intercedes on the way (and I think if the GM is constantly blocking the party in that way, then something is up and the GM isn't doing a terribly good job of running the game).
> 
> It is true that combat and non-combat stuff tends to function differently in most games. You usually have clear rules for combat, whereas you can run an RP moment in game with no mechanics at all. I think you can do either, but I don't think it is mother may I to have fewer mechanics or procedures on the non-combat side of play. It is just the nature of the medium: you can run that stuff without mechanics and the GM serving as the engine of the setting is perfectly viable. Not the only way to do it. It is a valid way to run a game and it has its advantages. People who like those advantages will go for it. The issue people are having in this discussion is this preference is being discussed as if it is based in delusion, a lack of courage to question assumptions, or even as a lack of gaming enlightenment (and the snark around peoples' intellect is really palpable here). If you like running a game where there are mechanics and procedures for non-combat stuff, and you want to include some variation of "Say yes or..." that is totally cool. I just think the attitude being expressed by certain posters, the condescension, is just getting under peoples' skin.




I'm not sure I'd fully agree that 'most games' have a different mechanics for combat and non-combat. I mean, sure, there are generally certain procedures which exist in RPGs that are there to handle peculiarities of combat, but IME MOST RPGs base the two on an underlying basic resolution system (including D&D since 3e). MANY games don't distinguish at all and use the identical same mechanics in all situations, or only layer on a small amount of stuff. For example Traveler adds a 'range band' and rules for how to change bands onto its existing resolution system, and that's pretty much it (there are IIRC parry rules in old black book Traveler, but as melee combat is unusual in that game they are kinda irrelevant). 

Obviously classic D&D is as you state, and some other (especially older) RPGs likewise. These are one case, where non-combat is entirely descriptive and mostly doesn't rely on dice. One of the reasons this has become uncommon as a design is effectively what you are describing. As games became less tests of player skill, and as it became expected for them to work in a wide variety of settings, people found it necessary to have conflict resolution of all types become subject to dice. This is largely a way of adding variety and insuring that players sometimes get what they want even if the referee might not be inclined to give it to them. 

I think there is a lot less condescension than you are feeling which is intended, TBH. There are some very strong preferences at work though! So, for example, while there are DMs with whom I might play AD&D and have fun, they are very specific ones who's DMing style I know and can work with. We would probably also introduce some procedures into play to reduce the necessity of DMs simply hard adjudicating most everything outside combat and exploration. I'd note that this is something which 5e retains from 4e days, even its 'social pillar' has resolution mechanics in place, as well as Inspiration.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> In DW, the GM never rolls any dice. So how would fudging occur?
> 
> In the games I GM, I roll my dice like everyone else, and read out the results - exalting in my natural 20s (when GMing 4e).
> 
> I think you are making assumptions about play practices which don't extend to many RPG tables.




Right, I wouldn't find it productive or sensible to fudge dice. If I am 'playing to see what happens', then why would I force an outcome? If I'm playing as an advocate of the player's having fun and engaging their avowed interests, then there's no sense in which I am concerned if they fail or succeed, all outcomes will produce fun.

TBH, I personally feel that playing in a fairly 'story now' kind of way is actually most likely to result in a GM both framing scenes and resolving them in a logical, plausible and coherent way. My long experience indicates that in a more traditional classic D&D-esque structure it is quite likely the DM will go through all sorts of contortions at some point. Things like illusionism will arise (@Sadras fudging, which produces the illusion of choice, but not the substance), or hard railroading techniques may be employed (no, the tea house has no sect in it because the adventure is structured so that the sect is met at location X and it cannot accommodate the players attempting to change that). This is where 'no myth' arose, to deal with *that* ramp down into the morass. 

These can all be classified as 'bad GM, bad game', but there IS a genuine desire in the circles of game designers to make games which reliably return better play experiences for more players. We can argue about success, but clearly even WotC felt this in the design of both 4e and 5e (and maybe 3.5 too, its harder to say).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> History is replete with armed men of violence coming to mutually beneficial and acceptable arrangements, though.  Feudal Japan is not remarkable in it's time for it's level of violence.  Neither was the Wild West.  Both were largely peaceful and most people got along just fine, including the armed ones.  You seem to have a Hollywood version of history.




I currently lack statistics or other objective data with which to assess this assertion, but I don't feel that it is backed by anything. Obviously SOME people in all places and times get along.


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## Sadras

I'm going to try address everyone's reply as time permits.



Aldarc said:


> That seems like too sandy of ground to build an argument on. Are the people who want "to exempt the combat pillar from MMI" the same people who advocated for fudging on that thread? (Or vice versa?) Because your moral accusation of hypocrisy seems to presuppose that those exempting the combat pillar from MMI are those who also fudge or advocate the use thereof.




I'm stating fudging occurs more often than not, at least by those who voted on the threads linked by lowkey13.
Secret Backstory exists in combat (monster statistics), therefore given the broad definition of MMI that appears to exist within this thread I would think the only way to truly be MMI free as defined, is if there is complete transparency.



chaochou said:


> So name me the game that you're talking about which isn't D&D which features such things.




I'm not here to attack games, and I probably do not know as many games as you do. 



chaochou said:


> But your attempt to conflate them says that you suppose that the authority to author a monster and the authority  to author world backstory and the authority to unilaterally decide the outcome of action declarations or the authority to unilaterally overide agreed resolution mechanics (or not) - are all the same.




I do not believe I'm conflating here.
Hard No's exist in combat. Some actions (attacks) taken by characters have no effect other than to inform the PC that their action (attack) had no effect. I'm saying that is the same as a PC declaring he/she is going to the Tea House to find sect members. At the TH no sect members are present. A new declaration must be made to find these sect members/to hurt the enemy.



> Firstly, you don't even know what games I might be talking about. You're stumbling around blind. But more pertinently - to argue as you have is to provide yet more evidence that you not only run MMI, but can't conceive of any other way to play. To lump together lots of types of authority and imagine they must all sit under the GM simply and clearly reiterates it.




Attempt to argue the point not the poster and you will have more success in the debate. I am engaging in earnest.

 @_*Ovinomancer*_, @_*pemerton*_ [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - I will have to get to your replies much later.


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## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> I suppose a lot of that depends on your definition of “many”.
> But that’s for you and Sadras.
> 
> I’m just pointing you to some data outside of your own table.



So you don't think there are many tables that don't fudge? Or that play PbtA games in which the GM never rolls dice?


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## Sadras

Apologies, I'm breaking this down.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would argue that there are other ways to defeat these monsters.




...But there are other ways to find the sect members.



> It may be a bit of a puzzle, but 2 things make it not MMI. First you can reason about this, everyone knows, or can learn, that Shambling Mounds and lightning are a bad mix! Once you know this, they're not hard to defeat. Heck, you might not even stumble upon this at all! When the DM says "no, you can't find a way through obstacle X, period." that's a LOT harder constraint.




A DM may also reason why sect members are not at the Tea House. 

And as far as I remember, the example used is, the DM adjudication rules that there are no sect members at the TH, not that they cannot keep looking for them in any way shape or form (magic, information gathering - whether it be bribery, seduction, coercion...etc, or visit another location).


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I'm not confusing. I'm observing.
> 
> If, in fact, player X is playing a PC whose wall raison d'etre is to drive a death knight away by causing fear, then your example would be analogous to the tea house example.
> 
> But in the typical D&D combat the goal of the player is to defeat the monster. The attempt to cause fear has _defeating the death knight_ as it's goal, and the failure of that spell doesn't bring the situation to an end.
> 
> The death knight's immunity to fear doesn't dictate the resolution of the scene, subject to some of the very atypical examples I've already suggseted which - if they are in play - _do_ give the death knight example the same character as  @_*chaochou*_ has referred to.
> 
> It's not to do with the "pillar". It's to do with the structure of scene resolution. I don't think this is very obscure.




This entire response rests on the word _scene_.
A new parameter has now been introduced (at least to me) where it is ok to Say No as long as the scene is not resolved via that No. Have I understood you correctly?




> In DW, the GM never rolls any dice. So how would fudging occur?




As per my response to @_*chaochou*_, I'm not focusing on a few specific games, I'm taking the definition of MMI some posters have understood it and testing it.

As for how would fudging occur in DW I do not know. Can fudging occur via secret information (i.e. increasing hit points)?



> In the games I GM, I roll my dice like everyone else, and read out the results - exalting in my natural 20s (when GMing 4e).




Ok. I don't believe I singled you out and said you fudge.



> I think you are making assumptions about play practices which don't extend to many RPG tables.




That word *many* is troublesome.
Is it your tables' many? Is the RPG's community's many? Is it Enworld's RPG community's many? Is it many for the gaming tables using the POTA system?


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## Sadras

Ovinomancer, I didn't respond to your _rant_ post upthread as I understand the position the other side is making, I'm just prodding to determine the limits applicable to their MMI definition.



Ovinomancer said:


> I disagree, here.  Fudging dice rolls is essentially ignoring mechanics to *supply your desired outcome*, but this kind of bad play isn't limited to the GM.  It's just that we tend to call fudging by players "cheating."  I don't think conflating fudging die rolls with DM-centric adjudication of player actions  is at all useful or illuminating -- you're just adding an additional facet, not clarifying.




Emphasis mine.
But is not DM-centric adjudication = supply your desired outcome?

We currently have a thread that is dealing with the 5e sneak attack damage on undead and constructs. Their are a wide range of DM adjudications within that thread. Some go by RAW, others say include oozes and/or elementals only, others say only incorporeal undead should be included, others include the whole lot as per 3.5e, others make a decision on the spot depending on the monster.
These all are DM adjudications to supply a desired outcome.



> Again, the "Rule 0" of D&D is that the DM is always right, and that extends over the combat pillar as well.  It is within the rules for a DM to override a player combat action just as much as in the social pillar.




But that is my point. Given that, why do we exempt the combat pillar from this particular definition of MMI?


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## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not sure I'd fully agree that 'most games' have a different mechanics for combat and non-combat.




This is why I'm attempting to understand why the Hard No's in the combat pillar are excluded from the definition of MMI.

 @_*Bedrockgames*_ has a narrow definition of MMI, and then you have a number of posters who ascribe all _Say No_ adjudications to MMI, but appear to limit the definition to only the social and exploration pillars.  



> We would probably also introduce some procedures into play to reduce the necessity of DMs simply hard adjudicating most everything outside combat and exploration.




_Saying Yes_ though is DM adjudication. This sentence seems to imply you prefer rolling than having a DM automatically _Say Yes_?


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Secret Backstory exists in combat (monster statistics)



Monster statistics aren't secret backstory. They're not backstory at all.

A fictional fact about a monster (eg death knights never flee in terror) is backstory, but is it secret? From whom? Not anyone who's read the Monster Manual. In 4e, not from anyone who makes a Monster Knowledge check. This goes to [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s point about conflation.



Sadras said:


> This entire response rests on the word _scene_.
> A new parameter has now been introduced (at least to me) where it is ok to Say No as long as the scene is not resolved via that No. Have I understood you correctly?



I don't think your notion of _saying No_ is coherent.

If a player makes a roll to hit, and the roll is a failure, the GM (in a system that has such a role of the more-or-less traditional sort - all the RPGs I play do so) will tell the player that the attack failed. No one on this thread has suggested that that is "Mother may I." It's a failed check.

If a player engages in a contested check against the GM rolling from some NPC's stats, the check may fail. And the player may not know in advance what the chance of failure is (depending on game rules and table conventions about keeping GM-side stats secret). If the NPC's stat correlates to the fiction as presented by the GM, this will almost certainly not be characterised by anyone on this thread as "Mother may I." If the NPC's stat is a rabbit from a hat, then maybe it is closer to that, though.

If a player declares an attack with a _fear_ effect against a death knight, and fails, is the player allowed a retry? In most approaches to GMing D&D, the answer is yes (perhaps at the cost of some hp loss due to the Death Knight getting in an extra round of actions, having suffered no hp loss itself due to the failed effect). That's already different from the tea house case, where there is no systematic framework for retries. (_We try the teahouse. We try the docks. We try the guardhouse._ Etc. That's not retries, that seems like the very paradigm of fishing around for an answer from the GM.)

Does the player know that the attack may fail? If the fiction has been well-narrated (eg undead lack mortal minds) then perhaps. Is the aim of play for the player to solve the puzzle of how to defeat a death knight (like the demi-lich in ToH)? Then perhaps we _are_ in "Mother may I" territory, depending on further details about whether it was a puzzle the players were expected to reason out, or a flat-out guessing game.

Notice that in the 4e DMG example of a Duke who can't be intimidated, (1) there are retries permitted within the framework of the skill challenge (until the 3rd failure occurs), and (2) the information is accessible _within the scene_, as the outcome of an Insight check (ie an attempt to learn further fiction about the personality/disposition of the Duke).

The various distinctions that I have drawn above may not be interesting or significant to you - I don't know. I think most RPGers who are disinclined to approach resolution through the _GM decides_ approach _are _likely to find them significant.



Sadras said:


> I'm not focusing on a few specific games, I'm taking the definition of MMI some posters have understood it and testing it.



If you point to certain GMing practices (deploying monsters with unanticipated immunities as a trick/test for the players) in the context of a particular RPG that is not well-known for its support of non-_GM decides_ play (D&D in its non-4e versions), then I'm not sure what sort of test you are engaging in. Perhaps all you're doing is showing how hard it can be to play D&D in a non-"Mother may I style", because (outside of its 4e version) it doesn't provide robust mechanics for allowing framing to unfold within a scene in a way that is dramatically and narratively satisfying without risking a total hosing of the players (the demi-lich in ToH would be a poster-child example of the absence of such robust mechanics).

After all, I would conjecture that many of the posters who don't care for _GM decides_ in the teahouse case wouldn't be very keen on _monster with unanticipated immunity as a trap/test for the p layers_ either. (I'm not, for instance.) It may not be a coincidence that, of D&D editions, many of those posters seem to prefer 4e, which does have robust mechanics for handling this that other versions of D&D tend to lack.

Anyway, turning to RPGs other than D&D: upthread there were discussions about how new backstory might be introduced in DW by way of moves like Discern Realities or Spout Lore. How would you see your Death Knight example working out in that context? Learning that the Death Knight is immune to one of a PCs' main forms of attack might be a "soft" GM move.

In my Cortex+ Fantasy game, the players learned that a Crypt Thing can teleport people away from it when I spent 2d12 to end the scene, and described their PCs being teleported away to some place deep in the dungeon. The fiction was new to them, but the _spend 2d12 to end the scene_ mechanic is a core rule that they were quite familiar with. A novel immunity would also rest on a core mechanic (spend a Doom Pool die to activate a SFX that permits disregarding Stress, Trauma and Complications having a certain sort of in-fiction origin or character).

Of the non-D&D fantasy systems that I am familiar with the one that comes closest to D&D in its _GM builds monsters and sometimes keeps details of them secret from player_ is Burning Wheel. But there are other features of BW GMing principles and techniques that would mean that immunities, if unrevealed, are unlikely to be _unanticipated_. For instance: when, in my BW game, the PCs fought zombies, the zombies had a high degree of crit reduction which made them hard to maim and kill. One of the players commented that _it felt like fighting zombies_. Those "resistances" were not revealed in advance of play, but were not unanticipated. Confrontations in BW (be they martial or social) tend to be deeply grounded in an unfolding fiction very differently from D&D (even 4e), which makes the idea of _We just came across a death knight, and fought it, and found it immune to our Fear effects_ largely inapposite.

This is what underpins [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s request that you identify some games, other than D&D, that you have in mind, when presenting your example of how combat might be framed and adjudicated and are suggesting that it is no different from the teahouse example. (Note that, if the absence of the sect members from the teahouse was deeply grounded in an unfolding fiction then it becomes much less likely that the example actually occurs, as it becomes much less likely that the players would just declare _We go to the teahouse to see if any sect members are there_ and then look to the GM for an answer.)



Sadras said:


> That word *many* is troublesome.
> Is it your tables' many? Is the RPG's community's many? Is it Enworld's RPG community's many? Is it many for the gaming tables using the POTA system?



What's the trouble? I assert (1) that many tables play Dungeon World and other PbtA games, and (2) that at those tables fudging doesn't occur. Likewise for Cortex+ Heroic. And just to add: fudging in Cortex+ Heroic, played by the rules, is literally impossible because every player at the table can see the dice pools, see the results, and keep track of whether any stress or complication has grown beyond d12 in size (there are no hp totals, secret or otherwise). 

Fudging is also impossible in Cthulhu Dark - the only time the GM might roll the dice is to set up a contest for a player's check, and the result of the die roll will be visible on the table where the die has landed. And the only numerical stat that is tracked is Insanity, which is recorded on a die sitting in front of each player. That said, there may not be _many_ tables playing Cthulhu Dark, although that would be a pity as it is a good RPG.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think there is a lot less condescension than you are feeling which is intended, TBH.




I don't feel you have been particularly condescending. I would encourage to read responses by other posters and see if you still draw this conclusion.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not sure I'd fully agree that 'most games' have a different mechanics for combat and non-combat. I mean, sure, there are generally certain procedures which exist in RPGs that are there to handle peculiarities of combat, but IME MOST RPGs base the two on an underlying basic resolution system (including D&D since 3e). MANY games don't distinguish at all and use the identical same mechanics in all situations, or only layer on a small amount of stuff. For example Traveler adds a 'range band' and rules for how to change bands onto its existing resolution system, and that's pretty much it (there are IIRC parry rules in old black book Traveler, but as melee combat is unusual in that game they are kinda irrelevant).
> 
> Obviously classic D&D is as you state, and some other (especially older) RPGs likewise. These are one case, where non-combat is entirely descriptive and mostly doesn't rely on dice. One of the reasons this has become uncommon as a design is effectively what you are describing. As games became less tests of player skill, and as it became expected for them to work in a wide variety of settings, people found it necessary to have conflict resolution of all types become subject to dice. This is largely a way of adding variety and insuring that players sometimes get what they want even if the referee might not be inclined to give it to them.
> .




I wasn't particularly concerned with defending my choice of the the word 'most' here. I honestly don't know what the ratio is. Just a general impression that lots of the games I've played deal with combat differently than non-combat (not saying they don't have rules, just there is more room for fewer rules, less clarity, etc). There will obviously be games that don't fit this description (or we wouldn't be having this discussion). But even games I play that have substantial non-combat rules, tend not to be as deeply codified as combat (or at least I haven't noticed that their non-combat rules are as deeply codified if they are). So I wasn't saying most games have zero resolution system outside combat. Either way, this is probably not very relevant to the actual focus of the discussion. I was just trying to acknowledge a point made  by someone on the other side with this statement. This isn't an aspect of the topic I am deeply invested in defending.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sadras said:


> Apologies, I'm breaking this down.
> 
> 
> 
> ...But there are other ways to find the sect members.
> 
> 
> 
> A DM may also reason why sect members are not at the Tea House.
> 
> And as far as I remember, the example used is, the DM adjudication rules that there are no sect members at the TH, not that they cannot keep looking for them in any way shape or form (magic, information gathering - whether it be bribery, seduction, coercion...etc, or visit another location).




In my example the situation at the table would actually be as follows: the players went to the city and looked for the sect specifically at the tea house. I should say they could have said something to me like "We spend the day looking around the city for signs of bone breaking sect" and I would have then called for a City Survival Roll, and they could have found leads or rumors that way (as well as a clear indication they are or are not at that tea house). So technically there was a mechanical solution available (with the caveat that the GM is the one who calls for the roll based on what the players say they are doing). Going to the Tea House specifically was a more efficient and direct thing to do at the time. That took an hour, whereas combing the city would have taken most of the day. And ultimately where Bone Breaking Sect members end up being would be up to me, based on what I know about the sect (how far its headquarters are from here, what they are doing, what kinds of things are presently going on in the martial world, whether they are bound by fate to meet them here, and how dramatically/genre appropriate it is to the present situation the PCs are in---I do consider that as a factor as well). When it comes to Bone Breaking Sect specifically, I have a lot of information, including entries for the leader, his wife, their son, three or four of their major sub chiefs, and stats for the different grades of disciple. I also have information on their allies ,and I know what goals Bone Breaking Sect has been pursuing. I find all this information tends to make it easy for me to have an immediate sense of whether they would be at the tea house or be likely to have contacts there. If I am on the fence at all, I would roll a d10 and assign a chance of different possibilities----i.e 1- the tea house is a front for the sect, 3-4 there is a contact of the sect there, 5 there is a sect member there, 6-10 other stuff is going on and they are not there  (and in this case, I think doing that would be fair): I tend to write little tables on the fly in my notebook as I run sessions for this type of situation as it arises if I feel the need to do so.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Ovinomancer, I didn't respond to your _rant_ post upthread as I understand the position the other side is making, I'm just prodding to determine the limits applicable to their MMI definition.



I do not think you do, because you keep presenting arguments that are akin to taking tricks in poker.

Frex, you're fixated on how the stat block of a D&D monster can cause a hard no in combat through secret backstory. This isn't terribly illuminating of anything other than how D&D is a GM-centered game in terms of authority. It certainly doesn't touch on games that aren't GM centered because such things as immunity to fire are either already clearly established in the fiction or are introduced in play, likely as the result of a failure where the GM is thwarting an intent of "kill it with fire." 

There are some things in the middle, but they tend to be poor examples and they start trying to shove camels through the eyes of needles.  Like 4e, with clear secret backstory in monster writeups that gets explained away as "the players can read the monster manuals so it's not secret it's just backstory"  Always found that a very weak argument for backstory not being secret -- if the not secret part depends on out of play homework assignments....



> Emphasis mine.
> But is not DM-centric adjudication = supply your desired outcome?



Um, yes? I mean, that's the core of the MMI comparison, isn't it?  That the GM has all the authority and can force their desired outcome so all player action declarations are requests to the GM needing approval?  Fudging is just a less overt means of doing so.


> We currently have a thread that is dealing with the 5e sneak attack damage on undead and constructs. Their are a wide range of DM adjudications within that thread. Some go by RAW, others say include oozes and/or elementals only, others say only incorporeal undead should be included, others include the whole lot as per 3.5e, others make a decision on the spot depending on the monster.
> These all are DM adjudications to supply a desired outcome.



Ah, I think I'm following a bit better here.  You're saying that the GM altering mechanics through houseruling is somewhat analogous to fudging or using secret backstory. I disagree; this comparison is too loose. Firstly, this kind of unilateral houseruling is only possible in strongly GM centered games, so its existence is  not a good defense  against bad MMI play.  Secondly, it's not really analogous if such houserules are made public because then it's part of the mechanics in play.  The nature of an enemy is very rarely secret, so players have the ability to choose useful actions.

And that last is an important distinction.  Monsters can have immunities to some player actions and this doesn't imply on GM centered adjudication if the knowledge is open and in play.  

As you note, transparency is needed, but it's not hard and it doesn't prevent surprises in play.  When I run 5e, for example, I'm very open with monster statblocks.  I either foreshadow monster abilities strongly or I provide key information openly to characters with appropriate backgrounds or proficiencies. This is because I don't think an encounter is made more fun by the mage using a firebolt on a Death Knight only to fail but rather the mage making a choice knowing her fire speciality is off the table.

Games that are more balanced between GM and player do not revolve around secret backstory.  Story Now games and No Myth games actively eschew it.  This is because secret backstory breaks the resolution engines of these games.  All backstory is either presented in scene framing or generated through play.




> But that is my point. Given that, why do we exempt the combat pillar from this particular definition of MMI?



It's not.  The GM approval is still in effect.  Culturally, though, we tend to play combat differently, but this doesn't change that the GM still has ultimate approval.  To reference another thread, the compendium one that's now about shield master, one of the "sides" is entirely arguing from a GM centered perspective in combat, where the GM is the one that determines which mechanics are used to resolve player action declarations, up to and including when and which combat action mechanics are used.  That can't happen in a non-GM centered game.

(For what it's worth, I disagree with that poster but find their arguments to be well thought out and consistent with the rules.)


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> In my example the situation at the table would actually be as follows: the players went to the city and looked for the sect specifically at the tea house. I should say they could have said something to me like "We spend the day looking around the city for signs of bone breaking sect" and I would have then called for a City Survival Roll, and they could have found leads or rumors that way (as well as a clear indication they are or are not at that tea house). So technically there was a mechanical solution available (with the caveat that the GM is the one who calls for the roll based on what the players say they are doing). Going to the Tea House specifically was a more efficient and direct thing to do at the time. That took an hour, whereas combing the city would have taken most of the day. And ultimately where Bone Breaking Sect members end up being would be up to me, based on what I know about the sect (how far its headquarters are from here, what they are doing, what kinds of things are presently going on in the martial world, whether they are bound by fate to meet them here, and how dramatically/genre appropriate it is to the present situation the PCs are in---I do consider that as a factor as well). When it comes to Bone Breaking Sect specifically, I have a lot of information, including entries for the leader, his wife, their son, three or four of their major sub chiefs, and stats for the different grades of disciple. I also have information on their allies ,and I know what goals Bone Breaking Sect has been pursuing. I find all this information tends to make it easy for me to have an immediate sense of whether they would be at the tea house or be likely to have contacts there. If I am on the fence at all, I would roll a d10 and assign a chance of different possibilities----i.e 1- the tea house is a front for the sect, 3-4 there is a contact of the sect there, 5 there is a sect member there, 6-10 other stuff is going on and they are not there  (and in this case, I think doing that would be fair): I tend to write little tables on the fly in my notebook as I run sessions for this type of situation as it arises if I feel the need to do so.



Now I HAVE to know if they actually found Sect members at the tea house, in your game


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I currently lack statistics or other objective data with which to assess this assertion, but I don't feel that it is backed by anything. Obviously SOME people in all places and times get along.



Well, if you lack knowledge about my assertion, then you clearly lacked knowledge about your assertions I was countering.  No sure why it's only my claims that need scrutiny.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> I'm stating fudging occurs more often than not, at least by those who voted on the threads linked by lowkey13.



And fudging seems irrelevant to discussion for reasons others have discussed already. Bit of a red herring, IMO. 

As a reminder, Vincent Baker - from whom the "Say Yes or Roll the Dice" originates - created the Apocalypse World system where the players roll everything. Sadras, how would you say that your introduced discussion of GMs fudging the dice is relevant in that framework of play?  



Sadras said:


> ...But there are other ways to find the sect members.



Even if we accept your thesis of monster statistics as "hidden backstory" (monster weaknesses, immunities, etc.) - and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does a good job refuting this idea - it seems like there is at least one key difference: _repeatability of methods_. 

When you first face the Death Knight, you may discover through play some of its immunities or resistances. Generally, more often then not, if you face the Death Knight monster again, you don't have to delve into rediscovering the "hidden backstory" of the Death Knight stats. If fire worked previously, then you know that you can fight it with fire again this time. Going into the fight, you will prepare fire to deal with it. And it would certainly be frustrating if the GM forced the players to "rediscover" the hidden backstory of the Death Knight's weakness each time players fought it or if the GM changed the hidden backstory of the Death Knight stats on a whim, declaring previously known successful methods to be ineffective. (If changes occur, GMs usually at least provide visual cues that suggest "this Death Knight is atypical" for players.) This repeatability for players encountering Death Knights is critical because it tests their (player) skill and knowledge about what they have learned, remembered, and utilized from previous encounters. 

But let's say that you are looking for the Cult again somewhere else. Instead of being able to repeat your previous method, now you have to engage in renewed "hidden backstory" procedures to discover the Cult.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, I wouldn't find it productive or sensible to fudge dice. If I am 'playing to see what happens', then why would I force an outcome? If I'm playing as an advocate of the player's having fun and engaging their avowed interests, then there's no sense in which I am concerned if they fail or succeed, all outcomes will produce fun.




For some of us fudging the dice isn't about forcing an outcome.  Every so often, maybe once or twice a campaign, my dice are on fire and the players' dice are cold.  They like super challenging encounters, but when the dice run like that during one it all but guarantees death.  Now I could kill the PCs over nothing but bad luck, but that doesn't seem right to me.  So I will fudge a little bit.  Not to decide an outcome, but to give them a chance at survival.  Maybe they win.  Maybe they lose.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Now I HAVE to know if they actually found Sect members at the tea house, in your game




I don't recall, but I am pretty sure in that campaign they ended up tracking down the leader's wife in an encampment and poisoning her.


----------



## Bedrockgames

On Fudging, I very much prefer 'let the dice fall where they may'. I think that adds much more excitement and uncertainty to play (at least for my taste). I am not opposed to fudging, some groups like it and many players even expect it (I know players who feel the GM should fudge to let things play more in their favor for example).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> For some of us fudging the dice isn't about forcing an outcome.  Every so often, maybe once or twice a campaign, my dice are on fire and the players' dice are cold.  They like super challenging encounters, but when the dice run like that during one it all but guarantees death.  Now I could kill the PCs over nothing but bad luck, but that doesn't seem right to me.  So I will fudge a little bit.  Not to decide an outcome, but to give them a chance at survival.  Maybe they win.  Maybe they lose.



That's still forcing an outcome.  You are overriding the mechanics to acheive a desired outcome, it's just that instead of a fixed result you're shifting the odds to something you like better.

This is actually a symptom of the system that losing is bad an ends the current effort in the game, requiring a restart instead of a continuation.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> That's still forcing an outcome.  You are overriding the mechanics to acheive a desired outcome,




What is my desired outcome?



> it's just that instead of a fixed result you're shifting the odds to something you like better.




What do I like better?



> This is actually a symptom of the system that losing is bad an ends the current effort in the game, requiring a restart instead of a continuation.




If you had bothered to read my rather short post, you'd have know that losing is equally possible AFTER I fudge, so I can have no desired outcome.  At least I have no desired outcome that the fudging actually did anything about.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> This is why I'm attempting to understand why the Hard No's in the combat pillar are excluded from the definition of MMI.
> 
> @_*Bedrockgames*_ has a narrow definition of MMI, and then you have a number of posters who ascribe all _Say No_ adjudications to MMI, but appear to limit the definition to only the social and exploration pillars.
> 
> 
> 
> _Saying Yes_ though is DM adjudication. This sentence seems to imply you prefer rolling than having a DM automatically _Say Yes_?




A Hard No in combat that really happened and was disappointing: after spending days defending a city from a siege, we eventually cleared the field and were ready to engage the big bad boss in command of the enemy forces: the Dm made him vanish with teleportation in front of our eyes. 

On the Dm adjudication: it is a very fundametal part of play in most games,  I believe more or less everyone agrees, the point is having a way of resolving things when agreement is not unanimous at the table, (or just for the fun of it, why not?) coherently with genre and fiction. Like imagine a Hard No in Akira Rpg* when the Psichokinetic Pc says "I teleport to the Moon and create it's biggest crater"  

*I don't think it does exist


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> What is my desired outcome?



According to your post, to mitigate bad luck.





> What do I like better?



According to your post, a situation where bad luck has less of an impact on PC success.




> If you had bothered to read my rather short post, you'd have know that losing is equally possible AFTER I fudge, so I can have no desired outcome.  At least I have no desired outcome that the fudging actually did anything about.



Max, if the situation after fudging is equally possible as before, why did you fudge? And, your pist, which I did read, says why:  you are reducing the impact of bad luck on PC success.  As I said in my post, this is still forcing an outcome as this result does not obtain without intentional GM intervention to cause it.  Outcomes, as I noted and you seem to have glossed, don't have to be concrete results, they can be a shift in probabilities, which is what you are doing.

You don't get to say you aren't using GM force by claiming you've still left a possibility of failure (or success).


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> According to your post, to mitigate bad luck.
> 
> According to your post, a situation where bad luck has less of an impact on PC success.




Those aren't outcomes.  They are processes.  An outcome is explicitly the way something turns out and my fudging doesn't cause an outcome to happen.



> Outcomes, as I noted and you seem to have glossed, don't have to be concrete results, they can be a shift in probabilities, which is what you are doing.




Sure.  I do give cases of extreme bad luck a nudge.  Normal bad luck just rolls on by.  But I don't change things enough to determine an outcome, so I have no desired outcome that my fudging has did anything about.



> You don't get to say you aren't using GM force by claiming you've still left a possibility of failure (or success).




DM force?  Using rules is DM force now?


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Those aren't outcomes.  They are processes.  An outcome is explicitly the way something turns out and my fudging doesn't cause an outcome to happen.



Are you mitigating bad outcomes through fudging or not? 



> DM force?  *Using rules* is DM force now?



And there it is. When all else fails, the walls where defenders of DMs fudging retreat and hide behind. 



Bedrockgames said:


> On Fudging, I very much prefer 'let the dice fall where they may'. I think that adds much more excitement and uncertainty to play (at least for my taste). I am not opposed to fudging, some groups like it and many players even expect it (I know players who feel the GM should fudge to let things play more in their favor for example).



I agree. I'm not discovering play if I am altering outcomes produced by die results.


----------



## Numidius

Since [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] named it a few times, in Cthulhu Dark when anyone at the table feels a Pc is getting away with it too easily, a "negative" die will be added to the roll to increase chances of failure. 

Neat, simple mechanic for sharing "realism" authority among the table. 

Kind of reverse of Say Yes or Roll...


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Those aren't outcomes.  They are processes.  An outcome is explicitly the way something turns out and my fudging doesn't cause an outcome to happen.
> 
> 
> 
> Sure.  I do give cases of extreme bad luck a nudge.  Normal bad luck just rolls on by.  But I don't change things enough to determine an outcome, so I have no desired outcome that my fudging has did anything about.
> 
> 
> 
> DM force?  Using rules is DM force now?



Fudging is not a DM rule.  And, yes, GM force can be codified into rules.  

Processes can be outcomes, but you haven't created a process, either.  A process is a systemized set of prodecures that generate a specified outcome.  Note that the outcome can be multiple things, they're just all within a known or general set.  How to make an attack in 5e is a process, but it's outcomes are still variable.

So, outcomes of a tool or process can still be variable.  When you fudge to reduce bad luck, the outcome is that you've modified the normal processes to alter the probabilities of success and failure to be more to your liking.  Your fudging had an outcome.  If it did not have an outcome, it would not have changed anything.

Seriously, leave it to you to turn an obvious thing into a definitional sematics game.  I mean, why on Earth are you arguing that your fudging has no outcomes? What's your upside?  To claim that you fudge but it doesn't change anything? That's a very odd position.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Are you mitigating bad outcomes through fudging or not?




The outcome is decided randomly via a fair fight.



> And there it is. When all else fails, the walls where defenders of DMs fudging retreat and hide behind.




Yeah.  God forbid we use rules. 



> I agree. I'm not discovering play if I am altering outcomes produced by die results.




The way I do it I am.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Fudging is not a DM rule.  And, yes, GM force can be codified into rules.




It's on page 235 of the DMG under rolling dice.  It says very clearly that rolling behind the screen lets you fudge if you want to.  Then it gives examples on how to go about it, followed by a cautionary warning.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> The outcome is decided randomly via a fair fight.



It stops being random or fair once you place your thumb on the scale. 



> The way I do it I am.



That's an assertion for you to prove, Max. Otherwise it's left dangling unsubstantiated.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> It stops being random or fair once you place your thumb on the scale.




Bullpucky!  You may not like what I do, but it is in fact random once I even up the odds.  The dice control the win or loss randomly, and it is in fact fair as I have gotten rid of the vastly unfair dice god interference.



> That's an assertion for you to prove, Max. Otherwise it's left dangling unsubstantiated.




I have no idea how it's going to play out after I fudge, so I am in fact discovering the game play.  That was easy to prove.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Bullpucky!  You may not like what I do, but it is in fact random *once I even up the odds.*  The dice control the win or loss randomly, and it is in fact fair as *I have gotten rid of the vastly unfair dice god interference.*



You keep appealing to putting your thumb on the scale and pretending that it represents randomness. This is not intellectually honest, Max. 



> I have no idea how it's going to play out after I fudge, so I am in fact discovering the game play.  That was easy to prove.



But if you are turning a hit into a miss or a miss into a hit - two common hinges where fudging occurs - then I am at a loss about how you are discovering game play. Those are two different fictions.


----------



## Numidius

When I feel the urge to fudge to facilitate things, I just say yes, or ask the players to focus on gaining an advantage, explaining how the situation might get worse for them


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> You keep appealing to putting your thumb on the scale and pretending that it represents randomness. This is not intellectually honest, Max.




Let's continue with your analogy.  You are arguing that an unbalanced scale is fair when it isn't.  And if the outcome is determined randomly, it doesn't matter if I put my thumb on the scale to balance it out and make it fair, it was still determined randomly.



> But if you are turning a hit into a miss or a miss into a hit - two common hinges where fudging occurs - then I am at a loss about how you are discovering game play. Those are two different fictions.




Discovering game play is not binary. That's a False Dichotomy.  Sure those very few fudges weren't discovered, but the 99% of the rest of it was, so it's still discovered play.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Let's continue with your analogy.  You are arguing that an unbalanced scale is fair when it isn't.



You are arguing that the scale is unbalanced when it isn't. (Or at least negligibly so.) You are conflating harshness of chance with unfair, but chance can be harsh but fair. If you flip a coin,* you have roughly 50/50 odds. If you project Heads for 50 percent of the time, but get Tails for 80 percent of those times, then yeah that's rough, but that's not unfair. We may call that unlucky. But that doesn't make the process of chance unfair. 

* Discounting technicalities of chance such as landing on its thin side. 



> And if the outcome is determined randomly, it doesn't matter if I put my thumb on the scale to balance it out and make it fair, it was still determined randomly.



No. Repeating something over and over doesn't make it true, Max. The outcome is not determined randomly if you choose to bypass the dice resolution process in favor of another outcome. 



> Discovering game play is not binary. That's a False Dichotomy.  *Sure those very few fudges weren't discovered,* but the 99% of the rest of it was, so it's still discovered play.



And there we go. An admission that the gameplay wasn't discovered. Thank you. Was that so hard?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> And there it is. When all else fails, the walls where defenders of DMs fudging retreat and hide behind.




This is a bit much. I don't care to fudge myself, but it is just a playstyle preference, and there are degrees of fudging for hosts of different reasons. I can understand the logic behind why some people like it, why it may add to play for them, and why it has stuck around. I particularly am sympathetic to the idea of the GM interceding when dice rolls produce results that really don't make sense. Obviously in an ideal world the system never produces senseless results. But it can happen occasionally, even in well crafted systems. For what I like to do, letting the dice fall where they may adds too much significance to key moments for me to shift to fudging. But I get why people do it. These are all just preferences. It is a question of playstyle, not morality.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> This is a bit much.



Possibly. But [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] dug-up old debates, and it seems that they are now erupting here too. 



> For what I like to do, letting the dice fall where they may adds too much significance to key moments for me to shift to fudging. But I get why people do it. These are all just preferences. It is a question of playstyle, not morality.



One can be sympathetic to the playstyle while not being sympathetic to the duplicitous double-speak that some individuals perform when defending the GMing practice. I appreciate GMs who are honest and forthright about what they are doing and why they are doing it when it comes to fudging. It's especially grating when these individuals go to great-lengths to justify their fudging while being quick to berate players for "fudging." 

But none of this discussion actually contributes anything meaningful to the prior discussion about "hidden backstory" or whatever it was we were kicking around.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> You are arguing that the scale is unbalanced when it isn't. (Or at least negligibly so.) You are conflating harshness of chance with unfair, but chance can be harsh but fair. If you flip a coin,* you have roughly 50/50 odds. If you project Heads for 50 percent of the time, but get Tails for 80 percent of those times, then yeah that's rough, but that's not unfair. We may call that unlucky. But that doesn't make the process of chance unfair.




Extreme bad luck is unbalanced as all extremes are.



> No. Repeating something over and over doesn't make it true, Max. The outcome is not determined randomly if you choose to bypass the dice resolution process in favor of another outcome.




I didn't bypass the dice resolution process.  In fact, I used it with just a few exceptions which did not determine the outcome of the fight.



> And there we go. An admission that the gameplay wasn't discovered. Thank you. Was that so hard?




Um, I never said that there weren't a very few instances where it wasn't discovered.  I said that my way still allows play to be discovered, and in fact it does.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Possibly. But
> One can be sympathetic to the playstyle while not being sympathetic to the duplicitous double-speak that some individuals perform when defending the GMing practice. I appreciate GMs who are honest and forthright about what they are doing and why they are doing it when it comes to fudging. It's especially grating when these individuals go to great-lengths to justify their fudging while being quick to berate players for "fudging."
> 
> But none of this discussion actually contributes anything meaningful to the prior discussion about "hidden backstory" or whatever it was we were kicking around.




I don't know, I think it is probably just an honest disagreement over playstyle rather than 'duplicitous double speak'. It could even just be some people are not as skilled at holding a consistent position in a conversation about gaming. I realize online, the worst crime imaginable is to contradict yourself in a thread, or demonstrate a lack of awareness about something. But given how low the stakes are here, it does't seem worth concerning ourselves over. To me it just looks like they like something and are trying to defend it. I don't think it is double speak as much as it is people trying to defend a preference under the pressure of people dissecting it on a gaming thread. To me that is a much more plausible explanation.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> One can be sympathetic to the playstyle while not being sympathetic to the duplicitous double-speak that some individuals perform when defending the GMing practice. I appreciate GMs who are honest and forthright about what they are doing and why they are doing it when it comes to fudging. It's especially grating when these individuals go to great-lengths to justify their fudging while being quick to berate players for "fudging."




Quote the rule that allows players to fudge and I will allow that rule in the games that I run.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Quote the rule that allows players to fudge and I will allow that rule in the games that I run.



I'm done beating the dead horse with you, Max. You are welcome to continue beating it, but you'll do so alone.


----------



## darkbard

Aldarc said:


> I'm done beating the dead horse with you, Max. You are welcome to continue beating it, but you'll do so alone.




I refer participants who reach Aldarc's current level of frustration with Max back to Max's post on 21 April, 2018, here, wherein he confesses that he deliberately "twists" (his term) what others are saying in an intellectually dishonest move: "For my part, once I get frustrated with someone who continually misrepresents what I am saying or doing with my style of play, I'll begin to toss back all the same "twistings" at that person to show that it can be done to their style as well. My hope is that they will see as they start defending what they perceive as an incorrect application to their playstyle, and come to the realization that what they are doing accomplishes nothing."

It was at that point that I decided to disengage from him during discussions like this; he seeks an exercise in "winning," not honest exchange.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> I refer participants who reach Aldarc's current level of frustration with Max back to Max's post on 21 April, 2018, here, wherein he confesses that he deliberately "twists" (his term) what others are saying in an intellectually dishonest move: "For my part, once I get frustrated with someone who continually misrepresents what I am saying or doing with my style of play, I'll begin to toss back all the same "twistings" at that person to show that it can be done to their style as well. My hope is that they will see as they start defending what they perceive as an incorrect application to their playstyle, and come to the realization that what they are doing accomplishes nothing."
> 
> It was at that point that I decided to disengage from him during discussions like this; he seeks an exercise in "winning," not honest exchange.




Guys, going back combing over peoples posts to score points like this, does not paint you well. First off, I don't really care what a poster said in 2018 about something. Largely because the context of such remarks matters a great deal. Here, he seemed to be expressing frustration with someone he felt was twisting his words, so he says he does the same in return (not ideal behavior, but not a consistent policy of twisting words whenever he disagrees with someone). Second, we are just talking about fudging and how acceptable it is within the rules. There is the notion of rule zero, and most groups I've gamed with, pretty much regardless of what they are playing, would say this sort of thing is a fair GM power. Not everyone likes fudging, but most of the people I've gamed with wouldn't say a GM who does it is cheating (though a player fudging they certainly would). I get there is a sharp divide here over what powers the GM ought to have. But this isn't that uncommon of an idea. If you guys are trying to advocate for games where the GM has less power or power is distributed differently, I think you'd get a long further along if you didn't use these kinds of tactics (again, just want to point out, this whole thread was started by someone who singled out one of my posts, basically to humiliate me----that seems a pretty prevalent attitude among this crowd of posters).


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I'm done beating the dead horse with you, Max. You are welcome to continue beating it, but you'll do so alone.




Translation: There is no such rule that allows it.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> I refer participants who reach Aldarc's current level of frustration with Max back to Max's post on 21 April, 2018, here, wherein he confesses that he deliberately "twists" (his term) what others are saying in an intellectually dishonest move: "For my part, once I get frustrated with someone who continually misrepresents what I am saying or doing with my style of play, I'll begin to toss back all the same "twistings" at that person to show that it can be done to their style as well. My hope is that they will see as they start defending what they perceive as an incorrect application to their playstyle, and come to the realization that what they are doing accomplishes nothing."




Here's the relevant part.

"For my part, once I get frustrated with someone who continually misrepresents what I am saying or doing with my style of play, I'll begin to toss back all the same "twistings" at that person to show that it can be done to their style as well."

So what you are saying is that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] has been continually misrepresenting and twisting what I have been saying, since that was the criteria for my engaging in it.  I disagree with you.  He gets some things wrong about what I am saying, but I don't think he's maliciously twisting my words.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> Here's the relevant part.
> 
> "For my part, once I get frustrated with someone who continually misrepresents what I am saying or doing with my style of play, I'll begin to toss back all the same "twistings" at that person to show that it can be done to their style as well."
> 
> So what you are saying is that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] has been continually misrepresenting and twisting what I have been saying, since that was the criteria for my engaging in it.  I disagree with you.  He gets some things wrong about what I am saying, but I don't think he's maliciously twisting my words.




I'm not going to be drawn into arguing nonsense, Max. I'm out.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Quote the rule that allows players to fudge and I will allow that rule in the games that I run.



Man, you're adamant. 
I see your point.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> I'm not going to be drawn into arguing nonsense, Max. I'm out.




Have fun, but that post you dragged out of the bushes clearly shows that  was I was saying is that I give what I get.  If you give me twisted crap, be prepared to take it.  If you give me honest discourse, you will get honest discourse back.  You shouldn't be afraid of engaging me in conversation unless you are unable to keep from deliberately twisting my words in a malicious manner.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Translation: There is no such rule that allows it.



Your translation is rude and false, Max. I am not engaging on the matter of fudging with you further because we have both been roped into beating a dead horse where it is unwarranted. And I would appreciate if you did not try to turn this unnecessarily into a pissing contest about winning points.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Your translation is rude and false, Max. I am not engaging on the matter of fudging with you further because we have both been roped into beating a dead horse where it is unwarranted. And I would appreciate if you did not try to turn this unnecessarily into a pissing contest about winning points.




This will be my last post here on the subject, then.  It can only be false is there is a rule that allows player fudging.  There are rules that allow limited types of fudging, like luck which lets you re-roll, but there is no rule that just allows the players to blanket fudge rolls like the DM can with his rule.  The DM and players have different roles.  It's okay for the DM to have different game abilities.


----------



## Numidius

A hero desires a sword
and a sword desires truth
(Soulcalibur)


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> So you don't think there are many tables that don't fudge? Or that play PbtA games in which the GM never rolls dice?




I lack data, but my feeling is, based on experience, that there has been an incident of overt or covert fudging at many tables where the DM drives play to a substantial degree. How often that happens is highly open to question. I know that when we played in this way it was pretty rare. As a DM I assume I must have done it once or twice, but I cannot actually remember a specific instance.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Apologies, I'm breaking this down.
> 
> 
> 
> ...But there are other ways to find the sect members.
> 
> 
> 
> A DM may also reason why sect members are not at the Tea House.
> 
> And as far as I remember, the example used is, the DM adjudication rules that there are no sect members at the TH, not that they cannot keep looking for them in any way shape or form (magic, information gathering - whether it be bribery, seduction, coercion...etc, or visit another location).




Right, and I agree that "they aren't at the tea house" is not necessarily a very hard constraint. I would have to base my opinion of it on the specific scenario, what the players are expecting, how much of an obstacle this presents, etc. It could be nothing "we go to the dojo next door." It could be a monumental problem "the oracle told us we can only be victorious if we find the sect in the tea house."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> This is why I'm attempting to understand why the Hard No's in the combat pillar are excluded from the definition of MMI.
> 
> @_*Bedrockgames*_ has a narrow definition of MMI, and then you have a number of posters who ascribe all _Say No_ adjudications to MMI, but appear to limit the definition to only the social and exploration pillars.



I don't think they ARE excluded. However, combat is traditionally an activity where the PCs are given the widest range of options. Heck, an AD&D fighter has, basically, NO options that are defined by rules outside of combat! Inside combat he has at least 3-5 basic options at any given time, maybe considerably more, that are covered by the rules (at least to some extent).

The point is, if the DM says "no you cannot aim at the neck of the snake and cut its head off using a called shot." that is simply a rules adjudication, it isn't allowed by the rules. It might also be a 'no' to what might be considered possible under some circumstance, depending on the game, DM, etc. In any case, this isn't removing all good options from the PC, nor thwarting them from continuing on basically the same course (IE killing the monster, etc.). 

I don't disagree that saying "no the sect is not in the tea house, period" is not definitively of a different character. There are plenty of other equally convenient places to search, there isn't a hard time constraint, etc. OTOH it falls outside the normal context of 'say yes or roll dice'. I would note that 4e D&D has a 'SYORTD' rule, and it also has page 42 for doing arbitrary actions. So you can try most anything in 4e and there is at least a general rule system to handle that. This is typical of this type of game, there is little need to say 'no'. 



> _Saying Yes_ though is DM adjudication. This sentence seems to imply you prefer rolling than having a DM automatically _Say Yes_?




Well, I was stating a preference for how I would approach AD&D play. 'say yes' is fine in AD&D too, sometimes. It just isn't coherent with challenge the player type game play, so it is likely to only come up when the DM deems the task trivial. Either nothing is at stake, so we really don't need to talk about 'yes' that much, or we do need to roll! 2e is an awkward game to talk about, because it has issues with what it thinks the play process is.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hasn't this thread maybe jumped the shark? lol.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> But [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] dug-up old debates, and it seems that they are now erupting here too.




No. I was discussing fudging in relation to MMI, not the merits of fudging. I have zero interest on rehashing fudging good/bad, rule or not.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Monster statistics aren't secret backstory. They're not backstory at all.



OK, they're hidden information.  Still something the DM knows and the player doesn't.



> A fictional fact about a monster (eg death knights never flee in terror) is backstory, but is it secret? From whom? Not anyone who's read the Monster Manual.



Which opens up the whole 'metagaming' can of worms again...


> In 4e, not from anyone who makes a Monster Knowledge check.



Which is certainly a half-decent way of doing it.

But if that check is failed by the PC but the player already knows the answer e.g. from reading the MM, what then? (and if the check is badly failed is the DM allowed to give faulty information?)



> If a player declares an attack with a _fear_ effect against a death knight, and fails, is the player allowed a retry? In most approaches to GMing D&D, the answer is yes (perhaps at the cost of some hp loss due to the Death Knight getting in an extra round of actions, having suffered no hp loss itself due to the failed effect). That's already different from the tea house case, where there is no systematic framework for retries. (_We try the teahouse. We try the docks. We try the guardhouse._ Etc. That's not retries, that seems like the very paradigm of fishing around for an answer from the GM.)



Sure there's retries.  How can there not be? _We try the teahouse.  If nothing, then half an hour later we try the teahouse again.  If nothing, then leave off till sunset and try it again. [etc.] _



> Does the player know that the attack may fail? If the fiction has been well-narrated (eg undead lack mortal minds) then perhaps. Is the aim of play for the player to solve the puzzle of how to defeat a death knight (like the demi-lich in ToH)? Then perhaps we _are_ in "Mother may I" territory, depending on further details about whether it was a puzzle the players were expected to reason out, or a flat-out guessing game.



If this is the first time they've ever met a Death Knight (and they've no reason to know anything about them otherwise) then trial and error is going to have to be their approach in determining how to deal with it.

Trial and error, lacking any other knowledge, is a very valid means of learning about a foe's strengths and weaknesses.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> OK, they're hidden information.  Still something the DM knows and the player doesn't.



This claim about monster abilities as hidden information is already making assumptions about play which, as [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] said, presusppose a "Mother may I" approach. I posted a fairly long reply to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] about this and so refer you to that (it's around 50 posts upthread).



Lanefan said:


> Sure there's retries.  How can there not be? _We try the teahouse.  If nothing, then half an hour later we try the teahouse again.  If nothing, then leave off till sunset and try it again. [etc.] _



 On this, I refer to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s posts not very far upthread:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> combat is traditionally an activity where the PCs are given the widest range of options. Heck, an AD&D fighter has, basically, NO options that are defined by rules outside of combat! Inside combat he has at least 3-5 basic options at any given time, maybe considerably more, that are covered by the rules (at least to some extent).
> 
> The point is, if the DM says "no you cannot aim at the neck of the snake and cut its head off using a called shot." that is simply a rules adjudication, it isn't allowed by the rules. It might also be a 'no' to what might be considered possible under some circumstance, depending on the game, DM, etc. In any case, this isn't removing all good options from the PC, nor thwarting them from continuing on basically the same course (IE killing the monster, etc.).
> 
> I don't disagree that saying "no the sect is not in the tea house, period" is not definitively of a different character. There are plenty of other equally convenient places to search, there isn't a hard time constraint, etc.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, and I agree that "they aren't at the tea house" is not necessarily a very hard constraint. I would have to base my opinion of it on the specific scenario, what the players are expecting, how much of an obstacle this presents, etc. It could be nothing "we go to the dojo next door." It could be a monumental problem "the oracle told us we can only be victorious if we find the sect in the tea house."



All I will add to this is that, in fighting the Death Knight, whether or not a chosen approach works is (i) not just _GM decides_ (assuming that this monster has some rules associated with it), and (ii) there are easily accessible options, like _hit it with a magic weapon_, which can achieve the goal of defeating it.

There are some monsters which can come very close to "Mother may I" - eg the classics like green slime, ochre jelly, grey ooze and black puddings with essentially arbitrary lists of vulnerabilities and resistances - and as I already posted upthread there are some contexts in which even the Death Knight's immunity to fear may be an example of "Mother may I" (eg as an important aspect of play, a PC has sworn to drive away the next foe s/he encounters by sheer terror alone, and then the GM presents a Death Knight as the next foe and thus dictates the failure of the PC's oath).


----------



## Sadras

@_*pemerton*_, that was a good post (your reply to me, in case there is any confusion), thanks. 
The only quibble I have is:

(1) An NPC with the statistic _Incorruptible_. Is that backstory or fictional fact? I think you have answered it somewhat in your post where you spoke of the Duke who could not be intimidated, however 3 attempts were initially allowed where the Duke example then would fall into SYRTD territory since at least 1 roll is allowed.

(2) Not a huge fan of using the reading of the MM as a decent defense. Your Monster Knowledge check fares much better, but I reserve the right to revert, as I just don't have my 4e books with me right now and I want to look up something.



> Does the player know that the attack may fail? If the fiction has been well-narrated (eg undead lack mortal minds) then perhaps. Is the aim of play for the player to solve the puzzle of how to defeat a death knight (like the demi-lich in ToH)? Then perhaps we _are_ in "Mother may I" territory, depending on further details about whether it was a puzzle the players were expected to reason out, or a flat-out guessing game.




(3) This kind of reasoning skirts quite close to defeating your own argument above. Well-narrated fiction suggests that the player HAS to know as opposed to the player doesn’t know due to failed Monster Knowledge check or having the inappropriate skill. I did not miss your _perhaps_ which allows a walk-back of that thought.

When noob PCs first encounter an Iron Golem with its various resistances and immunities, I can see how it can seem like a puzzle “How do we hurt this thing”. Personally I do not feel that is MMI territory, not even remotely, however the common definition MMI provided in this thread would included it if say s/he did not have knowledge of it.

(4) In my latest session, the PCs landed up in a town and one my new players, approached the local gem-wright asking if he had any enchanted gems that could somehow be attached to his weapon to enhance it. SYRTD precludes a hard no, right?

EDIT: In my game the gem-wright informed the PC about the local arcanist who could offer consumables and other lowly magical items but nothing like what he wanted. He suggested he try the elven settlement across the river (the PC was an elf).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This claim about monster abilities as hidden information is already making assumptions about play which, as [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] said, presusppose a "Mother may I" approach. I posted a fairly long reply to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] about this and so refer you to that (it's around 50 posts upthread).




But again, Chaochou is wrong about that.  Mother May I is an extreme where, not just some Q & A with the DM.  DM may I draw my sword?  DM may I open that door?  DM may I have my PC scratch his butt?  The game doesn't rise to the level of Mother May I.



> There are some monsters which can come very close to "Mother may I" - eg the classics like green slime, ochre jelly, grey ooze and black puddings with essentially arbitrary lists of vulnerabilities and resistances - and as I already posted upthread there are some contexts in which even the Death Knight's immunity to fear may be an example of "Mother may I" (eg as an important aspect of play, a PC has sworn to drive away the next foe s/he encounters by sheer terror alone, and then the GM presents a Death Knight as the next foe and thus dictates the failure of the PC's oath).




There no Mother May I there, either.  The player is not asking if his PC can do something.  He is doing it.  It's also okay to fail at something.  Even something the PC swears to do.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> As a reminder, Vincent Baker - from whom the "Say Yes or Roll the Dice" originates - created the Apocalypse World system where the players roll everything. Sadras, how would you say that your introduced discussion of GMs fudging the dice is relevant in that framework of play?




I'm not saying it is. My line of thought was that fudging (dice or other) would fit into the MMI as defined by some posters here, it was not about any one specific game.



> Even if we accept your thesis of monster statistics as "hidden backstory" (monster weaknesses, immunities, etc.) - and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does a good job refuting this idea - it seems like there is at least one key difference: _repeatability of methods_.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> But let's say that you are looking for the Cult again somewhere else. Instead of being able to repeat your previous method, now you have to engage in renewed "hidden backstory" procedures to discover the Cult.




This is all true. This searching for the cult is such a bad example.


----------



## Bedrockgames

If the presence of green slime or death knight immunities makes the game mother may I, I would say, in my opinion, that is an overly broad definition. Not particularly useful for discussion, and needlessly insulting to anyone who likes that stuff (and a substantial number of gamers do).


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't think they ARE excluded. However, combat is traditionally an activity where the PCs are given the widest range of options. Heck, an AD&D fighter has, basically, NO options that are defined by rules outside of combat! Inside combat he has at least 3-5 basic options at any given time, maybe considerably more, that are covered by the rules (at least to some extent).
> 
> The point is, if the DM says "no you cannot aim at the neck of the snake and cut its head off using a called shot." that is simply a rules adjudication, it isn't allowed by the rules. It might also be a 'no' to what might be considered possible under some circumstance, depending on the game, DM, etc. In any case, this isn't removing all good options from the PC, nor thwarting them from continuing on basically the same course (IE killing the monster, etc.).
> 
> I don't disagree that saying "no the sect is not in the tea house, period" is not definitively of a different character. There are plenty of other equally convenient places to search, there isn't a hard time constraint, etc. OTOH it falls outside the normal context of 'say yes or roll dice'. I would note that 4e D&D has a 'SYORTD' rule, and it also has page 42 for doing arbitrary actions. So you can try most anything in 4e and there is at least a general rule system to handle that. This is typical of this type of game, there is little need to say 'no'.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, I was stating a preference for how I would approach AD&D play. 'say yes' is fine in AD&D too, sometimes. It just isn't coherent with challenge the player type game play, so it is likely to only come up when the DM deems the task trivial. Either nothing is at stake, so we really don't need to talk about 'yes' that much, or we do need to roll! 2e is an awkward game to talk about, because it has issues with what it thinks the play process is.




But Mother May I doesn’t mean: any approach that isn’t SYORTD. I am fine with SYORTD as an approach but characterizing any style or system that isn’t that as Mother May I poisons the well, it is essentially just a debate tactic to make SYORTD the only approach worth considering (because who in their right mind wants Mother May I when they play an RPG?)


----------



## S'mon

This "mother may I" thing sounds a lot like "playing D&D".


----------



## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> This "mother may I" thing sounds a lot like "playing D&D".




But the Paladin's warhorse


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> But again, Chaochou is wrong about that.  Mother May I is an extreme where, not just some Q & A with the DM.  DM may I draw my sword?  DM may I open that door?  DM may I have my PC scratch his butt?  The game doesn't rise to the level of Mother May I.




Yes and no.  Firstly, MMI can, and often does, exist without explicit permission seeking.  If the GM has authority to negate action declarations, then you're in MMI territory because any declaration must at least be implicitly be approved by the GM.

5e does not rise to this level as written, but there's certainty a subculture that both embraces and cherishes this play, ie the GM is the boss of the table.

Secondly, MMI can exist indirectly.  If a HM uses action adjudication to control acceptable outcomes, like by setting DCs to impossible targets or outright failing actions they don't agree with, this is also MMI, just not directly.  The existence of GM arbitration doesn't mean MMI, but if the GM isn't following the fiction (both open and secret) with integrity, adjudication can be used for MMI.

5e is in this camp as written.  Some will not like the possibility of a system to enable MMI play, and you see this in this thread.  I think a purality of 5e games are principled enough to avoid it, some have some MMI, and some are very much MMI.  5e, as a system, does nothing to restrict it, but does offer play advice that acts to limit abuse.

So, no, I don't think MMI is as extreme as your portraying it.  You can see elements of its existence in metagaming discussions, frex, where it's often viewed by one side of those discussions as a legitimate tool.



> There no Mother May I there, either.  The player is not asking if his PC can do something.  He is doing it.  It's also okay to fail at something.  Even something the PC swears to do.




This I agree with.  Failure is not the same as negation.  You should be careful, though, for cases where failure is used as a stand in for negation, which do rise to MMI.  Failure is neutral, but hiw it's used is not.


----------



## Ovinomancer

S'mon said:


> This "mother may I" thing sounds a lot like "playing D&D".



They are not incompatible.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> I do not think you do, because you keep presenting arguments that are akin to *taking tricks in poker*.




My googlefu failed the first time you used that phrase. What does it mean? I'm a casual poker player but it is unfamiliar to me.

Thanks for the rest of the response.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> My googlefu failed the first time you used that phrase. What does it mean? I'm a casual poker player but it is unfamiliar to me.
> 
> Thanks for the rest of the response.



It was referenced in an eariler post by Campbell.  The crux is that it would be immediately odd if a player declared they took a trick while playing poker.  The point was that we tend to smear mechanics that belong in one game into another in RPGs to compare and don't think much about it when it's really as odd as trying to take tricks in a poker game.  SYORTD just doesn't fit in a game where you have monster stats like 5e's Death Knight.  They come from very different places.


----------



## Michael Silverbane

Ovinomancer said:


> It was referenced in an eariler post by Campbell.  The crux is that it would be immediately odd if a player declared they took a trick while playing poker.  The point was that we tend to smear mechanics that belong in one game into another in RPGs to compare and don't think much about it when it's really as odd as trying to take tricks in a poker game.  SYORTD just doesn't fit in a game where you have monster stats like 5e's Death Knight.  They come from very different places.




To further elaborate on that, "Taking Tricks" is a thing that you do in Pinocle, Hearts, and some other card games, but "Winning Hands" is the thing that you do in a poker game.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> This "mother may I" thing sounds a lot like "playing D&D".



Only if one disregards the "free kriegsspiel" idea you (I think?) introduced upthread.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> In my latest session, the PCs landed up in a town and one my new players, approached the local gem-wright asking if he had any enchanted gems that could somehow be attached to his weapon to enhance it. SYRTD precludes a hard no, right?



What are the rules for PC build? Eg in 4e there are fairly clear rules for the equipment component of PC build, which would provide the overlay for this interaction.

And what is the dramatic trajectory of that PC and of the game?  Which is to say, how does the player's action declaration relate to those things? Is the player at a cruch-point for his/her PC? Or is the player - whom you've said is new to your game - trying to learn the genre parameters of the game and doing it via in-character interaction rather than out-of-character?

The closest actual play example I can think of is when the PCs in my 4e game ended up in the company of some elves. The player of the drow PC - an exile from his homeland and a member of the secret Order of the Bat, worshippers of Corellon dedicated to undoing the sundering of the elves - declared that his PC made the sign of the Order of the Bat. I can't remember now what roll, if any, was made, but I remember that one of the leader elves of the company returned the sign. The PC gave that elf his recently-acquired dragon tooth so it could be made by the orders crafters into a Wyrmtooth Dagger.

That second bit of the interaction was easily adjudicated via the treasure-parcel rules that are core to 4e.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Only if one disregards the "free kriegsspiel" idea you (I think?) introduced upthread.




Well the two seem to be used pretty much synonymously as far as I can tell!

Going especially by what I've seen on RPGnet, I think a lot of people who speak of MMI don't believe in the possibility of the kind of objective judicious ruling necesary for Free Kriegsspiel. They seem to live in a bit of a nightmare world where GM rulings and even reality itself are forms of arbitrary and incomprehensible tyranny.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes and no.  Firstly, MMI can, and often does, exist without explicit permission seeking.  If the GM has authority to negate action declarations, then you're in MMI territory because any declaration must at least be implicitly be approved by the GM.




I played Mother May I as a kid and it was about having to ask every time if you were allowed to do the idea you have to get across the lawn. And if you forgot to ask correctly, you went back to the beginning as a punishment.  D&D has never been about that.  Even in its heyday during 1e, and the DM had authority to do whatever he wanted, it still wasn't Mother May I.  Why?  Because in addition to the rules, it's also a social game where the DM is obligated not to be a douche.  So when the player said that his character was going around the sequoia tree to see what was on the other side, he wasn't asking permission, despite the fact that the DM could have been a douche and said no.    

Not one edition of D&D has risen to the level of Mother May I on its own.  Some very rare bad DMs can bring it there, but that's an issue with that particular jerk, not the system.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> They are not incompatible.




Heh.  If I were him, I'd have gone with, "Playing D&D sounds a lot like S'mon says."


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Heh.  If I were him, I'd have gone with, "Playing D&D sounds a lot like S'mon says."



No, I played S'mon says as a kid and it requires someone to say, out loud, to the other players, "S'mon says."  You are clearly incorrect.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I think a lot of people who speak of MMI don't believe in the possibility of the kind of objective judicious ruling necesary for Free Kriegsspiel.



My view - based on a combination of experience with RPGing and knowledge of Prussian military culture and upper-class culture more generally - is that it depends on combining (i) a fairly narrow basis of fiction/shared imaginary space from which rulings are going to be derived, with (ii) a high degree of shared understanding of the nature and implications of that fiction/SIS.

I think you can see both things at work in the formative period of D&D. The shared fiction is predominantly _rather Spartan dungeons_ or _ecologically and topographically rather abstract wildernesses_. This is the narrow basis I mentioned. And you can see very strong emergent and iterative cultural understandings of what is or isn't possible, a fair "move", etc within that space - Gygax's DMG is notoriously replete with these, which is what makes bits of it so hard to make sense of to readers who weren't part of that shared culture. Examples include: his discussion of how to manage the passage of time, which assumes without stating that the campaign world is being run for multiple groups multiple evenings per week; his discussion around what is appropriate for non-Monty Haul treasure placement, which has to be reconciled with his XP tables and the idea that 10 magic items should be a genuine _limit_ for a paladin; the obsession with concealed pits as traps and the rules for detecting them, but the relative absence of assassins and the relative unclarity in how the surprise rules should work when one side is setting up an ambush; etc.

My own view is that once the campaign world - talking now not just about background colour and "Gygaxian naturalism" but about the actual subject matter of play - becomes anything like as rich as the real world (and Traveller and Runequest are the earliest RPGs I know of to try and present such gameworlds) then the feasibility of free kriegsspiel adjudication rapidly diminishes.

When mainstream D&D play entered this sort of period is hard to establish with any confidence, for me at least. Tracy Hickman's Desert of Desolation modules are often held up as being early examples of "story"-driven modules, but when I was able to pick them up second-hand a few years ago and have a read of them, they struck me as very dungeon-crawly with a bit of a puzzle-solving overlay. So in my thinking it still comes back to Dragonlance - if that is going to be played not as a dungeon crawl to beat a black dragon but as a genuine "story"-driven experience then I think the Free Kriegsspiel possibilities drop away. No matter how much backstory there is about the Tanis-Kitiar relationship, I don't think there can be objective Free Kriegsspiel determinations of whether or not she would be willing to kill him on the field of battle. There's no "objective" understanding of human emotions and emotional responses that will allow the GM to decide that, and that will bring it within the field of "knowable" prospects for the players. The difference from a covered pit trap, in these respects, could hardly be greater!



S'mon said:


> They seem to live in a bit of a nightmare world where GM rulings and even reality itself are forms of arbitrary and incomprehensible tyranny.



I don't know about _tyranny_; but if the reality of human emotions was as non-arbitrary as I think it needs to be for Free Kriegsspiel adjudication to work, then we would have far fewer songs, poems and rancorous relationship breakups!

If one thinks about literal Free Kriegsspiel, the main emotional factor is morale. But that is not handled by attempting to determine the emotional reactions of any single figure: it's handled by imposing "population"-level generalisations grounded in a shared experience of how those populations respond. Clearly even some of those experiences can produce false population-level conclusions: it seems likely that French adjudicators of Free Kriegsspield would have rated morale as too high a factor in relation to infantry success in contexts of "machine"-warfare; and likewise that many pre-WWII adjudicators would have rated civilian morale against terror bombing as far more likely to break than history has revealed to be the case.

But once we get to single figures, and how they would respond to former loves, whether they have to go to a meeting at a teahouse or just want to take some downtime there, how they might respond to an SOS signal, etc - well, I'm very sceptical that Free Kriegsspiel methods of adjudication are applicable.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Even in its heyday during 1e, and the DM had authority to do whatever he wanted, it still wasn't Mother May I.  Why?  Because in addition to the rules, it's also a social game where the DM is obligated not to be a douche.  So when the player said that his character was going around the sequoia tree to see what was on the other side, he wasn't asking permission, despite the fact that the DM could have been a douche and said no.
> 
> Not one edition of D&D has risen to the level of Mother May I on its own.  Some very rare bad DMs can bring it there, but that's an issue with that particular jerk, not the system.



Here's my response to this: [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] started a thread about how to handle certain aspects of scene framing and adjudication/resolution "without making players play the 'Mother may I' game". From reading the OP of that thread, it's clear that innerdude was _not_ looking for advice on how, as a GM, to avoid "being a douche" or being a "very rare bad DM".

It's quite clear that you wouldn't have framed [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]'s question the same way that he did. But given that he framed it using the terminology that he did, and that the subsequent discussions have taken up that terminology, it adds nothing to them to repeatedly insist that a different word should have been used.

You may have noted that in my posts, when I'm not responding to another poster who has used the phrase "Mother may I", I have generally referred to _GM decides_ as a method of adjudication and resolution. That's because the topic of this thread is not _what word/phrase would it have been best for innerdude to use_. The topic is - _given that we all know what innerdude was talking about, is the thing he is trying to avoid any closer to reality than the sorts of techniques that would help him avoid it?_

That's not a question about terminology. It doesn't get answered by arguing about the proper usage of "Mother may I".


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Here's my response to this: [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] started a thread about how to handle certain aspects of scene framing and adjudication/resolution "without making players play the 'Mother may I' game". From reading the OP of that thread, it's clear that innerdude was _not_ looking for advice on how, as a GM, to avoid "being a douche" or being a "very rare bad DM".
> 
> It's quite clear that you wouldn't have framed [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]'s question the same way that he did. But given that he framed it using the terminology that he did, and that the subsequent discussions have taken up that terminology, it adds nothing to them to repeatedly insist that a different word should have been used.




We've been through this before.  People don't get to take a word or phrase and re-define it for personal use.  It means what it means, and in this case it's a pejorative for "very rare bad DMs who are douches."  If that's not what he meant, and I believe you when you say that it wasn't, then he should not have use the term Mother May I.  

I and others also don't have to try and be mind readers about whether or not someone is using a term properly, or has re-defined it into something that it isn't.  It's the responsibility of the OP to use terms in the proper manner.  What is happening here is the one of the main reasons why that should be remembered by those who want to alter things.

In the last thread I engaged you in where you did this, I let you know that you when you try to re-define a word into something that it's not, you are derailing your thread from the outset.  People are going to respond to that word as what it really means, not some new definition.  This is true not only here, but on pretty much every other forum on the net where people meet to discuss things.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> My view - based on a combination of experience with RPGing and knowledge of Prussian military culture and upper-class culture more generally - is that it depends on combining (i) a fairly narrow basis of fiction/shared imaginary space from which rulings are going to be derived, with (ii) a high degree of shared understanding of the nature and implications of that fiction/SIS.
> 
> I think you can see both things at work in the formative period of D&D. The shared fiction is predominantly _rather Spartan dungeons_ or _ecologically and topographically rather abstract wildernesses_. This is the narrow basis I mentioned. And you can see very strong emergent and iterative cultural understandings of what is or isn't possible, a fair "move", etc within that space - Gygax's DMG is notoriously replete with these, which is what makes bits of it so hard to make sense of to readers who weren't part of that shared culture. Examples include: his discussion of how to manage the passage of time, which assumes without stating that the campaign world is being run for multiple groups multiple evenings per week; his discussion around what is appropriate for non-Monty Haul treasure placement, which has to be reconciled with his XP tables and the idea that 10 magic items should be a genuine _limit_ for a paladin; the obsession with concealed pits as traps and the rules for detecting them, but the relative absence of assassins and the relative unclarity in how the surprise rules should work when one side is setting up an ambush; etc.
> 
> My own view is that once the campaign world - talking now not just about background colour and "Gygaxian naturalism" but about the actual subject matter of play - becomes anything like as rich as the real world (and Traveller and Runequest are the earliest RPGs I know of to try and present such gameworlds) then the feasibility of free kriegsspiel adjudication rapidly diminishes.
> 
> When mainstream D&D play entered this sort of period is hard to establish with any confidence, for me at least. Tracy Hickman's Desert of Desolation modules are often held up as being early examples of "story"-driven modules, but when I was able to pick them up second-hand a few years ago and have a read of them, they struck me as very dungeon-crawly with a bit of a puzzle-solving overlay. So in my thinking it still comes back to Dragonlance - if that is going to be played not as a dungeon crawl to beat a black dragon but as a genuine "story"-driven experience then I think the Free Kriegsspiel possibilities drop away. No matter how much backstory there is about the Tanis-Kitiar relationship, I don't think there can be objective Free Kriegsspiel determinations of whether or not she would be willing to kill him on the field of battle. There's no "objective" understanding of human emotions and emotional responses that will allow the GM to decide that, and that will bring it within the field of "knowable" prospects for the players. The difference from a covered pit trap, in these respects, could hardly be greater!
> 
> I don't know about _tyranny_; but if the reality of human emotions was as non-arbitrary as I think it needs to be for Free Kriegsspiel adjudication to work, then we would have far fewer songs, poems and rancorous relationship breakups!
> 
> If one thinks about literal Free Kriegsspiel, the main emotional factor is morale. But that is not handled by attempting to determine the emotional reactions of any single figure: it's handled by imposing "population"-level generalisations grounded in a shared experience of how those populations respond. Clearly even some of those experiences can produce false population-level conclusions: it seems likely that French adjudicators of Free Kriegsspield would have rated morale as too high a factor in relation to infantry success in contexts of "machine"-warfare; and likewise that many pre-WWII adjudicators would have rated civilian morale against terror bombing as far more likely to break than history has revealed to be the case.
> 
> But once we get to single figures, and how they would respond to former loves, whether they have to go to a meeting at a teahouse or just want to take some downtime there, how they might respond to an SOS signal, etc - well, I'm very sceptical that Free Kriegsspiel methods of adjudication are applicable.




While I don't agree, I appreciate your perspective!
I do agree there is a strong element of being on the same page in the 'Shared Imaginative Space'. Having some similar cultural grounding certainly helps. Eg for Primeval Thule it helps to have some familiarity with swords & sorcery tropes. OTOH part of play is exploring the world-fiction and finding out how the fictional world works. That's one reason a GM needs to be ready to justify his/her decisions.

I agree that Free Kriegsspiel used for military training has an issue with referee cultural biases, so eg if the Royal Navy are running a Free Kriegsspiel in 1912 they're not going to have the RN battlecruisers explode and sink under German fire the way that happened at Jutland (and again in WW2 when Tirpitz sank The Hood). But this is much less of an issue with a fictional universe than a serious attempt to emulate the real one. Everyone accepts that the SIS is not the real world and that it operates under different laws. It only requires that the players trust the GM, and that the GM adjudication be reasonable and reasonably consistent. If the GM is running Dragonlance then the GM should be 
aiming to emulate high fantasy norms, but whether an NPC decides to kill a foe certainly can be decided by dice roll just as much as whether the 9th Hussars will stand against the Old Guard's advance. I generally find that if I play an NPC for a long time their internal motivations are clear, I 'feel' the NPC just as much as if they were a PC, and no roll needed. Rolls are more for morale checks for the hobgoblins I've been playing for three combat rounds, not the 20th level PC's Paladin wife I've been playing for three years.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I agree that Free Kriegsspiel used for military training has an issue with referee cultural biases
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But this is much less of an issue with a fictional universe than a serious attempt to emulate the real one. Everyone accepts that the SIS is not the real world and that it operates under different laws. It only requires that the players trust the GM, and that the GM adjudication be reasonable and reasonably consistent.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I generally find that if I play an NPC for a long time their internal motivations are clear, I 'feel' the NPC just as much as if they were a PC, and no roll needed.



For me, these bits I've highlighted bring out the contrast of perspective between (i) what I might call the _strong _"GM decides" approach and (ii) my own attempt to distinguish _free kriegsspiel-type GM decides_ from _"Mother may I"-type GM decides_. In particular, I feel that free kriegsspiel doesn't (fully? adequately? - an adverb is needed here and those are the ones I can think of in the right general neighbourhood) survive the transition you describe from being "disciplined" by the real world to being disciplined primarily by the GMs sense of _what's reasonable and consistent_.

If I had to choose a word to fasten on and express the previous sentence, it would be _objective_: free kriegsspiel disciplined by the real world can be objective, in a way that "free kriegsspiel" disciplined only by the referee's sense of reasonableness and consistency can't be. Those latter things are, almost by definition I think, subjective. 

As you'll have already worked out from my earlier post, I see pit traps as falling on the "objective" side here, but most individual (as opposed to "population"-level) human behaviour as falling on the other side.

This also leads me to think about the issue of _trust_ in the GM as being different in the two cases: of course the free kriegsspiel participants have to trust the referee to be objective - but that's something like trusting an encyclopedia to give you accurate information. But in a _Tanis and Kitiara_-type case - ie the ones I put on the other side of my posited distinction - the trust is more like _trusting the GM to present something plausible_. And _plausibility_ is a very different thing from _objectively accurate_.

To try and convey the same point in a slightly different way, the free kriegsspiel referee is trying to articulate _the single right answer to the situation_. But when the threshold is plausibility only - as is the case, I am asserting, for individual-level human behaviour - then _there is no single right answer_. There's a range of possible answers, with the referee fastening on one. Rather than _GM decides_ I might redescribe it as _GM chooses_ to try and convey the way in which I think it differs from free kriegsspiel.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> We've been through this before.  People don't get to take a word or phrase and re-define it for personal use.



Well, actually, this happens all the time. You do it too! - you have your preferred usages of various words and phrases which not every competent English-speaking RPGer accepts or agrees with.

Human communication is possible in part because most competent speakers are very capable of recognising and making allowances for these idiosyncratic variations in usage.



Maxperson said:


> If that's not what he meant, and I believe you when you say that it wasn't, then he should not have use the term Mother May I.



Even supposing this was true - and for the reasons just given I'm not sure that it is - the post is already made and some hundreds of posts have followed it. The event has happened, the deed is done, lamenting it seems largely pointless.  



Maxperson said:


> I and others also don't have to try and be mind readers about whether or not someone is using a term properly, or has re-defined it into something that it isn't.  It's the responsibility of the OP to use terms in the proper manner.



It doesn't require mind reading to work out what is meant, though. It's trivial to work it out from context. Which is my point.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> But in a _Tanis and Kitiara_-type case - ie the ones I put on the other side of my posited distinction - the trust is more like _trusting the GM to present something plausible_. And _plausibility_ is a very different thing from _objectively accurate_.
> 
> To try and convey the same point in a slightly different way, the free kriegsspiel referee is trying to articulate _the single right answer to the situation_.




Single right answer? But when I watched a TV show with British senior military officers playing the Battle of Waterloo (Napoleon won)  - the referee frequently said stuff like "On a 4+ the infantry withstand the charge" and then rolled the die. Obviously there were two possible answers - either the infantry held the line, or they broke and ran. There were other 'wrong' answers - answers outside the bounds of possibility, like the infantry are wiped out to the last man, or they turn into angels and start shooting laser beams from their eyes. The possible answers are the 'plausible' ones, exactly the same as with adjudicating individual NPC decisions.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Single right answer? But when I watched a TV show with British senior military officers playing the Battle of Waterloo (Napoleon won)  - the referee frequently said stuff like "On a 4+ the infantry withstand the charge" and then rolled the die. Obviously there were two possible answers - either the infantry held the line, or they broke and ran. There were other 'wrong' answers - answers outside the bounds of possibility, like the infantry are wiped out to the last man, or they turn into angels and start shooting laser beams from their eyes. The possible answers are the 'plausible' ones, exactly the same as with adjudicating individual NPC decisions.



I can happily accept that in certain cases the single right answer isn't ascertainable - there are limits to human epistemic prowess - but there is a _single right set of possibilities_ - either the infantry withstand the charge, or they break - and this is disciplining the referee's decision to set some odds and call for the roll.

In the individual-level human behaviour cases, my view is that there is no single right set of possibilities, because where individual-level human behaviour is concerned that already admits indefinitely many possibilities. That's not to say _anything goes_ - I think that most tables would accept that if Tanis meets Kitiara on the field of battle she's not going to rush up and offer him a rose - but the range of possibilities is very great - certainly more than two - and so there is no objective answer in that respect before we even get to the point of setting the odds.

I think this is what, in the history of RPG development, has driven (as a trend, not uniformally) _character/theme-driven RPGing_ towards "say 'yes' or roll the dice", or similar sorts of approaches. (Ie I don't think this is just a coincidental convergence.) I'll try and explain why.

In the Waterloo example, there's also a sense in which there are indefinitely many possibilities - it's always _possible_ that, right at that moment, an earthquake occurs and swallows up the infantry line, or a great wave sweeps them away (Belgium is a flat country, though Waterloo is a fair way inland, but hopefully you get my point), or whatever. But those possibilities are sufficiently remote and non-salient that the referee doesn't need to bother with them. The only salient possibilities are objectively ascertainable - holding or breaking.

In the Tanis-and-Kitiara example, how do we decide what the salient possibilities are, given the indefinite range of possible and plausible responses in human interaction? One way is _GM chooses_, which is the traditional way of running the DL modules. The other obvious way is that each participant in the play situation - player and GM - gets to nominate a salient possibility. The player puts forward his/hers, the GM puts forward his/hers. Then, when the dice are rolled, if the player wins his/her choice comes good; if the player loses the GM's choice comes good.

And this can be generalised to any situation in the game in which the inherent possibilities are multiple, but in which the player and GM can each fasten on one as the one s/he wants to put forward. It can handle not only _Where can we find some sect members_, where the player puts forward "In the teahouse" as their salient possibility, but even purely binary matters like _Is there a secret door here?_ It seems that "yes" and "no" are the only possible options in this latter case, but if both are plausible then this can be resolved by the player opting for one, the GM the other, and making a check to see which is to be the case.

So I think it is the individual-level human-behaviour stuff - which is at the heart of character-driven play - that creates the impetus for "say 'yes' or roll the dice", but the method turns out to be easily generalised to all parts of the game, including doing "exploration" using the same dice-based resolution approach as we use for other elements of play, rather than relying on maps and notes as per the wargaming tradition. (In a Waterloo free kriegsspiel, rather than "Is there a secret door" one player might ask "Are their clouds"? I can imagine the referee rolling dice to determine the answer. But I think in free kriegsspiel that wouldn't be the default approach to establishing these "backstory" elements.)

And once exploration is done in that way, it too gets swallowed up into the _theme_ stuff - if no one cares about secret doors than dice will never be rolled to determine whether or not there are any, but maybe the presence of curtains in rooms becomes a hot issue for that table for whatever reason. (Why do D&D maps and keys obsess over room height but not ceiling colour? I guess because we have a wall-climbing thief class, and rules for monster size and weapon length and the like, but no _colour mage_ or _interior decorator_ class. Given that we do have a druid class, why do D&D maps and keys _not_ obsess over what plant life and (non-giant) vermin live in the dungeon? I guess because the druid is something of an ad hoc add on to the core dungeoneering game!)

In this way I think the move away from _GM chooses_ for certain sorts of character-driven stuff leads to a more general move away from a wargame-type way of establishing setting and backstory to a much more "narrative"/"thematic" way of doing so. There's an inner logic to it, though obviously not every game has to travel all the way along the logical arrow.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> as I already posted upthread there are some contexts in which even the Death Knight's immunity to fear may be an example of "Mother may I" (eg as an important aspect of play, a PC has sworn to drive away the next foe s/he encounters by sheer terror alone, and then the GM presents a Death Knight as the next foe and thus dictates the failure of the PC's oath).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There no Mother May I there, either.  The player is not asking if his PC can do something.  He is doing it.  It's also okay to fail at something.  Even something the PC swears to do.
Click to expand...


This goes right back to the issue    [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] was concerned with in the OP on the other thread, namely how do _framing_, _player-chosen stakes_, and _adjudication/resolution interact_? And as    [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] noted, we can't talk about these things meaningfully without attending to differences between systems.

Upthread,    [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and    [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], in reply to    [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION], explored this in the context of Dungeon World. Their point was that, although in DW all backstory authority rests with the GM, the principles of the game oblige the GM (i) to have regard to player-chosen stakes in (ii) adjudication - eg establishing the outcomes of an attempt to Spout Lore or Discern Realities - and (iii) framing. In respect of the lattermost, the GM is obliged to _build on the fiction_ that was established via adjudication. Thus (i) feeds into (ii) feeds into (iii), and so even though players don't have backstory authority, their choices as to what matters - looking for secret doors, swearing oaths to drive foes away in terror, whatever it might be - ought to feed directly into the GM's authorship of the shared fiction.

It would be incredibly bad DW GMing to simply frame the PC who has sworn the terror oath into a conflict with a fear-immune death knight, full stop and end of story. Such a thing _might_ be one way of the GM establishing adverse consequences for failed checks; but in that case it wouldn't come from nowhere, and wouldn't be a case simply of _GM decides_.

Other RPGs take different approaches to content introduction, which affects what can feasibly be put at stake in those games. In Classic Traveller - which as I have said is a dice-driven game - every time the PC enter or leave a system in their starship, a check for a starship encounter has to be made. This is determined by rolling on a table, but as the rules say (Book 2 original ed, p 36), "This result may, and should, be superseded by the referee in specific situations, especially if a newly entered system is in military or civil turmoil, or involves other circumstances." Ie the referee is expected to have regard to the fiction in determining starship encounters.

This means that _if you're playing Traveller by the rules_, then it won't support a player making _an encounter with some specific sort of ship_ a matter of significance. In fact, it works best when _what the players care about, in the play of their PCs_ is something that can be furthered, built upon or otherwise played with _whatever sort of starship might be encountered_. Thankfully, the overall orientation of the game, and the implicit backstory of an Imperium loosely ruling a confederation of highly-varied but often noble-ruled worlds, tends to make this fairly easy.

D&D is, proceduarlly, _very_ relaxed about content-introduction except perhaps in its most austere, dungeon-crawling, wandering-monster table form: but in this latter case it is highly random and (in my experience) doesn't make integration of thematic focus fairly easy in the way that Traveller does. For instance, the game presents many types of PCs who might swear all sorts of oaths that orient them in particular ways to particlar foes (fighters, paladins, rangers, clerics, monks, even druids and perhaps even assassins) but the random tables won't make it easy for these oaths to play out in any narratively satisfying way; and if its _Gm decides_ then it's all on the GM to handle these aspects of content introduction. The possibilities of unsatisfactory play experiences in either case aren't addressed at all by saying "It's OK to fail".


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> In the Tanis-and-Kitiara example, how do we decide what the salient possibilities are, given the indefinite range of possible and plausible responses in human interaction?




In the Kitiara case, I normally do it by having an internal aspect on Kitiara. I feel what Kitiara is feeling, which determines her reaction to Tanis. This may be mediated by dice rolls - Tanis rolls Intimidate/Persuasion/Deception, and if I don't have a strong internal aspect on Kitiara yet I may roll a Reaction check for her. Eg I once rolled a 1e AD&D Reaction check for a young noblewoman whose stage coach (Tabitha Kallent was with her aunt Gertrude on their way to enrol in college in Yggsburgh) had just been rescued from brigands by the PCs. I rolled 00% - the best possible result - so naturally she fell wildly in love with her rescuer.  Within a few sessions I had a good internal aspect on Tabitha and no longer needed to roll for her as she came to feel like a real person; I could tell what she was thinking and feeling.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I once rolled a 1e AD&D Reaction check for a young noblewoman whose stage coach (Tabitha Kallent was with her aunt Gertrude on their way to enrol in college in Yggsburgh) had just been rescued from brigands by the PCs. I rolled 00% - the best possible result - so naturally she fell wildly in love with her rescuer.



Naturally!



S'mon said:


> In the Kitiara case, I normally do it by having an internal aspect on Kitiara.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Within a few sessions I had a good internal aspect on Tabitha and no longer needed to roll for her as she came to feel like a real person; I could tell what she was thinking and feeling.



But what about Tanis's player's internal aspect on Kitiara? Tanis has spent years (? or however long) in love with her, in her company - it seems plausible that Tanis knows her as well as, if not better than, the GM.

(This also relates to comments [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has made over the years about various approaches to immersion.)


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> But what about Tanis's player's internal aspect on Kitiara? Tanis has spent years (? or however long) in love with her, in her company - it seems plausible that Tanis knows her as well as, if not better than, the GM.




Nope. 

This actually came up in a serious way during the breakdown of my long running Wilderlands campaign. The player of Hakeem the N/CN Barbarian-20 warlord, possible Avatar of Bondorr the Sword Lord, was of the view that his lovely and very Lawful Good wife Malenn, Paladin of Mitra, should be entirely supportive of any decision he made, including his turning against allies (the Bronzes) he felt had betrayed him, culminating in his murdering a mutual long-term ally/friend, the LG/NG brass dragon Dyson, in order to spite them. I with Malenn's perspective am (a) prioritising the future of their son, betrothed to Lord Bronze's daughter & now endangered by Hakeem's actions, and (b) utterly aghast by his behaviour. The player wanted Malenn to be an accessory to his power fantasy; to me looking through her eyes she feels like a real person and I'm not going along with that. I'm not destroying the integrity of Malenn's character, or my campaign world, to keep a player happy. The game for me would no longer be worth running.

The player went as far as to try to fork the campaign with him GMing a universe where Malenn remains loyal to & in love with Hakeem, where the PCs play Hakeem's minions as he takes revenge on the traitorous Bronze former allies. I don't know if he got it off the ground, but it didn't seem a very good idea to me.


----------



## Sadras

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] you would have used RtD in [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s scenario or would you have said yes, having the wife been an extension of the player's control?


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> What are the rules for PC build?




So there are guidelines in the 5e DMG for magic in a low, medium and high magic-styled campaign, but since this is a 10-I-imagine session campaign only, I'm a little more lax.



> And what is the dramatic trajectory of that PC and of the game?  Which is to say, how does the player's action declaration relate to those things? Is the player at a cruch-point for his/her PC? Or is the player - whom you've said is new to your game - trying to learn the genre parameters of the game and doing it via in-character interaction rather than out-of-character?




It is a modified B10, the PCs wish to trackdown Golthar who escaped them and according to various clues they suspect strongly (correctly so) that he is on his way to Threshold. The PC ask for the enchanted gem is not due to crunch-point (at least I do not think, see below) it is probably enforced by his idea of what may be available in a land where magic exists.

He was quickly dispatched (unconscious) by one of Golthar's elite goons in a single round when the party had split so one can make that dramatic need connection, since he intends to return the favour should he meet up with that NPC again. 



> That second bit of the interaction was easily adjudicated via the treasure-parcel rules that are core to 4e.




The treasure-parcel rules does make it easier. 
Anyways I'm happy with how I handled it, I just wondered what your take on it would be, since was is not directly _find out what is in the DM notes_ in order to get from A to B in the storyline and certainly had nothing to do with backstory. 

Although I play sandbox, because this is a very short-and-specific-and-introductory campaign for 50% of the group, the game has _tracks_ which exist, but nothing overt. The longer they take to track down Golthar and and - the more dangerous the BBEG will be in the end.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Here's my response to this: [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] started a thread about how to handle certain aspects of scene framing and adjudication/resolution "without making players play the 'Mother may I' game". From reading the OP of that thread, it's clear that innerdude was _not_ looking for advice on how, as a GM, to avoid "being a douche" or being a "very rare bad DM".




But this thread isn't about inner dude, it is about your issue with my take on Mother May I in the thread, and in particular my statement that X was no more mother may I than in real life. I think I should also point out, while I disagreed with Innerdude on some things, I was able to reach a pretty amicable understanding with that poster. Innderdude even acknowledged my point about these styles being more nuanced and complex than he had originally framed. I didn't have an issue with Innerdude's position, I was working to understand it, and I had just made some side points about a style that got characterized in a post. The issue that cropped up was largely between you and me, not me and Innerdude or other posters. And this thread is just an attempt on your part to win that edge battle (I fight I really didn't even want to have quite frankly). I don't mean to sound like a broken record here, but you keep invoking that original thread, and my recollection of it is much different. Perhaps I am missing some key detail, or forgotten. This thread however, is a much more general discussion on mother may I. I don't think we are beholden to the particular focus of Innerdude's original question (one by the way I was genuinely trying to be helpful in answering in my original response---which is why I was clearly stating things like this might not be for you).


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Nope.





Sadras said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] you would have used RtD in [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s scenario or would you have said yes, having the wife been an extension of the player's control?



It depends on system and on "story" context. (Because I don't know all the details of S'mon's campaign, some of what I say may, to him, be obviously irrelevant to the particular situation that arose in his game.)

Re the second thing (ie context): a relationship that a PC is part of can either be colour/background, or can be a substantive aspect of gameplay. An example of the former: in my Prince Valiant game, two of the PC knights are married, but their spouses are just colour. The wooing and the weddings were big deals in play (one bigger than the other), but now that they've satisfied their dynastic ambitions they are planning to travel to Byzantium to fight Huns and join a crusade. A different sort of example: in my 4e game, two of the PCs have had familiars. The fact that a familiar is a semi-autonomous entity is, in 4e, just colur: the mechanical abilities conferred by a familiar are, in effect, bonuses conferred by a feat, and the fact that _in the fiction_ there is this other being involved is mere colour.

When a relationship is mere colour then I regard it as something for the player to look after unless s/he does something to bring it into the foreground (eg implanting the Eye of Vecna into one's imp familiar).

This doesn't mean that the relationship will always stay on an even keel. I have at least one player who can be very ruthless towards his own PCs if he thinks that's what the fiction demands.

When a relationship is not mere colour - of my currently active games, Burning Wheel is the main one where non-colour relationships are part of the game - then system becomes relevant.

In some systems, relationships are tagged/categorised as _inimical_ or _friendly_ (eg Burning Wheel) or as a flaw-type attribute or a buff-type attribute (eg HeroQuest revised; Marvel Heroic RP also supports something a bit like this). If a player chooses an inimical/flaw-type relationship then obviously all bets are off - and changing the nature of that relationship would require some significant success on the part of the player in the course of play.

If a player chooses a friendly/buff-type attribute, though, then the opposite applies: having that person turn into an enemy would only be the result of some significant failure in the course of play.

Because D&D (outside of the henchman mechanics) doesn't really treat non-colour relationships as an element of PC build, whether a relationship should be understood as friendly or inimical is going to depend much more on the fictional details; but that doesnt mean the classification is meaningless. Eg if the players succeed in a skill challenge to befriend so-and-so, then it would (in my view) be poor GMing to change the result of that outcome unless the players subsequently stake the relationship on some further outcome. Here's an example of that from my 4e game: the PCs befriended the baron; but then when they discovered his beloved niece was actually a Vecna-ite necromancer they informed him and asked him to deal with her as the law and justice required - the checks on that second occasion were not successful, and the outcome in the fiction was that the baron had an emotional breakdown and collapsed, thus signficinatly reducing the utility to the PCs of their relationship, and depriving the players of much of the benefit of their earlier success. (This example also shows that I regard it as perfectly good GMing, indeed obligatory!, for the GM to put pressure on the PCs' non-colour relationships - that's what drives a character-driven game. But _pressure _isn't the same as unilateral turning.)

If I look at the Tanis-Kitiara example through the lens of 4e play, then I would imagine that Tanis's player establishes, at the start of play and as an element of PC backstory, that he has an ex-lover who had a dark-side streak. Trying to reestablish connections with her would then be an unfolding skill challenge; or perhaps, in other skill challenges, Tanis's player would declare actions that relate to or draw upon his connection with Kitiara.

A successful check in these circumstances might result in learning some bit of information about Kitiara's whereabouts, or receiving some aid from an unrevealed ally who is (presumably) Kitiara. The first failure in respect of these checks might be narrated as Kitiara having joined the baddies. The second failure might be that not only has she joined the baddies, but she's a leading dragon highlord. The final failure would reveal that she is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, neither a double agent, nor willing to betray the baddies to reunite with Tanis.

This more-or-less conforms to the procedure I described above: each of the player and the GM put up a possibility that falls within the bounds of plausibility and is the outcome that is salient for them; and then the check tells us whose possibility is the one that is actually realised in the shared fiction.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> It is a modified B10



The same is true for my anecdote about the Order of the Bat. You're probably familiar with the elves - I can't remember now if the black dragon is part of the module's description of the island with the missing idol or is something I added in (but I think I'm right in remembering the missing idol on the island as an idea form the module rather than from me).



Sadras said:


> The PC ask for the enchanted gem is not due to crunch-point (at least I do not think, see below) it is probably enforced by his idea of what may be available in a land where magic exists.



While recognising the possibility you mention in brackets (which I can't add anything to if you're not sure and you were there as GM!), to me it sounds like the action declaration might have had the goal of helping to establish the parameters of the setting, but by way of in-character interaction rather than out-of-character interaction.

Even though that in-character interaction might be framed as an action declaration ("I ask the merchant to sell me an XYZ!"), if it's real purpose is as I've suggested then it's not really an action declaration at all, because it's not an attempt to change the shared fiction but simply to learn more about its parameters. I think this sort of thing is quite common from new players who are introduced to the game via certain approaches to play that I might (tentatively) call "classic immersion style". Whereas someone who is introduced by way of a very up-front "session zero"-type approach, or who reads a rulebook or sourcebook that sets out genre expectations, what is or isn't possible, etc probably won't need to do that sort of thing, because they would have those other ways of gathering the requisite information.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Even supposing this was true - and for the reasons just given I'm not sure that it is - the post is already made and some hundreds of posts have followed it. The event has happened, the deed is done, lamenting it seems largely pointless.




That's a misrepresentation of what is happening, though.  This thread didn't start off with Mother May I being used inappropriately, have some of us come in to defend against the slander, then have the OP retract and move on.  If it had, it WOULD be largely pointless to be talking about it now.  What happened, though, is people are still clinging to the false notion than D&D is Mother May I when run traditionally and keep using the term.  It's not largely pointless to keep defending against renewed attacks.


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> It depends on system and on "story" context. (Because I don't know all the details of S'mon's campaign, some of what I say may, to him, be obviously irrelevant to the particular situation that arose in his game.)...




It's interesting just how starkly different your approach is to mine. It seems like as GM I am in actor-stance inside the head of the NPC, whereas you are in author-stance. Sharing authorship with the players seems a lot more reasonable than sharing headspace.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> people are still clinging to the false notion than D&D is Mother May I when run traditionally and keep using the term.



Maybe that's because they don't agree with you that it's false!

You don't persuade people that your game doesn't have a feature they dislike by arguing terminology with them. You do that by explaining how your game doesn't really have that feature!

(Of course you might also allow that the game does have the feature, but explain why they're wrong to dislike it. But that's still not an issue of terminology - it's an issue of substance, about how a game works and what is valuable, or not valuable, about that.)


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> It's interesting just how starkly different your approach is to mine. It seems like as GM I am in actor-stance inside the head of the NPC, whereas you are in author-stance. Sharing authorship with the players seems a lot more reasonable than sharing headspace.



The only game where I'm a player at the moment is a BW game which has big gaps between sessions (trying to squeeze too many active campaigns into too few Sundays). When I'm playing, I don't need to think about big picture stuff and how to manage the outcomes of action resolution - I just declare actions that seem fitting for Thurgon von Pfizer, Last Knight of the Iron Tower.

Which is to say that I approach GMing and playing as quite different roles.

All of the above said, I (pemerton, not Thurgon) paid for some relationship as part of my build of Thurgon - and if the GM unilaterally deprived me of them I'd feel a bit gipped. But I do expect him to put pressure on them - eg in our last session I (Thurgon) was exploring the tower of Evard the sorcerer and found some old letters that suggested that Evard is, in fact, my grandfather. Thurgon's build includes a relationship with his mother and an affiliation with his family; Evard was a character whose existence, and whose tower's existence, as part of the shared fiction was established by a successful Great Masters-wise check made for Thurgon's offsider Aramina, the cynical sorcerer who for some as-yet unestablished reason hangs out with him. So discovering evidence that suggests dubious parentage for Thurgon is a very legitimate way of establishing pressure.

Naturally Thurgon gathered up all the old letters and burned them.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> (snip)...to me it sounds like the action declaration might have had the goal of helping to establish the parameters of the setting, but by way of in-character interaction rather than out-of-character interaction.




The distinction you make here I find interesting. I've never considered it like that.



> Even though that in-character interaction might be framed as an action declaration ("I ask the merchant to sell me an XYZ!"), if it's real purpose is as I've suggested then it's not really an action declaration at all, because it's not an attempt to change the shared fiction but simply to learn more about its parameters. I think this sort of thing is quite common from new players who are introduced to the game via certain approaches to play that I might (tentatively) call "classic immersion style". Whereas someone who is introduced by way of a very up-front "session zero"-type approach, or who reads a rulebook or sourcebook that sets out genre expectations, what is or isn't possible, etc probably won't need to do that sort of thing, because they would have those other ways of gathering the requisite information.




Impressed. In fact this player has primarily learned the game via this "classic immersion style" - as he regularly watches Critical Role and has very much been influenced by same. This is something I feel our table as somewhat lost or forgotten along the way, no to say we do not throw some roleplaying dialogue around, but perhaps not on the level of this new player whose idea of roleplaying is very much informed by what he has seen on CR.


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## Numidius

Sadras said:


> The distinction you make here I find interesting. I've never considered it like that.
> 
> 
> 
> Impressed. In fact this player has primarily learned the game via this "classic immersion style" - as he regularly watches Critical Role and has very much been influenced by same. This is something I feel our table as somewhat lost or forgotten along the way, no to say we do not throw some roleplaying dialogue around, but perhaps not on the level of this new player whose idea of roleplaying is very much informed by what he has seen on CR.



Your answer to the questioning newcomer appears pretty good, btw. You offered two more elements of the setting to explore in search of those magical gems, the lowly wizards market and the elf community.


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## Numidius

pemerton said:


> The only game where I'm a player at the moment is a BW game which has big gaps between sessions (trying to squeeze too many active campaigns into too few Sundays). When I'm playing, I don't need to think about big picture stuff and how to manage the outcomes of action resolution - I just declare actions that seem fitting for Thurgon von Pfizer, Last Knight of the Iron Tower.
> 
> Which is to say that I approach GMing and playing as quite different roles.
> 
> All of the above said, I (pemerton, not Thurgon) paid for some relationship as part of my build of Thurgon - and if the GM unilaterally deprived me of them I'd feel a bit gipped. But I do expect him to put pressure on them - eg in our last session I (Thurgon) was exploring the tower of Evard the sorcerer and found some old letters that suggested that Evard is, in fact, my grandfather. Thurgon's build includes a relationship with his mother and an affiliation with his family; Evard was a character whose existence, and whose tower's existence, as part of the shared fiction was established by a successful Great Masters-wise check made for Thurgon's offsider Aramina, the cynical sorcerer who for some as-yet unestablished reason hangs out with him. So discovering evidence that suggests dubious parentage for Thurgon is a very legitimate way of establishing pressure.
> 
> Naturally Thurgon gathered up all the old letters and burned them.



(Off Topic: is there somewhere I can read your char gen for BW, and/or session reports? Thanks)


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Maybe that's because they don't agree with you that it's false!
> 
> You don't persuade people that your game doesn't have a feature they dislike by arguing terminology with them. You do that by explaining how your game doesn't really have that feature!
> 
> (Of course you might also allow that the game does have the feature, but explain why they're wrong to dislike it. But that's still not an issue of terminology - it's an issue of substance, about how a game works and what is valuable, or not valuable, about that.)




But people have only been arguing about the terminology. No one is saying this campaign suited your style, or that you should overlook my method of resolving what is at the tea house. We simply maintained it wasn't Mother May I. Mother May I as a term would be like me contrasting "stinky poo scene framing" versus "fragrant aroma sandbox play". If you don't like the GMing making the call in the way I described, I have zero issue (and zero interest in persuading you toward a style you don't like). But if "mother may I" is the label used to analyze the play, I think you truly won't understand why people like it. And I think this plays out in the discussion, because your conclusions about styles you dislike don't seem to be objective, they veer into moral opprobrium or outright dismissal.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Your answer to the questioning newcomer appears pretty good, btw. You offered two more elements of the setting to explore in search of those magical gems, the lowly wizards market and the elf community.




Thank you. To be honest the question caught me off-guard, and although I'm fairly familiar with the setting (history, terrain, people, geography, politics and the like) questions that focus on magical items still unnerve me unless I have prepared for it.
The answer bought me more time to prepare (the elven settlement will be touched on next session) and lowly arcanist is something I'm more comfortable to handle on the spot (consumables and the like).


----------



## Sadras

Bedrockgames said:


> But people have only been arguing about the terminology. No one is saying this campaign suited your style, or that you should overlook my method of resolving what is at the tea house. We simply maintained it wasn't Mother May I. Mother May I as a term would be like me contrasting "stinky poo scene framing" versus "fragrant aroma sandbox play". If you don't like the GMing making the call in the way I described, I have zero issue (and zero interest in persuading you toward a style you don't like). But if "mother may I" is the label used to analyze the play, I think you truly won't understand why people like it. And I think this plays out in the discussion, because your conclusions about styles you dislike don't seem to be objective, they veer into moral opprobrium or outright dismissal.




Just to add to this, which I'm sure you have covered previously.

Say Yes
Roll the Dice
Say No
Co-Authoring
Table-Ruling via Consensus
Table-Ruling via DM
Player Adding a backstory element
Player Authoring upon success of check
Fail Forward
Success, with Complication
In-Character Dialogue Scene
and many others...

Are various tools that we use at our table.
To label all that as Mother-May-I, because I adopt the _Say No_ in my DMing toolbelt is short-sighted, reflects a terrible lack of understanding, a dismissive attitude with likely an undertone of nasty, given that the description is by many considered a pejorative.

I cannot understand why the _other side_ does not see this.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> Thank you. To be honest the question caught me off-guard, and although I'm fairly familiar with the setting (history, terrain, people, geography, politics and the like) questions that focus on magical items still unnerve me unless I have prepared for it.
> The answer bought me more time to prepare (the elven settlement will be touched on next session) and lowly arcanist is something I'm more comfortable to handle on the spot (consumables and the like).



Same, here. It does put me off when newcomers or old friends entering the game ask immediately for a magic weapon, using a MMI attitude before even starting to play. 
After explaining there are no +1 swords in the game to begin with, I ask the player about rumours, a legend, anything, surrounding this fabled magic weapon, from the POV of Pc class/race. Then start thinking/tinkering to come up with a decent Move (power/flaw) for it, involving the player in the process. By this time they usually give up the magic sword pretension (unfortunately  ).


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Just to add to this, which I'm sure you have covered previously.
> 
> Say Yes
> Roll the Dice
> Say No
> Co-Authoring
> Table-Ruling via Consensus
> Table-Ruling via DM
> Player Adding a backstory element
> Player Authoring upon success of check
> Fail Forward
> Success, with Complication
> In-Character Dialogue Scene
> and many others...
> 
> Are various tools that we use at our table.



A good start... 



> To label all that as Mother-May-I, because I adopt the _Say No_ in my DMing toolbelt is short-sighted, reflects a terrible lack of understanding, a dismissive attitude with likely an undertone of nasty, given that the description is by many considered a pejorative.
> 
> I cannot understand why the _other side_ does not see this.



...that sadly went down hill fast and lost a lot of my good will with it.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] you would have used RtD in [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s scenario or would you have said yes, having the wife been an extension of the player's control?



No one asked, but my rule of thumb is: Named Npc are under Gm control, Not yet named (minions or bystanders) ones are open to suggestion/usage from the players in the present scene. Should they become companions, Dw offer rules for managing them depending on what they want from the Pc: money, doing good deeds, glory etc. 

Btw, the first thing I noticed in 5e was the lacking of a Social Combat/resolution, so to speak. Useful in a situation like the Barbarian and his wife.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> I can happily accept that in certain cases the single right answer isn't ascertainable - there are limits to human epistemic prowess - but there is a _single right set of possibilities_ - either the infantry withstand the charge, or they break - and this is disciplining the referee's decision to set some odds and call for the roll.
> 
> In the individual-level human behaviour cases, my view is that there is no single right set of possibilities, because where individual-level human behaviour is concerned that already admits indefinitely many possibilities. That's not to say _anything goes_ - I think that most tables would accept that if Tanis meets Kitiara on the field of battle she's not going to rush up and offer him a rose - but the range of possibilities is very great - certainly more than two - and so there is no objective answer in that respect before we even get to the point of setting the odds.
> 
> I think this is what, in the history of RPG development, has driven (as a trend, not uniformally) _character/theme-driven RPGing_ towards "say 'yes' or roll the dice", or similar sorts of approaches. (Ie I don't think this is just a coincidental convergence.) I'll try and explain why.
> 
> In the Waterloo example, there's also a sense in which there are indefinitely many possibilities - it's always _possible_ that, right at that moment, an earthquake occurs and swallows up the infantry line, or a great wave sweeps them away (Belgium is a flat country, though Waterloo is a fair way inland, but hopefully you get my point), or whatever. But those possibilities are sufficiently remote and non-salient that the referee doesn't need to bother with them. The only salient possibilities are objectively ascertainable - holding or breaking.
> 
> In the Tanis-and-Kitiara example, how do we decide what the salient possibilities are, given the indefinite range of possible and plausible responses in human interaction? One way is _GM chooses_, which is the traditional way of running the DL modules. The other obvious way is that each participant in the play situation - player and GM - gets to nominate a salient possibility. The player puts forward his/hers, the GM puts forward his/hers. Then, when the dice are rolled, if the player wins his/her choice comes good; if the player loses the GM's choice comes good.
> 
> And this can be generalised to any situation in the game in which the inherent possibilities are multiple, but in which the player and GM can each fasten on one as the one s/he wants to put forward. It can handle not only _Where can we find some sect members_, where the player puts forward "In the teahouse" as their salient possibility, but even purely binary matters like _Is there a secret door here?_ It seems that "yes" and "no" are the only possible options in this latter case, but if both are plausible then this can be resolved by the player opting for one, the GM the other, and making a check to see which is to be the case.
> 
> So I think it is the individual-level human-behaviour stuff - which is at the heart of character-driven play - that creates the impetus for "say 'yes' or roll the dice", but the method turns out to be easily generalised to all parts of the game, including doing "exploration" using the same dice-based resolution approach as we use for other elements of play, rather than relying on maps and notes as per the wargaming tradition. (In a Waterloo free kriegsspiel, rather than "Is there a secret door" one player might ask "Are their clouds"? I can imagine the referee rolling dice to determine the answer. But I think in free kriegsspiel that wouldn't be the default approach to establishing these "backstory" elements.)
> 
> And once exploration is done in that way, it too gets swallowed up into the _theme_ stuff - if no one cares about secret doors than dice will never be rolled to determine whether or not there are any, but maybe the presence of curtains in rooms becomes a hot issue for that table for whatever reason. (Why do D&D maps and keys obsess over room height but not ceiling colour? I guess because we have a wall-climbing thief class, and rules for monster size and weapon length and the like, but no _colour mage_ or _interior decorator_ class. Given that we do have a druid class, why do D&D maps and keys _not_ obsess over what plant life and (non-giant) vermin live in the dungeon? I guess because the druid is something of an ad hoc add on to the core dungeoneering game!)
> 
> In this way I think the move away from _GM chooses_ for certain sorts of character-driven stuff leads to a more general move away from a wargame-type way of establishing setting and backstory to a much more "narrative"/"thematic" way of doing so. There's an inner logic to it, though obviously not every game has to travel all the way along the logical arrow.



Speaking of The batte of Waterloo and human psycology, I point out the importance of the backstory of Marshal Ney (coming from a series of unsuccessful battles, and maybe wanting to prove himself), leading Napoleon's cavalry in an epic fail charge against the English infantry, mistaking their removing of casualties from the field for a retreat, and thus not bothering of backing up his cavalry with infantry. 

An extract from Wikipedia on the psycological effect of the above cavalry charge:

A British eyewitness of the first French cavalry attack, an officer in the Foot Guards, recorded his impressions very lucidly and somewhat poetically:

About four p.m., the enemy's artillery in front of us ceased firing all of a sudden, and we saw large masses of cavalry advance: not a man present who survived could have forgotten in after life the awful grandeur of that charge. You discovered at a distance what appeared to be an overwhelming, long moving line, which, ever advancing, glittered like a stormy wave of the sea when it catches the sunlight. On they came until they got near enough, whilst the very earth seemed to vibrate beneath the thundering tramp of the mounted host. One might suppose that nothing could have resisted the shock of this terrible moving mass. They were the famous cuirassiers, almost all old soldiers, who had distinguished themselves on most of the battlefields of Europe. In an almost incredibly short period they were within twenty yards of us, shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" The word of command, "Prepare to receive cavalry", had been given, every man in the front ranks knelt, and a wall bristling with steel, held together by steady hands, presented itself to the infuriated cuirassiers.

— Captain Rees Howell Gronow, Foot Guards.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Here's my response to this:  [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] started a thread about how to handle certain aspects of scene framing and adjudication/resolution "without making players play the 'Mother may I' game". From reading the OP of that thread, it's clear that innerdude was _not_ looking for advice on how, as a GM, to avoid "being a douche" or being a "very rare bad DM".
> 
> It's quite clear that you wouldn't have framed  [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]'s question the same way that he did. But given that he framed it using the terminology that he did, and that the subsequent discussions have taken up that terminology, it adds nothing to them to repeatedly insist that a different word should have been used.
> 
> You may have noted that in my posts, when I'm not responding to another poster who has used the phrase "Mother may I", I have generally referred to _GM decides_ as a method of adjudication and resolution. That's because the topic of this thread is not _what word/phrase would it have been best for innerdude to use_. The topic is - _given that we all know what innerdude was talking about, is the thing he is trying to avoid any closer to reality than the sorts of techniques that would help him avoid it?_
> 
> That's not a question about terminology. It doesn't get answered by arguing about the proper usage of "Mother may I".




So I've been watching this thread and reading along, and there has been some very thoughtful discussion at times. There has also been the usual argument about terminology and how it's used, where people start talking about the labels rather than the ideas behind the labels. This post caught my eye for a couple of reasons.

First, I very much agree with it. I think that the intent of the OP by [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] in the thread that spawned this one was clearly not to put down any style of play. I don't think he was using Mother May I as a pejorative so much as a style that he was hoping to avoid, or at least minimize. I think his intent was clear, and that we would be better served speaking about his intent rather than the phrase Mother May I and what it may mean. 

Second, I feel like this post could have been made in reply to the OP of this thread. Or at least the intent. I feel like you willfully ignored the intent of the post by [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], who was clearly speaking about attempting to adjudicate a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction. So that, in the fiction, if a bad guy was hiding in the warehouse, then that is where he would be found, much like in the real world. I think that intent was also very clear. And if it wasn't, it was not long before the poster jumped over to this thread to elaborate, and to clarify. 

So I find this call for context and speaking to a poster's intent rather than their chosen words to be a bit incongruous with how you began this thread, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. 

Having said that, I otherwise agree with a lot of what you say, and your post has generated a lot of discussion, so there is that.

And for the record, I think that D&D absolutely fits the Mother May I description...I just don't think that's a bad thing. Not as long as there is some kind of thought given to how the DM handles the game. I look at the phrase as simply meaning that the game primarily runs through the DM, which D&D most certainly does. But I think that, as with many other games that have been cited, the DM should be acting with some principles that would prevent the game from becoming an example of the worst that Mother May I could be. Those principles should likely be clear at the start of the game, or discussed by the DM and group. As long as that's the case, then things should proceed just fine. 

If a DM is acting purely on whim, denying some actions while allowing others with no principle to guide him, no consistency in what is allowed and what is not, then yes, the game would be horrible. For many, this is likely what Mother May I means....the worst version of that. And that's what's caused all the argument back and forth on that. But I feel like with any game, it's possible for a GM to ignore principles and have the quality of play suffer. Seems pretty self evident.

I think perhaps the big difference with D&D and some other games, is that many other games describe the principles that they expect a GM to use, where as D&D seems to hint at a wide variety, and over many editions of the game, over forty-odd years, to the point where there is no set expectation on what principles will guide a given game. But, that doesn't mean there are none.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> A good start...
> 
> ...that sadly went down hill fast and lost a lot of my good will with it.




Well thanks for the input. Keep it up.

EDIT: Given that you define said playstyle with a pejorative I'm not sure how valuable that good will really is.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Btw, the first thing I noticed in 5e was the lacking of a Social Combat/resolution, so to speak. Useful in a situation like the Barbarian and his wife.




5e mechanics on this are limited. Besides the character ideals/bonds used a a general reference, there is the optional rule: Loyalty (dmg 93) but there is the Social Interaction rules (dmg 244-245) concerning the NPC's disposition towards the character. So I imagine one could use the friendly NPC reaction table for a situation between the barbarian and his wife.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> 5e mechanics on this are limited. Besides the character ideals/bonds used a a general reference, there is the optional rule: Loyalty (dmg 93) but there is the Social Interaction rules (dmg 244-245) concerning the NPC's disposition towards the character. So I imagine one could use the friendly NPC reaction table for a situation between the barbarian and his wife.



You're not married, are you?


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> 5e mechanics on this are limited. Besides the character ideals/bonds used a a general reference, there is the optional rule: Loyalty (dmg 93) but there is the Social Interaction rules (dmg 244-245) concerning the NPC's disposition towards the character. So I imagine one could use the friendly NPC reaction table for a situation between the barbarian and his wife.



Would you find satisfying rolling on the Friendly Npc Reaction table to resolve the barbarian's wife incident?


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> You're not married, are you?




I am. 

But I don't think it is wise to combine _Mother-May-I_ playstyle with a _Wife-May-I_.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I am.
> 
> But I don't think it is wise to combine _Mother-May-I_ playstyle with a _Wife-May-I_.



Anytime I get to play it's always Wife-May-I.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Would you find satisfying rolling on the Friendly Npc Reaction table to resolve the barbarian's wife incident?




Sure why not? But the process, given the situation would require Conversation, Multiple Checks (3 successes, before 3 losses...etc), Perhaps granting Advantage due to knowing NPC characteristics and relationship/Bond that exists, maybe even allow a Repeat, but the NPC's reaction might be worse.
You can still involve degrees of success/failure or fail forward scenarios so there is much scope for creative play/input.

I'm also sure there are games that handle such social resolution tasks much better.


----------



## S'mon

Sadras said:


> Sure why not? But the process, given the situation would require Conversation, Multiple Checks (3 successes, before 3 losses...etc), Perhaps granting Advantage due to knowing NPC characteristics and relationship/Bond that exists, maybe even allow a Repeat, but the NPC's reaction might be worse.
> You can still involve degrees of success/failure or fail forward scenarios so there is much scope for creative play/input.




This is all very alien to what actually happened, which was more akin to a real life marriage breakdown, with no real attempt to communicate. The player felt entitled to his  NPC wife's loyalty & support, he wasn't going to engage in a Skill Challenge to earn it!

Edit: The downside of super-immersive play is that the player/PC separation breaks down so much, the player feels the same emotions even away from the table. I guess this is what Jack Chick was warning us about!


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> Anytime I get to play it's always Wife-May-I.




No comment.


----------



## Sadras

S'mon said:


> This is all very alien to what actually happened, which was more akin to a real life marriage breakdown, with no real attempt to communicate. The player felt entitled to his  NPC wife's loyalty & support, he wasn't going to engage in a Skill Challenge to earn it!
> 
> Edit: The downside of super-immersive play is that the player/PC separation breaks down so much, the player feels the same emotions even away from the table. I guess this is what Jack Chick was warning us about!




The fact that the player tried to DM a different version of the events after what happened is pretty astonishing. He had a 20th level barbie so the the character occupied the player's headspace for quite some time.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Anytime I get to play it's always Wife-May-I.



I ask the wife questions and build on the answers


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> Sure why not? But the process, given the situation would require Conversation, Multiple Checks (3 successes, before 3 losses...etc), Perhaps granting Advantage due to knowing NPC characteristics and relationship/Bond that exists, maybe even allow a Repeat, but the NPC's reaction might be worse.
> You can still involve degrees of success/failure or fail forward scenarios so there is much scope for creative play/input.
> 
> I'm also sure there are games that handle such social resolution tasks much better.




Sounds cool and also a good example of SayYesOrRoll


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> No comment.



I like my wife more than I like gaming, so she has playing declaration veto power.   She's a good wife, though, so rarely says no and then only for reasons clearly established in the marriage prior to the play declaration.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Upthread,    [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and    [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], in reply to    [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION], explored this in the context of Dungeon World. Their point was that, although in DW all backstory authority rests with the GM, the principles of the game oblige the GM (i) to have regard to player-chosen stakes in (ii) adjudication - eg establishing the outcomes of an attempt to Spout Lore or Discern Realities - and (iii) framing. In respect of the lattermost, the GM is obliged to _build on the fiction_ that was established via adjudication. Thus (i) feeds into (ii) feeds into (iii), and so even though players don't have backstory authority, their choices as to what matters - looking for secret doors, swearing oaths to drive foes away in terror, whatever it might be - ought to feed directly into the GM's authorship of the shared fiction.
> 
> It would be incredibly bad DW GMing to simply frame the PC who has sworn the terror oath into a conflict with a fear-immune death knight, full stop and end of story. Such a thing _might_ be one way of the GM establishing adverse consequences for failed checks; but in that case it wouldn't come from nowhere, and wouldn't be a case simply of _GM decides_.




So first, it's good that a PC can fail in something important.  I often learn more about my characters from their failures, than their successes.  Second, I agree with you that if the DM was like, "Hehehe.  I'm going to throw a death knight in front of him now," that would be bad DMing.  However, if the death knight came up randomly, or if it had been pre-planned, I would want that death knight to show up regardless of my PC's oath.  I understand that in some systems things are not random and/or pre-determined like that, but I've been discussing D&D in this thread, so that's the stand point that I'm looking at it from.



> D&D is, proceduarlly, _very_ relaxed about content-introduction except perhaps in its most austere, dungeon-crawling, wandering-monster table form: but in this latter case it is highly random and (in my experience) doesn't make integration of thematic focus fairly easy in the way that Traveller does. For instance, the game presents many types of PCs who might swear all sorts of oaths that orient them in particular ways to particlar foes (fighters, paladins, rangers, clerics, monks, even druids and perhaps even assassins) but the random tables won't make it easy for these oaths to play out in any narratively satisfying way; and if its _Gm decides_ then it's all on the GM to handle these aspects of content introduction. The possibilities of unsatisfactory play experiences in either case aren't addressed at all by saying "It's OK to fail".




Even in the dungeon crawl, the DM can choose encounters, treasure and the like.  From 1e on the DM has had the rule given ability to ignore the dice or not to go to the dice at all and just decide things.  Sure, the base dungeon making rules contained random tables for monsters, but that didn't stop the DM from deciding that the next room has a roper.  

Even following the random dungeon tables, I don't see much issue with the oaths.  Unless you are spending your entire career inside that dungeon, or some massive series of dungeons, you will eventually find yourself outside where you can encounter the creatures you seek.  You can even research where to find them and seek them out.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Anytime I get to play it's always Wife-May-I.




I don't even have to be playing


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Well thanks for the input. Keep it up.
> 
> EDIT: Given that you define said playstyle with a pejorative I'm not sure how valuable that good will really is.



You made an edit so you could put words in my mouth?


----------



## Maxperson

I'll say that I can't recall [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] being one of those calling the traditional playstyle or game of D&D Mother May I.  He has asked some questions about it, but that's as much as I remember him doing.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Off Topic: is there somewhere I can read your char gen for BW, and/or session reports? Thanks



I've got a lot of Traveller, 4e and Prince Valiant reports, but fewer for BW. Here's a link to a report of a first session, but not the Thurgon campaign but a parallel game I'm GMing. (The report is on rpg.net, where I _post_ as thurgon.)


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like you willfully ignored the intent of the post by [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], who was clearly speaking about attempting to adjudicate a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction. So that, in the fiction, if a bad guy was hiding in the warehouse, then that is where he would be found, much like in the real world.



I wanted to pick up on this, to make a point that I don't think I've made earlier in the thread but seemed especially apposite in reply to this.

Notice how its an implication of what you say, in referring to "a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction", that games adjudicated in other ways tend to _lack_ a sense of real world causality.

The same implication is seen (and I have seen it _many_ times over the past decade or so on these boards) in describing approaches to establishing setting and backstory that aren't _GM maps and notes_ or _GM decides, perhaps by extrapolation from maps and notes_ as "Schroedinger's secret door (or whatever)".

I think that there is no basis for that implication whatsoever. And I think that most of those who put it forward have very little experience with those other (non-maps-and-notes) approaches. This claim that I am making is a corollary of the OP: that _the bad guy is in the warehouse because that's what the GM has written in his/her notes_ is no more realistic and no more emulates reality than _the bad guy is in the warehouse because the player succeeded on his/her track-down-bad-guys-in-warehouses check_.

And for completeness, in case it's not already obvious: _whatever_ method is used to establish the fictional truth about the location of the bad guy, the reason that he may be found in the warehouse is because that's where he is hiding - just as in the real world.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I wanted to pick up on this, to make a point that I don't think I've made earlier in the thread but seemed especially apposite in reply to this.
> 
> Notice how its an implication of what you say, in referring to "a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction", that games adjudicated in other ways tend to _lack_ a sense of real world causality.




This wasn't anything I was implying in my post. I made the point even that you can juggle different goals here (for example real world causality was one consideration, but potential drama or genre convention was another). This wasn't about being purely driven by real world causality (I was merely stating that, as an off-the-cuff remark, the person not being there or being there is no more mother may I than real life is mother may I). But I wasn't implying a different approach like the one you are suggesting couldn't include realism as the aim. I am assuming, based on your posting history and interests you are going to lean more toward what works in terms of story, but I don't see that a system which, for example, has moves players can perform to help adjudicate this situation would have to be less realistic. That honestly is going to depend greatly on the moves and the way the system tells you to use them. I don't see this as a zero sum game over who has the most realistic, or least realistic approach. Realism isn't a particular concern for me in my games. As I explained, I like some level of internal consistency, I like the world to feel like it is a real place that exists for the characters to explore, but my worlds are governed just as much by wuxia movie logic and physics as they are by real world logic and physics. 

Just to give an example from another game, which I know I've mentioned a lot but it is one that really struck me. When I played Hillfolk, I felt it, even though a lot of the setting stuff was coming from things the players asserted in scenes, that it felt like a real, palpable world (and everything was flowing logically from what came before). I realize that Hillfolk isn't say yes or roll the dice, or a system like DW, but it is one, at least when I played it (by no means am I an expert on the game), where these kinds of situations were often by players framing the scene (or even by just saying something was the case in dialogue within a scene). I didn't find it unrealistic or implausible at all. I am sure a boneheaded player could have made it so, but if the group wants plausibility, that kind of system will have it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I wanted to pick up on this, to make a point that I don't think I've made earlier in the thread but seemed especially apposite in reply to this.
> 
> Notice how its an implication of what you say, in referring to "a game with a sense of real world causality in the game's fiction", that games adjudicated in other ways tend to _lack_ a sense of real world causality.
> 
> The same implication is seen (and I have seen it _many_ times over the past decade or so on these boards) in describing approaches to establishing setting and backstory that aren't _GM maps and notes_ or _GM decides, perhaps by extrapolation from maps and notes_ as "Schroedinger's secret door (or whatever)".
> 
> I think that there is no basis for that implication whatsoever. And I think that most of those who put it forward have very little experience with those other (non-maps-and-notes) approaches. This claim that I am making is a corollary of the OP: that _the bad guy is in the warehouse because that's what the GM has written in his/her notes_ is no more realistic and no more emulates reality than _the bad guy is in the warehouse because the player succeeded on his/her track-down-bad-guys-in-warehouses check_.
> 
> And for completeness, in case it's not already obvious: _whatever_ method is used to establish the fictional truth about the location of the bad guy, the reason that he may be found in the warehouse is because that's where he is hiding - just as in the real world.




Again, this seems contradictory to me. 

If you honestly think that any method is equal...that neither GM nor Player driven techniques are more “realistic” than the other....a sentiment I would agree with, by the way...then why would you infer someone describing their technique as being guided by their sense of realism or causality as a criticism of other techniques? 

I don’t rely solely on GM driven techniques in my games. I use them, yes....but more and more I find myself allowing the players to determine lots of details. Whether it’s simply going with an idea they’ve presented or using the game mechanics to determine something, I like using different approaches for different things. Obviously, a lot of this depends on the game being played. 

At times I may decide something as a GM that I feel is appropriate. Perhaps a villain has been driven from his lair and gone into hiding. Where is he hiding? If I decide ahead of time, and base it upon information that’s been presented in the fiction...the villain’s traits and desires, and his connections and resources, whatever other pertinent elements of the fiction that may apply..then I’ll go ahead and do that. Using the logic of the fiction to make such a decision. 

In a case where maybe a lot of the facts that would inform such a decision haven’t been strongly established, I may allow the players to suggest a probable location, and perhaps make some kind of roll to see if it works out. Then I’ll proceed with having the villain be hiding somewhere accordong to this method.

I don’t think that either of these two methods is ultimately “more realistic” than the other. But I absolutely understand why someone might use such language when discussing the first method. It is certainly imprecise, but I’m not going to look for offense where none is intended.


----------



## Manbearcat

Sadras said:


> Just to add to this, which I'm sure you have covered previously.
> 
> Say Yes
> Roll the Dice
> Say No
> Co-Authoring
> Table-Ruling via Consensus
> Table-Ruling via DM
> Player Adding a backstory element
> Player Authoring upon success of check
> Fail Forward
> Success, with Complication
> In-Character Dialogue Scene
> and many others...
> 
> Are various tools that we use at our table.
> To label all that as Mother-May-I, because I adopt the _Say No_ in my DMing toolbelt is short-sighted, reflects a terrible lack of understanding, a dismissive attitude with likely an undertone of nasty, given that the description is by many considered a pejorative.
> 
> I cannot understand why the _other side_ does not see this.




Would you say it is fair to call this sort of "kitchen sink" approach "unconstrained (by system) GMing?"

If not, why?

Because when I think of the inverse, I think of "constrained (by system) GMing."  And constraint means specific things depending upon the system.  One constraint in a system might be "Fail Forward is anathema."  A constraint in another system might be "there is no plot."  A constraint in another system might be "you need a map with a, b, and c to play at all."  A constraint in another system might be "create a map through play."  A constraint in another system might be "at every moment, push play toward conflict or escalate current conflict."  A constraint in another system might be "follow the rules and the results of the dice."  A constraint in another system might be "GM all scenarios neutrally."


----------



## darkbard

pemerton said:


> I've got a lot of Traveller, 4e and Prince Valiant reports, but fewer for BW. Here's a link to a report of a first session, but not the Thurgon campaign but a parallel game I'm GMing. (The report is on rpg.net, where I _post_ as thurgon.)




"The 4e game will likely finish in a few months."

My, oh, my, that turned out a bit differently, what?


----------



## pemerton

darkbard said:


> "The 4e game will likely finish in a few months."
> 
> My, oh, my, that turned out a bit differently, what?



Someone decided to build a house, weekend-by-weekend.


----------



## darkbard

pemerton said:


> Someone decided to build a house, weekend-by-weekend.




Pitfalls of adulting...


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> If you honestly think that any method is equal...that neither GM nor Player driven techniques are more “realistic” than the other....a sentiment I would agree with, by the way...then why would you infer someone describing their technique as being guided by their sense of realism or causality as a criticism of other techniques?



In a conversation about transport modes, if someone says "I ride my bike because I need to get from A to B" that tends to imply that other modes (eg walking) aren't so good at getting from A to B. Alternatively, if someone thought that walking was as good as riding for getting from A to B, then they would (I think) be unlikely to point to _it gets me from A to B_ as a reason in favour of riding rather than walking.



hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t think that either of these two methods is ultimately “more realistic” than the other. But I absolutely understand why someone might use such language when discussing the first method.



I'm not saying I'm puzzled by the usage. I'm disagreeing with it. Those are different things.



hawkeyefan said:


> I’m not going to look for offense where none is intended.



You may be addressing the wrong poster here. I'm not offended and have never said anything to the contrary.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> Again, this seems contradictory to me.
> 
> If you honestly think that any method is equal...that neither GM nor Player driven techniques are more “realistic” than the other....a sentiment I would agree with, by the way...then why would you infer someone describing their technique as being guided by their sense of realism or causality as a criticism of other techniques?
> 
> I don’t rely solely on GM driven techniques in my games. I use them, yes....but more and more I find myself allowing the players to determine lots of details. Whether it’s simply going with an idea they’ve presented or using the game mechanics to determine something, I like using different approaches for different things. Obviously, a lot of this depends on the game being played.
> 
> At times I may decide something as a GM that I feel is appropriate. Perhaps a villain has been driven from his lair and gone into hiding. Where is he hiding? If I decide ahead of time, and base it upon information that’s been presented in the fiction...the villain’s traits and desires, and his connections and resources, whatever other pertinent elements of the fiction that may apply..then I’ll go ahead and do that. Using the logic of the fiction to make such a decision.
> 
> In a case where maybe a lot of the facts that would inform such a decision haven’t been strongly established, I may allow the players to suggest a probable location, and perhaps make some kind of roll to see if it works out. Then I’ll proceed with having the villain be hiding somewhere accordong to this method.
> 
> I don’t think that either of these two methods is ultimately “more realistic” than the other. But I absolutely understand why someone might use such language when discussing the first method. It is certainly imprecise, but I’m not going to look for offense where none is intended.




I agree, neither method is more realistic, because neither is realistic at all.  Both are methods of determining fiction, which can be as realistic as you describe it.  But, you will hear proponents of one of the methods often say that they use realism in their method.  I think it's fair to point out that they're just using their personal judgement as to what makes sense in a fictional world and that has nothing at all to do with realism.

I think honestly evaluating what you're doing when you play can lead to better play because you can avoid the potholes (cause you know where they are) and you will play with more discipline towards achieving play goals.  I do not think that honest evaluation means you must accept one method is objectively better than the other.  Subjectively, for you, absolutely one can be better.


----------



## pemerton

Suppose I said that _determining whether or not a secret door is part of the fiction by adjudicating a check_ is not more "Schroedinger's secret door" than _determining whether or not a secret door is part of the fiction by making a note on a map in advance of play_. I believe that many people, including some who are posting in this thread, would disagree with that claim.

Are they forbidden from disagreeing because they might hurt my feelings?


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Suppose I said that _determining whether or not a secret door is part of the fiction by adjudicating a check_ is not more "Schroedinger's secret door" than _determining whether or not a secret door is part of the fiction by making a note on a map in advance of play_. I believe that many people, including some who are posting in this thread, would disagree with that claim.
> 
> Are they forbidden from disagreeing because they might hurt my feelings?




This is sophistry.  You're saying that others are mean to you, so you're excused if you might be mean to them?

That said, one would hopefully not be hurt just by disagreement, although the SSD is a bad label, much like MMI, and can offend.


----------



## Sadras

Manbearcat said:


> Would you say it is fair to call this sort of "kitchen sink" approach "unconstrained (by system) GMing?"




Yes. I find D&D lends itself to adopt, borrow and steal from other great systems and playstyles.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> I like my wife more than I like gaming, so she has playing declaration veto power.   She's a good wife, though, so rarely says no and then only for reasons clearly established in the marriage prior to the play declaration.




I did not mean to imply anything negative, perhaps I should have used an emoji. I too have to clear it up with the wife beforehand given that we host 90% of the games.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> In a conversation about transport modes, if someone says "I ride my bike because I need to get from A to B" that tends to imply that other modes (eg walking) aren't so good at getting from A to B. Alternatively, if someone thought that walking was as good as riding for getting from A to B, then they would (I think) be unlikely to point to _it gets me from A to B_ as a reason in favour of riding rather than walking.




I don’t think that “I ride my bike to get from point A to B” has the implications you seem to think it does. I don’t think we should infer anything beyond the fact that this person chooses to ride a bike. It’s their personal preference. We don’t have enough information to know why they don’t opt for other methods. Not without asking.



pemerton said:


> I'm not saying I'm puzzled by the usage. I'm disagreeing with it. Those are different things.




Well, if you’re not puzzled by it, then you understood the intent, correct? If so, why disagree? Is it the label...the words chosen to express the idea...that you have a problem with? 

And if so, then why not allow Max the same complaint regarding the label “Mother May I”?



pemerton said:


> You may be addressing the wrong poster here. I'm not offended and have never said anything to the contrary.




Ah perhaps offense is too strong a word. You seemed...bothered? annoyed? mildly perturbed?....enough by the terms used to start a new thread explaining in a very literal way a conparison that was made casually and metaphorically. 

But plenty of other posters have also been looking for offense. I don’t think that Mother May I as it was used in the OP of the original thread was used in any kind of insulting manner. Nevertheless some have taken offense to it. I think that a big part of the problem in these conversations is that many folks are overly defensive of their playstyle, whether that style is openly criticized, or whether the criticism is perhaps only implied.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I agree, neither method is more realistic, because neither is realistic at all.  Both are methods of determining fiction, which can be as realistic as you describe it.  But, you will hear proponents of one of the methods often say that they use realism in their method.  I think it's fair to point out that they're just using their personal judgement as to what makes sense in a fictional world and that has nothing at all to do with realism.




In your opinion.  You shouldn't be presenting your opinion as if it were fact, because it's not.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I agree, neither method is more realistic, because neither is realistic at all.  Both are methods of determining fiction, which can be as realistic as you describe it.  But, you will hear proponents of one of the methods often say that they use realism in their method.  I think it's fair to point out that they're just using their personal judgement as to what makes sense in a fictional world and that has nothing at all to do with realism.
> 
> I think honestly evaluating what you're doing when you play can lead to better play because you can avoid the potholes (cause you know where they are) and you will play with more discipline towards achieving play goals.  I do not think that honest evaluation means you must accept one method is objectively better than the other.  Subjectively, for you, absolutely one can be better.




Oh I agree with that. I enjoy these kinds of discussions. And I enjoy all kinds of game mechanics and GMing techniques. I would wager my games have improved because of conversations like these, and specifically because of some of the posters involved, pemerton included. 

And I don’t mind questioning the use of a term. What seemed odd to me was that pemerton took issue with the way something was phrased, and then started a new thread about it. Then Max expresses concern over how something is phrased and is told that the label doesn’t matter, it’s the intent that we should focus on in order to have a meaningful discussion.

Those two things just jumped out as me as somewhat incompatible.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> For me, these bits I've highlighted bring out the contrast of perspective between (i) what I might call the _strong _"GM decides" approach and (ii) my own attempt to distinguish _free kriegsspiel-type GM decides_ from _"Mother may I"-type GM decides_. In particular, I feel that free kriegsspiel doesn't (fully? adequately? - an adverb is needed here and those are the ones I can think of in the right general neighbourhood) survive the transition you describe from being "disciplined" by the real world to being disciplined primarily by the GMs sense of _what's reasonable and consistent_.
> 
> If I had to choose a word to fasten on and express the previous sentence, it would be _objective_: free kriegsspiel disciplined by the real world can be objective, in a way that "free kriegsspiel" disciplined only by the referee's sense of reasonableness and consistency can't be. Those latter things are, almost by definition I think, subjective.
> 
> As you'll have already worked out from my earlier post, I see pit traps as falling on the "objective" side here, but most individual (as opposed to "population"-level) human behaviour as falling on the other side.
> 
> This also leads me to think about the issue of _trust_ in the GM as being different in the two cases: of course the free kriegsspiel participants have to trust the referee to be objective - but that's something like trusting an encyclopedia to give you accurate information. But in a _Tanis and Kitiara_-type case - ie the ones I put on the other side of my posited distinction - the trust is more like _trusting the GM to present something plausible_. And _plausibility_ is a very different thing from _objectively accurate_.
> 
> To try and convey the same point in a slightly different way, the free kriegsspiel referee is trying to articulate _the single right answer to the situation_. But when the threshold is plausibility only - as is the case, I am asserting, for individual-level human behaviour - then _there is no single right answer_. There's a range of possible answers, with the referee fastening on one. Rather than _GM decides_ I might redescribe it as _GM chooses_ to try and convey the way in which I think it differs from free kriegsspiel.




Exactly! And the problem with the answers of the GM here is not 'good GMing' or 'bad GMing' as some have insisted. It is a matter of first principles. NO GM can possibly say what a single NPC 'would do' in a situation with anything like authority. That is the ONLY authority they can rely on is some native authority of the GM, or to be precise the 'rules of the game' in the sense that those rules are "the GM decides as he sees fit". The other alternative is something else, of course. That is some sort of other mechanism decides, at least to some degree. The GM is constrained to act on the plot only in certain ways, the players can spend meta-game resources/take actions which allow them to introduce their answer, an allowable action declaration exists in a game where GMs don't have the option to block them, etc.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> You made an edit so you could put words in my mouth?




Apologies then for that. 
Then I'm not sure why your good will was lost. It has been established at least by one poster, repeatedly,  how such a word has been misapplied to their gamestyle. It has been mentioned by many posters that such word is a perjorative. Two posters commented that the perjorative was mentioned in a less than friendly post, with said post described as _hostile_.

It seems strange to me then for you to be offended for my characterisation of the other posters' use of the word.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I can happily accept that in certain cases the single right answer isn't ascertainable - there are limits to human epistemic prowess - but there is a _single right set of possibilities_ - either the infantry withstand the charge, or they break - and this is disciplining the referee's decision to set some odds and call for the roll.



I would take it further. There is a right answer. The troops depicted were all actually present at Waterloo and engaged in combat against each other on that day. There isn't just a 'single right set of possibilities', there is AN ANSWER. If the Old Guard and the Young Guard had charged together up the ridge 30 minutes sooner, then they would or wouldn't have broken through. One of those possibilities is what WOULD HAVE HAPPENED. There is no doubt there. True, it may not be determinable which IS correct, but there is a fundamental sense in which one of those answers is truly correct, and with sufficient information it could be determined which it is, with absolute certainty. 

The possible actions of a fantastical non-existent NPC of an imaginary race in an imaginary world with an imaginary culture and religion, and largely unknown background isn't something which HAS a determinable answer to it. 'truth' isn't even a possible description of any hypothesized set of actions. 



> In the individual-level human behaviour cases, my view is that there is no single right set of possibilities, because where individual-level human behaviour is concerned that already admits indefinitely many possibilities. That's not to say _anything goes_ - I think that most tables would accept that if Tanis meets Kitiara on the field of battle she's not going to rush up and offer him a rose - but the range of possibilities is very great - certainly more than two - and so there is no objective answer in that respect before we even get to the point of setting the odds.
> 
> I think this is what, in the history of RPG development, has driven (as a trend, not uniformally) _character/theme-driven RPGing_ towards "say 'yes' or roll the dice", or similar sorts of approaches. (Ie I don't think this is just a coincidental convergence.) I'll try and explain why.
> 
> In the Waterloo example, there's also a sense in which there are indefinitely many possibilities - it's always _possible_ that, right at that moment, an earthquake occurs and swallows up the infantry line, or a great wave sweeps them away (Belgium is a flat country, though Waterloo is a fair way inland, but hopefully you get my point), or whatever. But those possibilities are sufficiently remote and non-salient that the referee doesn't need to bother with them. The only salient possibilities are objectively ascertainable - holding or breaking.
> 
> In the Tanis-and-Kitiara example, how do we decide what the salient possibilities are, given the indefinite range of possible and plausible responses in human interaction? One way is _GM chooses_, which is the traditional way of running the DL modules. The other obvious way is that each participant in the play situation - player and GM - gets to nominate a salient possibility. The player puts forward his/hers, the GM puts forward his/hers. Then, when the dice are rolled, if the player wins his/her choice comes good; if the player loses the GM's choice comes good.
> 
> And this can be generalised to any situation in the game in which the inherent possibilities are multiple, but in which the player and GM can each fasten on one as the one s/he wants to put forward. It can handle not only _Where can we find some sect members_, where the player puts forward "In the teahouse" as their salient possibility, but even purely binary matters like _Is there a secret door here?_ It seems that "yes" and "no" are the only possible options in this latter case, but if both are plausible then this can be resolved by the player opting for one, the GM the other, and making a check to see which is to be the case.
> 
> So I think it is the individual-level human-behaviour stuff - which is at the heart of character-driven play - that creates the impetus for "say 'yes' or roll the dice", but the method turns out to be easily generalised to all parts of the game, including doing "exploration" using the same dice-based resolution approach as we use for other elements of play, rather than relying on maps and notes as per the wargaming tradition. (In a Waterloo free kriegsspiel, rather than "Is there a secret door" one player might ask "Are their clouds"? I can imagine the referee rolling dice to determine the answer. But I think in free kriegsspiel that wouldn't be the default approach to establishing these "backstory" elements.)
> 
> And once exploration is done in that way, it too gets swallowed up into the _theme_ stuff - if no one cares about secret doors than dice will never be rolled to determine whether or not there are any, but maybe the presence of curtains in rooms becomes a hot issue for that table for whatever reason. (Why do D&D maps and keys obsess over room height but not ceiling colour? I guess because we have a wall-climbing thief class, and rules for monster size and weapon length and the like, but no _colour mage_ or _interior decorator_ class. Given that we do have a druid class, why do D&D maps and keys _not_ obsess over what plant life and (non-giant) vermin live in the dungeon? I guess because the druid is something of an ad hoc add on to the core dungeoneering game!)
> 
> In this way I think the move away from _GM chooses_ for certain sorts of character-driven stuff leads to a more general move away from a wargame-type way of establishing setting and backstory to a much more "narrative"/"thematic" way of doing so. There's an inner logic to it, though obviously not every game has to travel all the way along the logical arrow.




Yup. I really never have understood why any of this would be controversial. I could write a book explaining exactly how RPGs progressed from one sort of game to the other through a series of accommodations, realizations, and elaborations. It shouldn't even be remotely controversial.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> But plenty of other posters have also been looking for offense. I don’t think that Mother May I as it was used in the OP of the original thread was used in any kind of insulting manner. Nevertheless some have taken offense to it. I think that a big part of the problem in these conversations is that many folks are overly defensive of their playstyle, whether that style is openly criticized, or whether the criticism is perhaps only implied.




It was not the OP I had issue with. I thought the OP explained his position quite well.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> You seemed...bothered? annoyed? mildly perturbed?....enough by the terms used to start a new thread explaining in a very literal way a conparison that was made casually and metaphorically.



A pretty clear claim was made - that _GM decides outcome of an action declaratoin about looking for sect members_ is no more "Mother may I" than real life.

I'm not interested in the terminology, and certainly not perturbed by it - I inherited it from another thread. I'm interested in the claim: I disagree with it. It trades on a notion that _encountering the world as an external constraint in real life_ is not relevantly different from _encountering the GM as an external constraint in RPGing_. But in fact the difference is night and day, for the reasons I gave in the OP. Only tne second is a fact about _allocation of authority in a RPG_ - which is what the phrase "Mother may I" is getting at.

If someone doesn't want to play an RPG where the authority for establishing the ficiton lies, unilaterally, with one participant, they will want to avoid the _GM decides_ approach. And to say that it is not more "Mother may I" than real life - that is, to say that it has nothing more to do with one-sided allocations of authority that real life - is just wrong.

I'm sure there are plenty of players who enjoy the _GM decides_ approach - this thread isn't about whether or not it's enjoyable, it's about clear analysis of where authority lies in establishing RPG fiction and outcomes.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I'm sure there are plenty of players who enjoy the _GM decides_ approach - this thread isn't about whether or not it's enjoyable, it's about clear analysis of where authority lies in establishing RPG fiction and outcomes.




This is where you are being disingenuous and I am not buying this post at all. All of these arguments have been about you advocating a playstyle preference. And you are using as your starting point, an off-the-cuff, casual remark, in order to build a straw man (where as I pointed out posters are cornered into defending the absurd position that the real world and the game world are exactly the same and follow the same processes). This was already covered earlier in the thread. If it isn't about playstyle advocacy, then you should have been discussing GM authority from the very outset, and you should have been capable of explaining why you think people might gravitate toward games with greater Gm Authority. Instead this whole discussion is a straw man built around a pejorative term and framed almost as a matter of morality. But if you are going to shift this argument to be one about whether the tea house scenario has nothing more to do with one-sided authority than real life, well your argument completely falls apart. In real life, I have zero authorship over such events. In a game where the GM decides, I can do much more to influence the GM's ultimate decision. In a case where I have to pick between trying to assert some kind of authority over reality, versus the GM, I pick the latter.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> A pretty clear claim was made - that _GM decides outcome of an action declaratoin about looking for sect members_ is no more "Mother may I" than real life.
> .




And again, want to point out for like the fifth time, I was making this statement very casually and wasn't asserting they were identical. You then took this small post and started a whole thread expecting me to defend the literal meaning of the words (which I repeatedly told you wasn't what I was trying to say). Further, I told you from the outset, I didn't like having my post singled out and turned into a thread.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> What seemed odd to me was that pemerton took issue with the way something was phrased, and then started a new thread about it.



With respect, this is a misapprehension on your part. I wasn't taking issue with phrasing. I don't care about terminology. I'm taking issue with a claim about the features of a certain GMing technique.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> This is where you are being disingenuous and I am not buying this post at all.



Seriously? I've been ignoring most of this stuff throughout this thread - but you're the guy who some years ago now was up to his armpits in a "How to Fight a Forgist" thread on another site that you moderate, which was not about any sort of dispassionate analysis but all about attacking someone (ie me) with playstyle preferences different from yours and your site's.

So mabye you're projecting your animus against me?


----------



## Numidius

Regardless of playstyles preferences, I believe that allocation of authority, equity in realism if Gm decides vs Pc check decides etc is something that the next generation of mainstream rpgs should address upfront in their core rules design


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In a conversation about transport modes, if someone says "I ride my bike because I need to get from A to B" that tends to imply that other modes (eg walking) aren't so good at getting from A to B. Alternatively, if someone thought that walking was as good as riding for getting from A to B, then they would (I think) be unlikely to point to _it gets me from A to B_ as a reason in favour of riding rather than walking.
> 
> .




In a normal conversation there isn’t such an implication. You have to squint real hard. If someone says that, I assume there are other reasons behind it (speed and affordability perhaps), rather than a blanket statement about being better than other modes of transportation.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> With respect, this is a misapprehension on your part. I wasn't taking issue with phrasing. I don't care about terminology. I'm taking issue with a claim about the features of a certain GMing technique.




Well 61 pages in, this continued laser focus does rather make you look like you're quite far up on the autism spectrum Mr P.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> if you are going to shift this argument to be one about whether the tea house scenario has nothing more to do with one-sided authority than real life, well your argument completely falls apart. In real life, I have zero authorship over such events. In a game where the GM decides, I can do much more to influence the GM's ultimate decision. In a case where I have to pick between trying to assert some kind of authority over reality, versus the GM, I pick the latter.



And you think it's _pejorative_ to call this "Mother may I"? Should we call it "Playing the GM" instead?


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Well 61 pages in, this continued laser focus does rather make you look like you're quite far up on the autism spectrum Mr P.



I'm a humanities academic - what do you expect?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Seriously? I've been ignoring most of this stuff throughout this thread - but you're the guy who some years ago now was up to his armpits in a "How to Fight a Forgist" thread on another site that you moderate, which was not about any sort of dispassionate analysis but all about attacking someone (ie me) with playstyle preferences different from yours and your site's.
> 
> So mabye you're projecting your animus against me?




Pemerton, I am on record saying if the forge gives value to your gaming, by all means use it. My only issue with the forge is some of its more aggressive proponents (people who engage in the kind of tactics you have used on this thread). Frankly I think that kind of behavior does more to tarnish the forges reputation than any of its actual ideas. I don’t personally find a lot of use in Forge theory. But that is just my personal preference. It is a model for understanding RPGs and I can see how some find value in that. And by the way, I’ve spent the past several years engaging people directly at Story-Games.com in order to get a better understanding of that side of the debate. For the record, I am no longer a mod at Therpgsite (though my reasons for not being a mod, have nothing to do with this issue). If you are truly curious about playstyle differences, I suggest checking out forums where immersion, plausibility and GM decides are the norm and posting there (posting at Story-games.com has certainly shaken up many of my assumptions about other playstyles).


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> And you think it's _pejorative_ to call this "Mother may I"? Should we call it "Playing the GM" instead?




Anything more neutral than mother may I. The GM decides seems to work fine. My issue is the terminology and how you project all kinds of things onto people who stare a preference. Maybe try adopting less pejorative language and listening (hearing what people say rather than looking for a new angle of attack). Pemerton I don’t like fighting online at all these days. I have no interest in arguing over stupid game preferences. I am only engaging you this way so I can walk away with a sense of dignity (I don’t think you realize how insulting your posts are coming off).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Regardless of playstyles preferences, I believe that allocation of authority, equity in realism if Gm decides vs Pc check decides etc is something that the next generation of mainstream rpgs should address upfront in their core rules design




It isn't even that binary. One of the problems that arises out of playstyle discussions like this is people start to become hyper aware of these these things (the way people on my side of the fence became hyper aware of dissociated mechanics in the wake of 4E and the Alexanderian article on the topic). I think there is value in articles like the one the Alexandrian wrote and in people exploring some of the reasons behind our reactions to different mechanics. At the same time, if we start to see all games as being being 'dissociated' or 'non-disocciated' based on any amounts of dissociated mechanics, we might start making games that have more dissociated mechanic than they probably should or games that have less than they should, simply because we've put ourselves in one camp. I think a good example of this is the Paladin Mount ability that Pemerton brought up. As posters stake more and more ground in favor of GM narrative authority in contrast to Pemerton's positions, if we think of it as this binary thing, then suddenly posters can start seeing a game with that mechanic as bad because they've gotten it into their head they are on the opposite side of Pemerton. I've seen this happen countless times in these discussion. So by all means, GM authority could be addressed. I would be cautious about overplaying its significance for most gamers. If it is addressed, maybe take a more objective approach than we've seen in this thread?


----------



## pemerton

Anyone who wants to discuss so-called "dissociated mechanics" (good to see no pejorative terms are being used!), I recommend this thread. Coincidentally enough, it was started by [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION].


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> It isn't even that binary. One of the problems that arises out of playstyle discussions like this is people start to become hyper aware of these these things (the way people on my side of the fence became hyper aware of dissociated mechanics in the wake of 4E and the Alexanderian article on the topic). I think there is value in articles like the one the Alexandrian wrote and in people exploring some of the reasons behind our reactions to different mechanics. At the same time, if we start to see all games as being being 'dissociated' or 'non-disocciated' based on any amounts of dissociated mechanics, we might start making games that have more dissociated mechanic than they probably should or games that have less than they should, simply because we've put ourselves in one camp. I think a good example of this is the Paladin Mount ability that Pemerton brought up. As posters stake more and more ground in favor of GM narrative authority in contrast to Pemerton's positions, if we think of it as this binary thing, then suddenly posters can start seeing a game with that mechanic as bad because they've gotten it into their head they are on the opposite side of Pemerton. I've seen this happen countless times in these discussion. So by all means, GM authority could be addressed. I would be cautious about overplaying its significance for most gamers. If it is addressed, maybe take a more objective approach than we've seen in this thread?



I think you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] made your points clear, so both your "sides" had spotlight here. 

Having said that, I believe that a shift in approach in mainstream rpg is needed. The issue of where realism comes from is real and palpable at the tables I sit to play. Dramatic, sometimes. 

I remark this also referring to what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said: Show me a rule and I will allow my players to do it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Anyone who wants to discuss so-called "dissociated mechanics" (good to see no pejorative terms are being used!), I recommend this thread. Coincidentally enough, it was started by [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION].




I am not defending the choice of terminology there, I agree something less pejorative could have been chosen. I think anyone interested in this topic would do well to check out the Alexandrian's posts on the subject (Justin Alexander's position, I believe, has shifted over the years on this topic). You can find his blog  here: https://thealexandrian.net

I brought it up though as an example of how the kind of terminology we are using on the thread, can lead to people making gaming or design decisions that are counter to their actual interests. Again, I think at the time, it got at something that resonated with many people who didn't grok 4E. At the same time, it became this thing where many of us were so against every having dissociated mechanics in our games, we threw the baby out with the bathwater. It was just like, any amount of mechanic that could fit into this category, destroyed the whole game for us. Because we were hyper aware of it. I think the term Mother May I, as it has been used in this thread, can lead to similar problems. No one wants to play mother may I, just like no one wants something dissociated in their game (if they embrace the ideas and meanings behind those uses of the terms). It becomes a lens, and once you use that lens, you miss a lot of other details (details like, while a whole game made up of these mechanics may not be for me, here and there they can actually add a lot of fun to the game for me). 

I would also just add, this thread is from nearly ten years ago. And the original article is from ages ago as well. People have changed their views a lot since then I am sure.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> I think you and @_*pemerton*_ made your points clear, so both your "sides" had spotlight here.
> 
> Having said that, I believe that a shift in approach in mainstream rpg is needed. The issue of where realism comes from is real and palpable at the tables I sit to play. Dramatic, sometimes.
> 
> I remark this also referring to what @_*Maxperson*_ said: Show me a rule and I will allow my players to do it.




The problem mainstream RPGs have though, is they need to appeal to you, to Pemerton, to me and to Max Person. They have to get as many people as possible. I am not saying that means they can't address these things. But obviously how they address them is going to matter because they want to attract all the gaming blocks while not pushing any of them away. Less mainstream games have always had the luxury of being able to focus more on stuff like this, because the audience will find them, and they can cater to a more narrow audience.

EDIT: Just to reiterate, the point of my original response to your post was just to say it should be more nuanced and not presented as a binary (I think a game could have a more even mixture rather than lean hard to one side or the other for instance). Just don't want to veer into an unnecessary tangent.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> I remark this also referring to what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said: Show me a rule and I will allow my players to do it.




Not everyone just accepts every rule put in the book though. If they did, we wouldn't have editions splits and edition wars. But I guess rather than speak abstractly, what sort of thing would you like to see in a game like D&D in order to address this issue (and mind you, I don't even play 5E at this point, so it doesn't really affect me one way or another which direction D&D goes anymore).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> In your opinion.  You shouldn't be presenting your opinion as if it were fact, because it's not.




Max, it's fact that nothing that happens in your game is realistic because it's fiction.  You made it up.  You can't make up the real world.  "Realism" in this case has nothing to do with the real world, only your preference for how outcomes are explained.  And having such a preference is laudable -- it creates believable, internally consistent worlds.  But, here's the thing, it's not more realistic that any other method because all methods are equally not realistic.  The difference is where you do the thinking on the consistency -- you do it before you call for a mechanic and build the mechanic according to your thinking.  IE, if you think it's very unlikely for the cultists to be at the tea shop, you build a mechanic that reflects your thinking it's unlikely. If the mechanic says they're there, then it's clearly for X reasons. The other way is to just use a defined mechanic and then build the thinking that explains the outcome.  IE, if the mechanic says yes, then it just so happens that the cultists were at the tea shop for X reasons.  Same "realism" because the cultists are at the tea shop for the same reasons (X) in both cases.  

The real world has absolutely nothing to do with your fiction, and so "realism," as in reflecting the real world, is a red herring.  "Realism" as in "believable, coherent, internally consistent fiction" is fine, but your preferred method doesn't necessarily generate that in any greater quantity than another.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> but you're the guy who some years ago now was up to his armpits in a "How to Fight a Forgist" thread on another site that you moderate, which was not about any sort of dispassionate analysis but all about attacking someone (ie me) with playstyle preferences different from yours and your site's.




I do want to address this seriously because I think it is an important point. I have definitely been involved in online debates about RPGs. I am a gamer. Gamer's get passionate. But something I realized over time with all this: none of the camps are really going anywhere. You can have a million 'how to fight a forgist threads" a million threads questioning immersion or sandbox play; all of the people who belong to those things, they are not going away just because someone scored points on an internet forum. All I've seen over the years with these flamewars is people dividing themselves into increasingly smaller camps, with less and less reach. I think most gamers, probably don't care as much as we do about these conflicts. And I think it is always better to get information from the horse's mouth. These days, rather than check out a 'how to fight a forgist' thread, I'd be much more interesting in checking out Ron Edwards youtube channel to get his viewpoints (and again for the record, I have always maintained my small number of interactions with him have always been positive, I don't have an issue with Ron Edwards personally and find him to be a charismatic and intelligent person). I think with the Forge, where it rubbed me the wrong way in the past, was aggressive forge defenders needling me on a playstyle preference in threads and just some of the concepts not really resonating that strongly with me (for whatever reason). But I don't think either of those things are a valid reason for me to assume things about other people who found use in the forge, or to lump all 'forgists' together. And I think if you look at most of my posts in recent years on theRPGsite, you will see I do try to make that distinction (though like most posters, I have my moments as well).

EDIT: Also just as a personal note, if there is anything I said in that thread on fighting forgists that you personally found insulting, let me know. I do admit I get annoyed at you sometimes, but I don’t hate you or anything. I am happy to apologize if I said something nasty or reconsider if I said something you think is inaccurate. I am looking at the thread now and in the first twenty pages or so I don’t seem to say anything too objectionable (I actually compliment you and I make the same point about the forge I made a few posts back). But it is a long thread and so haven’t reviewed it all yet.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> I think you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] made your points clear, so both your "sides" had spotlight here.
> 
> Having said that, I believe that a shift in approach in mainstream rpg is needed. The issue of where realism comes from is real and palpable at the tables I sit to play. Dramatic, sometimes.
> 
> I remark this also referring to what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said: Show me a rule and I will allow my players to do it.




Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but I can say that no one in this thread should be the determiner of that.  5e hasn't changed and it's leading a renaissance in gaming right now (perhaps due to streaming being also new, but still, 5e appears easy to stream), so it's ingrained DM-centered authorities clearly isn't a bad model.  The non-DM-centered authority games are still pretty small slices of the market, even together.  

Now, you and me might make changes, and discussions like this can aid it, but the market is vastly bigger than the handful of posters still engaging in this thread, or the slightly larger bucket of posters that come to ENW to argue about pretend-elf games on the internet.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I did not mean to imply anything negative, perhaps I should have used an emoji. I too have to clear it up with the wife beforehand given that we host 90% of the games.




Clearly, my tongue-in-cheek reply also failed to be properly presented.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> With respect, this is a misapprehension on your part. I wasn't taking issue with phrasing. I don't care about terminology. I'm taking issue with a claim about the features of a certain GMing technique.




All right. As someone who had not been involved in the conversation beyond watching along, it seemed to me that you assumed the claim you are arguing against based on the terminology used. I don’t think Bedrock was making the claim you are insisting he made. So in that sense, I do feel it was a matter of terminology.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> It was not the OP I had issue with. I thought the OP explained his position quite well.




I agree. I had no problem with his stance or how he phrased it. I do think that others later in the thread have certainly used Mother May I in a more derogatory way. For me though, such instances are not as frequent as may be thought, given how much of the conversation has been devoted to it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Numidius said:


> I think you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] made your points clear, so both your "sides" had spotlight here.
> 
> Having said that, I believe that a shift in approach in mainstream rpg is needed. The issue of where realism comes from is real and palpable at the tables I sit to play. Dramatic, sometimes.
> 
> I remark this also referring to what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said: Show me a rule and I will allow my players to do it.




I think this shift is happening. It appears to be a slow process, but I think that’s the way things are moving. We see that in 5E with things like Bonds and Flaws and the Inspiration mechanic. This is a small move toward more narrative techniques, but it’s there. 

And I think that the hackability of 5E lends itself to other modifications that are more narratively based. It’d be pretty easy to come up with a rule for gear in 5E that’s similar to how Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark handles gear. 

I think that when we talk about mainstream RPGs, D&D is the big one, and I don’t think we’ll see significant changes to their tules for a while. But I do think that the way they’ve designed the game and their support structure for it does lend itself to a shift in techniques and styles. And that’s generally a good thing for the industry. Those ideas that are pushing the accepted methods will therefore reach more people, and with time they won’t seem so radical as much as they’ll seem like just another way of doing things.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> I think this shift is happening. It appears to be a slow process, but I think that’s the way things are moving. We see that in 5E with things like Bonds and Flaws and the Inspiration mechanic. This is a small move toward more narrative techniques, but it’s there.
> 
> And I think that the hackability of 5E lends itself to other modifications that are more narratively based. It’d be pretty easy to come up with a rule for gear in 5E that’s similar to how Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark handles gear.
> 
> I think that when we talk about mainstream RPGs, D&D is the big one, and I don’t think we’ll see significant changes to their tules for a while. But I do think that the way they’ve designed the game and their support structure for it does lend itself to a shift in techniques and styles. And that’s generally a good thing for the industry. Those ideas that are pushing the accepted methods will therefore reach more people, and with time they won’t seem so radical as much as they’ll seem like just another way of doing things.




4e was very hackable in this regard.  It also was, largely, difficult to approach because it tried to be so malleable.  Actually, I'd say it was schizophrenic, because you could play it traditionally (for D&D) by ignoring some things or you could play it much more narratively by ignoring other things.  If you actually tried to use it as presented, especially in the first trilogy, it was an unclear mess in many places.  

5e did bolt on a few narrative things, but their use, as written, is still gated by the DM, which is why you see so many threads about how bad/useless/hard to use inspiration is.  5e largely moved back towards being more GM-centered, not less.  As someone who's trying to see where they can put a few more narrative touches into an ongoing 5e game, I'm realizing that it's a hard fit for a lot of things, and I'm having to overcome player inertia in a lot of places.  I've introduced inspiration as something players can claim at any time by just referencing a TBIF (once per trait per session) in relation to the action.  4 sessions in and it's been used once, when I prompted it.  Sigh.  But, oddly, these guys do GREAT in Blades.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> I think this shift is happening. It appears to be a slow process, but I think that’s the way things are moving. We see that in 5E with things like Bonds and Flaws and the Inspiration mechanic. This is a small move toward more narrative techniques, but it’s there.
> 
> And I think that the hackability of 5E lends itself to other modifications that are more narratively based. It’d be pretty easy to come up with a rule for gear in 5E that’s similar to how Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark handles gear.
> 
> I think that when we talk about mainstream RPGs, D&D is the big one, and I don’t think we’ll see significant changes to their tules for a while. But I do think that the way they’ve designed the game and their support structure for it does lend itself to a shift in techniques and styles. And that’s generally a good thing for the industry. Those ideas that are pushing the accepted methods will therefore reach more people, and with time they won’t seem so radical as much as they’ll seem like just another way of doing things.




I think what you are seeing with D&D is what you've often seen, not a shift in one direction, but a sprinkling of many different things that are presently in the Zeitgeist of gaming. If there are significant number of people who want narrative mechanics, you will have some element of that. If there are people who want stuff present in the OSR, you will have some of that. I don't think either one represents a move toward the OSR or toward Narrative design, it is just  arises out of a basic fact that D&D has to appeal to as many people as possible and they really can't ignore any significant trends....but it will always be a game that contains traces of those trends, rather than a hard push toward any of them (unless something like OSR or narrative design because so mainstream, it has to be an essential part of the game for it to be viable). Essentially I think D&D is going to respond to the designer's perception of the market (unless some crazy rich person buys the IP and decides to make it into their perfect version of the game).


----------



## chaochou

Bedrockgames said:


> If you are truly curious about playstyle differences, I suggest checking out forums where immersion, plausibility and GM decides are the norm.




But why would people such as myself or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], who spent a couple of decades playing that way with countless different people, need to do that? We don’t call it Mother May I in ignorance, but from long-standing actual play experience. How many player led games have you run? For how many years?


----------



## Bedrockgames

chaochou said:


> But why would people such as myself or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], who spent a couple of decades playing that way with countless different people, need to do that? We don’t call it Mother May I in ignorance, but from long-standing actual play experience. How many player led games have you run? For how many years?




We could trade blows over experience all day. I've been running games as well since the late 80s. I have run games in a number of styles. I don't run player led games. I am just not into them. I don't see how that would mean I have to accept your terminology. I am aware of such games and I have played in them (and I wouldn't refuse to play if one of my friends wanted to run one). But I do run lots of games where the GM decides. And I have made use of other techniques like say yes or roll the dice. I still think calling the GM decides 'Mother May I', is both pejorative and has the exact kind of effect I was talking about with dissociated mechanics. I am not denying your experience. I am not saying you should play the way I do, or that your style is bad. I am just saying, I have run games where I decide if something is at the tea house (and I've been in games where the GM does that sort of thing) and it doesn't feel like mother may I at all to me. And again, it is more than just the terminology. There is a tone in this discussion where one side is completely dismissing our style of play and aggressively critiquing it. whereas I think most folks on my side are saying if you like 'say yes and roll' go for it. Or 'if you like player led games' go for it. We just don't see that as the ultimate answer to everything. We think those options are one among many tools (and a lot of us tend to lean more on tools like the GM decides).


----------



## Ovinomancer

chaochou said:


> But why would people such as myself or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], who spent a couple of decades playing that way with countless different people, need to do that? We don’t call it Mother May I in ignorance, but from long-standing actual play experience. How many player led games have you run? For how many years?




This is a very valid point.  I don't think anyone arguing for more player-centric authority is unaware of how, exactly, DM-center authority works or has little experience with it.  The other proposition, that most people have experience with more player-centric authority games, is not likely.  This is because D&D and games that follow it's design leads are almost all DM-centric and are the 800-lb gorilla in the room.  If you've played any RPG, it's most likely a DM-centric one.  

So, yeah, that will almost always cut only one direction.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Having said that, I believe that a shift in approach in mainstream rpg is needed. The issue of where realism comes from is real and palpable at the tables I sit to play. Dramatic, sometimes.




Like @_*Bedrockgames*_ said D&D, and in particularly 5e, has made attempts to appeal to a wider market. It had to.

They have Rule 0, Personality Characteristics, the Inspiration Mechanic, The Role of Dice which discusses Say Yes/Not and Roll the Dice, Plot Points (which caters for player authoring), Success at a Cost, Degrees of Failure, and even Multiple Checks (sadly not going to far as to fully adopt the 4e SC, but its kinda there).  
I think they have done a stellar job and the shift has already happened.

EDIT: Crap, ninja'd by @_*hawkeyefan*_ 
EDIT2: and Ovinomancer


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Like @_*Bedrockgames*_ said D&D, and in particularly 5e, has made attempts to appeal to a wider market. It had to.
> 
> They have Rule 0, Personality Characteristics, the Inspiration Mechanic, The Role of Dice which discusses Say Yes/Not and Roll the Dice, Plot Points (which caters for player authoring), Success at a Cost, Degrees of Failure, and even Multiple Checks (sadly not going to far as to fully adopt the 4e SC, but its kinda there).
> I think they have done a stellar job and the shift has already happened.
> 
> EDIT: Crap, ninja'd by [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]




All of those are, however, gated by the GM, not the players.  The locus of authority is still, with all of that, firmly with the GM.  Well, plot points, aren't, but that's it.  5e is still very, very firmly DM-centered.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> All of those are, however, gated by the GM, not the players.  The locus of authority is still, with all of that, firmly with the GM.  Well, plot points, aren't, but that's it.  5e is still very, very firmly DM-centered.




That is all true. I tried Plot Points once, but I have a player who pushes the envelope. If the mechanic is vague or loose he will push it. He pushed it so bad, the rest of the players groaned because of the fiction introduced. I realised after that the best thing for me to do was just scrap that idea. I could not have the game lose some internal consistency every time he used a plot point. 

And despite all the flack we get from using the Say No toolkit in this thread and being lumped under the MMI label, I do not feel bad in using it (Saying No). 

I DID FEEL BAD when I had to Say No to the player using Plot Points. I don't want to be in that position again. I don't want to be in a position where I have to rise to my understanding of MMI-DM and have to deny someone their ability to change the fiction because of my idea of the internal consistency. I don't want that stress at my table.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Max, it's fact that nothing that happens in your game is realistic because it's fiction.  You made it up.  You can't make up the real world.  "Realism" in this case has nothing to do with the real world, only your preference for how outcomes are explained.




And it's a fact that this idea you are putting forward that something must mirror reality or be utterly and equally unrealistic is a False Dichotomy.  Realism is a spectrum, not an absolute.  Repeating your False Dichotomy incessantly isn't going to make it correct.

Let's take two movies.  Good Fellas and The Wizard of Oz.  Good Fellas, despite not mirroring reality, is much more realistic than The Wizard of Oz.  They are not equally unrealistic.



> The real world has absolutely nothing to do with your fiction, and so "realism," as in reflecting the real world, is a red herring. "Realism" as in "believable, coherent, internally consistent fiction" is fine, but your preferred method doesn't necessarily generate that in any greater quantity than another.




Riiiiiight.  Because gravity exists in the game, but doesn't exist in the real world, because if it did exist in the real world, then the real world would have something to do with the fiction of gravity in the game.  Knives don't exist in the real world for the same reason.  And so on.

Reality does connect to the game in thousands, if not millions of different ways to varying degrees.  Those degrees fall somewhere on the realism spectrum.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> 4e was very hackable in this regard.  It also was, largely, difficult to approach because it tried to be so malleable.  Actually, I'd say it was schizophrenic, because you could play it traditionally (for D&D) by ignoring some things or you could play it much more narratively by ignoring other things.  If you actually tried to use it as presented, especially in the first trilogy, it was an unclear mess in many places.
> 
> 5e did bolt on a few narrative things, but their use, as written, is still gated by the DM, which is why you see so many threads about how bad/useless/hard to use inspiration is.  5e largely moved back towards being more GM-centered, not less.  As someone who's trying to see where they can put a few more narrative touches into an ongoing 5e game, I'm realizing that it's a hard fit for a lot of things, and I'm having to overcome player inertia in a lot of places.  I've introduced inspiration as something players can claim at any time by just referencing a TBIF (once per trait per session) in relation to the action.  4 sessions in and it's been used once, when I prompted it.  Sigh.  But, oddly, these guys do GREAT in Blades.




For sure. 5E is still a GM centric game. The Inspiration mechanics are pretty thin, and from what I’ve seen, easily ignored by many groups. But their presence, and the idea of TBIF is promising. I also think that the game is very modifiable, and that design will hell expose more people to different techniques. Ideas are ported fromother games into the 5E system all the time, and the DMsGuild helps make sure there’s an easily accesible place to see that kind of stuff.

But there are always folks who won’t even consider such ideas, or won’t be exposed to them because they’re uninterested in changing their game. Which is fine. But I do find it odd how many seem to want to be involved in discussions about varieties of techniques, but all they do is insist on their method. The tricks in poker effect, as you called it. Like someone jumping into a conversation about sports, and then only talking about baseball. The mention of a touchdown by someone else seems baffling.

And interesting how your players are open to player driven play in one system, but resistant to it in another. Obviously the established mechanics play a bi part in that, but I wonder if it’s equally about perception or expectation.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> The problem mainstream RPGs have though, is they need to appeal to you, to Pemerton, to me and to Max Person. They have to get as many people as possible. I am not saying that means they can't address these things. But obviously how they address them is going to matter because they want to attract all the gaming blocks while not pushing any of them away. Less mainstream games have always had the luxury of being able to focus more on stuff like this, because the audience will find them, and they can cater to a more narrow audience.
> 
> EDIT: Just to reiterate, the point of my original response to your post was just to say it should be more nuanced and not presented as a binary (I think a game could have a more even mixture rather than lean hard to one side or the other for instance). Just don't want to veer into an unnecessary tangent.



I got it 

Maybe all those streaming d&d sessions of nowadays will slowly and nuancing change the paradigm for a broader audience, bringing in more input from Pcs as unexpected twist, story emerging, character development  similarly to a tv series, or a reality show.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but I can say that no one in this thread should be the determiner of that.  5e hasn't changed and it's leading a renaissance in gaming right now (perhaps due to streaming being also new, but still, 5e appears easy to stream), so it's ingrained DM-centered authorities clearly isn't a bad model.  The non-DM-centered authority games are still pretty small slices of the market, even together.
> 
> Now, you and me might make changes, and discussions like this can aid it, but the market is vastly bigger than the handful of posters still engaging in this thread, or the slightly larger bucket of posters that come to ENW to argue about pretend-elf games on the internet.




Few but good  
Representative of more or less the whole spectrum?


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> Like @_*Bedrockgames*_ said D&D, and in particularly 5e, has made attempts to appeal to a wider market. It had to.
> 
> They have Rule 0, Personality Characteristics, the Inspiration Mechanic, The Role of Dice which discusses Say Yes/Not and Roll the Dice, Plot Points (which caters for player authoring), Success at a Cost, Degrees of Failure, and even Multiple Checks (sadly not going to far as to fully adopt the 4e SC, but its kinda there).
> I think they have done a stellar job and the shift has already happened.
> 
> EDIT: Crap, ninja'd by @_*hawkeyefan*_
> EDIT2: and Ovinomancer



Really glad to hear it. 
The impression I get from outside is of a series of adds on to what is a fairly standard Od&d concept. 

Would you suggest to me 5e if I wanted a non combat centered campaign?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> I got it
> 
> Maybe all those streaming d&d sessions of nowadays will slowly and nuancing change the paradigm for a broader audience, bringing in more input from Pcs as unexpected twist, story emerging, character development  similarly to a tv series, or a reality show.




Honestly, and I haven’t seen a huge amount of CR, what they do seems more remiscent if 90s style play to me


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> No one asked, but my rule of thumb is: Named Npc are under Gm control, Not yet named (minions or bystanders) ones are open to suggestion/usage from the players in the present scene. Should they become companions, Dw offer rules for managing them depending on what they want from the Pc: money, doing good deeds, glory etc.
> 
> Btw, the first thing I noticed in 5e was the lacking of a Social Combat/resolution, so to speak. Useful in a situation like the Barbarian and his wife.




Right, this is a characteristic DW shares with all other 'generalized resolution system' types of game where you can apply its mechanics equally well in combat, in a social interaction, or in some sort of 'exploratory' play. This reduces all interactions to a common theme, that of conflict resolution, with common elements of stake setting, intent, fictional explication, etc. IMHO these are the most powerful sorts of game mechanics. PbtA-based games have their own interesting boundaries, with the move system, but those are firmly aimed at circumscribing the genre and tone, not constraining control of the fiction.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> Not everyone just accepts every rule put in the book though. If they did, we wouldn't have editions splits and edition wars. But I guess rather than speak abstractly, what sort of thing would you like to see in a game like D&D in order to address this issue (and mind you, I don't even play 5E at this point, so it doesn't really affect me one way or another which direction D&D goes anymore).



Mmhh... to start with what the authors said before the launch, actual Modularity would be fine*. 
Then moving away from the wargaming aspect towards the 3 Pillars, and having a unified resolution system (also modular, for those who prefer granularity and differentiation among the three Pillars) granting a satisfying resolve for disputes at the table; eventually having classes distributed between the 3P; more emphasis on setting modules than adventure paths: that leads to Pcs broader Action Declaration in the context of setting- game- situation and in which Pillar/Class/Skill Set the Pc is focused on. 

And a black strong coffee at the end  

*(Burning Wheel comes to mind for its modularity)


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> 5e mechanics on this are limited. Besides the character ideals/bonds used a a general reference, there is the optional rule: Loyalty (dmg 93) but there is the Social Interaction rules (dmg 244-245) concerning the NPC's disposition towards the character. So I imagine one could use the friendly NPC reaction table for a situation between the barbarian and his wife.




I would call all of these 'thin' in terms of adding much to the game conceptually. The Interaction rules seem more like a sort of DM support mechanic, something he can use at his option behind the scenes to provide a prod to his thinking, much like we all used to just roll a d6 behind the screen (I know I would, "maybe the bad guy went left 1-3, or right 4-6" or "maybe the NPC is broke and can be bribed 1-2, requires some bigger incentives 3-5, or is rich and laughs 6). 1e has a lot of these in the DMG (one could argue all but a few bits of the 1e DMG are of this nature). 

The point is, they aren't surfaced mechanics which the players can rely on and reason about in a way that lets them take measured risks or set up/advocate for the type of fiction they want. The ideals/bonds is the strongest of all of these, as it is explicitly player side in terms of setup at least. This means the player can ASK for certain things in a formalized way, and even make some embellishments on the backstory of his character and the world. Where it fails is in terms of just not tying into anything. When we played our 5e campaign I certainly referred to these elements of my character and said things like "Oh, my character has the ambition to rule his own kingdom. So I will vote to strike off in the direction of the castle in the hopes of finding a place I can establish my own stronghold." Things like that, but there wasn't any MEAT to it. 

This is one of the disappointments I have with 5e. It has a universal mechanic, but it fails to actually DO interesting stuff with it!


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> That is all true. I tried Plot Points once, but I have a player who pushes the envelope. If the mechanic is vague or loose he will push it. He pushed it so bad, the rest of the players groaned because of the fiction introduced. I realised after that the best thing for me to do was just scrap that idea. I could not have the game lose some internal consistency every time he used a plot point.
> 
> And despite all the flack we get from using the Say No toolkit in this thread and being lumped under the MMI label, I do not feel bad in using it (Saying No).
> 
> I DID FEEL BAD when I had to Say No to the player using Plot Points. I don't want to be in that position again. I don't want to be in a position where I have to rise to my understanding of MMI-DM and have to deny someone their ability to change the fiction because of my idea of the internal consistency. I don't want that stress at my table.



Power corrupts  No, joking aside, it takes time and sensibility not to abuse those features, from players not used to it, and from "old" Gms not wanting to release a bit the authority (I'm not referring to anyone in this thread)


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would call all of these 'thin' in terms of adding much to the game conceptually. The Interaction rules seem more like a sort of DM support mechanic, something he can use at his option behind the scenes to provide a prod to his thinking, much like we all used to just roll a d6 behind the screen (I know I would, "maybe the bad guy went left 1-3, or right 4-6" or "maybe the NPC is broke and can be bribed 1-2, requires some bigger incentives 3-5, or is rich and laughs 6). 1e has a lot of these in the DMG (one could argue all but a few bits of the 1e DMG are of this nature).
> 
> The point is, they aren't surfaced mechanics which the players can rely on and reason about in a way that lets them take measured risks or set up/advocate for the type of fiction they want. The ideals/bonds is the strongest of all of these, as it is explicitly player side in terms of setup at least. This means the player can ASK for certain things in a formalized way, and even make some embellishments on the backstory of his character and the world. Where it fails is in terms of just not tying into anything. When we played our 5e campaign I certainly referred to these elements of my character and said things like "Oh, my character has the ambition to rule his own kingdom. So I will vote to strike off in the direction of the castle in the hopes of finding a place I can establish my own stronghold." Things like that, but there wasn't any MEAT to it.
> 
> This is one of the disappointments I have with 5e. It has a universal mechanic, but it fails to actually DO interesting stuff with it!




I have to ask.  Why do you need a mechanic for that sort of thing?  Were that my 5e PC, I would make the stronghold happen.  I would save the prodigious amounts of coin I get adventuring.  When I am speaking with(and I would arrange to be able to speak with) nobles and kings as part of adventuring, I would ask for land grants and permission to build a stronghold.  When being asked for a reward, I would ask for titles and commissions.  I would build my way towards that stronghold and rule my land one way or another.  Many settings have wild areas not ruled.  The kingdoms next to those areas would be prime areas for me to go to for this sort of thing. I could set up my own kingdom, after proving my worth and promising trade exclusives, mutual protections and such.  

5e does as much interesting stuff as you have it do.  I'm sure mechanical aids would make it easier, but those aids aren't necessary to accomplish goals.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I have to ask.  Why do you need a mechanic for that sort of thing?  Were that my 5e PC, I would make the stronghold happen.  I would save the prodigious amounts of coin I get adventuring.  When I am speaking with(and I would arrange to be able to speak with) nobles and kings as part of adventuring, I would ask for land grants and permission to build a stronghold.  When being asked for a reward, I would ask for titles and commissions.  I would build my way towards that stronghold and rule my land one way or another.  Many settings have wild areas not ruled.  The kingdoms next to those areas would be prime areas for me to go to for this sort of thing. I could set up my own kingdom, after proving my worth and promising trade exclusives, mutual protections and such.
> 
> 5e does as much interesting stuff as you have it do.  I'm sure mechanical aids would make it easier, but those aids aren't necessary to accomplish goals.



Every ask you make here is to the GM.  You, as a player, have zero authority to "make it happen."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Mmhh... to start with what the authors said before the launch, actual Modularity would be fine*.
> Then moving away from the wargaming aspect towards the 3 Pillars, and having a unified resolution system (also modular, for those who prefer granularity and differentiation among the three Pillars) granting a satisfying resolve for disputes at the table; eventually having classes distributed between the 3P; more emphasis on setting modules than adventure paths: that leads to Pcs broader Action Declaration in the context of setting- game- situation and in which Pillar/Class/Skill Set the Pc is focused on.
> 
> And a black strong coffee at the end
> 
> *(Burning Wheel comes to mind for its modularity)




This is helpful. If it is truly a modular change, one an OSR person could ignore for example, I think it would be fine. The one that gives me the most pause is the broader action declaration. That is something I've always found leaves me scratching my head as a GM and player when it is present in a system. I think, in some ways, it is a bit why something like Skill Challenges threw me off (even though I understand those are not what you are talking about here). Also why Moves in DW took me a super long time to grok. Nothing against such things. I can see why you would find them valuable. But this is one area where I feel like an old dog learning a new trick. It just doesn't fit with how I approach play. So if a new edition were to want to attract both you and I as customers, I think that part of it would have to be something I could easily put aside (it being present wouldn't trouble me provided I could easily get around it and run games of D&D the way I always have.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Every ask you make here is to the GM.  You, as a player, have zero authority to "make it happen."




This is wrong.  I have absolute authority over what my PC does.  The DM is socially obligated not to be an asshat, so he's not going to be smashing what I do with a bunch of crap.  I don't have to worry about him being a bad DM, because those are rare as hell, and if I did manage to find one, I would have left long before I really made a push for those goals.  It may take work, but I can get there if I have the drive.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> And it's a fact that this idea you are putting forward that something must mirror reality or be utterly and equally unrealistic is a False Dichotomy.  Realism is a spectrum, not an absolute.  Repeating your False Dichotomy incessantly isn't going to make it correct.



No, Max, I am not putting forward a dichotomy, I'm saying the scale doesn't exist at all -- nothing in your game (or mine) is like the real world.  See?  No choice, no false dichotomy. 


> Let's take two movies.  Good Fellas and The Wizard of Oz.  Good Fellas, despite not mirroring reality, is much more realistic than The Wizard of Oz.  They are not equally unrealistic.



No, it's not.  Everything that happens is according to the imagination of tge participants.  The only real thing is the film, and that's the same in both.

Now, the real world is a constraint in both films, but only because they are made in the real world.  Your game (and mine) are not in the real world, they are fictional. 




> Riiiiiight.  Because gravity exists in the game, but doesn't exist in the real world, because if it did exist in the real world, then the real world would have something to do with the fiction of gravity in the game.  Knives don't exist in the real world for the same reason.  And so on.



No, Max.  Gravity and knives exist in the real world.  Neither exists in your game (or mine). We _pretend_ they do, but we also pretend elves and dragons and magic.  We can pretend anything, that doesn't make it real.

"Realism" on relation to pretend games is only the internal coherency and consistancy of the fiction that makes it believable.  It has nothing to do with the real world.

Specifically, you deciding that the pretend cultists are very pretend unlikely to be at the pretend tea house has absolutely nothing to do with the real world, on part or on a scale.  It is pretend.

Very unreal things can have a great deal of seeming weight and believability.  Game of Thrones is often cited as such (warning: GRRM hates you), but it's still pretend.  It's not realistic, it's internally consistent and coherent to a high degree. 

Reality does connect to the game in thousands, if not millions of different ways to varying degrees.  Those degrees fall somewhere on the realism spectrum.[/QUOTE]


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> No, Max, I am not putting forward a dichotomy, I'm saying the scale doesn't exist at all -- nothing in your game (or mine) is like the real world.  See?  No choice, no false dichotomy.




"Like the real world" is the False Dichotomy.  It doesn't have to be "Like the real world" to have realism.  It doesn't matter if it's "Like the real word," only that it be "more like the real world in this one particular instance than yours is."  That makes it more realistic in that instance.  



> Now, the real world is a constraint in both films, but only because they are made in the real world.  Your game (and mine) are not in the real world, they are fictional.




This is not relevant to realism.  



> No, Max.  Gravity and knives exist in the real world.  Neither exists in your game (or mine). We _pretend_ they do, but we also pretend elves and dragons and magic.  We can pretend anything, that doesn't make it real.




It doesn't have to be real.  There's your False Dichotomy again.  It just has to be related to the real world in some way and to some degree, which even things in the imagination are.



> Very unreal things can have a great deal of seeming weight and believability.  Game of Thrones is often cited as such (warning: GRRM hates you), but it's still pretend.  It's not realistic, it's internally consistent and coherent to a high degree.




How it portrays knights and life in that sort of era is more realistic than say Bugs Bunny's portrayal of knights and that sort of era.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This is wrong.  I have absolute authority over what my PC does.



Let's accept this as given for the sake of argument.  You don't have authority over outcomes.  The DM, does.  They decide if it's a success or failure or what mechanic to use. Perhaps your DM thinks it's very unlikely, and assigned a 1 in 10,000 chance?  You can't do boo about it.


> The DM is socially obligated not to be an asshat, so he's not going to be smashing what I do with a bunch of crap. I don't have to worry about him being a bad DM, because those are rare as hell, and if I did manage to find one, I would have left long before I really made a push for those goals.  It may take work, but I can get there if I have the drive.



But this isn't about how the rules work, Max, it's about the people you choose to play with and them aligning with your expectations.  It doesn't speak at all to how the rules work, or how their designed, it speaks to who you're friends with and what conventions your table accepts as baseline.  Given this, do you not see how your response to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] isn't helpful unless he plays at your table?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> "Like the real world" is the False Dichotomy.  It doesn't have to be "Like the real world" to have realism.  It doesn't matter if it's "Like the real word," only that it be "more like the real world in this one particular instance than yours is."  That makes it more realistic in that instance.



You've previously defined realism as 'like the real world,' Max.  This is why you introduced your scale of realism, where you can become just a bit more like the real world in one area and that's adding realism (for the sake of realism).  Are you now saying that realism, for you, does not mean "like the real world?"

That aside (because I know better), I'm not saying that it has to be "like the real world" to have realism, I saying is cannot be, at all, even a little bit, like the real world.  It can be how we imagine the real world, to some degree, but our pretend isn't realism.



> This is not relevant to realism.



No, it's me showing the only real part of the two movies you put forth as having "realism" based on their how their actors pretended about the fictional scripts.



> It doesn't have to be real.  There's your False Dichotomy again.  It just has to be related to the real world in some way and to some degree, which even things in the imagination are.



It can't be real.  Perhaps, if I say it again, you'll get it and stop forcing it into whatever mental engine you've got going that spits out "False Dichotomy!"

It cannot be real to any degree because it's all pretend.  It cannot be related to the real world because it's all pretend.  At best, it's how you imagine the real world to be, but I can imagine it differently and then we're stuck arguing which of our imaginings of the real world is more like the real world.  Neither are more like the real world, because they are both pretend.



> How it portrays knights and life in that sort of era is more realistic than say Bugs Bunny's portrayal of knights and that sort of era.



No, it isn't.  It's pretend.  It may hang together better for you, seem more believable, you may enjoy it more, but, fundamentally, that's just how you feel about it, it has nothing to do with how more or less real it is.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Let's accept this as given for the sake of argument.  You don't have authority over outcomes.  The DM, does.  They decide if it's a success or failure or what mechanic to use. Perhaps your DM thinks it's very unlikely, and assigned a 1 in 10,000 chance?  You can't do boo about it.




Cant do boo about what?  It's not a single roll.  The process I described begins at 1st level and probably doesn't finish until your level is in the double digits.  So I fail some rolls along the way.  That's to be expected.



> But this isn't about how the rules work, Max, it's about the people you choose to play with and them aligning with your expectations.  It doesn't speak at all to how the rules work, or how their designed, it speaks to who you're friends with and what conventions your table accepts as baseline.  Given this, do you not see how your response to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] isn't helpful unless he plays at your table?




If aligning with my expectations means that I expect them not to be asshats, then sure.  If it means that I need to have rules or people who will be compliant with my wishes for everything I want my PC to accomplish, then no.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> You've previously defined realism as 'like the real world,' Max.  This is why you introduced your scale of realism, where you can become just a bit more like the real world in one area and that's adding realism (for the sake of realism).  Are you now saying that realism, for you, does not mean "like the real world?"




See, the whole "...introduced your scale of realism, where you can become just a bit more like the real world in one area and that's adding realism" eliminates "like the real world" as my definition of realism.  "Like the real world" = "Mirrors the real world" and I have said that isn't what it is in most posts on the subject.



> That aside* (because I know better)*, I'm not saying that it has to be "like the real world" to have realism, I saying *is cannot be, at all, even a little bit, like the real world*.  It can be how we imagine the real world, to some degree, but our pretend isn't realism.




Then show your objective proof.  All I've seen so far are subjective claims.  If you know it, then it's a fact and you can prove that fact objectively.



> It cannot be real to any degree because it's all pretend.  It cannot be related to the real world because it's all pretend.  At best, it's how you imagine the real world to be, but I can imagine it differently and then we're stuck arguing which of our imaginings of the real world is more like the real world.  Neither are more like the real world, because they are both pretend.




So first off, our imaginations are real.  They exist here in the real world.  Second, what we are imagining might not be real, but it can have realism.  I can imagine something, and then imagine a more realistic version of it, and then a version more realistic still.  It doesn't have to be out in the real world and tangible for realism to be a quality.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Cant do boo about what?  It's not a single roll.  The process I described begins at 1st level and probably doesn't finish until your level is in the double digits.  So I fail some rolls along the way.  That's to be expected.



Waving your hands about it taking more than one check doesn't change the fact that it's your GM that's deciding things.  It could be 1 in 10,000 all the way down.



> If aligning with my expectations means that I expect them not to be asshats, then sure.  If it means that I need to have rules or people who will be compliant with my wishes for everything I want my PC to accomplish, then no.



It's not a matter of asshats, Max.  You could think it's reasonable, and your DM may not, and you lose.  There's an example of a barbarian's wife being used that showcases this entirely.



Maxperson said:


> See, the whole "...introduced your scale of realism, where you can become just a bit more like the real world in one area and that's adding realism" eliminates "like the real world" as my definition of realism.  "Like the real world" = "Mirrors the real world" and I have said that isn't what it is in most posts on the subject.



Sigh.  Yes, that's exactly what I understood you to mean.  I'm not confused at all, you're not listening.



> Then show your objective proof.  All I've seen so far are subjective claims.  If you know it, then it's a fact and you can prove that fact objectively.




Your game is a pretend world.  It lives in your imagination.  You imagine it to be like the real world, but it's not, it's like how you imagine the real world.  At no time does anything in your game adhere to quantum mechanics, even a little bit.  So, the idea that your imagination can be more or less like the real world is silly.  It's just your idea of how the world is.

So, if we can categorically say that your imagination cannot be the real world because it has none of the qualities of the real world, we can also say that your imagination cannot be a little bit like the real world.  Categorically it's not the same and cannot share qualities.

Instead, what you mean by "realism" is that it hangs together, it makes sense to you, and you can imagine that things might be causal (they aren't).  This is the proof.  Your imagination cannot be at all like the real world because your imagination cannot share any of the qualities that define the real world, even a little bit.



> So first off, our imaginations are real.  They exist here in the real world.



I've imagined a dragon.  Does the dragon exist in the real world or does the particular chemical and electrical combination inside my brain at that precise moment exist in the real world?

This is like playing Doom, and looking at the code and the computer and saying that since the code and the computer exist in the real world, the BFG9000 and the demon I just shot with it also both exist in the real world.  They do not. 



> Second, what we are imagining might not be real, but it can have realism.  I can imagine something, and then imagine a more realistic version of it, and then a version more realistic still.  It doesn't have to be out in the real world and tangible for realism to be a quality.



No.  You can't imagine a more realistic version of anything -- it's still your imagination.  At least so long as you hold to the definition of 'mirrors the real world'.  If you'll accept the change to 'is internally consistent and coherent and I can believe it" then, sure, onboard.  But, you've fought this change tooth and nail and insist that it's the relationship to the real world that's the crux of things.  I think because you really, really want your imagination to be tied to real things and therefore better instead of the actually subjective opinion that it actually is.  

I run a game that I strive very much to be internally consistent and coherent and presents a believable.  I crib from common experience as much as possible so that the fantastic elements are grounded in expectation and shared world assumptions.  I have gravity work at least in a manner that's understandable to a normal person.  But it's not gravity and has nothing in common with gravity except things go down.  I can increase the fidelity of my model, but that's not making things more realistic at all.  It might improve the coherent and consistency, and, for some, be more believable, but that has nothing to do with mirroring the real world in any way, and increased fidelity might be less a mirror but still have more fidelity.  It doesn't bother me at all to realize that what I do in my game is just my imagination of how things work.  If anything, it's improved my games, because I'm not mired in the idea that "realism" is a goal of play, which could lead me to poor choices.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Waving your hands about it taking more than one check doesn't change the fact that it's your GM that's deciding things.  It could be 1 in 10,000 all the way down.




No it can't.  The social contract is a stronger rule set than anything D&D has ever come up with.  Don't be an asshat means that what you just described above simply won't happen.  There me be some long odds along the way, but there will be many things with shorter odds and eventually I will be able to achieve my vision.



> It's not a matter of asshats, Max.  You could think it's reasonable, and your DM may not, and you lose.  There's an example of a barbarian's wife being used that showcases this entirely.




Disagreements do happen, yes, but not on all things, or even most things, along the way to a goal like that.  



> Your game is a pretend world.  It lives in your imagination.  You imagine it to be like the real world, but it's not, it's like how you imagine the real world.  At no time does anything in your game adhere to quantum mechanics, even a little bit.  So, the idea that your imagination can be more or less like the real world is silly.  It's just your idea of how the world is.




Yep!  And some of those imaginings will be more realistic than others.  Being in my imagination does not prevent realism from existing.



> So, if we can categorically say that your imagination cannot be the real world because it has none of the qualities of the real world, we can also say that your imagination cannot be a little bit like the real world.  Categorically it's not the same and cannot share qualities.




The world has green, and I can imagine green.  They share the quality of color, even if one color is created by my mind and the other by light absorbtion/reflection.  They just don't share all qualities, which is fine.  I'm not claiming realism as meaning "mirrors reality."



> I've imagined a dragon.  Does the dragon exist in the real world or does the particular chemical and electrical combination inside my brain at that precise moment exist in the real world?




And I've listened to Imagine Dragons. 



> You can't imagine a more realistic version of anything -- it's still your imagination.




Since I can do it, this is a false statement.  I've done it many times.



> I run a game that I strive very much to be internally consistent and coherent and presents a believable.  I crib from common experience as much as possible so that the fantastic elements are grounded in expectation and shared world assumptions.  I have gravity work at least in a manner that's understandable to a normal person.  But it's not gravity and has nothing in common with gravity *except things go down*.




Which is sufficient to afford it a measure of realism.  Though I suspect that in your game the farther things go down, the harder they hit, which is a little greater measure of realism.  Perhaps that even maxes out at some points, kinda sorta like terminal velocity, which be even more realism.



> I can increase the fidelity of my model, but that's not making things more realistic at all.  It might improve the coherent and consistency, and, for some, be more believable, but that has nothing to do with mirroring the real world in any way, and increased fidelity might be less a mirror but still have more fidelity.




Good, because realism isn't bout mirroring the real world. It's a spectrum between the extremes.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> There is a tone in this discussion where one side is completely dismissing our style of play and aggressively critiquing it. whereas I think most folks on my side are saying if you like 'say yes and roll' go for it.



I've repeatedly said that I'm sure plenty of people like _GM decides_. If they enjoy it, play it! It has no effect on me what RPGs you or anyone else plays in your spare time.

My post made a particular claim: that _GM decides_ is _not _"no more Mother May I than real life". That's all.

To quote from the OP:



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.



The first sentence of that quote expressly refrains from judging whether or not _GM decides_ makes for good RPGing. The second sentence states the claim I'm making in this thread: that having a ROG fiction established on the basis of one participant's unilateral judgement is nothing like encountering a constraint or a fact in real life.



Sadras said:


> And despite all the flack we get from using the Say No toolkit in this thread and being lumped under the MMI label, I do not feel bad in using it (Saying No).



What flack? To requote myself, from the FIRST POST in this thread: _Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste_.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> When we played our 5e campaign I certainly referred to these elements of my character and said things like "Oh, my character has the ambition to rule his own kingdom. So I will vote to strike off in the direction of the castle in the hopes of finding a place I can establish my own stronghold." Things like that, but there wasn't any MEAT to it.





Maxperson said:


> Why do you need a mechanic for that sort of thing?  Were that my 5e PC, I would make the stronghold happen.  I would save the prodigious amounts of coin I get adventuring.  When I am speaking with(and I would arrange to be able to speak with) nobles and kings as part of adventuring, I would ask for land grants and permission to build a stronghold.  When being asked for a reward, I would ask for titles and commissions.  I would build my way towards that stronghold and rule my land one way or another.  Many settings have wild areas not ruled.  The kingdoms next to those areas would be prime areas for me to go to for this sort of thing. I could set up my own kingdom, after proving my worth and promising trade exclusives, mutual protections and such.
> 
> 5e does as much interesting stuff as you have it do.  I'm sure mechanical aids would make it easier, but those aids aren't necessary to accomplish goals.





Ovinomancer said:


> Every ask you make here is to the GM.  You, as a player, have zero authority to "make it happen."





Maxperson said:


> This is wrong.  I have absolute authority over what my PC does.  The DM is socially obligated not to be an asshat, so he's not going to be smashing what I do with a bunch of crap.  I don't have to worry about him being a bad DM, because those are rare as hell, and if I did manage to find one, I would have left long before I really made a push for those goals.  It may take work, but I can get there if I have the drive.



What  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] says is true, but is orthogonal to the point I want to make about this. I think my point is related to what  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said.

Here's an example of MEAT: Suppose a player has, as a goal/Belief/whatever for his/her PC, _I will free my brother from his possession by a balrog - and will not leave this town without something to help me do this!_ The first event in the campaign is _the PC being at a bazaar, where a peddler claims to have an angel feather for sale._

Here's why it counts as MEAT: the first thing the player has to think about in playing the game is _Will this angel feather help me free my brother?_ Which leads to other questions like _Who is this peddler?_ _Can I trust him?_ _Am I sorcerer enough to harness the power of an angel feather?_

Whether this is good or pedestrian story/drama is a matter of taste; but it's clear that, from the get-go, the action of play raises dramatic questions that tie directly to the theme/dramatic arc of this PC.

Here's an example of NON-MEAT: the same PC; and the first event in the campaign is _You find yourself at the town gates - what do you do?_ This does not give rise to any dramatic questions. It does not force the player to confront questions about his/her PC, nor about any other character, institution or similar focus of human value and concern. _Yes_, the player could declare actions which involve seeking out angel feathers. _Yes_, if the GM is a Maxperson-style non-asshat the GM may provide opportunities to find them. But those things don't make MEAT.

In some fairly typical approaches to playing D&D, the second approach to the game actively pushes against MEAT, because the player is encouraged to mnimise risk and stakes at every point - instead of dealing with a peddler whose trustworthiness is unknown but in play, the player is encouraged to use divination magic, and spies, and sages, and the like to establish in advance that the peddler is trustworthy, that the power of the angel feather is something his/her PC can harness, etc.

The reason I have distinguished what I'm saying in this post from what  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] said is that _none of what I have said_ turns on who has authority over framing situations. Or even over establshing what's at stake in the overall arc of play. It's about whether or not the GM _frames situations in accordance with a certain set of principles,_ and how the stakes of _those situations_ are established.

Ovinomancer and  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] addressed this (coming in from a different angle, I'll admit) in their earlier remarks about how players influence the fiction of Dungeon World even though formal authority lies with the GM. The best discussion I know of, though, about these sorts of GM framing techniques, is in the Burning Wheel books (the core rules and the Adventure Burner).

An addendum: once the GM starts framing scenes having regard to PC goals/beliefs/themes, and with the goal of forcing the players to make hard/dramatic choices around those things, _then_ the next natural step is to want action resolution mechanics that will let the players choice shape outcomes, whether for better (the player succeeds on the check) or worse (the player fails the check). So I think there's a non-coincidental connection between an approach to establishing situation in RPGing, and an approach to resolving it. And I think I've got the order of logical explanation (situation first, mechanics in response to that) right.

An edit: what would count as good situation to engage _I will rule my own kingdom_ will depend (obviously) on all the details and nuance of the particular table and its players inclinations. But just to kick things of, and thinking of two examples from fantasy literature - Aragorn and Conan - it might well make sense to start with a kingdom whose rulership is under some sort of pressure or doubt. And present that pressure or doubt in a way that makes things hard for the player.

Eg Aragorn: _How can I take over the kingdom while honouring my obligations to family, ancestry and the stewards who have faithfully ruled in my stead?[/I

Conan: Can I, a barbarian, gain acceptance as the ruler of the most civilised kingdom around?

And in relation to these, or similar, possibilities, a game that starts with Keep on the Borderlands in its standard version would be NON-MEAT, even though the player might try and have his/her PC made Castellan of the Keep; and might even connive to that end (eg by helping the existing Castallen meet an unhappy end at the hands of the evil priest)._


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] says is true, but is orthogonal to the point I want to make about this. I think my point is related to what  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said.
> 
> Here's an example of MEAT: Suppose a player has, as a goal/Belief/whatever for his/her PC, _I will free my brother from his possession by a balrog - and will not leave this town without something to help me do this!_ The first event in the campaign is _the PC being at a bazaar, where a peddler claims to have an angel feather for sale._
> 
> Here's why it counts as MEAT: the first thing the player has to think about in playing the game is _Will this angel feather help me free my brother?_ Which leads to other questions like _Who is this peddler?_ _Can I trust him?_ _Am I sorcerer enough to harness the power of an angel feather?_
> 
> Whether this is good or pedestrian story/drama is a matter of taste; but it's clear that, from the get-go, the action of play raises dramatic questions that tie directly to the theme/dramatic arc of this PC.
> 
> Here's an example of NON-MEAT: the same PC; and the first event in the campaign is _You find yourself at the town gates - what do you do?_ This does not give rise to any dramatic questions. It does not force the player to confront questions about his/her PC, nor about any other character, institution or similar focus of human value and concern. _Yes_, the player could declare actions which involve seeking out angel feathers. _Yes_, if the GM is a Maxperson-style non-asshat the GM may provide opportunities to find them. But those things don't make MEAT.




They don't necessarily make non-meat, either.  So I find myself at the gates to the city.  The first thing I have to think about is how will I go about becoming the ruler of my own nation.  Do I go to the library and do research on items that can make me a king(i.e. Excalibur types)?  Am I adventurer enough to accomplish finding and controlling such an artifact?  Do I go to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status?  Do I put those things on hold for now and seek ways to fund a conquering army?  Those things are meat, and I came up with them myself.  I don't need the DM to force me long my path or to cause me to confront questions about my PC and his character.  I can do that myself.



> The reason I have distinguished what I'm saying in this post from what  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] said is that _none of what I have said_ turns on who has authority over framing situations. Or even over establshing what's at stake in the overall arc of play. It's about whether or not the GM _frames situations in accordance with a certain set of principles,_ and how the stakes of _those situations_ are established.




One of the things that I don't really agree with is the idea that events from the DM should confront one or more of the PCs in some dramatic way. Drama is drama because it's not the normal state of things.  When drama is the norm, it's no longer drama.  Some of what the DM does should confront PCs, and some should just be normal stuff.

An edit: what would count as good situation to engage _I will rule my own kingdom_ will depend (obviously) on all the details and nuance of the particular table and its players inclinations. But just to kick things of, and thinking of two examples from fantasy literature - Aragorn and Conan - it might well make sense to start with a kingdom whose rulership is under some sort of pressure or doubt. And present that pressure or doubt in a way that makes things hard for the player.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> They don't necessarily make non-meat, either.  So I find myself at the gates to the city.  The first thing I have to think about is how will I go about becoming the ruler of my own nation.  Do I go to the library and do research on items that can make me a king(i.e. Excalibur types)?  Am I adventurer enough to accomplish finding and controlling such an artifact?  Do I go to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status?  Do I put those things on hold for now and seek ways to fund a conquering army?  Those things are meat, and I came up with them myself.  I don't need the DM to force me long my path or to cause me to confront questions about my PC and his character.  I can do that myself.




then you wake up all sweaty and hurry up to catch up your party that already left for the sunken pyramid never to come back


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Again, this seems contradictory to me.
> 
> If you honestly think that any method is equal...that neither GM nor Player driven techniques are more “realistic” than the other....a sentiment I would agree with, by the way...then why would you infer someone describing their technique as being guided by their sense of realism or causality as a criticism of other techniques?



It definitely has been, at times, because the posit was something like "I wouldn't like this kind of game because I want a feel of a plausible realistic world..." which certainly implies that a 'story now' and/or 'zero myth' kind of system with SYORTD or some analogous mechanics cannot provide that. In other words, when you argue that a procedure of play is your preference because it is the one which produces the results you want, and another procedure is disfavored, you are pretty much saying that other procedure lacks the characteristic of producing the desired results! Anyway, it has been more explicitly stated than that by many posters at times, though not usually consistently. Often it comes in the form of questions about how to deal with 'non-realistic' types of results. I can recall several instances in this thread of "but then the players just declare they found the solution to the problem..." which is a kind of way of saying the whole procedure in which players can interject pieces into the setting is fundamentally bound to lead to degenerate unrealistic results. 



> I don’t rely solely on GM driven techniques in my games. I use them, yes....but more and more I find myself allowing the players to determine lots of details. Whether it’s simply going with an idea they’ve presented or using the game mechanics to determine something, I like using different approaches for different things. Obviously, a lot of this depends on the game being played.
> 
> At times I may decide something as a GM that I feel is appropriate. Perhaps a villain has been driven from his lair and gone into hiding. Where is he hiding? If I decide ahead of time, and base it upon information that’s been presented in the fiction...the villain’s traits and desires, and his connections and resources, whatever other pertinent elements of the fiction that may apply..then I’ll go ahead and do that. Using the logic of the fiction to make such a decision.
> 
> In a case where maybe a lot of the facts that would inform such a decision haven’t been strongly established, I may allow the players to suggest a probable location, and perhaps make some kind of roll to see if it works out. Then I’ll proceed with having the villain be hiding somewhere accordong to this method.
> 
> I don’t think that either of these two methods is ultimately “more realistic” than the other. But I absolutely understand why someone might use such language when discussing the first method. It is certainly imprecise, but I’m not going to look for offense where none is intended.




Right, so the question then is, would the later type of player explicated fiction, or at least player empowerment to receive a chance to lay stakes on achieving their goal not benefit from being more of a mechanically enabled thing vs simply being something you do in an ad-hoc way? 

What I found is that a huge advantage is the lack of a need to try to be laboriously systematic in considering every possible eventuality in the design of the campaign and associated adventures. I remember the ultimate end of my thinking that doing so would somehow lead to emergent dramatic elements of play. I created a VERY VERY thoroughly documented scenario for a campaign. One in which the existence of every hamlet, the recruiting of every bad guy, the expenses of every lord, the nature, location, aims, and capabilities of every monster, etc. was all to be documented and tied together in terms of a whole series of contingent timelines and cause-effect networks. This was silly. Not only was it impossible to really complete, no amount of trying lead to a situation in which the players in that campaign didn't crash it all to bits within a few sessions!

I took a pretty long hiatus from D&D after that, and came back to run a follow up game taking up the basic state of that world at a slightly later date, but using 4e and simply not worrying about the previous fiction, except where the players simply wandered into it and it could form the default background to what they were doing. Quickly the world went in a new direction, the players made up a whole bunch of background material and took up an agenda which entirely changed the context of the stuff happening in the previous campaign. I worked 50x less hard and the result was infinitely more interesting.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> The problem mainstream RPGs have though, is they need to appeal to you, to Pemerton, to me and to Max Person. They have to get as many people as possible. I am not saying that means they can't address these things. But obviously how they address them is going to matter because they want to attract all the gaming blocks while not pushing any of them away. Less mainstream games have always had the luxury of being able to focus more on stuff like this, because the audience will find them, and they can cater to a more narrow audience.
> 
> EDIT: Just to reiterate, the point of my original response to your post was just to say it should be more nuanced and not presented as a binary (I think a game could have a more even mixture rather than lean hard to one side or the other for instance). Just don't want to veer into an unnecessary tangent.




My feeling is there's no need for any specific RPG to be 'mainstream', its a niche hobby and its perfectly fine to play a game that appeals to nobody but you and your buds. 

I don't really want 'nuanced'. I feel like, and I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] feels like (though certainly ask him, I could be getting it wrong) that there is a pretty clear and distinct line that can be drawn. Either the game is subject to the ultimate direction of the GM as arbiter of all content and theme, or it is not. That is, in terms of mechanics and authority the game itself gives this either to the GM exclusively or not to the GM exclusively. We've discussed how culturally and socially different balances of creative authority exist in games, but that could be seen as a different dimension. A preference for making this an explicit and not implicit feature of games exists. 

So, there's a sense in which this IS binary and can be expressed that way, when we discuss the mechanics and processes and authorial structure presented by the game system itself. I guess what I'm saying is that the whole "but we have nuance" point is perfectly true, but not always relevant to all lines of discussion.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> then you wake up all sweaty and hurry up to catch up your party that already left for the sunken pyramid never to come back




When I become Pharaoh I will have their bloated corpses turned into mummies so that they may serve at my feet for all eternity!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Really glad to hear it.
> The impression I get from outside is of a series of adds on to what is a fairly standard Od&d concept.
> 
> Would you suggest to me 5e if I wanted a non combat centered campaign?



 [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] is of course being accurate, and I'm not at all disputing that people can (and do) use these rules to run a game with increased ranges of input from players compared with 'baseline' D&D. However, they are ALL add-ons. There is an essential bedrock, which is Rule 0. None of these other things displaces that rule in any way. Nor are these other addons on an equal footing with core rules. They are not really playtested much, don't really have defined interactions with each other or other subsystems, etc. 

What I mean is, they don't form a part of the default way of playing or the default expectations of play for people playing 5e, in general. You won't find them in AL play, nor generally in tournament play, nor expected or accommodated in published adventures. Some of them are pretty widely used, to an extent, like TBIFs, but even in an ideal situation those have very limited mechanical impact on the game. 

IME of play, 4e was (the way we used it at least) much more amenable to and encouraging of a sort of story now type of play with reduced reliance on DM authority. So 5e actually represents a step backwards in that light. Its odd, 5e is more explicit about these features, but vastly less committed to them. They feel very 'decorative' to me, and in contrast the way 5e character abilities, items, spells, and many rules are vastly more reliant on DM interpretation actually tells me a different message, let the DM run things.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It definitely has been, at times, because the posit was something like "I wouldn't like this kind of game because I want a feel of a plausible realistic world..." which certainly implies that a 'story now' and/or 'zero myth' kind of system with SYORTD or some analogous mechanics cannot provide that. In other words, when you argue that a procedure of play is your preference because it is the one which produces the results you want, and another procedure is disfavored, you are pretty much saying that other procedure lacks the characteristic of producing the desired results! Anyway, it has been more explicitly stated than that by many posters at times, though not usually consistently. Often it comes in the form of questions about how to deal with 'non-realistic' types of results. I can recall several instances in this thread of "but then the players just declare they found the solution to the problem..." which is a kind of way of saying the whole procedure in which players can interject pieces into the setting is fundamentally bound to lead to degenerate unrealistic results.




Yes, I agree that’s happened throughout the thread toward both player driven play and gm driven play. Examples offered by side A about play style B are often exaggerations that little resemble actual play, and which are of little use.

I’m not denying that. I just saw an appeal toward context and intent, and found it odd in relation to how this thread came to be. 

I think the comparison of playstyle to the real world was made casually, and I understand why that terminology was used. In GM driven play, the target of the PC’s search will be where the GM’s decided it will be. The player doesn’t get to decide. In that sense, it is like the real world in that if I am looking for something, I don’t get to decide where it is.

I don’t think the choice of language used to describe this was perfect, but I also don’t think it was really unclear.

Is there an implication about a play style that allowed players some input on the outcome? I don’t think any was intended. Can I see why someone might infer such? Yes...although I don’t know if I would attribute anything more to it than someone saying “this is what makes sense to me.”



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, so the question then is, would the later type of player explicated fiction, or at least player empowerment to receive a chance to lay stakes on achieving their goal not benefit from being more of a mechanically enabled thing vs simply being something you do in an ad-hoc way?




That’s an interesting question! 

Might they benefit? Absolutely. Must they? Not necessarily. It’s about the quality of design more than the actual style, I think. If the mechanics are weak, I don’t think anyone would care about whether it’s the GM or the players determining the fiction. 

I do think that some such systems are great. I also do still enjoy D&D, although I likely allow far more player input on the fiction than is typical. I do like how D&D lets me alter how I handle things. That’s lukely not possible in more narrative based games.

It’s likely about expectations and how the game sets and then meets (or doesn’t) them. I can play an OSR style dungeon crawl, or I can play Dungeon World. I like both styles of game...but I know what each is trying to do and can enjoy accordingly.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> What I found is that a huge advantage is the lack of a need to try to be laboriously systematic in considering every possible eventuality in the design of the campaign and associated adventures. I remember the ultimate end of my thinking that doing so would somehow lead to emergent dramatic elements of play. I created a VERY VERY thoroughly documented scenario for a campaign. One in which the existence of every hamlet, the recruiting of every bad guy, the expenses of every lord, the nature, location, aims, and capabilities of every monster, etc. was all to be documented and tied together in terms of a whole series of contingent timelines and cause-effect networks. This was silly. Not only was it impossible to really complete, no amount of trying lead to a situation in which the players in that campaign didn't crash it all to bits within a few sessions!
> 
> I took a pretty long hiatus from D&D after that, and came back to run a follow up game taking up the basic state of that world at a slightly later date, but using 4e and simply not worrying about the previous fiction, except where the players simply wandered into it and it could form the default background to what they were doing. Quickly the world went in a new direction, the players made up a whole bunch of background material and took up an agenda which entirely changed the context of the stuff happening in the previous campaign. I worked 50x less hard and the result was infinitely more interesting.




I also used to over prep and worry over every detail of the setting and the world. And I would create plots! Ugh. I did all that stuff and it’s only as I’ve gotten older and therefore had less time to devote to game prep that I dialed it back...and found that my game improved dramatically. 

I do enjoy players having some narrative clout in the game. The amount can vary, but there’s always at least some in my games. Even if it’s D&D.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I have to ask.  Why do you need a mechanic for that sort of thing?  Were that my 5e PC, I would make the stronghold happen.  I would save the prodigious amounts of coin I get adventuring.  When I am speaking with(and I would arrange to be able to speak with) nobles and kings as part of adventuring, I would ask for land grants and permission to build a stronghold.  When being asked for a reward, I would ask for titles and commissions.  I would build my way towards that stronghold and rule my land one way or another.  Many settings have wild areas not ruled.  The kingdoms next to those areas would be prime areas for me to go to for this sort of thing. I could set up my own kingdom, after proving my worth and promising trade exclusives, mutual protections and such.
> 
> 5e does as much interesting stuff as you have it do.  I'm sure mechanical aids would make it easier, but those aids aren't necessary to accomplish goals.




Our 5e campaign was fun, and the DM of that game took plenty of input. Still I felt the system was working against us. There were many times when I would have liked to point the action in a direction which I was more interested in. Lots of times material was introduced for reasons which had, apparently, little to do with specific things the players wanted. It seemed, at times, like obstacles were coming up more because there was some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, some 'meta-plot' or something that dictated that our schemes were to be curtailed. At any rate there seems an undercurrent surviving from the ancient days when Gygax wrote the 1e DMG, like the DM's mission is partly to make sure the players don't "get away with anything."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Cant do boo about what?  It's not a single roll.  The process I described begins at 1st level and probably doesn't finish until your level is in the double digits.  So I fail some rolls along the way.  That's to be expected.
> 
> 
> 
> If aligning with my expectations means that I expect them not to be asshats, then sure.  If it means that I need to have rules or people who will be compliant with my wishes for everything I want my PC to accomplish, then no.




It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.

What it is about is how I want to shape a narrative which centers (at least for the part about my character) on his quest to build a great kingdom. He may well fail. OTOH he may well succeed! Certainly it will be more dramatic and probably more engaging if he is able to get pretty far in his ambitions, taking great risks, winning great victories, etc. Eventually he may well fail. He might risk it all once too often on the chance of making it not just an ordinary kingdom but a really extraordinary one, and crash it all tumbles down! That's fine. That's playing to find out what happens. 

But if I have to play inside the DM's conception of how the world is basically going to work and only draw from his palette then it will be a more limited story that is less about that, probably. I mean, maybe not, maybe the DM and I are in perfect harmony about it, but probably we aren't. At least I would have liked to see 5e structured in such a way that it could take 4e's implicit possibilities as a story now type of game and given us a mechanism to make that explicit. Truth is though, we got a game which at the basic mechanical level bakes in DM-is-in-charge pretty hard, and then adds a bowtie to it that is mostly dress. Even if you hack it pretty hard it doesn't yield a really good narrative focus very easily. You could read my 4e hack though and see how easy it is to make it explicit there.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Would you suggest to me 5e if I wanted a non combat centered campaign?




No. 5e is still very much about combat.
Having said that you can certainly play 5e without having emphasizing combat, the tools are there you just make them more prominent, but then you're losing a large part of the game's identity IMO. In that instance you might as well find a game then which ordinarily focuses less on combat.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would call all of these 'thin' in terms of adding much to the game conceptually.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> This is one of the disappointments I have with 5e. It has a universal mechanic, but it fails to actually DO interesting stuff with it!




Agree. Hence my use of the word limited.
I have only just now started to try things with the flaws/Inspiration mechanic as i reflected upon in this thread. I am hoping to expand on this.

EDIT: Also since you mentioned strongholds, I intend to acquire Mathew Colville's Strongholds book hoping to add something along those lines.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Our 5e campaign was fun, and the DM of that game took plenty of input. Still I felt the system was working against us. There were many times when I would have liked to point the action in a direction which I was more interested in. Lots of times material was introduced for reasons which had, apparently, little to do with specific things the players wanted. It seemed, at times, like obstacles were coming up more because there was some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, some 'meta-plot' or something that dictated that our schemes were to be curtailed. At any rate there seems an undercurrent surviving from the ancient days when Gygax wrote the 1e DMG, like the DM's mission is partly to make sure the players don't "get away with anything."




I truly attempt to steer my game hard in the sandbox tent where I'm willing to sacrifice large meta-plot arcs and storylines in favour of letting the PC pursue their desires. Of course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of *some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, * given that I am the primary author of the fiction.

The question I ask is, how was that different for you in 4e? 
For instance, we have a PC at my table with a backstory (all his by the way):
_A restitched soul of the player's previous dead PC (Bard), but now different/altered/evolved into a being serving Kelemvor (Cleric). He has memories/fragments of his past, but his personality is changed, more solemn and grave. His sole purpose is to track down and kill a psychopathic NPC who intends to revive A'tar whom the NPC believes is the true deity of the sun, the harsh and merciless goddess, as opposed to the feeble and fake gods Amaunator and Lathander. Kelemvor, the deity of the Dead, firmly believes that A'tar must remain dead for the good of the cosmos and so his faithful servqnt, the PC, does his bidding. _

As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to _write their own story_ (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.

EDIT: The psychopathic NPC was also a previous PC of his who had that goal to resurrect A'tar. He became an NPC when he left the table for a while due to personal reasons.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> In GM driven play, the target of the PC’s search will be where the GM’s decided it will be. The player doesn’t get to decide. In that sense, it is like the real world in that if I am looking for something, I don’t get to decide where it is.



In the real world, if I am looking for something _no one_ decides where it is. It just is where it is.

Only if one treats _the GM's decision_ as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to _write their own story_ (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.




I don't think anyone is saying you shouldn't put obstacles, and the Pc is free to write their own story to be completed in two session.

Btw cool Bg linked to previous Pc


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In the real world, if I am looking for something _no one_ decides where it is. It just is where it is.
> 
> Only if one treats _the GM's decision_ as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.




Again, I wasn’t arguing it was exactly like real life. My point was just that for my purposes, it felt enough like the way things would work in the real world to not be mother may I. You don’t have to share this view. But can we please quit it with this straw man? I have been clarifying this since the thread was started.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.
> 
> What it is about is how I want to shape a narrative which centers (at least for the part about my character) on his quest to build a great kingdom. He may well fail. OTOH he may well succeed! Certainly it will be more dramatic and probably more engaging if he is able to get pretty far in his ambitions, taking great risks, winning great victories, etc. Eventually he may well fail. He might risk it all once too often on the chance of making it not just an ordinary kingdom but a really extraordinary one, and crash it all tumbles down! That's fine. That's playing to find out what happens.
> 
> But if I have to play inside the DM's conception of how the world is basically going to work and only draw from his palette then it will be a more limited story that is less about that, probably. I mean, maybe not, maybe the DM and I are in perfect harmony about it, but probably we aren't. At least I would have liked to see 5e structured in such a way that it could take 4e's implicit possibilities as a story now type of game and given us a mechanism to make that explicit. Truth is though, we got a game which at the basic mechanical level bakes in DM-is-in-charge pretty hard, and then adds a bowtie to it that is mostly dress. Even if you hack it pretty hard it doesn't yield a really good narrative focus very easily. You could read my 4e hack though and see how easy it is to make it explicit there.




I don’t think iris automatically easymode at all. I do think people connect with systems differently from one another.you have found these systems work well for you. When I’ve encountered them, it has created issues with plausibility (in part because I just don’t naturally connect to these systems). I would imagine people on the other side have trouble when it comes to what we are describing. Those kinds of differences are to be expected. The best situation is we have access to all these tools, the tools are honestly described and people can decide for themselves what to do. The only real contention here is that describing GM decides as mother may I fails to accurately describe the style and paints it in a negative light. For those of us who like the style, mother may I is a terrible descriptor of it. It doesn’t capture what we like about it. When we attempt to explain why we think we like it, it seems those attempts are shot down. At the end of the day, these are all just reasons we are working through to try to understand our preferences. But shooting down those reasons doesn’t change the preferences. Really all that truly matters is someone encounters GM decides and they do or don’t like it, someone encounters SYORTD and they do or do not like it. Explanations of the reasons can all be wrong.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> They don't necessarily make non-meat, either.  So I find myself at the gates to the city.  The first thing I have to think about is how will I go about becoming the ruler of my own nation.  Do I go to the library and do research on items that can make me a king(i.e. Excalibur types)?  Am I adventurer enough to accomplish finding and controlling such an artifact?  Do I go to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status?  Do I put those things on hold for now and seek ways to fund a conquering army?  Those things are meat



No, they're not MEAT.

None of them forces a hard decision. None of them puts your values - PC or player - to the test. None generates any pressure _here and now_.

Which you seem to agree with, here:



Maxperson said:


> One of the things that I don't really agree with is the idea that events from the DM should confront one or more of the PCs in some dramatic way. Drama is drama because it's not the normal state of things.  When drama is the norm, it's no longer drama.



This is obviously wrong. Watch Casablanca - drama is the norm. Rick has to make hard decisions (about whether to help the young couple; about whether to support the Nazis; about whether to go with Ilsa; etc). That doesn't make it not dramatic - Casablanca is one of the great dramas of all time!

Of course real life isn't terribly dramatic for many of us much of the time. But RPGs are fictions, and the ones I play are adventure fictions where exciting and challenging and dramatic things are the norm. And I'm not yet jaded, as this report of the session I GMed today will reveal. (Upthread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] asked how one would handle separated groups other than by precise tracing of times - this play report provides an example of an alternative approach, based on GM's sense of pacing/narrative imperatives.)



Maxperson said:


> Some of what the DM does should confront PCs, and some should just be normal stuff.



Why normal stuff? And what is "normal stuff" in the context of an adventure-oriented RPG?

_Going to the library and do research on items that can make me a king_ doesn't seem very normal to me. Nor does _going to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status_. The difference between those things, and what I described, is that - on the face of it - those things are _safe_ because nothing is really at stake. It's all _maybe_ and _in due course_. Which is precisely what I'm saying it has not MEAT.

EDIT: I read this post by AbdulAlhazred:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.
> 
> What it is about is how I want to shape a narrative which centers (at least for the part about my character) on his quest to build a great kingdom. He may well fail. OTOH he may well succeed! Certainly it will be more dramatic and probably more engaging if he is able to get pretty far in his ambitions, taking great risks, winning great victories, etc. Eventually he may well fail. He might risk it all once too often on the chance of making it not just an ordinary kingdom but a really extraordinary one, and crash it all tumbles down! That's fine. That's playing to find out what happens.
> 
> But if I have to play inside the DM's conception of how the world is basically going to work and only draw from his palette then it will be a more limited story that is less about that, probably.



The idea of a narrative _centred_ on a PC goal, and offering the possbility of _ambition_ and _taking great risks_, seems pretty close to my take on MEAT.

Asking the GM about what the books in the library say, and roleplaying interactions with NPCs whom the GM has established with no particular dramatic orientation towards my PC, doesn't seem to involve either of those things. Nor the real risk of _failure_.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> In the real world, if I am looking for something _no one_ decides where it is. It just is where it is.
> 
> Only if one treats _the GM's decision_ as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.




I understand all that. 

And yet it’s still true that the player does not get to decide where something is any more than a person in the real world does. That’s the comparison that was made and it’s clearly true. 

Yes, we can examine the play style further and point out that someone decides where the something is and how that may be relevant. But it doesn’t change the basic comparison that was made. 

And I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I truly attempt to steer my game hard in the sandbox tent where I'm willing to sacrifice large meta-plot arcs and storylines in favour of letting the PC pursue their desires. Of course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of *some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, * given that I am the primary author of the fiction.
> 
> The question I ask is, how was that different for you in 4e?
> For instance, we have a PC at my table with a backstory (all his by the way):
> _A restitched soul of the player's previous dead PC (Bard), but now different/altered/evolved into a being serving Kelemvor (Cleric). He has memories/fragments of his past, but his personality is changed, more solemn and grave. His sole purpose is to track down and kill a psychopathic NPC who intends to revive A'tar whom the NPC believes is the true deity of the sun, the harsh and merciless goddess, as opposed to the feeble and fake gods Amaunator and Lathander. Kelemvor, the deity of the Dead, firmly believes that A'tar must remain dead for the good of the cosmos and so his faithful servqnt, the PC, does his bidding. _
> 
> As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to _write their own story_ (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.
> 
> EDIT: The psychopathic NPC was also a previous PC of his who had that goal to resurrect A'tar. He became an NPC when he left the table for a while due to personal reasons.




It's a common misconception that narrative play allows the PC full latitude over introduction of fiction.  It doesn't.  The PC may have a larger goal, like yours does, but the GM still controls the framing of scenes and the narration of failures.  In your case, the player really owes the GM a "first step" goal.  Look to  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example above of a PC's whose goal is to save their brother from possession by a Balrog.  That's the big goal, but that player also provided "and I will not leave this town until I find something to help."  That's the goal that pemerton framed and put at risk to start.  Play then goes on to see if that item actually is what's looked for or not, and what happens next is up to that determination, which will involve the addition of new elements of fiction that will be pursued or stymied as play determines.  Eventually, the game will resolve or moot the big goal.  IIRC, the player of the PC with that goal failed, firstly by discovering that his brother wasn't possessed, but a willing partner, and then by not preventing his brother's death before he could save them.  None of those elements were at all conceived of when the angel feather was first put into play.

In my own example, a Blades in the Dark game, the Crew took a mission from an ally to place an artifact of power inside a rival gang's hangout for reasons they were not privy to (honestly, they're allied with but terrified of the Dimmer Sisters).  This started with them choosing how to approach the warehouse that was the rival's hangout.  They chose going in via the roof, so, of course, the warehouse has a skylight or two (this was me acknowledging their opening move by allowing for their intent to be realized, I had no schematic of the warehouse).  But they're roll to determine how the score started was normal, so immediately there's a complication.  The skylight was rusted shut.  Here, play started.  Recall the big goal was to place a macguffin in a specific place, but play actually started being confronted by a rusted-shut skylight.  From there, they had to navigate across the beams of the warehouse without being noticed, approach the second story office of the warehouse. Deal with the gang members hanging out there (a nifty flashback involving a gift of a crate of laced wined did the trick, at a few coin cost), and place the object where it wouldn't be discovered.  Getting out we elided, because that wasn't the focus of the drama for the score.

So, yes, the GM should acknowledge the player's goal and frame scenes that involve it, but at no time should the goal not be challenged, vigorously. This is what the guidance for these games tell you to do -- up the drama all the time in a scene, put player agendas at risk, and play to find out what happens.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.



And then we can ask who, at the table, should decide what a PC's family members do? The player of the PC - who is playing the character who has intimate knowledge of those people - or the GM, which will make those people's behaviours largely opaque to the player of the PC who supposedly knows them so well?

The most obvious solution I'm familiar with is to make a check - and if it fails, then the GM can establish that the PC's friends and family did something unexpected/undesired.

Which also, not fully coincidentally, is a different mechanic from _player decides_. Which is something I'vd been pointing out for most of the thread. But for some reason posters seem to keep suggesting that the most salient alternative to _GM decides_ is _player decides_, even though most of them for their whole RPGing lives have been playing a combat system (D&D's) which examplifies an alternative approach.


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## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> I understand all that.
> 
> And yet it’s still true that the player does not get to decide where something is any more than a person in the real world does. That’s the comparison that was made and it’s clearly true.
> 
> Yes, we can examine the play style further and point out that someone decides where the something is and how that may be relevant. But it doesn’t change the basic comparison that was made.
> 
> And I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.




Eh.  In the game, if a player declares they're looking for something somewhere, then it introduces the possibility it is there, which is not something that happens in real life at all.  Now you either have a "say yes" moment, where the player is right (not the real world), or you use a mechanic to determine if the player is right or not or it's complicated (not the real world), or you rely on the GM to make the call as if the player is right, wrong, or complicated (again, not the real world).

What we can say is that the game may seem like it's a believable, internally consistent, internally coherent, believable world where there's fictional causality for things that makes sense.  This is also not like the real world, but we can use our suspension of disbelief to believe so. 

Why it this important?  It's, well, not very.  It's a bit of an in the weeds talk about how game worlds are constructed and how they work.  It's nerdy and detailed.  If you approach how games work casually, this is utterly nitpicky and unimportant -- just play what makes you happy.  If, however, you're actually interested in how games do what they do, and what they incentivize, then it's very useful to recognize that gameworlds have absolutely nothing to do with the real world, but instead may contain what we think about the real world.  Gravity does not exist in your game, but what you think about gravity may.  This leads to a better understanding of how fiction works in game, what elements are necessary to maintain coherent, believable worlds and what may be elided entirely, and where the fiction causality determination needs to or may  occur. 

Fundamentally, I think that this discussion really revolves around whether a person thinks that causality needs to be determined prior to the mechanics or if it can be provided after you have your answer from the mechanics.  Those saying that the mechanics need to be more "realistic" are the former camp -- fictional causes need to be fed into or be part of the mechanics engine to be germane.  The mechanics then determine the outcome of this.  The latter camp is comprised of those that say that the mechanics only need generate a predictable probability curve of success/failure/complication and that the fictional causality will be whatever explains that.  In the end, both generate solid fiction, but far be it for me to actually say that the ends justify the means.  The only point of saying that the ends are indistinguishable is to say that method of play doesn't really affect fictional integrity at all.  It does, however, strongly affect how you enjoy playing.

So, then, to circle back to why care.  For those of us actually interested in these things, we've recognized that this knowledge has improved our play by allowing us to better understand what it is we like about the games.  And, of course, we like being nerdy about these things.  The discussion is part of the enjoyment.


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## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Look to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example above of a PC's who's goal is to save their brother from possession by a Balrog.  That's the big goal, but that player also provided "and I will not leave this town until I find something to help."  That's the goal that pemerton framed and put at risk to start.  Play then goes on to see if that item actually is what's looked for or not, and what happens next is up to that determination, which will involve the addition of new elements of fiction that will be pursued or stymied as play determines.  Eventually, the game will resolve or moot the big goal.  IIRC, the player of the PC with that goal failed, firstly by discovering that his brother wasn't possessed, but a willing partner, and then by not preventing his brother's death before he could save them.  None of those elements were at all conceived of when the angel feather was first put into play.



YRC.



Sadras said:


> IOf course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of *some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, * given that I am the primary author of the fiction.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out?



I'm about to go to sleep here and so haven't tried to think through your example - and I don't think I have enough detail to do so in any event, as I don't know all the cosmology that seems to give the relationship with this opposed NPC its heft and meaning.

But I can point to my own play examples. I just posted an actual play report of a Traveller session I GMed today. Here are some obstacles encountered by the on-world team, trying to scout out faction A's pathfinder base at the behest of faction B:

_pursuit of their ATV_ (upshot: surrender by the PCs);

_imprisonment and interrogation_ (upshot: all but one of the PCs unconscious, then one of the PCs "goers kinetic", trying to escape imprisonment, get control of some battle dress (Traveller's analogue of powered armour) and take over the base);

_numerous chances for attempt to take over base to fail, due to presence of enemy NPCs plus some risks associated with untrained use of battle dress_ (upshot: the PC succeeded, but not before the NPCs got a communication out that will be bad for the PCs if the Imperials get it).​
I didn't know how the pursuit would turn out: the system has evasion rules, so the PCs could have tried that. They also had a forward observer on their team, and a ship with a triple beam laser turret in orbit, and so could have tried to call down fire on the pursuing ship.

Once the PCs were imprisoned, I didn't know how that would turn out: they coud have folded under interrogation, and two of them might well have been inclined to join with the NPCs (but their refusal to cooperate under interrogation got in the way of that). I didn't know in advance that one of them would try a violent approach, though obviously that sort of thing is on the cards. And it was something of a coincidence, resulting from how the interrogations unfolfed, that the only PC who had any chance of using the NPC's battle dress happened to be the one who had the chance to do so.

And once violence broke out, things could have turned out differently too. The Classic Traveller combat rules can be pretty fickle, so the PCs could well have ended up being defeated in their attempt.

I certainly didn't start things with the preconception that the PCs might (i) end up with an upgraded ATV and some battle dress but (ii) be identified as enemies on an Imperial relay satellite.


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## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Fundamentally, I think that this discussion really revolves around whether a person thinks that causality needs to be determined prior to the mechanics or if it can be provided after you have your answer from the mechanics.  Those saying that the mechanics need to be more "realistic" are the former camp -- fictional causes need to be fed into or be part of the mechanics engine to be germane.  The mechanics then determine the outcome of this.  The latter camp is comprised of those that say that the mechanics only need generate a predictable probability curve of success/failure/complication and that the fictional causality will be whatever explains that.



Here are some things said by Ron Edwards, 2003:

*Internal Cause is King*
Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, _cause_ is the key, the imagined cosmos in action. . . .

*Resolution mechanics*, in Simulationist design, boil down to asking about the cause of _what_, which is to say, what performances are important during play. These vary widely, including internal states, interactions and expressions, physical motions (most games), and even decisions. Two games may be equally Simulationist even if one concerns coping with childhood trauma and the other concerns blasting villains with lightning bolts. What makes them Simulationist is the strict adherence to in-game (i.e. pre-established) cause for the outcomes that occur during play. . . .

The causal sequence of task resolution in Simulationist play must be linear in time. He swings: on target or not? The other guy dodges or parries: well or badly? The weapon contacts the unit of armor + body: how hard? The armor stops some of it: how much? The remaining impact hits tissue: how deeply? With what psychological (stunning, pain) effects? With what continuing effects? All of this is settled in order . . .

The most common Simulationist resolution is handled through Fortune, specifically Fortune-at-the-End. This term refers to a dice roll (or cards, or whatever) which is consulted after all possible pre-resolution description of the actions in question has been delivered. Its alternative, Fortune-in-the-Middle, is not historically observed in Simulationist game design.

. . .

Fortune-in-the-Middle: the Fortune system is brought in partway through figuring out "what happens," to the extent that specific actions may be left completely unknown until after we see how they worked out. Let's say a character with a sword attacks some guy with a spear. The point is to announce the character's basic approach and intent, and then to roll. A missed roll in this situation tells us the goal failed. Now the group is open to discussing just how it happened from the beginning of the action being initiated. Usually, instead of the typical description that you "swing and miss," because the "swing" was assumed to be in action before the dice could be rolled at all, the narration now can be anything from "the guy holds you off from striking range with the spearpoint" to "your swing is dead-on but you slip a bit." Or it could be a plain vanilla miss because the guy's better than you. The point is that the narration of what happens "reaches back" to the initation of the action, not just the action's final micro-second.

There's a whole spectrum of extreme connect/disconnect between conflict and task. At one end, the task does fail, but the goal fails too, perhaps with a nuance or two. The other end is much wider in interpretative scope: we know the character's goal (killing some guy) doesn't happen, but with those in place, narration takes over to provide all the events involved. Applying different judgments along this spectrum, for different parts of play, is a big deal . . .

Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates Narrativist play in a number of ways.

* It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent goofs; conversely, if you want your guy to suffer the effects of cruel fate, or just not be good enough, you can do that too.

* It permits tension to be managed from conflict to conflict and from scene to scene. So a "roll to hit" in Scene A is the same as in Scene B in terms of whether the target takes damage, but it's not the same in terms of the acting character's motions, intentions, and experience of the action.

* It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens in tandem with the real-people statements.​
. . .

Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things: 

* Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.

* Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.

* More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.​
What Edwards doesn't really discuss, at least in these essays (as I recall them - I haven't re-read them in their entirety this evening), is the variety of ways in which the ingame causal constraints that simulationsist play relies upon might be established. It has to be prior to the action declaration, but I don't think that means that it has to be the GM. To give just a simple example, equipment load-outs in these games are important in-fiction inputs into action resolution, but they aren't normally decided by the GM.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Our 5e campaign was fun, and the DM of that game took plenty of input. Still I felt the system was working against us. There were many times when I would have liked to point the action in a direction which I was more interested in. Lots of times material was introduced for reasons which had, apparently, little to do with specific things the players wanted. It seemed, at times, like obstacles were coming up more because there was some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, some 'meta-plot' or something that dictated that our schemes were to be curtailed. At any rate there seems an undercurrent surviving from the ancient days when Gygax wrote the 1e DMG, like the DM's mission is partly to make sure the players don't "get away with anything."




Personally, I don't want everything to relate with specific things that we want for a few reason.  The first of which it's unreasonable to think that everything that comes up for the PCs is going to somehow relate to their desires.  For me that's too unrealistic and detracts from my enjoyment of the game.  For you, that appears to be what you look for.  Different strokes for different folks.  If something is very important to my PC, I'm going to find a way to make it happen in the game.  Second, there are tons of things that interest me and I'm not going to remember them all.  Many of the things the DM comes up with will be interesting to me anyway, and that's really cool.  It's nice to be surprised with interesting things.



> It isn't about "compliant with my wishes", this is the straw man again which equates player empowerment over the direction of the game with some sort of 'easy mode' or 'candy store' where your character just lives in a world where all his wishes are fulfilled. That might be a possible game, but it isn't the game we're talking about, anymore than a DM-centered game is talking about "rocks fall and you die" which is also of course 'possible'.




Well, it's not a Strawman, because it has nothing to do with your argument.  It was a response to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] who tried to falsely attribute my success at pursuing the goals of my PCs as coming from DMs who "align with my expectations," rather than just from gameplay.  My response wasn't to you or about you in any way.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In the real world, if I am looking for something _no one_ decides where it is. It just is where it is.




How do you know?



> Only if one treats _the GM's decision_ as somehow "impersonal" or radically different from any other participant's contribution to the fiction can the suggestion even get off the ground. But that is exactly the "Mother may I" that the OP in the other thread was wanting to avoid.




There is no Mother May I in D&D, unless you have a really bad DM.  Simple Q&A and/or the DM having authority isn't sufficient to rise to the level of that pejorative.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No, they're not MEAT.
> 
> None of them forces a hard decision. None of them puts your values - PC or player - to the test. None generates any pressure _here and now_.




Yes they are *MEAT*.  I know the values of my PC.  I know what will challenge him, even when the DM doesn't.  Situations come up that I decide will be a challenge to the PC's values and they have every bit as much pressure as if the DM puts it on me.

Perhaps you need your hand to be held by the DM to get your *MEAT.*  Maybe your players need you to hold their hands in order for them to get their *MEAT*.  I've grown past that need as a player, though.  I am fully capable of getting my own *MEAT,* and sometimes *POTATOES*.  That doesn't mean that the DM can't also add such things from time to time, but just that I don't need that to happen.



> This is obviously wrong. Watch Casablanca - drama is the norm. Rick has to make hard decisions (about whether to help the young couple; about whether to support the Nazis; about whether to go with Ilsa; etc). That doesn't make it not dramatic - Casablanca is one of the great dramas of all time!




Okay, but if it was Casablanca at games week in and week out, it would cease to be drama and become, "Oh, look.  Yet another dilemma ::"  Drama has meaning when it's next to the non-dramatic.  If it's the norm, then it's just vanilla normal.



> Why normal stuff? And what is "normal stuff" in the context of an adventure-oriented RPG?




What's normal in life?  An RPG doesn't have to mirror life, but real life will let you know which kinds of things that are normal.



> _Going to the library and do research on items that can make me a king_ doesn't seem very normal to me. Nor does _going to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status_. The difference between those things, and what I described, is that - on the face of it - those things are _safe_ because nothing is really at stake. It's all _maybe_ and _in due course_. Which is precisely what I'm saying it has not MEAT.




You've never gone to the library to do reasearch on something?  I have.  Book reports are pretty normal in school.  Sometimes I just want to read about a certain culture's mythology and I'll go to the library and find some books on that.  

And if you think that there is no risk in just walking up to a local lord and interacting with him, you don't know much about nobility.  There's plenty at stake, including life and freedom with that plan.


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> And I’m also not sure I agree that “no one decides” where something is in the real world. I mean, I get what you mean as far as games go....so I understand your point. But I can bring up how my son jammed my keys into the couch cushions last week and we can steer the discussion toward the cognitive funtion of 17 month olds and what would constitute a decision on his part.




I just found something last week that my son lost a year ago when he was 4.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Eh.  In the game, if a player declares they're looking for something somewhere, then it introduces the possibility it is there, which is not something that happens in real life at all.  Now you either have a "say yes" moment, where the player is right (not the real world), or you use a mechanic to determine if the player is right or not or it's complicated (not the real world), or you rely on the GM to make the call as if the player is right, wrong, or complicated (again, not the real world).




I've done it in real life.  As a kid when I was looking for a friend and his mom didn't know where he was, I would try places he sometimes hung out.  There was a real life possibility that he was at one of these places.  Sometimes it worked and I found him.  Sometimes it didn't and the possibility didn't pan out.


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Well, it's not a Strawman, because it has nothing to do with your argument.  It was a response to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] who tried to falsely attribute my success at pursuing the goals of my PCs as coming from DMs who "align with my expectations," rather than just from gameplay.  My response wasn't to you or about you in any way.




Max, _you _attributed it to your GM.  You attributed the impossibility of the GM not acknowledging your attempts to build your own kingdom in a fair manner (which includes letting you try) is based on the social contract at your table. That if the GM did not, or actively blocked your attempts, they would be in violation of that social contract and you'd find a different game.  The subtext there, of course, being that it's the GM's game to begin with.

Your success most definition comes as the result of the GM's opinion of it's likelihood of success.  You've been arguing this in regard to the cultists being at the tea house for the entire thread.  Do you think no one notices you excusing your play from your statements of the GM's authority?



Maxperson said:


> I've done it in real life.  As a kid when I was looking for a friend and his mom didn't know where he was, I would try places he sometimes hung out.  There was a real life possibility that he was at one of these places.  Sometimes it worked and I found him.  Sometimes it didn't and the possibility didn't pan out.




No, Max.  There were no probabilities.  There was objective reality -- your friend was where they were.  You looking somewhere he was not did not create a probability of him being in that place; he either was there or was not there.

Probability does not describe the real world.  It describes our uncertainty about outcomes in the real world.  The real world doesn't care what probability you've assigned to your uncertainty of your friend being in a location or not, your friend is either there or not with no probability of either.

To drag this back to the discussion, if you as a player decide to look for the cultists at the tea house, that introduces the possibility (not probability) of this being true where before it wasn't at all part of the fiction.  In the real world, if there were cultists and a tea house, they would be there or not whether or not you thought about it (in the real).  This isn't true in the game, where the question of whether or not they are there only arises because someone asks the question.  At that time, you start your process of considering if it's likely they are there or not, however you prefer to do so.  Specifically, you prefer to analyze what you've already established in the fiction, determine possible fictional causes for presence or absence, and then apply your judgement at to what constitutes the proper mechanic to determine if they are there.  That may be "no", "yes", or roll.  On a success, the cultist are at the tea house for reasons you've imagined.  This is not at all like the real world, where the cultists either are or are not at the tea house,


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Max, _you _attributed it to your GM.  You attributed the impossibility of the GM not acknowledging your attempts to build your own kingdom in a fair manner (which includes letting you try) is based on the social contract at your table. That if the GM did not, or actively blocked your attempts, they would be in violation of that social contract and you'd find a different game.  The subtext there, of course, being that it's the GM's game to begin with.




I never said "at my game."  If you assumed that, and you were in error. The general social contract for RPGs across the world is "don't be an asshat."  I can sit down at a random convention game and it will be in force.  In the highly unlikely event that I encounter that very rare bad DM, then yes, I would leave, but that's not a matter of finding someone who meets some personal expectations that I have with regards to my PC's goals.  It's that people don't like to play with asshats who violate the social contract.



> Your success most definition comes as the result of the GM's opinion of it's likelihood of success.  You've been arguing this in regard to the cultists being at the tea house for the entire thread.  Do you think no one notices you excusing your play from your statements of the GM's authority?




I haven't excused anything.  You really need to stop with the assumptions.



> No, Max.  There were no probabilities.  There was objective reality -- your friend was where they were.  You looking somewhere he was not did not create a probability of him being in that place; he either was there or was not there.




There was a chance he might have decided to go there.  He didn't.  I missed that roll.  Him not being there is as objective as the cult members not being at the tea house when the roll is missed.  Both are at that point 100%.



> To drag this back to the discussion, if you as a player decide to look for the cultists at the tea house, that introduces the possibility (not probability) of this being true where before it wasn't at all part of the fiction.  In the real world, if there were cultists and a tea house, they would be there or not whether or not you thought about it (in the real).  This isn't true in the game, where the question of whether or not they are there only arises because someone asks the question.




The game world when run organically moves on even when the DM and players aren't thinking about it.  Those cultists go to the tea house or don't, and have been since they got to town.  Until I actually think about it, though, it's just not relevant.  Just as in the real world, mafia members could have been going to the local Shakey's Pizza since they got to town and I wouldn't know about it. Similarly, it's not relevant to me until I think about it.  Then I can decide to go down and look for them and see if one is there.


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## Bedrockgames

I have to say the overall argument here about realism seems very bizarre to me. It seems like people are honestly arguing that the only thing one can describe as 'realistic' is reality. I don't know. We call movies, books, games, etc realistic all the time. It doesn't mean they are a 100% match to the processes that govern the real world. It means they appear sufficiently real. You could seriously undermine just about any assertion by going after terms like this.


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## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> I have to say the overall argument here about realism seems very bizarre to me. It seems like people are honestly arguing that the only thing one can describe as 'realistic' is reality. I don't know. We call movies, books, games, etc realistic all the time. It doesn't mean they are a 100% match to the processes that govern the real world. It means they appear sufficiently real. You could seriously undermine just about any assertion by going after terms like this.




Yeah.  The level mental gymnastics being engaged in by some posters here in order to avoid having to say that D&D has some realism or that it can be greater or lesser, is astounding.


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## Numidius

To expect the game world to run organically even if players don't think about it, is reasonable. Dw has a protocol in that regard for the Gm to follow. 
So, let's say a party of four Pc want to do their own thing separately for a while, instead the Gm wants to run the next dungeon: what happens? 
Let's say the Gm comes up with situations and encounters for two of those Pc, but does not have anymore fantasy (like, imagination, strenght of will, time) to bother about the other two: what happens? 
After the next dungeon the two remaining Pc still want their own thing, but the story has already taken a different route and splitting the party would compromise things.
Maybe months of real life have passed and you're still waiting for that encounter to take forward your personal story arc, or you just wanted to show off that ability you took in Char Gen, but had not yet a chance to. 
What do you do: find another Gm, only because there is not a single RAW that goes beyond "Gm decides" on the authority of framing scenes/establish a situation to explore/do the Pc thing for once ?


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## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Eh.  In the game, if a player declares they're looking for something somewhere, then it introduces the possibility it is there, which is not something that happens in real life at all.  Now you either have a "say yes" moment, where the player is right (not the real world), or you use a mechanic to determine if the player is right or not or it's complicated (not the real world), or you rely on the GM to make the call as if the player is right, wrong, or complicated (again, not the real world).




Sure, those are the three main options. Of those options, I can understand why someone may describe the third as being the closest to real life. That is not to say that I don’t follow the point that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has been making or that you are explaining here. I can agree that none of the methods used to determine fictional elements of a game are any more realistic than others. I understand that whatever method used, a suitable explanation that seems sensible within the fiction can be assigned to the result. 

Wher I disagree with pemerton is in his insistence that the casual comparison was actually a criticism of other methods rather than simply someone stating a preference. 



Ovinomancer said:


> What we can say is that the game may seem like it's a believable, internally consistent, internally coherent, believable world where there's fictional causality for things that makes sense.  This is also not like the real world, but we can use our suspension of disbelief to believe so.




Right. When folks mention appeals to what’s realistic in these discussions, I tend to assume that this is what they’re talking about. And I think that’s generally the case...although sometimes folks can go waaay too far with it. Or that they don’t understand the distinction being made.



Ovinomancer said:


> Why it this important?  It's, well, not very.  It's a bit of an in the weeds talk about how game worlds are constructed and how they work.  It's nerdy and detailed.  If you approach how games work casually, this is utterly nitpicky and unimportant -- just play what makes you happy.  If, however, you're actually interested in how games do what they do, and what they incentivize, then it's very useful to recognize that gameworlds have absolutely nothing to do with the real world, but instead may contain what we think about the real world.  Gravity does not exist in your game, but what you think about gravity may.  This leads to a better understanding of how fiction works in game, what elements are necessary to maintain coherent, believable worlds and what may be elided entirely, and where the fiction causality determination needs to or may  occur.
> 
> Fundamentally, I think that this discussion really revolves around whether a person thinks that causality needs to be determined prior to the mechanics or if it can be provided after you have your answer from the mechanics.  Those saying that the mechanics need to be more "realistic" are the former camp -- fictional causes need to be fed into or be part of the mechanics engine to be germane.  The mechanics then determine the outcome of this.  The latter camp is comprised of those that say that the mechanics only need generate a predictable probability curve of success/failure/complication and that the fictional causality will be whatever explains that.  In the end, both generate solid fiction, but far be it for me to actually say that the ends justify the means.  The only point of saying that the ends are indistinguishable is to say that method of play doesn't really affect fictional integrity at all.  It does, however, strongly affect how you enjoy playing.
> 
> So, then, to circle back to why care.  For those of us actually interested in these things, we've recognized that this knowledge has improved our play by allowing us to better understand what it is we like about the games.  And, of course, we like being nerdy about these things.  The discussion is part of the enjoyment.




I think your comment on causality and the timing of the decision is indeed the crux of it. Without delving into quantum cats and the like, the location of a thing being determined prior to the results of the search for it seems to be the default expectation for many. Is this because that’s the long standing form of RPG play? Is itbecause itin some basic way mirrors our understanding of the real world? I’m sure the reasons vary, and that there are more that I’ve not mentioned, but I expect that those are the big two reasons. 

I think that it’s also likely due to the nature of RPG play. Where the character is very often seen as the avatar of the player in the fictional world. That connection can make things blurry. What thecharacter experiences and what the player experiences are different things, of course, but very often we blur things for the sale of ease. 

If we were to step away from gaming, and instead talk about an author and the methods he uses to determine elements he’s going to include in a story, I think the dostinction is clearer. If on one hand, the author decides that the police captain is an older man because of the time and location the story takes place, that seems a perfectly sensible method. If on the other hand, the author needa the captain to be a woman for some dramatic need, that also seems sensible. If the author instead decides to flip a coin to decide, again that’s sensible. 

All three methods are equally valid. None is more realistic than the other. Whether we accept this character as plausible depends on the writing, not the way the autntor decided to create the character.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> Wher I disagree with pemerton is in his insistence that the casual comparison was actually a criticism of other methods rather than simply someone stating a preference.




I do want to be clear. The casual comparison I made that the OP quotes, was not in any way a criticism of other methods. It was merely making the comparison to express why I didn't think it was Mother May I.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I think your comment on causality and the timing of the decision is indeed the crux of it. Without delving into quantum cats and the like, the location of a thing being determined prior to the results of the search for it seems to be the default expectation for many. Is this because that’s the long standing form of RPG play?



Just on this _the long standing form of RPG play_ - in AD&D, Gygax posits that a successful saving throw tells us that there was a place (eg a crevice in the rock face) to take shelter from the dragon's flaming breath; in Classic Traveller, the rules for a Streetwise check don't distinguish between _failure = no contact to find_ and _failure = there is a contact, but they reject the approach_ - it's left for the table to work out; Tunnels & Trolls has a Luck stat, against which saving throws are sometimes made, and I'd be shocked if no one ever adjudicated a Luck saving throw in fortuen-in-the-middle terms, back in the day.

_A long standing form of RPG play_, sure - and Runequest is the earliest unrelenting application of this form of play. _The long standing form of RPG play_, no, for the reasons just given.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> if it was Casablanca at games week in and week out, it would cease to be drama and become, "Oh, look.  Yet another dilemma ::"



Really? When Casablanca was released, eople went to the cinema week after week and didn't complain about it being too dramatic. There are TV shows that people tune into week after week and they're not hanging out for the episodes where Castle and Becket do nothing but take an uneventful trip to the laundrette.

Also, not all pressure is a dilemma. Not all hard choices are dilemmas. That's your narrow framing, not mine.



Maxperson said:


> Yes they are *MEAT*.  I know the values of my PC.  I know what will challenge him, even when the DM doesn't.  Situations come up that I decide will be a challenge to the PC's values and they have every bit as much pressure as if the DM puts it on me.



Please explain where the pressure comes from. For instance, if you decide that your PC goes to a library to research his/her family tree to find out if s/he is destined to be king, where is the pressure coming from? What hard decision is forced upon you there?

Suppose that you decide to go and raid the Caves of Chaos instead, what are you (as player and PC) giving up?



Maxperson said:


> Perhaps you need your hand to be held by the DM to get your *MEAT.*



I'm fairly well known on these boards as a proponent of the Czege principle, that _it's not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict_. What you describe seems even less exciting, because there's no conflict. There's just a player with an idea about what s/he might want his/her PC to do.



Maxperson said:


> You've never gone to the library to do reasearch on something?



I've never gone to the library to research whether or not I will become king - so that's not normal, as I said.

I spend a good part of my waking hours doing library research. It can sometimes be interesting but is rarely exciting. I wouldn't recommend it as the stuff of RPGing. (_You find another article whose title is promising but which seems to rely on a doubtful methodology. What do you do?_)



Maxperson said:


> And if you think that there is no risk in just walking up to a local lord and interacting with him, you don't know much about nobility.



I don't have much familiarity with nobility - although I live in a monarchy, my monarch lives in another country and spends most of her time there, so I've never had the opportunity to meet her. I do have a friend who was once invited to dine with a (continental European) Prince, but I don't think she was at much risk other than perhaps of heartburn from overly-rich food.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I never said "at my game."  If you assumed that, and you were in error. The general social contract for RPGs across the world is "don't be an asshat."  I can sit down at a random convention game and it will be in force.  In the highly unlikely event that I encounter that very rare bad DM, then yes, I would leave, but that's not a matter of finding someone who meets some personal expectations that I have with regards to my PC's goals.  It's that people don't like to play with asshats who violate the social contract.



I was unaware that you had the authority to dictate the social contract terms for everyone, Max.  And, let's not forget, you defined "be an asshat" as thwarting your desire to have your own kingdom in game.  That's an odd definition of "asshat" and not one, I'm sure, that' universally accepted.




> I haven't excused anything.  You really need to stop with the assumptions.



You're down to quibbling about word choice.  Substitute "expounded," if that's your sticking point.




> There was a chance he might have decided to go there.  He didn't.  I missed that roll.  Him not being there is as objective as the cult members not being at the tea house when the roll is missed.  Both are at that point 100%.



No, there was no chance at all.  He was either there or not there.  Again, this is an error in thinking about probability.  It's not a measure of how likely something is, it's a measure of our uncertainty about if something is true or not.  The "chance" was not that your friend would actually be there -- that's fixed -- but in the weight you assigned to your own uncertainty about where your friend was.

It's really not unique to you, there's a huge chunk of otherwise educated people that make this mistake.



> The game world when run organically moves on even when the DM and players aren't thinking about it.  Those cultists go to the tea house or don't, and have been since they got to town.  Until I actually think about it, though, it's just not relevant.  Just as in the real world, mafia members could have been going to the local Shakey's Pizza since they got to town and I wouldn't know about it. Similarly, it's not relevant to me until I think about it.  Then I can decide to go down and look for them and see if one is there.




Wow.  So much weird to unpack, here.  You say that the imaginary world continues to do things even when it's not being imagined (we'll leave aside the fact that imaginations can actually do things, it's the imaginers that are the operative force), but that whatever happens while the imaginary world is doing it's own thing doesn't matter until you think about it and, what?  Discover what the imginations did on their own or imagine yourself what happened?  Only the former fits with the imaginary world continuing whilst not being imagined, but that's treading into mental disorder land (please, seek help if this is true and your imagination are talking to you).  The latter means that the imaginary world didn't do anything at all until you get around to it and backfill in the imaginings.   It's all very confused -- not confusing, though it's that, too.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Yeah.  The level mental gymnastics being engaged in by some posters here in order to avoid having to say that D&D has some realism or that it can be greater or lesser, is astounding.




:spittake:  <coughing> Man, that's a new keyboard you owe me.


----------



## pemerton

Here's some stuff about monsters and monster stats, from the Burning Wheel Monster Burner (pp 63-64), under the heading "Peer Review":

The final and most important step to monster burning is showing your peers you work. This is the rule: A monster cannot be brought to the table for play unless he has been reviewd and agreed upon by the current GM and the current players.

This rule is in place so that monsters are acceptable to the standards of individual groups. . . . 

For peer review we look at three ways a monster might be used in game . . . Each has its own peer review process.

*GM's Monsters*
The GM is not obligated to reveal his secrets to the players. What fun would that be? However, he must, upon request, tell his players _in public_ the totals of his latest creation's stat, trait and skill points. Players can then complain by comparing those totals vs their own character's.

Burning Wheel believes in the ability of a GM to fairly test his players and respects his right to inject monstrous elements as he sees fit. I know that Gms will be fair and judicious, nd take the protests of their players into account when fielding the latest creations from the pit. A particularly good GM, however, will submit his creatures to the review for Player Designed Monsters described below. . . .

*Player-Designed Monsters*
If a player designs a monster to be used in game as a characger, there is a two-step review process.

_1. Players Get First Look_
The players as a grou may approve the monster and pass it to the GM. If they find it too powerful, they may do one of the following: [details of minor mechanical tweaks follow].

_2. GM Gets Second Look_
The GM may [make various more significant mechanical tweaks]. Lastly, the GM may mae strong suggestions regarding the monster's Beliefs and Instincts. Use these suggestions to better integrate the monster into play.

No on may alter the monster concept, but all should offer suggestions on how to better incorporate the monster into the game. . . .

If all the other players and the GM deem a creature to be unsuitable for their game, then they may veto the creature in its entirety. . . If your creature is vetoed, I advise you to discuss and negotiate with the group . . . Figure out what is best for the other players in your game. . . .

*Character Stock Monsters*
These monsters [ie written up with full Lifepath details for use in the full character generation system] undergo the same review process as for player-designed monsters. However, be sure to review the beast twic in this case. Once before [writing up the Lifepaths], and once after. It keeps players honest.

When designing monsters to be used as character stoc, the GM is just another player - he gets no special privileges. Another player should be nominted to act as GM for the purposes of Peer Review.

*Responsibility*
Peer Review is in place to ensure that monsters which are brought to your table are acceptable to the standards of your group. The responsibiity for ensuring this rests firmly on the shoulders of the players involved in the REview. Do not hestitate to make changes or raise objections if you think a monster is going to be disruptive to play. In the end, we all want an enjoyable experience.​
I have no idea how frequently BW tables follow the precise details of this review process. What I think is interesting is the general ethos and approach to establishing gameworld content that it exemplifies. It's very different from the GM just deciding to use a Death Knight that happens to be immune to fear.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No, they're not MEAT.
> 
> None of them forces a hard decision. None of them puts your values - PC or player - to the test. None generates any pressure _here and now_.



Though all of them could well be things that can help generate pressure _later_ when looking at something other than the immediate or short term.



> This is obviously wrong. Watch Casablanca - drama is the norm. Rick has to make hard decisions (about whether to help the young couple; about whether to support the Nazis; about whether to go with Ilsa; etc). That doesn't make it not dramatic - Casablanca is one of the great dramas of all time!



Yes, and it's a) only about two hours long and b) has a pre-set amount of story that has to be fit within that time.

RPGs are open-ended in length, thus there's no need whatsoever to cram story in (whether player or GM generated, doesn't matter for this point) in a rush to make it fit within a real-world timeframe.



> Of course real life isn't terribly dramatic for many of us much of the time. But RPGs are fictions, and the ones I play are adventure fictions where exciting and challenging and dramatic things are the norm.



Except that when everything's dramatic, nothing is.



> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] asked how one would handle separated groups other than by precise tracing of times - this play report provides an example of an alternative approach, based on GM's sense of pacing/narrative imperatives.)



Haven't read it yet, will get to it later.



> Why normal stuff? And what is "normal stuff" in the context of an adventure-oriented RPG?
> 
> _Going to the library and do research on items that can make me a king_ doesn't seem very normal to me. Nor does _going to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status_. The difference between those things, and what I described, is that - on the face of it - those things are _safe_ because nothing is really at stake. It's all _maybe_ and _in due course_. Which is precisely what I'm saying it has not MEAT.



Please define MEAT.  I'm assuming that because it's all-caps here it means something other than what comes from a butchered animal, but I don't know what.



> EDIT: I read this post by AbdulAlhazred:
> 
> The idea of a narrative _centred_ on a PC goal, and offering the possbility of _ambition_ and _taking great risks_, seems pretty close to my take on MEAT.
> 
> Asking the GM about what the books in the library say, and roleplaying interactions with NPCs whom the GM has established with no particular dramatic orientation towards my PC, doesn't seem to involve either of those things. Nor the real risk of _failure_.



This points to what I mention above: that things done now can set up pressure application later.

Of course there's (quite likely) not much risk involved in doing the library research...which might be exactly why the player/PC chose to take that angle - low risk but potentially decent reward, where the reward is useful information that might help reduce or mitigate the risks later when he puts this research to practical use and actually tries to take over the kingdom.  So, low-to-no pressure now could lead to reduced pressure later.

Why take great risks until and unless you have to?  And why not do whatever you can to turn those great risks into moderate risks?

Sure it might be less dramatic, but - wait for it! - it's what a rational character would do.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Just on this _the long standing form of RPG play_ - in AD&D, Gygax posits that a successful saving throw tells us that there was a place (eg a crevice in the rock face) to take shelter from the dragon's flaming breath; in Classic Traveller, the rules for a Streetwise check don't distinguish between _failure = no contact to find_ and _failure = there is a contact, but they reject the approach_ - it's left for the table to work out; Tunnels & Trolls has a Luck stat, against which saving throws are sometimes made, and I'd be shocked if no one ever adjudicated a Luck saving throw in fortuen-in-the-middle terms, back in the day.
> 
> _A long standing form of RPG play_, sure - and Runequest is the earliest unrelenting application of this form of play. _The long standing form of RPG play_, no, for the reasons just given.




Perhaps “widely accepted” or “most commonly used” would have been better than “long standing”? Was my point unclear?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Really? When Casablanca was released, eople went to the cinema week after week and didn't complain about it being too dramatic. There are TV shows that people tune into week after week and they're not hanging out for the episodes where Castle and Becket do nothing but take an uneventful trip to the laundrette.
> 
> Also, not all pressure is a dilemma. Not all hard choices are dilemmas. That's your narrow framing, not mine.




Hey.  Some people like drama to be so common that it's no longer really drama.  I get that.  Have fun with it.  Me, I'm not one of them.  I want some drama.  I want some comedy.  I want some stuff that doesn't have to do with my PC, so that the world feels more realistic.  



> Please explain where the pressure comes from. For instance, if you decide that your PC goes to a library to research his/her family tree to find out if s/he is destined to be king, where is the pressure coming from? What hard decision is forced upon you there?




The pressure comes from me and/or the personality that I set up for my character.  Have you never set a goal for yourself in real life where there was a limit of some sort?  Did you not feel pressure to get it done before that limit expired?  You don't need someone else to pressure you, or at least not everyone does.  Some people just won't do anything unless someone else is riding them.  I'm not one of those people.



> Suppose that you decide to go and raid the Caves of Chaos instead, what are you (as player and PC) giving up?




The Caves of Chaos are murder on mounts.  I had to give up the mount I have treasured for the last 5 years.  It was very difficult.



> I'm fairly well known on these boards as a proponent of the Czege principle, that _it's not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict_. What you describe seems even less exciting, because there's no conflict. There's just a player with an idea about what s/he might want his/her PC to do.




I'm not always introducing the conflict.  I'm often recognizing something the DM is unaware might even be a conflict as a conflict, and resolving it.  Sometimes, however, I do initiate the conflict, because it's necessary for my PC to do so, even if it's a difficult resolution.  I find it exciting and fun anyway.



> I don't have much familiarity with nobility - although I live in a monarchy, my monarch lives in another country and spends most of her time there, so I've never had the opportunity to meet her. I do have a friend who was once invited to dine with a (continental European) Prince, but I don't think she was at much risk other than perhaps of heartburn from overly-rich food.




And these kinds of seriously disingenuous responses are why a lot of people find it frustrating(or just don't do it) to talk to you.  Your monarch barely deserves the title.  She's a figurehead.  You know damn well that I'm discussing the medieval nobles who actually had the power of life and death over people, often at a whim.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I was unaware that you had the authority to dictate the social contract terms for everyone, Max.  And, let's not forget, you defined "be an asshat" as thwarting your desire to have your own kingdom in game.  That's an odd definition of "asshat" and not one, I'm sure, that' universally accepted.




So first, society dictates that when playing a game you don't be an asshat, not me.  Second, I didn't use that definition of asshat.  Nice try.  Now your going to go dig up where I said that unless a DM is an asshat, I will eventually be able to succeed.  That doesn't give you my definition of asshat, though.  That's just more assumption on your part.



> No, there was no chance at all.  He was either there or not there.  Again, this is an error in thinking about probability.  It's not a measure of how likely something is, it's a measure of our uncertainty about if something is true or not.  The "chance" was not that your friend would actually be there -- that's fixed -- but in the weight you assigned to your own uncertainty about where your friend was.




If you get someone's regular weekly schedule down, you can set the probabilities of him being at any given place at any given time.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> :spittake:  <coughing> Man, that's a new keyboard you owe me.




Nah.  Buy it out of the money you get for that mental gymnastic gold.


----------



## Manbearcat

Sadras said:


> As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to _write their own story_ (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.




I'm going to talk about this using Dungeon World and I'm going to use the example that was discussed upthread about searching for a hidden door.

So here is the sblocked version of a Dungeon World scenario handling a secret door via a Discern Realities move:

[sblock]You have to reflect back upon the game's Agenda and the GMing Principles. What applies here is:

* Play to find out what happens

* Draw maps, leave blanks

* Ask questions and use the answers

* Begin and end with the fiction

So here is the likely course of events with a Dungeon World GM and a burned out tavern where the players hoping to find survivors or signs of what happened here.

1) GM may have a rough idea of maybe 2-3 things that may have happened here but they aren't sure (because they're playing to find out).

2) The player says something like "Inns have cellars for dry goods, spirits and the like. Maybe someone hid in there and locked it when whatever went down. I move all of the debris from behind the bar and look for some kind of pull or something on the seared floorboards."

3) This is basically an "ask questions and use the answers" moment (but sort of inverted). 

4) The GM will not have anything nearing a blueprint (if they have anything at all and aren't just ad-libbing it) of the inn; "leave blanks." 

5) "Begin and end with the fiction" comes up here as the GM is using that input from the player and thinking yeah, the "begin with the fiction" proposition of a spirit/dry goods basement behind the bar makes sense in multiple ways. 

6) Is something at stake? Yeah. Survivors. The possible answer to whatever happened here (intel). Possible assets (maybe a use of Adventuring Gear/Rations/Poutlice or a Cohort in this group of people since they owe the PCs their lives). So we don't "say yes" we "roll the dice."

7) What are we rolling the dice for? To find out if there is this secret door/tavern cellar and what is in there.

So, by a collection of proxies, a player is basically being afforded the opportunity to stipulate fiction with a successful Discern Realities move.[/sblock]

So let us say the player's Discern Realities move in Dungeon World was a 6-.  How do I not introduce an obstacle that isn't preconceived prior to play?

*  The game tells me that it will fight me if I try to conceive plot prior to play.  And its right (due to the brutal transparency and the nature of the mechanics, application of GM Force in PBtA games is exceptionally difficult...and not worth the hassle, in part because...)

* The game tells me it will be more fun if I play to find out what happens (and it turns out its correct!)...

* The game tells me (a) how to play to find out what happens and (b) how the game will help me to do so (in organizing a low overhead, focused-ethos approach to GMing and in helping to distill my responses to the ongoing play conversation in a hyper-functional and gamestate-coherent way).


So the player has failed.  I know I need to:

* make a hard move that has immediate consequences or a soft move (which portends immediate negative consequences if not acted upon) if that fits the situation better...

* that move needs:

1 - follow from the prior fiction

2 - to have the context of "be a fan of the characters" (in Dungeon World, this means referencing and testing their specific protagonism)

3- to be dangerous and fill the PCs lives with adventure

So back to the fiction.

Most times, Discern Realities failure is going to warrant a soft move.  But lets say in the above scenario, I've already made a soft move with the prior description of the scene:

"Viscous pink skid-marks on the floor cut a jagged path in the floorboards to the area behind the bar where the ceiling has collapsed as a pair of load-bearing pillars have been upended.  Desperate scratches and a pair of fingernails ripped from their bed accompany the disgusting trail of soupy ichor which appears to be blood and some other, thicker, clear substance."

So now there is something...what-we-don't-know-at-this-point...amiss.

So maybe one of the characters is a holy warrior with the Alignment statement of "save a lost soul from itself."  Maybe this ruined tavern used to be a way-station for slave-trade and a mother had to watch her child starve to death before she succumbed herself.  Her afterlife wrath ruined this place, and ever since she manifests as an angry poltergeist to murder squatters, bandits, and hapless travelers seeking momentary respite from the elements alike.

So when that Discern Realities fails, the poltergeists manifests with all of its wild wrath and someone is taking damage d10 (ignores armor).  

Its on!

Or it could be any number of other things that does the above 3 things.


Now *Torchbearer *(if you're familiar with the video game Darkest Dungeon, it is 100 % inspired by Torchbearer) is a game that entails "The Utility of No" and would handle this entirely differently.  Spending a Turn searching for a secret door means (a) the condition clock ticks and (b) light source(s) tick(s).  Time is the most fundamental resource that must be carefully managed in Torchbearer.  As you spend Turns on actions in the Adventure phase, the gloom slowly threatens to swallow your crew as you tread an inexorable path of weariness/exhaustion/sickness that ends often in death...sometimes in glory.

Now, like Moldvay Basic (the game is a love-letter to Moldvay Basic and a mash-up of it and Burning Wheel), there will be a map that is created by the GM (through an inspired codified sequence like Lifepaths in Traveller) and secret doors will be preconcieved.  When a test is made to locate a secret thing, a Scout Test occurs vs an Obstacle rating.  If the player fails (and they can use a Trait against themselves which will earn them a "Check" which helps the group in different phases of the game or helps that character advance), then a Condition is imposed or a Twist (which can be stock or be rolled on...most people either have some flash cards of possible Twists for an area and just blindly draw one or they roll on a Table for the particular area) occurs and a Conflict will likely arise as a result of that Twist.  Like in Dungeon World, these Twists will be themed for (a) the particular dungeon setting and/or (b) to conflict with a character's Nature or Beliefs.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> So first, society dictates that when playing a game you don't be an asshat, not me.  Second, I didn't use that definition of asshat.  Nice try.  Now your going to go dig up where I said that unless a DM is an asshat, I will eventually be able to succeed.  That doesn't give you my definition of asshat, though.  That's just more assumption on your part.



Again, Max, you've said that if the DM doesn't allow your attempts, they're a jerk and you won't play with them.  This conflicts with your prior statements that the DM can (and maybe should) block attempts to find the cultists in the tea house because it would be "realistic" (ie, your thinking about the imaginary world says something) that this is unlikely.  You previously sidestepped when I asked if you'd call your DM an asshat and quit playing if they found your quest to be ruler of your own kingdom unlikely and at odds with their conception about their setting.  Now, you're trying to make it about "society" defending your opinion.






> If you get someone's regular weekly schedule down, you can set the probabilities of him being at any given place at any given time.



And those probabilities define _your uncertainty_ about where they are, not where they actually are.

I get it, you've been exposed to probability as a mathemagical wand that does things.  Struggle a bit here and try to grasp that it isn't.  Or, don't, and continue to insist that probabilities define reality so that you can maintain your statement about your imaginary gameworld having probabilities and therefore is like reality.  If I have to bet, you'll do the latter.  I'd rate my uncertainty about this outcome about a .85.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Nah.  Buy it out of the money you get for that mental gymnastic gold.




Sigh.  Last time:

1. Imagination is not the real world.
2. Your game is entirely imagination.
3.  If you define 'realism' as 'mirroring the real world', your imagination cannot, because 1 and 2.
4.  If you define 'realism' as 'my imagination tries to be internally consistent and coherent and believable to other people' then, yes, you can do this.*

Which part requires mental gymnastics?  

On your side, you've advanced that you can have realism (definition 3) in your game because imagination exists in the real world, your imagination continues to run when you're not imagining it, and that probabilities are a feature of the real world and your imagination therefore probabilities are realism.

I rest my case.  Continue if you wish, I'm really not sure how you could make a larger fool of yourself, but I'll not bet against you.


*It's worth noting that I use 4. for my games and it works swimmingly.  I don't confuse myself that adding what I think the real world is like is actually useful in and of itself, but make choices as to what best improves my games.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Sigh.  Last time:
> 
> 1. Imagination is not the real world.
> 2. Your game is entirely imagination.
> 3.  If you define 'realism' as 'mirroring the real world', your imagination cannot, because 1 and 2.
> 4.  If you define 'realism' as 'my imagination tries to be internally consistent and coherent and believable to other people' then, yes, you can do this.*
> 
> Which part requires mental gymnastics?
> 
> On your side, you've advanced that you can have realism (definition 3) in your game because imagination exists in the real world, your imagination continues to run when you're not imagining it, and that probabilities are a feature of the real world and your imagination therefore probabilities are realism.
> 
> I rest my case.  Continue if you wish, I'm really not sure how you could make a larger fool of yourself, but I'll not bet against you.
> 
> 
> *It's worth noting that I use 4. for my games and it works swimmingly.  I don't confuse myself that adding what I think the real world is like is actually useful in and of itself, but make choices as to what best improves my games.




I know you aren't dumb, so getting number 3 wrong for the umpteenth time after I have corrected you on it at LEAST 5 times in this thread, probably closer to 10 is nothing but bad faith.  If you want me to respond again, try with what I am saying, not your alterations.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I know you aren't dumb, so getting number 3 wrong for the umpteenth time after I have corrected you on it at LEAST 5 times in this thread, probably closer to 10 is nothing but bad faith.  If you want me to respond again, try with what I am saying, not your alterations.




Fix it then, define "realism".


----------



## Manbearcat

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps you need your hand to be held by the DM to get your *MEAT.*  Maybe your players need you to hold their hands in order for them to get their *MEAT*.  I've grown past that need as a player, though.  I am fully capable of getting my own *MEAT,*




Lol.  I'm sorry.  Call me 5 years old.  I don't care.

But this is bloody hysterical.  I've read it like 5 times and just cackled.

"I DON'T NEED YOU HOLDING MY HAND.  I CAN GET MY MEAT BY MYSELF OK?!"


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> An edit: what would count as good situation to engage _I will rule my own kingdom_ will depend (obviously) on all the details and nuance of the particular table and its players inclinations. But just to kick things of, and thinking of two examples from fantasy literature - Aragorn and Conan - it might well make sense to start with a kingdom whose rulership is under some sort of pressure or doubt. And present that pressure or doubt in a way that makes things hard for the player.
> 
> Eg Aragorn: _How can I take over the kingdom while honouring my obligations to family, ancestry and the stewards who have faithfully ruled in my stead?[/I
> 
> Conan: Can I, a barbarian, gain acceptance as the ruler of the most civilised kingdom around?
> 
> And in relation to these, or similar, possibilities, a game that starts with Keep on the Borderlands in its standard version would be NON-MEAT, even though the player might try and have his/her PC made Castellan of the Keep; and might even connive to that end (eg by helping the existing Castallen meet an unhappy end at the hands of the evil priest)._



_

I will contrast this with some examples of what DID happen in the campaign where my dwarf had a goal of ruling his own kingdom:

There was no presentation of any situations which would provide this as a pathway. The DM ran the Phandelver module, and located it in an area of a long-established campaign world that was at the edge of an existing kingdom. While this kingdom has been having a rulership crisis (in pre-existing metaplot from former campaigns set there) nothing about that was set as an opportunity for my character, in any sense. I was going to have to carve something out purely by creating a situation by dint of the character's actions. So he claimed the ruined bugbear castle from the module. From there the questions were really purely logistical and political. 

This is OK, but it didn't seem terribly dramatic. The character set out to create ways to get stuff into the area, blaze a trail into a richer area of land beyond it which could serve as a trade route, etc. There were threats, but he was never confronted with questions like "you can either build your castle or serve your family" or something like that. 

Later, after I had established the castle and some stuff around it, the DM's response was to take it away. Basically I came back from a trip one day and someone else had moved in! Start over from scratch. There's nothing wrong with losing something, but it was pretty much not a dramatic kind of loss at all, it was literally just "the DM giveth, the DM taketh away". Generously the scenario was structured as "take big risks to get your stuff back, or give up." Again, this isn't BAD, and might even be a way of putting pressure on the whole idea, but it definitely seemed like a more frustrating way of doing it than other ways might have been. I would have preferred to have had a choice to stake my castle on something and then deal with the consequences of losing it vs feeling like I was just back to ground zero and trying to get a castle all over again. 

Anyway, this is not to complain about how that game went, it was fun, but just to contrast with what might be done in a less DM-centered story-telling mechanics. That is to say, in -say- BW I expect that there is an actual rule that the GM doesn't take away the player's goodies unless they're staked somehow. This illustrates how integrating story oriented mechanics more deeply into games can provide better results. Likewise, DW would probably not lead to this sort of turn, the PC in question would be practically guaranteed to have at least some sort of 'defy danger' or something (I guess technically DW doesn't explicitly preclude this stuff, but the referee is supposed to be an advocate of the players, so it probably wouldn't IMHO)._


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I truly attempt to steer my game hard in the sandbox tent where I'm willing to sacrifice large meta-plot arcs and storylines in favour of letting the PC pursue their desires. Of course the obstacles I introduce in my game are because of *some underlying preconception of how things should turn out, * given that I am the primary author of the fiction.



Well, obviously part of my answer is I would advise approaching games which feature at least some mix as being more-or-less equal partnerships. Its OK to have ideas and themes you as DM want to explore, that's only fair! I'm not sure about the 'primary author' part. I mean, in a lot of story games the GM is still primary author, maybe even sole authority on what is really possible within the 'box' of the particular game world/genre. I would just say that the game should also be equally about what the players are interested in it being about. 



> The question I ask is, how was that different for you in 4e?
> For instance, we have a PC at my table with a backstory (all his by the way):
> _A restitched soul of the player's previous dead PC (Bard), but now different/altered/evolved into a being serving Kelemvor (Cleric). He has memories/fragments of his past, but his personality is changed, more solemn and grave. His sole purpose is to track down and kill a psychopathic NPC who intends to revive A'tar whom the NPC believes is the true deity of the sun, the harsh and merciless goddess, as opposed to the feeble and fake gods Amaunator and Lathander. Kelemvor, the deity of the Dead, firmly believes that A'tar must remain dead for the good of the cosmos and so his faithful servqnt, the PC, does his bidding. _
> 
> As DM how do you not introduce obstacles that are your preconception of how things should maybe turn out? If the PC is free to _write their own story_ (via dice), his story-arc might end within the next session or two. That would leave him twiddling his thumbs for the rest of the campaign arc.




Well, this is an interesting topic. I mean, GMs are generally going to be framing scenes in a way that puts pressure on the PCs beliefs, goals, etc. It is quite possible this pressure can take forms which are part of the GM's own agenda. It is only really necessary that they DO exist in the story for purposes of pushing the drama related to the PCs 'stuff' which the player has invented. 

As for the PC in your example... You don't quite cast the belief in terms of the PC, but attribute it to the god, Kelemvor. Is it the PC's belief? Is the PC's belief that he should serve Kelemvor? Is he serving because he has some OTHER belief/goal/interest which makes him want to do that? 

Pressure could be put on this PC via stressing his relationship with his deity. It coule be done by bringing back elements of his previous life. Maybe he still feels something about the people and whatever who were in that life. Maybe the 'reawakening of his soul' causes conflict within himself. You could do a ton of stuff with this. Obviously the goal of tracking down the psychopathic NPC could also be used for all sorts of pressure. What is their relationship?


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> Lol.  I'm sorry.  Call me 5 years old.  I don't care.
> 
> But this is bloody hysterical.  I've read it like 5 times and just cackled.
> 
> "I DON'T NEED YOU HOLDING MY HAND.  I CAN GET MY MEAT BY MYSELF OK?!"




LOL  @_*pemerton*_ likes to have people use HIS terminology.  As I was writing that, my mind went there, too.  No judgment!


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, obviously part of my answer is I would advise approaching games which feature at least some mix as being more-or-less equal partnerships. Its OK to have ideas and themes you as DM want to explore, that's only fair! I'm not sure about the 'primary author' part. I mean, in a lot of story games the GM is still primary author, maybe even sole authority on what is really possible within the 'box' of the particular game world/genre. I would just say that the game should also be equally about what the players are interested in it being about.




I don't really have any disagreement here. Most of the players have a decent detailed backstory for their characters which I weave in and out of the main campaign meta-plot and they decide when to actively pursue such goals balancing it up with the stakes of the meta-plot. But everything is pretty much their decision. There is one player though that doesn't have any strong goals besides those provided by the DM and other characters' goals.



> As for the PC in your example... You don't quite cast the belief in terms of the PC, but attribute it to the god, Kelemvor. Is it the PC's belief? Is the PC's belief that he should serve Kelemvor? Is he serving because he has some OTHER belief/goal/interest which makes him want to do that?




The way I understood it from the player, his character was forged by Kelemvor, instead of having his soul spend an eternity on the Wall of the Faithless. At this point in time the PC is acting out the wishes of Kelemvor and in fact believes them to be true and just. For now that is his sole purpose. He travels with the party since they were essentially the ones that freed the psychopathic NPC and briefly accepted him as part of their group - he believes their relationship (NPC and party's) is not over and their paths will cross again due to converging goals/meta-plot reasons. 

EDIT: Again, this is all the player. As DM I ask and prod to learn more to stay faithful to his backstory.



> Pressure could be put on this PC via stressing his relationship with his deity. It coule be done by bringing back elements of his previous life. Maybe he still feels something about the people and whatever who were in that life. Maybe the 'reawakening of his soul' causes conflict within himself. You could do a ton of stuff with this. Obviously the goal of tracking down the psychopathic NPC could also be used for all sorts of pressure.




This is all good stuff to bring into the mix. The above stress caused _might_ see the PC act out against the wishes of Kelemvor. Traditional D&D sees me as DM deciding if Kelemvor was offended and if offended, dealing out any consequences. How would that differ in your type of game?
Would you let the die decide if Kelemvor acts out the punishment/consequence? 

EDIT: This skirts closely to Alignment i guess. 
This is similar to @_*pemerton*_'s example some years back of Vecna and the imp.

In one of my previous examples either on this thread or another (I forget), a character handed a magical item to a Frost Giant who had a similar such item (essentially each had a shard of the rod of seven parts). The shards clicked into place and became one item. I ruled the Frost Giant kept such item ignoring the soft protestation by the character (a cough and hand motion to return). There was no die roll. Some posters felt there should have been a die roll.
I'm only asking because if I apply pressures on the relationship between PC and deity it might end up in a situation where fictionally it would make sense for the deity to _lash out _his annoyance of a decision made by the PC - and essentially I'm asking if you would have it resolved via die roll or DM fiat?


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> And these kinds of seriously disingenuous responses are why a lot of people find it frustrating(or just don't do it) to talk to you.  Your monarch barely deserves the title.  She's a figurehead.  You know damn well that I'm discussing the medieval nobles who actually had the power of life and death over people, often at a whim.



Maxperson, here's this particular conversation:



Maxperson said:


> Some of what the DM does should confront PCs, and some should just be normal stuff.a





pemerton said:


> Why normal stuff? And what is "normal stuff" in the context of an adventure-oriented RPG?
> 
> _Going to the library and do research on items that can make me a king_ doesn't seem very normal to me. Nor does _going to the local lord and try to ingratiate myself with him to gain status_.





Maxperson said:


> What's normal in life?  An RPG doesn't have to mirror life, but real life will let you know which kinds of things that are normal.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You've never gone to the library to do reasearch on something?  I have.  Book reports are pretty normal in school.  Sometimes I just want to read about a certain culture's mythology and I'll go to the library and find some books on that.
> 
> And if you think that there is no risk in just walking up to a local lord and interacting with him, you don't know much about nobility.  There's plenty at stake, including life and freedom with that plan.





pemerton said:


> 've never gone to the library to research whether or not I will become king - so that's not normal, as I said.
> 
> I spend a good part of my waking hours doing library research. It can sometimes be interesting but is rarely exciting. I wouldn't recommend it as the stuff of RPGing. (_You find another article whose title is promising but which seems to rely on a doubtful methodology. What do you do?_)
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't have much familiarity with nobility - although I live in a monarchy, my monarch lives in another country and spends most of her time there, so I've never had the opportunity to meet her. I do have a friend who was once invited to dine with a (continental European) Prince, but I don't think she was at much risk other than perhaps of heartburn from overly-rich food.



I asked you what you meant by "normal stuff", and you told me to refer to "real life". Well, in real life I've never researched my heritage and destiny in a library, and have never met nobility.

Furthermore, in real life, interacting with mediaeval nobility did not generate the risks you are describing - you seem to have mediaeval nobles confused with Stalin.

Moreover, if interacting with nobility is so risky and high stakes and exciting, then how does it fall under the description _normal stuff_ rather than _confrontingt stuff_?

I've articulated a pretty clear conception of what makes character goals and themes MEAT in [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s sense, and have explained why _reading library books_ and _hanging out with nobles_ doesn't count. In response you're trying to tell me that that stuff is good because it's normal like real life, not dramatic, but is also risky. I have no idea what your actual advice to players and GMs is. Should games be boring, or not? If not, then where is the interest located? If it's in _risk_, then what do you think is the contrast between that and drama? If it's in the laying out of GM-established backstory, then we're back to AbdulAlhazred's point that the PC's goal/theme is not at the centre of play. But I thought you were disagreeing with him on that point.

If you are claiming that your game can be exciting by eschewing excitement, then I simply don't believe it.



Lanefan said:


> RPGs are open-ended in length, thus there's no need whatsoever to cram story in (whether player or GM generated, doesn't matter for this point) in a rush to make it fit within a real-world timeframe.



Huh? Here's a real-world timeframe - I'll probably be dead in 40 or so years.

Here's another real-world timeframe - I play on Sunday afternoons, which are followed by Sunday evenings which are school nights. So given our sessions start after lunch around 2 pm, and have to finish around 6 pm, I have 4 hours per session.

I want to cram as much into each session as I can!



Lanefan said:


> Of course there's (quite likely) not much risk involved in doing the library research...which might be exactly why the player/PC chose to take that angle - low risk but potentially decent reward, where the reward is useful information that might help reduce or mitigate the risks later when he puts this research to practical use and actually tries to take over the kingdom.  So, low-to-no pressure now could lead to reduced pressure later.
> 
> Why take great risks until and unless you have to?  And why not do whatever you can to turn those great risks into moderate risks?
> 
> Sure it might be less dramatic, but - wait for it! - it's what a rational character would do.



There's a whole genre of games for people who like mathematical optimisation as their approach to play - rules-intensive wargames - and D&D has a significant heritage connection to that genre.

But it's not very realistic to have such rational characters all the time. Many people in many circumstances don't act rationally. I re-watched Gravity on Saturday afternoon in preparation for GMing Traveller yesterday, and (*spoiler alert*) in an early scene Sandra Bullock insists on finishing a particular engineering process even though George Clooney is instructing her to get back into the shuttle NOW. That's not rational on her part, but it makes for a believable character.

In the context of the film it also produces drama, where the question is not _will this character compute the optimal course of action?_ but _will this character's irrational concern with her particular component of the mission bring ruin on the mission itself?_ Approaching the fiction from the point of view of mathematical optimisation does not produce drama - in the context of RPGing, it tends not to produce _exciting_ play.

In my Prince Valiant game, two of the PC knights wanted to marry noblewomen, to improve their social status. They didn't go about this by hanging out at heraldic colleges collecting lists of eligible ladies and then calculating their odds with each one. That would be boring; and part of why it would be boring would be that it would be, in effect, triggering glossography download from the GM. Where's the play?

Rather, they wooed ladies they met in the course of their errantry (at one stage the two of them competing for the hand of the lovely Violette), protected them from bandits, aided their families, and in general did the sorts of things that Arthurian knights do in (real or faux) mediaeval romances. That's game play!



Lanefan said:


> Except that when everything's dramatic, nothing is.



I think this is obviously not true. When you look at films, or TV shows, or other well-authored fiction, the whole thing is structured so as to produce drama, excitement and interesting stuff. A film won't show the characters going to the laundrette if that does not have some connection to the deeper narrative concerns of the film.

The idea that RPG fiction will suffer in some fashion if it's as dramatic and/or exciting as other forms of fiction is quite implausible.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I'm only asking because if I apply pressures on the relationship between PC and deity it might end up in a situation where fictionally it would make sense for the deity to _lash out _his annoyance of a decision made by the PC - and essentially I'm asking if you would have it resolved via die roll or DM fiat?



I strongly suggest that you closely read  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s hypothetical example of the poltergeist upthread, and what he says about using soft moves vs hard moves.

One point that follows from what is said in that post is that _the question you ask can't be answered in the abstract_. When is it proper to use a hard rather than a soft move? How much foreshadowing/prefiguring is the right amount? What would count as a GM squib; and what would count as heavy-handed GMing that is in "rocks fall" territory?



Sadras said:


> This is similar to @pemerton's example some years back of Vecna and the imp.



So here are some features of this example:

* The player deliberately chose to have his PC implant the Eye of Vecna in the imp, not himself, because "Malstaph's not foolish enough to think that he's a god." 

* This itself built on multiple years of play in which the PC's flirtation with Vecna-worship had been a part of play (eg dozens of sessions earlier, when the PC picked up the Sword of Kas, I inflicted the damage it does to a Vecna-worshipper - the player didn't complain at all, but rather used this to confirm his hunch that the sword was indeed the Sword of Kas, hence doing damage to his Vecna-respecting PC).

* In the moment of play, the player had the choice to provide a boon of souls to Vecna or to the Raven Queen. He couldn't choose both. I asked him which he chose. He pondered, though not for long, and then answered "The Raven Queen". He was presented with a choice, and made it.

* I imposed the consequence, which was - in mechanical terms - a modest de-buff that ended up lasting a handful of sessions. The player didn't have any objection. I don't know if he anticipated it, but - in Dungeon World terms - it was undoubtedly _a move that followed from the fiction_. In DW mechanical terms, this is the sort of thing that might happen on a 7-9 result (ie the player gets something s/he wants for his/her PC, but also has to pay a cost which - often - is going to be established by the GM).​ 
Is your Frost Giant example similar? _As I've read your account of it_, it doesn't seem to be a move that follows from the established fiction, imposed as a consequence at a moment of dramatic choice. That's not to say that it's _bad GMing_. But as you've presented it, I don't see how (for instance) I could reconcile it with DW-like GMing principles.

 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s example of the GM deciding his PC's castle had been taken over by another seems to follow even less from a player choice, and from the established fiction - I would regard it as being in "rocks fall" territory.

What is a player staking? What is the established fiction? (Not in the mind of the GM - I mean _at the table_.) What "soft moves" have already been made? Does the player see the situation as having the same significance as the GM?

This is all in the realm of judgement, not machine-like rules.

I'll finish with this post from the Burning Wheel rulebook (it's found in more than one edition, but can be found in Gold edition at p 54):

We once had a character with the Belief: "I will one day restore my wife’s life." His wife had died, and he kept her body around, trying to figure out a way to bring her back. Well, mid-way through the game, the GM magically restored his wife to the land of the living. I’ve never seen a more crushed player. He didn't know what do! He had stated that the quest and the struggle was the goal, not the end result. "One day!" he said. But the GM insisted, and the whole scenario and character were ruined for the player.​
It take skill as a GM to avoid squibbing while also avoiding "rocks fall".


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> in -say- BW I expect that there is an actual rule that the GM doesn't take away the player's goodies unless they're staked somehow.



The post just above is my main response to what you posted - but on this point I don't think BW has such an express rule. (Maybe it does and I can't remember.) But I think it's implicit in the fact that _loss of gear, reputations, etc_ is flagged as among the possible consequences for a failed check.

I think I've always taken this as close to obvious, at least for the last 25+ years of GMing - the GM shouldn't just unilaterally purge a player's position. To suffer that sort of loss the player has to have actually lost at something.

That's why I put it in "rocks fall" territory (which may be too harsh on your GM overall, sorry - but I don't have all the good experiences to ameliorate my judgement, just the story you've posted).


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Huh? Here's a real-world timeframe - I'll probably be dead in 40 or so years.



Same here; and because I've got 40-ish years to do whatever I don't feel all that much pressure to do it all right now. 



> Here's another real-world timeframe - I play on Sunday afternoons, which are followed by Sunday evenings which are school nights. So given our sessions start after lunch around 2 pm, and have to finish around 6 pm, I have 4 hours per session.



I sail Sunday evenings, in theory starting at 7:30 but most often starting a bit after 8 (our crew in general aren't known as a punctual lot), and we go till midnight or sometimes later if we're all into it - particularly if the following day is a holiday Monday.



> I want to cram as much into each session as I can!



I want people to have fun, but that can happen without me-as-DM having to ratchet up the drama factor.

A silly - but then, maybe not so silly - example from the game I play in: the session before last was largely taken up by one character playing an ongoing prank (involving another PC's castle which is our home base, and lots of pink paint) during downtime and other characters reacting to said prank.  Did this advance the story in any form?  No, not a whit.  Did it allow us to do a bunch of in-character role-playing?  Hell yeah.  Were we all enjoying the entertainment?  Sure seemed like it! 

And the DM could mostly sit back and enjoy the ride.



> There's a whole genre of games for people who like mathematical optimisation as their approach to play - rules-intensive wargames - and D&D has a significant heritage connection to that genre.



I don't see this sort of in-character action as "mathematical optimisation"; that's more a term I use for out-of-character min-maxing and that sort of thing that grants anumeric game-mechanical advantage at the table..

Perhaps a better term for what I'm thinking of might be "fictional optimization", where the in-fiction actions are done in an attempt to gain an in-fiction advantage (and where, depending on system, numeric game mechanics might only peripherially enter into it, if at all).  But that said...



> But it's not very realistic to have such rational characters all the time. Many people in many circumstances don't act rationally. I re-watched Gravity on Saturday afternoon in preparation for GMing Traveller yesterday, and (*spoiler alert*) in an early scene Sandra Bullock insists on finishing a particular engineering process even though George Clooney is instructing her to get back into the shuttle NOW. That's not rational on her part, but it makes for a believable character.



I'm not saying that everyone (or every character) is going to act rationally all the time.  Hell, I'm the poster child for characters doing rash things - it's been said that most of the time the biggest threat to my characters is their player and it's not entirely untrue. 

But assuming a player with a bit more patience than me and a character with a wisdom score higher than that of a shoe, when given the choice between the safe methodical approach and the rash risky approach one would think the safe methodical approach would - all other things being equal - be chosen most of the time; and it's then on the DM to adjudicate and determine results via whatever means the system in use provides.

You say the safe methodical approach isn't realistic: I posit that it's far more realistic - in terms of what most real people would be likely to do, assuming their intention is to succeed at their goal - than the rash risky approach.  And, in the example given the PC can always quietly bail on the whole idea if the library research indicates she hasn't got a chance of success _before_ she sticks her neck out and paints a target on herself.



> In the context of the film it also produces drama, where the question is not _will this character compute the optimal course of action?_ but _will this character's irrational concern with her particular component of the mission bring ruin on the mission itself?_ Approaching the fiction from the point of view of mathematical optimisation does not produce drama - in the context of RPGing, it tends not to produce _exciting_ play.



Again, though, this is a film.  A film is designed to entertain a passive non-participating audience who have paid to be there, and thus is expected to deliver.  Also, the participants in the film (i.e. the actors, directors, and all the other names in the credits) are remote from the audience both in time and space (different to a stage play where the active participants are in the same room - or close - at the same time as the audience).    And a film almost always has a written script being used to tell a predetermined story.

A sequel to said film not only has to do this but it really has to do it better than the first film, as to entertain to just the same level as the first will leave (most of) the audience disappointed.  It's the whole "how do we top this?" syndrome.

An RPG is vastly different.  First off, in most cases the participants and the audience are the same people, which means the entertainment has to be provided by and to the same people simultaneously.  Second, most parts of an RPG are unscripted in the here-and-now with the exception of either a) a DM reading boxed text or providing expository narration, or b) a player reading out prepared elements of her character's background or pre-story.  Some DMs do try to script the bigger picture to some degree, with varying degrees of success based on a bunch of factors too long to list here, but what happens at the table is rarely if ever fully scripted.

I've wandered off my original point, so let me return to the path.  "If everything's dramatic, nothing is" means that if there's drama all the time it'll tend to plateau and, as we know from the movie-sequel example, plateau-ing leads to a disappointed audience.  So, you're stuck with always trying to top whatever you did before, which is of course unsustainable beyond the very short term.

What's the answer?  Back off on the drama until and unless it's needed.



> In my Prince Valiant game, two of the PC knights wanted to marry noblewomen, to improve their social status. They didn't go about this by hanging out at heraldic colleges collecting lists of eligible ladies and then calculating their odds with each one. That would be boring; and part of why it would be boring would be that it would be, in effect, triggering glossography download from the GM. Where's the play?
> 
> Rather, they wooed ladies they met in the course of their errantry (at one stage the two of them competing for the hand of the lovely Violette), protected them from bandits, aided their families, and in general did the sorts of things that Arthurian knights do in (real or faux) mediaeval romances. That's game play!



Much of this depends on the knights' underlying motive for marrying a noblewoman as opposed to a commoner or anyone else.  

Is the motive only to marry into nobility whatever it takes?  If yes, then collecting lists of eligible ladies, learning about their families, and going for the best odds makes perfect sense.  Result is ultimately binary - you either marry a noblewoman at some point or you don't.

Is the motive to marry for love?  If yes, then the second approach holds sway: you do your knightly deeds, put yourself out there where various ladies can see you and see if any mutual attractions develop.  The risk here, of course, is that the mutual attraction ends up being with a commoner; so you get the love you want but lose the nobility angle.  This adds more possible end-result outcomes that may or may not be counted as complete success:

Marry nobody (worst case)
Marry a commoner for love
Marry a noblewoman without love
Marry a noblewoman for love (best case)



> I think this is obviously not true. When you look at films, or TV shows, or other well-authored fiction, the whole thing is structured so as to produce drama, excitement and interesting stuff. A film won't show the characters going to the laundrette if that does not have some connection to the deeper narrative concerns of the film.



See above re time, audience expectations, etc.

A film is only going to show you the highlights of the charaters' lives as they relate to that specific story, mostly because it doesn't have time to show anything else.



> The idea that RPG fiction will suffer in some fashion if it's as dramatic and/or exciting as other forms of fiction is quite implausible.



It will suffer.  Maybe not in the first session, or even the first half-dozen; but to try and keep that level of drama going for 100 or 200 or 500 sessions is simply unsustainable.  In an RPG you do (in theory!) have time to delve into the day-to-day of the characters' lives if you want to; you can explore their backgrounds and personalities and quirks in a depth that no film can ever provide; you can (and in fact rather have to) manage their resources and finances and so forth on an ongoing basis; and you can make your own decisions as to how your PC is going to interact with the other PCs and with the game world around it/them and then follow up on these decisions in as much depth and detail as you like.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> I've wandered off my original point, so let me return to the path.  *"If everything's dramatic, nothing is" means that if there's drama all the time it'll tend to plateau* and, as we know from the movie-sequel example, plateau-ing leads to a disappointed audience.  So, you're stuck with always trying to top whatever you did before, which is of course unsustainable beyond the very short term.
> 
> What's the answer?  Back off on the drama until and unless it's needed.



It's difficult to take this assertion seriously when 1) you are arguing from a position of ignorance about a play preference you self-admittedly have mostly second-hand exposure to online and minimal to zero actual play experience, and 2) you demonstrate repeated lack of good faith arguments about story-narrative play styles. 

I believe that even   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] had noted how one side seems to have more experiential awareness of other playstyles than the other side. And this can be a glaring weakness when one side attempts to argue how those games would operate under such game design principles and mechanics. 

That said, consider most things with a serialized format. Generally there are multiple points of dramatic conflict throughout a series. There will dramatic conflict that is the forefront of the episode. There will be dramatic conflict in the backdrop of the episode. (Usually A, B, and maybe C plots.) There will be dramatic conflict centered around lengthy character arcs. There will be dramatic conflict centered around narrative or story arcs. There will be dramatic conflict between characters. This drama will overlap, crisscross, and branch. Some storylines will naturally slow down in favor of other storylines. Over the long term, we are not looking at a plateau, but, rather, a mountain range containing peaks, valleys, and hills. 

It's also silly to argue against the principle to "top whatever you did before" while lauding a game where monsters have an increasing difficulty challenge rating that encourages players to engage a level-based treadmill where they will top what they did before in their encounters as they level. The entirety of D&D's character and encounter design is rooted in increasingly "topping" prior things. 



Lanefan said:


> It will suffer.  Maybe not in the first session, or even the first half-dozen; but to try and keep that level of drama going for 100 or 200 or 500 sessions is simply unsustainable.



This falsifiable assertion seems at odds with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s lengthy campaigns that he has run using 4e with story now approaches.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Were we all enjoying the entertainment?  Sure seemed like it!



Sure. I think the people I play with enjoy our games too - certainly no one is forcing them to set aside every second Sunday afternoon and come along to our sessions.



Lanefan said:


> A film is only going to show you the highlights of the charaters' lives as they relate to that specific story, mostly because it doesn't have time to show anything else.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In an RPG you do (in theory!) have time to delve into the day-to-day of the characters' lives if you want to; you can explore their backgrounds and personalities and quirks in a depth that no film can ever provide; you can (and in fact rather have to) manage their resources and finances and so forth on an ongoing basis; and you can make your own decisions as to how your PC is going to interact with the other PCs and with the game world around it/them and then follow up on these decisions in as much depth and detail as you like.



I suggest that your account of films is confusing cause and effect - it's not that films are time limited and hence show highlights; it's that films want to tell well-paced stories and hence show only selected events in the (notional) lives of their (fictional) subjects.

Of course there are real-time films, like some of Andy Warhol's, but I find it hard to believe that more than a handful of people has ever watched all 5 hours of Warhol's Sleep.

Good RPGing also involves management of pacing - not by retrospective editing (given the way RPG fiction is created) but by managing scene-framing and transitions. (Even if this is as simple as Moldvay Basic's _no play, only healing, happens between dungeon raids_.) I don't want to RPG doing the laundry, cleaning my character's teeth, or collecting wood for a campfire. I find managing resources rather tedious, and prefer RPGs where that's not really a consideration (this is one respect in which Traveller shows its age, design wise - your suggestion that you _have to_ do this suggest you don't have much familiarity with the many RPGs where that's not true).

I am interested in exploring characters, but that precisely requires generating situations that force choices in the way I've described.

And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a _GM-decides_ game - you can only do it in the detail the GM likes!



Lanefan said:


> A film is designed to entertain a passive non-participating audience who have paid to be there, and thus is expected to deliver.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> An RPG is vastly different.  First off, in most cases the participants and the audience are the same people, which means the entertainment has to be provided by and to the same people simultaneously.



In my experience, this means that the actual fiction produced by way of RPGing is less compelling, qua fiction, than that which is written by more professional authors with the opportunity to edit.

The fact that it is produced spontaneously by and for the participants goes a long way in overcoming this issue. In that sense, I see it as similar to making one's own music.

But in any event, the particpant-audience aspect seems rather orthogonal to the question of whether RPGs can't sustain drama.



Lanefan said:


> A sequel to said film not only has to do this but it really has to do it better than the first film, as to entertain to just the same level as the first will leave (most of) the audience disappointed. It's the whole "how do we top this?" syndrome.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> "If everything's dramatic, nothing is" means that if there's drama all the time it'll tend to plateau and, as we know from the movie-sequel example, plateau-ing leads to a disappointed audience.  So, you're stuck with always trying to top whatever you did before, which is of course unsustainable beyond the very short term.
> 
> What's the answer?  Back off on the drama until and unless it's needed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It will suffer.  Maybe not in the first session, or even the first half-dozen; but to try and keep that level of drama going for 100 or 200 or 500 sessions is simply unsustainable.



I've been running periodic RPG sessions for about 30 years without much interruption, so maybe close to a thousand in all; and haven't experienced the problem you hypothesie.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> That said, consider most things with a serialized format. Generally there are multiple points of dramatic conflict throughout a series. There will dramatic conflict that is the forefront of the episode. There will be dramatic conflict in the backdrop of the episode. (Usually A, B, and maybe C plots.) There will be dramatic conflict centered around lengthy character arcs. There will be dramatic conflict centered around narrative or story arcs. There will be dramatic conflict between characters. This drama will overlap, crisscross, and branch. Some storylines will naturally slow down in favor of other storylines. Over the long term, we are not looking at a plateau, but, rather, a mountain range containing peaks, valleys, and hills.




And if you watch the series over multiple seasons, each season tries to top the last in order to keep going, but that tactic only stretches it out a few seasons and then the series dies a usually sudden death with either no ending, or a rushed and crappy ending.   



> It's also silly to argue against the principle to "top whatever you did before" while lauding a game where monsters have an increasing difficulty challenge rating that encourages players to engage a level-based treadmill where they will top what they did before in their encounters as they level. The entirety of D&D's character and encounter design is rooted in increasingly "topping" prior things.




This is a False Equivalence.  A vampire being more powerful than a zombie, or a dragon being more powerful than a large lizard is not at all the same as one season of a drama trying to outdo the last to stay marketable.  C'mon man!  You can do better than that.



> This falsifiable assertion seems at odds with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s lengthy campaigns that he has run using 4e with story now approaches.




Sure, and there are some people who like how House kept getting more and more ridiculous until at the end, he faked his own death to go riding off into the sunset with his oncologist buddy who had terminal cancer.  

That he has found people that enjoy ridiculous levels of drama doesn't mean that in general, ridiculous levels of drama are not sustainable.  T.V. Dramas routinely die, because of that unsustainability.


----------



## Numidius

Numudius' corner: another boring actual play.

In the last group I played, the party took a pause of rest in an ancient settlement built around a health-regenerating thermal pool, after an almost lethal fight against a giant monster in the haunted forest surrounding it. 
What I thought ought to be just a brief downtime, became soon a whole session of jokes, embarassing moments, relaxed roleplay, casual spent of money for "services" by the locals, all while having a day long regenerating bath. 

Rinse. Repeat. Next session same thing. I already split from them earlier to follow an investigation in town on my own. I had my scene but nothing more happened. The others still having the rejuveneting bath. 

Third session of bathing. I try to hire some guides to take me to the infamous settlement, the Gm fiddles for ages about costs, wages, timing, distance, preparation and takes me by exaustion. Nothing dramatic happens.

On the fourth session I roll a new Pc to be present in the settlement to hurry the party up and move on. Half a session later we are eventually out: one random encounter in the forest and the evening of play ends. 

Then I quit the group, sadly.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Good RPGing also involves management of pacing - not by retrospective editing (given the way RPG fiction is created) but by managing scene-framing and transitions. (Even if this is as simple as Moldvay Basic's _no play, only healing, happens between dungeon raids_.) I don't want to RPG doing the laundry, cleaning my character's teeth, or collecting wood for a campfire. I find managing resources rather tedious, and prefer RPGs where that's not really a consideration (this is one respect in which Traveller shows its age, design wise - your suggestion that you _have to_ do this suggest you don't have much familiarity with the many RPGs where that's not true).




But not everyone enjoys the kind of pacing or scene framing you like (and to be clear, I am not knocking what you do, since it clearly works for you). In the games I run, which tend to be more sandboxy, but with a bit of drama, and plenty of world exploration and character-driven stuff in it....pacing is often more in the hands of the players actually. Their the ones that would prevent me from scene framing. I am actually quite impatient and as a GM and would often be happy to just keep moving briskly. But I can't tell you the number of times, I've had players say 'wait, I still want to do this thing in town before we go to the next thing'. It isn't laundry, but to me it often feels pretty close to laundry. Yet they are really enjoying themselves. I can understand this because when I am a player, one of the things I really enjoy doing is building things in the setting. For example one of my favorite campaigns was when I started a enterprise selling coffee and making connections along a trade route. I think a lot of people would find the dull, but I enjoyed lingering on the details. 

I don't disagree with what you saying, it is more the intro of "Good RPGing involves". I think the hobby is simply too varied for those kinds of statements to really have the weight we think they do at other tables. 




> And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a _GM-decides_ game - you can only do it in the detail the GM likes!
> 
> .




I would disagree with this. You can very much explore worlds in detail when the GM decides. I would argue that the GM functioning as the referee who makes calls about the things players attempt is one of the key elements that makes this the case. Not saying their are not other ways. Just saying I've seen it work, I've experienced it working as a player, and I have been doing it myself for many years. It works brilliantly because there really isn't much a limit to how much detail you can go in, if the GM is seriously considering anything the players attempt.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Numudius' corner: another boring actual play.
> 
> In the last group I played, the party took a pause of rest in an ancient settlement built around a health-regenerating thermal pool, after an almost lethal fight against a giant monster in the haunted forest surrounding it.
> What I thought ought to be just a brief downtime, became soon a whole session of jokes, embarassing moments, relaxed roleplay, casual spent of money for "services" by the locals, all while having a day long regenerating bath.
> 
> Rinse. Repeat. Next session same thing. I already split from them earlier to follow an investigation in town on my own. I had my scene but nothing more happened. The others still having the rejuveneting bath.
> 
> Third session of bathing. I try to hire some guides to take me to the infamous settlement, the Gm fiddles for ages about costs, wages, timing, distance, preparation and takes me by exaustion. Nothing dramatic happens.
> 
> On the fourth session I roll a new Pc to be present in the settlement to hurry the party up and move on. Half a session later we are eventually out: one random encounter in the forest and the evening of play ends.
> 
> Then I quit the group, sadly.




The key thing to ask here is whether you were the only person bored, or if the other players were also having a bad time. If the latter, then the GM, in my view, wasn't running the game well. If the former, he or she may just have had difficulty connecting your preferences with the rest of the group's.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> The key thing to ask here is whether you were the only person bored, or if the other players were also having a bad time. If the latter, then the GM, in my view, wasn't running the game well. If the former, he or she may just have had difficulty connecting your preferences with the rest of the group's.




The former. We then separated consensually. The Gm actually told me later that he was doing that on purpose: that's the way they like to play.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> And if you watch the series over multiple seasons, each season tries to top the last in order to keep going, but that tactic only stretches it out a few seasons and then the series dies a usually sudden death with either no ending, or a rushed and crappy ending.



Sometimes. Not always. And certaintly not a universal rule or maxim. We are easily swimming in examples where this is not the case. This is also ignoring how some series have preset lengths. E.g., Babylon 5 was planned for five seasons, though the narrative structure had a major hiccup due to TNT. Avatar the Last Airbender was planned for three seasons: Book 1, Water; Book 2, Earth; Book 3, Fire. 

So I quote: 


Maxperson said:


> In your opinion.  You shouldn't be presenting your opinion as if it were fact, because it's not.



That is some good advice that you should live by too.  



> This is a False Equivalence. A vampire being more powerful than a zombie, or a dragon being more powerful than a large lizard is not at all the same as one season of a drama trying to outdo the last to stay marketable.  C'mon man!  You can do better than that.



Calling it a False Equivalence doesn't make it so. This is generally how D&D uses monsters for artifically escalating drama -- at least through the common D&D lens of equating dramatic moments to PCs overcoming challenging foes -- to the point where you eventually fight demon princes and gods or become ones yourself. And drama in a number of fantasy/sci-fi series often likewise involves escalating foes. This is even one reason why people wanted something akin to "bounded accuracy" so that lower-tiered monsters of the week would remain dramatically relevant in later gameplay. 



> That he has found people that enjoy ridiculous levels of drama doesn't mean that in general, ridiculous levels of drama are not sustainable.  T.V. Dramas routinely die, because of that unsustainability.



Shows regularly die regardless of their dramatic content for a variety of reasons (production costs, ratings, network marketing and rebranding, actors, writer fatigue, etc.) so that is a red herring. How many episodes does Bold and the Beautiful have? How many episodes did the original CSI have? Or how about Law & Order? Or how about Doctor Who? There are plenty of shows where this is false. And likewise there are plenty of "non-drama-driven" D&D campaigns that are lucky to get past 10 sessions. 

Maxperson: Lanefan is saying uniequivocally that the dramatic-drive play that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others describe is unsustainable for 100+ sessions. This is demonstrably false. Your defending of this falsehood seems rooted more in a desire to bicker and win points than to ascertain the truth of the proposition. I sometimes think that if I casually said that the earth was round, you would go out of your way to become a flat earther. If you are interested in the truth of things, then why would you defend Lanefan's assertion here if you know this to be false? (Pemerton's chronicled story now sessions are hardly esoteric gnosis. And he is hardly alone in long campaigns in story now games.) Is this really an argument you want to be making with any shred of good faith?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Numidius said:


> Numudius' corner: another boring actual play.
> 
> In the last group I played, the party took a pause of rest in an ancient settlement built around a health-regenerating thermal pool, after an almost lethal fight against a giant monster in the haunted forest surrounding it.
> What I thought ought to be just a brief downtime, became soon a whole session of jokes, embarassing moments, relaxed roleplay, casual spent of money for "services" by the locals, all while having a day long regenerating bath.
> 
> Rinse. Repeat. Next session same thing. I already split from them earlier to follow an investigation in town on my own. I had my scene but nothing more happened. The others still having the rejuveneting bath.
> 
> Third session of bathing. I try to hire some guides to take me to the infamous settlement, the Gm fiddles for ages about costs, wages, timing, distance, preparation and takes me by exaustion. Nothing dramatic happens.
> 
> On the fourth session I roll a new Pc to be present in the settlement to hurry the party up and move on. Half a session later we are eventually out: one random encounter in the forest and the evening of play ends.
> 
> Then I quit the group, sadly.




This stuff is cool, and happens in player-centered games as well.  When the GM is framing scenes and action is occurring, the GM has a role to make things challenge the characters and to up the ante.  That isn't to say that every moment in game is in such a scene.  Free play, where the GM is pretty much not involved, also occurs.

Take Blades in the Dark, which is a game that uses the drive to drama approach in play.  It has three large "phases" -- the score, where most play happens and the GM is actively challenging players; downtime, where there are some codified interactions that allow players to further long term goals, heal, indulge in their vice, try to recruit for the Crew, etc.; and free play, where the players do things that aren't in the above but are related to it -- ie, scout out the next score, have some diplomacy with another gang, interact among themselves, etc.


----------



## Numidius

Numidius said:


> The former. We then separated consensually. The Gm actually told me later that he was doing that on purpose: that's the way they like to play.



But I'm convinced that if that Gm sped up things a bit, all the table would have enjoyed.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> This stuff is cool, and happens in player-centered games as well.  When the GM is framing scenes and action is occurring, the GM has a role to make things challenge the characters and to up the ante.  That isn't to say that every moment in game is in such a scene.  Free play, where the GM is pretty much not involved, also occurs.
> 
> Take Blades in the Dark, which is a game that uses the drive to drama approach in play.  It has three large "phases" -- the score, where most play happens and the GM is actively challenging players; downtime, where there are some codified interactions that allow players to further long term goals, heal, indulge in their vice, try to recruit for the Crew, etc.; and free play, where the players do things that aren't in the above but are related to it -- ie, scout out the next score, have some diplomacy with another gang, interact among themselves, etc.



The funny thing is, I accepted to play in that game because the Gm wanted to try Blades in the Dark, next...


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Maxperson: Lanefan is saying uniequivocally that the dramatic-drive play that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others describe is unsustainable for 100+ sessions. This is demonstrably false. Your defending of this falsehood seems rooted more in a desire to bicker and win points than to ascertain the truth of the proposition. I sometimes think that if I casually said that the earth was round, you would go out of your way to become a flat earther. If you are interested in the truth of things, then why would you defend Lanefan's assertion here if you know this to be false? (Pemerton's chronicled story now sessions are hardly esoteric gnosis. And he is hardly alone in long campaigns in story now games.) Is this really an argument you want to be making with any shred of good faith?




If Pemerton is getting 100 plus sessions, then he is getting 100+ sessions using the style. I think this is one of those areas where everyone has a harder or easier time running games using certain methods. I know some GMs who can only do a long term campaign using adventure paths (that structure just works for them, even though I really don't enjoy them myself). I will say, I game with some folks who do go more toward the dramatic angle, and they seem to prefer shorter campaigns (simply because a good story can be told in a 6-10 session campaign). I think that is just a preference on their part though. And obviously it depends on how you do it. For me, I find the approach I've talked about (the dramatic sandbox) works well for me, over the long term (and running long term campaigns is important to me when I run a system or choose my campaign approach). Personally, I think most of the problems on this thread, tend to come down to people being overly skeptical of what other people are saying about their experience at the table. You can pull out a word a person says, an assertion they make while trying to defend a style, and dissect it until it seems like you've disproven their experience. But again I think really most of this just boils down people on these threads are very good at making arguments: that doesn't make them right.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> If Pemerton is getting 100 plus sessions, then he is getting 100+ sessions using the style.* I think this is one of those areas where everyone has a harder or easier time running games using certain methods.*
> 
> Personally, I think most of the problems on this thread, tend to come down to people being overly skeptical of what other people are saying about their experience at the table. You can pull out a word a person says, an assertion they make while trying to defend a style, and dissect it until it seems like you've disproven their experience. But again I think really most of this just boils down people on these threads are very good at making arguments: that doesn't make them right.



You make a good observation with the statement in bold. This seems like this line of debate would have been easily avoidable had an alternate argumentation had been originally adopted: "Given my play preferences, I would personally find it chellenging to sustain a 100+ session campaign using this dramatic-driven approach." This seems far less controversial and indisputable than asserting that something is inherently unsustainable or that dramatic-play will necessarily plateau.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> I strongly suggest that you closely read  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s hypothetical example of the poltergeist upthread, and what he says about using soft moves vs hard moves.
> 
> One point that follows from what is said in that post is that _the question you ask can't be answered in the abstract_. When is it proper to use a hard rather than a soft move? How much foreshadowing/prefiguring is the right amount? What would count as a GM squib; and what would count as heavy-handed GMing that is in "rocks fall" territory?




Reverse engineering the scenario with the poltergeist.

The player fails their Discern Realities move, but made a soft move as of yet to Reveal an Unwelcome Truth.  So, instead of having the poltergeist manifest and dealing damage (a hard move), I make the soft move when the character says they want to investigate the area behind the bar for a trap door to a cellar:

"Viscous pink skid-marks on the floor cut a jagged path in the floorboards to the area behind the bar where the ceiling has collapsed as a pair of load-bearing pillars have been upended. Desperate scratches and a pair of fingernails ripped from their bed accompany the disgusting trail of soupy ichor which appears to be blood and some other, thicker, clear substance."


----------



## hawkeyefan

I have to admit that the whole "you can't have exciting play without boring play" argument to be really odd. I don't think that's remotely true, even with long running campaigns. I don't expect every session to be super meaningful, but every session should move things forward. Bookkeeping and maintenance are not why I roleplay, so that stuff has no appeal to me, and is certainly not necessary.

And while I think every game should have some free play type scenes, I can't help but wince at [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]'s description above where free play went on for four sessions. I'd make it about halfway through the second one before I started smashing my face into the table. 

My goal when I GM, regardless of system, is to keep things interesting, and to keep things moving toward points of interest, where exciting things can happen, and the players will have meaningful decisions to make for their characters. 

Yes, there may be times where we fail to achieve this. But I would have to expect that those times are fewer than such times in a game that seems to expect, or even embrace, such lulls.


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> I think this is one of those areas where everyone has a harder or easier time running games using certain methods.




This is probably true, but I would suggest the same thing I've always suggested to this.

Everyone play different kinds of games.  Its just like anything else (from food to exercises).  It will broaden a person's perspective/skill-set, help them recognize and push back against cognitive blind-spots, make them appreciate their preferred playstyle more, and it will sharpen their skill-set (by distilling and clarifying the differences) in their preferred playstyle.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> If Pemerton is getting 100 plus sessions, then he is getting 100+ sessions using the style. I think this is one of those areas where everyone has a harder or easier time running games using certain methods. I know some GMs who can only do a long term campaign using adventure paths (that structure just works for them, even though I really don't enjoy them myself). I will say, I game with some folks who do go more toward the dramatic angle, and they seem to prefer shorter campaigns (simply because a good story can be told in a 6-10 session campaign). I think that is just a preference on their part though. And obviously it depends on how you do it. For me, I find the approach I've talked about (the dramatic sandbox) works well for me, over the long term (and running long term campaigns is important to me when I run a system or choose my campaign approach). Personally, I think most of the problems on this thread, tend to come down to people being overly skeptical of what other people are saying about their experience at the table. *You can pull out a word a person says, an assertion they make while trying to defend a style, and dissect it until it seems like you've disproven their experience. But again I think really most of this just boils down people on these threads are very good at making arguments: that doesn't make them right.*






Manbearcat said:


> This is probably true, but I would suggest the same thing I've always suggested to this.
> 
> Everyone play different kinds of games.  Its just like anything else (from food to exercises).  *It will broaden a person's perspective/skill-set, help them recognize and push back against cognitive blind-spots, make them appreciate their preferred playstyle more, and it will sharpen their skill-set (by distilling and clarifying the differences) in their preferred playstyle.*




I agree 100% with what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] writes above, and I think this also addresses [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]'s impicit critique of threads like this (a critique that, at times, has become explicit). _Honest_ discussion of these issues isn't navel gazing; and it isn't dissection with the aim of proving oneself "right" or scoring points. Such discussion is an attempt to clarify one's own reasons for holding certain preferences and (potentially) illuminate for others cognitive biases they seem to hold that prevent them from seeing others' viewpoints.

This is also why I find "debate styles" that are intellectually dishonest so infuriating: these become an attempt to grasp ever harder to an ever-less-tenuous argument rather than cede ground in a game of one-upsmanship and point scoring, which defeats the purpose of dialogue as a means of explaining why one holds the views one does.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> This is probably true, but I would suggest the same thing I've always suggested to this.
> 
> Everyone play different kinds of games.  Its just like anything else (from food to exercises).  It will broaden a person's perspective/skill-set, help them recognize and push back against cognitive blind-spots, make them appreciate their preferred playstyle more, and it will sharpen their skill-set (by distilling and clarifying the differences) in their preferred playstyle.




I think playing different games is fine. I do it myself. But not everyone wants to try everything under the sun. Knowing what you like is fine too, and not everyone wants the kinds of experiences being offered by all varieties. It is like going to a restaurant. Some people like to try everything new they can, some people want reliable experiences with the meals they know they like. I have been doing that myself. But I think a lot of people feel like they've found the gaming grail, and don't understand why others don't always change their tastes after experiencing said grail. Sure people should play games of all kinds. These are just games. I don't think it is necessarily for us to approach them any differently than we approach food or movies.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> I agree 100% with what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] writes above, and I think this also addresses [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]'s impicit critique of threads like this (a critique that, at times, has become explicit). _Honest_ discussion of these issues isn't navel gazing; and it isn't dissection with the aim of proving oneself "right" or scoring points. Such discussion is an attempt to clarify one's own reasons for holding certain preferences and (potentially) illuminate for others cognitive biases they seem to hold that prevent them from seeing others' viewpoints.
> 
> This is also why I find "debate styles" that are intellectually dishonest so infuriating: these become an attempt to grasp ever harder to an ever-less-tenuous argument rather than cede ground in a game of one-upsmanship and point scoring, which defeats the purpose of dialogue as a means of explaining why one holds the views one does.




Just because someone makes a point that is hard to refute, I don't think you should automatically cede the ground. I've had so many experiences where I couldn't refute something a person said in a discussion, but felt deep down, what they said wasn't true. And it would often take me several weeks to figure out why and find the appropriate counter point (or to figure out the faulty assumption in the person's argument). Discussion is fine. But frankly I think there is too much confidence sometimes about the process and how it ought to play out. This is why I think being smarmy or arrogant in this kind of discussion is such a turn off. People may think they've found the path. But a lot of times, they've just found an eloquent way to describe a subjective play preference, that isn't any better or worse than many other approaches out there.


----------



## Numidius

hawkeyefan said:


> I have to admit that the whole "you can't have exciting play without boring play" argument to be really odd. I don't think that's remotely true, even with long running campaigns. I don't expect every session to be super meaningful, but every session should move things forward. Bookkeeping and maintenance are not why I roleplay, so that stuff has no appeal to me, and is certainly not necessary.
> 
> And while I think every game should have some free play type scenes, I can't help but wince at [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]'s description above where free play went on for four sessions. I'd make it about halfway through the second one before I started smashing my face into the table.
> 
> My goal when I GM, regardless of system, is to keep things interesting, and to keep things moving toward points of interest, where exciting things can happen, and the players will have meaningful decisions to make for their characters.
> 
> Yes, there may be times where we fail to achieve this. But I would have to expect that those times are fewer than such times in a game that seems to expect, or even embrace, such lulls.



Yeah. It helped me that I had already split my pc from the main party before the thermal baths (a dead end investigation, btw) 
Then I wanted to offer my effort in-game by rolling a new pc, a guide to... guide the party thru the haunted forest, but just didn't click. 

Anyway I was expecting something along the lines, the style of play, of [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], that I would have really enjoyed, since the setting was rich, intense, full of tensions between factions. 

This Gm style was instead a continous improvisation responding at player's declarations, with the occasional look at the setting book for notions/inspiration. Extremely neutral. On his behalf I admit he is good at describing, secure of his ability, high self esteem, believable in depicting Npcs and ambience. So twice a shame he did not want to frame a bit scenes or impose a bit of pacing in the events. He was overly obsessed by encumbrance, btw, and a sense of neutral realism. 
He said: "Situations, adventures, are not gonna curiously happen to you only because you are in town. Deal with it. I'm not gonna make things happen for you"
My answer: "But I'm an Inquisitor inbued with the magic of the one&only Sun god of the setting wearing a sacred Mask all the time to conceal my identity (as per RAW), and I already offered my services to the local Church, and to the travellers guild! What else am I supposed to do?" 

He: "Go the library; start a trade..." (sic. For real, I'm not making it up) 

Me: "I'm gonna burn down that library!"  

----
There were moments of intense Role play,  between us players. Once this bunch of bad guys conspirators were attacking us. We killed one, took one prisoner, the rest fleed. The WitchHunter Pc started interrogating, then torturing the unfortunate Npc: nothing. then I entered giving my word to let him live if he spoke. He did. After that the WH wanted to kill him anyway. The situation became tense. we argued: his caution vs my honor as a truthful priest;  then he prepared the sword to stab him, but I rolled better, and with my knife cutted the Npc tongue. With blood on my hands (a young and newly ordained inquisitor) I said: "This poor devil is not going to talk about us anymore. I'll take him to the local Church and follow the trail of this apparent conspiracy". 

Was an intense scene for everyone at the table, and the Gm didn't interfere. I wish he had the will to do it in those later stagnant moments, tho.
 We were nearly "There" with this group, it's a missed opportunity.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Numidius said:


> Yeah. It helped me that I had already split my pc from the main party before the thermal baths (a dead end investigation, btw)
> Then I wanted to offer my effort in-game by rolling a new pc, a guide to... guide the party thru the haunted forest, but just didn't click.
> 
> Anyway I was expecting something along the lines, the style of play, of [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], that I would have really enjoyed, since the setting was rich, intense, full of tensions between factions.
> 
> This Gm style was instead a continous improvisation responding at player's declarations, with the occasional look at the setting book for notions/inspiration. Extremely neutral. On his behalf I admit he is good at describing, secure of his ability, high self esteem, believable in depicting Npcs and ambience. So twice a shame he did not want to frame a bit scenes or impose a bit of pacing in the events. He was overly obsessed by encumbrance, btw, and a sense of neutral realism.
> He said: "Situations, adventures, are not gonna curiously happen to you only because you are in town. Deal with it. I'm not gonna make things happen for you"
> My answer: "But I'm an Inquisitor inbued with the magic of the one&only Sun god of the setting wearing a sacred Mask all the time to conceal my identity (as per RAW), and I already offered my services to the local Church, and to the travellers guild! What else am I supposed to do?"
> 
> He: "Go the library; start a trade..." (sic. For real, I'm not making it up)
> 
> Me: "I'm gonna burn down that library!"
> 
> ----
> There were moments of intense Role play,  between us players. Once this bunch of bad guys conspirators were attacking us. We killed one, took one prisoner, the rest fleed. The WitchHunter Pc started interrogating, then torturing the unfortunate Npc: nothing. then I entered giving my word to let him live if he spoke. He did. After that the WH wanted to kill him anyway. The situation became tense. we argued: his caution vs my honor as a truthful priest;  then he prepared the sword to stab him, but I rolled better, and with my knife cutted the Npc tongue. With blood on my hands (a young and newly ordained inquisitor) I said: "This poor devil is not going to talk about us anymore. I'll take him to the local Church and follow the trail of this apparent conspiracy".
> 
> Was an intense scene for everyone at the table, and the Gm didn't interfere. I wish he had the will to do it in those later stagnant moments, tho.
> We were nearly "There" with this group, it's a missed opportunity.




Yeah, that sounds rough. Seems a shame that the GM was so good at certain parts of the game, but the end result was not one you found fun. I mean, if that's how they want to play, cool for them, but it sounds totally superfluous to me....just goofing around and using the game as a source to make jokes. Which I think is likely a part of most games....my players and I regularly joke about the game....but it's not the goal of play.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> Just because someone makes a point that is hard to refute, I don't think you should automatically cede the ground. I've had so many experiences where I couldn't refute something a person said in a discussion, but felt deep down, what they said wasn't true. And it would often take me several weeks to figure out why and find the appropriate counter point (or to figure out the faulty assumption in the person's argument). Discussion is fine. But frankly I think there is too much confidence sometimes about the process and how it ought to play out. This is why I think being smarmy or arrogant in this kind of discussion is such a turn off. People may think they've found the path. But a lot of times, they've just found an eloquent way to describe a subjective play preference, that isn't any better or worse than many other approaches out there.



From an outsider perspective, now barely aware of these years long disputes of you people, I appreciate the way you all debate, even argue, and stimulate each other, bringing MEAT to the table, so to speak


----------



## Numidius

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, that sounds rough. Seems a shame that the GM was so good at certain parts of the game, but the end result was not one you found fun. I mean, if that's how they want to play, cool for them, but it sounds totally superfluous to me....just goofing around and using the game as a source to make jokes. Which I think is likely a part of most games....my players and I regularly joke about the game....but it's not the goal of play.



I'm pretty sure the other players would have really appreciated a more guiding Gm touch, also.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I think playing different games is fine. I do it myself. But not everyone wants to try everything under the sun. Knowing what you like is fine too, and not everyone wants the kinds of experiences being offered by all varieties. It is like going to a restaurant. Some people like to try everything new they can, some people want reliable experiences with the meals they know they like. I have been doing that myself. But I think a lot of people feel like they've found the gaming grail, and don't understand why others don't always change their tastes after experiencing said grail. Sure people should play games of all kinds. These are just games. I don't think it is necessarily for us to approach them any differently than we approach food or movies.




To run with the metaphor, let's say you're at a restaurant and you're wondering what to get. You're with two friends who've been there before. One gets the same thing every time he's there, and he loves it, but has never tried anything else. The other friend has tried a lot of what's on the menu, and has a few suggestions for you. 

Who are you more likely to listen to?

Ultimately, I do think that such choices are a matter of taste and preference. Some people will never like ribs, for example, even if they're at the best rib joint in the world. But, setting aside taste and preference, there's something to be said about the advice or insight that can be offered by someone who eats the same thing every time, and someone who's tried more than one thing.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> To run with the metaphor, let's say you're at a restaurant and you're wondering what to get. You're with two friends who've been there before. One gets the same thing every time he's there, and he loves it, but has never tried anything else. The other friend has tried a lot of what's on the menu, and has a few suggestions for you.
> 
> Who are you more likely to listen to?
> 
> Ultimately, I do think that such choices are a matter of taste and preference. Some people will never like ribs, for example, even if they're at the best rib joint in the world. But, setting aside taste and preference, there's something to be said about the advice or insight that can be offered by someone who eats the same thing every time, and someone who's tried more than one thing.




I think it depends though. I've often found people who seem to like everything, are not a very good way of gauging what I'd like. To me it would boil down to the individual. If it is someone who has preferences closer to mine, and I want to ensure I have a good dining experience, I'd go with that individual's recommendation. If I am feeling adventurous I might go with the person who has had everything on the menu. Either way, I'd get information from both of them, treat them both like human beings and wouldn't sneer at either one of them for the kind of food they like to eat. The latter is really what I am talking about here. It is fine to be worldly. It is fine to try lots of RPGs. I think people can get so into that though, they lose sight of what interests people who like more standard faire. 

To use another metaphor: film. Growing up my dad liked to watch all kinds of movies. There is something good about that, but it has its downsides. When we went to video store he'd always get recommendations from the people working there. We saw a lot of movies, but I can honestly say one result of this approach is most of the movies were not that enjoyable (and if we had stuck with more mainstream blockbuster hits, more of the movies we saw, we'd probably have enjoyed). For every cool, quirky movie we saw, we had to sit through two films like Wizard of Speed and Time and The Peanut Butter Solution. Again, I am not knocking having wide ranging taste and trying many things (I do try to play as many RPGs as I can when I have the time). I just think people are not seeing that there is no grail here. Every approach is going to have downsides and upsides. 

I like to try lots of things still. But it is definitely not for everyone. And you can be just as much of a jerk advocating for the latest quirky thing you've found, as you can be stubbornly refusing to engage anything outside your experience. And I've learned to respect that other people might have more straightforward tastes and be put off by things that are less in that zone.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> Ultimately, I do think that such choices are a matter of taste and preference. Some people will never like ribs, for example, even if they're at the best rib joint in the world. But, setting aside taste and preference, there's something to be said about the advice or insight that can be offered by someone who eats the same thing every time, and someone who's tried more than one thing.




Also, while this is a very imperfect metaphor, just to come back to it for another point: I think both these people actually have something to offer. The guy who gets the steak every time, is going to be able to tell me how consistent that steak is. The guy who gets something new every time, is going to have a wider variety of options to talk about, but any one of those could have been eaten on a good or bad day. In gaming terms, a person who plays one, or a handful of similar games, is going to have deep knowledge of those systems. A person who plays lots of different games all the time, is going to have less deep knowledge of the individual games I think. Of course, most people are not this stark. I imagine most gamers will be closer to the center of the spectrum. 

The examples in the metaphor are really a bit extreme I think. In reality, you'd more likely be dealing with a) Person who has a handful of regular items they routinely order on the menu because they consider them reliable, and b) person who different things more often. 

Also I don't think anyone here is seriously advocating not trying different food. This conversation is more like, some people in the room don't like seafood, and so suggesting they try the calamari probably isn't going to go over well (for the record, I like calamari a lot).


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I think it depends though. I've often found people who seem to like everything, are not a very good way of gauging what I'd like. To me it would boil down to the individual. If it is someone who has preferences closer to mine, and I want to ensure I have a good dining experience, I'd go with that individual's recommendation. If I am feeling adventurous I might go with the person who has had everything on the menu. Either way, I'd get information from both of them, treat them both like human beings and wouldn't sneer at either one of them for the kind of food they like to eat. The latter is really what I am talking about here. It is fine to be worldly. It is fine to try lots of RPGs. I think people can get so into that though, they lose sight of what interests people who like more standard faire.
> 
> To use another metaphor: film. Growing up my dad liked to watch all kinds of movies. There is something good about that, but it has its downsides. When we went to video store he'd always get recommendations from the people working there. We saw a lot of movies, but I can honestly say one result of this approach is most of the movies were not that enjoyable (and if we had stuck with more mainstream blockbuster hits, more of the movies we saw, we'd probably have enjoyed). For every cool, quirky movie we saw, we had to sit through two films like Wizard of Speed and Time and The Peanut Butter Solution. Again, I am not knocking having wide ranging taste and trying many things (I do try to play as many RPGs as I can when I have the time). I just think people are not seeing that there is no grail here. Every approach is going to have downsides and upsides.
> 
> I like to try lots of things still. But it is definitely not for everyone. And you can be just as much of a jerk advocating for the latest quirky thing you've found, as you can be stubbornly refusing to engage anything outside your experience. And I've learned to respect that other people might have more straightforward tastes and be put off by things that are less in that zone.




Sure, I don't think that anyone needs to be treated poorly. And I think that does happen from time to time in these discussions. It honestly goes both ways, really. I find that these online debates can lose nuance and tone and context, and that can often add to the problem, where as if this conversation were to happen in person, I'd be surprised if things didn't remain civil. 

And I agree that a variety of opinion is helpful, and so it's good to ask both of your friends for their advice. 

But in discussing the menu in its entirety, it's very clear who will likely have more insight....and I don't mean that in any way except the most practical.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> But in discussing the menu in its entirety, it's very clear who will likely have more insight....and I don't mean that in any way except the most practical.




But here is where that metaphor breaks down in a serious way. The guy who has tried everything on a menu at some restaurant, probably has biases, but I doubt they rise to the level of biases you encounter in gaming discussions. It would be great if on a random internet forum, you could trust the person who has tried everything to report on all the items on the menu accurately. In reality, just my experience on gaming discussions, half the time people try games outside their preferred style (particularly if their preferences are very strong), they are doing so with the sole aim of critiquing that game. Just to take it out of this forum, I saw it all the time in other forums where there are posters whose preferences are closer to mine. People are not objective when it comes to gaming flame wars. And much of this discussion has had the tone of a flame war. So it isn't like we are at a restaurant with friends who are reliably going to report on their experiences. People are still trying to win the discussion here and I think that clouds the issue. 

But at the end of the day, I would restate what I said earlier, I think it really depends on the individual. And I think if we have two extremes to choose from: on the hand asking someone who tries lots and lots of games, and on the other asking someone who has played the same game endlessly...you are probably going to want to ask the person with lots of experience about the quirky games, but that person who plays the same one day in and day out will be able to tell you just about everything to do with that system and how to make it work. I think both those extremes are pretty unrealistic. Most people are going to settle on a preferred style of play, and have varying degrees of experience with other systems. I think the sweet spot is to actually have a go to system or systems (because mastering a single game system is very helpful to do), but to seek out other experiences as well. Still, if I want to learn about story games, I don't ask the immersionist who has tried everything under the sun. I ask people who like story games and play them regularly. If I am looking for a new gaming experience, then I am going to ask someone with a broad view of games, who can report on them objectively (I have a handful of friends in the real world who I would go to for such things).


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> Also, while this is a very imperfect metaphor, just to come back to it for another point: I think both these people actually have something to offer. The guy who gets the steak every time, is going to be able to tell me how consistent that steak is. The guy who gets something new every time, is going to have a wider variety of options to talk about, but any one of those could have been eaten on a good or bad day. In gaming terms, a person who plays one, or a handful of similar games, is going to have deep knowledge of those systems. A person who plays lots of different games all the time, is going to have less deep knowledge of the individual games I think. Of course, most people are not this stark. I imagine most gamers will be closer to the center of the spectrum.
> 
> The examples in the metaphor are really a bit extreme I think. In reality, you'd more likely be dealing with a) Person who has a handful of regular items they routinely order on the menu because they consider them reliable, and b) person who different things more often.
> 
> Also I don't think anyone here is seriously advocating not trying different food. This conversation is more like, some people in the room don't like seafood, and so suggesting they try the calamari probably isn't going to go over well (for the record, I like calamari a lot).




I think that many folks in the discussion fall in the middle. Even the ones who have the most exposure to the widest variety of RPGs are still in the middle. None of us have played them all. 

But I do think there are also plenty of people who have only ever played one game, or at most a handful of games that are all very similar in approach. And that in and of itself is fine. There's nothing wrong with only ever playing one RPG or only ever eating ribs or whatever!

What I think can be frustrating is that when the discussion is about using RPG techniques or mechanics from a variety of systems, those folks chime in and insist on viewing things through their one point of reference. 

To be clear, I'm not saying you did that, and I think the initial comment you made which then spawned this thread was clearly taken out of context. But I think there have been plenty of other examples in this thread that show what I'm talking about. 

For example, meta-gaming. Many hold that this is always bad. The reason is because the game they play, or at least the way they like to play it, says that's the case. But there are other games where meta-gaming is absoluetly part of the process. It's by no means "always bad". So if someone brings up meta-gaming as a technique in RPG, and they have to fend off all the "meta-gaming is always bad!!!" comments, it can really undermine the conversation.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> For example, meta-gaming. Many hold that this is always bad. The reason is because the game they play, or at least the way they like to play it, says that's the case. But there are other games where meta-gaming is absoluetly part of the process. It's by no means "always bad". So if someone brings up meta-gaming as a technique in RPG, and they have to fend off all the "meta-gaming is always bad!!!" comments, it can really undermine the conversation.




I think it is unfair to expect people to bring anything other than their experience to a discussion. If you have a wider range of experiences, it is on you to figure out how to communicate with people who haven't had those experiences. But I think some folks are holding their gaming experience over the heads of others in this debate. Personally I am open to trying all kinds of games, and I don't even really play D&D anymore (at least not that often). And if I do play D&D now, it is usually an OSR version. And while there are games I like to play and try, there are others I don't have much interest in (DW, Burning Wheel and FATE all have very little appeal to me). Doesn't mean I haven't looked into them or tried playing them. A game like FATE for example, I wanted to like because there was a setting put out using that system that I really wanted to try, but I just can't to connect with the system. I don't think that should be held against me in a discussion like this (especially when I think it is clear I am basically getting what posters are saying about those systems, but some of my words are being used against me to imply I am not). But that said, I've tried to explain that I do like to try and play other games. I have a whole group of players where this pretty much all we do (I don't usually run the games, but I am a player in a game where we rotate systems, often times very experimental and quirky systems). 

But to get to metagaming stuff. I wasn't paying close attention to that part of this conversation. If it is the sort of thing I am imagining it might be, I don't know,I don't care if people want to metagame in their games. 

As far as this thread goes though, I think the OP pretty much poisoned the discussion from the start.


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] what FATE setting were you interested in?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> And if you watch the series over multiple seasons, each season tries to top the last in order to keep going, but that tactic only stretches it out a few seasons and then the series dies a usually sudden death with either no ending, or a rushed and crappy ending.



You say this as if we should expect our RPGing to do better - whereas I would assert, any RPG group which can sustain fiction that has the same quality and engaging character as a three-seasion TV drama is one of the most impressive around! Very few people are capable of coming up with fiction as engaging as even second-tier professionally written material.



Maxperson said:


> That he has found people that enjoy ridiculous levels of drama doesn't mean that in general, ridiculous levels of drama are not sustainable.



Who does "he" refer to in this sentence?


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> In the last group I played, the party took a pause of rest in an ancient settlement built around a health-regenerating thermal pool, after an almost lethal fight against a giant monster in the haunted forest surrounding it.
> What I thought ought to be just a brief downtime, became soon a whole session of jokes, embarassing moments, relaxed roleplay, casual spent of money for "services" by the locals, all while having a day long regenerating bath.
> 
> Rinse. Repeat. Next session same thing. I already split from them earlier to follow an investigation in town on my own. I had my scene but nothing more happened. The others still having the rejuveneting bath.
> 
> Third session of bathing. I try to hire some guides to take me to the infamous settlement, the Gm fiddles for ages about costs, wages, timing, distance, preparation and takes me by exaustion. Nothing dramatic happens.
> 
> On the fourth session I roll a new Pc to be present in the settlement to hurry the party up and move on. Half a session later we are eventually out: one random encounter in the forest and the evening of play ends.
> 
> Then I quit the group, sadly.



This makes me feel sorry for you, but also impressed by your patience.

Were these (what I would think of as) typical sessions - 4 or so hours? In which case you're talking about 12+ hours of play in which _nothing happens_ but for a random encounter. Unbelievable!


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a GM-decides game - you can only do it in the detail the GM likes!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I would disagree with this. You can very much explore worlds in detail when the GM decides.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> there really isn't much a limit to how much detail you can go in, if the GM is seriously considering anything the players attempt.
Click to expand...


I'm not sure how you're disagreeing with me: I said that it is the _GM_, not the _player_, who determines the degree of detail in which the gameworld can be explored. And you seem to have just elaborated on that point.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> This makes me feel sorry for you, but also impressed by your patience.
> 
> Were these (what I would think of as) typical sessions - 4 or so hours? In which case you're talking about 12+ hours of play in which _nothing happens_ but for a random encounter. Unbelievable!



Yes. Even longer. Some RP, some casual chat with Npcs... 
 That's why I'm always complaining "We have a problem over here!"  (In my home town)
As I said my pc was on his own in a city doing his own thing. 
I invested so much time because we were supposed to play other games after that, and I thought was a matter of just getting on the same page, since we had long conversation about how we play before meeting in person. 
He knows and likes the same game I do.. but the importance of Gm as unique authority on content and keeper of realism, plausibility was really too strong in him. I didn't know how exactly to debate with him.

This thread helped me clarify things. Like a lecture on the subject.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> He knows and likes the same game I do.



From this thread I get the sense you know and like DitV and some PbtA games. What else?

(And what system was the bathing RPG using?)


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> From this thread I get the sense you know and like DitV and some PbtA games. What else?
> 
> (And what system was the bathing RPG using?)



The bathing system was Symbaroum, so more of a shame for its cool setting full of possible conflicts and stuff. 

We shared the interest for Gumshoe, Blades in the Dark, AW .... later on I understood he likes to tinker with games and make them his own thing, one true wayly


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> The bathing system was Symbaroum, so more of a shame for its cool setting full of possible conflicts and stuff.



This is the first time of heard of Symbaroum - I just Googled it and skimmed a rpg.net review.

I tend to be wary of RPGs where the main hook is _setting_, and (perhaps unfairly) your experience with this system is not changing that! If you've never read Ron Edwards' essay about setting in rpgs, you might find it interesting.


----------



## Numidius

In







Numidius said:


> The bathing system was Symbaroum, so more of a shame for its cool setting full of possible conflicts and stuff.
> 
> We shared the interest for Gumshoe, Blades in the Dark, AW .... later on I understood he likes to tinker with games and make them his own thing, one true wayly



I enjoyed a lot Marvel Heroic (Fantasy). 
Have an ages long barely ongoing campaign of Warhammer, from first to second ed, skipped third, maybe will continue with Zweihander. 
I'm collecting all printed stuff I can find of BW and Luke Crane in general. 
Have a love/hate affair with both D&D and Trollbabe by Edwards (also Elfs! So funny, long ago...) 
I know for sure one of my oldest friends still owns a copy of classic Traveller bought in the late 80's  

....


----------



## Numidius

Yes the system is a very skimmed down sort of d20, not bad btw. Lethal combat. But I really despise turn based, movement rated, grid-a-like combat. 

Char gen is fast and cool. The setting is small, realistic and different. The fluff for cities and locations is very playable from the get go. It had quite a good interest here in Italy. 

Thanks for the link. I probably read it many years ago... repetita juvant







pemerton said:


> This is the first time of heard of Symbaroum - I just Googled it and skimmed a rpg.net review.
> 
> I tend to be wary of RPGs where the main hook is _setting_, and (perhaps unfairly) your experience with this system is not changing that! If you've never read Ron Edwards' essay about setting in rpgs, you might find it interesting.


----------



## Numidius

Actually Symbaroum RAW says: backgrounds for Pc, as well with Goals for Pc and Party. 
The Gm did not allow neither of them... first warning of badwrongfun coming went unheard by me


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure how you're disagreeing with me: I said that it is the _GM_, not the _player_, who determines the degree of detail in which the gameworld can be explored. And you seem to have just elaborated on that point.




I was disagreeing with the "And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a GM-decides game". I have just been in too many games where the GM decides and the players are free to explore. I understand the argument you are making. i don't think it reflects the reality at a table like this. Now it might not be to your taste. But in a GM decides game, the players still play a significant role shaping the level of exploration detail. You are just limited, essentially in most cases, by doing so through your character. But within that constraint you are free to try anything you want. My personal experience of this, is it genuinely feels like I am exploring a real world in as much detail as possible.


----------



## Numidius

Marvel Heroic Fantasy, man, I have to tell you, liked it on paper, not so much at the table for a classic fantasy style rpg, but I found it excellent for a hex crawl, a kind of game that never inspired me before. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> That said, consider most things with a serialized format. Generally there are multiple points of dramatic conflict throughout a series. There will dramatic conflict that is the forefront of the episode. There will be dramatic conflict in the backdrop of the episode. (Usually A, B, and maybe C plots.) There will be dramatic conflict centered around lengthy character arcs. There will be dramatic conflict centered around narrative or story arcs. There will be dramatic conflict between characters. This drama will overlap, crisscross, and branch. Some storylines will naturally slow down in favor of other storylines. Over the long term, we are not looking at a plateau, but, rather, a mountain range containing peaks, valleys, and hills.



And this - a long-running TV series - is a far better point of comparison than a movie; and what you say here is quite right: the drama is a) going to have numerous sources and b) will rise and fall as it hits those peaks, valleys, hills and so forth.

All those sources of drama are, one hopes, present in a decently run/played RPG as well.  My point is that if they're all running full blast all the time without any valleys or lulls (which is how I more or less read/interpret [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's desires) then it's liable to lose its lustre after a while.  Same is true of a movie (which I here will use as a comparison): if it's nothing but high action and explosions from start to finish then to the majority of the audience it's most likely going to become tiresome partway through.

Without valleys and lulls there can't really be any peaks.  The peaks are what are (most often) remembered later, but the valleys are just as important both to set up the peaks and to provide a respite from them.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Sure. I think the people I play with enjoy our games too - certainly no one is forcing them to set aside every second Sunday afternoon and come along to our sessions.



I hope not, anyway. 

But even then, there's going to be some sessions that just work better than others, for one, some, or all of a whole variety of possible reasons.



> I suggest that your account of films is confusing cause and effect - it's not that films are time limited and hence show highlights; it's that films want to tell well-paced stories and hence show only selected events in the (notional) lives of their (fictional) subjects.



You say "selected events", I say "highlights", and I think we mean the same thing.



> Of course there are real-time films, like some of Andy Warhol's, but I find it hard to believe that more than a handful of people has ever watched all 5 hours of Warhol's Sleep.



Merely proving that corner cases exist in all arenas. 



> Good RPGing also involves management of pacing - not by retrospective editing (given the way RPG fiction is created) but by managing scene-framing and transitions. (Even if this is as simple as Moldvay Basic's _no play, only healing, happens between dungeon raids_.) I don't want to RPG doing the laundry, cleaning my character's teeth, or collecting wood for a campfire. I find managing resources rather tedious, and prefer RPGs where that's not really a consideration (this is one respect in which Traveller shows its age, design wise - your suggestion that you _have to_ do this suggest you don't have much familiarity with the many RPGs where that's not true).



Which comes right back to the thread topic: realism.  Is it realistic to think your PC archer ought to be keeping track of how many arrows she has left?  Yes.  Can this tracking become tedious?  Yes.  Is the associated tedium enough reason in itself to forego the tracking and lose the associated realism?  No.

Don't get me wrong - I don't want to roleplay doing the laundry either.  But I completely disagree with Moldvay's "no play between raids" mantra; what happens during downtime can be just as much fun as what happens in the field.



> I am interested in exploring characters, but that precisely requires generating situations that force choices in the way I've described.



Perhaps, perhaps not.  A character can be just as deeply explored through detailed in-character conversations and interactions with other PCs and-or NPCs even if these convrsations and-or interactions carry no "pressure" at all.



> And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a _GM-decides_ game - you can only do it in the detail the GM likes!



If I-as-player keep asking questions and drilling down into the details it's on the GM to have answers, whether they be prepped or made up on the fly.  And I will keep asking questions until I'm satisfied with the level of detail provided, which will always vary depending on the specific situation at hand.

To use your famous angel feather in the marketplace example: if I-as-player had the short-term goal of not leaving this marketplace until I'd found somethng that could help me sort out my brother, I'd probably be asking you-as-GM for (via having my PC wander around the whole market) a quick rundown of the type of wares of every vendor in the place other than those only selling basic food and drink.  From that rundown I (thinking as my PC) would come up with an idea of which vendors might have something that could suit my needs, and start interacting with those on a more detailed level until I found what I was after...assuming it was there to be found at all.



> In my experience, this means that the actual fiction produced by way of RPGing is less compelling, qua fiction, than that which is written by more professional authors with the opportunity to edit.
> 
> The fact that it is produced spontaneously by and for the participants goes a long way in overcoming this issue. In that sense, I see it as similar to making one's own music.



When read after the fact by an uninvolved third party, yes - the fiction produced by a typical RPG is very likely not going to be up to the standard of...well, anything, really; no matter how well the tale is written.   But most of the fun for the participants lies in the act of creating the fiction and seeing it develop, which as you say mitigates or even eliminates the quality issue.



> But in any event, the particpant-audience aspect seems rather orthogonal to the question of whether RPGs can't sustain drama.



I'm not sure it's that orthogonal.  It's far more dramatic and personal to be actually involved in something - be it acting in a stage play, playing a sport, playing an RPG - than it is to be a spectator to the same event.



> I've been running periodic RPG sessions for about 30 years without much interruption, so maybe close to a thousand in all; and haven't experienced the problem you hypothesie.



Either you've been beyond-the-bounds lucky or you're not seeing the valleys between the peaks.


----------



## Numidius

...or you just happen to finish the arrows if you botch a roll. Same realism


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I was disagreeing with the "And as far as exploring the gameworld, you can't do that in as much detail as you like, at least in a GM-decides game".



You misread me, then.

I said you can't do that in as much detail a _you_ like - it's in as much detail as _the GM_ likes. And then you went on, as far as I can tell, to elaborate on that point, by explaining how it is the GM who establishes what and how much detail is explored.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Marvel Heroic Fantasy, man, I have to tell you, liked it on paper, not so much at the table for a classic fantasy style rpg, but I found it excellent for a hex crawl, a kind of game that never inspired me before. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]



I've enjoyed it both for Marvel Superheroes (it's the only supers RPG I've ever played) and for fantasy - not hexcrawl, but rather pretty light-hearted "story now".


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> My point is that if they're all running full blast all the time without any valleys or lulls (which is how I more or less read/interpret  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's desires) then it's liable to lose its lustre after a while.



Hmm... I will leave  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to decide whether that is an accurate reading of his position. However, I think that most dramatic play described in these sort of games is less about "running full blast all the time" and more about simply running at all. This isn't necessarily about going "full blast," but it nevertheless propels the story/drama/characters forward. It's hardly a coincidence that the common narrative-based game principles of Say Yes or Roll the Dice, Fail Forward, and Success with Complications all share some overlapping desire to engender story propulsion. 

Unless you happen to be Michael Bay (or one of his acolytes), I would also not define explosions and high action as the sort of "dramatic content" that pemerton likely has in mind. This point should have been fairly clear given how pemerton uses _Casablanca_ as his reference and not _Rambo: First Blood Part 2_. IMHO, this is fundamental misunderstanding. Dramatic play is not necessarily about propagating nonstop, high action, rock 'em sock 'em combat. Instead, I would argue that it's generally about propagating situations in play that frame dramatic stakes for the characters.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> Hmm... I will leave  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to decide whether that is an accurate reading of his position. However, I think that most dramatic play described in these sort of games is less about "running full blast all the time" and more about simply running at all. This isn't necessarily about going "full blast," but it nevertheless propels the story/drama/characters forward. It's hardly a coincidence that the common narrative-based game principles of Say Yes or Roll the Dice, Fail Forward, and Success with Complications all share some overlapping desire to engender story propulsion.
> 
> Unless you happen to be Michael Bay (or one of his acolytes), I would also not define explosions and high action as the sort of "dramatic content" that pemerton likely has in mind. This point should have been fairly clear given how pemerton uses _Casablanca_ as his reference and not _Rambo: First Blood Part 2_. IMHO, this is fundamental misunderstanding. Dramatic play is not necessarily about propagating nonstop, high action, rock 'em sock 'em combat. Instead, I would argue that it's generally about propagating situations in play that frame dramatic stakes for the characters.



Of course.  I used the high-action example as something obvious and easy to grok, that many of us will be familiar with.  But all-high-drama-all-the-time can have the same numbing effect. (and maybe that's why I've never made it through watching Casablanca  )


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> You misread me, then.
> 
> I said you can't do that in as much detail a _you_ like - it's in as much detail as _the GM_ likes. And then you went on, as far as I can tell, to elaborate on that point, by explaining how it is the GM who establishes what and how much detail is explored.




I understood what you said. I just didn't agree.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Eh.  In the game, if a player declares they're looking for something somewhere, then it introduces the possibility it is there, which is not something that happens in real life at all.  Now you either have a "say yes" moment, where the player is right (not the real world), or you use a mechanic to determine if the player is right or not or it's complicated (not the real world), or you rely on the GM to make the call as if the player is right, wrong, or complicated (again, not the real world).




What is key here is that, from the character's in-game perspective (imaginary perspective, but we can still describe it) ALL OF THESE ARE THE SAME. In all cases the item either is or is not where they look. It is impossible to tell from a narrative written from their perspective what rules and processes were being used by the game participants to adjudicate this was/wasn't there. 

So, there is no issue of 'realism' here! Any desire to create some sort of verisimilitude with respect to the overall pattern of things which happen to the PC is a separate issue. That could be a concern for the players, and if it is, then in a game where the players have the power to make choices which are going to lead to new fiction, then they should do so in a way which pleases them! I would note that simply because the GM decides doesn't lead automatically to anything more pleasing to the players in this regard than if the players decide, or dice decide, or some other process decides.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - I've got a lot of actual play reports on these boards, so they would give a pretty good idea of what I have in mind by drama/excitement/thematic choice.

Over the past 6 to 12 months the two campaigns I've played the most have been Prince Valiant and Classic Traveller.

In Prince Valiant the drama is often social as much as physical adventure - whom to befriend, whom to snub, whom to woo.

In Traveller the drama can be social/political, but more often is sci-fi adventure/thriller. In Sunday's session, the players (as their PCs) had to make choices that include: (i) how to deal with arms smugglers they encountered in orbit, while engaging in their own undercover activity; (ii) whether to break into an installation they were spying on; (iii) what to do when pursued after deciding not to enter the installation (that pursuit was a direct consequence of the decision they made at (i)); (iv) how to handle being interrogated, once they surrendered; (v) in one case, whether or not to "go kinetic" and try to escape from captivity by overpowering a guard; (vi) having chosen to go kinetic, and having stolen a suit of battle dress, how to deal with the enemies in the base and the consequences of blowing some of them up with a plasma gun.

Some of the choices - especially at (iv) - reflected social and political allegiances, but at a fairly supericial level. It's not a thematically deep game in that sense.

What makes me contrast it with a game about _going to the library_ or _starting a trade_ or _trying to ingratiate oneself with nobles_ is that, at more-or-less every moment of play, the players _have_ to make a choice whose consequences - while not entirely forseeable - will clearly matter to how the fiction unfolds, both for their PCs and for the setting that the PCs are embedded in. (Eg the choices have implications for what the players anticipate to be a pending Imperial assault of at least some parts of the world they are currently on.)

And the converse of that is that there's basically no moment in play where the principle focus of activity is the players learning more from the GM about the contents or parameters of the setting. The few times when that happened (eg in clarifying some of the details concerning equipment; or in clarifying some points of geography) it was ancillary and in service of the real action.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] what FATE setting were you interested in?




Tianxia (which I ended up getting anyways for the setting material and other flavor).


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> Tianxia (which I ended up getting anyways for the setting material and other flavor).



Ah, for the wuxia game of yours, I guess, using Savage Worlds, right?


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Sometimes. Not always. And certaintly not a universal rule or maxim. We are easily swimming in examples where this is not the case. This is also ignoring how some series have preset lengths. E.g., Babylon 5 was planned for five seasons, though the narrative structure had a major hiccup due to TNT. Avatar the Last Airbender was planned for three seasons: Book 1, Water; Book 2, Earth; Book 3, Fire.




I did forget pre-planned shorter series that avoid the issue via planning.



> Calling it a False Equivalence doesn't make it so. This is generally how D&D uses monsters for artifically escalating drama -- at least through the common D&D lens of equating dramatic moments to PCs overcoming challenging foes -- to the point where you eventually fight demon princes and gods or become ones yourself. And drama in a number of fantasy/sci-fi series often likewise involves escalating foes. This is even one reason why people wanted something akin to "bounded accuracy" so that lower-tiered monsters of the week would remain dramatically relevant in later gameplay.




And yet it still is a False Equivalence.  Monster difficulty isn't about trying to outdo the last monster.  



> Shows regularly die regardless of their dramatic content for a variety of reasons (production costs, ratings, network marketing and rebranding, actors, writer fatigue, etc.) so that is a red herring. How many episodes does Bold and the Beautiful have?




Yes, your Red Herring here is in fact red.  Kind of you to notice and call it out like that.  Yes, there are other ways that a show could end before getting to the point where it drowns in its own drama.



> How many episodes did the original CSI have? Or how about Law & Order? Or how about Doctor Who?




Crime shows are different and Dr. Who is more of a comedy than it is a drama.  But okay, there are some exceptions to the rule.  They don't invalidate the rule.



> Maxperson: Lanefan is saying uniequivocally that the dramatic-drive play that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others describe is unsustainable for 100+ sessions. This is demonstrably false. Your defending of this falsehood seems rooted more in a desire to bicker and win points than to ascertain the truth of the proposition. I sometimes think that if I casually said that the earth was round, you would go out of your way to become a flat earther. If you are interested in the truth of things, then why would you defend Lanefan's assertion here if you know this to be false? (Pemerton's chronicled story now sessions are hardly esoteric gnosis. And he is hardly alone in long campaigns in story now games.) Is this really an argument you want to be making with any shred of good faith?




I'm not defending him at all, which is why you find a lack of "I think Lanefan is right" and the like in my post.  I think you can do 100+ or more just fine.  You just have to find people who enjoy that sort of thing.  Me, I find that sort of incessant drama to be ridiculously unrealistic.


----------



## Manbearcat

Lanefan said:


> Which comes right back to the thread topic: realism.  Is it realistic to think your PC archer ought to be keeping track of how many arrows she has left?  Yes.  Can this tracking become tedious?  Yes.  Is the associated tedium enough reason in itself to forego the tracking and lose the associated realism?  No.




All of this depends heavily on the conceits/themes, win conditions, and game mechanics what game you're playing.  

*Dungeon World*, frex, keeps track of the following very important resources:

Hit Points
Rations
Ammo
Adventuring Gear
Bandages
Poultices and Herbs
Bags of Books

(There are others, but these are the primary ones)

Is it tedious?  No.  Its extremely low overhead and minimal handling time because the numbers are small (eg 5 Ammo is a full quiver)

These also hook into a trivially easy to use Encumbrance (which is again, a small and easy to account number).

Is it realistic?  Thresholds differ here, but my guess is you would say no, because the accounting/expenditure (and even type; Adventuring Gear can be anything from a Torch to Flint and Steel to a Rope) is abstract.

But all of this is integrated elegantly and holistically in the game because moves (all of player moves, player choices on costs on a 7-9, and GM moves in response) taxing these resources is a fundamental part of the changing gamestate and the attendant tension and choicepoints for the players as the fiction snowballs down the hill and threat/danger builds (and decision-points become more weighty).

Contrast with standard D&D where the numbers and accounting for gear and encumbrance are extremely tedious and you spend too much table time and mental overhead on these things...and overwhelmingly groups just elide them haphazardly or handwave them altogether.  Groups whose play priorities actually connote a need for such accounting as an important facet of play!

And contrast all of this with *Torchbearer* , which is a grinding, grueling dungeon crawl game (in a Points of Light setting) where logistics and strategic management of resources and exploration turns is more brutal and punishing (but rewarding) than any D&D game...EVER.

Ammo in your Quiver isn't tracked at all!  But it can be lost or complicated via a Twist (which can happen as a result of a failed test).

However, Light is preciously tracked for all light sources (as number of Turns) because the game demands it (as managing the "Light Clock" is one of the primary pillars of play).



Lanefan said:


> Don't get me wrong - I don't want to roleplay doing the laundry either.  But I completely disagree with Moldvay's "no play between raids" mantra; what happens during downtime can be just as much fun as what happens in the field.




It can be.

*Torchbearer *and *Blades in the Dark* are structured almost exactly the same way.

Blades has _Free Play, Score,_ and _Downtime_ with Free Play being the time where you're scoping out potential scores and sorting out strategic moves.

TB has_ Adventure, Camp_, and _Town _(and Winter as a special phase) whereby Town is basically a combination of Blades Free Play and Downtime where you're scoping out potential Adventure, recovering, and regear-ing.

But I think its probably different than what you're intimating because Free Play and Downtime/Town are all "purposeful", "purposeful" here meaning they are all "gamestate relative."  You're not taking baths for hours in real time (like [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] intimated in the game he suffered through).  If you're taking a bath its to (a) recover, (b) indulge a vice (also recover), (c) perform reconnaissance, (d) attain some gear/illicit goods from a front operation, (e) deal with a problem in a mostly elided vignette (that has mechanical resolution and significant mechanical implications involved).  

You aren't just taking a gamestate irrelevant bath because of bath and funny bath-jokes or make light of pranks/antics/mishaps that occurred on the last journey.  Those jokes may, and likely will, take place incidentally in the course of play...but Free Play/Town/Downtime isn't devoting any time (let alone hours) specifically to that as a matter of course/intentional play conversation.

Games like 4e and Cortex+ ...they don't focus on that minutiae at all.  Not because its impossible to make those things low overhead (as DW, TB, and Blades demonstrate...encumbrance/load-out and gear can be relevant and easily handled without a ton of handling time and mental overhead).  It doesn't focus on them because the games are entirely about Action Scenes that hook into theme/premise and hard Transitions.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Ah, for the wuxia game of yours, I guess, using Savage Worlds, right?




I use my own system for it. It is built around Kung Fu technique abilities


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> ...or you just happen to finish the arrows if you botch a roll. Same realism




It's not the same realism.  Your way you have essentially a full quiver until it's suddenly empty.  His way the arrows count down slowly until you are mid way, then low, then on your last arrow and you know you have to make it count.  It's much more realistic his way.


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> All of this depends heavily on the conceits/themes, win conditions, and game mechanics what game you're playing.
> 
> *Dungeon World*, frex, keeps track of the following very important resources:
> 
> Hit Points
> Rations
> Ammo
> Adventuring Gear
> Bandages
> Poultices and Herbs
> Bags of Books
> 
> (There are others, but these are the primary ones)
> 
> Is it tedious?  No.  Its extremely low overhead and minimal handling time because the numbers are small (eg 5 Ammo is a full quiver)



Is this Ammo expended one per shot (thus you only get 5 shots before you run out) or is it 1 Ammo per combat/encounter no matter how many actual shots are taken?

Either way, at least it's an attempt. 



> These also hook into a trivially easy to use Encumbrance (which is again, a small and easy to account number).



Yeah, I'll willingly concede encumbrance is a bloody nuisance to track.  Devices of Holding soon become everybody's best friend. 



> Is it realistic?  Thresholds differ here, but my guess is you would say no, because the accounting/expenditure (and even type; Adventuring Gear can be anything from a Torch to Flint and Steel to a Rope) is abstract.



It's a start, but were it me I'd certainly want to break down Adventuring Gear into some component parts.  For example, say some mishap causes your Adventuring Gear to get damaged somehow - how do you determine what you still have?



> But all of this is integrated elegantly and holistically in the game because moves (all of player moves, player choices on costs on a 7-9, and GM moves in response) taxing these resources is a fundamental part of the changing gamestate and the attendant tension and choicepoints for the players as the fiction snowballs down the hill and threat/danger builds (and decision-points become more weighty).



This puts a lot of onus onto the players to not game the system, I think, with PCs who just always happen to have exactly what they need when they need it when what they need is some otherwise obscure piece of gear that might otherwise never see the light of day.  Cool if you can pull it off.  It'd never fly here. 



> Contrast with standard D&D where the numbers and accounting for gear and encumbrance are extremely tedious and you spend too much table time and mental overhead on these things...and overwhelmingly groups just elide them haphazardly or handwave them altogether.  Groups whose play priorities actually connote a need for such accounting as an important facet of play!



Agreed.  Some things (ammo, food and water, weapons and armour carried/worn) are certainly more important to track than others; and the importance diminishes overall as levels and wealth get higher.  For example, at very low levels in D&D light sources need to be carefully tracked be it spell duration, burn time on a torch, amount of oil left for the lantern, whatever.  But once the PCs get access to Continual Light or Everburning Candles or whatever this tracking can largely disappear except in unusual circumstances e.g. operating in a no-magic zone.



> And contrast all of this with *Torchbearer* , which is a grinding, grueling dungeon crawl game (in a Points of Light setting) where logistics and strategic management of resources and exploration turns is more brutal and punishing (but rewarding) than any D&D game...EVER.
> 
> Ammo in your Quiver isn't tracked at all!  But it can be lost or complicated via a Twist (which can happen as a result of a failed test).
> 
> However, Light is preciously tracked for all light sources (as number of Turns) because the game demands it (as managing the "Light Clock" is one of the primary pillars of play).



I'll have to give this system a look if it ever crosses my path. 



> It can be.
> 
> *Torchbearer *and *Blades in the Dark* are structured almost exactly the same way.
> 
> Blades has _Free Play, Score,_ and _Downtime_ with Free Play being the time where you're scoping out potential scores and sorting out strategic moves.
> 
> TB has_ Adventure, Camp_, and _Town _(and Winter as a special phase) whereby Town is basically a combination of Blades Free Play and Downtime where you're scoping out potential Adventure, recovering, and regear-ing.
> 
> But I think its probably different than what you're intimating because Free Play and Downtime/Town are all "purposeful", "purposeful" here meaning they are all "gamestate relative."



Yes.  I'm referring to small-d unstructured downtime I guess, where you're referring to big-D Downtime as a specific facet of play.



> You're not taking baths for hours in real time (like [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] intimated in the game he suffered through).  If you're taking a bath its to (a) recover, (b) indulge a vice (also recover), (c) perform reconnaissance, (d) attain some gear/illicit goods from a front operation, (e) deal with a problem in a mostly elided vignette (that has mechanical resolution and significant mechanical implications involved).
> 
> You aren't just taking a gamestate irrelevant bath because of bath and funny bath-jokes or make light of pranks/antics/mishaps that occurred on the last journey.  Those jokes may, and likely will, take place incidentally in the course of play...but Free Play/Town/Downtime isn't devoting any time (let alone hours) specifically to that as a matter of course/intentional play conversation.



Numidius' tale was over the top for sure, but what would big-D Downtime have to say about the session I played in a few weeks ago (which I think I referenced upthread) where most of it was taken up with story-irrelevant role-play surrounding a castle being painted pink*?

I guess I'm saying that not everything has to tie in to the ongoing story or drama or what-have-you, as long as we're having fun.

* - this was a completely player-driven sequence, by the way - the DM had nothing to do with its planning, execution, or fallout other than (because it was done covertly) neutrally narrating the results.





> Games like 4e and Cortex+ ...they don't focus on that minutiae at all.  Not because its impossible to make those things low overhead (as DW, TB, and Blades demonstrate...encumbrance/load-out and gear can be relevant and easily handled without a ton of handling time and mental overhead).  It doesn't focus on them because the games are entirely about Action Scenes that hook into theme/premise and hard Transitions.



Which probably at least in part explains why 4e as a system tended to rub me the wrong way.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> It's not the same realism.  Your way you have essentially a full quiver until it's suddenly empty.  His way the arrows count down slowly until you are mid way, then low, then on your last arrow and you know you have to make it count.  It's much more realistic his way.



You haven't yet clearly defined realism, Max, so no one knows what you mean, here.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> And yet it still is a False Equivalence.  Monster difficulty isn't about trying to outdo the last monster.



I do not believe that false equivalence applies here. But even if it were a false equivalence that does not make it a false or baseless comparison. I do believe that the nature of monsters (and their associated difficulty) is at least partly about outdoing previous encounters through having level-appropriate challenges for the party. Though not a sole authority, even Matt Collville, who I would say represents fairly traditional D&D play, notes how D&D generally follows a level-based sliding scale where players fight less interesting things at lower level but then fight progressively weirder, bigger badder extraplanar things at higher levels. If this was a television show, then each tier (or subtier) of D&D would most definitely be accused by audiences of attempting to outdo the previous seasons with more farfetched creatures for its foes and lower level foes who once posed problems now being portrayed as cannon fodder. 



> Yes, there are other ways that a show could end before getting to the point where it drowns in its own drama.



The point being that "unsustainable drama" is generally not one of the most commonly listed reasons for most cancellations, so I don't think that we can say with confidence that this is why dramas are routinely cancelled. My own inclination is to approach that particular topic from a perspective critical of its capitalistic context and surrounding market forces, though YMMV. 



> Crime shows are different and Dr. Who is more of a comedy than it is a drama.  But okay, there are some exceptions to the rule.  They don't invalidate the rule.



When you are done quibbling with labels of genre, please note that the point is that these are shows driven by dramatic characters who are placed into dramatic situations that typically require they make dramatic choices. Whether we call this a "drama" or not is immaterial to whether this is apt for describing the nature of the dramatic play that we are discussing. 



Lanefan said:


> Of course.  I used the high-action example as something obvious and easy to grok, that many of us will be familiar with.  *But all-high-drama-all-the-time* can have the same numbing effect. (and maybe that's why I've never made it through watching Casablanca  )



Sure, but that may be a bit of a strawman. Again, I would say that most of these drama-conducive games are about story propulsion and their dramatic framing. The idea within many of these games is that the stakes of dramatic choice remain clear for players in the framing of the fiction and that these player choices will propel the narrative into a new set of dramatic frames where the process will (hopefully) repeat itself. And this will be made up of "small" dramatic decisions and larger ones. 

For example, a cleric gaining a complicated success in Dungeon World (an adjusted 7-9) when casting a spell will force the player to choose the resulting dramatic complication: (1) your action draws unwanted attention (DM tells you what), (2) your spell distances you from your deity, resulting in a -1 ongoing penalty to spells until you commune, or (3) the spell is revoked by your deity and you can't cast that spell again until you commune. This is not "high drama" but it will have dramatic consequences in the fiction. And the player may believe putting themselves into harm's way (1) may be more important than the risk of adverse effects on their spellcasting. Small stakes informed by and that can build up to bigger stakes of drama. 



pemerton said:


> [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - I've got a lot of actual play reports on these boards, so they would give a pretty good idea of what I have in mind by drama/excitement/thematic choice.



Of course, but I also don't necessarily regard it as my place to presume speaking for your position here.  



> What makes me contrast it with a game about _going to the library_ or _starting a trade_ or _trying to ingratiate oneself with nobles_ is that, at more-or-less every moment of play, the players _have_ to make a choice whose consequences - while not entirely forseeable - will clearly matter to how the fiction unfolds, both for their PCs and for the setting that the PCs are embedded in. (Eg the choices have implications for what the players anticipate to be a pending Imperial assault of at least some parts of the world they are currently on.)



Which ties in nicely about how much of this play is fueled by dramatic framing and personal stakes in the fiction. 



Lanefan said:


> Which comes right back to the thread topic: realism.  Is it realistic to think your PC archer ought to be keeping track of how many arrows she has left?  Yes.  Can this tracking become tedious?  Yes.  Is the associated tedium enough reason in itself to forego the tracking and lose the associated realism?  No.



Much like  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] says, a lot of this depends on play priorities. 

The Black Hack, for example, is one of several OSR games that utilizes a Usage Die mechanic for tracking ammo, rations, torches, etc. A Usage Die is an assigned die value that abstractly represents the amount of a thing you may have (d12, d10, d8, d6, d4). After using an item type, the player rolls their usage die. If they roll a 1-2 on the die, then the die downgrades to a lower die value (e.g., d12 -> d10, d8 -> d6, etc.). When a player finally rolls a 1-2 on a d4 then they are "out." Notably, the Usage Die for ammo is rolled after combat and not per attack action. 

This is of course more abstract than concrete numbers, but it can also simulate its own fictional coherence. Maybe not all of your torches you bought are actually good working torches. Maybe a portion of your rations spoiled in the dungeon. Just because you bought 12 days of rations does not mean that all of your rations would naturally keep well in a warm, moist, moldy place. Does each attack action with a bow represent a single arrow or is the fiction more complicated? Or do all of your arrows remain intact through your dungeoneering? Legolas may know that they have enough arrows for fighting the next group of orcs they encounter (a d4 UD), but what about the fight after that? Overall, these are facets that are typically not given much attention even in the standard resource management game. So the resource management game of Black Hack shifts from "the tedium of tracking" to gambling on using your resources. Much like with  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s Dungeon World and Torchbearer examples, Black Hack has a different set of play priorities for its old school dungeoneering sensibilities. 



Lanefan said:


> I'll have to give this system a look if it ever crosses my path.



Torchbearer was actually the primary inspiration and influence on the hit indie video game Darkest Dungeon.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> It's not the same realism.  Your way you have essentially a full quiver until it's suddenly empty.  His way the arrows count down slowly until you are mid way, then low, then on your last arrow and you know you have to make it count.  It's much more realistic his way.



Sure, I get that, and I've seen the game (Dw or else) tightens when resources are nearly gone, be they arrows or hp. 

Now, though, I wonder if you simulate also which of those arrows are still intact after being thrown


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> The Black Hack, for example, is one of several OSR games that utilizes a Usage Die mechanic for tracking ammo, rations, torches, etc. A Usage Die is an assigned die value that abstractly represents the amount of a thing you may have (d12, d10, d8, d6, d4). After using an item type, the player rolls their usage die. If they roll a 1-2 on the die, then the die downgrades to a lower die value (e.g., d12 -> d10, d8 -> d6, etc.). When a player finally rolls a 1-2 on a d4 then they are "out."




Thank you, I'm stealing this.


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> Is this Ammo expended one per shot (thus you only get 5 shots before you run out) or is it 1 Ammo per combat/encounter no matter how many actual shots are taken?
> 
> Either way, at least it's an attempt.
> 
> 
> Yes.  I'm referring to small-d unstructured downtime I guess, where you're referring to big-D Downtime as a specific facet of play.
> 
> Numidius' tale was over the top for sure, but what would big-D Downtime have to say about the session I played in a few weeks ago (which I think I referenced upthread) where most of it was taken up with story-irrelevant role-play surrounding a castle being painted pink*?
> 
> I guess I'm saying that not everything has to tie in to the ongoing story or drama or what-have-you, as long as we're having fun.
> 
> * - this was a completely player-driven sequence, by the way - the DM had nothing to do with its planning, execution, or fallout other than (because it was done covertly) neutrally narrating the results.




Ammo in Dw is basically accounted as the number of times a Pc can fail a roll, or suffer a consequence from a failed roll, before it is gone. Clearly anytime is possible in the fiction,  one replenishes it. 

--

Torchbearer is a strange beast. I found it difficult to grasp, and when I tried to explain it to the table... well, I failed  

--

The pattern seems pretty clear: Gm-driven play and pc-driven downtime; heavy regulated combat and (almost) completely deregulated downtime; intense combat oriented play under Gm control and loose free time Pc playground


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Thank you, I'm stealing this.



Keep in mind that even David Black, the eponymous creator of Black Hack, cautions about using the Usage Die mechanic for your games. 

I will likely tweak it slightly for my own use where rolling a 1-2 result on your d4 not result in you being "out," but, rather, on your last use so the PC can still decide when to use the last arrow, ration, torch, etc. But this really just changes the fiction of the UD from "determining when you are out" to "determining when you reach your final use." Though for some things, like spell charges in wands, I may still use UD as a determinate for when you are out.

Edit: And a high quality item may confer advantage on these rolls. While a low quality item - that you may find on dungeon denizens - may confer disadvantage on these rolls.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> The idea within many of these games is that the stakes of dramatic choice remain clear for players in the framing of the fiction and that these player choices will propel the narrative into a new set of dramatic frames where the process will (hopefully) repeat itself. And this will be made up of "small" dramatic decisions and larger ones.



I think the account of the action of my Traveller session falls pretty well under this description. 



Aldarc said:


> Maybe not all of your torches you bought are actually good working torches. Maybe a portion of your rations spoiled in the dungeon. Just because you bought 12 days of rations does not mean that all of your rations would naturally keep well in a warm, moist, moldy place. Does each attack action with a bow represent a single arrow or is the fiction more complicated? Or do all of your arrows remain intact through your dungeoneering?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Overall, these are facets that are typically not given much attention even in the standard resource management game.



This is why I don't agree with    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] that D&D-style resource tracking is more realistic. That degree of rational control over one's resources is unrealistic even for a modern bureaucracy, let alone the notional fiction of a typical fantasy RPG.

I was also struck by the irony of this:



Lanefan said:


> Yeah, I'll willingly concede encumbrance is a bloody nuisance to track.  Devices of Holding soon become everybody's best friend.



D&D is full of elements whose principle function is to circumvent what would otherwise - at least notionally - be an element of play: quivers of endless arrows, bags of holding, continual light spells, Magnificent Mansions, etc. And typically these are gated behind levels in some fashion (either directly for spells, or indirectly for magic items).

If tracking encumbrance is boring, then why make it (pseudo-)mandatory for the first N levels of each campaign before dropping it?

Or if choosing when to rest is meant to be an exciting, skill-testing element of play, then why introduce a game element which means, from level N onwards, it ceases to be part of the game? (How many 5e threads have I read about Rope Trick or Tiny Hut breaking the encounters-per-day paradigm of that system?)

These are _games_. Their contents are (or ought to be) driven by considerations of what makes for good game play: there's no obligation of reason or morality that requires them to have Magnificent Mansion spells, or encumbrance tracking, or whatever. "Eating one's vegetables" might build character in real life, but there's no need for it to be part of game design.


----------



## pemerton

On "ridiculous levels of drama that are unrleasltic" -  the suggestion is nonsense, and upthread I already explained why.

How much drama occurs in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game? Let's call it D.

How much ingame time passes per unit of such drama? Let's call it T.

Taking it as a premise that the _drama denstiy per unit time_ in Maxperson's game is realisitc - so now we know that a drama-density-per-unit-time of D/T is realistic.

Now let's call the amount of _real-world time_ spent playing P. Suppose I spend a greater amount of real-world time on dramatic stuff than Maxperson does. I can do that, while maintaining the ratio D/T. All I have to do, if I'm increasing D, is to similarly step up T. Which I can do, by simply increasing the value of T relative to P: that is, cover more ingame time per amount of real-world time.

 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seem to proceed on the assumption that the ratio of T to P is fixed in some fashion, but that assumption is baseless. For instance, in my Prince Valiant game months or even seasons pass between sessions. In my Cortex+ Heroic game, seasons pass, travel takes indeterminate amounts of time, etc.

Traveller's mechanics call for tighter time tracking (it's more "old school" in that way), but time passes at an average of around 3 weeks per session.

So as I said, this whole idea . . .



Maxperson said:


> I find that sort of incessant drama to be ridiculously unrealistic.



 . . . is nonsense, because from the density of drama per unit of time spent playing, absolutely _nothing_ can be inferred about the density of drama per unit of ingame time (ie the D/T ratio), and hence nothing can be inferred about realism.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I do not believe that false equivalence applies here. But even if it were a false equivalence that does not make it a false or baseless comparison. I do believe that the nature of monsters (and their associated difficulty) is at least partly about outdoing previous encounters through having level-appropriate challenges for the party. Though not a sole authority, even Matt Collville, who I would say represents fairly traditional D&D play, notes how D&D generally follows a level-based sliding scale where players fight less interesting things at lower level but then fight progressively weirder, bigger badder extraplanar things at higher levels. If this was a television show, then each tier (or subtier) of D&D would most definitely be accused by audiences of attempting to outdo the previous seasons with more farfetched creatures for its foes and lower level foes who once posed problems now being portrayed as cannon fodder.




The increase in monster difficulty isn't about outdoing prior levels, or even tiers.  That's not the goal, unlike with a drama series where if you don't outdo the prior season you lose ratings.  It just doesn't make sense for a demon lord to be as easy to kill as a goblin, or a troll to be as easy to kill as an orc.  Being level based is just to give the players a sense of progression, and there are monsters from lore that fall all over the spectrum of power, so they are used to challenge PCs at various levels.  "Outdoing" prior levels is incidental, not the purpose. 



> The point being that "unsustainable drama" is generally not one of the most commonly listed reasons for most cancellations, so I don't think that we can say with confidence that this is why dramas are routinely cancelled. My own inclination is to approach that particular topic from a perspective critical of its capitalistic context and surrounding market forces, though YMMV.




The reason given is loss of viewership, which is directly caused by the unsustainability of drama.  When you have to keep topping yourself, you are eventually going to tip past the point of the audience's ability to suspend disbelief and they will tune into other shows.  Similarly, if you do not keep topping the prior season's drama level, the show stagnates and you lose viewership.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Sure, I get that, and I've seen the game (Dw or else) tightens when resources are nearly gone, be they arrows or hp.
> 
> Now, though, I wonder if you simulate also which of those arrows are still intact after being thrown




Egads!  If you're throwing arrows you might as well not even have them! 

Serious answer.  In those games where the DM has had us track ammo, and only about half of the DMs I've played with do, yes we check to see which arrows break and which don't.  I also save the arrowheads and fletching if possible from the broken arrows just in case I need to try and make more arrows later.


----------



## pemerton

Further to my post just upthread about resource tracking, there's this weird dynamic: Gygax and crew are developing their game, evolving their play processes as they go - _encumbrance getting boring for someone? introduce the Bag of Holding_ - but then that same sequence of _game design and improvisation_ is built into everyone's D&D play experience as if _that's what it means to play D&D_.

It's like playing D&D has to be a cargo-cult homage to the experience of designing D&D.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> The increase in monster difficulty isn't about outdoing prior levels, or even tiers.  That's not the goal, unlike with a drama series where if you don't outdo the prior season you lose ratings.  It just doesn't make sense for a demon lord to be as easy to kill as a goblin, or a troll to be as easy to kill as an orc.  Being level based is just to give the players a sense of progression, and there are monsters from lore that fall all over the spectrum of power, so they are used to challenge PCs at various levels.  "Outdoing" prior levels is incidental, not the purpose.



I think you are turning a blind eye to the degree of overlap. 



> The reason given is loss of viewership, which is directly caused by the unsustainability of drama.



Correlation is not causation. And you would need to prove a causal relationship here between the loss of viewership and the dramatic output, which you have not yet done at all. Need I remind you? 


Maxperson said:


> In your opinion.  You shouldn't be presenting your opinion as if it were fact, because it's not.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It's like playing D&D has to be a cargo-cult homage to the experience of designing D&D.




You keep projecting these pejorative onto peoples’ Preferences. Is it any wonder they don’t embrace your ideas? 

I think this is a caricature of the real thing. What a lot of people in the OSR are doing us simply saying don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. But if you look at what folks are doing they are finding the stuff that works well for them and using it. Lots of people ignore the things they don’t like. And there is another group of players interested in the original experience they had playing, so they go back to the old books (or just keep using them because they have never stopped). There is nothing wrong with that. Like I said, I don’t really play much D&D anymore but I don’t think that makes me better than people who do, or people who like stuff like bag of holding or encumbrance. How they evolved isn’t as important as whether people find them fun to use.


----------



## Numidius

Aldarc said:


> I do believe that the nature of monsters (and their associated difficulty) is at least partly about outdoing previous encounters through having level-appropriate challenges for the party. Though not a sole authority, even Matt Collville, who I would say represents fairly traditional D&D play, notes how D&D generally follows a level-based sliding scale where players fight less interesting things at lower level but then fight progressively weirder, bigger badder extraplanar things at higher levels. If this was a television show, then each tier (or subtier) of D&D would most definitely be accused by audiences of attempting to outdo the previous seasons with more farfetched creatures for its foes and lower level foes who once posed problems now being portrayed as cannon fodder.




See also: Dragonball series


----------



## Aldarc

Numidius said:


> See also: Dragonball series



With no small measure of irony, I will note that had I cut out of my original drafting of this post a season by season list of how this played out in Dragonball Z.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> It's like playing D&D has to be a cargo-cult homage to the experience of designing D&D.




See also: Phylogeny and Ontogeny of D&D


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Egads!  If you're throwing arrows you might as well not even have them!




 Right

I don't always throw my arrows, but, when do, I keep track of them.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> This is why I don't agree with   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] that D&D-style resource tracking is more realistic. That degree of rational control over one's resources is unrealistic even for a modern bureaucracy, let alone the notional fiction of a typical fantasy RPG.



To  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s credit, I believe that he does attempt to account for this, at least along some axes of play. He has alluded to the destruction of resources and spellbooks caused by AoE spells. But these are part of his own house rules rather than a representation of RAW. 



pemerton said:


> I was also struck by the irony of this:
> 
> D&D is full of elements whose principle function is to circumvent what would otherwise - at least notionally - be an element of play:
> 
> If tracking encumbrance is boring, then why make it (pseudo-)mandatory for the first N levels of each campaign before dropping it?



I agree. I'm not the biggest fan of these magical work-arounds for this reason. It is definitely interesting how so many "classic" magical items or spells were likely created for the sole purpose of the players and GM to circumvent the resource management mini-game.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Aldarc said:


> To  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s credit, I believe that he does attempt to account for this, at least along some axes of play. He has alluded to the destruction of resources and spellbooks caused by AoE spells. But these are part of his own house rules rather than a representation of RAW.
> 
> I agree. I'm not the biggest fan of these magical work-arounds for this reason. It is definitely interesting how so many "classic" magical items or spells were likely created for the sole purpose of the players and GM to circumvent the resource management mini-game.




Yeah, I agree. As time has gone on, I've looked at those kinds of elements over the years and thought about the value of introducing some kind of complication (carrying capacity/encumbrance) which was mostly annoying to track and manage, and then introducing a solution to the problem in the form of a magic item. It just seems annoying, and then the resolution of the problem comes from some external boon from the DM anyway, so it's not even like a limitation that the PCs work to overcome.  

I decided a long time ago to simply remove the carrying capacity/encumbrance rules as they were, and simply allow people to carry whatever they wanted, and apply only a kind of "common sense" limit to the items. 

Then, when players would invariably try to "add" an item to their character's inventory when that item proved to be needed in play, I just started allowing it. Why wouldn't they have a rope? Would it be better for play to deny them the rope? Probably not. 

Then when games started tinkering with the idea of inventory slots, or load, it was just a more formalized method of what my group had already started doing. 

Thinking about the different sides of the discussion, I think this kind of captures a big part of the divide. So many folks have tweaked D&D to make it do what they want to avoid these kinds of "fiddly" or otherwise boring (for them) mechanics. But they're just used to this because it's been something they've kind of done over time, and it's more like a house rule which maybe makes it less real or official in some way, maybe? 

But if you formalize it and put it in the rules from the start, it seems odd because it basically immediately does what most are used to doing themselves over time, with all manner of minor justifications along the way. 

Just a thought.


----------



## chaochou

Bedrockgames said:


> You keep projecting these pejorative onto peoples’ Preferences.




Well, then. Why don't you react when people's play gets called 'ridiculously unrealistic' completely without foundation.

Your sense of the perjorative is utterly one-sided and one-eyed.


----------



## Bedrockgames

chaochou said:


> Well, then. Why don't you react when people's play gets called 'ridiculously unrealistic' completely without foundation.
> 
> Your sense of the perjorative is utterly one-sided and one-eyed.




If you point out this post, I am happy to react. I don't read every post on a given thread. I read mainly the posts that are responses to my own or ones that catch my eye. I simply don't have the time to follow every response. I've tried to be clear that I don't think there is anything wrong with these other types of play. I am just trying to put forward what I like. But I don't see you reacting to the pejoratives used by your side of the debate either.


----------



## chaochou

Bedrockgames said:


> But I don't see you reacting to the pejoratives used by your side of the debate either.




That's because I'm not the one bleating about perjoratives - that's you.

I'm simply highlighting the hypocrisy of complaining about just one set of perjoratives while feigning ignorance of the rest.


----------



## Bedrockgames

chaochou said:


> That's because I'm not the one bleating about perjoratives - that's you.
> 
> I'm simply highlighting the hypocrisy of complaining about just one set of perjoratives while feigning ignorance of the rest.




I am not a fan of pejoratives in these discussions, regardless of who it is from. And the few times I've seen someone on my side say something I disagree with, I've posted a response. I am focusing more on one side, because I've been in a debate with Pemerton. So that is where my focus is. Plus I am not omnipotent and have not read every single post. If you have a post you want me to react to, feel free to share it.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> You keep projecting these pejorative onto peoples’ Preferences. Is it any wonder they don’t embrace your ideas?



When you start policing tone and courtesy without discrimination (eg where is your outrage at   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] calling the levels of drama in my game _ridiculous_?) then I might take these sorts of comments seriously.

As far as embracing my ideas is concerned, I'm very happy with the number of posters who, over the years, have acknowledged my contributions and/or thanked me for ideas that they have adapted into their games.

EDIT: I notice that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has made the same comment as I have done. Thanks chaochou!


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> When you start policing tone and courtesy without discrimination (eg where is your outrage at   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] calling the levels of drama in my game _ridiculous_?) then I might take these sorts of comments seriously.
> 
> As far as embracing my ideas is concerned, I'm very happy with the number of posters who, over the years, have acknowledged my contributions and/or thanked me for ideas that they have adapted into their games.
> 
> EDIT: I notice that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has made the same comment as I have done. Thanks chaochou!




Your ideas are great. I have no problem with your ideas. But you have a tendency to be extremely dismissive and insulting to people who have different gaming preferences than you. 

And if Maxperson said that, I disagree with him. But it is also coming after two threads of you crapping on what he likes in games.


----------



## darkbard

Bedrockgames said:


> But you have a tendency to be extremely dismissive and insulting to people who have different gaming preferences than you.




You keep leveling this charge against   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but if memory serves _you_ jumped in during the initial thread at the earliest opportunity by taking offense with his posts _despite the fact he used the term "Mother-May-I" in quotations, following the original poster's usage, and proffered his own, less pejorative term half the time instead; and then you went on to say you had no issue with the OP's use of the term._ Perhaps you are looking for offense where none is intended, particularly where pemerton is concerned? As you say in one of your posts, you believe you and he rarely see eye-to-eye, so perhaps this colors how you infer tone from his posts?


----------



## Lanefan

Numidius said:


> Ammo in Dw is basically accounted as the number of times a Pc can fail a roll, or suffer a consequence from a failed roll, before it is gone. Clearly anytime is possible in the fiction,  one replenishes it.



OK, makes sense.

Only ever getting 5 shots seemed a bit restrictive. 



> Torchbearer is a strange beast. I found it difficult to grasp, and when I tried to explain it to the table... well, I failed



I'll keep this in mind should I ever find it, and expect a heavy read.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> This is why I don't agree with @Lanefan and @Maxperson that D&D-style resource tracking is more realistic. That degree of rational control over one's resources is unrealistic even for a modern bureaucracy, let alone the notional fiction of a typical fantasy RPG.



Er...how is it irrational or unrealistic for me to be able to count the arrows in my quiver at any time other than the middle of a battle?  I'll also each day have a pretty good idea how much food and-or water I've got left and probably at least a vague idea of how easy it might be to replenish such from the surrounding environment.  If a warrior I'll also know what I have for weapons and armour, and what condition they're in; if a caster, ditto for my books and materials.  If I don't have magical light available and have to rely on torches or lanterns then before going into a dark area I'll make sure I have a reasonably good idea how long my light is good for, barring unforeseen circumstances.  And so on.

And all of this holds true whether I'm an explorer in the real world or acting as a PC in the game.



> How much ingame time passes per unit of such drama? Let's call it T.  ...
> 
> @Maxperson and @Lanefan seem to proceed on the assumption that the ratio of T to P is fixed in some fashion, but that assumption is baseless.



I'm not looking at in-game time at all in this case.  What I'm looking at is real time at the table (you call this P) and what the D/P ratio is; and suggesting that if D is kept too high too long there's a real risk of a numbing effect leading to stagnation.

I know full well that in-game time and real-world time have next to no relationship with each other*.   This is true over both the short and long term; for example my current campaign this month hits the 11-year point in real time but over that span the in-game time has only advanced about 4.7 years (summer of 1082 to late winter of 1087).

* - which also means I specifically don't subscribe to the Gygax-DMG notion of a day passing in the game world for each day that passes between sessions - in fact I've always seen this as one of his dumber ideas.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> When you start policing tone and courtesy without discrimination (eg where is your outrage at   @_*Maxperson*_ calling the levels of drama in my game _ridiculous_?) then I might take these sorts of comments seriously.
> 
> As far as embracing my ideas is concerned, I'm very happy with the number of posters who, over the years, have acknowledged my contributions and/or thanked me for ideas that they have adapted into their games.
> 
> EDIT: I notice that @_*chaochou*_ has made the same comment as I have done. Thanks chaochou!




What I said was, "I THINK that those levels of drama are ridiculously unrealistic."  The level of realism in your games is much lower than mine and I don't enjoy that sort of thing.  There's a difference between that and using a pejorative to describe other styles.  I mean, I could have come here and said that your kind of game play is Player May I, but I didn't.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The level of realism in your games is much lower than mine



How do you know this? I don't think you've ever engaged with one of my actual play threads. And you've certainly never posted much actual play of your own.



Maxperson said:


> What I said was, "I THINK that those levels of drama are ridiculously unrealistic."



And so you won't be upset if I say I THINK your game is a "Mother may I" game?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> how is it irrational or unrealistic for me to be able to count the arrows in my quiver at any time other than the middle of a battle?



It's not irrational to do so. But most people for most of history haven't been as maximally rational as most contemporary wargamers tend to be.

I think playing PCs as if they're optimising contemporary accountants or logistics planners is unrealistic, because anachronistic.



Lanefan said:


> I'm not looking at in-game time at all in this case.  What I'm looking at is real time at the table (you call this P) and what the D/P ratio is; and suggesting that if D is kept too high too long there's a real risk of a numbing effect leading to stagnation.



Which goes back to the issue of evidence. It seems that you don't have evidence from your table, because you run a low D/P ratio. You don't have evidence from my table, because I run a relatively higher D/P ratio but no numbing or stagnation has set in. Where is the table that actually demonstrates the phenomenon?


----------



## Manbearcat

darkbard said:


> You keep leveling this charge against   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but if memory serves _you_ jumped in during the initial thread at the earliest opportunity by taking offense with his posts _despite the fact he used the term "Mother-May-I" in quotations, following the original poster's usage, and proffered his own, less pejorative term half the time instead; and then you went on to say you had no issue with the OP's use of the term._ Perhaps you are looking for offense where none is intended, particularly where pemerton is concerned? As you say in one of your posts, you believe you and he rarely see eye-to-eye, so perhaps this colors how you infer tone from his posts?




I really, really don't want to get bogged down in this "but you said thing x that I take offense to so now the conversation needs to change from analysis of the mechanics and veracity of thing x (to prove or falsify the claim) to the legitimacy of my grievances" because I feel like this this approach happens far too often and all it does is serve to undermine any actual interesting conversation about TTRPGs (which is sort of the point of coming here to converse?).

However...

allowing for this for a moment, why isn't it helpful to examine controversial claims about aspects of all kinds of play?  In my experience, there is HUGE utility in reflecting on your own play and/or games you advocate for.

I can trivially name two off the top of my head.

1)  4e's "skip the (implied 'boring') gate guards and get to the fun."  My personal reflection of this (in a game I advocate for) has me of the position that (a) they meant something else (eg the indie axioms of "cut to the action" and "at every moment, drive play toward conflict") and (b) this clumsy iteration of (a) (much like Mearls statement in the 5e playtest of "shouting arms back on") served only to undermine the edition in both (i) needlessly turning a segment of gamers off to no good end and (ii) not actually being REMOTELY as clear as just recapitulate the indie axioms themselves (which are abundantly clear!).

So this is bad.  Don't do this again.

2)  4e detractors' position that 4e's roles and mechanics are just artificial video games in disguise.  They're obviously not.  But what do they actually resemble?  Magic Decks.  MtG is WotC's primary bread-winner so of course that group consulted on 4e's design.

So these two things above (along with other things such as noncombat conflict resolution, keyword architecture being fundamental, and focused themes/premise) combined lead me to (correctly) frame the game design as an action adventure game primarily inspired by indie games and Magic the Gathering.  From that, I'm better able to explain all manner of things to people who don't grok the game or who are trying to learn the game.


Sum total, there is enormous utility in provocative positions (even...or perhaps especially...wrong ones) that beg analysis if you're just willing to engage with the ideas (and try to falsify them or be willing to be convinced by them) rather than trying to instead reframe the entirety of the conversation around your offense.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> How do you know this? I don't think you've ever engaged with one of my actual play threads. And you've certainly never posted much actual play of your own.




From your descriptions your games can't be.



> And so you won't be upset if I say I THINK your game is a "Mother may I" game?




You've said worse about them in previous threads with your various attacks on my playstyle.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The level of realism in your games is much lower than mine
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How do you know this? I don't think you've ever engaged with one of my actual play threads. And you've certainly never posted much actual play of your own.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> From your descriptions your games can't be.
Click to expand...


Maxperson, I hereby assert - quite sincerely - that I am confident my Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant games are _more realistic_ than any fantasy game you have GMed.

I'm less confident to assert the same of my Traveller game and your sci-fi games, but am still inclined to believe so. Likewise for the session of Cthulhu Dark I ran last year, compared to any modern-day/contemporary RPG you might have run.

You'll see that I'm not mentioning D&D 4e and Cortex+ Heroic. That's not because I think my games using these systems are less realistic than your fantasy and supers games, but I'm not confident that they are more realistic. (When it comes to cosmic fantasy like D&D 4e, or Marvel-style supers, I'm also not at all sure what even _counts_ as realistic.)


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> (When it comes to cosmic fantasy like D&D 4e, or Marvel-style supers, I'm also not at all sure what even _counts_ as realistic.)




Max isn't, either, or, at least, he hasn't been able to articulate it clearly.


----------



## Sadras

Someone mentioned it earlier, it might have been Bedrockgames, where D&D needs to be able to appeal to a wider market, so for those:

1. Wanting to track coin, rations, ammunition, light sources and the like, it is possible;
2. Wanting to have a detailed system regarding carrying capacity/encumbrance, it is possible;
3. Wanting to have a low-magic game, it is possible;
4. Wanting to experience a high-powered wuxia game, it is possible;
5. Wanting to experience a greater degree of co-authoring, it is possible (use the plot point device);
...etc

It may not be the best at any one of those, but D&D is such that it encourages customisation and add-ons so with some creativity one is able to homebrew or borrow ideas from other games. That is one of its appealing qualities.

For me the realism debate, is a non-issue. If a mechanic appeals to me, it becomes another tool to use at the table.

For instance, I like encumbrance and when it is necessary for the fiction I might ask for a rough estimate of carrying capacity for each player, otherwise for ease (and since we have done some measuring in the past), most adventurers with their gear are encumbered. The rule at our table everyone's movement is affected as if encumbered, but during a combat, 5e allows one as a free action to drop something. So that free action is used (in the first round of combat) for one to drop their gear pack, freeing a PC to move their full complement of movement unhindered and again that is only if I break out the grid. *In ToM that doesn't even enter play.* And we do a lot of ToM. Should a player want to declare their character is not encumbered then they need to keep track and update where necessary. This rules seems to work for our table.

Is it _more real_ to keep 100% track of encumbrance? I don't believe so.
Does it require more bookkeeping to measure encumbrance continuously? Of course yes.
Does the above solution I use take into account the effects of encumbrance sufficiently enough for my table? Yes.

For coin, time, inspiration and rests - I keep track of it on our shared online page. We use the average daily spend as listed in the PHB. Using the average spend means, meals, drinks, replacement/mending of clothes, maintenance of weapons/armour, purchasing of medi-kits, ammunition, light sources, paying for stabling, board and the like are all taken care of. So when adventuring characters are always at maximum in terms of medikits and ammunition (unless it becomes important to track, like for an extended time away from possible supplies).

Would it be _more real_ to keep track of these more accurately? I do not think so. 
Would it require more bookkeeping? For sure.
Does the average daily spend sufficiently cover our table's conception of general adventuring costs? Yes

Whether one keeps an accurate record/s or one doesn't is not an indication of what is more real or not. 

However having said that, I do agree realism can lie on a spectrum, so @_*Lanefan*_'s table which attempts to account for equipment being damaged due to AoE attacks and environment damage (water, falling)...etc does seem to lean to towards _a sounder_ internal consistency.  

I might use/allow equipment to be damaged as a possible stake, bargaining chip or even damage replacement.
As an example: Player failed their roll for the character's attempt to leap onto beast's back. As DM I might offer _Success with Complication_. They succeeded, using their masterwork shortsword to grip into the beast's flesh - and hanging on, but the blade broke from the shaft in the struggle. So they still succeeded, but now they have lost their masterwork weapon. The player is free to refuse the fiction offered and just accept the standard fail.

The above is certainly a real possibility for the fiction, but that might never happen in say @_*Maxperson*_'s game depending on the system and homebrew rules he may use. That does not mean his game is any less real than mine though.


----------



## Numidius

Not having a long thermal bath after a deadly encounter, that would be unrealistic.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> I really, really don't want to get bogged down in this "but you said thing x that I take offense to so now the conversation needs to change from analysis of the mechanics and veracity of thing x (to prove or falsify the claim) to the legitimacy of my grievances" because I feel like this this approach happens far too often and all it does is serve to undermine any actual interesting conversation about TTRPGs (which is sort of the point of coming here to converse?).
> 
> However...
> 
> allowing for this for a moment, why isn't it helpful to examine controversial claims about aspects of all kinds of play?  In my experience, there is HUGE utility in reflecting on your own play and/or games you advocate for.
> 
> I can trivially name two off the top of my head.
> 
> 1)  4e's "skip the (implied 'boring') gate guards and get to the fun."  My personal reflection of this (in a game I advocate for) has me of the position that (a) they meant something else (eg the indie axioms of "cut to the action" and "at every moment, drive play toward conflict") and (b) this clumsy iteration of (a) (much like Mearls statement in the 5e playtest of "shouting arms back on") served only to undermine the edition in both (i) needlessly turning a segment of gamers off to no good end and (ii) not actually being REMOTELY as clear as just recapitulate the indie axioms themselves (which are abundantly clear!).
> 
> So this is bad.  Don't do this again.
> 
> 2)  4e detractors' position that 4e's roles and mechanics are just artificial video games in disguise.  They're obviously not.  But what do they actually resemble?  Magic Decks.  MtG is WotC's primary bread-winner so of course that group consulted on 4e's design.
> 
> So these two things above (along with other things such as noncombat conflict resolution, keyword architecture being fundamental, and focused themes/premise) combined lead me to (correctly) frame the game design as an action adventure game primarily inspired by indie games and Magic the Gathering.  From that, I'm better able to explain all manner of things to people who don't grok the game or who are trying to learn the game.
> 
> 
> Sum total, there is enormous utility in provocative positions (even...or perhaps especially...wrong ones) that beg analysis if you're just willing to engage with the ideas (and try to falsify them or be willing to be convinced by them) rather than trying to instead reframe the entirety of the conversation around your offense.




Except, and I say this as a person who really disliked 4E and used plenty of insulting language in the debates over it, if you are framing the discussion this way, with heavily loaded language, that is going to bias your analysis. My analysis of 4E wasn't objective. It was based on a real reaction I had, and I think stating that initial reaction is fine. But after years of these kinds of discussions, to cling to terms like that to, to insist on language like mother may i, my whole point is you can't really analyze this stuff objectively if your mired in gaming ideology the way the OP is. I feel like it is very hard for me and Pemerton to have a real conversation about what drives my style of play, because he is always looking for the angle of attack. And mother may I is just one aspect of that. Whereas, I think I could have an honest conversation with Pemerton about his style of play, because I am genuinely curious about other play styles, and I am not looking to disprove them. But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers, we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place. Not saying everyone on my side of the debate has behaved perfectly. but this isn't simply about people having grievances. We are pointing out this isn't a real conversation or a real analysis. It is a flamewar disguised as analysis.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> You keep leveling this charge against   @_*pemerton*_, but if memory serves _you_ jumped in during the initial thread at the earliest opportunity by taking offense with his posts _despite the fact he used the term "Mother-May-I" in quotations, following the original poster's usage, and proffered his own, less pejorative term half the time instead; and then you went on to say you had no issue with the OP's use of the term._ Perhaps you are looking for offense where none is intended, particularly where pemerton is concerned? As you say in one of your posts, you believe you and he rarely see eye-to-eye, so perhaps this colors how you infer tone from his posts?




I would 100% agree my objectivity is probably not the best when it comes to Pemerton. I think though, I am more objective than he is when we have our exchanges. I at least understand I am dealing with an intelligent poster who has given a great deal of thought to these things. And I try not to be insulting of anyone's intellect in these exchanges. I don't feel that is reciprocated. And my memory of this earlier phase of the debate is different from your's (though admittedly, on a hundreds page thread, I could be mistaken). My main gripe is with the OP of this thread, which I had asked him not to start and I felt was overly aggressive (maybe I am being a baby, but I just don't like a poster taking one quote like that from me and starting a whole thread against it, when I said I wasn't interested in the conversation).

And to me the disingenuousness of the argument being made in the OP, is so obvious It is purely a rhetorical tactic (the idea that someone invokes realism, so they would need to defend a setting being as realistic as the processes that underly reality? That makes any invocation of realism useless). It feels to me like the argument of someone who is intelligent and educated in the process of debate, but using that knowledge in a way that isn't sincerely trying to arrive at anything true (it is just being used to win).


----------



## Bedrockgames

And you guys can say "well shouldn't we be able to get past this and examine the substance". I think that is hard to do when half the posters feel the topic was poisoned from the very first post. And I think most of us can't help shaking the feeling we are being laughed at by the other side.


----------



## Imaculata

I'm willing to bet my campaign is less realistic than most of the campaigns on this board. 
But it has a few unique semi-realistic rules. The rest follows rule-of-cool though.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I say this as a person who really disliked 4E and used plenty of insulting language in the debates over it
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think I could have an honest conversation with Pemerton about his style of play, because I am genuinely curious about other play styles, and I am not looking to disprove them.



These two propositions aren't immediately reconcilable, at least by me.

As far as having an "honest conversation" about how I like to play RPGs, whenever you want to talk about non-_GM decides_ techniques then do so! But in this thread, the few times I've invited you to do that - particularly to engage with the idea of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" as opposed to _player decides_ - you've declined.



Bedrockgames said:


> But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers



I have friends, and colleagues, and students, and family members, and on these boards I have fellow posters - but I don't think I have any _followers_.



Bedrockgames said:


> we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place.



I don't think anyone is in any doubt that your preferences exist. The whole history of RPGing from c1984 to today is largely a testament to them. Any random thread about GMing techniques on this board will almost certainly present your prefences as if they are synonymous with _playing D&D_ or even with _RPGing_ as such. (See eg the current New DM thread in this General RPG sub-forum.) So I'm not sure what you think the struggle consists in.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Imaculata said:


> I'm willing to bet my campaign is less realistic than most of the campaigns on this board.
> But it has a few unique semi-realistic rules. The rest follows rule-of-cool though.




I am not particularly caught up in realism as I am in causality in my games. My style is to emulate the stuff of wuxia movies and books, but I like to do so in a way that, for me at least, makes the place feel like a real thing the players are exploring. So I am not worried about rigid adherence to weighing all the items characters are carrying, but I don't want to teleport my NPCs around for pure convenience of plot. But any effort at plausibility is surely more eyeballed than measured. I also want what is going on to logically follow from prior events and NPC motivations (i.e. well, Iron Toothed Bat King is still sore about the players getting away with the Obsidian Bat, and he was in Kaifeng eight days ago, so getting to Handan and ambushing the PCs here is plausible. I would then call for a Survival roll on the part of the PCs to see if they spot the ambush or wander into it). I still want it to be interesting and a bit dramatic, but I also want to keep plausibility in play. And I am fine making the call myself about where Iron Tooth Bat King is in this situation, because I am playing the guy and know what he is trying to do.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> Max isn't, either, or, at least, he hasn't been able to articulate it clearly.



Thankfully he can just say that it's on a spectrum, which allows him to obfuscate terms and move goal posts as needed. Then he can throw in a few of his usual logical fallacy buzzwords, such as accusing you of making a false dichotomy about realism, allowing him to further evade the actual argument in the discussion. 

Edit: This is all to say, that while I do think that you,  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] likely do have your heart in the right place and are a good DM for your table, you can be an aggrevatingly frustrating person to talk to sometimes.  



Sadras said:


> Someone mentioned it earlier, it might have been Bedrockgames, where D&D needs to be able to appeal to a wider market, so for those:



I'll just be "that guy" and say it, but I don't care about what D&D does. I don't need D&D to be all and end all of RPG experiences. I don't use a D&D as a metric for what I am looking for in a game. 

   [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I think that you are looking for far more offense than is intended with pemerton, and you should probably learn to chill out, because your "counteroffenses" are often unnecessarily disproportionate to what was said, conveyed, or intended. It tends to escalate things. I would at least suggest taking a different tact, because it's clearly not working much for anyone. If you need a good example to follow, I personally think that   [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] is an exemplary poster who know knows how to respectfully engage a variety of different posters even when he disagrees with them. 



Bedrockgames said:


> But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers, we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place.



I am, however, incredulous about this statement given how "pemerton and a lot of his followers" hold a position that is undboutedly in the minority within gaming circles; if anything, it's in the reverse - that "pemerton and a lot of his followers" have to justify their own approaches - such that you are expressing a false victimization complex. And also I would warn against using language such as "and his followers," as that sort of unnecessarily loaded language marginalizes and maligns a lot of the agency that individuals have deciding their own game preferences. Let's spell this out: "mother-may-I" may be derogatory to a playstyle, but lumping people together as "pemerton and a lot his followers" displays a derogatory attitude towards actual people.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> These two propositions aren't immediately reconcilable, at least by me.
> .




One of those statements is past tense. You are probably right though. I wouldn't be as objective as I could be. But I am also not trying to win 4E flamewars anymore, and I really do understand, I think, why people who like it, find it enjoyable (and I don't hold it against people or the system, it just wasn't for me). I've also realized a lot of the ideas I picked up about why I didn't like 4E, while they may have got at something that made sense to me at the time, pushed me into much too extreme of a stance and caused me to reject similar mechanics in smaller quantity that I would have otherwise enjoyed in a game. I think in these arguments it is possible to build up your own position against the opposition so much, you start harming your own playstyle. And that happened to me with the 4E discussions. So if we had a talk about it today, I would definitely concede a lot more ground. But sure, I didn't particularly like the edition and that is going to color my discussion with you if it is a part of your playstyle.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> And to me the disingenuousness of the argument being made in the OP, is so obvious It is purely a rhetorical tactic (the idea that someone invokes realism, so they would need to defend a setting being as realistic as the processes that underly reality? That makes any invocation of realism useless).



And given that this is _not_ the argument of the OP of this thread - as I have stated numerous times - I feel you are either misrepresenting it, or misunderstanding it.

The argument of the OP is as follows: that _a player having to accept something as true in the shared fiction because the GM decided it_ is more "Mother may I" than _an actual person encountering something as true in the real world_. Because the former, but not the latter, is an expression of someone's authorial judgement.

The former is, in fact, precisely a manifestation of the sort of thing the other thread was intending to capture by use of the phrase "Mother may I".


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I have friends, and colleagues, and students, and family members, and on these boards I have fellow posters - but I don't think I have any _followers_.
> .




You might not realize it, but you do have followers. It is obvious to anyone who engages you in a thread. I am not saying that as a bad thing. you have followers because you make very strong arguments that are difficult to refute and you communicate well. On the internet that leads to posters being your followers. You see this all the time on forums.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> You might not realize it, but you do have followers. It is obvious to anyone who engages you in a thread. I am not saying that as a bad thing. you have followers because you make very strong arguments that are difficult to refute and you communicate well. On the internet that leads to posters being your followers. You see this all the time on forums.



Paranoid much? Cut it out. This insinuation is rude.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I don't think anyone is in any doubt that your preferences exist. The whole history of RPGing from c1984 to today is largely a testament to them. Any random thread about GMing techniques on this board will almost certainly present your prefences as if they are synonymous with _playing D&D_ or even with _RPGing_ as such. (See eg the current New DM thread in this General RPG sub-forum.) So I'm not sure what you think the struggle consists in.




You have a tendency to undermine the language people use to describe their playstyle. It has been a while since we had one of these exchanges but I definitely remember this coming up in the discussion about sandbox play and player agency. Even in this discussion it feels like our assertions about our playstyle preference are being completely called into question (like for example you seem to be questioning the feasibility of posters who express a desire for realism to achieve any level of realism). To me that feels like calling the whole playstyle into question.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Paranoid much? Cut it out. This insinuation is rude.




I am not trying to be rude. But there are thought leaders on internet forum. Pemerton is clearly a thought leader. Heck, Pemertonian Scene framing is a thing because he has people who like his ideas and follow them. I am not suggesting he is a cult leader or anything. but he is a poster who people listen to.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> One of those statements is past tense.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But sure, I didn't particularly like the edition and that is going to color my discussion with you if it is a part of your playstyle.



In this thread you commended The Alexandrian's blog about "dissocated mechanics". Which characterises 4e as not really an RPG, but a skirmish game punctuated by moments of free-form roleplaying. In case anyone doesn't believe me, here's the quote:

There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn’t actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you’re playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.​
This is why I don't really take seriously that you object to pejorative descriptions of playstyles you personally don't care for. Your objection to pejorative descriptions only seems to be activitated by someone (especially me) explaing a dislike for _GM-decides_ as a resolution system.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Pemertonian Scene framing is a thing because he has people who like his ideas and follow them. I am not suggesting he is a cult leader or anything. but he is a poster who people listen to.



"Permertonian Scene Framing" is a phrase coined by [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] who is a poster on these boards with a post-count similar to mine; who (like me) is an academic in an English-language law school; whose politics are different from mine (I think I can say that much without breaking board rules); whose opinions I generally respect and whose commentary on RPGing is almost always worth listening to; who thinks I have interesting things to say about 4e, sometimes accepts I have interesting things to say about OSR/"free kriegsspiel", but who (I believe) thinks I'm wrong in this thread.

To characterise S'mon as my "follower" is ridiculous! Without being mawkish and without wanting to exaggerate the intimacy that is possible on a message board (we've never met in person), I would characterise S'mon as a friend.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> I think most of us can't help shaking the feeling we are being laughed at by the other side.




Given the past play experiences shown in this thread, "I" should be the one being laughed at. I demand my niche protection.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> you seem to be questioning the feasibility of posters who express a desire for realism to achieve any level of realism



Are you confusing me with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]?

Not only do I not question the feasibility of achieving some degree of realism, I assert that most of my RPGing has more of it than most of [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s!

I think the most interesting domains of realism in a RPG are in the domains of human relations and social and cultural phenomena - because these are also the most interesting domains of realism in fiction generally.

There's a form of realism that I don't think is well-suited to RPGing - namely, the fact that most people's lives are (without editing) narratively uninteresting - but I don't think many people, in their RPGing, actually try to reproduce an unedited ilfe. My reason for asserting this is the same as my reason for asserting that very few people have ever actually watched all 5+ hours of Andy Warhol's Sleep.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Given the past play experiences shown in this thread, "I" should be the one being laughed at. I demand my niche protection.



Your bathing story makes me cry, not laugh - _I feel your pain_.

(EDIT: perhaps I need a bath to soothe me of the pain of your play report.)


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Are you confusing me with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]?




Unlikely, I blocked him in the previous thread for doing what he apoears to be doing now.


EDIT: [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I also think it would be good if you define what you mean by realism.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] - I think I remember that now but had forgotten - sorry for dragging you into it given that backstory.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I'll just be "that guy" and say it, but I don't care about what D&D does. I don't need D&D to be all and end all of RPG experiences. I don't use a D&D as a metric for what I am looking for in a game.




I found this to be a strange response since my post was not intended to be hostile or dismissive of other games, styles or ideas. I predominantly tackled the realism issue as I understand it, but initially commented on the flexibility of D&D to cater to a larger degree of playstyle as some posts back it seemed as if the use/need of encumbrance and the general accounting of minutiae in the game was being questioned.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> To characterise S'mon as my "follower" is ridiculous! Without being mawkish and without wanting to exaggerate the intimacy that is possible on a message board (we've never met in person), I would characterise S'mon as a friend.




Aye!


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I found this to be a strange response since my post was not intended to be hostile or dismissive of other games, styles or ideas. I predominantly tackled the realism issue as I understand it, but initially commented on the flexibility of D&D to cater to a larger degree of playstyle as some posts back it seemed as if the use/need of encumbrance and the general accounting of minutiae in the game was being questioned.



D&D really doesn't, though.  Plot points do allow a bit of slop in the core GM centered play of 5e, but it doesn't really move the needle much: it's still a strongly GM centered game.  D&D allows a lot of playstyles within the tent, but not outside of it.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> D&D really doesn't, though.  Plot points do allow a bit of slop in the core GM centered play of 5e, but it doesn't really move the needle much: it's still a strongly GM centered game.  D&D allows a lot of playstyles within the tent, but not outside of it.




Okay and given my zero-experience with 50/50 authored games or even player-centric games I can accept that, since you and others have played in both tents and have a better understanding of it, but my initial post was not dismissive of Aldarc's preferences hence my surprise by his response.


----------



## S'mon

Lanefan said:


> * - which also means I specifically don't subscribe to the Gygax-DMG notion of a day passing in the game world for each day that passes between sessions - in fact I've always seen this as one of his dumber ideas.




Works great in the context of multiple PC groups within the same campaign - the context he assumed.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> This is why I don't really take seriously that you object to pejorative descriptions of playstyles you personally don't care for. Your objection to pejorative descriptions only seems to be activitated by someone (especially me) explaing a dislike for _GM-decides_ as a resolution system.




Funny enough on this issue, even though I strongly do not agree with Pemerton's characterisation of that certain playstyle as MMI and am on that side with Bedrockgames, I would defend Pemerton the freedom in using this obviously _inflammatory_ word. 

Damn my ideals!


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In this thread you commended The Alexandrian's blog about "dissocated mechanics". Which characterises 4e as not really an RPG, but a skirmish game punctuated by moments of free-form roleplaying. In case anyone doesn't believe me, here's the quote:
> 
> There is a meaningful difference between an RPG and a wargame. And that meaningful difference doesn’t actually go away just because you happen to give names to the miniatures you’re playing the wargame with and improv dramatically interesting stories that take place between your tactical skirmishes.​
> This is why I don't really take seriously that you object to pejorative descriptions of playstyles you personally don't care for. Your objection to pejorative descriptions only seems to be activitated by someone (especially me) explaing a dislike for _GM-decides_ as a resolution system.




I also said I thought a better term could be used. And I think the pejorative nature of the term has led to some of its excesses over the years.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sadras said:


> Funny enough on this issue, even though I strongly do not agree with Pemerton's characterisation of that certain playstyle as MMI and am on that side with Bedrockgames, I would defend Pemerton the freedom in using this obviously _inflammatory_ word.
> 
> Damn my ideals!




He can use what words he wants. It isn't like I am hitting the report button or anything. But if he uses inflammatory language on me, surely I can reciprocate?


----------



## S'mon

Aldarc said:


> [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], I think that you are looking for far more offense than is intended with pemerton, and you should probably learn to chill out, because your "counteroffenses" are often unnecessarily disproportionate to what was said, conveyed, or intended.




I'm sure there is truth in this, but I didn't like the OP either - and I'm definitely not inclined to be prejudiced against Pemerton or in favour of Brendan. So I think it's fair to say the OP is pretty abrasive!

I like 4e rather a lot, and I value discussion that helps me understand how to make it work. But I like the opposite, OSR-style approach too and for some reason that's the one I'm more inclined to feel I need to defend against detractors. I think I understand why people don't grok 4e, because initially I didn't either. Whereas when people don't grok immersionist world-sim old-school play I kinda want to shake them and yell "WHAT'S _WRONG_ WITH YOU?!?!"


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Max isn't, either, or, at least, he hasn't been able to articulate it clearly.




Sure I have.  I'm just not going to repeat myself for a 10th time.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Sure I have.  I'm just not going to repeat myself for a 10th time.



Max, I legitimately do not know what you mean by "realism."  I'm asking you to provide a clear definition that isn't smeared across 100 or more posts in this thread (not 100s of your posts, but that many posts between).


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> "Permertonian Scene Framing" is a phrase coined by [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] who is a poster on these boards with a post-count similar to mine; who (like me) is an academic in an English-language law school; whose politics are different from mine (I think I can say that much without breaking board rules); whose opinions I generally respect and whose commentary on RPGing is almost always worth listening to; who thinks I have interesting things to say about 4e, sometimes accepts I have interesting things to say about OSR/"free kriegsspiel", but who (I believe) thinks I'm wrong in this thread.
> 
> To characterise S'mon as my "follower" is ridiculous! Without being mawkish and without wanting to exaggerate the intimacy that is possible on a message board (we've never met in person), I would characterise S'mon as a friend.




Well, S'mon and I have a history as well. But I didn't have S'mon in mind here. He may well have coined the phrase (I don't know the precise history). But my point is, at least in my view, it has taken off because you are a thought leader here. And I do think it is fair to say you have posters who put faith in your arguments and ideas and can be said to follow you. If you don't like me saying this, I'll back off. I am not trying to be rude. I simply mentioned it, in honest truth, to be complimentary. I don't see it as bad to have followers online. If people hear what you say and promote it, and believe in your words, that is a good thing. It means you have strong leadership qualities and smart ideas. I am not blind to your strengths as a poster. But again, if it is bothering people, I am happy to drop it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Are you confusing me with [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]?




It is possible I confused arguments in the thread. That said, I have a very strong memory of you dismissing peoples' claims to realism, not just in this thread, but in others. If that isn't your position, then perhaps I am mistaken. 

I still have issues though with the framing of the OP. But I think we've hashed that out as much as we can without going after punctuation marks.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> And given that this is _not_ the argument of the OP of this thread - as I have stated numerous times - I feel you are either misrepresenting it, or misunderstanding it.
> 
> The argument of the OP is as follows: that _a player having to accept something as true in the shared fiction because the GM decided it_ is more "Mother may I" than _an actual person encountering something as true in the real world_. Because the former, but not the latter, is an expression of someone's authorial judgement.
> 
> The former is, in fact, precisely a manifestation of the sort of thing the other thread was intending to capture by use of the phrase "Mother may I".




The problem is that nothing you described there comes close to rising to the level of Mother May I.  It's a disingenuous use of the term as a pejorative to put down a playstyle that is different than yours.


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> Except, and I say this as a person who really disliked 4E and used plenty of insulting language in the debates over it, if you are framing the discussion this way, with heavily loaded language, that is going to bias your analysis. My analysis of 4E wasn't objective. It was based on a real reaction I had, and I think stating that initial reaction is fine. But after years of these kinds of discussions, to cling to terms like that to, to insist on language like mother may i, my whole point is you can't really analyze this stuff objectively if your mired in gaming ideology the way the OP is. I feel like it is very hard for me and Pemerton to have a real conversation about what drives my style of play, because he is always looking for the angle of attack. And mother may I is just one aspect of that. Whereas, I think I could have an honest conversation with Pemerton about his style of play, because I am genuinely curious about other play styles, and I am not looking to disprove them. But in conversation with Pemerton and a lot of his followers, we have to struggle just to even prove our preference exists in the first place. Not saying everyone on my side of the debate has behaved perfectly. but this isn't simply about people having grievances. We are pointing out this isn't a real conversation or a real analysis. It is a flamewar disguised as analysis.




I wish you could vigorously reflect on this post you just wrote.

Pemerton is a dude in a remote corner of the internet.

Followers? Seriously? Followers.

Do you realize how bunker mentality in the midst of an all-important culture war this, and all the other posts like this (and not just from you...and not juston this site) this reads as?

And also how disrespectful it is? 

Plenty of people have thanked me for posts they found insightful and helpful to them in their RPGing. Does that make them followers of mine? Of course not! That’s ridiculous! They’re humans, sometimes fallible and sometimes insightful (same as me), who are just working through their thoughts on a subject (TTRPGing design and play) in real time and trying to improve their experience. Same goes for me. I’ve gleaned plenty of insight from people I disagree with.

Framing all of these conversations as secret, strategic culture war gambits with clergy, acolytes, and the vulnerable masses is the real poison here. It’s completely toxic, it drives people away from this site, and it stifles interesting conversation that actually helps our gaming grow, change, and refine (all of which can mean going backwards in time and recognizing the power of older design and play) rather than stagnate and ossify.

This actually happened in 4e. It was a constant, never-ending, scorched earth campaign against a stupid gaming system. It took place all over the Internet, in hobby stores, at tables, and cons. I really enjoyed that game and I engaged in endless conversations about all the various topics, which by your definition were well-poisoned from the beginning. Yet I engaged with the ideas, trying earnestly to reflect on them and analyze them. I didn’t focus exclusively on the poisoned well and my offense to it. And I’m not special by any means. So anyone can do the same.

* EDIT - and it really annoys me that I feel obliged to even waste my time on a post like this rather than focusing my small time available and mental energies on talking about actual design and play.


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## Sadras

Bedrockgames said:


> He can use what words he wants. It isn't like I am hitting the report button or anything. But if he uses inflammatory language on me, surely I can reciprocate?




You could reciprocate, but like you said some time back it is not worth it - it does nothing for the conversation. My attempt was to rather use his definition of MMI against his own playstyle, but if one plays with that much transparency (monster knowledge checks) and less of a player-puzzle, that argument falls flat as I discovered.

My definition of MMI is much narrower, probably similar to yours I presume, but Pemerton sits very firmly in the other tent so from his POV any GM adjudication (no matter how justified) reflects as a MMI. I borrow ideas from all games (DM or Player-centric) so even though I'm in the opposite tent, I don't view the Say No as something negative but rather as another tool in the art of DMing that I can call on - whether it be for rule-of-cool, internal consistency or to punish players (KIDDING).

Having said that - the play reports, with the limited information, from @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ 5e were in my definition heavy within MMI territory. Having said that, it means nothing much given that @_*Aldarc*_ views my Frost Giant write-up as MMI and our table does not. 
 @_*Numidius*_ play report on the other hand is just something else completely. I mean WTF!


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## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> I wish you could vigorously reflect on this post you just wrote.
> 
> Pemerton is a dude in a remote corner of the internet.
> 
> Followers? Seriously? Followers.
> 
> Do you realize how bunker mentality in the midst of an all-important culture war this, and all the other posts like this (and not just from you...and not juston this site) this reads as?
> 
> And also how disrespectful it is?
> 
> Plenty of people have thanked me for posts they found insightful and helpful to them in their RPGing. Does that make them followers of mine? Of course not! That’s ridiculous! They’re humans, sometimes fallible and sometimes insightful (same as me), who are just working through their thoughts on a subject (TTRPGing design and play) in real time and trying to improve their experience. Same goes for me. I’ve gleaned plenty of insight from people I disagree with.
> 
> Framing all of these conversations as secret, strategic culture war gambits with clergy, acolytes, and the vulnerable masses is the real poison here. It’s completely toxic, it drives people away from this site, and it stifles interesting conversation that actually helps our gaming grow, change, and refine (all of which can mean going backwards in time and recognizing the power of older design and play) rather than stagnate and ossify.
> 
> This actually happened in 4e. It was a constant, never-ending, scorched earth campaign against a stupid gaming system. It took place all over the Internet, in hobby stores, at tables, and cons. I really enjoyed that game and I engaged in endless conversations about all the various topics, which by your definition were well-poisoned from the beginning. Yet I engaged with the ideas, trying earnestly to reflect on them and analyze them. I didn’t focus exclusively on the poisoned well and my offense to it. And I’m not special by any means. So anyone can do the same.




Like I said, I am happy to back off this follower thing. But I think characterizing it as a bunker mentality is just not an accurate reflection of what I was saying. People look to other posters for ideas and arguments. This is something you see all the time on the internet. The Alexandrian, for example, is a thought leader. Prominent posters on forums who gain the good will of other posters, are often thought leaders. It isn't meant as an insult. I think anyone who is honest with themselves will see they have followers, and that they follow people. I am not saying people are Pemerton's subjects. I am just saying, there are clearly people who have adopted his ideas and who look to him for arguments and analysis.


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## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I also think it would be good if you define what you mean by realism.



I'm happy to say a bit about this. I won't be engaging with what you have said upthread about imagination etc - you may find that what I say presupposes a very different view from yours about the nature of cognition, reference and representation, but I'm not going to go into those matters in this post.

What follows is not short and not always focused but hopefully conveys my thoughts to some extent.

*Some concepts that seem relevant*
In the context of fiction I think that _realism_ overlaps with, but isn't the same as, _verisimilitude_ and _naturalism_. I'm not really much of a critic, nor aesthetician, so my explanation of this may be a bit half-baked, but what I mean by the preceding is this:

* _Verisimilitude_ is the property of having an intuitive/experiential plausibility - so it depends on the expectations/experiences of the audience. I would say that variable weapon damage in D&D is a manifestation of verisimilitude. Likewise healing rates in Rolemaster (which factor in the nature and location of the injury). Presumably for martial artists, variabe weapon damage is more likely to lack verisimilitude (or at least in more danger of doing so); and presumably for doctors the same is true of the RM healing rules.

* _Naturalism_ is a particular way of presenting a fictional world, as characterised by a certain sort of "ordinariness" or "groundedness". If you've ever read Jack the Giant Killer (I think the version I've read is in the Blue Fairy Book) it is wildly non-naturalistic: giants just pop up, with their treasure, with no rhyme or reason. Whereas I see one of JRRT's major achievements as a writer being to present fairy tale and Arthurian romance-type tropes in the form of a naturalistic novel (eg his treatment of Lorien presents the faerie woods with a faerie queen in the mode of being a real, imaginable and in some sense measurable place). Naturalism can support verisimilitude but isn't necessary for it - the Hobbit is less naturalilstic than LotR (eg Rivendell in the Hobbit really isn't treated naturalistically at all) but I'm not sure it's any less verisimilitudinous. And sometimes the attempt at naturalism can undermine verisimilitude - the naturalistic presentation of the Shire in LotR to me ultimately undercuts verisimilitude because the material standard of living seems utterly implausible to me given the economic geography.

* _Realism_ I would think of as meaning _resemblance to or imitation of reality_. Lorien is naturaistically presented, but not realistic - what do all those elves eat? and who is making their wine? Likewise the Shire, for the reasons I gave earlier. Conversely, a fiction might be relatively realistic but not very naturalistically presented - some Hal Hartley films are like this, for instance. Realism can support verisimilitude, but not necessarily - it can be quite realistic, for instance, for people's moods or allegiances to swing in volatile ways, but this may undermine verisimilitude or cause the audience to have to question their understanding of or intuitions about the work because they have to reframe it to re-establish plausibility.

*Concepts applied to RPGing*
With RPGing, I would think of the above features as properties of the play experience and the fiction it produces, not of systems. (Eg tracking encumbrance may produce a realistic play experience, or not, depending on how the application of the rules plays out in the context of the shared fiction at the table. In 4e I found the outcome unrealistic - even ordinary people seem (to me) inordinately strong; in Traveller the lack of realism feels the same but for the opposite reason - ordinary people seem to be penalised by quite light loads.)

I think an RPG game/fiction is realistic if the characters who figure in it have plausible and recognisable motivations; if the social contexts and institutions are likewise able to be made sense of (this can be tricky, because human cultures are incredibly diverse and if not familiar can seem quite alien - but I rarely see this done well in RPGs); if the unfolding of events appears to be explicable in its own terms.

*Reflections on my own RPGing in light of the above idea of realism*
I don't think of my 4e game as particularly realistic in these terms: the main antagonists and icons are cosmic figures (gods, primordials, etc) whose motivations are obscure and abstract (law, chaose, "evil", undeath etc); and the PCs' allegiances/hostilities to those beings are likewise framed in rather abstract terms with little connection to human realities and genuine human interests. In this way it closely resembles superhero comics, some romances (eg 1990s Hong Kong wuxia cinema; some approaches to Arthurian-type romance; etc), Star Wars, etc.

My Cortex+ games are similar to 4e in these respects.

Conversely, while my Prince Valiant game does features knights who travel about on various quests or looking for valorous deeds to do - not super realistic but a trope posited by the genre - the motivations of the PCs and the NPCs are generally quite comprehensible in human terms: there are peasants and bandits who don't like rich abbots; there was an apprentice who left his master because he wanted to marry a woman living in the nearby village, and the PCs were able to solve various problems by making that apprentice a proposal which would provide him and his fiance with a house and a livelihood; there is wooing, and rivalries, and the odd bit of betrayal, but also friendship; two of the PCs are father and son and this colours their relationship and also how they interact with NPCs; etc.

It's not always naturalistic (there's much "season pass", "you ride for days", etc, without any real attempt to convey a changing or unfolding larger world) but is (I find) quite realistic subject to some genre tropes (which include relatively light touch, by FRPGing standards, magic).

Burning Wheel has magic in a way and to a degree that Prince Valiant doesn't, but otherwise I would say it is similarly realistic. And also more naturalistic, as even when seasons pass there are mechanical devices in the system for making that matter, and expectations on the GM to treat the passage of time for rest, training, earning income, etc as a basis for amping up the antagonists.

You'll notice in my assessment - and I think consistent with my post not too far upthread - that I'm not including _likelihood of having such interesting and exciting lives_ under my measure of realism. It's a basic premise of adventure fiction that the protagonists have inordinatly interesting and exciting lives. But the fact that, in my games, that adventure often results from _social_ or _interpersonal_ dynamics playing out in some challenging or threatening fashion, rather than from discovering some new purely external threat (like a new dungeon, or a new plot to destroy the world, or whatver) I would count as speaking _in favour of_ realism. Because it grounds the situation in actual human motivations. Or in the more cosmic games, it locates the conflicts within the understood cosmic framework - which is taken to permeate the whole world of those games - rather than having all these (improbable both independently and in total) separate little unmotivated threats.

*What I don't think too much about when I think of realism in RPGing*
The issue of how far people can jump - and similar sorts of stuff around physical performance - which is probably a big deal for (say)  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] in relation to realism isn't a big deal for me. To stick to the jumping example, of the games I've mentioned the only one that ever measures distances in the way Lanefan takes for granted, let alone correlates them to jumping mechanics, is 4e. And who's to say what a realistic jumping distance for a demigod is? (The 30th level fighter in my 4e game can jump about 50'. At 10th level that was probably more like 30', which is world record level and thus probably about right for the pinnacle of heroic tier.)

In Prince Valiant or BW, jumping is resolved by a Brawn + Athletics check, or a Speed check, respectively, against a difficulty set by the GM. If the tabel think the difficulty is unrealistic relative to the narrated fiction, then the difficulty can be negotiated until a mutually acceptable equilibrium is reached. In practice it tends to work the other way, that from the GM-specified difficulty participants will construct their own conception of what it is that makes it so difficult (or easy), and so the issue doesn't even come up.

When I used to GM a lot of Rolemaster this sort of thing was more important to me, and I would (for instance) try to configure jumping rules so that for characters with bonuses at the top end of what was possible, the resuts of checks would be at the top end of what world record figures suggest is humanly possible. But in retrospect, given that this stuff never came into play (the players in my games tended to build PCs who could cast flight-type magic rather than PCs who had peak athletic skills) in retrospect this may not have been the best possible use of my time! (But RM puts a _very_ high priority on system, including the (abstract) outcomes it will (hypothetically) produce; almost the opposite of, say, Cortex+ Heroic where the system is simply a device for producing concrete outcomes in play - and for me its those outcomes that determine realism, as I said above.)


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> Framing all of these conversations as secret, strategic culture war gambits with clergy, acolytes, and the vulnerable masses is the real poison here. It’s completely toxic, it drives people away from this site, and it stifles interesting conversation that actually helps our gaming grow, change, and refine (all of which can mean going backwards in time and recognizing the power of older design and play) rather than stagnate and ossify.
> .




I think there is a lot here. First, I don't see this as a culture war. A culture war is a much broader conflict over major social and political issues. That isn't what is happening here. But this conversation is definitely an outgrowth of old flamewars over playstyle (I think that is pretty hard to dispute if you honestly examine the exchange of posts here). And I think my position on that has been clear: I don't want flamewars anymore. I am not interested in taking down other peoples' play styles. This whole I have not been attacking any of the playstyle suggestions Pemerton and others have made. I think engaging in that kind of playstyle war online, isn't helpful, and it hurts play at ones own table (because there is a tendency to build your playstyle and define against he style you are opposing...this is why I've said before you can end up with an inverse GNS theory if that is the thing you are arguing against the whole time---and I think you see that in some immersionist camps). I don't want any of that. I just want what works at my table, and I am not interested in gaming ideology whatsoever anymore (admittedly I used to be a lot more rigid in my views). My only point in this whole thread has been I felt by framing our style as Mother May I: 1) it is pretty dismissive and it is natural we will react with some amount of hostility, but more importantly 2) it clouds peoples ability to truly understand why we play the way we do. I get that they are using it as a thing they don't want in the game, which can be useful. But like dissociated mechanics, it becomes this bogeyman that starts to shape your style in ways you might not otherwise engage in. You can really end up throwing the baby out with the bath water if you are always on the look out for 'bad thing X'. And given how expansive the definition of Mother May I is here, and how it completely overlaps with our preferred style of play by that definition, I think its utility really needs to be called into question.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Works great in the context of multiple PC groups within the same campaign - the context he assumed.



Do you actually do this in your sandbox games?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Do you actually do this in your sandbox games?




If you are going to have multiple PC groups in the same sandbox campaign, my experience (just trying all the different methods I could) is this is the only real way to make it work----otherwise it can be maddening keeping track of the different areas and NPCs being affected by PC behavior. If the PCs are not intersecting that much, it is easier to hand wave. But I've had parties in two different campaigns end up in serious conflict with each other, and that proved very challenging to track. Having the time between sessions reflect real time is one easy way to manage it (though it has its downsides). However, honestly I didn't feel it was worth the trouble after about a year and half of trying to do that. I just said 'screw it this is a multiverse and both parties are in slightly different realities'. That approach ended up working a lot better for me personally. It also made things interesting because I got to see two very different realities play out over two campaigns in the same setting. There was still some intersection, but there was enough freedom to alter details, that it made my role as the GM more fun as well.


----------



## S'mon

Manbearcat said:


> Do you realize how bunker mentality in the midst of an all-important culture war this ...reads as?




Culture war?

So, Brendan and Pemerton should put their gaming differences aside, recognise their all-important political-cultural commonalities; and unite against ..._me_? 
Not sure I like that idea...


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The problem is that nothing you described there comes close to rising to the level of Mother May I.  It's a disingenuous use of the term as a pejorative to put down a playstyle that is different than yours.



You do realise, don't you, that I used the phrase "Mother may I" only because it was used in the post I was responding to.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Do you actually do this in your sandbox games?




I did it for about 18 months in my multi-group Wilderlands Stonehell Dungeon game, yup. If group played weekly, a week would pass in game between delves. If fortnightly then 2 weeks passed. I am somewhat doing it (time passes roughly 1 month game = 1 month real) in my current two-group Primeval Thule campaign. In the Thule game adventures last typically 2-3 sessions, not a single session delve, so it needs to be looser.

My Stonehell game had the Dungeon as a pure sandbox. The Thule game is semi-sandboxy; there tend to be several hooks, and players bite on what interests or seek out contacts who provide more hooks. But it's a lot closer to 4e style than the Stonehell game was, eg I'll use Bangs, player Heroic Narratives are important, I'll use Pemertonian Scene Framing...


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You do realise, don't you, that I used the phrase "Mother may I" only because it was used in the post I was responding to.




Perpetuating incorrect definitions and/or pejoratives doesn't help a situation.  It just makes it worse.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I am somewhat doing it (time passes roughly 1 month game = 1 month real) in my current two-group Primeval Thule campaign. In the Thule game adventures last typically 2-3 sessions, not a single session delve, so it needs to be looser.



Right, the single-session delve does seem fairly crucial to making the Gygax system work. (Without the need for loosening.)

In the single-session delve sort of game, what do you do if the clock is about to strike midnight and - for whatever reason - the group is still stuck on the 7th level? (As best I recall, the canonical books - Gygax and Moldvay - don't address this.)


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Right, the single-session delve does seem fairly crucial to making the Gygax system work. (Without the need for loosening.)
> 
> In the single-session delve sort of game, what do you do if the clock is about to strike midnight and - for whatever reason - the group is still stuck on the 7th level? (As best I recall, the canonical books - Gygax and Moldvay - don't address this.)




I say "Ok you go home now.'

They have never been stuck at end of session, though there was the Out of Time Mine session where it was close and I had to be a bit generous in ruling when they had breached the temporal anomaly trapping them.


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> They have never been stuck at end of session



Good luck, or good management? And if the latter, by players or GM? (Eg how far do "generous" rulings go?)


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> I found this to be a strange response since my post was not intended to be hostile or dismissive of other games, styles or ideas. I predominantly tackled the realism issue as I understand it, but initially commented on the flexibility of D&D to cater to a larger degree of playstyle as some posts back it seemed as if the use/need of encumbrance and the general accounting of minutiae in the game was being questioned.



I apologize. I did not think that your post was hostile to other games, styles, or ideas. I do, however, get frustrated sometimes by how D&D sometimes monopolizes discussion on TTRPGs. I suspect that my outburst directed towards you likely came more from that frustration than anything else. 



Sadras said:


> Having said that, it means nothing much given that @_*Aldarc*_ *views my Frost Giant write-up as MMI* and our table does not.



About all I said regarding your Frost Giant scenario was that I disliked how you chose to adjudicate it. I was agnostic about whether it constituted MMI. Though at this point you were also trying to drag me into "picking a side" in that discussion between you and pemerton.  



Maxperson said:


> Perpetuating incorrect definitions and/or pejoratives doesn't help a situation.  It just makes it worse.



Yes and no. Or at least, I'm of several minds about this. I study in a field drowning in incorrect definitions, inaccurate terms, pejoratives, and the like. We have more "correct" terms that we can use, but then sometimes people have no idea what we are talking about, so the subject becomes more esoteric. So many times we have to "bite the bullet" when discussing anything while tacitly acknowledging the inaccuracies and problematic elements of terms. 

In our RPG context, this often arises, for example, when talking about "race." (And there is an entire megathread where people debated that kettle of fish, which I will not rehash here.) "Race" is common parlance within gaming circles, but there are a lot of problematic issues related to using the term in the context of RPGs, much as there is outside of gaming. 

And while Mother-May-I has pejorative undertones, it is also an expression that is fairly easy to conceptualize in terms of the underlying issues being evoked: some form of play entailing players asking persmission from a single authority figure, who may then grant them permission. It asks you to apply your general knowledge of a fairly ubiquitous children's game to a more niche hobby game. So it unquestionably has some descriptive utility. How and where it applies, however, will be the points of contention. Also, I would note that it is not a pejorative that dehumanizes anyone, as it applies to a playstyle. (Playstyles aren't people.) 

If the term is inaccurate, then usually it becomes incumbent on critics of the term to find a more accurate term for the problem described. No one has really offered one so MMI remains the default term in play and with people's default assumptions of its meaning and scope. Unfortunately, when asked about MMI, I think that some dismiss the MMI phenomenon entirely by saying simply "that's just how the game is played." In other words, it's a complete denial that the problem described exists or could exist, which I also find unhelpful. 



lowkey13 said:


> Why are you using the past tense?



Weirdly enough, perhaps because enough time has passed and 5e "won," I think that there has been a retrospective warming up to 4e online, where even some of its vocal critics have shown more willingness to play it, to praise its strengths, or to reevaluate their initial stance on 4e as a legitimate part of D&D's legacy. And that has even included people pointing to things that 4e did better than 5e. 



S'mon said:


> I'm sure there is truth in this, but I didn't like the OP either - and I'm definitely not inclined to be prejudiced against Pemerton or in favour of Brendan. So I think it's fair to say the OP is pretty abrasive!



Sure, but the two of you demonstrate a mutual ability to engage each other respectfully without presuming malice.


----------



## hawkeyefan

I think that a large part of the problem is that many folks seem to be looking for reasons to take offense, and once some offense is perceived, they will not let it go, even when the supposed offender clarifies or qualifies the statements, and explicitly says I meant no offense. 

90 some pages in and people are still bringing up terms that upset them even though the use of the term was explained very early in the thread. 

Personally, I don't care to take offense about anything anyone says here. I don't care how anyone feels about the way I like to play pretend, other than that it's interesting to me to discuss it. I may disagree, I may find a post abrasive or dismissive, but ultimately, spending time talking about that accomplishes nothing. 

I think that we have to stop worrying about loaded terms. Or at least stop grinding discussion to a halt by decrying the use of a term rather than asking a poster what they mean by the term's use. Maybe give each other the benefit of the doubt that whatever stance we may have, we're not d-bags, and instead of assuming the worst, assume the best. Ask a question rather than toss an accusation. When someone says, "what I actually meant was...." maybe listen to them, and stop going back to an earlier post of theirs without taking the clarification into consideration. 

If someone's actually being a d-bag, it's usually pretty clear to everyone involved. They've pointed it out themselves.

There have been some interesting points in this discussion, but it gets lost in the noise of people discussing what may or may not have offended them.


----------



## Sadras

lowkey13 said:


> Why are you using the past tense?




And with that, the _followers_ of lowkey13 fall in behind and to the side of him shouting "D&D had been voted the best game" and "Death to Paladins". The mob led by a grinning lowkey13 then suddenly begins descending on a tight group of travellers led by one known only as Pemerton.

As the mob gets closer to the travellers, S'mon steals some more Pemertonian Scene Framing, while under his breath he mutters "I hope to see you again, friend," before disappearing from the scene altogether. 

Ovinomancer packs up both his tents, his trick cards and his blocks before he too departs all the while shaking his head and thinking "This isn't real, this isn't real." 

Aldarc offended by it all makes his protestations known. "This is not right, not morally, not ethically, I demand social..." his voice is drowned out from the growing mob.

At that point AbdulAlhazred turns to Pemerton saying "I never asked for this Pem, all I wanted was a piece of land to build on. Not this. You have to do something."

But Pemerton seems unperturbed as he begins picking up numerous backpacks fully loaded with dictionaries, encyclopedias, manuals, guides, handbooks and the like which he has written over the years. Impressively he seems to carry them all easily enough while moving unhindered.   

Lanefan meanwhile loses his spellbook as it is bumped out of his hands by frantic Maxperson rushing past him. Lanefan makes an attempt to save his arcane tome from the shuffling feet, but the mob is too much and the tome is trampled and torn in the process. He sighs inwardly, but thankfully he prepared for this eventuality as he pulls out his backup spellbook.

Maxperson runs ahead charging off from the mob directly towards Pemerton smiling that his dream is finally being realised. The player of Maxperson pants from exhaustion.

chaochou, now a mad look upon his eyes, cries out wildly "They want to play, we will show them how players play! We will raise the stakes, we will not backdown, there will be NO SAY NO!" 

Meanwhile Manbearcat rushes out to the centre, holding out his hands for both camps to stop the madness. But no one seems to be taking any heed. Why is that he thinks to himself, why can't people just be nice, it's like no one read his analytical self-help posters.

At this point Numidius wakes up from all the noise, but declines to leave the comfort of the warm waters of the bathtub. He reaches for a stack of arrows which are casually lying around, and throws them in the general direction of Maxperson.

Maxperson laughs at the feeble throw. The player of Maxperson laughs.

Bedrockgames excited by it all, makes a quick call "Hello Mother," Lanefan hears him say, the rest of the conversation is lost, except for the end, "But mother I want to join them." The call ends, Bedrockgames physically disappointed looks up at Lanefan and shakes his head in a no-fashion before leaving lowkey13's crowd.

Sadras still keeping up with the mob begins reading up on these travellers, learning about them and their capabilities. As he turns the pages, he notices two that are stuck together. "What is this," he exclaims, "a secret page?" He finally manages to pry apart the pages to reveal the traveller known as Pemerton...when he reaches the traveller's backstory, his eyes open wide. "It's a t..." 

In the midst of all this chaos, a large space vessel lands, the words _Umbran_ adorning its one side. A large staircase descends towards the ground as a man walks out introducing himself as Morrus, the General.

Hussar turns to lowkey13 and says rather angrily "If he's from Sigil," pointing at Morrus "then I'm out."  

Saelorn's player turns to Hussar's player "You can't say that, that is meta-gaming. No-way, no-how your character knows about Sigil." He then turns to the DM for support.

The DM who strictly follows SYRTD makes the motion for Hussar's player to make a knowledge check. The player rolls a 1.

Saelorn's player smiles.

The DM instructs everyone to ignore the 1, as DM he is going to fudge it, so Hussar knew about Sigil. All the players leave the table except Max.      

*EDIT:* No offense intended. Entire post is tongue-and-cheek.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## hawkeyefan

Aldarc said:


> Yes and no. Or at least, I'm of several minds about this. I study in a field drowning in incorrect definitions, inaccurate terms, pejoratives, and the like. We have more "correct" terms that we can use, but then sometimes people have no idea what we are talking about, so the subject becomes more esoteric. So many times we have to "bite the bullet" when discussing anything while tacitly acknowledging the inaccuracies and problematic elements of terms.
> 
> In our RPG context, this often arises, for example, when talking about "race." (And there is an entire megathread where people debated that kettle of fish, which I will not rehash here.) "Race" is common parlance within gaming circles, but there are a lot of problematic issues related to using the term in the context of RPGs, much as there is outside of gaming.
> 
> And while Mother-May-I has pejorative undertones, it is also an expression that is fairly easy to conceptualize in terms of the underlying issues being evoked: some form of play entailing a single authority figure granting permission to other players. It asks you to apply your general knowledge of one ubiquitous game to a more niche hobby game. So it unquestionably has some descriptive utility. How and where it applies, however, will be the points of contention. Also, I would note that it is not a pejorative that dehumanizes anyone, as it applies to a playstyle. (Playstyles aren't people.)
> 
> If the term is inaccurate, then usually it becomes incumbent on critics of the term to find a more accurate term for the problem described. No one has really offered one so MMI remains the default term in play and with people's default assumptions of its meaning and scope. Unfortunately, when asked about MMI, I think that some dismiss the MMI phenomenon entirely by saying simply "that's just how the game is played." In other words, it's a complete denial that the problem described exists or could exist, which I also find unhelpful.




I think this is a good example of how to handle the terminology. I personally felt that the use of MMI in the original thread was clear. The poster was using it as a way of describing GM authorization of game elements; he wanted to allow the player to introduce elements that interested him without having to rely on the GM for introduction of the content or approval. 

In that sense, the term works perfectly. And if we toss out the idea that it's meant as a pejorative (and I know that historically, it can be used that way, but let's ignore that for now). GM Authorization does seem to be the default approach for many RPGs, including D&D. I don't think that's really in contention; the players are free to declare actions for their characters (within the established constraints of the fiction), and the GM establishes the likelihood of success or failure, usually by setting some kind of DC or target number for a skill check or other action. How exactly the GM decides on a target DC will vary, but usually it involves including relevant fictional factors such as range, quality, pressure, and the like. 

Nearly everything in the game is filtered through the GM. 

Whether that's good or bad or a mix of the two is up to personal preference. 

I personally don't mind this style of play, but I do tend to incorporate as much player authorship as the system will allow. I have a 5E campaign, and my players routinely add things to the fictional world. It's not in as formalized or mechanically supported a way as other games may support, and I'd say that's the significant difference. D&D as written allows players to introduce fictional elements mostly through Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, which is pretty minimal, and very likely front loaded at the time of character creation. There's no reason you can't incorporate more player authorship into the game in other ways, and I would say that the system itself is flexible enough to handle a lot of that, but if you decide to do so, you have to introduce optional rules or house rule it, and so on. 

But even for my game which I consider to have a good deal of player authorship, I still think it falls into the GM Authorization category; that's exactly how the mechanics are designed to work. It's not a bad thing, and I don't know why some see this as bad, other than one phrase used to summarize it.


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]
"NO SAY NO!" got me 

Btw, they were six arrows, two darts and a D10 minus 2 minimum1 arroheads... (submerges back his head in the bathtub)


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Good luck, or good management? And if the latter, by players or GM? (Eg how far do "generous" rulings go?)




The players once or twice stayed in the dungeon between sessions (no time passing) but it was their choice.

Normally when time comes to leave, if we are out of real time then they get out with no encounter checks. I assume they find their way back to the surface down what are usually well travelled routes - the pace of exploration is typically slow, a few rooms per session, with lots of cleared territory along safe route to their rear. I usually only do 1 or two encounter checks for the start of session travel to the exploration front - the dungeon frontier - reflecting repopulation & movement of monsters during the downtime, and so 0 checks when leaving is not implausible. Unlike hardcore Gygaxian play, I do not require players to navigate their way out in game.


----------



## Manbearcat

I really think Torchbearer is enormously instructive to this conversation. I would encourage everyone to buy the game and read it through (if not play it).

As a mash-up of (a much more punishing) Moldvay Basic and Burning Wheel, it combines classic dungeon crawl procedures with an indie ethos. 

The game is an interesting combination of:

1) HEAVY systemization 

2) while simultaneously having a significant classic GM role (which includes classic expectations of GM authority but does not include White Wolf’s Golden Rule or Rule 0) simultaneously guided by certain indie principles and techniques

3) but also heavy system constraint on the GM, large divestment of authority onto codified procedures, and plenty of shared authority with players (due to BW thematic flags and lots of resources that players can call upon).

I’m thinking about doing a play excerpt post, but the system is complex enough that I feel like I’d have to abridge/gloss over some things (and in-so-doing may lose relevant information). Maybe I’ll just do a small, peacemeal excerpt of an Adventure phase.


----------



## Aldarc

Manbearcat said:


> I really think Torchbearer is enormously instructive to this conversation. I would encourage everyone to buy the game and read it through (if not play it).
> 
> The game is an interesting combination of: 2) while simultaneously having a significant classic GM role (which includes classic expectations of GM authority *but does not include White Wolf’s Golden Rule or Rule 0*) simultaneously guided by certain indie principles and techniques



I'm afraid that you are underestimating the pervasive power of Rule -1: Gamemasters will read and play assuming Rule 0 even when the rule is entirely absent.


----------



## Numidius

Manbearcat said:


> I’m thinking about doing a play excerpt post, but the system is complex enough that I feel like I’d have to abridge/gloss over some things (and in-so-doing may lose relevant information). Maybe I’ll just do a small, peacemeal excerpt of an Adventure phase.




Please, do! And post the link here ...?


----------



## Numidius

Aldarc said:


> I'm afraid that you are underestimating the pervasive power of Rule -1: Gamemasters will read and play assuming Rule 0 even when the rule is entirely absent.



As far as my understanding of the game goes, it is not possible with Torchbearer.


----------



## Aldarc

Numidius said:


> As far as my understanding of the game goes, it is not possible with Torchbearer.



Nah. Rule -1. GMs will force Rule 0 even where it is unwarranted.


----------



## Numidius

You people speaking of in-game time management, made me realize that maybe: in the notorious Thermal Bath sequence, the Gm found himself stuck in aligning Three different time frames: the party in the hot pools (just wanting to relax in the shared imagined fiction without complications as long as possible), my Pc in a different location,  that Also sent an 'important' mail via horse rider to another town (the Gm actually made me write it phisically in character, in first person), taking a few days to come back with an answer. 
So (I now think) we were supposed to just play day by day "waiting" for the mail to be responded and passing time in the meanwhile, without nothing much happening, because Simulation of Reality (His words: "I am the Casual Link of the game world; nothing less, nothing more")


----------



## Sadras

Manbearcat said:


> I really think Torchbearer is enormously instructive to this conversation. I would encourage everyone to buy the game and read it through (if not play it).
> 
> As a mash-up of (a much more punishing) Moldvay Basic and Burning Wheel, it combines classic dungeon crawl procedures with an indie ethos.




Ok, you've convinced me.  That, and I read half a dozen or so reviews and comments and I like what I'm hearing, it seems like it is something I could run and I feel perhaps some of the material might be easy enough to port into our D&D table. Buying it right after this post.

For player-facing games I have a player who when he does DM is _excellent_ and more suited, I believe, for those style of games. The only short-coming he has is that I have had disappointment with campaigns not ending (not always his fault, but he doesn't push enough as DM I feel). So he is great for one-shots and 3-8 session storylines.


----------



## Manbearcat

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] 

Awesome! Enjoy.

If you’re going to most likely just port things to your 5e game, focus on Failure handling (Fail Forward with either a Twist or a Condition + you get what you want), Exploration Turns + Condition/Light Clock, gear handling, CampPhase/Rest handling, and the mapbuilding procedures (similar to Travellers Lifepaths but for adventure sites). That’s easily enough ported (but you’re going to have to hack magic Light effects in 5e). 

 [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] I’ll link here when I post it.


----------



## Lanefan

S'mon said:


> Works great in the context of multiple PC groups within the same campaign - the context he assumed.



This is the very context in which my games run - multiple parties within the same campaign and setting - and I still don't like the idea.

And I'll freely admit this leads to more work for me as DM in trying to keep things straight in terms of who might bump into who at what time and in what place, but to me that's just an accepted and necessary part of the job.

Looked at another way: when party A goes out on a mission to the far south for a month, leaving party B and a bunch of spare PCs back in town, there's no built-in assumption of any kind that party B and the spares will just sit in town awaiting A's return.  If something comes up for B (and-or the spares) to do in the meantime then they'll go out and do it while A is still away. (sometimes the collective group end up with [or self-generate] several missions at once, and literally decide in-character who's going on which trip)

At the table this would go, on the macro level, like this:

Step 1: we play through party A's adventure until they get back to town, at which point I make it clear that I-as-DM don't know which if any of their friends and associates are here.  We sort out A's bookkeeping and put them on hold.
Step 2: we play through party B's adventure until they get back to town, at which point I'll already know whether A is back yet or not but won't know about the spares.  We sort out B's bookkeeping and put them on hold.
Step 3: we update the spares and see if they've got up to anything meaningful (usually not, but sometimes yes); and if anything needs to be played through we do so.
Step 4: open-ended.  If A and B's time in town doesn't overlap then they probably remain separate, each might cycle in-out some spares and head back out, or the earlier might wait for the later to return to town, or whatever.

[side note - this is a large part of the reason why game time progresses so much slower than real time: we're playing through the same in-game dates more than once, with different parties]

Now if A and B are running side-along on different nights of the week it gets even messier, in that when one gets too far out of synch in game-time with the other I have to somehow slow down the faster group.  The simplest answer there is to make up a party C out of the spare PCs and run them on something short while the slower main party catches up in time.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In the context of fiction I think that _realism_ overlaps with, but isn't the same as, _verisimilitude_ and _naturalism_.
> 
> * _Verisimilitude_ is the property of having an intuitive/experiential plausibility - so it depends on the expectations/experiences of the audience. I would say that variable weapon damage in D&D is a manifestation of verisimilitude. Likewise healing rates in Rolemaster (which factor in the nature and location of the injury). Presumably for martial artists, variabe weapon damage is more likely to lack verisimilitude (or at least in more danger of doing so); and presumably for doctors the same is true of the RM healing rules.
> 
> * _Naturalism_ is a particular way of presenting a fictional world, as characterised by a certain sort of "ordinariness" or "groundedness". If you've ever read Jack the Giant Killer (I think the version I've read is in the Blue Fairy Book) it is wildly non-naturalistic: giants just pop up, with their treasure, with no rhyme or reason. Whereas I see one of JRRT's major achievements as a writer being to present fairy tale and Arthurian romance-type tropes in the form of a naturalistic novel (eg his treatment of Lorien presents the faerie woods with a faerie queen in the mode of being a real, imaginable and in some sense measurable place). Naturalism can support verisimilitude but isn't necessary for it - the Hobbit is less naturalilstic than LotR (eg Rivendell in the Hobbit really isn't treated naturalistically at all) but I'm not sure it's any less verisimilitudinous. And sometimes the attempt at naturalism can undermine verisimilitude - the naturalistic presentation of the Shire in LotR to me ultimately undercuts verisimilitude because the material standard of living seems utterly implausible to me given the economic geography.
> 
> * _Realism_ I would think of as meaning _resemblance to or imitation of reality_. Lorien is naturaistically presented, but not realistic - what do all those elves eat? and who is making their wine? Likewise the Shire, for the reasons I gave earlier. Conversely, a fiction might be relatively realistic but not very naturalistically presented - some Hal Hartley films are like this, for instance. Realism can support verisimilitude, but not necessarily - it can be quite realistic, for instance, for people's moods or allegiances to swing in volatile ways, but this may undermine verisimilitude or cause the audience to have to question their understanding of or intuitions about the work because they have to reframe it to re-establish plausibility.



Well put.

So the question then becomes this: are verisimilitude, naturalism, and realism (and I'll toss in believability here too) worthy goals a DM should strive for when designing a setting and-or running a RPG?

If no, then fair enough; and our conversation mostly ends there.

But if yes, then the next questions are by what means can one steer one's games closer to these goals; and how far is one willing to go and-or how hard is one willing to push in order to get [closer to] there?



> *Concepts applied to RPGing*
> With RPGing, I would think of the above features as properties of the play experience and the fiction it produces, not of systems. (Eg tracking encumbrance may produce a realistic play experience, or not, depending on how the application of the rules plays out in the context of the shared fiction at the table. In 4e I found the outcome unrealistic - even ordinary people seem (to me) inordinately strong; in Traveller the lack of realism feels the same but for the opposite reason - ordinary people seem to be penalised by quite light loads.)



System has a lot to say here, though, and can't be ignored.  Consider something as basic as 5' squares vs. fluid spacing for movement and-or combat - and even ignoring the specific mechanics involved in either, consider the tone these things set for the game as a whole.

The reason I point to this example is that one is quite clearly 'gamist', and gamism is frequently the enemy of realism-naturalism-verisimilitude.

(back up a step further even and consider the tone set by the game's rulebook : does it read like a math text [extremely gamist] or a fantasy novel [extremely naturalist], or - as nearly all rulebooks fall somewhere between these - which way does it lean and how obvious are said leanings?)



> I think an RPG game/fiction is realistic if the characters who figure in it have plausible and recognisable motivations; if the social contexts and institutions are likewise able to be made sense of (this can be tricky, because human cultures are incredibly diverse and if not familiar can seem quite alien - but I rarely see this done well in RPGs); if the unfolding of events appears to be explicable in its own terms.



I completely agree.

I'll lob in also that having a plausible (within itself) and consistent setting behind it all helps greatly too.


----------



## Sadras

Manbearcat said:


> @_*Sadras*_
> 
> Awesome! Enjoy.
> 
> If you’re going to most likely just port things to your 5e game, focus on Failure handling (Fail Forward with either a Twist or a Condition + you get what you want), Exploration Turns + Condition/Light Clock, gear handling, CampPhase/Rest handling, and the mapbuilding procedures (similar to Travellers Lifepaths but for adventure sites). That’s easily enough ported (but you’re going to have to hack magic Light effects in 5e).




Busy skimming the book. I like it, the system seems tight. It is an easy read, very direct, and everything is well-laid out. The artwork reminiscent of early days roleplaying games. Love some of the ideas. 

The weapon list seems to have more properties/qualities than the 5e counterpart which is great and places more weight when choosing one's weapon in a particular conflict. Definitely one of the areas I think 5e could have expanded on. 

Selecting a conflict captain is interesting - kind of like a player referee/administrator of sorts. 

There are a number of tables, although they are quick and easy to understand, but still intimidating to a newbie as you might feel overwhelmed.   

The below caught my eye and thought it was funny to include it. Perhaps they deal with things like this in the town law's section.



> *To the Dogs*
> Your remaining fresh rations spoil or go stale. You can discard them at the gates for the beggars and dogs.




I noticed there are quite a few add-ons for Torchbearer - new classes and setting specific rules and the like (including being aboard a sea vessel).

EDIT: I wouldn't hack the game's magic/spells or change 5e, that is more work than I'm prepared to do. There was a time in my teens and 20's where that were possible, not now though. I'd rather play the game as is to experience the magic. 

They do recommend one gets the  player and GM cards.

Your equipment resources are more important and better tested in this system than 5e due to a number of factors but predominantly because the system demands it and not because of homebrew rules and DM fiat. I definitely recommend this for hardcore, low-magic campaign POL settings.  
I read somewhere becoming an adventurer was your first mistake. 

Gaining rewards is interesting: Fight for your Belief, accomplish your Goal, help out with your Instinct.


----------



## Sadras

nvm


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I think that some dismiss the MMI phenomenon entirely by saying simply "that's just how the game is played." In other words, it's a complete denial that the problem described exists or could exist, which I also find unhelpful.



I just wanted to respond to the fact that your first quoted sentence refers to a _phenomenon_, but in the second sentence it has transmuted into a _problem_.

I think "Mother may I", as a term, is a bit like "railroading". That is, everyone largely can grasp what is being conveyed - ie just as everyone knows that a _railroad_ is a game with problematic GM domination (often via pre-authorship) of plot/outcomes, so everyone knows that _Mother may I_ is a game with problematic GM gate-keeping of resolution outcomes - but there is often disagree on what counts as an intance of the phenomenon.

Now let's unpack that disagreement. It seems obvious to me that it's quite possible to acknowledge the existence of either GM role in a given instance of play, while disagreeing that the GM role is _a problem_. And so when surprised by a description of something as a railroad or Mother may I, a sensible response may be to ask _why is the degree of GM authority in this instance regarded as a problem by this person?_ And if what they are criticsing strikes the surprised person as "just how the game is played", then it also will make sense to ask _what different approach to play is the critic using?_

In this thread, I've posted several times that those who are surprised by the description of some play as "Mother may I" seem not to be able to step outside a "GM decides" paradigm - and so they envisage "saying no" being replaced with "saying yes". But that's still GM gatekeeeping. I think the key to understanding where the critics of _GM decides_ are coming from is to recognise the possibility of resolution systems that are able to distribute authority across different participants without one participant as gatekeeper. That's why "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and PbtA-type "moves" - both of which are ways of doing this distribution - have figured so prominently as topics in this thread.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In this thread, I've posted several times that those who are surprised by the description of some play as "Mother may I" seem not to be able to step outside a "GM decides" paradigm - and so they envisage "saying no" being replaced with "saying yes". But that's still GM gatekeeeping. I think the key to understanding where the critics of _GM decides_ are coming from is to recognise the possibility of resolution systems that are able to distribute authority across different participants without one participant as gatekeeper. That's why "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and PbtA-type "moves" - both of which are ways of doing this distribution - have figured so prominently as topics in this thread.




This isn't what is going on Pemerton. This was clarified many times in the thread. And this is part of what I am talking about. I tried to explain my use of language to you, apologized for where it was unclear, but you persist in very uncharitable readings of people posting casual responses. I and the others are fully able to step outside the GM decides paradigm. What it feels like to me is you can't step out of the paradigm that views GM decides as a problem. I can definitely see how it might be a problem for you, and how SYORTD or Moves could be a solution. That is why I have said these are perfectly valid tools. But it feels like you are only looking at GM decides from your point of view, imposing assumptions about it on us, that just don't feel like they match what we experience at the table. The conversation feels like I am reporting to you what I experience and your response is something like "Oh so you mean [insert thing I absolutely didn't say or try to imply]." Perhaps I've misunderstood you. But this is my impression of your position over the course of this thread.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> resolution systems that are able to distribute authority across different participants without one participant as gatekeeper.




Paradoxically, an effect of such a distribution of authority, would allow the Gm to go full-on adversarial against the players during the resolution phase, if so wishes, without the need to muffle the blows, fudge, or generally being concerned about fairness of outcomes etc


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> This isn't what is going on Pemerton. This was clarified many times in the thread. And this is part of what I am talking about. I tried to explain my use of language to you, apologized for where it was unclear, but you persist in very uncharitable readings of people posting casual responses. I and the others are fully able to step outside the GM decides paradigm. What it feels like to me is you can't step out of the paradigm that views GM decides as a problem. I can definitely see how it might be a problem for you, and how SYORTD or Moves could be a solution. That is why I have said these are perfectly valid tools. But it feels like you are only looking at GM decides from your point of view, imposing assumptions about it on us, that just don't feel like they match what we experience at the table. The conversation feels like I am reporting to you what I experience and your response is something like "Oh so you mean [insert thing I absolutely didn't say or try to imply]." Perhaps I've misunderstood you. But this is my impression of your position over the course of this thread.



Would you agree that 'Gm Decides' only works if the Gm is good? Good in the broadest meaning of capable, fair, careful, equanimous, aware etc.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Would you agree that 'Gm Decides' only works if the Gm is good? Good in the broadest meaning of capable, fair, careful, equanimous, aware etc.




No. I wouldn't agree with that. It is going to be better if the GM is good. But it can still work in the hands of less skilled GMs. I think it won't work well in the hands of a jerk, but that is another matter.

Edit: But if you have an argument flowing from that premise, by all means, share it.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> nd while Mother-May-I has pejorative undertones, it is also an expression that is fairly easy to conceptualize in terms of the underlying issues being evoked: some form of play entailing players asking persmission from a single authority figure, who may then grant them permission. It asks you to apply your general knowledge of a fairly ubiquitous children's game to a more niche hobby game. So it unquestionably has some descriptive utility. How and where it applies, however, will be the points of contention. Also, I would note that it is not a pejorative that dehumanizes anyone, as it applies to a playstyle. (Playstyles aren't people.)
> 
> If the term is inaccurate, then usually it becomes incumbent on critics of the term to find a more accurate term for the problem described. No one has really offered one so MMI remains the default term in play and with people's default assumptions of its meaning and scope. Unfortunately, when asked about MMI, I think that some dismiss the MMI phenomenon entirely by saying simply "that's just how the game is played." In other words, it's a complete denial that the problem described exists or could exist, which I also find unhelpful.




There are other terms readily available.  DM Facing Game and Traditional Playstyle/Game work just fine.  There may even be some others, but those are the two that jumped out with a second of thought.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> *EDIT:* No offense intended. Entire post is tongue-and-cheek.




LOL  No offense taken.  That was one of the better humor posts I've seen here.  Well done!!


----------



## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> But .... did we get rid of the Paladins?
> 
> (I only regret that I have but one laugh to give for that!)




Almost.  It was close, but then they started laying hands upon one another and it got.........weird.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Though all of them could well be things that can help generate pressure _later_ when looking at something other than the immediate or short term.



Sure, but as I've stated, why do they then need mechanics? Its only when you reach some stage where you will 'generate pressure' (IE where there will be conflict) that you need a mechanical game system. You see this quite often in movies, where the travel, or the training, or the research, or whatever, is just basically a montage. Only when the plot actually travels forward, where there are changes in the fictional state (or as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] would call it, the fictional positioning or scene) that there is a resumption of story. 



> Yes, and it's a) only about two hours long and b) has a pre-set amount of story that has to be fit within that time.
> 
> RPGs are open-ended in length, thus there's no need whatsoever to cram story in (whether player or GM generated, doesn't matter for this point) in a rush to make it fit within a real-world timeframe.



This is an assumption and doesn't stand up to even casual examination. We could spend thousands of hours on RPGs or on movies, and in fact people probably overall spend at least as much time on the later (and on TV) as the former. It is drama-filled because that's what is truly entertaining in most cases. Not to say that slow pacing cannot be good, but it isn't somehow magically always the best way. 



> Except that when everything's dramatic, nothing is.



I would point to movies again. They are mostly pretty dramatic, and those are the most popular. People watch one after another and show no such thing as this hypothesized 'drama fatigue'. 



> Please define MEAT.  I'm assuming that because it's all-caps here it means something other than what comes from a butchered animal, but I don't know what.



I used the term, in the sense of the phrase 'get to the meat of it'. The vital part, that which contains the essence of the thing. In terms of a story in an RPG it would mean the part in which the story is actually told, where things happen, where characters endure conflict and undergo growth and change. 



> This points to what I mention above: that things done now can set up pressure application later.
> 
> Of course there's (quite likely) not much risk involved in doing the library research...which might be exactly why the player/PC chose to take that angle - low risk but potentially decent reward, where the reward is useful information that might help reduce or mitigate the risks later when he puts this research to practical use and actually tries to take over the kingdom.  So, low-to-no pressure now could lead to reduced pressure later.



But where is the conflict in library research? There's no pressure happening in a scenario where I am just going to the library to 'learn stuff' even if it is with a certain goal in mind. It can be simply summarized in a sentence and requires no dice or other mechanics. If it is going to 'mitigate risks later' that's fine, but again there's nothing to dwell on. Going on about the library, the details of the various books, etc. is just color. Its OK, where that color has some narrative function. Its fine if there's real information obtained, plans made, and resources expended in preparations. These are all still basically non-dramatic and don't need to take up useful table time to any great degree.



> Why take great risks until and unless you have to?  And why not do whatever you can to turn those great risks into moderate risks?
> 
> Sure it might be less dramatic, but - wait for it! - it's what a rational character would do.




OK, so the rational character goes to the library, the GM says "you go to the library and X, Y, Z" and then you go on to the next scene. Guess what? Something dramatic will happen in that next scene. Sure, the character may trot out X and use it to overcome some problem, but if you are following any sort of narrative driven game then X will have been somehow keyed to something the player signaled before. So X might be a revelation that your great grandfather really was a vampire, on to the crypt scene! Guess who you meet? Lucky you brought that holy symbol along! Now how do you resolve your pride in your ancestry with the fact that your ancestor is an undead monster? THAT IS MEAT!


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would point to movies again. They are mostly pretty dramatic, and those are the most popular. People watch one after another and show no such thing as this hypothesized 'drama fatigue'.




I once watched Godfather I and II before going to see III in the theater.  It was 15 years before I would watch another gangster movie and I reaaaaaally wanted to leave number III early.  Not because it was a bad movie.  But because it was just too......much......drama.

T.V. shows take longer for me, since they are shorter and once per week.  Even so, as the seasons get more and more ridiculous trying to top the last, I eventually stop watching them as well.  The dramas anyway.  The comedies take me longer.

I know from speaking with my friends that I am far from alone in this.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Paradoxically, an effect of such a distribution of authority, would allow the Gm to go full-on adversarial against the players during the resolution phase, if so wishes, without the need to muffle the blows, fudge, or generally being concerned about fairness of outcomes etc



Right - and I'm sure that you're familiar with Vincent Baker's discussion of this in his designer notes for DitV.


----------



## pemerton

I haven't read or played Torchbearer, but - obviously given my posts - am a big fan of Burning Wheel.



Sadras said:


> The weapon list seems to have more properties/qualities than the 5e counterpart which is great and places more weight when choosing one's weapon in a particular conflict.



Maybe  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] or  [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] can confirm - is this similar to the BW weapon list?



Sadras said:


> Selecting a conflict captain is interesting - kind of like a player referee/administrator of sorts.



I am guessing this is related to Luke Crane's love for the _caller_ role in Molday Basic. Is that right?



Sadras said:


> Fight for your Belief, accomplish your Goal, help out with your Instinct.



That seems similar to BW, though not identical.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> There are other terms readily available.  DM Facing Game and Traditional Playstyle/Game work just fine.  There may even be some others, but those are the two that jumped out with a second of thought.



I don't think though that either of these terms really cover the issue, and also this answer incidentally falls in line with what I said about how some seem to deny that MMI exists as an issue. Calling something "traditional" goes a long way to normalize the phenomenon even if it is problematic. The MMI issue may frequently occur in DM Facing Games, as DM Facing Games enable the issue, but I would not necessarily use "DM Facing Game" to label the issue that Mother May I attempts to describe. So if you gave yourself more than a second of thought, what other terms would you suggest for describing the issue?  



pemerton said:


> I think "Mother may I", as a term, is a bit like "railroading". That is, everyone largely can grasp what is being conveyed - ie just as everyone knows that a _railroad_ is a game with problematic GM domination (often via pre-authorship) of plot/outcomes, so everyone knows that _Mother may I_ is a game with problematic GM gate-keeping of resolution outcomes - but there is often disagree on what counts as an intance of the phenomenon.



But this also brings up another point that went unaddressed or unnoticed. "Railroading" is a pejorative for a play or GMing style, and yet almost no one voices a problem with using the pejorative term "railroading" to describe a playstyle. Many may even unequivocally claim that "railroading" is a sign of a "bad GM" even if the players at the table perhaps enjoy that playstyle.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> "Railroading" is a pejorative for a play or GMing style, and yet almost no one voices a problem with using the pejorative term "railroading" to describe a playstyle.



Sorry to contradict you, but I've certainly copped heat for my use of that term! (In threads not too different from this one.)


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> Sorry to contradict you, but I've certainly copped heat for my use of that term! (In threads not too different from this one.)



And you have been accused of "railroading" with your approaches. So it's a pejorative, but not one that (many of those same) people are above using. :shrug:


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, but as I've stated, why do they then need mechanics? Its only when you reach some stage where you will 'generate pressure' (IE where there will be conflict) that you need a mechanical game system. You see this quite often in movies, where the travel, or the training, or the research, or whatever, is just basically a montage. Only when the plot actually travels forward, where there are changes in the fictional state (or as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] would call it, the fictional positioning or scene) that there is a resumption of story.



A lot to dig into here.

First, advancement of story and use of mechanics are not necessarily tied together: either can very easily happen without the other.

Second, the difference between a movie and an RPG is that a movie has to use a montage in order to keep within time limits where in an RPG there's time to play the montage out in greater depth and detail.

Third, a change in the fictional state might have nothing to do with advancing the story.  In the game I play in, for example, it looks like we're just starting an arc involving the artifacts of Vecna (again); painting a castle pink during the pre-adventure downtime doesn't advance that story a millimeter but it does change the fictional state: the castle is pink, and some characters have changed their opinions of other characters due to the action and subsequent reactions.



> This is an assumption and doesn't stand up to even casual examination. We could spend thousands of hours on RPGs or on movies, and in fact people probably overall spend at least as much time on the later (and on TV) as the former. It is drama-filled because that's what is truly entertaining in most cases. Not to say that slow pacing cannot be good, but it isn't somehow magically always the best way.
> 
> I would point to movies again. They are mostly pretty dramatic, and those are the most popular. People watch one after another and show no such thing as this hypothesized 'drama fatigue'.



Most movies - but by no means all - have enough sense of pacing to intentionally include valleys between the peaks.



> But where is the conflict in library research? There's no pressure happening in a scenario where I am just going to the library to 'learn stuff' even if it is with a certain goal in mind. It can be simply summarized in a sentence and requires no dice or other mechanics.



It probably needs dice on the GM side in order to determine whether you find what you seek (and how much, and how quickly) or whether you find nothing, or whether you find false information that steers you wrong.



> If it is going to 'mitigate risks later' that's fine, but again there's nothing to dwell on. Going on about the library, the details of the various books, etc. is just color. Its OK, where that color has some narrative function. Its fine if there's real information obtained, plans made, and resources expended in preparations. These are all still basically non-dramatic and don't need to take up useful table time to any great degree.



Perhaps not, but that's no excuse to skip these things entirely or, worse, deny them as legitimate actions.  Who knows - there might not be any useful info obtained at all, but you won't know until-unless you do the research.



> OK, so the rational character goes to the library, the GM says "you go to the library and X, Y, Z" and then you go on to the next scene.



Unless X or Y or Z brings up further questions and-or points to more research to do with A, B and-or C; elements or variables discovered during the first round of digging.



> Guess what? Something dramatic will happen in that next scene. Sure, the character may trot out X and use it to overcome some problem, but if you are following any sort of narrative driven game then X will have been somehow keyed to something the player signaled before. So X might be a revelation that your great grandfather really was a vampire, on to the crypt scene! Guess who you meet? Lucky you brought that holy symbol along! Now how do you resolve your pride in your ancestry with the fact that your ancestor is an undead monster? THAT IS MEAT!



If X is a revelation that great-granddad was a vampire then Y, Z, and a bunch of other things are going to come from me digging a lot deeper into his life (and death!) history while putting all of it into a whole new light.  With any luck I'll learn he's buried in that crypt before I ever go there, and thus be forewarned and (I hope!) prepared should I meet him there.

Or maybe learning he's buried in that crypt changes my mind about wanting to go there right now (or ever, for that matter), and I instead go off and find something else to do for however long it takes me to become confident that I'm tough enough to deal with a vampire should I meet one.

Or maybe on learning he's buried in that crypt I figure that if he's potentially a vampire I should probably recruit some trained professional vampire hunters (in D&D these would be high level Clerics) to go in there with me, 'cause if there's one potential vampire down there who knows how many others might be in there with him?

Skipping straight from the library to the crypt scene unfairly denies me - both as player and as PC - all these options plus whatever others might arise.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> I once watched Godfather I and II before going to see III in the theater.  It was 15 years before I would watch another gangster movie and I reaaaaaally wanted to leave number III early.  Not because it was a bad movie.  But because it was just too......much......drama.
> 
> T.V. shows take longer for me, since they are shorter and once per week.  Even so, as the seasons get more and more ridiculous trying to top the last, I eventually stop watching them as well.  The dramas anyway.  The comedies take me longer.
> 
> I know from speaking with my friends that I am far from alone in this.



Similar to you in that, but I cant stand sitcoms

I think Drama is not the right term: Action, Things Running, as others have already said, are more appropriate... Drama being a moment, a pinnacle of those ...things


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Right - and I'm sure that you're familiar with Vincent Baker's discussion of this in his designer notes for DitV.



I had precisely DitV in mind. 

---
Weapon stat in

 BW: Power (damage/critical hit bonus), Add (dice added to location/damage), VA (versus armor), WS (weapon speed), Lenght (weapons are compared in a chart for bonus/malus against each other)

In TB weapons are described in terms of how they affect your actions in Kill, Drive Off and Capture conflicts. Each is listed with the bonus or penalty dice for Attack, Defend, Feint and Manouver. Plus Special feature (eg: bypasses shield benefit), and Encumbrance value/location where carried.


In TB ammo is not tracked, it merely takes up an inventory slot and can be lost through a twist. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Sorry to contradict you, but I've certainly copped heat for my use of that term! (In threads not too different from this one.)



To be fair, you broadened the term to include any use of secret backstory, so....


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I once watched Godfather I and II before going to see III in the theater.  It was 15 years before I would watch another gangster movie and I reaaaaaally wanted to leave number III early.  Not because it was a bad movie.  But because it was just too......much......drama.
> 
> T.V. shows take longer for me, since they are shorter and once per week.  Even so, as the seasons get more and more ridiculous trying to top the last, I eventually stop watching them as well.  The dramas anyway.  The comedies take me longer.
> 
> I know from speaking with my friends that I am far from alone in this.



Right, so, the antidite is drama-free stretches of not much happening?  Don't sign me up?


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> Right, so, the antidite is drama-free stretches of not much happening?  Don't sign me up?



See also: Thermal baths


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I am guessing this is related to Luke Crane's love for the _caller_ role in Molday Basic. Is that right?




I did a quick skim, but yes I believe so. The game is very much a call-back to those older games, just with a newer take on things and really integrating all those moving parts like encumbrance, carrying capacity, equipment, light, coinage and the like, into the system.  



> That seems similar to BW, though not identical.




I would not be surprised at this.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> To be fair, you broadened the term to include any use of secret backstory



 . . . to resolve declared actions.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> . . . to resolve declared actions.



Yes.  The presense or absense of a secret door does not rise to the level of railroading.  In the sense of a Story Now game it does, but in "trad" styles it does not.  Your favorite Moldovay Basic, for instance, the GM's notes are not railroading, even when used for action declarations.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I don't think though that either of these terms really cover the issue, and also this answer incidentally falls in line with what I said about how some seem to deny that MMI exists as an issue. Calling something "traditional" goes a long way to normalize the phenomenon even if it is problematic.




There is no problem.  As I mentioned earlier, the social contract prevents the DM from having the full control that others are calling "Mother May I."  The DM has no ability, barring something in game like  mind control, to keep the PC from walking behind the tree as the player wishes, or to go to the local bar for a drink as the player wishes.  The player simply does not have to ask permission to do those things, even in a game like D&D.

A DM who does use that authority to do things like that is not only violating the social contract, but also the intent and function of the game which is for everyone to have fun.  Only a very few DMs are so horrible at DMing that they would try something like that, and in those very few occasions, it's a problem of personality and not system.

The "problem" is completely fabricated by people trying to disparage a playstyle they don't understand, dislike, or both.



> The MMI issue may frequently occur in DM Facing Games, as DM Facing Games enable the issue, but I would not necessarily use "DM Facing Game" to label the issue that Mother May I attempts to describe. So if you gave yourself more than a second of thought, what other terms would you suggest for describing the issue?




How about Jerk DM?  It's not a system problem at all.  It's purely a DM issue.



> But this also brings up another point that went unaddressed or unnoticed. "Railroading" is a pejorative for a play or GMing style, and yet almost no one voices a problem with using the pejorative term "railroading" to describe a playstyle. Many may even unequivocally claim that "railroading" is a sign of a "bad GM" even if the players at the table perhaps enjoy that playstyle.




Perhaps because it's a much more common issue than "Mother May I," which is one that is almost entirely fabricated as I mention above.  Unlike the fictional "Mother May I" issue, Railroading does happen to remove player choice, and often happens with new DMs who don't know any better.  New DMs won't even think to try and stop a PC from moving behind a tree to see what is on the other side or go to the inn for a drink, but they might try to force the party down a storyline, thinking that it's going to be fun for everyone and move the game along.  

In Railroading threads I've noted that if you have player buy-in, then it's fine to Railroad them.  One of my players recently(a few years ago) started to DM a bit to give me a break.  When he first started he came to us and told us that he was still trying to learn things and wasn't that good at improvising yet, so he wanted us to go down his story rather than break off and maybe go somewhere strange like we sometimes do.  We all agreed not to go running off to say Candle Keep for information and just stick to his adventure.  That kind of Railroad is fine.  The rest are not.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> There is no problem.  As I mentioned earlier, the social contract prevents the DM from having the full control that others are calling "Mother May I."  The DM has no ability, barring something in game like  mind control, to keep the PC from walking behind the tree as the player wishes, or to go to the local bar for a drink as the player wishes.  The player simply does not have to ask permission to do those things, even in a game like D&D.
> 
> A DM who does use that authority to do things like that is not only violating the social contract, but also the intent and function of the game which is for everyone to have fun.  Only a very few DMs are so horrible at DMing that they would try something like that, and in those very few occasions, it's a problem of personality and not system.
> 
> The "problem" is completely fabricated by people trying to disparage a playstyle they don't understand, dislike, or both.
> 
> 
> 
> How about Jerk DM?  It's not a system problem at all.  It's purely a DM issue.
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps because it's a much more common issue than "Mother May I," which is one that is almost entirely fabricated as I mention above.  Unlike the fictional "Mother May I" issue, Railroading does happen to remove player choice, and often happens with new DMs who don't know any better.  New DMs won't even think to try and stop a PC from moving behind a tree to see what is on the other side or go to the inn for a drink, but they might try to force the party down a storyline, thinking that it's going to be fun for everyone and move the game along.
> 
> In Railroading threads I've noted that if you have player buy-in, then it's fine to Railroad them.  One of my players recently(a few years ago) started to DM a bit to give me a break.  When he first started he came to us and told us that he was still trying to learn things and wasn't that good at improvising yet, so he wanted us to go down his story rather than break off and maybe go somewhere strange like we sometimes do.  We all agreed not to go running off to say Candle Keep for information and just stick to his adventure.  That kind of Railroad is fine.  The rest are not.



All I have to do to counter your argument is start a thread on metagaming.  Then we'll see plenty of GMs saying that it's appropriate to deny action declarations because it'sassumed as  part of their social contract.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> All I have to do to counter your argument is start a thread on metagaming.  Then we'll see plenty of GMs saying that it's appropriate to deny action declarations because it'sassumed as  part of their social contract.




Metagaming is cheating and cheating is also against the social contract.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> Metagaming is cheating and cheating is also against the social contract.




That varies so much from group to group through. I don't personally care if a bit of meta gaming works its way into play (for example, players doing things just so the party can stay together and we can have a smooth session). I think most groups only care when meta gaming starts to disrupt play. But it really does seem to vary a lot. I've been in groups that allowed zero meta gaming, and I've been in groups that didn't care at all about it.


----------



## Manbearcat

Y







pemerton said:


> I haven't read or played Torchbearer, but - obviously given my posts - am a big fan of Burning Wheel.
> 
> Maybe  @_*Manbearcat*_ or  @_*Numidius*_ can confirm - is this similar to the BW weapon list?
> 
> I am guessing this is related to Luke Crane's love for the _caller_ role in Molday Basic. Is that right?
> 
> That seems similar to BW, though not identical.




1) Yup, weapons are similar implementation but relevant differences related to the different zoom of the conflict mechanics.

Unlike Fight! and DoW, the Conflict system is shared with Mouse Guard and very similar to 4e’s SCs (with certain notable differences). All conflicts (from combat to parley to chases to abjures etc) use a unified, abstract framework with effectively HPs for both sides, take actions and contest against each other and the fiction changes until one side has no more HP.

2) That’s exactly right. The Conflict Captain is basically The Caller.

3) Yup, you’ve got Beliefs, Instincts, Wises, Traits, Skills, Abilities, Checks, Goals, Nature, Mentor (Training), Friend, Enemy, Fate points and Persona points, Beginners Luck, and Conditions. 

The stuff that looks familiar has similar implementation.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> That varies so much from group to group through. I don't personally care if a bit of meta gaming works its way into play (for example, players doing things just so the party can stay together and we can have a smooth session). I think most groups only care when meta gaming starts to disrupt play. But it really does seem to vary a lot. I've been in groups that allowed zero meta gaming, and I've been in groups that didn't care at all about it.




Sure, and you can allow players to just pick whatever number they want to roll after they roll the die, too.  Metagaming is one of those things that people tolerate or even enjoy to varying degrees, but if the DM doesn't allow it in part or in whole, it's cheating to engage in it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> And you have been accused of "railroading" with your approaches. So it's a pejorative, but not one that (many of those same) people are above using. :shrug:




I haven't seen that mentioned, but what Pemerton describes isn't railroading in my opinion. I think railroading and MMI are similar terms. They have utility to describe functional play. But here it is being used to paint traditional play as mother may I (I realize there is dispute over how to characterize this, but doing so for convenience)---or at least to paint a very, very common playstyle as MMI. That is when the utility is lost. Both terms describe dysfunction. Even linear adventures are not railroads for example. It only becomes a railroad when the GM refuses to let the players go off the path of the linear adventure. If I apply railroad to describe half the hobby, I think I will never really understand why those people do what they do. It is a term that is loaded with a sense of bafflement over the type of play that is occurring. No one wants a railroad and no one wants mother may I. I think the only real way these terms make sense is when they describe failed states of play. Otherwise we should probably stick to the terms people themselves use to describe their playstyle. I just think there is too much partisanship in how people conduct analysis in this hobby when it comes to coining terms.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> Sure, and you can allow players to just pick whatever number they want to roll after they roll the die, too.  Metagaming is one of those things that people tolerate or even enjoy to varying degrees, but if the DM doesn't allow it in part or in whole, it's cheating to engage in it.




But that depends on the game system. You can't just say meta gaming is always cheating, simply because you don't like it or because you play one game that discourages it (or even has a specific rule against it). I don't put any rules against meta gaming in my games. I leave that to the players and GM to decide amongst themselves. If they metagame, I wouldn't regard it as cheating. I think this is an odd position to take. Personally i am guessing we probably are pretty close in playstyle when it comes to meta gaming. I just don't see how allowing a player to metagame is the same as allowing them to alter the result of a valid die roll.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> There is no problem.





> The "problem" is completely fabricated by people trying to disparage a playstyle they don't understand, dislike, or both.





> "Mother May I," which is one that is almost entirely fabricated as I mention above.





> Unlike the fictional "Mother May I" issue,



Again, this repetition speaks volumes to how I was saying earlier about how unhelpfully people dismiss the existence of this practice entirely. It tries to shutdown the conversation.  



> As I mentioned earlier, the social contract prevents the DM from having the full control that others are calling "Mother May I."  The DM has no ability, barring something in game like  mind control, to keep the PC from walking behind the tree as the player wishes, or to go to the local bar for a drink as the player wishes.  The player simply does not have to ask permission to do those things, even in a game like D&D.
> 
> *A DM who does use that authority to do things like that is not only violating the social contract, but also the intent and function of the game which is for everyone to have fun.*  Only a very few DMs are so horrible at DMing that they would try something like that, and in those very few occasions, it's a problem of personality and not system.



The social contract is not a rule or anything that exists concretely as part of a system, as far as I know, so it does not prevent anything. So we may as well appeal to punitive wrath of Mithra or Adam Smith's Invisible Hand when the social contract of gaming is violated. 

And I would note that while you deny that MMI exists or is a problem, in the same breath you also suggest that the practice described _*is*_ a problem. Stop equivocating. 



> How about Jerk DM?  It's not a system problem at all.  It's purely a DM issue.



Because Jerk DM covers way too many things and is too obscure and imprecise. 1) I know you like to obfuscate terms to the point where they become unhelpfully broad, vague, and non-specific definitions, but if we want to talk meaningfully about the phenomenon of this practice - and maybe you don't - then "jerk DM" WILL NOT and CAN NOT cut it. It would be a bit like if we refused to label "railroading" as anything other than being a "jerk DM." Who knows what practice we are talking about if the only term available to us is "jerk DM"?  That does not provide us with much finesse or nuance in our discussions. And 2) Max, you can't just keep scapegoating and categorizing every single problem (particularly the ones you happen to dislike) to "jerk/bad DM" as you are so prone to do. So again I ask you: What alternative term would you propose to describe the negative practice that MMI entails? 



Maxperson said:


> Sure, and you can allow players to just pick whatever number they want to roll after they roll the die, too.  Metagaming is one of those things that people tolerate or even enjoy to varying degrees, *but if the DM doesn't allow it in part or in whole*, it's cheating to engage in it.



So there is no actual rule against it?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Again, this repetition speaks volumes to how I was saying earlier about how unhelpfully people dismiss the existence of this practice entirely. It tries to shutdown the conversation.




A lot of people have been repeating themselves. It is a 900+ post sequel thread, and folks are naturally reaching frustration points. We could probably all be a bit more charitable in our dealings with one another, given the sheer quantity of posts people have been working through and the room that creates for misunderstanding.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Metagaming is cheating and cheating is also against the social contract.



I rest my case.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I haven't seen that mentioned, but what Pemerton describes isn't railroading in my opinion. I think railroading and MMI are similar terms. They have utility to describe functional play. But here it is being used to paint traditional play as mother may I (I realize there is dispute over how to characterize this, but doing so for convenience)---or at least to paint a very, very common playstyle as MMI. That is when the utility is lost. Both terms describe dysfunction. Even linear adventures are not railroads for example. It only becomes a railroad when the GM refuses to let the players go off the path of the linear adventure. If I apply railroad to describe half the hobby, I think I will never really understand why those people do what they do.
> 
> It is a term that is loaded with a sense of bafflement over the type of play that is occurring. No one wants a railroad and no one wants mother may I. I think the only real way these terms make sense is when they describe failed states of play. Otherwise we should probably stick to the terms people themselves use to describe their playstyle. I just think there is too much partisanship in how people conduct analysis in this hobby when it comes to coining terms.



Oh, I see where you are coming from, even if I may not entirely agree. My point though was not meant to reopen discussions of railroading or how it applies to discussions pemerton has participated, and you do not linger on that here. It was only to highlight as you had likewise pointed out with great terseness: "both terms describe dysfunction." In that I agree with you, and I commend your ability to summarize this incredibly well, particularly starting where I made a new paragraph. 

I would also add that to an earlier point that another reason why I would like to refrain from attributing this gameplay dysfunction to simply "jerk DM." The nature of this practice is not exclusive to DMs. Players can likewise operate with this mentality even in the presence of a "good DM."


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Again, this repetition speaks volumes to how I was saying earlier about how unhelpfully people dismiss the existence of this practice entirely. It tries to shutdown the conversation.




A "practice" implies that it is common.  It's not.  It's rare.  There are very few DMs who will engage in trying to control every aspect of what the players want to do



> The social contract is not a rule or anything that exists concretely as part of a system, as far as I know, so it does not prevent anything. So we may as well appeal to punitive wrath of Mithra or Adam Smith's Invisible Hand when the social contract of gaming is violated.




The social contract is stronger than any rule system.  And you might as well appeal to the punitive wrath of Mithra or Adam Smith's Invisible Hand when a game rule is violated or changed by a DM.  If a DM is going to be a jerk, no rule or game system can stop him. 



> And I would note that while you deny that MMI exists or is a problem, in the same breath you also suggest that the practice described _*is*_ a problem. Stop equivocating.




There is no equivocation going on.  It's not a system or playstyle problem at all.  What I described is not a system or playstyle problem.  It's a problem with a few very rare DMs being jerks, and that isn't confined to Mother May I.



> Because Jerk DM covers way too many things and is too obscure and imprecise. 1) I know you like to obfuscate terms to the point where they become unhelpfully broad, vague, and non-specific definitions, but if we want to talk meaningfully about the phenomenon of this practice - and maybe you don't - then "jerk DM" WILL NOT and CAN NOT cut it. It would be a bit like if we refused to label "railroading" as anything other than being a "jerk DM." Who knows what practice we are talking about if the only term available to us is "jerk DM"?  That does not provide us with much finesse or nuance in our discussions. And 2) Max, you can't just keep scapegoating and categorizing every single problem (particularly the ones you happen to dislike) to "jerk/bad DM" as you are so prone to do. So again I ask you: What alternative term would you propose to describe the negative practice that MMI entails?
> 
> So there is no actual rule against it?




5e tells the DM to discourage metagame thinking.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I rest my case.




Me: The social contract keeps the vast majority of DMs from engaging in Mother May I.

You: All I have to do to counter the social contract argument is give an example of something ruled by the social contract.

Me: Thanks for the help.

You: I win!!!

Well, no.  You don't win when you rest a case after helping me with my point.  Not only does the social contract cover metagaming, but metagaming has nothing to do with Mother May I.  It's not as if a DM is going to control every aspect of what a player does over metagaming.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I don't think though that either of these terms really cover the issue, and also this answer incidentally falls in line with what I said about how some seem to deny that MMI exists as an issue.




I'm not sure anyone in this thread is denying MMI as an issue. I believe the disagreement lies in the MMI definition, it's more a matter of degree.



> Calling something "traditional" goes a long way to normalize the phenomenon even if it is problematic.




The viewpoint that traditional = MMI is not held by all, the observation you make is only relevant from persons who view MMI as all DM-facing games or all DM-adjudicated games. 



> The MMI issue may frequently occur in DM Facing Games, as DM Facing Games enable the issue, but I would not necessarily use "DM Facing Game" to label the issue that Mother May I attempts to describe. So if you gave yourself more than a second of thought, what other terms would you suggest for describing the issue?




Well herein lies the problem, when people do not agree on the definition.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Me: The social contract keeps the vast majority of DMs from engaging in Mother May I.
> 
> You: All I have to do to counter the social contract argument is give an example of something ruled by the social contract.
> 
> Me: Thanks for the help.
> 
> You: I win!!!
> 
> Well, no.  You don't win when you rest a case after helping me with my point.  Not only does the social contract cover metagaming, but metagaming has nothing to do with Mother May I.  It's not as if a DM is going to control every aspect of what a player does over metagaming.



Is that how you see it?  Here's an alternative:

Max:  MMI is prevented by the social contract, everywhere.

Me: Nope, metagaming opponents have no problem with MMI and its usually part of their social contract 

Max: Metagaming is cheating (does not cute rule).

Me:  (Yep, guessed that response because it pleads away a clear contradiction by labelling it more bad behavior, despite everyone not agreeing so being super clear in all of the discussions of metagaming.) I rest my case.

Max: We both said social contract!  I win!


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I'm not sure anyone in this thread is denying MMI as an issue. I believe the disagreement lies in the MMI definition, it's more a matter of degree.
> 
> 
> 
> The viewpoint that traditional = MMI is not held by all, the observation you make is only relevant from persons who view MMI as all DM-facing games or all DM-adjudicated games.
> 
> 
> 
> Well herein lies the problem, when people do not agree on the definition.



MMI exists whenever the GM has authority to negate action declarations, even if a GM chooses not to.  It's a matter of where a game rests authority.  This gets mixed up in whether or not a GM exercises that power.  I think it's fair to say that principled GMing of such games can yeild non-MMI outcomes, but that die3sn't make the ruleset non-MMI.

The flipside is talking about narrativist games that allow degenerate play by the rules but are constrained by principled play to not do so.  The rulesets can still allow degenerate play.  I think the main difference is that the narrativist games are upfront about these principles while more "trad" games do not offer such advice.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sadras said:


> I'm not sure anyone in this thread is denying MMI as an issue. I believe the disagreement lies in the MMI definition, it's more a matter of degree.
> 
> 
> 
> The viewpoint that traditional = MMI is not held by all, the observation you make is only relevant from persons who view MMI as all DM-facing games or all DM-adjudicated games.
> 
> 
> 
> Well herein lies the problem, when people do not agree on the definition.




This is the core of it. MMI and Railroading both represent dysfunctional play. If you apply either to huge swaths of the hobby that are clearly not dysfunctional, you are pathalogizing a perfectly valid playstyle. It is the inverse of the problem Aldarc identifies. He makes the point that you are normalizing behavior. But it just seems very strange to me to take what is clearly mainstream gaming, and treat it like it is abnormal or dysfunctional. This isn't something that just exists here. I see it in communities I am part of that share my preferences. when those preferences are out of sync with the mainstream, people in the niche often express disbelief that the mainstream enjoys what it enjoys. I just think taking this kind of critical approach isn't useful because it basically ensures you will never really understand what is driving interest in these things in the mainstream* if you are always looking down on it (and a term like MMI or Railroading being used that way is definitely looking down on the style, there is just no way around the pejorative nature of those terms).

*Or whatever stream you are examining


----------



## S'mon

Ovinomancer said:


> MMI exists whenever the GM has authority to negate action declarations




Declarations? Like "I attack?" Or do you mean "Resolutions" like "I kill the Orc"?


----------



## Bedrockgames

DOUBLE POST


----------



## Ovinomancer

S'mon said:


> Declarations? Like "I attack?" Or do you mean "Resolutions" like "I kill the Orc"?



"I kill the orc" can be either.  As a declaration, denying the action leads into MMI.  Denying the resolution would be a broader conversation that touches on "fudging," amongst other things.  A pervasive denial of resolution can lead to a softer, defacto form of MMI.  If no action you take except that approved of by the GM can result in "I kill the orc,"  then you're just adding a step between declaration and denial.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> 5e tells the DM to discourage metagame thinking.



As does 1e, if only by putting the DMG and MM off-limits to players.

But in fairness 1e is conflicted on this one, as in other areas of the game (e.g. riddle solving) meta-thinking is almost demanded.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Metagaming is one of those things that people tolerate or even enjoy to varying degrees, but if the DM doesn't allow it in part or in whole, it's cheating to engage in it.



What's the GM got to do with it? It's either the rules of the game, or - if the rules are silent - table expectations ("socia contract). The GM is nothing special in respect of either.


----------



## pemerton

Why should criticism in the field of RPGs operate by different standards from criticism in other fields?


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> "I kill the orc" can be either.  As a declaration, denying the action leads into MMI.



"I try to kill the orc" is a valid declaration.  "I kill the orc" is not, as it bypasses the game mechanics that might otherwise very well get in the way.

And I don't think anyone here is suggesting that game mechanics are MMI.


----------



## S'mon

Lanefan said:


> And I don't think anyone here is suggesting that game mechanics are MMI.




I was wondering if Ovinomancer was saying that the GM saying "No, Roll to hit" would be Denial of "I Kill the Orc" and thus "Mother May I". (Frankly I'm still wondering).

I find this MMI concept very confusing. It definitely seems to be a derogatory term but I can't get a clear idea of what it's supposed to mean. It seems to be applied to the normal processes of playing an RPG.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> "I try to kill the orc" is a valid declaration.  "I kill the orc" is not, as it bypasses the game mechanics that might otherwise very well get in the way.



Only if you're insisting on formal English in phrasing declarations.  If my players say, "I kill the orc," I take that as the intent of their action and apply resolution mechanics.

But, that aside, only the first two lines of my response involved declarations, the rest was about resolutions.



> And I don't think anyone here is suggesting that game mechanics are MMI.



I think you may not have been paying attention.  The mechanic of "GM decides" is a large part of MMI.  Where that mechanic gets employed is the operative part, I think.  If it's universal, then you're in MMI, if it's more limited, you may not be.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Only if you're insisting on formal English in phrasing declarations.  If my players say, "I kill the orc," I take that as the intent of their action and apply resolution mechanics.
> 
> But, that aside, only the first two lines of my response involved declarations, the rest was about resolutions.



Yes, the "try to" is often assumed at the table but for purposes of discussions like these - where nothing can be safely assumed - it's probably best to put it in. 



> I think you may not have been paying attention.  The mechanic of "GM decides" is a large part of MMI.



Then "I [try to] kill the orc" was probably a poor choice of example, as rare indeed is the system that lets a GM - without recourse to some sort of combat mechanics - outright decide how combat resolves when said combat involves PCs.



> Where that mechanic gets employed is the operative part, I think.  If it's universal, then you're in MMI, if it's more limited, you may not be.



Perhaps.


----------



## Ovinomancer

S'mon said:


> I was wondering if Ovinomancer was saying that the GM saying "No, Roll to hit" would be Denial of "I Kill the Orc" and thus "Mother May I". (Frankly I'm still wondering).



I'm going to assume that you're using "I kill the orc" as a declaration here, and not a resolution?  Okay.  In that case, absolutely not.  A denial of the declaration, "I kill the orc" (or "I try to kill the orc," for [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]), would be, "No, you don't, because X,Y,Z" or, less obviously, "You try to but fail."  The latter only becomes MMI if you have to use the GM's approved actions to progress.




> I find this MMI concept very confusing. It definitely seems to be a derogatory term but I can't get a clear idea of what it's supposed to mean. It seems to be applied to the normal processes of playing an RPG.



MMI, simply put, is the GM having the power to deny action declarations.  In other words, anything you try to do must first receive GM permission.  This is often implied, as in you don't actually ask permission, but the GM has the authority to negate outright.  D&D prior to 4e largely has this quality, and it's an assumed mindset in the crowd that insists a game is owned by the GM.  However, if players can declare actions freely, and the fiction then reflects their action attempt, you're not doing hard MMI.  If the GM then has authority over the resolution system, and uses that to effect the same result as hard MMI, ie, making DCs impossible or denying success outright to disapproved actions, then you're into soft MMI.  Principled play by the GM in this latter system can dispel MMI, and I think many games use such principled games even in earlier editions.

MMI is closely related to railroading, and, as I think on it, at least soft MMI is largely required for railroading.  If you can't force the rails, you aren't in MMI territory.  If you can, then you kinda are, because you're making the play go only along approved directions by using your authority as GM.

So, no, MMI is not the normal process of playing an RPG, but it may be A process.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Yes, the "try to" is often assumed at the table but for purposes of discussions like these - where nothing can be safely assumed - it's probably best to put it in.
> 
> Then "I [try to] kill the orc" was probably a poor choice of example, as rare indeed is the system that lets a GM - without recourse to some sort of combat mechanics - outright decide how combat resolves when said combat involves PCs.
> 
> Perhaps.




I can think of a few instances where "I kill the orc" is both the declaration and automatic resolution, even in old school D&D.  If the orc is tied up and helpless, for example, this may be a foregone conclusion and, I think, would be quickly resolved via declaration at most tables.  Some systems may, depending on the scene, accept this declaration as resolution without engaging formal mechanics to do so.  Some systems, even, would welcome this as declaration and resolution (these, though, are more storytelling games).  It's hard to pin down what declarations might result in automatic resolutions.

In a combat, though, yes, I agree a declaration of "I kill the orc" would be tested in almost all systems.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I find this MMI concept very confusing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It seems to be applied to the normal processes of playing an RPG.



As used in the OP of the other thread, which is the usage I was borrowing in the OP of this thread, it means _the GM decides the way in which action declarations and action resolution change the fiction_. The salient changes in the fiction that were being considered were both more-or-less immediate outcomes, and also downstream consequences.

The reason for calling it "Mother may I" is because, in order to produce a desired outcome or consequence in the fiction, the player has to guess what sort of action declaration will lead the GM to decide to make such a change to the fiction.

The contrast is with an action resolution system that is used to determine whether an action declaration produces the change in the fiction the player would like it to, or rather some adverse change in the fiction that the GM has in mind.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> As used in the OP of the other thread, which is the usage I was borrowing in the OP of this thread, it means _the GM decides the way in which action declarations and action resolution change the fiction_.




So you could just call it "GM decides"? I would think that would be a lot more neutral terminology.


----------



## Ovinomancer

S'mon said:


> So you could just call it "GM decides"? I would think that would be a lot more neutral terminology.




I don't believe the existence of GM decides is sufficient for MMI.  Necessary, but not sufficient.  For instance, 5e uses GM decides for it's core game loop, but it's not necessarily MMI if played in a principled manner.  5e's core loop removes approval of player action declarations from the GM, so no hard MMI, but if the GM uses the GM decides loop to force his approval, then you're back into MMI, again.

I don't see the existence of a degenerate play like MMI to be cause to not discuss how it occurs.  I've also said, in posts you've quoted but snipped, that most tables don't engage in MMI.  It's more like talking about railroading -- clearly a degenerate playstyle, but one that can be discussed without saying everyone does it.  Noting which systems put GM approval at a foundational tier in the ruleset is valuable in knowing that you should approach using that system from a principled stance to minimize it's impact.  I don't think older D&D editions intentionally placed MMI as a foundation, nor do I think most games played with those systems suffer from MMI, but that's in spite of the ruleset, not because of it.

GM decides is a method of play that isn't inherently MMI or not.  It's just how some systems resolve actions in play, they rely on a GM to apply their best judgement to the evolving play and adjudicate fairly.  When I run 5e, as I'm doing right now, I play this way, because that's how that system operates.  I pay attention to my play, though, and strive to avoid reaching into MMI by gating player actions by my preferences.  I think plenty of other GMs do this as well.  Discussing the issue is not casting aspersions.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> A "practice" implies that it is common.  It's not.  It's rare.  There are very few DMs who will engage in trying to control every aspect of what the players want to do



Let's say that it's common enough of a phenomenon to warrant the creation of a moderately-circulated pejorative to describe it and a 900+ thread of people debating the scope of its applicability. 



> The social contract is stronger than any rule system.



Maybe if I remind you of this post often enough, then maybe your words will transform into an actual conviction that you put into practice: 


Maxperson said:


> In your opinion.  You shouldn't be presenting your opinion as if it were fact, because it's not.



Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 



> 5e tells the DM to discourage metagame thinking.



It depends on how you read the imperative. Is it prohibitive? Commanding? Instructive? Advisory? Suggestive? Nowhere though does it explicitly say that metagaming is disallowed. Discouraging a thing is not prohibiting a thing. We see this, for example, in "Discourage swearing by establishing a swear jar," which does not prohibit swearing or imply illegality. And if we are in a system that lives by "rulings not rules," then what extent can we say that metagaming is illegal in the rules?  

Furthermore, discouraging a thing does not make the thing illegal or cheating. The book may note how a GM would possibly want to discourage the creation of a chaotic evil PC among a bunch of Lawful Good PCs due to disruption it may cause the game. But in itself, it is not prohibited. 

And along similar lines, discouraging a thing does not inherently make it an invalid part of play. Fouling is technically illegal in basketball. There are explicit rules to discourage excessive fouling and what may be regarded as unsportsmanlike conduct. However, fouling is an intentional and strategic part of how basketball and many other sports (such as football/soccer) are played. Players are even trained about how to foul other players and how to draw fouls. It's almost as if the metagame is a fundamental part of the game.  

But let's also consider this. I am a player reading the player's handbook, which tells me, the player, how to play the game. As a humble player, I do not have access to the DMG, because I am not the Dungeon Master. Where is my prohibition against metagaming in the PHB? If this is a player issue, then why is this issue of "foul play" entirely absent in the player's manual where a player, who would obviously need to know of its illegality as part of play, could find it? 

All that said, I'm of a similar mind as the Angry GM when it comes to metagaming. Metagaming is more often than not a symptom that the social contract already broke down between players and the GM, and it's not always the player's fault: "Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault." 

BTW, Max, I am still awaiting your alternative term for Mother-May-I that you think would be more suitable to describe the practice. If you don't like the term "practice," for reasons you have already provided, then substitute "practice" with "this particular aspect of dysfunctional play that jerk DMs do." You have definitely had more than a second of thought to come up with one by this point.  

Edit: 


S'mon said:


> So you could just call it "GM decides"? I would think that would be a lot more neutral terminology.



Dear    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]: This is an example of a person providing an alternative term. We can of course debate the merits of this alternative term, but they have nevertheless proposed one, and that should be lauded. 



S'mon said:


> I was wondering if Ovinomancer was saying that the GM saying "No, Roll to hit" would be Denial of "I Kill the Orc" and thus "Mother May I". (Frankly I'm still wondering).



GM: "Let's roll to find out." 

It's not as if the GMing principle is called "Say yes or it's Mother-May-I." Please remember that a critical part of SYORTD lies in the second part of the phrase: "or roll the dice."


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Let's say that it's common enough of a phenomenon enough to warrant the creation of a moderately-circulated pejorative to describe it and a 900+ thread of people debating the scope of its applicability.




I don't think online threads really indicate how big of a problem something is. This thread has what, 5-10 posters keeping it alive? Starting a thread takes one poster. I think it is difficult to glean a lot from that kind of information.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't think online threads really indicate how big of a problem something is. This thread has what, 5-10 posters keeping it alive? Starting a thread takes one poster. I think it is difficult to glean a lot from that kind of information.



Thankfully I did not use this thread as the sole determiner of its prevalence, though it certainly pertains to its current relevance.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> As used in the OP of the other thread, which is the usage I was borrowing in the OP of this thread, it means _the GM decides the way in which action declarations and action resolution change the fiction_. The salient changes in the fiction that were being considered were both more-or-less immediate outcomes, and also downstream consequences.
> 
> The reason for calling it "Mother may I" is because, in order to produce a desired outcome or consequence in the fiction, the player has to guess what sort of action declaration will lead the GM to decide to make such a change to the fiction.
> 
> The contrast is with an action resolution system that is used to determine whether an action declaration produces the change in the fiction the player would like it to, or rather some adverse change in the fiction that the GM has in mind.






Ovinomancer said:


> I don't believe the existence of GM decides is sufficient for MMI.  Necessary, but not sufficient.  For instance, 5e uses GM decides for it's core game loop, but it's not necessarily MMI if played in a principled manner.  5e's core loop removes approval of player action declarations from the GM, so no hard MMI, but if the GM uses the GM decides loop to force his approval, then you're back into MMI, again.
> 
> I don't see the existence of a degenerate play like MMI to be cause to not discuss how it occurs.  I've also said, in posts you've quoted but snipped, that most tables don't engage in MMI.  It's more like talking about railroading -- clearly a degenerate playstyle, but one that can be discussed without saying everyone does it.  Noting which systems put GM approval at a foundational tier in the ruleset is valuable in knowing that you should approach using that system from a principled stance to minimize it's impact.  I don't think older D&D editions intentionally placed MMI as a foundation, nor do I think most games played with those systems suffer from MMI, but that's in spite of the ruleset, not because of it.
> 
> GM decides is a method of play that isn't inherently MMI or not.  It's just how some systems resolve actions in play, they rely on a GM to apply their best judgement to the evolving play and adjudicate fairly.  When I run 5e, as I'm doing right now, I play this way, because that's how that system operates.  I pay attention to my play, though, and strive to avoid reaching into MMI by gating player actions by my preferences.  I think plenty of other GMs do this as well.  Discussing the issue is not casting aspersions.




These two posts together probably organize the concept as well as it can be organized so I'm quoting them here.

Another aspect of this (which you see me typically invoke) is:

"How Force-enabling is this ruleset?"

There will be some correlation with the MMI concept there.

In my opinion, there are three things that stand out above all others to enable Force (though there are others).  These are:

1)  Inclusion of a Golden Rule derivative that stipulates that the GM may ignore, change rules, or change action resolution outcomes at their discretion to facilitate an overly broad/nebulous social play goal (eg the idea of, and invariably the GM's interpretation of, the "table state of fun").  This sort of power as a central pillar of a game's GMing ethos literally trumps anything else that comes after it.  It not only places full veto power of every moment of of the gamestate in the GM's hands, but it also casts the GM as interpreter of a likely complex collective state (which is virtually never unified)...and not erringly interpret that state through the prism of their own cognitive bias.

2)  The game's machinery to change the gamestate is significantly (or overwhelmingly) opaque and/or GM-facing rather than transparent and consistent or player-facing.

3)  Lack of systematized, high resolution GMing principles and focused + specific (rather than unfocused and broad) play goals, that serve to constrain GM overhead and guide refereeing, which the table is collectively conscious of that writ.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Thankfully I did not use this thread as the sole determiner of its prevalence, though it certainly pertains to its current relevance.




I wasn't just thinking of this thread though. I only make the point because I once put a lot more stock in online conversations. However, over time, I noticed a large gulf between the pressing gaming issues discussed on forums and the stuff my players cared about at my gaming tables. An online argument isn't nothing. But I don't honestly know how much weight to give it either.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I don't really have any disagreement here. Most of the players have a decent detailed backstory for their characters which I weave in and out of the main campaign meta-plot and they decide when to actively pursue such goals balancing it up with the stakes of the meta-plot. But everything is pretty much their decision. There is one player though that doesn't have any strong goals besides those provided by the DM and other characters' goals.



There is always one.... lol. 



> The way I understood it from the player, his character was forged by Kelemvor, instead of having his soul spend an eternity on the Wall of the Faithless. At this point in time the PC is acting out the wishes of Kelemvor and in fact believes them to be true and just. For now that is his sole purpose. He travels with the party since they were essentially the ones that freed the psychopathic NPC and briefly accepted him as part of their group - he believes their relationship (NPC and party's) is not over and their paths will cross again due to converging goals/meta-plot reasons.
> 
> EDIT: Again, this is all the player. As DM I ask and prod to learn more to stay faithful to his backstory.



Cool. That is definitely good stuff! You may well be able to simply get the player to figure out what to confront his own PC with, he seems pretty dedicated to making it an interesting character.



> This is all good stuff to bring into the mix. The above stress caused _might_ see the PC act out against the wishes of Kelemvor. Traditional D&D sees me as DM deciding if Kelemvor was offended and if offended, dealing out any consequences. How would that differ in your type of game?
> Would you let the die decide if Kelemvor acts out the punishment/consequence?



Oh, it could work out the same way. I would telegraph what is likely at stake. So the PC can make one or the other hard choice, or try to have his cake and eat it too, but only by risking more somehow. In other words, you don't really need, technically, to even roll dice if a player declares a PC action of "let the NPC go so I can save my brother!" The NPC gets away, the brother is saved. There could be checks to see what else happens (injury, brother is only temporarily saved, etc.). Likewise, he could sacrifice the brother and kill the NPC, OK, brother dies, NPC dies, he's made his choice. Of course most players will try to go for the double win, and then let the dice fall where they may! I'd say if the PC fails Kelemvor, then he IS pissed! Maybe this leads to a major turn for the PC, or maybe he just has to redeem himself.



> EDIT: This skirts closely to Alignment i guess.
> This is similar to @_*pemerton*_'s example some years back of Vecna and the imp.



Yeah, Alignment was ideally supposed to be able to help drive this kind of thing. It could work if the players worked it, but then it wasn't REALLY needed. Its an odd mechanic that way. 



> In one of my previous examples either on this thread or another (I forget), a character handed a magical item to a Frost Giant who had a similar such item (essentially each had a shard of the rod of seven parts). The shards clicked into place and became one item. I ruled the Frost Giant kept such item ignoring the soft protestation by the character (a cough and hand motion to return). There was no die roll. Some posters felt there should have been a die roll.
> I'm only asking because if I apply pressures on the relationship between PC and deity it might end up in a situation where fictionally it would make sense for the deity to _lash out _his annoyance of a decision made by the PC - and essentially I'm asking if you would have it resolved via die roll or DM fiat?




Well, there could be a die roll. I would say that if the check succeeds then the character is on the run, and if it fails, then he's in the soup. Either way there are then further options, maybe if he's captured he gets imprisoned and learns of a plot against Kelemvor, does he go with it and escape, or try to get back in the god's good graces? If he manages to run in the first place, then how does he deal with the falling out, and is he now 'toxic' (IE what about his allies, will Kelemvor constantly go after all of them, unless he heads off alone?). You can go a lot of ways with it, but dice are always a nice option where things can progress in 2 ways and its not really under the PC's full control to choose.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> So you could just call it "GM decides"? I would think that would be a lot more neutral terminology.



That's why I've been using that term throughout this thread. My OP doesn't use the phrase "Mother may I" at all - it reproduces others' use of it in some quotes, and in subsequent posts I have sometimes used the phrase - mostly in inverted commas (either literal quotes or scare quotes) - when that is necessary because of the context of a response to another poster.

This is one reason why I am not taking seriousluy suggestions by some posters that I am deliberately using a belittling phrase.


----------



## S'mon

OK everyone, S'mon Says use "GM Decides" not "Mother May I"!


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## pemerton

Apropos of nothing in particular, I just noticed that sometime during this thread I became a Titan (Level 27).

And that led me to check the "Hottest thread" - this one hasn't quite cracked the top 20 yet, but is getting close! (Numbers 3, 7 and 16 are still there.)


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> Apropos of nothing in particular, I just noticed that sometime during this thread I became a Titan (Level 27).




And you only joined in 2006, newb!


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## pemerton

S'mon said:


> And you only joined in 2006, newb!



You know how it is - long time reader, first time poster!


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## Imaculata

pemerton said:


> Apropos of nothing in particular, I just noticed that sometime during this thread I became a Titan (Level 27).





Congrats, you can pick a bonus feat!


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## Imaculata

S'mon said:


> OK everyone, S'mon Says use "GM Decides" not "Mother May I"!




I'm not sure "GM decides" covers the same ground though as "Mother May I". 
The GM decides a lot of things in general, and so it makes the terminology a bit vague. 

When someone uses "Mother May I", I'm thinking of a style of play in which the DM explicitly blocks the players from taking certain actions, or determines the outcome in such a way as to render player-actions useless. It is the direct opposite of a DM that says "roll the dice", thus allowing just about any action, but using the dice to resolve the outcome. 

For example, I played in a Star Wars RPG, where the DM told me that I couldn't try to pilot a stationary X-wing in a hangar. He didn't ask for a check, even though my character had a pilot skill. That would be an example of "Mother May I" in my opinion. He could have asked me to make a skill check (not "Mother May I"), or he could have just set the DC impossibly high (soft "Mother May I", but almost just as bad). What he did not do, is allow me to just take the action and/or have a fair chance at pulling it off. 

But please correct me if I'm interpreting the phrase incorrectly.


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## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Apropos of nothing in particular, I just noticed that sometime during this thread I became a Titan (Level 27).
> 
> And that led me to check the "Hottest thread" - this one hasn't quite cracked the top 20 yet, but is getting close! (Numbers 3, 7 and 16 are still there.)



May I celebrate posting a meme?


----------



## Michael Silverbane

Imaculata said:


> I'm not sure "GM decides" covers the same ground though as "Mother May I".
> The GM decides a lot of things in general, and so it makes the terminology a bit vague.
> 
> When someone uses "Mother May I", I'm thinking of a style of play in which the DM explicitly blocks the players from taking certain actions, or determines the outcome in such a way as to render player-actions useless. It is the direct opposite of a DM that says "roll the dice", thus allowing just about any action, but using the dice to resolve the outcome.
> 
> For example, I played in a Star Wars RPG, where the DM told me that I couldn't try to pilot a stationary X-wing in a hangar. He didn't ask for a check, even though my character had a pilot skill. That would be an example of "Mother May I" in my opinion. He could have asked me to make a skill check (not "Mother May I"), or he could have just set the DC impossibly high (soft "Mother May I", but almost just as bad). What he did not do, is allow me to just take the action and/or have a fair chance at pulling it off.
> 
> But please correct me if I'm interpreting the phrase incorrectly.




So, to me...  It seems like Mother May I is the degenerate case of GM Decides.

A game where the GM has Veto power on player action declarations is GM Decides. When that veto power causes game dysfunction (such as in your example above) it becomes Mother May I.

The amount of veto power usage that will cause Mother May I will vary from table to table.


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## Bedrockgames

Michael Silverbane said:


> So, to me...  It seems like Mother May I is the degenerate case of GM Decides.
> .




That is what it should be. But the problem is the way it has been framed in much of the discussion is as GM decides.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Why should criticism in the field of RPGs operate by different standards from criticism in other fields?




Do they? Some of us may be critical of criticism in other fields as well if that is the case (I don't know, it isn't my field). I think terms do matter. And if terms are coined with obvious intent at mockery of the thing you are trying to analyze, my view is it taints the discussion and the analysis. If other fields engage in criticism like this, then I have to say, I am a little disappointed to hear that. Because the obvious bias produced by this kind of terminology is pretty clear to me.


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## Numidius

Imaculata said:


> I'm not sure "GM decides" covers the same ground though as "Mother May I".
> The GM decides a lot of things in general, and so it makes the terminology a bit vague.
> 
> When someone uses "Mother May I", I'm thinking of a style of play in which the DM explicitly blocks the players from taking certain actions, or determines the outcome in such a way as to render player-actions useless. It is the direct opposite of a DM that says "roll the dice", thus allowing just about any action, but using the dice to resolve the outcome.
> 
> For example, I played in a Star Wars RPG, where the DM told me that I couldn't try to pilot a stationary X-wing in a hangar. He didn't ask for a check, even though my character had a pilot skill. That would be an example of "Mother May I" in my opinion. He could have asked me to make a skill check (not "Mother May I"), or he could have just set the DC impossibly high (soft "Mother May I", but almost just as bad). What he did not do, is allow me to just take the action and/or have a fair chance at pulling it off.
> 
> But please correct me if I'm interpreting the phrase incorrectly.



Also in regard to interpretation of the personality of a Pc, or dismissing players  planning inside an established setting, thus promoting a prudent, submissive, undertoned game. 

I've seen it in practice enforced by the use, or menace, of super Npcs, preventing planning/execution of certain courses of action, keeping the game constrained, with a constant feeling of danger in the air. On the opposite side, the absence of significant, interesting Npc, during exploration, implying the Pc is out of tracks, or more simply the Gm is not interested in that Pc-driven situation. 

I consider the above deranged forms of play, just to be clear, not related to anyone here; but even the more open and friendly Gm I know, has a consolidated habit of sometimes just saying no and moving on. 

On the players side, those who play stealth or social types in those games, tend to be extremely thoughtful before declaring anything, while the combat oriented ones just wait the opportunity to unleash their dice on some opponent, hoping is not that much stronger than them. 

Most of the time nothing very significant happens at the table, unless is the seldom Gm-driven stuff to shake a bit the situation.


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## Michael Silverbane

Bedrockgames said:


> That is what it should be. But the problem is the way it has been framed in much of the discussion is as GM decides.




I think that the reason that some of the posters are framing any and all GM Decides as Mother May I is due to the table variance I mentioned above. For them, ANY use of GM Decides causes dysfunction, so at their tables, it is all considered Mother May I.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Me: Nope, metagaming opponents have no problem with MMI and its usually part of their social contract




So first, do you mean opponents of metagaming or opponents that metagame?  Second, you didn't say anything about opponents or the social contract with your statement, so the above claim is just plain false.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> MMI exists whenever the GM has authority to negate action declarations, even if a GM chooses not to.  It's a matter of where a game rests authority.




So in every RPG ever.  The DM can alter rules in every RPG and give himself that authority, whether the rules of the RPG "allow" it or not.  Therefore, he has that authority whether he gives it to himself or not.  If he chooses not go give himself that authority, he has simply chosen not to exercise it.  

And then of course, the game Mother May I is about having to ask "mother" about every little thing they want to do, which defines what the pejorative means in RPGs.  Since even in D&D that's not the case, regardless of where the authority lies, D&D is not Mother May I.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I think you may not have been paying attention.  The mechanic of "GM decides" is a large part of MMI.  Where that mechanic gets employed is the operative part, I think.  If it's universal, then you're in MMI, if it's more limited, you may not be.




You need to read the rules for D&D again it seems.  If a player decides that his PC walks behind the tree, I have no ability as DM to decide that he cannot do so.  If the player decides that his PC goes to the local bar to get a drink, I have no ability as DM to decide that he cannot do so.  And so on.  The exception of course being an in game reason that stops the PC, like Dominate or guards arresting the PC as he heads to the bar.

The "DM decides" is only about things that have the possibility to fail or are guaranteed to fail, and if the outcome is in doubt, the DM has to decide on an appropriate DC and let the player roll.  It's simply not Mother May I when the DM decides that declarations that have no chance of success, fail.


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> So in every RPG ever.  The DM can alter rules in every RPG and give himself that authority, whether the rules of the RPG "allow" it or not.  Therefore, he has that authority whether he gives it to himself or not.  If he chooses not go give himself that authority, he has simply chosen not to exercise it.



This sort of thinking is how dictatorships are born.


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> This sort of thinking is how dictatorships are born.




No it isn’t. I don’t agree with Maxperson in this case, but it is demonstrably not how dictatorships get their start. We are talking smabout resolution systems for games where people pretend to be elves and dwarves. I don’t know Maxperson’s politics, but I think it is unlikely he is a fascist. You can believe in GM authority but be against of that kind of power in any one person as the head of state.


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## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> No it isn’t. I don’t agree with Maxperson in this case, but it is demonstrably not how dictatorships get their start. We are talking smabout resolution systems for games where people pretend to be elves and dwarves. I don’t know Maxperson’s politics, but I think it is unlikely he is a fascist. You can believe in GM authority but be against of that kind of power in any one person as the head of state.



I wlll not press this point any further. However, if you disagree with Max, then maybe you can voice some of that disagreement?


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> MMI, simply put, is the GM having the power to deny action declarations.  In other words, anything you try to do must first receive GM permission.  This is often implied, as in you don't actually ask permission, but the GM has the authority to negate outright.




This has never been a part of any edition of D&D.



> D&D prior to 4e largely has this quality, and it's an assumed mindset in the crowd that insists a game is owned by the GM.




Even in the days of yore when I played 1e and 2e, this was never the case.  Yes, we would say that the DM has the authority to do anything he wants, but that "anything" didn't include things like stopping a PC from crossing the street when the player of that PC said that's what his PC was doing.  Nobody I ever played with believed that, because it's simply an absurd hyper inflation of the authority of the DM to alter, remove or create rules for the game.  The Mother May I "issue" is a Reducto Ad Absurdum argument about the extent DM authority in D&D.


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> This sort of thinking is how dictatorships are born.




It's how house rules are born anyway.


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Let's say that it's common enough of a phenomenon to warrant the creation of a moderately-circulated pejorative to describe it and a 900+ thread of people debating the scope of its applicability.




If you think that  in a 900+ post rhread, 800+ posts consisting of argument by about 6 people over whether the term is pejorative or not, or exists or not, means that the scope of the phenomenon is common, then I think you might need to step back and reassess your beliefs on the matter.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> This has never been a part of any edition of D&D.
> 
> 
> 
> Even in the days of yore when I played 1e and 2e, this was never the case.  Yes, we would say that the DM has the authority to do anything he wants, but that "anything" didn't include things like stopping a PC from crossing the street when the player of that PC said that's what his PC was doing.  Nobody I ever played with believed that, because it's simply an absurd hyper inflation of the authority of the DM to alter, remove or create rules for the game.  The Mother May I "issue" is a Reducto Ad Absurdum argument about the extent DM authority in D&D.



It's not a matter of crossing the street, simple legit actions declarations etc, it's a matter of having the Gm willing to cooperate and build on players input. 

Framing scenes and all that stuff. 

Just leaving the PC loose hanging around without support in the fiction, is not freedom, looks more like loneliness. 

Again, things I see over here, not related to d&d or your campaigns


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> When someone uses "Mother May I", I'm thinking of a style of play in which the DM explicitly blocks the players from taking certain actions, or determines the outcome in such a way as to render player-actions useless. It is the direct opposite of a DM that says "roll the dice", thus allowing just about any action, but using the dice to resolve the outcome.




This isn't a style of play, though.  It's the DM being a jerk, which isn't a matter of playstyle or rules.  It's simply a DM being one of the relatively few bad DMs that exist within the hobby.



> For example, I played in a Star Wars RPG, where the DM told me that I couldn't try to pilot a stationary X-wing in a hangar. He didn't ask for a check, even though my character had a pilot skill. That would be an example of "Mother May I" in my opinion. He could have asked me to make a skill check (not "Mother May I"), or he could have just set the DC impossibly high (soft "Mother May I", but almost just as bad). What he did not do, is allow me to just take the action and/or have a fair chance at pulling it off.




I'm confused by this example.  If the x-wing was stationary(not moving) how would you pilot it?  Piloting involves movement, not stationary.  If you were asking to pilot it slowly across the hanger for some reason and he told you no outright, then that's an example of bad DMing, not a playstyle or ruleset being Mother May I.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> It's how house rules are born anyway.



Mine are done through group discussions. Sometimes I or the players will propose a house rule, and then we will usually discuss it before deciding collectively. We may even run a trial period with the rule.  

I like socialism in practice, even in my games.  



Maxperson said:


> If you think that  in a 900+ post rhread, 800+ posts consisting of argument by about 6 people over whether the term is pejorative or not, or exists or not, means that the scope of the phenomenon is common, then I think you might need to step back and reassess your beliefs on the matter.



I think that you ignore the first part of the sentence so you can isolate the second part referencing this thread, which would be more easy to debunk the point if it existed in isolation removed from context. 



Maxperson said:


> This isn't a style of play, though.  It's the DM being a jerk, which isn't a matter of playstyle or rules.  It's simply a DM being one of the relatively few bad DMs that exist within the hobby.



I wish I could have a nickel for everytime you reduced every issue down to "this issue is not a problem; it's a jerk DM." There has to be a name for this sort of "jerk DM fallacy" that you fallback on.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> It's not a matter of crossing the street, simple legit actions declarations etc,* it's a matter of having the Gm willing to cooperate and build on players input*.
> 
> *Framing scenes and all that stuff. *
> 
> Just leaving the PC loose hanging around without support in the fiction, is not freedom, looks more like loneliness.
> 
> Again, things I see over here, not related to d&d or your campaigns




To what extent?  This is the first time I think I've seen that "Mother May I" is about how the DM frames scenes and builds on player input.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Mine are done through group discussions. Sometimes I or the players will propose a house rule, and then we will usually discuss it before deciding collectively. We may even run a trial period with the rule.
> 
> I like socialism in practice, even in my games.




Which is fine.  Some house rules I implement.  Others I say I want to implement and see if there are any objections.  Others are ideas that I want discussion on and propose it to the group and see what everyone thinks.  9 out of 10 are in the last two categories.  Rarely I will just make a change, because I feel something is too disruptive to the game that I'm running.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I wlll not press this point any further. However, if you disagree with Max, then maybe you can voice some of that disagreement?




I have voiced some of my disagreement with Max here. I think he and I largely agree on many assumptions about running the game. But the quoted post was too absolute for my approach. I do believe in rule 0 and I do believe one key GM function is to adjust rules on the fly if they don't function well, if a weird outcome arises that clearly shouldn't, etc. But I do think the GM needs to weigh how his or her decisions will impact other peoples' enjoyment of the game, and I do think the GM's authority is limited by the trust given by players. You don't have any authority if the players don't respect your judgements. Your authority at the table isn't self anointed. So it isn't an absolute thing at all. Also, I don't think this applies to every RPG ever. Plenty of RPGs limit the authority of the GM. That is definitely a thing, and if it is in the rules of the game, I can't pretend such games don't exist. I do think rule zero is typically an assumption. But there are obviously games that don't assume rule zero.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Do they? Some of us may be critical of criticism in other fields as well if that is the case (I don't know, it isn't my field). I think terms do matter. And if terms are coined with obvious intent at mockery of the thing you are trying to analyze, my view is it taints the discussion and the analysis.



In literary or cinematic criticism, it is not "below the belt" to call a work _shallow_ (for instance) just because those who authored it, or those who enjoy it, don't agree.

More generally, it is not considered out of bounds to use descriptions, including harsh descriptions, that some authors and audiences would reject.

As far as "mockery" is concerned, all I will do is reiterate that the OP in this thread does not use the term "Mother may I", and I have consistently throughout this thread used the phrase _GM decides_, except when the context of response to another poster who has used the phrase "Mother may I" requires using it in retur (and then I have almost always used quote marks to signal that the terms in not one that I am unproblematically introducing into the conversation).


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> To what extent?  This is the first time I think I've seen that "Mother May I" is about how the DM frames scenes and builds on player input.



You are right, infact I see that here people tend to concentrate on simple action dec, which I see as a symptom of a broader attitude. 

If a Gm in a game I play just says No, I can argue and explain that my declaration is legit; what I cannot do is change the concretized habit; the consolidated assumption that if the Gm loosen the reins the campaign will collapse. Or that immersion is broken and continuity is compromised if we speed up a bit skipping fill-in stuff, or change approach to the course of play. 

The use of Force can be explicit (uber Npc, impossibile obstacles), or implicit (nothing interesting seems to happen around the Pc until the next plot twist from above).


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

Imaculata said:


> I'm not sure "GM decides" covers the same ground though as "Mother May I".
> The GM decides a lot of things in general, and so it makes the terminology a bit vague.



As I've been using the term _GM decides_ in this thread - which I think is pretty close to what [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has in mind - I've been meaning _the GM decides what changes occur in the fiction as a result of a player declaring an action for his/her PC_. I'm pretty sure that that is what the OP in the progenitor thread of this thread had in mind in using the phrase "Mother may I" - the connection between that latter phrase, and the _GM decides_ method of action resolution, being that if a player wants to produce change X to the shared fiction, s/he has to guess what action declaration might lead the GM to decide to change the fiction in way X.

The contrast, then, is with action resolution methods which allow a player to change the fiction in way X _without_ that having to be mediated through GM decision-making about outcomes and consequences - D&D combat is mostly an illustration of such a method, provided X is _make it true in the fiction that such-and-such a charcter/creature is dead_, and the RPGs that I play tend to use similar action resolution methods for a range of non-combat matters also.

I agree that if you take the phrase "GM decides" out of the context of this particular focus on the changes in the fiction that result from action declarations, it is rather broad. But in this thread I believe (or at least hope!) that the context and focus have remained pretty clear even over 1000+ posts.



Numidius said:


> It's not a matter of crossing the street, simple legit actions declarations etc, it's a matter of having the Gm willing to cooperate and build on players input.
> 
> Framing scenes and all that stuff.
> 
> Just leaving the PC loose hanging around without support in the fiction, is not freedom, looks more like loneliness.



I think this is a really important point _in the context of this thread and its progenitor thread_.

I think there's probably almost no RPG play where the players can achieve literally _no_ changes in the fiction without being blocked by the GM. _I walk behind the tree_. _I go to that nearby pub._ _I take off my hat_. _I pick a blade of grass and put it between my teet_.

But implicit in the idea of _action resolution changing the fiction in way X_ is that _way X_ is something that has some degree of consequence or meaning or heft for gameplay; that X provides some sort of platform or impetus for further gameplay; and the like. That X actually _matters_ to play.

That's why, in this post and in my post not too far upthread replying to S'mon, I talked about _outcomes and consequences_. When a player says _I walk behind the tree_ s/he is envisaging not just the immediate outcome, within the fiction, of his/her PC having moved a few metres so as now to be behind the tree. S/he has some reason for declaring this action, is anticipating some sort of gameplay-significant consequence to follow from that.

If the GM accepts, and regards him-/herself as _obliged_ to accept, the action declaration - so it's now true in the fiction that the PC is behind the tree - but the GM doesn't accept any further consequence - the PC is just left "hanging around" with nothing further happening in the fiction that responds to or builds upon the player's action declaration - then we still have an instance of what I am calling the _GM decides_ approach to resolution.

Only if the GM is obliged to accept not just the immediate. literal content of a player's action declaration, but is also obliged to accept in some fashion, or to have regard to, the player's intention as to how the fiction is going to change in some meaningful way, are we starting to move into non-_GM decides_ territory. There are different ways such an obligation can work and be systematically implemented in a game - "say 'yes' or roll the dice" coupled with "fail forward", which amounts to _if you, the player, win the toss then the fiction changes how you wanted it to, but if you lose the toss then the fiction will change in some way which speaks to what you wanted but in an adverse sort of way_ is an obvious one, but not the only one. It can be done through mutually respectful back-and-forth about the fiction - this is how stuff can happen in a Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic Transition Scene, for instance - but the back-and-forth approach is (in my experience) only modestly robust under pressure, when the stakes get high and the player wants to push the fiction one way and the GM is interested in pushing it back the other way. That's why MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic uses a different approach, which is a version of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" with some bells and whistles added on, during Action (= high stakes) Scenes.

To further lengthen this post, I aso want to say something about free kriegsspiel, which [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] in particular has talked about in this thread; and it connects also to a discussion with [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] upthread.

In a RPG where the GM has already pre-established important, salient parts of the fiction - a dungeon map and its key is the paradigm of this; a wildereness map is another example - then some "action declarations" don't really constitute _attempts to change the fiction in way X_. They're really more like _attempts to learn the content and parameters of the fiction as already decided by the GM_. For this reason, the concept of _GM decides_ is (in my view) not really even applicable to them.

But - and this is to reiterate something I've already said in this thread, and have said more about in some other threads over the years - the boundary/contrast between _"action declaration" to learn content/parameters of the fiction_ and _action declaration to change the fiction in way X_ can fairly easily become rather non-robust, and is also highly vulnerable to a unilateral decision that what the player intended as the latter is really the former.

A concrete example: a player declares _I cast Dimension Door_. The GM responds _Nothing happens_ (because the GM has made a determination that the area that the PC is in is teleport warded). It seems to me that most of the time, in this sort of case, the player has intended to change the fiction in way X (_now my PC is here rather than there_) but the GM has, by his/her approach to adjudication, rendered what the player did into a discovery of the paremeters/content of the fiction. From the GM's point of view, s/he is facilitating the player's _exploration_ of the fiction. But from the point of view of the player, who was not setting out to _explore_ the fiction but rather was hoping to change it, this may well be experienced as a rather striking case of _GM decides_.

Whether or not this sort of case, in which the player who was hoping to _change _the fiction discovers that s/he is really _exploring _it, is a _problem_ will obviously be something that varies from table to table. That it _might be a problem_ I think is obvious.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> So in every RPG ever.  The DM can alter rules in every RPG and give himself that authority, whether the rules of the RPG "allow" it or not.  Therefore, he has that authority whether he gives it to himself or not.



This claim is not true, except in the completely uninteresting sense that _any _participant in a game might try and cheat, or try and get away with fudging or whining or lobbying for do-overs, or threaten to tip over the board if s/he doesn't get his her way.



Maxperson said:


> You need to read the rules for D&D again it seems.  If a player decides that his PC walks behind the tree, I have no ability as DM to decide that he cannot do so.



This prompts a short answer and a long one.

The short one is that I think [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] may have in mind the following (from p 3 of the 5e Basic PDF):

*The players describe what they want to do.* . . .

Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results . . .

*The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.*​
One reading of this is that it is always open to the GM to decide whether or not the PC makes it behind the tree. (And I have a memory of you arguing as much in a thread we both participated in not too long ago.) I'm not sure, myself, that that is the only or even the best reading, but I'm guessing it's what Ovinomancer has in mind. (If I'm wrong about that I'm sure he will let me know.)

The long answer is the one given by [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] upthread, that I've replied to just upthread: the issue isn't the narrow, immediate one of whether or not the PC ends up behind the tree, but rather of whether any of the interesting things that the player thought might result from that actually do come about. Or whether the PC is left "hanging around without support in the fiction."


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> Do you really want to be part of a club that I'm in?
> 
> It's kind of like, "Thank goodness. I finally joined the rarefied intellectual air of Thomas Wiseau."



Oh, hi Mark!


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> I can't understand why it's so hard for people to understand that labeling things with a pejorative term really is an obnoxious thing to do when discussing issues.





pemerton said:


> As far as "mockery" is concerned, all I will do is reiterate that the OP in this thread does not use the term "Mother may I", and I have consistently throughout this thread used the phrase _GM decides_, except when the context of response to another poster who has used the phrase "Mother may I" requires using it in retur (and then I have almost always used quote marks to signal that the terms in not one that I am unproblematically introducing into the conversation).



Do I need to reiterate it _again_?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> I don't know? I was responding to your statements concerning the use of shallow.



Upthread a couple of posters asserted that, in discussing RPGs, we should always use the descriptions that participants themselves use.

That's not a norm that obtains in other fields of criticism. Why should it obtain in RPGs?

Of course you don't normally start a discussion with a creator by asking "Why did you write such a shallow work?" But no one is suggesting otherwise, and this thread is not an example of such a thing.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> A concrete example: a player declares _I cast Dimension Door_. The GM responds _Nothing happens_ (because the GM has made a determination that the area that the PC is in is teleport warded). It seems to me that most of the time, in this sort of case, the player has intended to change the fiction in way X (_now my PC is here rather than there_) but the GM has, by his/her approach to adjudication, rendered what the player did into a discovery of the paremeters/content of the fiction. From the GM's point of view, s/he is facilitating the player's _exploration_ of the fiction. But from the point of view of the player, who was not setting out to _explore_ the fiction but rather was hoping to change it, this may well be experienced as a rather striking case of _GM decides_.



Before starting to change something, doesn't it make sense to explore it first and figure out what you're trying to change and why?  To learn the parameters of your in-fiction surroundings, and of the situation at hand?

And then isn't it reasonable to first determine what means and methods of change, of those you have available to you in the fiction, have better chances of success* before just diving in?

* - and this determination can and often will include some trial and error, a fine example of which is the _Dimension Door_ bit quoted above.  If the PCs have no way of knowing they've just entered a teleport no-fly zone, this is how they find out.



> Whether or not this sort of case, in which the player who was hoping to _change _the fiction discovers that s/he is really _exploring _it, is a _problem_ will obviously be something that varies from table to table. That it _might be a problem_ I think is obvious.



How exploration in an RPG can ever be a problem rather boggles the mind, given as exploration is one of the three** key pillars*** of the game.

** - or four, if downtime is included as a pillar
*** - and though it took 5e D&D to codify this, the principles this codification are based on - that an RPG consists in varying measures of social interaction, exploration, and combat - are nigh-universal.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In literary or cinematic criticism, it is not "below the belt" to call a work _shallow_ (for instance) just because those who authored it, or those who enjoy it, don't agree.
> 
> More generally, it is not considered out of bounds to use descriptions, including harsh descriptions, that some authors and audiences would reject.
> 
> As far as "mockery" is concerned, all I will do is reiterate that the OP in this thread does not use the term "Mother may I", and I have consistently throughout this thread used the phrase _GM decides_, except when the context of response to another poster who has used the phrase "Mother may I" requires using it in retur (and then I have almost always used quote marks to signal that the terms in not one that I am unproblematically introducing into the conversation).





I am of two minds on this front. On the one hand, I can see how this should be the case with literary and cinematic criticism, since it sort of straddles analysis and review, and a lot of it is based on how we react to what we see or read. On the other hand, I've been reading a lot of film criticism and analysis lately for wuxia, but I come from a history background. And just as an outsider, I find some of this kind of thing a bit perplexing, and I find it is often hard to get the sort of concrete information I am looking for at times (I guess I just find some of the analysis very flowery, but not very grounded in something I can make use of). Again, I am coming at it as an outsider, so maybe I am just missing something. 

That said, I think we are talking about analyzing game design. To me that is almost more of an engineering issue. We are trying to understand why people like different modes of play, what systems and mechanics work, what don't, what mechanics are good for what approaches, etc. Obviously people also have their own subjective opinions about gaming. My contention though has been that a term like Mother May I, clearly is going to make exploration of that harder. I get that sometimes it is said with humor. Ron Edwards recently did a series of videos on sandboxes, and I think he called them Kitty Boxes or litter boxes. I chuckled when I first saw it, because it is a clever thing to say. But I think the effect it had was, the actual points he was trying to make about sandboxes (which I didn't agree with, but he did have sound points that warranted a response) were not really heeded by anyone in the sandbox camp (because the label he chose was so dismissive). I think at the same time, it kind of clouds our ability to understand why people like something when we choose these sorts of labels. You can be critical of an adventure structure, but if you are going to be critical of it, you should probably really understand why people use it in the first place and why they keep using it. Calling GM Decides mother may I, I don't see how it helps to understand what is driving that kind of play at all. Whereas keeping it as a term for a failed state of play, makes total sense (because failed states of play are undesirable and mother may I is undesirable--no one wants a game of Mother May I when they play RPGs). 

I appreciate it if you haven't been using Mother May I. I was under the impression you had, but I apparently just assumed that. I will say though, the OP was launched because I was making that point to demonstrate this playstyle wasn't mother may I. So I think we were still grappling with that disagreement over the course of this thread.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> To further lengthen this post, I aso want to say something about free kriegsspiel, which [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] in particular has talked about in this thread; and it connects also to a discussion with [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] upthread.
> 
> In a RPG where the GM has already pre-established important, salient parts of the fiction - a dungeon map and its key is the paradigm of this; a wildereness map is another example - then some "action declarations" don't really constitute _attempts to change the fiction in way X_. They're really more like _attempts to learn the content and parameters of the fiction as already decided by the GM_. For this reason, the concept of _GM decides_ is (in my view) not really even applicable to them.




Just a quick chime-in to append the phrase _in order to work toward achieving the game's win condition_ to the end of:

_attempts to learn the content and parameters of the fiction as already decided by the GM_


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## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> You are right, infact I see that here people tend to concentrate on simple action dec, which I see as a symptom of a broader attitude.
> 
> If a Gm in a game I play just says No, I can argue and explain that my declaration is legit; what I cannot do is change the concretized habit; the consolidated assumption that if the Gm loosen the reins the campaign will collapse. Or that immersion is broken and continuity is compromised if we speed up a bit skipping fill-in stuff, or change approach to the course of play.
> 
> The use of Force can be explicit (uber Npc, impossibile obstacles), or implicit (nothing interesting seems to happen around the Pc until the next plot twist from above).




This post seems to presume that everyone wants to play the way you play.  That's simply not the case.  A lot of people enjoy the traditional playstyle where the DM has more control and they don't want the reins loostened, or to skip the "fill-in stuff."  Hell, they don't even see it as "fill-in stuff."   That's a preference of yours, and a lot of people enjoy playing that way, too.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This claim is not true, except in the completely uninteresting sense that _any _participant in a game might try and cheat, or try and get away with fudging or whining or lobbying for do-overs, or threaten to tip over the board if s/he doesn't get his her way.




It's absolutely true.  If I buy Burning Wheel, I have full authority to create house rules for it, including altering the game to give me the same level of DM authority that D&D has.  I can then seek players for my Burning Wheel game.  I will likely not find many(or maybe not any), but I can do it.  



> The short one is that I think [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] may have in mind the following (from p 3 of the 5e Basic PDF):
> 
> *The players describe what they want to do.* . . .
> 
> Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results . . .
> 
> *The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.*​
> One reading of this is that it is always open to the GM to decide whether or not the PC makes it behind the tree.




One reading, but not the correct reading.  The correct reading is that the PC goes behind the tree and the DM narrates the results of that such as, "You step behind the tree and you see a waterfall that you had previously not noticed due to the tree blocking your view."

If there are a couple ways to read a rule and one requires that you be a jerk and one doesn't, the one requiring you to be a jerk is wrong.



> (And I have a memory of you arguing as much in a thread we both participated in not too long ago.)




I have never argued that I have total control over the PCs actions.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Do I need to reiterate it _again_?




This is from the OP where you quote yourself saying the following.



> *If a group doesn't want Mother May I,* but does want hunting down sect members to be part of play, then it makes sense to choose a system that will facilitate this. (As @chaochou suggested in his post.)




Very clearly that is your discussing the playstyle as "Mother May I."  Then you quote [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] disagreeing with you that it's Mother May I.  You don't get to dodge your saying the playstyle is "Mother May I" just because it was in a quote of yours from the previous thread and you didn't repeat it in the new text for this thread.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This post seems to presume that everyone wants to play the way you play.  That's simply not the case.  A lot of people enjoy the traditional playstyle where the DM has more control and they don't want the reins loostened, or to skip the "fill-in stuff."  Hell, they don't even see it as "fill-in stuff."   That's a preference of yours, and a lot of people enjoy playing that way, too.




Awesome.  I'm running 5e pretty much by the book right now, so, clearly, I don't have a problem with D&D.  That you can enjoy a playstyle doesn't mean that playstyle doesn't have warts.  You clearly have no problems saying so about other styles.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> It's absolutely true.  If I buy Burning Wheel, I have full authority to create house rules for it, including altering the game to give me the same level of DM authority that D&D has.  I can then seek players for my Burning Wheel game.  I will likely not find many(or maybe not any), but I can do it.



You would actually be violating the rules of that game if you do this.

The point you're so adeptly missing is that D&D puts control over the rules under the GM as a _rule of the game_.  BW does not.  



> One reading, but not the correct reading.  The correct reading is that the PC goes behind the tree and the DM narrates the results of that such as, "You step behind the tree and you see a waterfall that you had previously not noticed due to the tree blocking your view."



Or the GM says, " you're lawful good and have orders yo guard this location. You wouldn't wander off behind the tree.  If you do, I'm changing your alignment and you'll lose your Paladin abilities."


> If there are a couple ways to read a rule and one requires that you be a jerk and one doesn't, the one requiring you to be a jerk is wrong.



What a weirdly subjective maxim. 

"I want to shieldbash with Shield Master before my attack action."

"Doesn't work that way."

"You're being a jerk, which means you've read the rule wrong, I shield bash!!!"




> I have never argued that I have total control over the PCs actions.



Unless they're metagaming.  You've declared that cheating, so metagame based actions are strcitly verboten


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## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> This post seems to presume that everyone wants to play the way you play.  That's simply not the case.  A lot of people enjoy the traditional playstyle where the DM has more control and they don't want the reins loostened, or to skip the "fill-in stuff."  Hell, they don't even see it as "fill-in stuff."   That's a preference of yours, and a lot of people enjoy playing that way, too.



If seemed so, it wasn't my presumption. Again, I remark, I'm talking about my direct experience at different tables. Tables that infortunately broke, sooner or later. 
And you are right, in those cases the players did not want to even talk about sharing some content authority, introducing scenes, discuss a different approach with the Gm, to the point of give up playing when the situation was no more bearable. 

The counterpart of Gm-decides, is Players-abide. 
They wait for the Gm to do the right thing, and don't try to be part of the solution, because it would be like metagame cheating. 

(IME, in my town, with the last four or five different groups I played in)


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> You would actually be violating the rules of that game if you do this.
> 
> The point you're so adeptly missing is that D&D puts control over the rules under the GM as a _rule of the game_.  BW does not.




The point that YOU are missing is that the rules are not relevant to someone who is going to change them and has the authority, by mere virtue of owning the game, to do so.  People house rule every game that has ever been made, regardless of whether or not the rules say you can or can't.  



> Or the GM says, " you're lawful good and have orders yo guard this location. You wouldn't wander off behind the tree.  If you do, I'm changing your alignment and you'll lose your Paladin abilities."




Out of one side of your mouth you say that it's not about being a jerk DM, but out of the other side of your mouth you are now giving examples of a jerk DM in defense of your position.  Which is it?  Are these system issues or jerk DM issues?  You can't have it both ways.




> Unless they're metagaming. You've declared that cheating, so metagame based actions are strcitly verboten




No.  Not even then.  I won't stop the action.  What I will do is have a first and final with the player after the game and let him know that the second time he cheats he won't be invited back to the game.  I'm not going to control his PC outside of some sort of valid game means such as Dominate, though.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> The point that YOU are missing is that the rules are not relevant to someone who is going to change them and has the authority, by mere virtue of owning the game, to do so.  People house rule every game that has ever been made, regardless of whether or not the rules say you can or can't.



This is a ridiculous point, then.  You're postulating someone rewriting the game as if it would be the same thing as actually playing the game as written.  D&D puts rules authority, including the changing of rules, under the GM as a rule of the game, so changing that game is still using it's rules.  Burning Wheel, though, requires someone breaking the rules of the game to do so.  Not the same thing at all, despite you trying to make it so.




> Out of one side of your mouth you say that it's not about being a jerk DM, but out of the other side of your mouth you are now giving examples of a jerk DM in defense of your position.  Which is it?  Are these system issues or jerk DM issues?  You can't have it both ways.



Really, that's never happened in any game you've played -- the GM has never once questioned a player's action based on their class or alignment?  What if there was a secret treasure behind the tree and you were certain the player was metagaming based on prior knowledge of the module, then what would you do?

The point here is that you cannot label everything that disagrees with you as "Jerk DM".  Well, you can, and you've shown remarkable persistence in doing so.  Doesn't actually make it true.



> No.  Not even then.  I won't stop the action.  What I will do is have a first and final with the player after the game and let him know that the second time he cheats he won't be invited back to the game.  I'm not going to control his PC outside of some sort of valid game means such as Dominate, though.[/FONT][/COLOR]




Right, you'll just prevent them from ever declaring any future actions if they disagree with your ruling on their action.

It's amusing, by the by, that you snipped off the part about Shield Master.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> This is a ridiculous point, then.  You're postulating someone rewriting the game as if it would be the same thing as actually playing the game as written.  D&D puts rules authority, including the changing of rules, under the GM as a rule of the game, so changing that game is still using it's rules.  Burning Wheel, though, requires someone breaking the rules of the game to do so.  Not the same thing at all, despite you trying to make it so.




Um, no.  I didn't say that.  Try again.



> Right, you'll just prevent them from ever declaring any future actions if they disagree with your ruling on their action.




You really let your players roll for stats, get a 12 and put an 18 down on their sheet?  You really let them just tell you whatever number they feel like when they roll a d20?  Cheating is just fine in your games is it?

Not allowing cheating =/= control of PC actions.  



> It's amusing, by the by, that you snipped off the part about Shield Master.




It was an invalid bad faith response and didn't warrant inclusion in my post.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Um, no.  I didn't say that.  Try again.
> 
> 
> 
> You really let your players roll for stats, get a 12 and put an 18 down on their sheet?  You really let them just tell you whatever number they feel like when they roll a d20?  Cheating is just fine in your games is it?
> 
> Not allowing cheating =/= control of PC actions.
> 
> 
> 
> It was an invalid bad faith response and didn't warrant inclusion in my post.



Max, I think I'm done with your special pleading.  Enjoy.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Max, I think I'm done with your special pleading.  Enjoy.




Excellent.  I'd rather spend time responding to people who are interested in having a genuine discussion, anyway.


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] I am wondering, setting aside the whole “Mother May I” label and also the idea that someone can pick up a copy of Shadowrun and house rule it till it’s Monopoly, would you describe D&D as a DM driven game? 

If so, why?

If not, why not? And what would be an example of a GM Driven game in your opinion?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] I am wondering, setting aside the whole “Mother May I” label and also the idea that someone can pick up a copy of Shadowrun and house rule it till it’s Monopoly, would you describe D&D as a DM driven game?




Yes.



> If so, why?
> 
> If not, why not? And what would be an example of a GM Driven game in your opinion?




Because it expects the DM to be the primary one to come up with the adventures, write plots and so on.  The reason I say the DM is primary, and not only one to come up with adventures, is because it's very easy for a proactive player to set the adventure through his PC's actions and goals.  The game is mostly written around it being the DM, though.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Yes.
> 
> 
> 
> Because it expects the DM to be the primary one to come up with the adventures, write plots and so on.  The reason I say the DM is primary, and not only one to come up with adventures, is because it's very easy for a proactive player to set the adventure through his PC's actions and goals.  The game is mostly written around it being the DM, though.




Okay, cool. 

So then would you say that your opinion is that the term “Mother May I”, generally speaking, would refer to a GM driven game that’s gone wrong in some way?

Is “Mother May I” something to be cautious of when playing/GMing that kind of game?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Okay, cool.
> 
> So then would you say that your opinion is that the term “Mother May I”, generally speaking, would refer to a GM driven game that’s gone wrong in some way?




Horribly wrong.  It would require a DM to go out of his way to allow or disallow all the declarations of the players.  That's not something I have ever encountered before, even with the few DM's who I rate as bad ones. 



> Is “Mother May I” something to be cautious of when playing/GMing that kind of game?




I wouldn't think so.  I don't think it occurs to the vast majority of us that we can stop a PC from going around a tree to look at something from the other side.  The notion being put forth by the "Mother May I" crowd that D&D is "Mother May I," because the DM has the power to stop every declaration people make in D&D, is bupkis.  The DM has never had that power unless he has taken it and given it to himself.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Calling GM Decides mother may I, I don't see how it helps to understand what is driving that kind of play at all.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I appreciate it if you haven't been using Mother May I. I was under the impression you had, but I apparently just assumed that.



Don't you read what I post before you criticise me for it?



Maxperson said:


> Very clearly that is your discussing the playstyle as "Mother May I."



That is me, in the other thread, using the term coined by the OP of that thread to engage with the topic of that thread (an OP that [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] has said he has no problem with). As I have said in multiple posts in this thread, when responding to other posters who use the term I have used it, mostly inside quotes, because otherwise conversation becomes difficult if not impossible.

What's at issue in the other thread is _how to use play techniques other than GM decides, so as to have play esperiences that aren't primarily driven by the GM's preferences and conception of the fiction_. "Mother may I' was used by the OP in that thread as a shorthand for the right hand side of the "so as" clause. The primary focus of this thread is _Whether or not GM decides is saliently comparable to real life_. I assert that it's not, precisely because it's about a particular person's preferences and volition. If someone wants to label that "Mother may I" good luck to them, but it's not a term I've used or that I need to use to make my point.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Don't you read what I post before you criticise me for it?
> 
> That is me, in the other thread, using the term coined by the OP of that thread to engage with the topic of that thread (an OP that [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] has said he has no problem with).




Cordiality matters. When I expressed my viewpoint on his use of Mother May I, he acknowledged it may have been more complicated than his first post made it out to be (or something to that effect). He still held to a position I disagreed with, but my issue in this and that thread hasn't been merely disagreeing. It has been about what feels like a lack of respect in the conversation from some posters. With him I simply didn't get a sense that I was being disrespected.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If I buy Burning Wheel, I have full authority to create house rules for it, including altering the game to give me the same level of DM authority that D&D has.  I can then seek players for my Burning Wheel game.  I will likely not find many(or maybe not any), but I can do it.





Ovinomancer said:


> You would actually be violating the rules of that game if you do this.
> 
> The point you're so adeptly missing is that D&D puts control over the rules under the GM as a _rule of the game_.  BW does not.



To add to what Ovinomancer said:

(1) There is nothing special about the GM role in the example you give. I could buy the BW books and create house rules for it and ask someone to GM it for me.

(2) There is nothing special about the game being an RPG in the example you give. I could buy Forbidden Desert, create a house rule for it (eg double the number of sand counters) and ask people to play it with me.

All you'e shown is that people can make up games and ask people to play them with them. Which I think is probably common knowledge for participants in this thread.  



Ovinomancer said:


> Or the GM says, " you're lawful good and have orders yo guard this location. You wouldn't wander off behind the tree.  If you do, I'm changing your alignment and you'll lose your Paladin abilities."



I'm still working through the thread, so maybe [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] has responded to this already. But to me it seems a fairly common alternative to being left hanging around unsupported by the fiction.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> The counterpart of Gm-decides, is Players-abide.
> They wait for the Gm to do the right thing, and don't try to be part of the solution, because it would be like metagame cheating.



This is not unique to Roman RPGing. I've encountered this phenomenon in Melbourne, Australia. (My town.)


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Horribly wrong.  It would require a DM to go out of his way to allow or disallow all the declarations of the players.  That's not something I have ever encountered before, even with the few DM's who I rate as bad ones.




I would agree. If a DM denies all action declarations, then things have indeed gone horribly wrong.

But what would be considered “mildly wrong” or “wrong enough to be of concern”? 



Maxperson said:


> I wouldn't think so.  I don't think it occurs to the vast majority of us that we can stop a PC from going around a tree to look at something from the other side.  The notion being put forth by the "Mother May I" crowd that D&D is "Mother May I," because the DM has the power to stop every declaration people make in D&D, is bupkis.  The DM has never had that power unless he has taken it and given it to himself.




I don’t think that’s what’s being put forth by anyone. You’re assuming the extreme where a DM denies everything the players try to do out of hand. As you’ve said quite a lot, that is a DM being a jerk.

Instead, let’s imagine a DM who does it here and there. And I don’t mean the kind of “say no” that’s required to run the game, just the kind where it’s the DM deciding he doesn’t like what the player has introduced. He could say yes, but for whatever reason, he says no. 

Can you see how some players might not like the idea the DM can do that? He doesn’t have to be some megalomaniacal tyrant, laughing behind the DM screen as his players fail to achieve anything because he’s decided to give himself absolute authority muu huu haha hahha ahaha! It could be just one instance, and it rubs a certain player the wrong way. 

So, if you can see how some players might be a bit nervous about that idea, which I think is pretty easy to understand, then you can also imagine that a game system that made efforts to remove the risk of that happening might appeal to those players. 

Would you agree with that?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> To add to what Ovinomancer said:
> 
> (1) There is nothing special about the GM role in the example you give. I could buy the BW books and create house rules for it and ask someone to GM it for me.
> 
> (2) There is nothing special about the game being an RPG in the example you give. I could buy Forbidden Desert, create a house rule for it (eg double the number of sand counters) and ask people to play it with me.




The point you are ignoring is that DM authority exists in all RPGs if the DM so wishes. 



> All you'e shown is that people can make up games and ask people to play them with them. Which I think is probably common knowledge for participants in this thread.




So it's your contention that a house rule changes the game into a completely new game that the person made up?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Whether or not this sort of case, in which the player who was hoping to change the fiction discovers that s/he is really exploring it, is a problem will obviously be something that varies from table to table. That it might be a problem I think is obvious.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How exploration in an RPG can ever be a problem rather boggles the mind, given as exploration is one of the three** key pillars*** of the game.
> 
> ** - or four, if downtime is included as a pillar
> *** - and though it took 5e D&D to codify this, the principles this codification are based on - that an RPG consists in varying measures of social interaction, exploration, and combat - are nigh-universal.
Click to expand...


(1) Notice that I didn't say that exploration is a problem. I said that I think it is obvious how the following _might_ be a problem: _a player who is hoping to change the fiction, by way of an action declaration for his/her PC, discovers - in virtue of how the GM approaches adjudication that s/he is really exploring the fiction_.

The risk of such a problem is not obviated by pointing out that exploration is a "key pillar" of the game.

Here's a trite illustration of the point: drinking water is a key pillar of human existence. But it might be a problem if every time you go to eat some food, or drink some beer, or . . ., you find yourself drinking water instead.

Here's a slightly less trite illustration: if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel surprised or even disappointed.

(2) The idea of pillars of exploration, combat and social is actually distinctive to some versions of D&D.

It doesn't generalise to Traveller, in which making a FTL jump is a moment of action resolution that is neither fighting nor talking but is not exploration. It requires various rolls to avoid misjump, drive failure and the like.

It doesn't generalise to Burning Wheel, in which _chasing someone_ or _buying something_ can be a moment of action resolution no different in basic mechanical structure from fighting or talking, but obviously neither.

It doesn't generalise to 4e D&D, which has two basic pillars - combat and non-combat (skill challenges) - and the latter can be used to adjudicate social interaction, crossing a desert, altering or dispelling a magical phenomenon, etc.



Lanefan said:


> Before starting to change something, doesn't it make sense to explore it first and figure out what you're trying to change and why?  To learn the parameters of your in-fiction surroundings, and of the situation at hand?
> 
> And then isn't it reasonable to first determine what means and methods of change, of those you have available to you in the fiction, have better chances of success* before just diving in?
> 
> * - and this determination can and often will include some trial and error, a fine example of which is the _Dimension Door_ bit quoted above.  If the PCs have no way of knowing they've just entered a teleport no-fly zone, this is how they find out.



This all rests on very strong assumptions about how RPGing works. I'm sure they're true for how you play D&D. They're clearly not true for (say) Dungeon World played by the book.

To elaborate: the most common way that the players in my games learn the parameters of their in-fiction surrounding is by asking and being told. That is, they don't declare actions with the intention of having the outcome being narration of fiction; they (as players, not as their PCs) ask me and I tell them.

Sometimes this has collaborative dimensions, in the sense that together we establish the parameters of the fiction.

In our last Traveller session, for instance, through asking and telling and working together we established fiction about Imperial Marines insignia, the player of an ex-Marine established some details about salutes and signals, we referred to rulebooks to ascertain exactly how battle dress (a type of powered armour works), I described to the players the existence of force-field type technology that is used to maintain heat in open-air areas on the icy-cold world the PCs are currently on, etc. None of this took the form of _exploration_ in the D&D sense of delcaring actions like "I prod it with a 10' pole". It was all about establising and sharing backstory and establishing clear framing of current situations.

Another way the fiction in my games is established is as the outcome of action declarations. In a BW session, this was how it was established that a sick-room contained a chamber pot (a player made a successful Perception check to notice a vessel in the room). In a Cortex+ Heroic session, this was how it was established that some runic inscriptions described the dungeon layout (because a player declared an action to eliminate his PC's Lost in the Dungeon complication, using the Runic Inscrptions Scene Distinction as a component of his dice pool for this action).

Yet another way is because players make checks that oblige me to make up new fiction. This is a part of Dungeon World - you'll recall the discussions upthread of the Discern Realities and Spout Lore moves, which - if successful - oblige the GM to provide the player with certain bits of information:

*Spout Lore*
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful.

*Discern Realities*
When you closely study a situation or person, roll+Wis. ✴On a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below. ✴On a 7–9, ask 1. Either way, take +1 forward when acting on the answers.

• What happened here recently?
• What is about to happen?
• What should I be on the lookout for?
• What here is useful or valuable to me?
• Who’s really in control here?
• What here is not what it appears to be?​
It's taken for granted in DW that that information won't have been pre-established - the GM is expected to make it up on the spot, building on what has gone before and the current dynamic of play (including previous "soft moves" made by the GM) - [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] have discussed the details of this technique upthread.

Similar things happen in my Traveller game, though in Classic Traveller it is mostly less formally structured.

In the first session, after the PCs had been briefed by their patron, one of the players was suspicious because the whole thing didn't make much sense:



pemerton said:


> Methwit thought all this sounded a bit odd - why would a high-class (Soc A) marine lieutenant be smuggling goods into a dead-end world like Byron - and so asked Li back to his hotel room to talk further. With his Liaison-1 and Carousing-1 and a good reaction roll she agreed, and with his Interrogation-1 he was able to obtain some additional information (although he did have to share some details about his own background to persuade her to share).
> 
> The real situation, she explained, was that Byron was itself just a stop-over point. The real action was on another world - Enlil - which is technologically backwards and has a disease-ridden atmosphere to which there is no resistance or immunity other than in Enlil's native population. So the goods to be shipped from Ardour-3 were high-tech medical gear for extracting and concentrating pathogens from the atmosphere on Enlil, to be shipped back to support a secret bio-weapons program. The reason a new team was needed for this mission was because Vincenzo had won the yacht from the original team - who were being dealt with "appropriately" for their incompetence in disrupting the operation.
> 
> (I had been planning to leave the real backstory to the mission pretty loose, to be fleshed out as needed - including the possibility that Li was actually going to betray the PCs in some fashion - but the move from Methwit's player forced my hand, and I had to come up with some more plausible backstory to explain the otherwise absurd situation I'd come up with. And it had to relate to the worlds I'd come up with in my prep.)



For the character in the fiction, of course that's all about figuring out what is going on. But for the _player_, given that I am approaching my Traveller game in a DW-type spirit rather than a "secret backstory" spirit, it's about using action declarations to force the referee to provide more detail in the framing, thus providing the player with more fictional "levers" on which to hang action declarations.

And notice that this is the _player_ doing this. (Just as, in DW, it is a player who triggers Discern Realities or Spout Lore.) Which relates back to the first part of my reply - my response as referee conformed to the players intentions in declaring the action (ie forcing the GM to enrich the framing to provide more fictional levers).


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I would agree. If a DM denies all action declarations, then things have indeed gone horribly wrong.
> 
> But what would be considered “mildly wrong” or “wrong enough to be of concern”?




Sure, but that's also exceptionally rare, and once you leave that realm it's no longer "Mother May I."  When you get a DM denying player actions mildly or even moderately, it's no longer a "Mother May I" situation.  It's a Railroad.  I've seen about threeish DMs over the last 36 years who acted that way.



> I don’t think that’s what’s being put forth by anyone. You’re assuming the extreme where a DM denies everything the players try to do out of hand. As you’ve said quite a lot, that is a DM being a jerk.




 [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] said it straight out multiple times.  He said that D&D was "Mother May I", because the DM has the ability to stop or allow all player actions, so even if the DM doesn't exercise that power, it's "Mother May I."  Nevermind that the DM doesn't actually have that authority from the books.



> Instead, let’s imagine a DM who does it here and there. And I don’t mean the kind of “say no” that’s required to run the game, just the kind where it’s the DM deciding he doesn’t like what the player has introduced. He could say yes, but for whatever reason, he says no.




What kind of player introduction are we talking about?  If it's the creation of a place or NPC, that's not the player's job in D&D, so saying no isn't "Mother May I" or Railroading.  It's simply playing a traditional game.  If you're talking about introducing part of the PC's personality or something that the player has control of, then saying no is usually going to be bad.



> Can you see how some players might not like the idea the DM can do that? He doesn’t have to be some megalomaniacal tyrant, laughing behind the DM screen as his players fail to achieve anything because he’s decided to give himself absolute authority muu huu haha hahha ahaha! It could be just one instance, and it rubs a certain player the wrong way.




Sure, but this isn't a problem with the system.  It's an issue of two people enjoying different playstyles in the first example above, and the DM probably making a mistake in the second.



> So, if you can see how some players might be a bit nervous about that idea, which I think is pretty easy to understand, then you can also imagine that a game system that made efforts to remove the risk of that happening might appeal to those players.




Sure, which is why people play different games.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The point you are ignoring is that DM authority exists in all RPGs if the DM so wishes.



Are you determined to ignore the fact that the GM is irrelevant here. _Any player can suggest a house rule and have others agree to it._ The GM is nothing special in this regard.

You are asserting that the GM has some special status and power in this respect, which is simply not true.



Maxperson said:


> So it's your contention that a house rule changes the game into a completely new game that the person made up?



No. I don't care how you individuate games. My point is the above: that any player of any game can ask others to accept a house rule or variation that s/he proposes. This is an obvious point. It reveals nothing distinctive about RPGs, nor about the role of GMs in RPGing.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> hawkeyefan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> let’s imagine a DM who does it here and there. And I don’t mean the kind of “say no” that’s required to run the game, just the kind where it’s the DM deciding he doesn’t like what the player has introduced. He could say yes, but for whatever reason, he says no.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What kind of player introduction are we talking about?  If it's the creation of a place or NPC, that's not the player's job in D&D, so saying no isn't "Mother May I" or Railroading.  It's simply playing a traditional game.
Click to expand...


This is too simplistic.

In Dungeon World the creation of places or NPCs is (generally) not the player's job. See Discern Realities and Spout Lore above - it is _the GM_ who establishes the new fiction. But the GM is absolutely expected to have regard to player intention and desire in doing that, as   [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] explained in some detail upthread.

5e D&D doesn't state clear principles like DW (I state the edition deliberately, because 4e D&D does have generally clear principles that aren't wildly different from DW) - but for that very reason there is no rule or principle in 5e D&D that _precludes_ a GM from having regard to player interest and desire in deciding what new content to introduce.

And I think that is the underlying context for   [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s question - given that nothing in D&D _obliges_ a GM to disregard player interest and desire in introducing new content; and given that at least some D&D players might want a GM who is introducing new content to have regard to their interests and desires in respect of the developing fiction; what are your thoughts on a GM who nevertheless proceeds from time-to-time without having such regard?

(For what's it worth, I don't think appeals to _tradition_ help here. Tradition doesn't mandate paying no regard to player interests and desires in establishing content. Traditionally, also, players have been able to establish facts about their PCs' ancestry, early life, etc - the Puffin book _What is Dungeons & Dragons_ was published in 1982, and it says (p 23) that PC details may include an "imaginary background, invented by the player, detailing the character's life up to the start of the campaign".)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Are you determined to ignore the fact that the GM is irrelevant here. _Any player can suggest a house rule and have others agree to it._ The GM is nothing special in this regard.
> 
> You are asserting that the GM has some special status and power in this respect, which is simply not true.
> 
> No. I don't care how you individuate games. My point is the above: that any player of any game can ask others to accept a house rule or variation that s/he proposes. This is an obvious point. It reveals nothing distinctive about RPGs, nor about the role of GMs in RPGing.




So there is some truth there, and some falsehood.

First, the truth.  Players can suggest a house rule.  Now the falsehood.  The DM is nothing special in that regard.  Before I get into the scenarios, let me once again say that 9 times out of 10 I get player input into the house rules I would like to put into place, or sit down with the players and discuss the kind of rule we want to have to fix the issue we are having.  That said...

Let's examine some scenarios.

Scenario #1:  The DM walks in and says that he has decided on a house rule that says it will take half as much exp to level as the book says.

Result: The house rule gets added into the game.

Scenario #2:  The players suggest that they want it to take half as much exp to level, but the DM disagrees.

Result: The house rules does not get added into the game.

Now, you might say, "But the players can just leave the game and go somewhere else."  This is true, but they won't have a house rule when they get there, UNLESS one of them decides to become a DM and then approves the house rule, but then you have the DM being the one to put the house rule into place.  On the other hand, even if the players leave, the DM will have his house rule in place and will just find other players to play the game as he house ruled it.

Only the DM can put a house rule into place.  The players have no authority to do so, regardless of how many house rules they come forward with.  The DM and players are simply not equal in this regard UNLESS the DM himself chooses to make them equal, and then only for so long as he wants that equality in place.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> 5e D&D doesn't state clear principles like DW (I state the edition deliberately, because 4e D&D does have generally clear principles that aren't wildly different from DW) - but for that very reason there is no rule or principle in 5e D&D that _precludes_ a GM from having regard to player interest and desire in deciding what new content to introduce.




No preclusion does not mean inclusion, though.  Since there is no rule saying that the DM has to regard player interest, he doesn't HAVE to.  He SHOULD give regard to player interests, but it just isn't required.  The extent of that regard is up for debate, though, and I suppose depends on the extent that the players want to decide what new content to introduce and how.  

In my game, when it comes to PC background, I will often ask the players to give me details on important NPCs and locations such as the town they are from.  They can create quite a bit in that limited area.  When it comes to actual game play, they get to determine new content mostly by dictating through their PCs actions and goals which way the campaign is going.

In one campaign of mine, I had a story involving demon possession whose frequency was growing to the point that soon demons would openly be arriving in cities and attacking people and places.  This abyssal incursion was very serious.  The players like me to come up with these sorts of stories, but being a sandbox game, they are not obligated to go with it.  In this case, the PCs decided that they didn't want to have anything to do with the attacks and not being the nicest of PCs, decided to try their hand at piracy.  I immediately shifted focus from the demon story to piracy, because that's the direction the players decided things were going in.

They directed the content of the campaign by shifting the focus from demons to piracy.  The demon storyline kept going on its own, and the PCs crisscrossed it a few times, but they weren't involved in it as main players.  

Other players might want to be much more involved with content creation.



> And I think that is the underlying context for   [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s question - given that nothing in D&D _obliges_ a GM to disregard player interest and desire in introducing new content; and given that at least some D&D players might want a GM who is introducing new content to have regard to their interests and desires in respect of the developing fiction; what are your thoughts on a GM who nevertheless proceeds from time-to-time without having such regard?




See above.  Depending on the extent of the players' content creation desires, the DM should or should not allow it, depending on what will be fun for him.  If his fun and the players' fun cannot do not coincide at all, they should go their separate ways and find players(for the DM) and a DM(for the players) whose playstyle matches their own.


----------



## Imaculata

Maxperson said:


> This isn't a style of play, though.  It's the DM being a jerk, which isn't a matter of playstyle or rules.  It's simply a DM being one of the relatively few bad DMs that exist within the hobby.




It would not surprise me if there are a lot more groups that play this way than you think. That to me, makes it a playstyle. A bad one, but a playstyle none the less.



Maxperson said:


> I'm confused by this example.  If the x-wing was stationary(not moving) how would you pilot it?  Piloting involves movement, not stationary.  If you were asking to pilot it slowly across the hanger for some reason and he told you no outright, then that's an example of bad DMing, not a playstyle or ruleset being Mother May I.




It was parked in a hangar. Nothing was preventing me from getting into the cockpit and starting the engines. But this DM had everything planned out that he wanted to happen, and the players grabbing his decorative X-wings and bailing was not part of that plan. Not only did he railroad the campaign, but his playstyle meant blocking our actions at every turn. He would arbitralily tell us our actions failed, because it is not what he intended.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Let's examine some scenarios.
> 
> Scenario #1:  The DM walks in and says that he has decided on a house rule that says it will take half as much exp to level as the book says.
> 
> Result: The house rule gets added into the game.



Alternative result: the players say _Not on your nellie!_ and so the GM withdraws his/her suggestion for a house rule.



Maxperson said:


> Scenario #2:  The players suggest that they want it to take half as much exp to level, but the DM disagrees.
> 
> Result: The house rules does not get added into the game.



Alternative result: the GM says _OK_ and so the rule changes as the player suggested.

All you have here are examples of social negotiation. They show us nothing about the power of a GM in the play of a RPG.



Maxperson said:


> Now, you might say, "But the players can just leave the game and go somewhere else."  This is true, but they won't have a house rule when they get there, UNLESS one of them decides to become a DM and then approves the house rule, but then you have the DM being the one to put the house rule into place.



And if the players leave, the GM won't have a house rule UNLESS s/he gets some new players who will approve it.

Because all you are describing is social negotiation, the situations of the participants are - from a formal point of view - completely symmetrical. (I say "from a formal point of view" because it may be that some one participant is more charismatic, influential etc than the others and hence, as a matter of substance, has more sway over the group's decisions.)

Another way to look at it is that choosing to play with a house rule is no different from choosing to play (say) AD&D rather than Runequest. It's not a choice that can be made unilaterally. Everyone has to agree to sit down and play that game.



Maxperson said:


> even if the players leave, the DM will have his house rule in place and will just find other players to play the game as he house ruled it.



And the players will just find another GM to run the game they want to play! Again, this is all just social interaction. None of it is about game play, or the allocation of authority in gameplay.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Sure, but that's also exceptionally rare, and once you leave that realm it's no longer "Mother May I."  When you get a DM denying player actions mildly or even moderately, it's no longer a "Mother May I" situation.  It's a Railroad.  I've seen about threeish DMs over the last 36 years who acted that way.




Not necessarily, although it may also be a railroad. 

I think there are likely 3 broad categories here, which could likely be broken down a bit more, but for the sake of this discussion it makes sense to keep it at 3. Three categories of GM Driven games. The first is an acceptable level of GM Authority. I think this is the way D&D and similar games are typically expected to run. The second is a game where the GM has too much authority and exercises it inconsistently. The third type is somewhere in between the first two. 

Obviously, everyone is going to hate the second type, so it’s not even worth discussing beyond that. The third type is the gray area where opinions are going to vary. And I think this is the type of game most are trying to discuss. And you try to shift to talking about the second type. 



Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] said it straight out multiple times.  He said that D&D was "Mother May I", because the DM has the ability to stop or allow all player actions, so even if the DM doesn't exercise that power, it's "Mother May I."  Nevermind that the DM doesn't actually have that authority from the books.




“Has the ability to...but doesn’t always exercise that power” is exactly what is being talked about. Again, it’s not about the tyrant DM. 



Maxperson said:


> What kind of player introduction are we talking about?  If it's the creation of a place or NPC, that's not the player's job in D&D, so saying no isn't "Mother May I" or Railroading.  It's simply playing a traditional game.  If you're talking about introducing part of the PC's personality or something that the player has control of, then saying no is usually going to be bad.




Well, this can vary. I do allow player creation of places or NPCs in my D&D game. But that’s a bit of a departure from what’s expected in the game. And there are obviously many other RPGs that function that way.

So the answer to the question depends on the system you’re playing and also how yoi’re playing it. 

You’re obviously approaching the discussion with D&D in mind, so NPC or location creation and similar elements require DM approval. Correct?

So none of your PCs has ever been out for revenge against some villain that the player came up with? None of your players has never come up with family members for their PC?

Or do you restrict player introduced content only once play has actually begun?



Maxperson said:


> Sure, but this isn't a problem with the system.  It's an issue of two people enjoying different playstyles in the first example above, and the DM probably making a mistake in the second.




It’s not a problem with the system, I agree. Any game system has a desired outcome, so if play proceeds accordingly, then the system is working as intended. What we’re talking about is more an issue of a mismatch of system expectation and player expectation. 

So in the original OP of the thread that birthed this one, a GM said he wanted to engage a player by allowing the player to introduce content in such a way as to not require GM approval. He asked for ways to go about, suggestions on how other games have done it or techniques people have used in their own game. 



Maxperson said:


> Sure, which is why people play different games.




Or they play a game differently.


----------



## pemerton

Imaculata said:


> It was parked in a hangar. Nothing was preventing me from getting into the cockpit and starting the engines. But this DM had everything planned out that he wanted to happen, and the players grabbing his decorative X-wings and bailing was not part of that plan. Not only did he railroad the campaign, but his playstyle meant blocking our actions at every turn. He would arbitralily tell us our actions failed, because it is not what he intended.



I don't want to speak too harshy about a situation that you were part of and I (obviously enough) was not - but why participate in this game for more than the session or so it took to work this out? What you're talking about here isn't RPGing, it's just sitting there listening to the GM tell his Star Wars story. Which is unlikely to be as good as one you'll find in a comic or a film, simply because most professional storytellers are better than most amateurs.

To me, this seems like the other side of  [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]'s bathtime coin: we have bathtime GMs who just leave the PCs hanging with no fiction for the players to engage with; and on the other side we have GMs who have already prewritten all the ficiton so still there is - for practical purposes of playing an RPG - no fiction for the players to engage with.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaculata said:


> It would not surprise me if there are a lot more groups that play this way than you think. That to me, makes it a playstyle. A bad one, but a playstyle none the less.




I disagree of course.  Being a bad DM is not a playstyle, not matter how many groups suffer through them.  Not that it's very many relative to the number of groups that play.



> It was parked in a hangar. Nothing was preventing me from getting into the cockpit and starting the engines. But this DM had everything planned out that he wanted to happen, and the players grabbing his decorative X-wings and bailing was not part of that plan. Not only did he railroad the campaign, but his playstyle meant blocking our actions at every turn. He would arbitralily tell us our actions failed, because it is not what he intended.




This was a bad DM.  It's that simple.  A DM who was mediocre or better would have let you make the attempt.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> (1) Notice that I didn't say that exploration is a problem. I said that I think it is obvious how the following _might_ be a problem: _a player who is hoping to change the fiction, by way of an action declaration for his/her PC, discovers - in virtue of how the GM approaches adjudication that s/he is really exploring the fiction_.
> 
> The risk of such a problem is not obviated by pointing out that exploration is a "key pillar" of the game.



The risk?  No.  That it's a problem at all?  Yes.



> Here's a trite illustration of the point: drinking water is a key pillar of human existence. But it might be a problem if every time you go to eat some food, or drink some beer, or . . ., you find yourself drinking water instead.



Not quite.  Closer to the point here would be a situation where you go to drink some water and find it's tainted, or is in fact vodka or gin.



> Here's a slightly less trite illustration: if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel surprised or even disappointed.



As would the PC; and *this is perfectly fine*.  Same way I'd feel if I took a swig of water only to find I'd just downed a mouthful of Gilbey's Finest London Dry: I don't like gin, and so I'd be both surprised and disappointed...and probably a bit annoyed too.

What was my mistake?  Not sniffing the "water" first...i.e. not fully enough exploring my surroundings before interacting with them.



> (2) The idea of pillars of exploration, combat and social is actually distinctive to some versions of D&D.
> 
> It doesn't generalise to Traveller, in which making a FTL jump is a moment of action resolution that is neither fighting nor talking but is not exploration. It requires various rolls to avoid misjump, drive failure and the like.



Regardless, after the jump you're going to be somewhere you weren't before - a place which you either know through previous exploration or don't know and thus will probably want to explore - even if such exploration consists only of looking out the window (and-or checking the sensors) to see what's around you before jumping again to somewhere else.



> It doesn't generalise to Burning Wheel, in which _chasing someone_ or _buying something_ can be a moment of action resolution no different in basic mechanical structure from fighting or talking, but obviously neither.



Actively chasing someone usually falls under combat; surreptitiously following someone would be more in the exploration side.  Buying something falls under social.  That the game has specific mechanics for these things doesn't deny the pillars are present.

Come to think of it, I wonder if you can name anything a PC might do or try to do within the fiction of an RPG that doesn't fall under one or more of the four pillars including downtime?



> It doesn't generalise to 4e D&D, which has two basic pillars - combat and non-combat (skill challenges) - and the latter can be used to adjudicate social interaction, crossing a desert, altering or dispelling a magical phenomenon, etc.



4e does kinda take two pillars and shove 'em into one, but when looked at more closely each thing within the one can be broken out.  Social interaction = social (obviously!); crossing a desert = exploration.  Altering or dispelling a magical phenomenon = some situationally-dependent mix of combat and exploration if done under duress, and quite possibly downtime if done in the safety of town.



> This all rests on very strong assumptions about how RPGing works. I'm sure they're true for how you play D&D. They're clearly not true for (say) Dungeon World played by the book.
> 
> To elaborate: the most common way that the players in my games learn the parameters of their in-fiction surrounding is by asking and being told.



This is likely true almost universally, as far as it goes.  But it's only half the picture...



> That is, they don't declare actions with the intention of having the outcome being narration of fiction; they (as players, not as their PCs) ask me and I tell them.



So they never declare any action on the basis of "let's try this and see if it works"?  No trial-and-error, intentional or otherwise?

The other half of the picture is, of course, hidden information that the PCs (and thus players) can't know until they discover it, sometimes the hard way.  The no-teleport zone would be like this, as would be the gin-water.  Or do you flat-out tell them if they ask (and even if they don't?) it's a no-fly zone even if the PCs have no way of knowing?



> Sometimes this has collaborative dimensions, in the sense that together we establish the parameters of the fiction.
> 
> In our last Traveller session, for instance, through asking and telling and working together we established fiction about Imperial Marines insignia, the player of an ex-Marine established some details about salutes and signals, we referred to rulebooks to ascertain exactly how battle dress (a type of powered armour works), I described to the players the existence of force-field type technology that is used to maintain heat in open-air areas on the icy-cold world the PCs are currently on, etc. None of this took the form of _exploration_ in the D&D sense of delcaring actions like "I prod it with a 10' pole". It was all about establising and sharing backstory and establishing clear framing of current situations.



No, but it all fell under the exploration pillar in terms of learning about the setting and how things work there.



> Another way the fiction in my games is established is as the outcome of action declarations. In a BW session, this was how it was established that a sick-room contained a chamber pot (a player made a successful Perception check to notice a vessel in the room). In a Cortex+ Heroic session, this was how it was established that some runic inscriptions described the dungeon layout (because a player declared an action to eliminate his PC's Lost in the Dungeon complication, using the Runic Inscrptions Scene Distinction as a component of his dice pool for this action).
> 
> Yet another way is because players make checks that oblige me to make up new fiction. This is a part of Dungeon World - you'll recall the discussions upthread of the Discern Realities and Spout Lore moves, which - if successful - oblige the GM to provide the player with certain bits of information:
> 
> *Spout Lore*
> When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something, roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it useful.
> 
> *Discern Realities*
> When you closely study a situation or person, roll+Wis. ✴On a 10+, ask the GM 3 questions from the list below. ✴On a 7–9, ask 1. Either way, take +1 forward when acting on the answers.
> 
> • What happened here recently?
> • What is about to happen?
> • What should I be on the lookout for?
> • What here is useful or valuable to me?
> • Who’s really in control here?
> • What here is not what it appears to be?​
> It's taken for granted in DW that that information won't have been pre-established - the GM is expected to make it up on the spot, building on what has gone before and the current dynamic of play (including previous "soft moves" made by the GM) - [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] have discussed the details of this technique upthread.



Those are still all exploration, regardless of the mechanics used.  D&D Bards have a Legend Lore ability that sounds quite similar to the Spout Lore noted above; and well over 95% of the time when a Bard in my game succeeds with Legend Lore I'm immediately making stuff up on the fly (they chuck LL at some of the strangest things  ) so I can narrate the information obtained.

Information gathering of any kind is exploration.  Occasionally combat might enter into it (see: torture), and far more often social enters into it (when you get the info from another person or entity in the fiction), but it's always exploration at the root.



> Similar things happen in my Traveller game, though in Classic Traveller it is mostly less formally structured.
> 
> In the first session, after the PCs had been briefed by their patron, one of the players was suspicious because the whole thing didn't make much sense:
> 
> ...
> 
> For the character in the fiction, of course that's all about figuring out what is going on. But for the _player_, given that I am approaching my Traveller game in a DW-type spirit rather than a "secret backstory" spirit, it's about using action declarations to force the referee to provide more detail in the framing, thus providing the player with more fictional "levers" on which to hang action declarations.
> 
> And notice that this is the _player_ doing this. (Just as, in DW, it is a player who triggers Discern Realities or Spout Lore.) Which relates back to the first part of my reply - my response as referee conformed to the players intentions in declaring the action (ie forcing the GM to enrich the framing to provide more fictional levers).



And in these instances the player is simply trying to mirror the character, which is great.

You aren't always going to describe every last little feature of a scene and nor is anyone else.  Players can (1) ask for more (or more specific) info, or they can (2) declare actions that'll get them the info.  Either way, for better or worse they should end up learning more; and in many cases it'll take a bit of both (1) and (2) to fully suss out a scene or situation.

The difference with (2) here is that it might draw out information that simple observation (1) can't get - as in the no-fly zone or the gin-water.  For example asking you to give a more detailed description of the items on the desk will get me that, and I can in theory drill down (within reason, of course) until I'm satisfied; but it'll still take the action declaration of "I cast Detect Magic" to pull that one of the four otherwise ordinary-looking dust-covered quills on the desk is enchanted.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Alternative result: the players say _Not on your nellie!_ and so the GM withdraws his/her suggestion for a house rule.
> 
> Alternative result: the GM says _OK_ and so the rule changes as the player suggested.




You know what those alternatives have in common?  They rely on DM authority.  The DM can in fact decide to go with the wishes of the players.  That's his decision.  The players cannot force the DM to accept their wishes.  They have no power to do so.



> And if the players leave, the GM won't have a house rule UNLESS s/he gets some new players who will approve it.




The DM has a house rule whether he has players or not.  He has the house.  He has the game.  The rules of the game are changed.  It won't do him much good without players, but the house rule exists.



> Another way to look at it is that choosing to play with a house rule is no different from choosing to play (say) AD&D rather than Runequest. It's not a choice that can be made unilaterally. Everyone has to agree to sit down and play that game.
> 
> And the players will just find another GM to run the game they want to play! Again, this is all just social interaction. None of it is about game play, or the allocation of authority in gameplay.




So then Player May I is a thing?  If the DM doesn't have the authority, because the players can do as they wish, then it's Player May I, not Mother May I.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Are you determined to ignore the fact that the GM is irrelevant here. _Any player can suggest a house rule and have others agree to it._ The GM is nothing special in this regard.
> 
> You are asserting that the GM has some special status and power in this respect, which is simply not true.
> 
> No. I don't care how you individuate games. My point is the above: that any player of any game can ask others to accept a house rule or variation that s/he proposes. This is an obvious point. It reveals nothing distinctive about RPGs, nor about the role of GMs in RPGing.



Well, actually the GM does have some special status in that if she rejects the suggestion and doesn't add it in to the game there's nothing the players can really do about it.

A GM can always say 'no' to something she doesn't want to run or doesn't want in the game.  An obvious case is whether or not a particular GM will allow a particular expansion book for the in-use game system - if the GM don't want it, it don't happen.

This also applies to elements within the fiction.  My own example is that I pull out the smackdown hammer if-when PCs try to get involved in macro-economics and trade and stocks and futures and buy-low-sell-high and compound interest rather than adventuring (which one of my players in particular would looooove to do on the meta-level): I've flat-out said a long time ago that if they want to do this crap then they'll have to find someone else to DM it, 'cause I ain't gonna.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Well, actually the GM does have some special status in that if she rejects the suggestion and doesn't add it in to the game there's nothing the players can really do about it.



No, there's no difference here - if the players reject the GM's suggested house rule and don't add it into the game then there's nothing the GM can really do about it.

The question of what rules a group of people is going to use to play a game is something that _only the group_ can answer.



Lanefan said:


> A GM can always say 'no' to something she doesn't want to run or doesn't want in the game.



And the same is true of players. There is nothing here but symmetry.



Lanefan said:


> I pull out the smackdown hammer if-when PCs try to get involved in macro-economics and trade and stocks and futures and buy-low-sell-high and compound interest rather than adventuring (which one of my players in particular would looooove to do on the meta-level): I've flat-out said a long time ago that if they want to do this crap then they'll have to find someone else to DM it



Right. And if some other Victorian is offering to GM a trade-and-compound-interest game and all the players in the neighbourhood say _If you want to run that crap then you'll have tofind someone else to play it_ then that GM won't get to play that particular game.

As I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just social negotiation where every participant is formally equal.



Maxperson said:


> The players cannot force the DM to accept their wishes.  They have no power to do so.



And the GM can't force the players to accept his/her wishes. S/he has no power to do so.



Maxperson said:


> The DM has a house rule whether he has players or not.  He has the house.  He has the game.  The rules of the game are changed.  It won't do him much good without players, but the house rule exists.



This is abusrd sophistry. But if we're going to go down this path, then the player has his/her house rule too. That palyer has a game with that rule. It's just that no one is playing or refereeing it.



Maxperson said:


> So then Player May I is a thing?  If the DM doesn't have the authority, because the players can do as they wish, then it's Player May I, not Mother May I.



I don't even know what you're talking about here. This sub-topic is a discusion of settling the rules of play, not resolving actions. But "Mother may I" is a label applied to an approach to determining outcomes and consequences, in the fiction, of actions declared by the players for their PCs.

If you're asking _is it possible to play a RPG in which the players have authority to determine certain outcomes_, then the answer obviously is _yes_.

And, of course, it's possible to have a RPG in which authority to determin outcomes is allocated from resolution-event to resolution-event, often by rolling dice to see who - player of the PC, or GM - gets to decide.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel surprised or even disappointed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As would the PC; and *this is perfectly fine*.  Same way I'd feel if I took a swig of water only to find I'd just downed a mouthful of Gilbey's Finest London Dry: I don't like gin, and so I'd be both surprised and disappointed...and probably a bit annoyed too.
Click to expand...


So here's a fairly uncontroversial idea: bartenders who swap water for gin, or vic versa, aren't doing something perfectly fine. Even leaving aside the breach of laws that regulate the commercial provision of alcholic beverages, there is the social issue: they're doing wrong by their patrons.

And I can tell you, if I was playing in a game where a signficant number of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that _wouldn't_ be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.



Lanefan said:


> Actively chasing someone usually falls under combat



Says who? It could be a race. An attempt to deliver a message. This seems like sheer projection.

The same is true of your discussion of other examples. Eg buying things in BW is not mostly about social interaction at all, but is primarily about how the resource stat is affected.



Lanefan said:


> crossing a desert = exploration.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> it all fell under the exploration pillar in terms of learning about the setting and how things work there.



In what sense is either case (the desert crossing, or me describing to the players the situation in which their PCs find themselves) exploration?

Here's how the 5e D&D Basic PDF describes exploration (p 5):

*Exploration *includes both the adventurers’ movement through the world and their interaction with objects and situations that require their attention. Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens.​
In my Traveller game, last session, a group of PCs was being pursued by mercenaries and Imperial Marines in a faster, better-armed vehicle, and so surrendered. I described to them the circumstances in which they found themselves as prisoners (incuding that there were force-fields of a particular type to keep warm air inside an open-air area). That's not exploration, that's just the GM describing the situation. Having the GM tell the players about the PCs' circumstances isn't exploration - isn't "interacting with objects". It's the functional equivalent of reading the boxed text in a module.

And the last time I adjudicated a desert crossing was in BW. The PCs knew where they were going. There was no exploration, either in the fiction (the PCs weren't exploring) or in the process of resolution (the players weren't learning the content of the fiction from the GM). The actual question resolved by the action resolution was whether or not they would make it to the foothills and find the fresh water there. The outcome - given the relevant check failed - was that when they got to the waterhole it had been fouled by an enemy. There was no "give-and-take" here, and the players weren't being told the result of their journey by the GM: there was a framed, and ultimately unscuccessful, Orienteering check. Had it succeeded, the players' vision for the fiction (safe arrival at fresh water) would have been what happened. But because it failed, I as GM got to establish an adverse vision of the fiction instead.



Lanefan said:


> after the jump you're going to be somewhere you weren't before - a place which you either know through previous exploration or don't know and thus will probably want to explore - even if such exploration consists only of looking out the window (and-or checking the sensors) to see what's around you before jumping again to somewhere else.



But that's not what I talked about. I referred to the need to succeed at checks to avoid misjump, enging failure and the like.

RPGs can cover any ficitonal events that can be conveived of - and human endeaour extends beyond talking to people, fighting them and looking for them.



Lanefan said:


> I wonder if you can name anything a PC might do or try to do within the fiction of an RPG that doesn't fall under one or more of the four pillars including downtime?



The "three pillars" of 5e, and your "four pillars", are a jumble of in-fiction and at-the-table characterisations of PC actions. In Cortex+ there are Action Scenes and Transition Scenes - differentiated both by their role in the fiction and (more importntly) their role in pacing and conflict at the table.

In Burning Wheel there is either "say 'yes'" or else there is confict, which is resolved via checks. Whether the conflict is about fighting, persuading, or makng it safely across a desert, the mechanical basics are the same.

But anyway, I've already listed some stuff that doesn't fall under any of your pillars, in that it is not fighting, not talking, and not just "give and take where players say what their PCs do and GM tells them what happens": runing a race; and ensuring that a spaceship successfully makes a jump. More examples would include successfully placing a secret message (happened in my second-to-last Traveller game), trying to ensure a message is sent to your family so they can join you at an event (happened in my last Prince Valiant game), intercepting or blocking communiation signals (a recurrent element in my Traveller game), repairing a vehicle, testing the DNA of an alien creature, making checks to avoid being caught doing illegal things (al Traveller again), lighting a campfire (Burning Wheel), recalling a fact, etc, etc.



Lanefan said:


> The other half of the picture is, of course, hidden information that the PCs (and thus players) can't know until they discover it, sometimes the hard way.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Information gathering of any kind is exploration.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You aren't always going to describe every last little feature of a scene and nor is anyone else.  Players can (1) ask for more (or more specific) info, or they can (2) declare actions that'll get them the info.  Either way, for better or worse they should end up learning more



Spout Lore and Discern Realities (in DW), or the scenario I described from my Traveller game, are not _the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result_. They don't involve the revelaion of hidden information (maybe in the fiction it might be hidden, but not necessarily). They're examples of players activating the mechanics to oblige the GM to _make some stuff up_! The sort of thing the GM makes up depends on the outcomes of the check(s) at issue.

5e D&D simply doesn't contemplate this sort of thing in its account of "exploration". And there are features of the game - namely, the lack of an appropriate system of checks - that would make it hard to introduce. (This is a marked contrast with 4e, which is easily run this way.)



Lanefan said:


> So they never declare any action on the basis of "let's try this and see if it works"? No trial-and-error, intentional or otherwise?



In the fiction, of course this happens. In my Traveller game one of the PCs has Jack-of-all-Trades-4. But as a resolution method, no, not really. When actions are declared the players know the general way that resolution will be determined (eg in Traveller, the default is a 2 dice throw), and we throw the dice and see what happens.

It's not any sort of coincidence that this post keeps coming back to the framing of checks. Making checks is the most obvious alternative to _GM decides_ in order to esetablish the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I said that I think it is obvious how the following _might_ be a problem: _a player who is hoping to change the fiction, by way of an action declaration for his/her PC, discovers - in virtue of how the GM approaches adjudication that s/he is really exploring the fiction_.
> 
> The risk of such a problem is not obviated by pointing out that exploration is a "key pillar" of the game.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> Here's a slightly less trite illustration: if a player is setting out to do something in a different "pillar", and discovers by way of unanticipated GM adjudication that s/he is really exploring, then s/he might feel *surprised or even disappointed*.




I think this kind of thing happens in the Star Trek show all the time where they try to do something to find out they actually can't or what they attempt doesn't work at all. This really goes back to how do you like your puzzles in an RPG. Collaborative effort or not. IMO a player's disappointed when monster x makes their saving throw and crossing pillars makes no difference to the degree of disappointment. If fact the blending of pillars is quite a common experience within RPGs.

Surprise is generally not considered a negative emotion so I'm ok with hard no's which build on the exploration and puzzle feature. Again it is all a matter of taste.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> And I can tell you, if I was playing in a game where a *signficant number* of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that _wouldn't_ be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.




Bold emphasis mine. When you say significant number, Max has every right to throw in jerk DM. When people are arguing extremes or making these things a common frequence the conversation devolves to what it has become with no insight reached from either side.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> (Alignment as constraint) But to me it seems a fairly common alternative to being left hanging around unsupported by the fiction.




In the closed-world version of high simulative immersive play, I've seen the Personality Traits (and ad-hoc background) used by Gm as leverage to obtain the auspicable course of action declarations from Pc. During play, enforced by in-character superNpc, later on, out of char, by the Gm to the Player. (Eg: Nature & Demeanor traits in Vampire the Masquerade)

The open world version (always IME) sees background and traits as burdens on the path of free roaming plot-less exploration. 

Both need to heavily house-rule the system in order to obtain the desired gameplay. Getting rid of significant past Npc, BG, Traits, Goals, or viceversa reinforce them ad-hoc in order to keep the game inside a closed environment. 
Btw those Gms were very good at what they did: skilled and self confident. The downside being that Pc actions were usually clueless and meaningless. 
In both games, I joined because the Gm needed new blood to propel the stagnating game forward. They wouldn't change approach anyway, so, sooner or later, games came to an end. In the closed world, the Gm had me change Pc: I wasnt conformating to his expectations. In the open one, I rolled a second Pc to actively take the party out of the thermal pools. 

Both games were very deadly combat-wise, so players spent most of the time trying not to engage any dangerous course of action. Npcs were very consistent personality-wise, but not so relatable by Pcs.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Bold emphasis mine. When you say significant number, Max has every right to throw in jerk DM. When people are arguing extremes or making these things a common frequence the conversation devolves to what it has become with no insight reached from either side.




The thing is, this actually describes a lot of D&D play, especially with modules that GM is running close to the printed material.  It's pretty typical for a "find traps' attempt, for example, for the result to be whatever the GM already knows but is now telling the players.  Quite often, this is 'no traps'.  Sometimes it's "you spot [insert some clue about a possible trap]."  I don't think this is at all uncommon in D&D play.  For evidence, I point to Grimtooth's Traps, a popular 3.x 3rd party book (popular by sales) that details many complex and fiendish traps that are often designed to obscure the true danger from players on the basis of the initial 'find traps' attempt.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> This is not unique to Roman RPGing. I've encountered this phenomenon in Melbourne, Australia. (My town.)



Melbourne,  cool, or should I say "absolutely ice-box"? Long time ago I had this aussie friend during a sojourn in Cape Town, saying that all the time  
I'm a fan of the Phillip Island circuit in motogp/superbike races, and on the playstation is my favourite track. Old style, flowing circuit in front of the sea, where the rider needs guts to be fast.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I think this kind of thing happens in the Star Trek show all the time where they try to do something to find out they actually can't or what they attempt doesn't work at all.



I didn't talk about _the character_  being surprised or even disappointed. I talked about _the player_ - like turning up to an invitation to a bridge tournament only to find they're all playing poker instead.

Of course _characters_ will be disappointed all the time in RPGing. The precise details of "all the time" will depend on failure rates built into the system - but the question I was addressing is whether that failure is (1) a result of _GM decides_, so that what a player puts forward as full-blooded action declaration (ie an attempt to change the fiction) turns out to be exploration (ie the GM has decided that such-and-such an approach can't work), or (2) a result of failing a check.

In my Traveller game a couple of weeks ago the PCs discovered that the people they were spying on were transmitting in an Imperial code that the PCs couldn't decode. But that was the result of failed action resolution (in that case, failed Education checks for the characters with an Imperial Navy background).

In DW, a 6- result on Discern Realities or Spout Lore will naturally result in the GM establishing some piece of backstory or embellishing the current situation in a way that is adverse to the situation of the PCs. That could include, for instance, discovering that a magical force field will block any attempts to teleport out.

The difference that I pointed to between _action declaration that can change the fiction_, and _exploration_, is a difference that operates _at the table in the play of the game_, not one that is discernible within, or pertains to, the content of the fiction itself.



Sadras said:


> Surprise is generally not considered a negative emotion so I'm ok with hard no's which build on the exploration and puzzle feature. Again it is all a matter of taste.





Sadras said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> if I was playing in a game where a *signficant number* of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that wouldn't be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Bold emphasis mine. When you say significant number, Max has every right to throw in jerk DM.
Click to expand...


I honestly don't understand how you can assert the two things I've quoted just above.

If it's a matter of taste - which is what I said in the OP of this thread - then how can someone be a _jerk_ just because they have different tastes from mine?

From the way in which you post about them I am pretty sure that, for me, the games you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] run would fall foul of my "significant number" constraint. But presumably neither of you thinks that you are a jerk.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Melbourne,  cool, or should I say "absolutely ice-box"? Long time ago I had this aussie friend during a sojourn in Cape Town, saying that all the time



Not an ice-box - fairly similar, seasonally, to Rome. (Single digit max temperatures sometimes happen in winter, but not much, and there is no snow here except the - rather occasional - dusting of some nearby hills.)

Someone from further north in Australia would find it cold, but then they would find Rome cold too in winter! (To get Cape Town type temperatures here you have to go further north, up towards Brisbane - I was at the Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane, in winter last year and had a nice morning swim at the beach, with no need of a wetsuit, before heading off to my conference.)


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Not necessarily, although it may also be a railroad.
> 
> I think there are likely 3 broad categories here, which could likely be broken down a bit more, but for the sake of this discussion it makes sense to keep it at 3. Three categories of GM Driven games. The first is an acceptable level of GM Authority. I think this is the way D&D and similar games are typically expected to run. The second is a game where the GM has too much authority and exercises it inconsistently. The third type is somewhere in between the first two.
> 
> Obviously, everyone is going to hate the second type, so it’s not even worth discussing beyond that. The third type is the gray area where opinions are going to vary. And I think this is the type of game most are trying to discuss. And you try to shift to talking about the second type.




I don't think that there are 3 types.  I think that there are only 2.  The first type you mention I don't think exists.  No matter what level of authority a DM has, some will like it and some won't, and opinions will vary on how much is appropriate and how it should be used.  That leaves us your number 2 and 3 as the only types out there.  

"Mother May I" and "Railroad" DMs abuse their authority and most think those are bad.  The rest want to discuss the grey area that's left.

The OP may have wanted to discuss the kind of game that falls into the grey area, but by inviting people to discuss things using the pejorative "Mother May I," even if it isn't how HE would refer to the games, he caused the discussion to devolve into hundreds of pages of arguing over the term and how it should not be applied to the playstyles people are trying to apply it to.  People have strong feelings about the kinds of games they like being insulted by such terms.  The OP should have said that he wanted to discuss X, and that no pejorative terms should be used in the discussion as they just cause problems and derail threads.



> “Has the ability to...but doesn’t always exercise that power” is exactly what is being talked about. Again, it’s not about the tyrant DM.




I didn't say "doesn't always exercise that power."  What I sad was "doesn't exercise that power."  There''s a big difference between the two.  Yours involves at least some instances of the DM railroading the players.  Mine involves no such abuses, yet was still being called "Mother May I."



> Well, this can vary. I do allow player creation of places or NPCs in my D&D game. But that’s a bit of a departure from what’s expected in the game. And there are obviously many other RPGs that function that way.
> 
> So the answer to the question depends on the system you’re playing and also how yoi’re playing it.
> 
> You’re obviously approaching the discussion with D&D in mind, so NPC or location creation and similar elements require DM approval. Correct?
> 
> So none of your PCs has ever been out for revenge against some villain that the player came up with? None of your players has never come up with family members for their PC?
> 
> Or do you restrict player introduced content only once play has actually begun?




As I mentioned in another recent response, during background I let the players come up with towns, NPCs, and sometime monsters if done well.  During game play not so much, but it's not 100% unheard of and usually pertains to background that hasn't been fully fleshed out.  



> It’s not a problem with the system, I agree. Any game system has a desired outcome, so if play proceeds accordingly, then the system is working as intended. What we’re talking about is more an issue of a mismatch of system expectation and player expectation.




Such a mismatch is generally solved by leaving the game and finding players or a DM that matches your expectations.   Occasionally, the players or DM can change and still enjoy the game.



> Or they play a game differently.




I agree with that.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Not an ice-box - fairly similar, seasonally, to Rome. (Single digit max temperatures sometimes happen in winter, but not much, and there is no snow here except the - rather occasional - dusting of some nearby hills.)
> 
> Someone from further north in Australia would find it cold, but then they would find Rome cold too in winter! (To get Cape Town type temperatures here you have to go further north, up towards Brisbane - I was at the Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane, in winter last year and had a nice morning swim at the beach, with no need of a wetsuit, before heading off to my conference.)



Yes, you're right about climate. 
I meant, this guy used to answer to something like: "Are we cool?" with: "Yes, absolutely ice-box". So much so that I still remember that way of saying


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Yes, you're right about climate.
> I meant, this guy used to answer to something like: "Are we cool?" with: "Yes, absolutely ice-box". So much so that I still remember that way of saying



Ah, sorry, my literalist mistake! Though there are people in Melbourne who complain about the temperature because they've come from further north - eg a one-time housemate of mine from Darwin, who would spend all winter wearing his parka indoors.

As for "absolutely ice-box" I don't think I've ever heard that one myself.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> The thing is, this actually describes a lot of D&D play, especially with modules that GM is running close to the printed material.




Sure, published modules and APs are pretty "fixed". Having said that though, In my table's ToD storyline I'm running things have been very much all over the place with the players selecting ways advantageous for their characters - finding plausible ways to draw dragons out of their lairs and deal with them on their own terms. As I see it, the AP is very much a guide, but you're right many people will be running it as is. In our ToD there are fixed scene-framing, events that have to happen (i.e. each council meeting), but these have been very fluid and the players are free to have their characters skip them. 



> It's pretty typical for a "find traps' attempt, for example, for the result to be whatever the GM already knows but is now telling the players.  Quite often, this is 'no traps'.  Sometimes it's "you spot [insert some clue about a possible trap]."  I don't think this is at all uncommon in D&D play.




Pemerton was talking about _changing the fiction_, I'm not convinced "find traps" is a great example of what he was referring to.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> If it's a matter of taste - which is what I said in the OP of this thread - then how can someone be a _jerk_ just because they have different tastes from mine?
> 
> From the way in which you post about them I am pretty sure that, for me, the games you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] run would fall foul of my "significant number" constraint. But presumably neither of you thinks that you are a jerk.




Yeah.  What you are describing seems to me to just be playstyle differences, not the DM being a jerk about things.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I didn't talk about _the character_  being surprised or even disappointed. I talked about _the player_




Is the player not disappointed at the failed saving throw? 



> The difference that I pointed to between _action declaration that can change the fiction_, and _exploration_, is a difference that operates _at the table in the play of the game_, not one that is discernible within, or pertains to, the content of the fiction itself.




So the puzzle is solved on the meta-level which means when this happens the player, and perhaps, perhaps, this level of happiness/satisfaction is greater than that where the puzzle is solved via die roll as it is the player who solves it not the character. To be very clear this is not a discussion of what roleplay system is better, but my understanding is if you're saying the lows are low in DM-decides, then it kinda makes sense to say that the highs are high in same such game. Yes no? 



> From the way in which you post about them I am pretty sure that, for me, the games you and @_*Maxperson*_ run would fall foul of my "significant number" constraint. But presumably neither of you thinks that you are a jerk.




I'm not knowledgeable enough about Max's games to comment, in fact I know less about his games than I do yours since you've been pretty generous with your playtest reports on your various games. _Significant_ is a subjective word, you might interpret it as 1-x DM adjudications, I might interpret it as y or more. When you use that word I'm thinking extreme and then the jerk DM application is applicable (for me).

EDIT: Rightfully so, if your bar is very strict, given that you have perhaps judged that an entire playstyle is MMI, then yes I would be agree with you I may be a _jerk DM_ in your eyes.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Sure, published modules and APs are pretty "fixed". Having said that though, In my table's ToD storyline I'm running things have been very much all over the place with the players selecting ways advantageous for their characters - finding plausible ways to draw dragons out of their lairs and deal with them on their own terms. As I see it, the AP is very much a guide, but you're right many people will be running as is. In our ToD there are the fixed scene-framing (i.e. each council meeting), but these have been very fluid and the players are free to have their characters skip them.
> 
> 
> 
> Pemerton was talking about _changing the fiction_, I'm not convinced "find traps" is a great example of what he was referring to.




You're absolutely right [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] isn't talking about action declarations to get info from the GM, but 'find traps' is a staple of D&D play that is, in fact, to find out info from the GM so you don't accidentally fall afoul of his notes when you open the door/walk down the hall/open the chest.  I guess I skipped to normal D&D play where 'find traps' is something players are essentially taught to do before getting to the changing fiction actions -- they're taught to ask for information before moving to changing the fiction.

If a player instead just opens the door, then their attempt to change the fiction (door is open) is then altered by the GM telling them some things about the world (the trap goes off).  

Traps are an interesting thing in RTD games, because they're either part of the initial scene framing (ie, part of the initial challenge) or added as a consequence to a failed check.  They aren't very much at all like D&D traps.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> So here's a fairly uncontroversial idea: bartenders who swap water for gin, or vic versa, aren't doing something perfectly fine. Even leaving aside the breach of laws that regulate the commercial provision of alcholic beverages, there is the social issue: they're doing wrong by their patrons.



Of course.  But none of that saves me from the here-and-now situation  of being surprised by my surroundings - in this case gin masquerading as water. (which, btw, could just as easily happen at home as in a bar)



> And I can tell you, if I was playing in a game where a signficant number of my attempts to change the fiction got reframed by the GM as opportunities to provide me with the outcomes of exploration - ie to tell me more about the gameworld and fiction as they conceive of it - then that _wouldn't_ be fine and I'd be out of there quick smart.



Which tells me that a) you don't like being deceived by elements in the setting (e.g. the water is actually gin) and b) you don't like being surprised when things aren't as they appear.

I take it you don't often (if at all) use illusions in framing your scenes, i.e. where much or all of what you describe to the players is an elaborate illusion intended to deceive the viewers (the PCs) either to give a false impression or an early combat advantage.  Pity.

One cool encounter we had a few years back: party is in a palace; within this palace is an area filled with rock riddled with small narrow tunnel-like passages.  Once we're in these passages we get repeatedly attacked by creatures stepping out of the walls, swinging weapons, and then blending back in often before we could react.  Took us forever to figure out the "passages" were all illusory and we were in fact in one great big chamber.



> Says who? It could be a race. An attempt to deliver a message. This seems like sheer projection.



If these are the case then it'd be exploration.  See below.



> The same is true of your discussion of other examples. Eg buying things in BW is not mostly about social interaction at all, but is primarily about how the resource stat is affected.



I'll concede this wouldn't count as social if the whole transaction was done via interaction with machines (in our real world this would equate to online ordering leading to robotic delivery).  But as soon as the PC interacts with a shopkeeper it's social, even if it isn't role-played out at the table.



> In what sense is either case (the desert crossing, or me describing to the players the situation in which their PCs find themselves) exploration?



Desert crossing: see below.  

Describing the situation: in order to receive that description it's assumed that the PCs are using their senses (vision, hearing, scent, etc.) to determine what's around them; the very act of which is pure exploration.



> Here's how the 5e D&D Basic PDF describes exploration (p 5):
> 
> *Exploration includes* both *the adventurers’ movement through the world* and their interaction with objects and situations that require their attention. Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens.​



I bolded the key bits there - crossing a desert would seem to count as movement through the world, hm?



> In my Traveller game, last session, a group of PCs was being pursued by mercenaries and Imperial Marines in a faster, better-armed vehicle, and so surrendered. I described to them the circumstances in which they found themselves as prisoners (incuding that there were force-fields of a particular type to keep warm air inside an open-air area). That's not exploration, that's just the GM describing the situation. Having the GM tell the players about the PCs' circumstances isn't exploration - isn't "interacting with objects". It's the functional equivalent of reading the boxed text in a module.



The pursuit sounds like an offshoot of combat.  The social bit where they surrender and thus interact with their pursuers looks by this description to have been skipped, leading straight to you describing their situation in prison - which looks from here like _describing what happens as a result of their action_, which was to surrender.  Failing that, to get this description the PCs would still have to engage their senses as noted above.

In other words, exploration no matter how you slice it.



> And the last time I adjudicated a desert crossing was in BW. The PCs knew where they were going. There was no exploration, either in the fiction (the PCs weren't exploring) or in the process of resolution (the players weren't learning the content of the fiction from the GM).



They weren't exploring in the sense of discovering something new, but they were in the exploration pillar nonetheless as they were moving through the world.



> The actual question resolved by the action resolution was whether or not they would make it to the foothills and find the fresh water there. The outcome - given the relevant check failed - was that when they got to the waterhole it had been fouled by an enemy. There was no "give-and-take" here, and the players weren't being told the result of their journey by the GM: there was a framed, and ultimately unscuccessful, Orienteering check. Had it succeeded, the players' vision for the fiction (safe arrival at fresh water) would have been what happened. But because it failed, I as GM got to establish an adverse vision of the fiction instead.



All this is simply describing the mechanics of how a particular system handles an action (or series of) in the exploration pillar.



> But that's not what I talked about. I referred to the need to succeed at checks to avoid misjump, enging failure and the like.



Again, just mechanics surrounding exploration.



> RPGs can cover any ficitonal events that can be conveived of - and human endeaour extends beyond talking to people, fighting them and looking for them.



And each respective pillar extends far beyond those examples.



> The "three pillars" of 5e, and your "four pillars", are a jumble of in-fiction and at-the-table characterisations of PC actions. In Cortex+ there are Action Scenes and Transition Scenes - differentiated both by their role in the fiction and (more importntly) their role in pacing and conflict at the table.
> 
> In Burning Wheel there is either "say 'yes'" or else there is confict, which is resolved via checks. Whether the conflict is about fighting, persuading, or makng it safely across a desert, the mechanical basics are the same.



Again you come back to mechanics.

Back off from the mechanics for a moment and consider the underlying thing that's transpiring in the fiction.  A group of PCs are crossing a desert - OK, fine; but that's exploration no matter what specific mechanics (or lack thereof) get overlaid by the game system in use.



> But anyway, I've already listed some stuff that doesn't fall under any of your pillars, in that it is not fighting, not talking, and not just "give and take where players say what their PCs do and GM tells them what happens": runing a race; and ensuring that a spaceship successfully makes a jump. More examples would include successfully placing a secret message (happened in my second-to-last Traveller game), trying to ensure a message is sent to your family so they can join you at an event (happened in my last Prince Valiant game), intercepting or blocking communiation signals (a recurrent element in my Traveller game), repairing a vehicle, testing the DNA of an alien creature, making checks to avoid being caught doing illegal things (al Traveller again), lighting a campfire (Burning Wheel), recalling a fact, etc, etc.



Hmmm - a challenge. 

Running a race = combat, of a sort
Ensuring a spaceship makes a clean jump = exploration as the goal (the jump itself) with associated preparations
Successfully placing a secret message = social as the goal (successful receipt of the message) with associated preparations
Ensuring a message is sent = social as the goal (successful receipt of the message) with possible other elements depending on what means are required to ensure it gets sent
Intercepting/blocking comm signals = social (in the negative sense of blocking social interaction), and exploration if the intent is to gather information from the intercepted signals
Repairing a vehicle = downtime (probably)
Testing a creature's DNA = exploration (information gathering) and-or downtime (research)
Making checks to avoid getting caught = irrelevant (pure mechanics); it's the illegal acts themselves, whether successful or not, that would fall under a pillar - can't say which as what those acts are isn't given
Lighting a campfire = downtime (probably); or social if the intent is to send a signal or have it be a beacon
Recalling a fact = could be any of social, exploration, or downtime; depends on the context in which the fact needs to be recalled (and, possibly, what the fact is)



> Spout Lore and Discern Realities (in DW), or the scenario I described from my Traveller game, are not _the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result_. They don't involve the revelaion of hidden information (maybe in the fiction it might be hidden, but not necessarily). They're examples of players activating the mechanics to oblige the GM to _make some stuff up_! The sort of thing the GM makes up depends on the outcomes of the check(s) at issue.



I think we mostly agree on this, though one could just as easily say the give-and-take bit applies here too:

_the players describing what they want their characters to do_ (they want their characters to learn more information)
_the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result_ (you get more information, which consists of ...)



> 5e D&D simply doesn't contemplate this sort of thing in its account of "exploration". And there are features of the game - namely, the lack of an appropriate system of checks - that would make it hard to introduce. (This is a marked contrast with 4e, which is easily run this way.)
> 
> In the fiction, of course this happens. In my Traveller game one of the PCs has Jack-of-all-Trades-4. But as a resolution method, no, not really. When actions are declared the players know the general way that resolution will be determined (eg in Traveller, the default is a 2 dice throw), and we throw the dice and see what happens.
> 
> It's not any sort of coincidence that this post keeps coming back to the framing of checks. Making checks is the most obvious alternative to _GM decides_ in order to esetablish the content of the shared fiction.



What's more telling is that the post kept coming back to game mechanics; particularly just above where you point out that 5e doesn't have an appropriate system of checks.  The presence or absence of supporting game mechanics has nothing to do with the presence or absence of an underlying pillar of play.

Exploration is still exploration and the PCs (very likely!) still want to know what's around them regardless of whether this is achieved by straight GM narration or by skill challenges or by the framing of a scene or whatever.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I didn't talk about _the character_  being surprised or even disappointed. I talked about _the player_ - like turning up to an invitation to a bridge tournament only to find they're all playing poker instead.
> 
> Of course _characters_ will be disappointed all the time in RPGing.



Exactly - and if the character is disappointed one would kind of expect the player to also be disappointed, if only because she's playing in character. 

Sort of comes back to keeping player knowledge and character knowledge the same, such that their reactions will also mirror.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> The presence or absence of supporting game mechanics has nothing to do with the presence or absence of an underlying pillar of play.




OMFG! How many of these conversations have you partaken in over the years?! It seems like you learn nothing from this interaction: you're so locked in to the parameters of D&D c. 1988. Why not actually read a rulebook from some other game methodology and see how it challenges the preconceptions you take for granted as built in to RPGing?

I honestly don't understand the impulse to partake in conversations like these if you're not going to do the basic work of understanding where other posters are coming from!

EDIT: I acknowledge the above might sound harsh, but I don't mean it personally. I just really don't understand what you (or others!) might hope from these conversations if you don't take the steps of understanding where the other "side" is coming from. And posts like this indicate that you're not even listening,  let alone following up on what is said.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> Traps are an interesting thing in RTD games, because they're either part of the initial scene framing (ie, part of the initial challenge) or added as a consequence to a failed check.  They aren't very much at all like D&D traps.




That is certainly different and from my PoV would be better for my table. I'm not a huge fan of the way D&D presents them at least not how I DM for our current games* but if I were running a 1e/2e/BECMI game per book, as I think Bedrockgames does from time to time, then perhaps in that style it would work. I have only done that once properly in my later more experienced years, and it was an absolute blast.

* I prefer the surprises to be a narrative twist or part of the solving the puzzle process rather than a 'gotcha' if that makes sense.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I don't think that there are 3 types.  I think that there are only 2.  The first type you mention I don't think exists.  No matter what level of authority a DM has, some will like it and some won't, and opinions will vary on how much is appropriate and how it should be used.  That leaves us your number 2 and 3 as the only types out there.




My categories were already taking subjectivity into account. There are 3 types of games. 

1) Games that work.
2) Games that don’t work.
3) Games that partially work. 

Are you really saying that there are no games of D&D that fall into category 1? 

Obviously, where a particular game is would be a subjective thing. You might think a game is working fine, and I may think it’s working okay, and yet another person thinks it’s awful. That’s all fine. But objectively there are those three categories.

Would you agree with that?



Maxperson said:


> "Mother May I" and "Railroad" DMs abuse their authority and most think those are bad.  The rest want to discuss the grey area that's left.
> 
> The OP may have wanted to discuss the kind of game that falls into the grey area, but by inviting people to discuss things using the pejorative "Mother May I," even if it isn't how HE would refer to the games, he caused the discussion to devolve into hundreds of pages of arguing over the term and how it should not be applied to the playstyles people are trying to apply it to.  People have strong feelings about the kinds of games they like being insulted by such terms.  The OP should have said that he wanted to discuss X, and that no pejorative terms should be used in the discussion as they just cause problems and derail threads.




The OP did not cause anyone to do anything. Each of us has chosen to engage in this conversation to whatever extent we have because of our own inclinations.

It’s incredibly clear at this point, and has been for tens of pages worth of comments, that the OP did not mean MMI in a pejorative manner. You’ve been arguing that for dozens of posts, and have made some really strange arguments along the way (i.e. a DM fudging a die roll is actually a DM preserving chance? Um...okay....).

As I’ve said in a couple of posts, we need to try and be aware of context and intent. If you didn’t quite grasp the fact that MMI was not really being used pejoratively in the OP, okay that’s fine....but in the subsequent clarifications and qualifications that have been made, have you realized it? 



Maxperson said:


> I didn't say "doesn't always exercise that power."  What I sad was "doesn't exercise that power."  There''s a big difference between the two.  Yours involves at least some instances of the DM railroading the players.  Mine involves no such abuses, yet was still being called "Mother May I."




Right. Two things on this.

First, a DM who never really abuses the authority granted to him by the default assumptions of D&D is probably running the kind of game that his players expect, and would likely fall into category 1 above. So not much to talk about there; things are going fine and they should proceed and enjoy. The issue is in games where it does come up.

Second, for some, a system where there is even a possibility that the GM can at any point in time bend the game to his desires is one that some folks don’t enjoy. Even if the DM proves to be principled in his judgment and rulings, that kind of system does not appeal to them.



Maxperson said:


> As I mentioned in another recent response, during background I let the players come up with towns, NPCs, and sometime monsters if done well.  During game play not so much, but it's not 100% unheard of and usually pertains to background that hasn't been fully fleshed out.




Okay, I’m almost reluctant to bring this one up but hey let’s use this old chestnut....

Our 3rd level party is attacked by strange creatures, giant green skinned monsters with long noses and wicked claws. They are vicious and what’s worse, their wounds heal before our eyes!!!

Let’s say we’re at a table of veteran players. One rolls his eyes and then declares that his character lights a torch and throws an oil flask at one of the creatures. He says “Tordek’s Uncle Elmo told him about such creatures, they’re vulnerable to flame!” The other players smile and nod. 

Here the player is basically saying “I’m not really interested in a random encounter with trolls and in pretending my character doesn’t know about their vulnerability, so I’ve come up with a way around it”. 

How the DM responds to this situation is what is in question. Based on your comments in this thread, I thibk you’d consider this solution cheating, and you’d deny it.

Which to me is far worse than metagaming because basically the whole group looked at the encounter and said “not interested” and the DM denied their preferences and proceeded with running things how he wanted. Which is kind of a strong example f the DM being a jerk, in my oponion.

So the MMI flaw in GM Driven game systems can surface in a variety of ways, and how it’s handled can vary greatly as well. 



Maxperson said:


> Such a mismatch is generally solved by leaving the game and finding players or a DM that matches your expectations.   Occasionally, the players or DM can change and still enjoy the game.




Or playing a different game or having a discussion and coming to some kind of compromise that all can live with or any number of other options.

In the case of the OP in the original thread, perhaps asking others how to incorporate some player driven content in order to help engage a player. 



Maxperson said:


> I agree with that.




Sometimes it’s hard to tell. You seem to have a very binary view.


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> OMFG! How many of these conversations have you partaken in over the years?! It seems like you learn nothing from this interaction: you're so locked in to the parameters of D&D c. 1988. Why not actually read a rulebook from some other game methodology and see how it challenges the preconceptions you take for granted as built in to RPGing?
> 
> I honestly don't understand the impulse to partake in conversations like these if you're not going to do the basic work of understanding where other posters are coming from!
> 
> EDIT: I acknowledge the above might sound harsh, but I don't mean it personally. I just really don't understand what you (or others!) might hope from these conversations if you don't take the steps of understanding where the other "side" is coming from. And posts like this indicate that you're not even listening,  let alone following up on what is said.



What I'm doing is simply pointing out how what "the other side" (if in fact there's sides here rather than a bunch of individual viewpoints) is saying is rooted in the same underlying foundations as what I'm saying.

That those underlying foundations were first hard-coded by an edition of D&D (as opposed to any other RPG) is of no matter.  All that hard-coding does is put into words that which has existed all along and which still exists: that 99+% of RPG play is going to involve at least one of these four things: combat, exploration, social interaction, or PC downtime.

Sure, different RPG systems might have different terms for these things* and will apply different game mechanics when they arise in play, but the underlying idea remains.

* - including, wilfully or otherwise, denying the existence of one or more of these foundations; which seems rather self-defeating from the design side.  "Let's design an RPG that doesn't include [pick one: combat, exploration, social interaction] in any way" doesn't seem like a premise that's going to get very far.


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> Exactly - and if the character is disappointed one would kind of expect the player to also be disappointed, if only because she's playing in character.
> 
> Sort of comes back to keeping player knowledge and character knowledge the same, such that their reactions will also mirror.



Actually I love those moments of alchemy. Comes to mind the first session of the Vampire game I joined: the Gm handed me the character sheet of my Malkavian with a depressive mania, talked for some time, then Game started and an UberNpc gave his long and instructive speech in-character introducing my Pc to the party and Npc and "breafing" us on the present situation. So this man, the Gm, just spoke for about an hour in total. At the end the UberNpc/Gm asked me if I had questions... I started laughing out loud at the table, inside me considering the asylum I entered voluntarily, in & out of character. Then I described the Malkavian recompose himself from the hysterical laugh, sitting down in place on the floor, staring at bystanders. 

Fond memories. After that the psychological thriller began...


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> That is certainly different and from my PoV would be better for my table. I'm not a huge fan of the way D&D presents them at least not how I DM for our current games* but if I were running a 1e/2e/BECMI game per book, as I think Bedrockgames does from time to time, then perhaps in that style it would work. I have only done that once properly in my later more experienced years, and it was an absolute blast.
> 
> * I prefer the surprises to be a narrative twist or part of the solving the puzzle process rather than a 'gotcha' if that makes sense.



So have you looked into Dungeon World?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Is the player not disappointed at the failed saving throw?



Sure. And the player will also be disappoined if someone drops a mug on her foot that breaks a toe. But that wasn't what I was talking about.

If I turn up to a bridge tournament and lose a hand, then I'm disappointed in the sense that I lost. But I'm not disappointed _to be playing bridge_ - that's what I turned up to do. If I turn up to a bridge tournament and find everyone's playing poker, though, that's a different sort of disappointment. I've been tricked, my hopes raised and then dashed.

We have a phrase for someone whose disappointment at losing makes them regret having taken part at all - _a bad sport_.

But it's not being a bad sport to be disappointed at having been tricked into attending a poker tournament because it was advertised as a bridge tournament.

If I turn up to play a RPG, and I find that what is really going on is that the GM is telling me his/her story - which is to say, if my attempts at _changing the fiction by way of action declaration_ routinely default to _the GM rendering it exploration and telling me more about the fiction_ - then I will be out of there.

And that's not hypothetical. I've left games for this reason.



Sadras said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> he difference that I pointed to between action declaration that can change the fiction, and exploration, is a difference that operates at the table in the play of the game, not one that is discernible within, or pertains to, the content of the fiction itself.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So the puzzle is solved on the meta-level which means when this happens the player, and perhaps, perhaps, this level of happiness/satisfaction is greater than that where the puzzle is solved via die roll as it is the player who solves it not the character. To be very clear this is not a discussion of what roleplay system is better, but my understanding is if you're saying the lows are low in DM-decides, then it kinda makes sense to say that the highs are high in same such game. Yes no?
Click to expand...


I don't understand what you're saying or how it relates to my post that you quoted. Which puzzles? What highs and lows?

I'm saying that if _I turn up to play a RPG_, that is, to particpate in establishing a shared fiction; and find, instead, that a good chunk of what is happening is the GM is revealing fiction to me as the result of my acion declarations; then I'm out. (I might hang around for a little bit of free kriegsspiel play, where the fiction is not an end in itself but a vehicle for puzzle solving, but not too much as I'm not really into it.)



Sadras said:


> if your bar is very strict, given that you have perhaps judged that an entire playstyle is MMI, then yes I would be agree with you I may be a _jerk DM_ in your eyes.



This is backwards. You're not a jerk GM. You're just someone I may not want to play RPGs with. What is the moralistic language adding?


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> for some, a system where there is even a possibility that the GM can at any point in time bend the game to his desires is one that some folks don’t enjoy. Even if the DM proves to be principled in his judgment and rulings, that kind of system does not appeal to them.



I want to pick up on this.

Let's look, concretely, at a particular episode of RPG play. I'll draw again on the example of Discern Realities/Spout Lore, and the piece of Traveller play that I compared to this.

Discern Realities and Spout Lore provide a framework in which a player can oblige a GM to elaborate on the established fiction, in a way that connects to the interests/concerns of the player in respect of that fiction. To work, these DW moves depend on a few things being the case:

* There must be an established but "gappy" fiction. To see why, consider a Spout Lore result which requires the GM to tell the player something true and useful - the presence of this move, and this possible result, as part of the gameplay means that the GM is precluded from already having estabished everything about the fiction, which would create the possibility of there being nothing more useful to learn.

* Following from the above, it depends on their being ways of resolving _other_ sorts of action resolution - like, say, _we hurry to the next corner_ or _we sneak across town avoiding being spotted by any sect members_ - that don't depend on maps and keys and notes about the locations of sect members and wargame-type movement rules. Because those ways of resolving moving and sneaking and so on only work if the fiction is fully established in precisely the way that it can't be for the DW moves to work.

* There must be some known goal or orientation or trajectory of play, such that the notion of _useful_ makes sense. This establishes, straight away, a contrast with RPGing in which the players keep their plans and intentions secret from the GM.

* As the flip-side of the above, there must be some clear sense of what would count as adversity or a setback for the PCs (and thus the players), so that the GM can make a meaningful move on a roll of 6-.​
So can you implement the DW approach in 5e D&D? To me, it seems not super-easily: 5e D&D doesn't have clear mechanics for resolving moving and sneaking and the like other than the classic wargame approach, which means it doesn't properly handle "gappy" fiction. And 5e D&D, by default, doesn't really encourage clear trajectories of play, and a clear sense of adversity, in the way that these DW moves depend upon.

Could 5e D&D be tweaked to change this? Well, introducing clear goals and adversity might be easy enough. But then you'll bump into the central resolution system, which, outside of combat, doesn't clearly support _ntent and task_ action declaration and _fail forward_ action resolution, and rellies very heavily on GM intuition to set DCs.

Again, there are tweaks and workarounds and so on possible here, but that still leaves us with the issue of "gappy" fiction. Eg a relevant consideration for resolving hiding/sneaking in 5e D&D is whether or not someone is looking at the character. That is, the presence and location (in the fiction) of observers is an _input_ into resolution. But resolving movement and sneaking in "gappy" fiction depends on a system where that sort of thing can be an _output_ of resolution.

Can this be worked around too? Maybe - I'm not a 5e expert by any means. What I'm trying to point out is that _system_ is intimately and intricately linked to the feasible range of techniques that can be used, and hence is apt to produce a particular sort of play experience. And while some posters in this thread have talked about the flexibility of D&D, and about picking and choosing among techniques, there are some failry deep features of 5e as a system that make it hard to use it to produce the sort of experience that DW will.

Classic Traveller can be contrasted with 5e D&D in some of these respects: first, its PC gen (the first lifepath system) produces characters with richer implicit backstory, and hence more readily emergent goals for play, than does 5e D&D; second, it has a system for random patron generation which can produce a patron without depedning on extrapolation from established fiction (hence producing less pressure for non-"gappy" fiction); third, it has a system for random world generation which can produce implicit situation (eg _how do people survive on this high-pop but low-tech world with a tainted atmosphere?_) again without needing the fiction to be filled in; fourth, its base move action is the interstellar jump, which can be resolved without needing a detailed, non-"gappy" map; fifth, it has a reaction roll table which can be used to extrapolate NPC reactions without needing to know what the underlying fiction is that explains that reaction, again supporting "gappy" fiction; and it has other random content generation systems also.

I drew on these features when (i) presenting a patron and a mission, and (ii) subsequently adjudicating the attempt by the player in my first Traveller session to extract more information from the PCs' patron about the nature of the mission she was sending them on.

Drifting Classic Traveller to play something like DW (not the same - more randomness, for a start!) is easier than doing the same with 5e - it has more supporting frameworks, and fewer assumptions about how framing and resolution work that will create problems.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Which tells me that a) you don't like being deceived by elements in the setting (e.g. the water is actually gin) and b) you don't like being surprised when things aren't as they appear.



You're draing the wrong inference.

What it tells you is _I don't like a game where the focus is on learning the pre-established fiction as opposed to changing the fiction_.

Deciet by elements in the setting is fine, if it is the _output_ of action resolution.



Lanefan said:


> Back off from the mechanics for a moment and consider the underlying thing that's transpiring in the fiction. A group of PCs are crossing a desert - OK, fine; but that's exploration no matter what specific mechanics (or lack thereof) get overlaid by the game system in use.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What's more telling is that the post kept coming back to game mechanics; particularly just above where you point out that 5e doesn't have an appropriate system of checks. The presence or absence of supporting game mechanics has nothing to do with the presence or absence of an underlying pillar of play.



Given that this whole thread is about resolution techniques, why would I back off from discussing them?

_Te content of the fiction is largely irrelevant to whether a RPG gives a good or bad experience_. Proof: if it was otherwise, then it would make no difference whether the game proceeded in the typical mode of a RPG, or whether it proceeded by the players just sitting there and having the GM tell them a story. Because both things can produce _excactly the same fiction_. But the first might be fun while the second will almost certainly suck.



Lanefan said:


> Running a race = combat, of a sort
> Ensuring a spaceship makes a clean jump = exploration as the goal (the jump itself) with associated preparations
> Successfully placing a secret message = social as the goal (successful receipt of the message) with associated preparations
> Ensuring a message is sent = social as the goal (successful receipt of the message) with possible other elements depending on what means are required to ensure it gets sent
> Intercepting/blocking comm signals = social (in the negative sense of blocking social interaction), and exploration if the intent is to gather information from the intercepted signals
> Repairing a vehicle = downtime (probably)
> Testing a creature's DNA = exploration (information gathering) and-or downtime (research)
> Making checks to avoid getting caught = irrelevant (pure mechanics); it's the illegal acts themselves, whether successful or not, that would fall under a pillar - can't say which as what those acts are isn't given
> Lighting a campfire = downtime (probably); or social if the intent is to send a signal or have it be a beacon
> Recalling a fact = could be any of social, exploration, or downtime; depends on the context in which the fact needs to be recalled (and, possibly, what the fact is)



This is all pointless and bizarre. Only a few bits of it are worth respoding to.

Running a race is not a combat. It's a competition.

Making sure a starship engine doesn't fail during jump is not exploring anything. It's performing a mechanical task. The only reason you "pillars" don't have a _craft/repair_ element to them is because that's never been a significant focus of D&D play, because D&D is set in a pre-technological world. And the reason you label repairing a vehicle as "downtime" is because, in D&D, magic item crafting is framed as something that happens outside the main focus of dungeoneering play. This is why I described your classification as projection: you've so internalised the dynamics of D&D c 1980 or thereabouts that you seem to find it literally inconceivable that there might be RPGs which don't focus on dungeon-delving or bank robbing as the main part of play.

In my Prince Valiant game, we played a scenario in which the PC knights accompanied a crimson bull to a swamp, where it was to be killed by a pagan wise woman. On the way through they had some strange interactions with the bull, and wondered and debated what to do with it. In the end, one of them used his dagger blessed by St Sigobert to dispel a demonic spirit that was possessing the bull; and in doing so, so impressed the wise woman that she agreed to be baptised at the Shrine of St Sigobert.

Nothing was being explored. No maps were drawn by me as GM or by the players - we jointly looked at our map of Britain at the back of the Pendragon hardback to get a general sense of where the PCs were travelling to, and then the journey was simply narrated (_You walk for a day through the forest_; _You arrive at the valley_; etc). There were some social elements to the scenario - eg talking to the bull - but that was not all of it. The hurling of the dagger into the mist of the demon as it left the body of the bull was not _combat_ in any genuine sense - there was no fight going on.

D&D doesn't exhaust the possible range of fiction, nor the possible range of play techniques, that can figure in RPGing. It adds nothing to our understanding of how RPGing works to try and cram everything into D&D's categories.



Lanefan said:


> What I'm doing is simply pointing out how what "the other side" (if in fact there's sides here rather than a bunch of individual viewpoints) is saying is rooted in the same underlying foundations as what I'm saying.
> 
> That those underlying foundations were first hard-coded by an edition of D&D (as opposed to any other RPG) is of no matter.  All that hard-coding does is put into words that which has existed all along and which still exists: that 99+% of RPG play is going to involve at least one of these four things: combat, exploration, social interaction, or PC downtime.
> 
> Sure, different RPG systems might have different terms for these things* and will apply different game mechanics when they arise in play, but the underlying idea remains.



This is so backwards it's hard to put into words.

It's a bit like saying that all road transport can be explained in terms of steering wheels, drive shafts and carburetors. And then insisting that a motorcycles handlebars and chain are _really_ a streering wheel and a drive shaft.

Or that all moving piectures can be explained in terms of light projected through a film onto a screen - and then analysing a TV in those terms (I'll let someone else work out how one could even go about that analysis).

In my Prince Valiant game, there is no difference between the narration of "downtime" (_OK, seasons pass, you hear rumours of Saxon invasion_) and the narration of travel (_OK, you travel for a few days, and you arrive back at Warwick_).

In my Burning Wheel game, the action resolution for recovering resources, or recovering health, over an extended period of ingame time is no different from the action resolution for buying a sword or for bluffing a guard or for climbing a fence. There's no notion of "downtime", because there's no notion of _the adventure_ or _the dungeon expedition_ as there is in D&D. There are different things that players might have their PCs do, that take different amounts of ingame time, and  are resolved via different ratios of ingame to real-world time.

We've already established that breaking interpersonal conflict out into distinct "combat" and "social" categories means that athletics competitions can't be accounted for; in Cortex+ Heroic there is no difference between these things at all, and - for instance - a character can cause another to wilt in shame by besting him/her in swordplay. Similarly, in the example of play for Marvel Heroic RP we see Wolverine using his Adamantium Claws in a dice pool used to inflict Emotional Stress (ie scaring off some enemy NPCs). This sort of thing is omething that D&D doesn't easily allow for. (Hence the recurrent discussions of why it is that bards are more intimidating than barbarians.)

As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said not far upthread, why not start trying to think about other RPGs, and the techniques and approaches they involve, on their own terms rather than through this narrow and distorting lens of 80s-style D&D.


----------



## pemerton

*Re traps:*

In one of my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy sessions, is used a scene complication of Deadly Traps. Mechanically, this allowed me to add an extra die to my pools against the PCs, making it more likely I would be able to succeed and inflict adverse conditions on them. And the Scout PC was able to use his Alertness SFX to "Step back any stress, trauma or complication caused by traps or snares".

In gameplay terms, the function of this was (1) colour, which (2) provided the fictional peg on which to hang the use of a PC's special ability, and (3) an increase in the overall level of mechanical adversity confronting the PCs (and their players).

This is very different from how traps work in (say) the Tomb of Horrors. There's no exploration, solving puzzles, etc. The feel of it is more like a sequence in the X-Men's Danger Room or escaping from an ancient temple in Indiana Jones. (Which is a deliberate result of the game design.)


----------



## pemerton

*Re the idea of having a trajectory or goal of play*

On another thread recently a poster who is not participating in this thread (and so I won't quote directly, but rather will paraphrase) talked about playing a WotC 5e D&D AP for many sessions. The poster described the play as "directionless at times", with a lot of random following of leads, but "awesome fun" with the GM doing a good job of bringing the setting to life. 

Now I assert that this sort of play literally _could not happen_ in Dungeon World. (It couldn't happen in Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic either. And it couldn't happen in BW without manifesting at the table as a power struggle between players and GM.) For instance, there can't be _random following of leads _in DW, because of the Discern Realities and Spout Lore moves; and more generally there can't be _directionless_ play because the whole game is oriented around GM moves that impart direction in response to player moves that also impart direction.

That means that for anyone who wants that sort of play ("awewsome fun") DW is not a suitable system.

And, conversely, for anyone who thinks that sounds like a terrible RPG experience (eg me) then I have a good reason to doubt that 5e is the right system for me.


----------



## S'mon

OT: _Downtime_ as a formal concept is actually very recent for me - I've only really started using it since 2017. In my 2015-17 5e D&D Wilderlands game we pretty much played through every minute, and that's much how I recall running games from 1984 onwards (when I got into RPGs) also.

More broadly, I find 5e's "Three Pillars + Downtime" a highly functional approach to thinking about how the game works, much better than 4e's "Get to the FUN!!!" - it's obviously not the only way to run an RPG, and wouldn't work well for other systems - eg 4e does not 'like' an Exploration pillar IME, and fights me when I try to include it, while Traveller or Call of Cthulu may work better without a formal Combat pillar, and Storygames may have a completely different premise (story now) with shared world-building that requires there not be a players-explore-the-world pillar. You can explore what lies in the hearts of your fellow players, instead.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> And, conversely, for anyone who thinks that sounds like a terrible RPG experience (eg me) then I have a good reason to doubt that 5e is the right system for me.




Well they built 5e to be an 'all things to all men' system. They do want it to be useable, or at least driftable, to the style you like. Even with the APs themselves, the one I am running (Princes of the Apocalypse) is not a Paizo "Story_teller_" type railroad, it is designed more as a frame which can be run with players adding directly to the fiction. This is traditionally done via the backstory, but the frame allows this to be done in-play as well - certainly at least as much as with the 4e adventures you ran. In my game's case, because I like the Exploration pillar there is not a lot of player-adds-to-fiction (outside of the choices their PC makes) in play, but certainly some of my players have added significantly in out of play discussion, so we have Yartar as a Shou enclave, a burned Kensai monastery, quests for vengeance, abduction of fellow Tiamat cultists (for the dragonborn PCs) etc.  

The campaign certainly could be used for direct player fiction-creation as part of play, and would not 'break' the way a Paizo AP would. Or it can be used for a 1990s GM-sets-plot-and-direction approach, or for a 1970s/OSR sandbox, etc. Maybe it does not do any of these quite as well as if it was dedicated to one alone; that's why they call it "Everyone's Second Favourite Edition" I guess. (Personally it's my favourite!)


----------



## Manbearcat

Quick excerpt of *Torchbearer *play and the cognitive workload and agency within a decision-point for the players.  In another post, I'll examine what such a scenario might look like in Dungeon World.

Level 1 

Dwarf Adventurer
Elf Ranger
Halfling Burglar

They're at the end of their initial _Adventure_, a foray into a crystalline cavern network long ago abandoned by its demihuman denizens due to a calamity.  Every member of the group has multiple _Conditions_, they're running low on rations, their skins are empty, and they only have 4 torches left between them.

They dealt with a Cave-in _Twist _awhile back that cut them off from the known route back to the surface.  With severely dwindling resources and growing _Conditions_, they couldn't afford to spend the _Turns _trying to dig their way out.  So, in hopes of finding a new way out, they struck off in another direction where active air flow worked the flames of their dying torchlight.

They reach a bottomless chasm spanned by an incredibly rickety rope bridge that is in near ruin in the middle and gently swaying in an unseen breeze.  The ceiling is too high to see with the minuscule light of their torch and the endless dark below promises swift death.  

Another torch goes out.  6 _Turns _of light left...(3 torches * 2 Turns).

_The Grind_ also hits on this turn (every 4 turns = _Condition _Clock ticks).  _Hungry and Thirsty. _ The last of the rations stave that off...

How to cross?

Time is the enemy.

The stakes are very high for this obstacle.

_Conditions _are grinding down the team (the Halfling is _Afraid _so he can't Help, the Elf is _Injured _so -1D to _Nature/Will/Health/ Skills_, the Dwarf is _Angry _and _Exhausted _so can't use Traits to help and all tests increase by 1).  

They have to weigh the potential time it would take to try to (a) find another way around, (b) attempt to repair the bridge, vs (c) the danger of a mad dash across (and the _Twist _or _Condition _that would arise from failure...) while still (d) dealing with the unknown of what lies ahead.  

A mad dash across would just be 1 turn but would test _Dungeoneer _or _Will _(nerves) for all.

Repairing/jury-rigging it would be 2 turns, but the Elf has _Survivalist _2 and he can tap his _Nature _for 4 more (though it will tax his _Nature _because its out of his descriptor portfolio) with his _Persona _point he earned earlier for playing against a _Belief_, can use his 1/Session _"Brave" Trait_ for 7 total.  -1 for Injured.  Someone has to scramble out there and hold the torch while the Elf does his work.  The _Angry _and _Exhausted _Dwarf has to be the one (Halfing can't) and he has _Dungeoneering_, so fair enough.  There is another 1, though the _Obstacles _factor increases by 1 from OB3 to OB4.  Needs 4 or better on 4 out of his 7 dice.  

They consider the possible _Twists _they can think of; losing gear, torch snuffing early and being stuck in the pitch black on the rickety bridge, some kind of Indiana Jones conflict with the the bridge snapping with them hung up in the tattered remnants...slamming them against the sheer face on the other side...while the Halfling is stuck back there, some unforeseen predator that haunts the cavern, one of them falls through to certain death but the other can grab him with a successful test...or fall too...

Then there is the prospect of getting across but another crushing _Condition _accrued for the Dwarf and Elf (putting them closer to death). 

Its the best shot they have and they're reaching the proverbial end of the rope (/rimshot).


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] that's thrilling! What did they do then? 
Real question: how came out the notion of the air-blowing path, in the fiction?


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I want to pick up on this.




I agree with the examples you’ve given. Certain mechanics can be ported from one game to another pretty seamlessly. Others would require that the system be modified a bit to allow for the incorporated mechanic. Others require that the mechanic itself be mosifoed in order to fit the system it’s being moved to.

I’d say that 5E D&D is pretty modifiable. I’ve certainly tweaked it to do what I’d like when I’ve DMed, and so has the DM for the game I’m currently playing in. 

I wouldn’t say it’s the most modifiable game out there, but it’s certainly more modifiable than many other games. As with most games, I expect how successful a modification may be would depend on the severity of the change to the play experience being made.


----------



## Manbearcat

Numidius said:


> @_*Manbearcat*_ that's thrilling! What did they do then?
> Real question: how came out the notion of the air-blowing path, in the fiction?




2nd part 1st.

The player of the Dwarf PC is aware of the trope.  Being the resident Dwarf (and not Angry then...the Condition was afflicted upon him not long before this when the Halfling shrieked/dropped a torch/fled due to Afraid, causing it to snuff a Turn early), he possessed the background and mechanical machinery to back up figuring out their problem post Cave-in Twist.

Dungeoneering test + Fate point to reroll a dice failure as the test related to a Wise = success.

This was the biggest cave in the network with a high ceiling so the ground cover wasn't significant.  Pressure gradient + chimney effect as surely there were small cracks in that ground cover where surface air circulates.

1st part.

While they weren't right near the surface, they actually weren't too far from a modest cache; a Lantern + 1.33 Flasks of Oil, so 4 more turns, a Soothing Tincture (suppress Injury for up to 3 turns), and a Wineskin.  

They (as an adventuring group) perished right there.  

The test failed so I went with a Twist.  Dwarf fell through a rotted plank.  He has an Instinct regarding light so I just said "yes" that he kept the torch rather than dropping it into the chasm as he reached futilely for a hold before he fell.  The Elf had a relevant Instinct so free test to catch the Dwarf with the stakes being dead.  That failed and the light was gone.  Unfortunately, the Dwarf also had the remaining torches...

The Elf and the Halfling each had a Candle remaining apiece.  The Elf crawled across to the other side in the dark but earned the Exhausted condition.  The terrified Halfling attempted to cross the bridge in the dark, failed, quickly triggering a collapse.  Stuck on the other side, the Halfling said farewell to the Elf, and perished in the dark after his candle went out.

The Elf made it to the cache by flickering candlelight and barely made it out of the complex...down two pals...with a pathetic score of only a few Gems and a small silver-inlaid bowl (the Tincture was fully used to survive the last leg)...changed forever.


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## Numidius

Scary... "The skakes being dead" ...urgh!... Thanks for the detailed explanation [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]
Now I really want to try it again. I see it can be preparatory for Burning Wheel, that is still waiting on the shelf.


----------



## Manbearcat

Numidius said:


> Scary... "The skakes being dead" ...urgh!... Thanks for the detailed explanation [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]
> Now I really want to try it again. I see it can be preparatory for Burning Wheel, that is still waiting on the shelf.




I've only played Burning Wheel a little.  My experience is Mouse Guard and Torchbearer (which are basically the chasis with different themes/premise).

When I get around to transliterating that Torchbearer scenario to what it would have looked like in Dungeon World, the differences in procedure, ethos, and outcomes should be clear and stark.

Hopefully it will shed some light on our conversation here.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> My categories were already taking subjectivity into account. There are 3 types of games.
> 
> 1) Games that work.
> 2) Games that don’t work.
> 3) Games that partially work.
> 
> Are you really saying that there are no games of D&D that fall into category 1?
> 
> Obviously, where a particular game is would be a subjective thing. You might think a game is working fine, and I may think it’s working okay, and yet another person thinks it’s awful. That’s all fine. But objectively there are those three categories.
> 
> Would you agree with that?




What I am saying is that categories 1 and 3 are the same category.  Right now,  my game is category 1.  If [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] were to join my game, it wouldn't work for him and I would go into your category 3, even though I didn't change anything about my game.  Subjectivity controls whether games work or partially work.  Category 2 involves those games that are Railroad, "Mother May I"(if it exists outside of a white room, and other games that involve bad DMing.



> As I’ve said in a couple of posts, we need to try and be aware of context and intent. If you didn’t quite grasp the fact that MMI was not really being used pejoratively in the OP, okay that’s fine....but in the subsequent clarifications and qualifications that have been made, have you realized it?




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is not the only one using the term in this thread, and it really should have been dropped as a term immediately when people began taking offense at the pejorative.   



> Second, for some, a system where there is even a possibility that the GM can at any point in time bend the game to his desires is one that some folks don’t enjoy. Even if the DM proves to be principled in his judgment and rulings, that kind of system does not appeal to them.




Sure, I get that.  There are other systems or the ability to modify the system, though, so it's all good.  If they are in a game with a group that doesn't want to alter the system or change systems, then they should seek other games where they can get what they want.  What they should not do is insult the system and/or playstyle that they don't like.



> Okay, I’m almost reluctant to bring this one up but hey let’s use this old chestnut....




That's it!  you're fired! 



> Our 3rd level party is attacked by strange creatures, giant green skinned monsters with long noses and wicked claws. They are vicious and what’s worse, their wounds heal before our eyes!!!
> 
> Let’s say we’re at a table of veteran players. One rolls his eyes and then declares that his character lights a torch and throws an oil flask at one of the creatures. He says “Tordek’s Uncle Elmo told him about such creatures, they’re vulnerable to flame!” The other players smile and nod.
> 
> Here the player is basically saying “I’m not really interested in a random encounter with trolls and in pretending my character doesn’t know about their vulnerability, so I’ve come up with a way around it”.
> 
> How the DM responds to this situation is what is in question. Based on your comments in this thread, I thibk you’d consider this solution cheating, and you’d deny it.




So as I said before, I don't stop actions in game.  The action would happen and then I would speak to the player outside of the game about metagaming.  Most probably, I'd see if there was some in game way for him to have that knowledge so that it's not even an issue.  5e is good like that in that all PCs have all skills, so the PC would have some level of monster lore to roll against.  Perhaps his home town was near to a swamp where trolls would be common, and therefore so is the knowledge of trolls, which would get rid of even the need to roll.  



> Which to me is far worse than metagaming because basically the whole group looked at the encounter and said “not interested” and the DM denied their preferences and proceeded with running things how he wanted. Which is kind of a strong example f the DM being a jerk, in my oponion.




It's not the DM being a jerk.  What it is, is the DM and the players not being on the same page as to the style of game.  If that many players are at odds with the DM on the style of game being played, they need to go their separate ways and find people who are more compatible.  



> So the MMI flaw in GM Driven game systems can surface in a variety of ways, and how it’s handled can vary greatly as well.




That wasn't an example of "Mother May I," though.  Even if the DM denied the action in game due to metagaming, that's just a ruling about what is allowed and not allowed in game play.  Denial does not automatically equal "Mother May I."


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> You're draing the wrong inference.
> 
> What it tells you is _I don't like a game where the focus is on learning the pre-established fiction as opposed to changing the fiction_.
> 
> Deciet by elements in the setting is fine, if it is the _output_ of action resolution.



I'm talking about having deceitful elements as input rather than output; to wit, that the action declarations could be sometimes based on legitimately faulty information obtained or observed by the PCs.  Examples:

 - the person you've been talking to (and maybe preparing to attack) isn't the evil baron but is someone in disguise; the real baron is the third guard on the left
 - the empty room you've just entered isn't empty at all, it just looks that way courtesy of a permanent illusion
 - your contact in the thieves' guild (or maybe even one of the PCs!) is a double agent and has been feeding you false info to steer you away from your real objective
 - the Mace of Terriann that you think you just picked up from beneath the throne is actually a fake (though it radiates magic); the real Mace still lies in a hidden hole just beneath where the fake one was

Each of these could lead to all sorts of action declarations that would have been different had the input information been true and accurate.



> Given that this whole thread is about resolution techniques, why would I back off from discussing them?



You keep trying to make it about resolution techniques.  It started as an in-game-realism v real-world-realism discussion and went from there.



> _Te content of the fiction is largely irrelevant to whether a RPG gives a good or bad experience_. Proof: if it was otherwise, then it would make no difference whether the game proceeded in the typical mode of a RPG, or whether it proceeded by the players just sitting there and having the GM tell them a story. Because both things can produce _excactly the same fiction_. But the first might be fun while the second will almost certainly suck.



In your eyes, perhaps.  But flip it around to the other axis: the exact same game/system (whatever it may be) can and likely will produce vastly different fiction from one campaign to the next, and fiction that utterly captivates one group could well leave another bored to tears.



> This is all pointless and bizarre. Only a few bits of it are worth respoding to.
> 
> Running a race is not a combat. It's a competition.



A competition is a form of combat.



> Making sure a starship engine doesn't fail during jump is not exploring anything. It's performing a mechanical task.



Yes, in and of itself.  But look at it in even a slightly broader way and ask why it's being done, and the answer will in one form or another boil down to exploration. (remember, exploration includes movement within the world and in Traveller's case 'world' kinda means galaxy)



> The only reason you "pillars" don't have a _craft/repair_ element to them is because that's never been a significant focus of D&D play, because D&D is set in a pre-technological world. And the reason you label repairing a vehicle as "downtime" is because, in D&D, magic item crafting is framed as something that happens outside the main focus of dungeoneering play. This is why I described your classification as projection: you've so internalised the dynamics of D&D c 1980 or thereabouts that you seem to find it literally inconceivable that there might be RPGs which don't focus on dungeon-delving or bank robbing as the main part of play.



Again, look just a bit more broadly and ask why the vehicle is being repaired.  Is the PC repairing vehicles as a means of filling time and making a few bucks between doing more exciting things?  Is the PC repairing it because it's her only hope of getting off this dying planet?  Is the PC repairing it because she just accidentally broke it and wants to get it fixed before anyone else notices?



> In my Prince Valiant game, we played a scenario in which the PC knights accompanied a crimson bull to a swamp, where it was to be killed by a pagan wise woman. On the way through they had some strange interactions with the bull, and wondered and debated what to do with it. In the end, one of them used his dagger blessed by St Sigobert to dispel a demonic spirit that was possessing the bull; and in doing so, so impressed the wise woman that she agreed to be baptised at the Shrine of St Sigobert.
> 
> Nothing was being explored. No maps were drawn by me as GM or by the players - we jointly looked at our map of Britain at the back of the Pendragon hardback to get a general sense of where the PCs were travelling to, and then the journey was simply narrated (_You walk for a day through the forest_; _You arrive at the valley_; etc).



Nothing new was being explored but the travel still puts it in the exploration realm.



> There were some social elements to the scenario - eg talking to the bull - but that was not all of it. The hurling of the dagger into the mist of the demon as it left the body of the bull was not _combat_ in any genuine sense - there was no fight going on.



No fight, perhaps, but throwing a weapon at a perceived enemy still sounds like combat from here. 



> D&D doesn't exhaust the possible range of fiction, nor the possible range of play techniques, that can figure in RPGing. It adds nothing to our understanding of how RPGing works to try and cram everything into D&D's categories.



Well nothing exhausts the possible range of fiction, so this one's a bit of a red herring.  D&D ceratinly does not exhaust the possible range of play techniques.  But taking a concept (the pillars) that just happened to come from a D&D edition and applying it universally certainly can and in my case does help understand or clarify how RPGs (can) work; all 5e did was clarify and codify something that's always been there in the background probably without a lot of us realizing it was there.

Had this clarification come from some other source whose words you value more highly we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.



> This is so backwards it's hard to put into words.
> 
> It's a bit like saying that all road transport can be explained in terms of steering wheels, drive shafts and carburetors. And then insisting that a motorcycles handlebars and chain are _really_ a streering wheel and a drive shaft.



Not quite.

Perhaps it's more like saying that self-directed ground-based transportation always has a few key elements to it: a surface that will allow travel (be it roads, rails, trails, whatever); a means of propulsion and acceleration (engine, feet, pedal-chains-gears, or whatever; and this would also include fuel); a means of slowing or stopping movement (brakes, usually, or feet); a means of setting and-or altering direction of travel (steering, feet, etc.); and things related to the comfort and-or safety of the traveller(s).

Everything to do with ground-based travel can be broken down into, and explained as being a part of, one or more of those five elements: surface, propulsion, deceleration, direction, and safety/comfort. (propulsion-deceleration might even be combinable)

And even though I've never owned a motorbike I can still say which basic parts of it fit in which of the above elements; ditto for a locomotive (which I've also never owned, except in HO-scale model form) or my feet (of which I still have two). 



> In my Prince Valiant game, there is no difference between the narration of "downtime" (_OK, seasons pass, you hear rumours of Saxon invasion_) and the narration of travel (_OK, you travel for a few days, and you arrive back at Warwick_).



No difference in narration, sure.  Difference in pillar, though. 



> In my Burning Wheel game, the action resolution for recovering resources, or recovering health, over an extended period of ingame time is no different from the action resolution for buying a sword or for bluffing a guard or for climbing a fence. There's no notion of "downtime", because there's no notion of _the adventure_ or _the dungeon expedition_ as there is in D&D. There are different things that players might have their PCs do, that take different amounts of ingame time, and  are resolved via different ratios of ingame to real-world time.



Right, I get this.

But how the action is being resolved (mechanical) doesn't remove it from why it's being done (pillar of play).

There may not be a notion of between-adventure downtime in BW, and depending how it's run the PCs might never get a chance to sit back and relax for a bit - but that doesn't deny that downtime as a universal aspect* of RPG play, it only says that this particular table has chosen to exclude it.

Same thing as running an RPG without any combat.  It can be done, and has been I'm sure, but the doing of such doesn't remove combat as a universal aspect of RPG play.



> We've already established that breaking interpersonal conflict out into distinct "combat" and "social" categories means that athletics competitions can't be accounted for;



You've tried to establish this; from here athletic comptitions are a form of combat.  They might not use the same mechanics, but the idea of striving to defeat someone else (or several someone elses) is still combative.



> in Cortex+ Heroic there is no difference between these things at all, and - for instance - a character can cause another to wilt in shame by besting him/her in swordplay. Similarly, in the example of play for Marvel Heroic RP we see Wolverine using his Adamantium Claws in a dice pool used to inflict Emotional Stress (ie scaring off some enemy NPCs). This sort of thing is omething that D&D doesn't easily allow for. (Hence the recurrent discussions of why it is that bards are more intimidating than barbarians.)



Both of these examples mix elements of combat and social together - the swordplay one in particular uses combat as an action to generate a social result on success.  Seems fine from here. 



> As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said not far upthread, why not start trying to think about other RPGs, and the techniques and approaches they involve, on their own terms rather than through this narrow and distorting lens of 80s-style D&D.



Because the aspects-of-play idea goes way, way beyond just 80's style D&D.

* - if I call them 'aspects' instead of 'pillars' does that help?


----------



## pemerton

I can't remember now what happened when I used trolls in my 4e game. I am guessing, though, that the PCs used fire. Several member of my group are very experienced D&D players and would have known that fire is needed.

When they fought a fire-breathing hydra, that creature needed to suffer cold or acid damage after having a head severed to prevent it growing two new heads at the start of its turn. I can't remember how the players learned this, but my guess would be via successful monster knowledge. But possibly it just came to light when the paladin PC did cold damage on his turn.

What created the excitement in this situation wasn't learning what the weakness was, but trying to apply it - it wasn't easy for the paladin to stand toe-to-toe against the hydra, and when the paladin had to go and help his friend fight other creatures, it wasn't easy to successfully apply the required damage types at the required times.

If one thinks about one of the more famous examples of monster vulnerability - Eowyn and Merry killing the Witch-King - the excitemen and drama is not in _discovering the Witch-King's weakness_. It's in these two standing against him. My own view is that also makes for better RPGing.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> If one thinks about one of the more famous examples of monster vulnerability - Eowyn and Merry killing the Witch-King - the excitemen and drama is not in _discovering the Witch-King's weakness_. It's in these two standing against him. My own view is that also makes for better RPGing.



Except here the monster actually - and rather foolishly - tells the heroes what its vulnerability is!  Whereupon, of course, Eowyn then proceeds to exploit the hell out of it.

That said, this one particular combat is my go-to example of why I always prefer flatter power curves in a game: a low-level nobody like Merry can still hit one of the more powerful monsters in the world hard enough to make it sit up and pay attention.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Except here the monster actually - and rather foolishly - tells the heroes what its vulnerability is!  Whereupon, of course, Eowyn then proceeds to exploit the hell out of it.



Because she would have not fought the Witch-King otherwise? Or, would have stopped being "no man"  if the Witch-King didn't tell her his weakness (which it apparently didn't know either)?

I don't get this argument at all.  It's like saying "but water is wet" when told the ocean is full of water -- yeah, okay, also true, but not really relevant to the point.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Nothing new was being explored but the travel still puts it in the exploration realm.




I think this one sentence really sums up all of the frustration in this thread.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> What I am saying is that categories 1 and 3 are the same category.  Right now,  my game is category 1.  If [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] were to join my game, it wouldn't work for him and I would go into your category 3, even though I didn't change anything about my game.  Subjectivity controls whether games work or partially work.  Category 2 involves those games that are Railroad, "Mother May I"(if it exists outside of a white room, and other games that involve bad DMing.




No, they’re different. There are games where everyone is satisfied with the style of play. There are games where some people are satisfied with the style of play, or where all the players are sometimes satisfied with the style of play. 

Yes, an individual’s decision about a game...if it’s satisfactory or not or partially so...is subjective. What I was saying is that objectively there are three categories of game...satisfactory, non-satisfactory, and partially satisfactory. That’s objectively true.



Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is not the only one using the term in this thread, and it really should have been dropped as a term immediately when people began taking offense at the pejorative.




No, it didn’t need to be dropped. People can choose to take offense at anything. There are rules on these boards, but I don’t think they were violated. There’s also standard etiquette, but I don’t think that using a loaded term about a RPG should really rise to the level of offense. 

There has been a discussion about the term and what it means, and that’s good. And you don’t like the term, and that’s fine, too. You’re as entitled to your opinion as anyone else. But I’d be willing to bet that the number of times MMI was actually used pejoratively is far less than your posts rallying against it.  



Maxperson said:


> Sure, I get that.  There are other systems or the ability to modify the system, though, so it's all good.  If they are in a game with a group that doesn't want to alter the system or change systems, then they should seek other games where they can get what they want.  What they should not do is insult the system and/or playstyle that they don't like.




Fair enough. I don’t think nearly as much insult was intended as has been taken. Certainly not in the original OP that spawned this thread. 



Maxperson said:


> So as I said before, I don't stop actions in game.  The action would happen and then I would speak to the player outside of the game about metagaming.  Most probably, I'd see if there was some in game way for him to have that knowledge so that it's not even an issue.  5e is good like that in that all PCs have all skills, so the PC would have some level of monster lore to roll against.  Perhaps his home town was near to a swamp where trolls would be common, and therefore so is the knowledge of trolls, which would get rid of even the need to roll.




An in game reason was given. The character’s uncle told him about trolls. There’s no need for anything further. 

Any further action does move toward a Mother May I situation. The player is not allowed to make such decisions but has to ask for the DM’s approval.  



Maxperson said:


> It's not the DM being a jerk.  What it is, is the DM and the players not being on the same page as to the style of game.  If that many players are at odds with the DM on the style of game being played, they need to go their separate ways and find people who are more compatible.




In my opinion, a DM who so blatantly ignores cues about what kind of play his players are interested very well may be a jerk. There could be other reasons for it...perhaps he’s just clueless or something. But I’d take a cue like that and tailor my game accordingly if that were me.



Maxperson said:


> That wasn't an example of "Mother May I," though.  Even if the DM denied the action in game due to metagaming, that's just a ruling about what is allowed and not allowed in game play.  Denial does not automatically equal "Mother May I."




Yes. Yes it does. This is a strong example of Mother May I. You’ve even described it as such without using the term. “That’s just a ruling about what is allowed and not allowed in game play.”

Who made the ruling? The DM. And why? To overrule the player’s input that his character knows trolls are vulnerable to fire because of his Uncle Elmo.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> A competition is a form of combat.



No it's not. I've sat, and I've graded, competitive examinations. They are nothing like combat.

Even as competitoins, they are different - a race or an exam is an attempt to do better than another _at a common task_. Combat is an attempt to best another by preventing them doing the same to you. And this can be seen in mechanical resolution terms: an attempt to adapt Runequest's combat resolution rules for racing would break down pretty quickly, because there is no analogue in a race (or an exam) of the Runequest _parry_ skill.

(Systems otherwise as different as BW and Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic are able to cope with this by dropping RQ's separate attack and parry stats, and resolving fights as opposed checks, which can also be adapted to running races.)

Furthermore, if all competition is combat then that generates obvious absurdities, like a poetry slam or battle of the bands being part of the combat "pillar" rather than the social "pillar".

The 5e "pillars" tell us about the design, and focus of play, of 5e. They are not, and don't even purport to be, a general analytical framework for RPGing.



Lanefan said:


> look just a bit more broadly and ask why the vehicle is being repaired.



So does a joust belong to the _social_ rather than the _combat_ pillar if it is being done to win the heart of an admirer? At least as I understand it, the pillars are meant to be characterised by some combination of _what is going on in the fiction_ and _how that is resolved at the table_, not _what it is hoped success in the action might facilitiate_.



Lanefan said:


> Nothing new was being explored but the travel still puts it in the exploration realm.



What information is conveyed by this? In 5e D&D, to describe it as "exploration" tells us something about (i) what is happening in the fiction, and (ii) how that will be handled at the table - in particular, via the back-and-forth of free narration between player(s) and GM, and perhaps the occasional check if the player declares that his/her PC looks around, or picks something up, or whatever.

In my Prince Valiant game, there's no back-and-forth here: there's just framing. To describe it as "exploration" in the 5e D&D sense is to actively misdescribe both the techniques in use, and the table experience.

In my Traveller game, when checks are made to successfully make an interstellar jump, there is a standard subsystem that is followed, and if the checks are successful then the next stage of play is to narrate the PCs's ship's arrival at the destination world. Again, it has little to nothing in common with 5e's "exploration".

On-world travel in Classic Traveller is much closer to 5e's exploration; it's for that very reason that I've repeatedly characterised it, in threads over the past year or so, as the weakest part of the Traveller rules, and disappointing in comparison to the tightness of the other sub-systems.



Lanefan said:


> all 5e did was clarify and codify something that's always been there in the background probably without a lot of us realizing it was there.
> 
> Had this clarification come from some other source whose words you value more highly we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.



Huh? I've thought about different elements of play, and how they related to mechanics. long before WotC published 5e. 



Lanefan said:


> But taking a concept (the pillars) that just happened to come from a D&D edition and applying it universally certainly can and in my case does help understand or clarify how RPGs (can) work



But it's not doing this! It's leading you into repeated misdescriptions and mischaracterisations. For instance, the fact that you envisage travel in my Prince Valiant game as being like 5e D&D's exploration reveals that you _don't understand_ what is happening at the table. It's actually closer to your concept of "downtime", but that woudl also be misleading because it is occurring in the course of what you would call an "adventure".

WotC in 4e distinguished _exploration_ from _encounters_, and distinguished the latter into combat and non-combat resolution. That is a useful framework for 4e; it broadly maps onto the Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic distinction between transition scenes and acion scenes, although the latter have no combat/non-combat breakdown.

It would just distort understanding of 4e to insist that social skill challenges be thought about differently from travel skill challenges, or to insist on analysing travel skill challenges through the lens of _exploration_ as that concept works in 4e.

And mutatis mutandis for other RPG systems.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Except here the monster actually - and rather foolishly - tells the heroes what its vulnerability is!



As [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] has suggested, it's not clear that the Witch King even appreciated the pun in the prophecy and hence knew that he was weak in the relevant way (ie to a blow from a woman).

As Ovinomancer has also hinted at, does this mean you're agreeing with me that RPGing is more exciting when what is at issue is standing against a foe, than attempting to puzzle out the foe's weakness?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> An in game reason was given. The character’s uncle told him about trolls. There’s no need for anything further.




Player: My uncle told me (player consults the module the DM is running) that if we go down the left corridor and open the second door, under the rug is a secret compartment with 85gp and 2 potions of healing inside.

You don't see anything wrong with that?  Weak justifications for metagaming are just that.  Weak justifications.  There absolutely does need to be something further in order for the character to have that knowledge.  



> Any further action does move toward a Mother May I situation. The player is not allowed to make such decisions but has to ask for the DM’s approval.




Denial does not equal "Mother May I" and never has.  It takes for more than the DM saying no to a weak justification for metagaming.



> Yes. Yes it does. This is a strong example of Mother May I. You’ve even described it as such without using the term. “That’s just a ruling about what is allowed and not allowed in game play.”
> 
> Who made the ruling? The DM. And why? To overrule the player’s input that his character knows trolls are vulnerable to fire because of his Uncle Elmo.




Once again, denial does not equal "Mother May I" and never has.  It takes for more than the DM saying no to a weak justification for metagaming. 

The thing you are also overlooking is that there are two possibilities here.  1) the DM allows metagaming.  If that's the case, the DM won't deny the blatant metagaming going on in your example.  2) the DM does not allow metagaming, in which case metagaming is cheating.  A DM saying no to cheating is not "overriding player input" as players don't get to provide input that is cheating.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> WotC in 4e distinguished _exploration_ from _encounters_, and distinguished the latter into combat and non-combat resolution. That is a useful framework for 4e; it broadly maps onto the Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic distinction between transition scenes and acion scenes, although the latter have no combat/non-combat breakdown.
> 
> It would just distort understanding of 4e to insist that social skill challenges be thought about differently from travel skill challenges, or to insist on analysing travel skill challenges through the lens of _exploration_ as that concept works in 4e.
> 
> And mutatis mutandis for other RPG systems.




Right, this kind of thing was easy to see in doing a redesign of 4e to produce HoML. In that game there are only 'scenes' with each being either a non-conflict 'interlude' or a conflict 'challenge'. There is no real importance to 'exploration' per se in HoML in that it isn't mechanically distinct from 'social interaction', both are either challenges, or interludes. There IS a mechanical distinction between combat and other types of challenge, so there are some possible distinctions, but that is more a reflection of a legacy of D&D making this kind of distinction and a conscious desire to emulate it (maybe this is a bad choice, I did play around with an abstract combat system which would treat them mechanically like other challenges, but the resulting game definitely departs radically from any 4e-like nature).


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Because she would have not fought the Witch-King otherwise? Or, would have stopped being "no man"  if the Witch-King didn't tell her his weakness (which it apparently didn't know either)?
> 
> I don't get this argument at all.  It's like saying "but water is wet" when told the ocean is full of water -- yeah, okay, also true, but not really relevant to the point.



We aren't told if she otherwise knew about this vulnerability; but when the Witch-King says "No man can kill me" and she, thinking quickly, comes back with "But I am no man", the Witch-King has just given away his weakness.  This gives her confidence that if she fights him she might have a chance of taking him out - which, as we know, she does.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> As [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] has suggested, it's not clear that the Witch King even appreciated the pun in the prophecy and hence knew that he was weak in the relevant way (ie to a blow from a woman).
> 
> As Ovinomancer has also hinted at, does this mean you're agreeing with me that RPGing is more exciting when what is at issue is standing against a foe, than attempting to puzzle out the foe's weakness?



The real excitement here, were Eowyn my PC, would come not necessarily from somewhat-suicidally standing against a foe I couldn't beat but from the 'aha!' moment: the realization that due to his vulnerability maybe - just maybe - I _can_ beat him where others cannot; with ongoing excitement as the combat plays out and I a) _do_ beat him and b) survive.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Player: My uncle told me (player consults the module the DM is running) that if we go down the left corridor and open the second door, under the rug is a secret compartment with 85gp and 2 potions of healing inside.
> 
> You don't see anything wrong with that?  Weak justifications for metagaming are just that.  Weak justifications.  There absolutely does need to be something further in order for the character to have that knowledge.



This is the sort of thing that drives home some marked differences in assumptions, systems and play approaches.

In particular:

(1) To me this does not register as an issue of metagaming but (at least as I understand what is being presented) as _cheating_. In running a classic module of the KotB or Castle Amber or Desert of Desolation sort, it is understood that the player does not read the GM-only material, because this is the puzzle the player is expected to solve. Doing otherwise is cheating.

(2) This presupposes that the location of some treasure in a geographical location is established by the GM in advance, but not announced to the players, such that the player might take steps (like peeking at notes or reading the module) to learn it. In a game like Cortex+ Heroic RP, and I would imagine in many DW games, that presupposition does not hold good. In Cortex+ Heroic, for instance, most instances of treasure are going to be either assets or similar established by players as part of the action resolution process, or Scene Distinctions whose existence is clearly announced to the players as part of scene framing.

(3) This presupposes that a player is free to decide what it is that his/her uncle has told the PC, and its usefulness. But in (say) DW, this is not the case: this would be a Spout Lore action and so requires a check as discussed at some length upthread. In BW, the GM _could_ say yes but equally could call for a check (eg on My old uncle's stories-wise) which, if it failed, would license the GM to have some fun with the player about the tall tales told the PC by his/her uncle!​
Thus, this example is located in a very particular play paradigm. There are a variety of other systems and approaches to which it does not straightforwardly generalise.

This also relates to the discussion, upthread, of whether or not D&D is "strong GM decides". To the extent that it permits this sort of thing to come about, it certainly _lacks_ a whole suite of action declaration and resolution systems that other systems use to manage action declarations about _stuff my uncle told me_.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The real excitement here, were Eowyn my PC, would come not necessarily from somewhat-suicidally standing against a foe I couldn't beat but from the 'aha!' moment: the realization that due to his vulnerability maybe - just maybe - I _can_ beat him where others cannot; with ongoing excitement as the combat plays out and I a) _do_ beat him and b) survive.



Which seems broadly consistent with what I said - the excitement is standing against a dangerous foe, not solving the puzzle of how to hurt it.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No it's not. I've sat, and I've graded, competitive examinations. They are nothing like combat.



I'll concede this one is probably an exception.



> Even as competitoins, they are different - a race or an exam is an attempt to do better than another _at a common task_. Combat is an attempt to best another by preventing them doing the same to you.



Not always.  For example a hidden sniper shooting an unaware sentry from long range is certainly a part of combat, but doesn't really fall into this definition of it.



> Furthermore, if all competition is combat then that generates obvious absurdities, like a poetry slam or battle of the bands being part of the combat "pillar" rather than the social "pillar".



I've been in poetry slams and believe me, they're far more combat than social! 

Further, and this'll come up again below, some things/actions/activities either span multiple aspects simultaneously or move within themselves from one to another.



> The 5e "pillars" tell us about the design, and focus of play, of 5e. They are not, and don't even purport to be, a general analytical framework for RPGing.



As written in 5e, no.  But I find it a very easy step to take the idea, apply it universally, and use it as a general framework for analysing RPG play; particularly in terms of what happens in the fiction and why, as opposed to the game mechanics that get it there.



> So does a joust belong to the _social_ rather than the _combat_ pillar if it is being done to win the heart of an admirer? At least as I understand it, the pillars are meant to be characterised by some combination of _what is going on in the fiction_ and _how that is resolved at the table_, not _what it is hoped success in the action might facilitiate_.



I'd see the actual joust as part of the combat aspect, with social overtones and-or potential consequences.

Regardless of how 5e puts it, I'm far more interested here in analysing what actually happens in the fiction and why (and how it might influence what happens next); and for these purposes really don't care what mechanics and-or resolution methods are used at the table in order to bring these events about.  This puts me at odds with you, as you seem to be far more concerned with analysing the mechanics and letting the fiction just tag along.



> What information is conveyed by this? In 5e D&D, to describe it as "exploration" tells us something about (i) what is happening in the fiction, and (ii) how that will be handled at the table - in particular, via the back-and-forth of free narration between player(s) and GM, and perhaps the occasional check if the player declares that his/her PC looks around, or picks something up, or whatever.
> 
> In my Prince Valiant game, there's no back-and-forth here: there's just framing. To describe it as "exploration" in the 5e D&D sense is to actively misdescribe both the techniques in use, and the table experience.



Even there it tells me something of what's happening in the fiction (which is what matters, in the end), regardless of the techniques in use.



> In my Traveller game, when checks are made to successfully make an interstellar jump, there is a standard subsystem that is followed, and if the checks are successful then the next stage of play is to narrate the PCs's ship's arrival at the destination world. Again, it has little to nothing in common with 5e's "exploration".



Mechanically, there's little to no overlap.  Fine.

Fictionally, however, there's loads of overlap: on success the PCs have just travelled from point A to point B.  Travel, even if points A and B are already known places, is part of the exploration aspect.



> Huh? I've thought about different elements of play, and how they related to mechanics. long before WotC published 5e.



Where I'm thinking about them not as they relate to mechanics but in how they relate to and define the end-result fiction.



> But it's not doing this! It's leading you into repeated misdescriptions and mischaracterisations. For instance, the fact that you envisage travel in my Prince Valiant game as being like 5e D&D's exploration reveals that you _don't understand_ what is happening at the table. It's actually closer to your concept of "downtime", but that woudl also be misleading because it is occurring in the course of what you would call an "adventure".



Again, what's happening at the table is almost irrelevant.  What's happening in the fiction is travel, wich means exploration.

The fiction is what drives which aspect(s) is(are) being played at any given moment or in any given scene, and this is what I want to look at for my own games: are the various aspects (combat, social, exploration, downtime) showing up in the fiction too frequently, or not frequently enough, and with what degree of emphasis; and what would or should the right frequency and-or emphasis be for each?



> WotC in 4e distinguished _exploration_ from _encounters_, and distinguished the latter into combat and non-combat resolution. That is a useful framework for 4e; it broadly maps onto the Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic distinction between transition scenes and acion scenes, although the latter have no combat/non-combat breakdown.
> 
> It would just distort understanding of 4e to insist that social skill challenges be thought about differently from travel skill challenges, or to insist on analysing travel skill challenges through the lens of _exploration_ as that concept works in 4e.
> 
> And mutatis mutandis for other RPG systems.



A social skill challenge and a travel skill challenge use the same mechanics at the table in 4e, but the fiction defines one as social and the other as exploration.

This is relevant for a few reasons.  

One, because the outcome and consequences in the fiction are likely to be quite different from a social challenge than a travel challenge.

Two, because in her game a GM and-or the players might want social fiction handled by different means than travel fiction (i.e. the fictional aspect defines what mechanics are used, rather than the reverse - it's always worked this way for combat, frex), meaning either 4e wouldn't be a suitable system in this case or it'd need some tweaking to work as desired.

And three, because it seems often social-aspect play is viewed and approached differently than exploration-aspect play - some tables take social-aspect play very seriously (that's where the drama comes from) while others groove on exploration and anything in the social aspect just means waiting longer for either combat or more exploring.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Which seems broadly consistent with what I said - the excitement is standing against a dangerous foe, not solving the puzzle of how to hurt it.



To a point.  The excitement would only start (with a real kickstart!) when I solved the puzzle, then continue as the combat went along.

In musical terms it'd be kind of like a musical note with a very strong attack (solving the puzzle), then a small decay followed by a more or less level sustain (the combat) with perhaps a second kick at the end (when the Witch-King goes down), and a fairly quick release (when the fight is over).

(if the above terms are unfamilar check this link https://www.erikkmckenzie.com/adsr - scroll down to the bottom of the page for a clear diagram)


----------



## S'mon

Exploration - finding out stuff
Combat - beating people/things.
Social - interacting with people. This typically involves elements of finding out stuff, beating people, but also mutually beneficial interaction - alliance building, mate-bonding, friendship et al.

Travelling a known route isn't Exploration, but travelling an unknown route & encountering new places along the way does have an Exploration element I think, in 5e D&D terms. Of course if it's abstracted - line on the map style - then it's not Exploration, it's closer to Downtime, as Mr P noted.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> some things/actions/activities either span multiple aspects simultaneously or move within themselves from one to another.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Regardless of how 5e puts it, I'm far more interested here in analysing what actually happens in the fiction and why
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The fiction is what drives which aspect(s) is(are) being played at any given moment or in any given scene, and this is what I want to look at for my own games: are the various aspects (combat, social, exploration, downtime) showing up in the fiction too frequently, or not frequently enough, and with what degree of emphasis; and what would or should the right frequency and-or emphasis be for each?
> 
> A social skill challenge and a travel skill challenge use the same mechanics at the table in 4e, but the fiction defines one as social and the other as exploration.



I honestly don't see the point of trying to establish some general classification of adventure fiction as either fighting, talking or exploring, especially when you concede that some events and activities are plural in their character.

These aren't classifications that I'm used to from criticism, and to me they don't seem to shed any interesting light. I've already pointed out that it doesn't cover building and repairing things - simply because this has never been a big part of D&D's action (cf Traveller, which - being set in a highly technological society - obviously treats this sort of thing very differently). Or, to give a different example, in my last Prince Valiant session there was a boar hunt, which created an opportunity for the PCs to shame an NPC they didn't like, and also an opportunity from some rivalry among the PCs as to who would get the kill. In that same session, there was a joust which provided an opportunity for making some new friendships and reinforcing some established enmities.

It seems to me to add nothing to my account of these events to try to decide whether they should be classed as combat, social or interaction. That is simply not a useful framework for either criticism or for play. (In 4e this could easily have been run as a skill challenge, moving between different social, Nature, and combat skills/abilities. I don't know what the proper way to handle it in 5e would be, but my sense is that, by default, it would require more GM manipulation of the fiction.)

And I don't know what it would mean for there to be too much, or not enough, of one or another sort of fiction. The fiction is what the fiction is. If players want more talking, then - provided the system allows for it - they'll declare such actions; likewise if they want more fighting. To me that seems a total non-problem.



Lanefan said:


> you seem to be far more concerned with analysing the mechanics and letting the fiction just tag along



To reiterate what I just said: in my experience players will create the fiction that they want, consistently with what the mechanics make room for. As GM I don't need to police the fiction; but when deciding what game to play, and when adjduciating a system as GM, I do need to understand how its mechanics work.

As an example, consider the BW Circles mechanic, which pertains to encountering old friends and enemies as one goes about one's business. In 5e D&D, such matters are an entirely GM-side decision; but in Burning Wheel, such things are frequently the outcome of a Circles check made by a player - and once such a mechanic is introduced, players will use it and that sort of thing will become a bigger part of play than it might otherwise be.

So if I want more Conan-style or Arthurian style chance encounters, then I should play a game with something like a Circles mechanic. Similarly, if I think a game with more talking would be fun, then I should play a game which enables players to change the fiction by declaring talky stuff. To repeat again what I said, in my experience if the mechanics are there, then - assuming the players are at all interested - the fiction will take care of itself. 

(Also, re Circles checks: is this social or exploration? In 5e D&D the question doesn't even arise, because chance encounters don't fall under any of the pillars, being an entirely GM-side matter. In BW, the question doesn't make any sense, because BW doesn't have distinct "social" and "exploration" pillars. This is another example that illustrates the non-ubiquity of the 5e pillars.)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is the sort of thing that drives home some marked differences in assumptions, systems and play approaches.
> 
> In particular:
> 
> (1) To me this does not register as an issue of metagaming but (at least as I understand what is being presented) as _cheating_. In running a classic module of the KotB or Castle Amber or Desert of Desolation sort, it is understood that the player does not read the GM-only material, because this is the puzzle the player is expected to solve. Doing otherwise is cheating.​





Metagaming is bringing in knowledge that the player has that the character doesn't and having the character act on it.  That's the definition.  My example is no different than a player reading the Monster Manual and using the puzzles attached to the monsters in game.  In both cases the player is going to books that the DM is supposed to use, learning knowledge, and then bringing it in for the PC to use.



> (2) This presupposes that the location of some treasure in a geographical location is established by the GM in advance, but not announced to the players, such that the player might take steps (like peeking at notes or reading the module) to learn it. In a game like Cortex+ Heroic RP, and I would imagine in many DW games, that presupposition does not hold good. In Cortex+ Heroic, for instance, most instances of treasure are going to be either assets or similar established by players as part of the action resolution process, or Scene Distinctions whose existence is clearly announced to the players as part of scene framing.




Yep. Sort of like how monster weaknesses are established in advanced, not announced to the players, such that the player might take extra steps like reading the Monster Manual to learn it.



> (3) This presupposes that a player is free to decide what it is that his/her uncle has told the PC, and its usefulness. But in (say) DW, this is not the case: this would be a Spout Lore action and so requires a check as discussed at some length upthread. In BW, the GM _could_ say yes but equally could call for a check (eg on My old uncle's stories-wise) which, if it failed, would license the GM to have some fun with the player about the tall tales told the PC by his/her uncle!



 [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] has said that the player should be allowed to do this and that the DM is a jerk for not allowing it.  He has also made the claim that it's "Mother May I" to say no.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> Exploration - finding out stuff
> Combat - beating people/things.
> Social - interacting with people. This typically involves elements of finding out stuff, beating people, but also mutually beneficial interaction - alliance building, mate-bonding, friendship et al.



To be honest, even in the context of 5e D&D this is looking to me like a dubious system of classification in the way that you present it, because social can include both exploration and combat.

To me, it seems fairly clear that the utility of the "3 pillars" is not in identifying categories of fictinal activity, but in identifying ways of handling stuff at the table. In particular, as I understand it, the 5e "3 pillars" are an attempt to capture in a single classificatory scheme some D&D traditions concerning how different sorts of action-resolution are handled.

*Combat *pertains to the sort of stuff that is traditionally resolved using the to hit, saving throw and hit point mechanics. For these reasons, some but not all spell casting falls under the combat pillar.

*Exploration* pertains to the sort of stuff that is traditionally resolved using classic dungeoneering and hex-crawl adjudication, which includes: answering questions by reference to the referee's map and key; rolling dice for search attempts, listening at doors, and avoiding getting lost; and the GM describing new situations as the PCs move into them.

*Social* pertains to PC-NPC interactions, which many tables traditionally resolve by free roleplaying.

It's fairly clear that the boundaries of these pillars, even within a very traditional D&D paradigm, are highly porous. When _exploration _results in the PCs triggering a trap, for instance, _combat_ processes might be used to determine the result (eg a saving throw to avoid damage). When NPCs are encountered, the use of a random reaction roll may help determine the outcome of what occurs in subsequent _social_ interaction, but as a method of resolution reallly has more in common with the methods of the _exploration_ pillar.

Then there is a case like determining surprise: does this belong to _exploration_ or to _combat_? I don't see that there is anything meaningful at stake in this question - it's "angels on the head of a pin" territory.

And there are also elements of traditional D&D that seem to me to fall under none of the pillars - eg classic D&D wilderness evasion (based on a % chance rolled periodcially modified by various factors - charts for this are found in AD&D and Marsh/Cook Expert, and maybe in OD&D too though I'm not pulling out my books to check at the moment). This is not social because not free roelplaying of the traditional sort. It's not exploration. But it's not combat in the traditional sense either, in that it doesn't reference any of the standard combat notions like to hit chance, damage, etc. Again, insisting that this particular mechanic _must_ fall under one of the three pillars seems to me to add nothing to our understanding of D&D play, nor to be useful in thinking about how to GM or play the game.

It follows from what I've just said, and frankly I think should be pretty uncontroversial, that a system that doesn't follow these traditional D&D understandings of how certain sorts of actions are adjudicated isn't usefully thought of in terms of the "3 pillars". So in 4e, for instance, if social encounters are being resolved as skill challenges, and if searching for stuff and avoiding getting lost is being resolved as skill challenges, then GMs and players need good advice on how to adapt the skill challenge mechanics to this variety of stuff, but no clarity in analysis or advice is gained by distinguishing "social" from "exploration". (And the odd-one-out category of classic evasion would also, in 4e, be just another thing to be resolved as a skill challenge. Likewise building and repairing stuff, although depending on details this can suffer a bit from a lack of clarity in respect of salient skills - in my game Dungeoneering ends up picking up a fair bit of this slack.)

In BW, there is a social conflict resolution system called Duel of Wits that, in mechanical framing, is very similar to the combat resolution mechanics. And the combat resolution mechanics distinguish between melee (Fight!) and missile skirmishing (Range and Cover). So if one wants to talk about "pillars" here at all, then skirmish combat is as much a distinct pillar from melee combat as either is from social conflict. But all three have more in common than the 5e combat and social pillars, as all three are based on a common framework of blind declaration within a quasi-rocks/paper/scissors opposed check framework.

None of the above is a criticism of 5e's treatment of its pillars. But it is a criticism of the idea that these provide any general framework for thinking about RPGing.



S'mon said:


> Travelling a known route isn't Exploration, but travelling an unknown route & encountering new places along the way does have an Exploration element I think, in 5e D&D terms. Of course if it's abstracted - line on the map style - then it's not Exploration, it's closer to Downtime, as Mr P noted.



If travelling a known route in 5e isn't exploration - and clearly it isn't combat or social - then we have another activity which falls outside the 3 pillars. Which is fine as far as it goes, but if such examples proliferate then the utility of the classification becomes more doubtful.

What is interesting to me is that, if it _isn't_ exploration, then that suggets it's not meant to be a big element of play at all, and should be handled line-on-a-map/"downtime" style until something occurs (whether by way of player action declaration or by way of GM stipulation) that does genuinely fall under one of the pillars. I wonder if this is the standard way of playing 5e, though, or if some (many?) tables do treat travelling known routs as exploration.

I think that travelling an unknown route should count as exploration in 5e D&D, because of the resolution systems that should activate: both the players asking questions and getting GM answers, plus the stuff like spotting things, avoiding getting lost, etc that I identified above as traditional components of D&D's "exploration" pillar.

And we are likeminded in thinking that in an RPG where travel even along new routes is handed simply through fairly quick free narration, with none of those traditional D&D methods being deployed, then we don't have something that counts as 5e-type exploration. This describes most of the travel in my Prince Valiant game, all of the travel in my Marvel Heroic game, most fo the travel in my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, some of the travel in my BW game (ie if I've "said 'yes'" rather than framed a check), and interstellar travel in my Classic Traveller game.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> So have you looked into Dungeon World?




No, only what has been posted here. I did purchase a copy of TorchBearer which I'm hoping to experience once my short campaign finishes.


----------



## Aldarc

The desire to classify every activity in RPGs to the artificial categories of combat, exploration, social, or downtime is only slightly less absurd than the scene in Donnie Darko where Donnie is forced by his teacher to categorize the hypothetical scenario of someone finding a lost wallet but keeping the money inside in terms of either 'Fear' or 'Love.' We recognize it at once as a flaw, and we sympathize with Donnie's frustrations with his teacher's naivety (and her subsequent threat of punishment for not complying). 

The Three Pillars of Play strike me as a potentially useful tool for getting new GMs to think about different aspects of play, but not necessarily something that accurately reflects either a descriptive or prescriptive state of the game. I think that even when people complain about fighters have a lack of options outside of the combat pillar reflects instead a frustration regarding the fighter's restricted class options for authorizing or establishing changes in the fiction.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> To be honest, even in the context of 5e D&D this is looking to me like a dubious system of classification in the way that you present it, because social can include both exploration and combat.




Well, that is what I just said, or tried to say - that social can involve combat & exploration 
elements.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Sure. And the player will also be disappoined if someone drops a mug on her foot that breaks a toe. But that wasn't what I was talking about.
> 
> If I turn up to a bridge tournament and lose a hand, then I'm disappointed in the sense that I lost. But I'm not disappointed _to be playing bridge_ - that's what I turned up to do. If I turn up to a bridge tournament and find everyone's playing poker, though, that's a different sort of disappointment. I've been tricked, my hopes raised and then dashed.
> 
> We have a phrase for someone whose disappointment at losing makes them regret having taken part at all - _a bad sport_.
> 
> But it's not being a bad sport to be disappointed at having been tricked into attending a poker tournament because it was advertised as a bridge tournament.
> 
> If I turn up to play a RPG, and I find that what is really going on is that the GM is telling me his/her story - which is to say, if my attempts at _changing the fiction by way of action declaration_ routinely default to _the GM rendering it exploration and telling me more about the fiction_ - then I will be out of there.
> 
> And that's not hypothetical. I've left games for this reason.




Okay I understand the difference, but I'm not sure you are being fair in this instance with this example.

Never once in my entire RPG-experience has any player commented (including me) saying they are so disappointed with roleplaying x because a certain mechanic never worked in or out of combat, for whatever reason. I honestly think with this example, you're falling afoul of making an assumption of a certain playstyle. 
In the games we play, a Dimension Door not working due to x does not cause the disappointment you're referencing in your example. At the same time, I'm not at all disputing your dislike of such an adjudication. I'm just saying that "negative" disappointment feeling is not so common (give the rpg market).






> I don't understand what you're saying or how it relates to my post that you quoted. Which puzzles? What highs and lows?




Given that say in traditional games the player is being tested (in a manner of speaking)...i.e. the joy of solving the puzzle (defeating a certain foe, solving the dungeon, succeeding in the adventure), I would imagine the highs of that to be higher than an adventure where the player is not tested at that level.   



> This is backwards. You're not a jerk GM. You're just someone I may not want to play RPGs with. What is the moralistic language adding?




Fair enough, the jerk term was not appropriate. 

What I was getting at is the word _significant_ is subjective.
The DM may use Say No twice in the game and that to you may be significant.
The DM may use Say No five times in a game before I may call it significant.
The DM may use Say No seven times in a game before Max may call it significant.

When you use a word like significant is at various meanings for various people and sometimes this sees posters jumping to extremes.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> To me, it seems fairly clear that the utility of the "3 pillars" is not in identifying categories of fictinal activity, but in identifying ways of handling stuff at the table. In particular, as I understand it, the 5e "3 pillars" are an attempt to capture in a single classificatory scheme some D&D traditions concerning how different sorts of action-resolution are handled.
> 
> ...It follows from what I've just said, and frankly I think should be pretty uncontroversial, that a system that doesn't follow these traditional D&D understandings of how certain sorts of actions are adjudicated isn't usefully thought of in terms of the "3 pillars". So in 4e, for instance, if social encounters are being resolved as skill challenges, and if searching for stuff and avoiding getting lost is being resolved as skill challenges, then GMs and players need good advice on how to adapt the skill challenge mechanics to this variety of stuff, but no clarity in analysis or advice is gained by distinguishing "social" from "exploration".




Yes, I agree. 

I think I've mentioned a few times my failures in trying to apply traditional D&D 'Exploration' play in the 4e D&D system. IMO 4e D&D does not have a functional "Exploration Pillar" in 5e D&D terms. That does not mean it's a broken game - it just does not do something I like doing.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> My example is no different than a player reading the Monster Manual and using the puzzles attached to the monsters in game.



Here is one difference: reading the Monster Manual, or the monster section of B/X, is a fairly standard part of learning to play the game; whereas reading a module before playing it is generally considered cheating.

To elaborate: it is very common for person A to be both a GM (sometimes) and a player (sometimes) and hence to have read the MM in the former capacity and to have that knowledge become relevant in the latter capacity.

Whereas for person A to have GMed a module which s/he is now playing in is (at least in my experience) less common, even unusual.

To elaborate further: if I've played D&D for a few years, even if I've never GMed or read the MM, I'm likely to have picked up some knowledge about eg trolls & fire. But reading a module I'm meant to be playing is still cheating.



Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] has said that the player should be allowed to do this and that the DM is a jerk for not allowing it.  He has also made the claim that it's "Mother May I" to say no.



I believe [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was assuming a context of _playing D&D_ in which, via past experience, a player already knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire and wants to rationalise that from an in-character point of view.

I don't think [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was expressing any opinion about how such a thing would be handled in Dungeon World, even supposing that it were to come up in anything like the way that it might in D&D. My sense from this thread is that hawkeyefan is relatively sensitive to the differences that pertain in respect of both GM and player roles when different RPG systems are involved.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I think I've mentioned a few times my failures in trying to apply traditional D&D 'Exploration' play in the 4e D&D system. IMO 4e D&D does not have a functional "Exploration Pillar" in 5e D&D terms. That does not mean it's a broken game - it just does not do something I like doing.



And mutatis mutandis for me and 5e D&D. It puts all this weight on "exploration" and GM decision-making which I'm not really that interested in as part of my RPGing!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Here is one difference: reading the Monster Manual, or the monster section of B/X, is a fairly standard part of learning to play the game; whereas reading a module before playing it is generally considered cheating.




No it's not a standard part of learning how to play.  Reading the PHB is the standard part of learning how to play.  Not the DMG and MM which are both for the DM.  You don't need to read the DMG or MM unless you are going to run the game, which relatively few players ever do.



> To elaborate: it is very common for person A to be both a GM (sometimes) and a player (sometimes) and hence to have read the MM in the former capacity and to have that knowledge become relevant in the latter capacity.




Only because of sheer numbers.  If only 1% of the U.S. does something, that's still 3.2 million people.  That's a LOT, but it's still a *relatively small *number of people.  It's the same with gaming.  Most players don't DM.  A relatively few do, but given the number of people who game, we still encounter a lot of them. 

Let's go with what you are saying, though.  It's also common for people who are going to DM to read modules in advance to run them or even just to see if they some day want to run them.  The same logic you are applying to the MM still applies to modules.



> I believe [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] was assuming a context of _playing D&D_ in which, via past experience, a player already knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire and wants to rationalise that from an in-character point of view.




It doesn't matter where the player got the outside knowledge.  Bringing it in via a weak justification is still no different than bringing in knowledge of a module you know that the DM is running.  

Let's go with a personal example.  I've run the Desert of Desolation series at least 3 times.  Well after that, a DM I used to play with decided to run it.  I remembered many of the secrets.  According to what you are saying here, it would have been okay for me to bring in my Uncle Cheap Justification to let me know all of those secrets via talks he had with me in my youth.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> No, only what has been posted here. I did purchase a copy of TorchBearer which I'm hoping to experience once my short campaign finishes.



I would recommend that you consider Dungeon World as well. I am not proposing that it replaces 5e D&D for you, but I genuinely think that there are many things that you could positively learn from running it.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Given that say in traditional games the player is being tested (in a manner of speaking)...i.e. the joy of solving the puzzle (defeating a certain foe, solving the dungeon, succeeding in the adventure), I would imagine the highs of that to be higher than an adventure where the player is not tested at that level.



I am still not really following. By "highs" do you mean pleasure and/or excitement?

In my most recent Traveller session, the most dramatic moment was, I think, the struggle between a detained PC and a guard for control of a submachine gun. The PC won, killing the guard and hence escaping, and then being able to grab some battle dress (= lite powered armour) and free his comrades. There were plenty of other moments of tension and uncertainty - eg when the PCs were being interrogated, and when the PCs were deciding whether or not to fire on a merchant ship that they encountered - but that fight for the gun was I think the apex for the session.

I'm not sure what you're positing about the difference that would obtain in a "traditional" (= _GM decides_?) game.

For instance, based on my experience posting in this thread and posting about my Traveller game, some GMs would take the view that it is unrealistic that a detained PC should be able to wrestle a gun from a guard at all. At a table where the GM made such a decision, I think the game would be less exciting than the session I GMed.



Sadras said:


> Never once in my entire RPG-experience has any player commented (including me) saying they are so disappointed with roleplaying x because a certain mechanic never worked in or out of combat, for whatever reason.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In the games we play, a Dimension Door not working due to x does not cause the disappointment you're referencing in your example. At the same time, I'm not at all disputing your dislike of such an adjudication. I'm just saying that "negative" disappointment feeling is not so common (give the rpg market).



I'm not making predictions about commercial success, or even about popularity abstracted away from sales. But I can report, truthfully, that I have walked from games where the GM treated action declarations primarily as an opportunity to expound his/her sense of the fiction rather than as opportunities for the players to engage and change the fiction.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> No it's not a standard part of learning how to play.



Moldvay Basic - one of the best-selling and most-played versions of D&D - suggests that a new player should read the monster chapter of the book.



Maxperson said:


> It's also common for people who are going to DM to read modules in advance to run them or even just to see if they some day want to run them.  The same logic you are applying to the MM still applies to modules.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I've run the Desert of Desolation series at least 3 times.  Well after that, a DM I used to play with decided to run it.  I remembered many of the secrets.  According to what you are saying here, it would have been okay for me to bring in my Uncle Cheap Justification to let me know all of those secrets via talks he had with me in my youth.



Not at all. In fact I posted the exact opposite of that:



pemerton said:


> it is very common for person A to be both a GM (sometimes) and a player (sometimes) and hence to have read the MM in the former capacity and to have that knowledge become relevant in the latter capacity.
> 
> Whereas for person A to have GMed a module which s/he is now playing in is (at least in my experience) less common, even unusual.



To elaborate yet further: whereas some versions of D&D direct new players to read the monster section (eg Moldvay Basic) and others are silent on the matter (AD&D, 3E, 4e); and whereas it is a ubiquitious feature of D&D play that one encounters the same monsters in new campaigns, and hence knows the weaknesses despite never having had this particular PC deal with them before; most modules that I'm familiar with have a bit somewhere near the start which says _Don't read this if you're going to play it as opposed to GM it_.

In other words, the assumptions in D&D around _knowledge of monsters_ and _knowledge of modules_ are completely different. I can't believe that this is even remotely controversial.

If the relatively unusual situation comes up that this instruction is being violated - eg you are playing Desert of Desolation as a player despite having read it - then the table will have to make some decision about how to handle that, given that it is going directly against the instructions, and the premise about play (ie that players don't know the module) which those instructions are an expression of.

(Note also that none of this changes my point that there are other systems (DW) in which this whole issue cannot even arise.)


*TL;DR EDIT*: It's taken for granted in D&D play that the contents of the Monster Manual will be reused by the same people across multiple campaigns, multiple PCs, etc. It's therefore practically inevitable that any given player will experience a situation in play where s/he knows more about a monster's weaknesses that is prima facie likely for his/her PC.

The game provides no rules for actually dealing with this, because when the game was invented it was taken for granted that players, being good wargamers, would do what you call "metagaming" without anyone looking for an ingame rationale.

 [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s suggestion of how to generate an ingame rationale seems as good as any.

In contrast, it has never been assumed that the same player would play the same module again, or play a module s/he has GMed. In fact the instructions for most modules direct the opposite: that if you're going to play it then you should make sure not to learn the contents in advance.

So if this comes up for a group, that group is going outside the assumed and stated parameters of play. However this is handled, it can't just be _assumed_ to be the same as the ubiquitous, and intended to be ubiquitous, monster case.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> you seem to be far more concerned with analysing the mechanics and letting the fiction just tag along.






pemerton said:


> To reiterate what I just said: in my experience players will create the fiction that they want, *consistently with what the mechanics make room for.* As GM I don't need to police the fiction; but when deciding what game to play, and when adjduciating a system as GM, I do need to understand how its mechanics work.




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] addresses this above, but I just wish to emphasize the point: system; at least as much as genre tropes, social conventions, aesthetic preferences, etc.; necessarily restricts or unlocks how the players engage the fiction. Understanding what the system does allows a game to become _fiction first_, if that is the desired outcome; poor comprehension of system blocks allowing engagment of the fiction first, as players stumble their way through mechanics and play directives that work with or against their desired fictional outcomes.

For this reason, I think it vital to understand not only a single game system but many: only in the comparison can one see the possibilities and limitations of a particular system. 

(This is why it sometimes becomes frustrating conversing with you, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (even though you are generally quite pleasant in your interactions): when others suggest you look at other systems (like, actually read the rules books) so that you stop viewing everything through your constant lens of D&D, you don't seem to follow through.)


----------



## Sadras

Just to comment on this real quick.



pemerton said:


> I'm not making predictions about commercial success, or even about popularity abstracted away from sales. But I can report, truthfully, that I have walked from games where the GM treated action declarations primarily as an opportunity to expound his/her sense of the fiction rather than as opportunities for the players to engage and change the fiction.




Those examples were hard-railroady games. My 4e-experience as a player echoes the GMing style you encountered and I stuck around long enough (too long in fact), with the only silver lining being that I got to poach two great players from their group before walking out.
This style is certainly not for all and it is likely how I DMed in my earlier years.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Player: My uncle told me (player consults the module the DM is running) that if we go down the left corridor and open the second door, under the rug is a secret compartment with 85gp and 2 potions of healing inside.
> 
> You don't see anything wrong with that?  Weak justifications for metagaming are just that.  Weak justifications.  There absolutely does need to be something further in order for the character to have that knowledge.




Come on now. If you don't see the difference between the example I gave and the one you decided to come up with, then I don't think there's any reason in discussion, is there? It's like we have two gunshot victims, and you want to treat the guy whose pinky toe was shot off the same as the one who was hit in the head. "But they're both gunshot wounds!!!"

I said "veteran players" for a reason. If you've played D&D for any significant length of time, you know trolls are vulnerable to fire. For a veteran player to come up with an excuse why his character knows that is perfectly fine in my game. I can understand why it may not be for your game. But doing so means that such authority is in the hands of the DM. Which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on what the DM and players want from the game. D&D is meant to be a largely DM driven game, so I don't think it would typically be a problem.

When I said that such a DM was being a jerk, it's because he ignored the cue that his veteran players didn't want to play the "pretend not to know" game. The player came up with a way to bypass it. To me, this is a player contributing....he's come up with an element that helped explain his character's actions, and also cued teh DM to the type of stuff he'd like to do in the game....or at least the type of stuff he'd rather not do, in this case. To me, that's helpful; I want to know what my players want out of a game. If the DM chooses to thwart that and forces the players to play out the scenario in some arbitrary "when-is-it-okay-to-use-fire" encounter, then yeah, I'd say that DM is forcing a "Mother May I" situation, and he's possibly ignoring his players' desires for play.  

The players have to ask "Mother May I use Fire?" and the DM sits back and says "No" until some arbitrary point where he then decides "Okay, yes, you can use fire."



Maxperson said:


> Denial does not equal "Mother May I" and never has.  It takes for more than the DM saying no to a weak justification for metagaming.




It certainly can. You have a binary view that just doesn't seem to allow for any nuance or gray area. 

Also, this is your opinion, correct? Because mine is clearly different. There is no objective definition of the term as it relates to RPG play, as this thread has proven. 

Maybe your unyielding opinion on what the term means is the obstacle to actually listening to what others are saying? Would you say that you see why I use the term Mother May I, and it's just a case of you wish I'd use another term? Or are you unclear of what the actual issue I'm describing may be? 



Maxperson said:


> Once again, denial does not equal "Mother May I" and never has.  It takes for more than the DM saying no to a weak justification for metagaming.
> 
> The thing you are also overlooking is that there are two possibilities here.  1) the DM allows metagaming.  If that's the case, the DM won't deny the blatant metagaming going on in your example.  2) the DM does not allow metagaming, in which case metagaming is cheating.  A DM saying no to cheating is not "overriding player input" as players don't get to provide input that is cheating.




What about the non-binary third option; the DM allows some metagaming? I mean, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of D&D games fall into this category, so it seems odd to leave it out. 




Maxperson said:


> Metagaming is bringing in knowledge that the player has that the character doesn't and having the character act on it.  That's the definition.  My example is no different than a player reading the Monster Manual and using the puzzles attached to the monsters in game.  In both cases the player is going to books that the DM is supposed to use, learning knowledge, and then bringing it in for the PC to use.




No, not necessarily. All of my players except one have been a DM at some point. Some for quite some length of time and to quite a large amount of people. And all of them, with the one exception, have been gaming since we were kids in the 80s. So even if they've never read the MM or DMG or whatever other book you want to mention, they all know about trolls and fire. Even the new gamer who hasn't read any DM aimed books. 

It's not surprising to any of them, and that's why I'd never bore them by having them play an encounter where they had to "guess" about fire. I'd actually be glad that the player came up with a way to justify the use of fire if we did wind up in such a scenario. 




Maxperson said:


> Yep. Sort of like how monster weaknesses are established in advanced, not announced to the players, such that the player might take extra steps like reading the Monster Manual to learn it.




Do your players need to read the MM to know about trolls? Stop it.



Maxperson said:


> @_*hawkeyefan*_ has said that the player should be allowed to do this and that the DM is a jerk for not allowing it.  He has also made the claim that it's "Mother May I" to say no.




Yes, in this instance....absolutely. 

It's odd to me that in these discussions, you always advocate for the DM using their judgement, that D&D works because you have a DM who is acting on "behalf of the game" and so on. Here I give an example of the DM using their judgement, and you declare it wrong. 



Maxperson said:


> It doesn't matter where the player got the outside knowledge.  Bringing it in via a weak justification is still no different than bringing in knowledge of a module you know that the DM is running.
> 
> Let's go with a personal example.  I've run the Desert of Desolation series at least 3 times.  Well after that, a DM I used to play with decided to run it.  I remembered many of the secrets.  According to what you are saying here, it would have been okay for me to bring in my Uncle Cheap Justification to let me know all of those secrets via talks he had with me in my youth.




No. You know the differences between these two examples, so stop treating them the same. Yes, they are similar in that they use player knowledge. But they are also different, and the differences are more important than the similarity. 

In a case like you're describing, where a player who's previously run an adventure finds himself as a player in that adventure, there are any number of ways that his knowledge can be handled. The first is that you simply ignore it; just play the game as best you can without spoiling things for the other players. Nothing wrong with that, although it may be difficult at times. Another way would be for the DM and player to discuss this and address it in the fiction; "your character has previously been to the adventure site, but was struck in the head before wandering off and being found by merchants, so his memory of things may be a bit fuzzy". 

The player has the knowledge in both of these cases. So why not go with the second? Where it's acknowledged and incorporated into the game rather than having to pretend you don't know what you know? 

Again, I don't want to get too bogged down in the metagame discussion because that was only the example I used about MMI. The fact is that D&D is a largely DM Authoritative game....and although there's nothing at all wrong with that, it is what it is. My example would play out radically differently in other games because they are not set up the same way. For many other games, the dice are what determines the outcome of any check. For others, the GM and players may openly discuss the fiction and the characters and decide what's best as a result.


----------



## Manbearcat

S'mon said:


> Exploration - finding out stuff
> Combat - beating people/things.
> Social - interacting with people. This typically involves elements of finding out stuff, beating people, but also mutually beneficial interaction - alliance building, mate-bonding, friendship et al.
> 
> Travelling a known route isn't Exploration, but travelling an unknown route & encountering new places along the way does have an Exploration element I think, in 5e D&D terms. Of course if it's abstracted - line on the map style - then it's not Exploration, it's closer to Downtime, as Mr P noted.






pemerton said:


> To be honest, even in the context of 5e D&D this is looking to me like a dubious system of classification in the way that you present it, because social can include both exploration and combat.
> 
> To me, it seems fairly clear that the utility of the "3 pillars" is not in identifying categories of fictinal activity, but in identifying ways of handling stuff at the table. In particular, as I understand it, the 5e "3 pillars" are an attempt to capture in a single classificatory scheme some D&D traditions concerning how different sorts of action-resolution are handled.






pemerton said:


> Here is one difference: reading the Monster Manual, or the monster section of B/X, is a fairly standard part of learning to play the game; whereas reading a module before playing it is generally considered cheating.




Couple quick thoughts right quick about:

* RPG pillars

* Metagaming

You could probably break down the actual experience at the table of playing a TTRPG to:

*Discovery*

- "All these years...my brother isn't who I thought he was...so how do I trust anyone?"

- "The stonework turns on a vertical axis as you push it, the secret door revealing the overwhelming stench of a charnel pit, your flickering torchlight catching hints of gold amidst the pile of death."

- "My character has Trait x that makes her calculated and cool...but she did thing y in the heat of the moment that, upon reflection, turned out rash and impulsive (when I used the Trait against her in the dice pool).  What does that say about her?"

*Creation*

- GM sees that your character and another character have Bond/Belief x that are at tension and uses that tension when a failure arises to introduce a conflict/obstacle that highlights that rift.

- A player has "A Lover in Every Port" either allowing the player to introduce an NPC that will help the PCs in their situation.  If the dice come up a certain way, the GM gets to complicate the relationship with the NPC (while also honoring the help).

- GM rolls Reaction for NPCs and it comes up with a difficult result...now they have to come up with some interesting fiction to explain that.

*Competition*

- "We're going to overcome this conflict/obstacle!"

- "I don't feel like I did a good job challenging character x's theme/archetype/ethos last week.  I'm going to do a much better job this week."

- "I wonder if I can go nova and end this conflict immediately?"


Harkening to the "player reads module" before play.  Why is this universally abhorred as dysfunctional metagaming?  

Its simple.

The player is completely nullifying the actual RPGing experience at the table as it pertains to all 3 of legitimate Discovery, Creation, and Competition in exchange for some morbid idea of social currency gained.

What about a player pretending to not know something (eg Trolls and Fire)?  If you (the player) already know that _answer x_ is the solution to _problem y_...then which of the above 3 have you delegitimized?

Discovery?  Nope.  There is nothing to discover.

Competition?  Nope.  There is nothing truly being tested.

Creation?  I think is where someone like Max, Lanefan, Saelorn disagree with the rest of us.  My personal take on this is simple.  A creation of a fiction that I'm interested in partaking in needs to have players advocating for their PCs as hard as they can.  If the rules or gaming ethos says "this yields degenerate play despite the fact that Discovery and Competition are both null in this moment of play", then there is something wrong with either (a) the system or (b) the content being introduced by the GM, or (c) both.


----------



## Sadras

When it comes to metagaming our table's primary concern is what knowledge is shared and I'm not referring to monsters but what has been revealed to a PC by another PC or NPC. If a player forgets something or makes a connection their character could not have, they are quickly reminded by the table and the fiction is appropriately amended.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I am still not really following. By "highs" do you mean pleasure and/or excitement?




Yes, I'm positing that given the pre-structure say in traditional gaming that _beating the module_-styled games might give players a greater sense of enjoyment that one which is loose, and/or unscripted with a shared-narrative. Essentially players (not characters) versus the module/puzzle.

To reiterate, my statement is not said to disparage a particular playstyle and just to add that not even I feel I run _beating the module_ styled-games. I have only ever done it once with B9's The Great Escape, and as it turned, it was immensely satisfying and surprising as the PC's actually survived and _beat the module_ per RAW. 

EDIT: There is no data ofcourse for this just speculation on my part.



> For instance, based on my experience posting in this thread and posting about my Traveller game, some GMs would take the view that it is unrealistic that a detained PC should be able to wrestle a gun from a guard at all. At a table where the GM made such a decision, I think the game would be less exciting than the session I GMed.




Funny enough, my example above _The Great Escape,_ is similar in this regard with PC prisoners (with no equipment or weapons) attempting to break free of their bonds and escape a keep.


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] addresses this above, but I just wish to emphasize the point: system; at least as much as genre tropes, social conventions, aesthetic preferences, etc.; necessarily restricts or unlocks how the players engage the fiction. Understanding what the system does allows a game to become _fiction first_, if that is the desired outcome; poor comprehension of system blocks allowing engagment of the fiction first, as players stumble their way through mechanics and play directives that work with or against their desired fictional outcomes.



Quite right.  I suppose I'm sort of looking at it from the other direction, though: asking first what do I/we want from the fiction (as opposed to what we're getting) and only after answering that then asking what do I have to do to the system to make it work.

And to answer the first question one has to be able to somehow analyze the fiction, and this is where the aspects model comes in handy.  Some players/GMs want to focus on one particular aspect (the names given to the extremes would, I suppose, be drama queens, combat wombats, and pixel-bitchers*) while others are happy with a mix of all three and still others don't care much at all as long as there's still beer in the fridge.

* I can't think of an 'extreme' name for a player whose primary focus is downtime, even though I play with one. 

Knowing a) which aspects are of most interest to people - both at a specific table and in general - then informs me-as-DM as to the sort of things I should include or downplay, where I have any choice in the matter.  I can then also step back and ask whether the system is helping, hindering, or neither. (the ideal for me is 'neither'; ideally I'd prefer the system be as unobtrusive and out-of-the-way as possible, and familiarity can provide this even if it's otherwise a bit on the rules-heavy side)


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> Quite right.  I suppose I'm sort of looking at it from the other direction, though: asking first what do I/we want from the fiction (as opposed to what we're getting) and only after answering that then asking what do I have to do to the system to make it work.




But this avoids the other part of my post, which you elided: your commitment to the single vision of a particular system (houseruled 1E D&D, right?) and resolute avoidance of other game systems with very different aspects, mechanics, principles, etc. ensures that you will find yourself asking "what do I have to do to make it work [in this system]" rather than finding a system that more closely aligns with the vision of fictional possibilities you have in mind from the get go, without tinkering. Further, it ensures that what you see will always be filtered through that narrow system's prism rather than being able to step beyond the light of that single, distorting lens and instead view gaming through a variety of different lenses!


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> * I can't think of an 'extreme' name for a player whose primary focus is downtime, even though I play with one.




Suggesting: Thermal bather


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I'm positing that given the pre-structure say in traditional gaming that _beating the module_-styled games might give players a greater sense of enjoyment that one which is loose, and/or unscripted with a shared-narrative.



That's not my experience, subject - I guess - to the fact that I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "shared narrative" but am guessing that you mean to include games where the GM frames scenes that impose pressure in response to player-signalled themes/cues.

I'm not sure what the basis is for your conjecture. To explain by way of comparison: Some people like solving crosswords. Others like debating at seminars. The former is pre-structured. The latter is social, and has a responsisve and evolutionary dynamic. Both are intellectual and require good command of one's words. I don't see what reason there would be to think that solving crosswords, _in general_, should be more enjoyable.

If you're positing that trying to _beat the moduole_ must, in general, be more _demanding_ on players than playing a scene-framed game, then I flat-out disagree. I've never played a RPG that is more demanding on players than Burning Wheel.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> To explain by way of comparison: Some people like solving crosswords. Others like debating at seminars. The former is pre-structured. The latter is social, and has a responsisve and evolutionary dynamic. Both are intellectual and require good command of one's words. I don't see what reason there would be to think that solving crosswords, _in general_, should be more enjoyable.




The analogy I use for players new to it, is that of a dinner, eating meals already made served by the Gm in the living room, who hopes they will enjoy it  and maybe get to dessert, as opposed to everyone bringing ingredients, recipes, spices, and the Gm will cook it on the spot, with all collaborating between the kitchen and the living room.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Not at all. In fact I posted the exact opposite of that:




You posted the opposite, but the logic you used applies to monsters as well.



> To elaborate yet further: whereas some versions of D&D direct new players to read the monster section (eg Moldvay Basic) and others are silent on the matter (AD&D, 3E, 4e); and whereas it is a ubiquitious feature of D&D play that one encounters the same monsters in new campaigns, and hence knows the weaknesses despite never having had this particular PC deal with them before; most modules that I'm familiar with have a bit somewhere near the start which says _Don't read this if you're going to play it as opposed to GM it_.




The existence of skills designed to let the PCs know monster abilities and weaknesses proves at least for 3e and 4e, that the players are not intended to just be able to pull the knowledge out of their rears and use it in game.  



> The game provides no rules for actually dealing with this, because when the game was invented it was taken for granted that players, being good wargamers, would do what you call "metagaming" without anyone looking for an ingame rationale.




The game provided skills for it in 3e and 4e, and 5e.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Come on now. If you don't see the difference between the example I gave and the one you decided to come up with, then I don't think there's any reason in discussion, is there? It's like we have two gunshot victims, and you want to treat the guy whose pinky toe was shot off the same as the one who was hit in the head. "But they're both gunshot wounds!!!"




The point is a valid one.  Steal $100 or steal $100,000, both are bad.  Sure, it's a matter of degree, but it's a matter of degree between two bad things.

I said "veteran players" for a reason. If you've played D&D for any significant length of time, you know trolls are vulnerable to fire. For a veteran player to come up with an excuse why his character knows that is perfectly fine in my game. I can understand why it may not be for your game. But doing so means that such authority is in the hands of the DM. Which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on what the DM and players want from the game. D&D is meant to be a largely DM driven game, so I don't think it would typically be a problem.



> When I said that such a DM was being a jerk, it's because he ignored the cue that his veteran players didn't want to play the "pretend not to know" game. The player came up with a way to bypass it. To me, this is a player contributing....he's come up with an element that helped explain his character's actions, and also cued teh DM to the type of stuff he'd like to do in the game....or at least the type of stuff he'd rather not do, in this case. To me, that's helpful; I want to know what my players want out of a game. If the DM chooses to thwart that and forces the players to play out the scenario in some arbitrary "when-is-it-okay-to-use-fire" encounter, then yeah, I'd say that DM is forcing a "Mother May I" situation, and he's possibly ignoring his players' desires for play.
> 
> The players have to ask "Mother May I use Fire?" and the DM sits back and says "No" until some arbitrary point where he then decides "Okay, yes, you can use fire."




So I'm going to counter with the players being the jerks.  They went into a game knowing that the DM doesn't allow metagaming and by virtue of sitting down to play, they agreed to those terms.  Going back on it later with the troll is fairly jerkish behavior.

And once again, denial does not equate to "Mother May I."  



> There is no objective definition of the term as it relates to RPG play, as this thread has proven.




Metagaming being out of character knowledge being brought into the game is the standard(by far the most common) definition.  Sure, you'll get corner cases like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] who like to try and redefine things to fit their narratives, but that doesn't work and just ends up causing arguments.   



> Maybe your unyielding opinion on what the term means is the obstacle to actually listening to what others are saying? Would you say that you see why I use the term Mother May I, and it's just a case of you wish I'd use another term? Or are you unclear of what the actual issue I'm describing may be?




To be honest, it's a pejorative no matter what your intent behind the use, so I really don't care why you are using it.  It's a term that does not belong in civil conversation. 



> What about the non-binary third option; the DM allows some metagaming? I mean, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of D&D games fall into this category, so it seems odd to leave it out.




If he allows some metagaming, he allows metagaming.  You either allow it(in whole or in part) or you do not. 



> No. You know the differences between these two examples, so stop treating them the same. Yes, they are similar in that they use player knowledge. But they are also different, and the differences are more important than the similarity.




Theft is theft.  Cheating is cheating.  Metagaming is metagaming.  A difference in degree does not change that for me.  If someone altered 1 die roll, and another person metagamed the module, I would treat them both the same.  They would get their one warning and the next instance of cheating would be their last at a game that I run.

Since you seem to feel that degree matters, and metagaming a troll is okay, but metagaming a module is not, where do you draw the line?  At what point does metagaming become cheating for you?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The game provided skills for it in 3e and 4e, and 5e.



These are devices for allowing an ignorant player to oblige the GM to inform him/her.

They don't tell us that players who are already informed are meant to do whatever-it-is that you think they're meant to do. (And frankly I don't know what that is.)


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> Discovery?  Nope.  There is nothing to discover.
> 
> Competition?  Nope.  There is nothing truly being tested.
> 
> Creation?  I think is where someone like Max, Lanefan, Saelorn disagree with the rest of us.  My personal take on this is simple.  A creation of a fiction that I'm interested in partaking in needs to have players advocating for their PCs as hard as they can.  If the rules or gaming ethos says "this yields degenerate play despite the fact that Discovery and Competition are both null in this moment of play", then there is something wrong with either (a) the system or (b) the content being introduced by the GM, or (c) both.




So there is discovery there.  When I play a character, I have no idea what all my PC knows.  I do know that he does not know everything I know, and I know that he knows things that I don't.  Through roleplay, exploration of the world, background, and die rolls, I discover what he knows as I play the game.

Creation is also there, as my playstyle still involves creating the fiction of the game.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> These are devices for allowing an ignorant player to oblige the GM to inform him/her.




Um, no.  They are skills for the PC to find out what abilities and weaknesses monsters have.  The rules say so.  You can change it for your game to only apply to ignorant players, but the game makes no such distinction.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Um, no.  They are skills for the PC to find out what abilities and weaknesses monsters have.  The rules say so.



Here is the rule for monster knowledge checks in the 4e Rules Compendium (p 130):

Refer to these rules *whenever a character makes a check* to identify a monster, regardless of the knowledge skill he or she is using. The DM typically tells a player which skill to use, based on the creature’s origin or relevant keyword. If a monster’s origin and keyword suggest the use of two different skills, the DM decides which skill can be used to identify the monster, and might allow the use of either skill. . . .​
Here is the same rule from the 4e PHB (p 180):

Regardless of the knowledge skill you’re using, refer to the rules here *when making a check* to identify a monster. . . .​
Both entries go on to state DCs for learning various bits of information about a monster.

Both entries also - as I have emphasised - explain that they govern checks made to learn stuff about monsters. They say nothing about other ways in which a character might know something about a monster (eg because the GM tells the player; because the player already knows; etc). And obviiously if a player already knows about a monster then there is no particular reason why s/he would need to make a check to identify and learn about it. Hence, as I said, these rules are a device for players who _don't_ have that knowledge to oblige the GM to share it with them.

A table could adopt further conventions around this: for instance, I can imagine a table which took the view that player A, who knows, shouldn't tell player B, who is ignorant, unless one or the other successfully makes a check (which would then provide an ingame rationalisation of A's PC's knowledge and hence of A's PC's communication to B's PC). But that would be a table convention/"house rule". There is no discussion of this sort of thing in the rules for monster knowledge checks.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Here is the rule for monster knowledge checks in the 4e Rules Compendium (p 130):
> 
> Refer to these rules *whenever a character makes a check* to identify a monster, regardless of the knowledge skill he or she is using. The DM typically tells a player which skill to use, based on the creature’s origin or relevant keyword. If a monster’s origin and keyword suggest the use of two different skills, the DM decides which skill can be used to identify the monster, and might allow the use of either skill. . . .​
> Here is the same rule from the 4e PHB (p 180):
> 
> Regardless of the knowledge skill you’re using, refer to the rules here *when making a check* to identify a monster. . . .​
> Both entries go on to state DCs for learning various bits of information about a monster.
> 
> Both entries also - as I have emphasised - explain that they govern checks made to learn stuff about monsters. They say nothing about other ways in which a character might know something about a monster (eg because the GM tells the player; because the player already knows; etc). And obviiously if a player already knows about a monster then there is no particular reason why s/he would need to make a check to identify and learn about it. Hence, as I said, these rules are a device for players who _don't_ have that knowledge to oblige the GM to share it with them.
> 
> A table could adopt further conventions around this: for instance, I can imagine a table which took the view that player A, who knows, shouldn't tell player B, who is ignorant, unless one or the other successfully makes a check (which would then provide an ingame rationalisation of A's PC's knowledge and hence of A's PC's communication to B's PC). But that would be a table convention/"house rule". There is no discussion of this sort of thing in the rules for monster knowledge checks.




This is a school of Red Herring.  Nobody said that the DM couldn't just give the PC the knowledge.  The DM is free to rule that every bit of the MM is in every PC's head if he wants. What I said was that the skills were there to give PCs knowledge, and the are. That's the entire reason for their existence as monster lore skills.  Not for the ignorant.  Not for the new.  Not for the old.  For everyone.  

In 4e this fact is backed up on page 180 of the PHB with the Monster Knowledge Check section.

Monster Knowledge: No action required—*either you know the answer or you don’t*.
✦ DC: See the table.
✦ Success: You identify a creature as well as its type, typical temperament, and keywords. Higher results give you information about the creature’s powers, resistances, and vulnerabilities.
✦ Failure: You don’t recall any pertinent information. The DM might allow you to make a new check if further information comes to light.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], did you read the bits of the rules that I bolded: the monster knowledge checks apply when a check is made to determine a PC's knowledge. If the PC already has the knowledge because, for instance, the player has the knowledge and is acting on it, then obviously no check is required and the monster knowledge check rules do not apply.

The point being, therefore, that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s example - of a player narrating his/her PC having been told a tale about trolls by an adventuring uncle, thereby rationalising in the fiction how it is that the PC (like the player) knows that fire is needed to kill trolls - is completely consistent with the 4e rules for player and PC knowledge about monsters.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> To be honest, it's a pejorative no matter what your intent behind the use, so I really don't care why you are using it.  It's a term that does not belong in civil conversation.



It still amazes me that you can say this while also unironically using the terms "metagaming" and "railroading" as pejoratives.


----------



## Numidius

Mother, meta i? 

A TPK is about to occurr. One PC might give resolutive help, but dares not because metagaming. Players and Gm pause for a moment... what happens then?


----------



## Aldarc

I don't think that "metagaming" is a helpful or accurate term for TTRPGs. If we were talking about the "metagame" of League of Legends, for example, then we are talking about tier lists of characters, strategies, counters, etc. Likewise, if we were talking about the "metagame" of Magic the Gathering, then we would likewise be talking about deck builds, strategies, counters, etc. If we are talking about the "metagame" of a sport, then we are talking about winning strategies, fouling, clock management, etc. 

If one had no knowledge of D&D, then one would probably believe that the "metagame" refers to effective character builds (i.e., optimization), dungeon navigation/combat strategies and tactics (e.g., 10-ft. pole, retainers hauling loot, attacks of opportunity, gaming advantage, etc.), resource management (e.g., 15-minute adventuring day, etc.), reward systems (e.g., gold = XP), and the culture surrounding play. In fact, such a player would likely even assume that having knowledge of troll counters would be encouraged, since knowing the meta is typically regarded as a sign of system awareness and player skill/mastery. TTRPGs is really the only medium that uses "metagame" as a pejorative used for DMs to shout at players for "ruining" what they planned. And yes, this use does foster in the players a "DM decides" approach that is at least comparable to MMI. Because implicit in this is the player having to constantly play with the question "Is it permissible, DM, that my character knows this?" 

And some metagaming seems inherently impossible. Let us imagine that we were running the Caves of Chaos in the Keep on the Borderlands. There is a Total Party Kill. The party rolls up new characters. The reality is that these player characters will play things differently albeit with knowledge of the prior scenario. Party 1 cared about talking to the different NPCs. This time Party 2 doesn't give a flying duck about it, because they just want to get back to the CoC. Per (TTRPG) definition, that's metagaming. But the DM forcing them through those hoops again would also be largely performative, if not a punitive. 

They arrive at the CoC. Which cave will they pick? Is it metagaming if they pick the cave they knew they experienced the TPK? (Probably.) The players know that the cave likely has less monsters in it now. The players know that their old loot is there on the bodies of the corpses or looted by the orcs. So they pick Cave no. 4 and resume orc-killing. 

I think it is as much as   [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said: this basically informs the DM what the players want to engage. They don't care about playing through the red tape again; they want to resume what they had previously been doing prior to the TPK.


----------



## pemerton

As far as trolls are concerned, the whole "metagaming" thing is the obvious result of a collision of play expectations.

When the game was invented, learning and remebering monster vulnerabilities was a player skill, much like becoming better at counting the cards and following the play in bridge. The fact that players would start new campaigns in new worlds with new PCs, and the implications this might have for the player/PC knowledge and experience interface, had barely been thought of. You can see the evidence of this in Gygax's DMG, where he hems and haws over whether experienced players starting a new campaign should start at 1st level, or whether it's OK for them to start with PCs whose mechanical prospects are more aligned with their player expertise.

Over the past 40 years, the "replay"/start-new-campaigns-at-1st-level paradigm has become predominant. But it's obvious that this paradigm is a poor fit for a design based aroudn _reusing puzzles_ in those new campaign, which is what is going on with trolls and fire.

I mean, just look at it practically - what is a player who knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but who is playing a notionally ignorant PC, meant to do. How do you "roleplay" the process of solving a puzzle that you've already solved? The whole idea is ridiculous.

4e addressed this issue by changing the challenge: even if a group of players know that fire is needed to properly hurt the troll, the play of the game makes it non-trivial to deliver the right damage-type, because the PC buiild rules mean that it's unlikely that every PC will have the ability to do meaningful amounts of fire damage, and so their is a tactical challenge in bringing the right sort of damage to bear against the right target.

Another obvious approach would be to make the whole thing mechanically more abstract: a character has to succeed at some sort of knowledge or inspiration check in order to then generate a change in the game state which enhances attacks against the troll (the change could simply be a changed status, or perhaps a bonus die like an asset in Cortex+ Heroic).

But this isn't consistent with D&D's approach to knowledge, equipment, etc - which assumes players are free to choose what their PCs are doing (subject to what's on their equipment list), rather than gating those choices behind successful checks. Which takes us back to the general territory of the contrast between D&D and something like DW's Spout Lore and Discern Realities moves.

EDIT: I think there's some overlap, and synergy, between this post and [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]'s just upthread of it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> It still amazes me that you can say this while also unironically using the terms "metagaming" and "railroading" as pejoratives.



Well, metagaming and railroading are things Max doesn't do (or strongly believes he doesn't do). MMI sounds pretty close to things he _does_ do.  Viola.


----------



## Manbearcat

Maxperson said:


> So there is discovery there.  When I play a character, I have no idea what all my PC knows.  I do know that he does not know everything I know, and I know that he knows things that I don't.  Through roleplay, exploration of the world, background, and die rolls, I discover what he knows as I play the game.
> 
> Creation is also there, as my playstyle still involves creating the fiction of the game.




I think you misunderstood that part of my post. I wasn’t referring to a particular playstyle. I was referring to a particular moment of play where you, the player, already know something very relevant about the fiction (due to prior exposure) and the incentive structures of not advocating for your PC are misaligned with the goal of defeating the objective. In such a scenario, Discovery is absent and Competition becomes bastardized (as you work against your, the player and group, own competitive interests).

In such a moment of play, the nature of Creativity becomes something VERY different than if true Discovery and true Competition were both inputs to play.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], did you read the bits of the rules that I bolded: the monster knowledge checks apply when a check is made to determine a PC's knowledge. If the PC already has the knowledge because, for instance,* the player has the knowledge and is acting on it*, then obviously no check is required and the monster knowledge check rules do not apply.




If you house rule the bolded portion in, sure.  The skill itself is intended to be used to determine PC knowledge when there is no in game reason for the PC to know the information, and Uncle Ernie telling the PC about every monster is just weak justification, not really a valid in game reason.



> The point being, therefore, that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s example - of a player narrating his/her PC having been told a tale about trolls by an adventuring uncle, thereby rationalising in the fiction how it is that the PC (like the player) knows that fire is needed to kill trolls - is completely consistent with the 4e rules for player and PC knowledge about monsters.




If you have to rationalize the knowledge, you've failed.  There should be an appropriate reason for it.

"ra·tion·al·ize

verb
1.
attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, *even if these are not true or appropriate*."


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> It still amazes me that you can say this while also unironically using the terms "metagaming" and "railroading" as pejoratives.




Metagaming is not a pejorative.  It's a defined act that I view as cheating.  If you don't, great.  I wouldn't play in that game, but you are welcome to use it.  Railroading is not a playstyle, so it's not a pejorative for a playstyle.  "Mother May I" on the other hand is only used as a pejorative for a valid playstyle that doesn't actually involve any "Mother May I."


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> "ra·tion·al·ize
> 
> verb
> 1.
> attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, *even if these are not true or appropriate*."



pedantic adjective
pe·​dan·​tic | \ pi-ˈdan-tik

Definition of pedantic

1 : of, relating to, or *being a pedant*


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> pedantic adjective
> pe·​dan·​tic | \ pi-ˈdan-tik
> 
> Definition of pedantic
> 
> 1 : of, relating to, or *being a pedant*




Nice joke there.

However, in a discussion over the appropriateness of metagaming, showing that something is inappropriate is not pedantic.  It's relevant.


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> I think you misunderstood that part of my post. I wasn’t referring to a particular playstyle. I was referring to a particular moment of play where you, the player, already know something very relevant about the fiction (due to prior exposure) and the incentive structures of not advocating for your PC are misaligned with the goal of defeating the objective. In such a scenario, Discovery is absent and Competition becomes bastardized (as you work against your, the player and group, own competitive interests)




I didn't misunderstand.  I was offering a different viewpoint, and a failure to understand different viewpoints is where these discussions tend to go wrong.  When I already know something as a player, but my character doesn't, I am indeed discovering what he knows via those activities I described. For me discovery is happening.  For you, not so much. 

I also don't view the competition as bastardized, as I and my players view roleplaying your character properly, even to the detriment of character and party, as good roleplaying.  The competition doesn't override good roleplay.  Roleplaying is a part of that competition and helps define it.

That means that if my PC doesn't know about troll weaknesses, it's good roleplaying to portray that in character.  You may disagree and that's fine.  People have different views and desires when playing the game.  My way doesn't become bastardized or lose the discovery aspect I mentioned just because you view things differently, though.


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## sd_jasper

I'm going to chime in here with what I think this whole discussion on monster knowledge boils down to: *Is it part of the game?* What I mean by this is, does monster knowledge _matter_ to the players and GM?

Let's say I'm playing a game with a "scholar" class or character type. My character's strength is the things that he knows. If any player can just declare that they know everything about monster X, then my characters role in the groups is greatly diminished or even made totally unnecessary. Even if I were not a scholar, but my character had invested in knowledge skills (over other abilities), then again I could be "playing the game wrong" if the GM was willing to just give out the info my character should have unique access too, to any PC.

Or if I were a GM and expected the players to invest in such skills/abilities, and that discovering a monsters weakness to play a major part of the game's combat... then I sure wouldn't allow players to simply declare that they know all about whatever monster.

On the other hand, if there is no expectation of discovering this sort of information... if the game is just about killing the monsters, not figuring out how to, then it would be fine to let the players make decorations of "uncle told me...". Better yet, it should be assumed that the characters know, and needs no justifying statements.

_As an aside: Monster knowledge does matter in my games, and if PCs start charging a troll with fire w/o making a monster identification check, they may just end up running into Trolls that are healed by fire._


----------



## Numidius

Numidius said:


> A TPK is about to occurr. One PC might give resolutive help, but dares not because metagaming. Players and Gm pause for a moment... what happens then?




I'm sincerely curious on how [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] would approach it


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Nice joke there.
> 
> However, in a discussion over the appropriateness of metagaming, showing that something is inappropriate is not pedantic.  It's relevant.



I think that it's fine to show that something is inappropriate. However, a dictionary entry for the definition for 'rationalization' is neither relevant nor demonstrates how what you describe is inappropriate. You actually have to make an argument using reason and _connected_ support that works in your favor. A dangling dictionary definition is just lazy. If you had not included it, then nothing about your argumentative thrust would have changed nor does it add any argumentative weight to what you wrote. 

And this says nothing about whether your claim actually has merit. I think that if you are roleplaying a character and you are not rationalizing the knowledge, then you've failed at roleplaying. A critical part of roleplay, IMHO, would require that the principal actor rationalize the character's thoughts, actions, and behaviors. If you succeed at making any given Intellect/knowledge check, whether of your own provoking or DM telling you to roll, then the actor is forced to rationalize their character's knowledge that they somehow know. But the idea that the actor can't possess character knowledge unless the actor succeeds at a roll leads to some odd situations. I know that many players have buckled against DMs telling the player how their character feels, but it's also odd that a DM could tell a character what they know or don't as if somehow knowledge and feelings were truly distinct cognitive categories. 



Maxperson said:


> Metagaming is not a pejorative.  It's a defined act that I view as cheating.  If you don't, great.  I wouldn't play in that game, but you are welcome to use it.  Railroading is not a playstyle, so it's not a pejorative for a playstyle.  "Mother May I" on the other hand is only used as a pejorative for a valid playstyle that doesn't actually involve any "Mother May I."



How is "metagaming" not a pejorative when "it's a defined act that [you] view as cheating" and has decidedly negative connotations?  Since you prefer to use dictionaries for your arguments, perhaps you should consult one for the term 'pejorative' and how consider how 'metagaming' is used in the parole of TTRPG discussions. And how do you not recognize the metnal gymnastics you are doing for "metagaming" and "railroading" here? Oedipus blinded himself, but he still knew what he had done. But you seem to have blinded yourself so that you can delude yourself into ignorance of what you are doing here.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> The point is a valid one.  Steal $100 or steal $100,000, both are bad.  Sure, it's a matter of degree, but it's a matter of degree between two bad things.




No. Not every example of metagaming is bad. Maybe none is bad. It really depends on table expectations and desires, and the system you're playing. You are clearly talking about D&D, so again, that's how I'm proceeding with the discussion, but I think it's worth a momentary detour from D&D to point that out. Blades in the Dark, for instance, offers as one of a GM's Best Practices to "Keep the meta channel open". The game expects the GM and players to discuss meta content. So clearly, metagaming is not always bad. Perhaps in the context of D&D only you may claim that, but even then, it's just your opinion. I am very comfortable with certain types of metagaming in D&D. 




Maxperson said:


> So I'm going to counter with the players being the jerks.  They went into a game knowing that the DM doesn't allow metagaming and by virtue of sitting down to play, they agreed to those terms.  Going back on it later with the troll is fairly jerkish behavior.
> 
> And once again, denial does not equate to "Mother May I."




Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what the expectations were, or how much was established prior to play. 

And denial _does not always_ equate to Mother May I, but in this instance I think it's a pretty strong example. "DM may I now use fire on the troll?" 



Maxperson said:


> Metagaming being out of character knowledge being brought into the game is the standard(by far the most common) definition.  Sure, you'll get corner cases like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] who like to try and redefine things to fit their narratives, but that doesn't work and just ends up causing arguments.




The lack of a clear definition was for Mother May I as a term. There's no set definition, as this thread very clearly states. Even this post. I don't think the term need be pejorative. You do. 



Maxperson said:


> To be honest, it's a pejorative no matter what your intent behind the use, so I really don't care why you are using it.  It's a term that does not belong in civil conversation.




You don't get to tell people what they can say or how they can say it. Regardless that a pejorative absolutely requires intent, that doesn't change the fact that people can use whatever term they want to in a discussion like this. This thread and the one that spawned it are largely involved in determining what the term means, so it would be impossible not to use it.  

Otherwise, as others have pointed out, you're using metagaming as a pejorative by insisting that it's cheating, and no manner of qualifying statements matter, it's simply a pejorative and therefore not allowed in the discussion. 




Maxperson said:


> If he allows some metagaming, he allows metagaming.  You either allow it(in whole or in part) or you do not.




I don't agree. I think there are degrees that are allowed. Honestly, if I had to take as strong a stance as you like to take, I'd say there's no such thing as a RPG without metagaming on the part of the players. It's simply impossible. 

So really, the question is "how much is allowed?" rather than "is any allowed?"



Maxperson said:


> Theft is theft.  Cheating is cheating.  Metagaming is metagaming.  A difference in degree does not change that for me.  If someone altered 1 die roll, and another person metagamed the module, I would treat them both the same.  They would get their one warning and the next instance of cheating would be their last at a game that I run.




Except for the DM, right? He can alter any rolls he sees fit, right? He can also add any house rule he likes or any amount of metagaming and so on. It's the DM's game, right? 

And you wonder why people are looking at this as Mother May I? The DM is more important than the players, and has final say on nearly everything. This is the dynamic that people are criticizing, and your defense basically consists of doubling down on it. 

It like when someone says "stop shouting" and the other replies "I'M NOT BLOODY SHOUTING!"




Maxperson said:


> Since you seem to feel that degree matters, and metagaming a troll is okay, but metagaming a module is not, where do you draw the line?  At what point does metagaming become cheating for you?




This is where judgment is needed. You seem to place complete trust in the DM in all other matters, so why would you think this one would be so challenging? 

For me, it's about fun. We're playing a game, right? It's meant to be a fun, enjoyable experience. Let's look at the two examples we've been discussing.

In one, the players used a meta game trick to avoid a boring slog of fighting trolls and pretending they don't know the trick to killing them. They've done so in a way that contradicts nothing, and allows them to move more quickly past this challenge, and to get to something they find more interesting. They're trying to have fun. By contrast, the DM forcing them into some kind of arbitrary "pretend-to-guess-the-secret-you-already-know" encounter sounds pretty boring. 

In the other example, a player is familiar with a module having run it for another play group previously. Depending on how it's handled, the player can keep it to himself and allow others to enjoy the game, and he can play as a kind of observer, maybe enjoying watching others work toward figuring out and facing the challenges. This player sounds like he's trying to have fun and to ensure that others are, too. Seems all good to me. 

But if the player doesn't mention that he's familiar with the module, and instead seems to quickly figure out all the challenges and deal with all the obstacles....where's the fun in that? Maybe a person could get some kind of enjoyment out of that, but I would think it would be minimal when compared with a more standard form of play. And he's certainly not worried about the fun of the other players or the DM. So I'd view this as bad. 

It doesn't need to be that difficult. 

And I'm not saying that I allow any and all metagaming. Not by any means. I'll very often ask for all other players to be quiet and not offer advice when one PC is faced with some kind of decision where communication is not possible, and so on. That kind of stuff makes the encounters more dynamic and fun, and helps change things up. I like and value variety in my game, so that's what I try to do. If I had a player who came to me and said that the adventure I was about to run was one they were familiar with, I'd work with them to use that knowledge to make the experience unique. I'd incorporate the fact that the player knows the adventure into how I ran it. 

There are plenty of ways to allow metagaming that are acceptable and which can enhance the game rather than take away from it.


----------



## Lanefan

Catching up on several posts at once here...


pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what the basis is for your conjecture. To explain by way of comparison: Some people like solving crosswords. Others like debating at seminars. The former is pre-structured. The latter is social, and has a responsisve and evolutionary dynamic. Both are intellectual and require good command of one's words. I don't see what reason there would be to think that solving crosswords, _in general_, should be more enjoyable.



Interesting that your examples - whether intentionally or not - also imply a degree of social interactivity.  Solving crosswords is usually a solitary pastime, while debating is by definition going to involve other people.

 [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] ' analogy in the followign post regarding dinner preparation is much better, the only variable missing in the GM-made meal part is whether the GM asked for menu input before starting to cook and-or how well she listened to any responses.



> These are devices for allowing an ignorant player to oblige the GM to inform him/her.
> 
> They don't tell us that players who are already informed are meant to do whatever-it-is that you think they're meant to do. (And frankly I don't know what that is.)



They are also devices for telling a knowledgeable player playing an ignorant character when the player knowledge may be used (success on the skill check) and when it may not (failure on said check).

Obviously if a PC already has the knowledge e.g. this isn't the first time she's fought trolls then no check is required*.

* - barring very unusual circumstances e.g. PC amnesia.



			
				Numidius said:
			
		

> Mother, meta i?
> 
> A TPK is about to occurr. One PC might give resolutive help, but dares not because metagaming. Players and Gm pause for a moment... what happens then?



A DM might scrape around to try and find an out clause - give a PC a more or less difficult roll to know the relevant info even though she otherwise might not - but if it comes right down to it and the out-clauses fail, then TPK it is.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> I don't think that "metagaming" is a helpful or accurate term for TTRPGs. If we were talking about the "metagame" of League of Legends, for example, then we are talking about tier lists of characters, strategies, counters, etc. Likewise, if we were talking about the "metagame" of Magic the Gathering, then we would likewise be talking about deck builds, strategies, counters, etc. If we are talking about the "metagame" of a sport, then we are talking about winning strategies, fouling, clock management, etc.



M:tG is almost nothing but metagaming, or so it sometimes seems. 



> If one had no knowledge of D&D, then one would probably believe that the "metagame" refers to effective character builds (i.e., optimization), dungeon navigation/combat strategies and tactics (e.g., 10-ft. pole, retainers hauling loot, attacks of opportunity, gaming advantage, etc.), resource management (e.g., 15-minute adventuring day, etc.), reward systems (e.g., gold = XP), and the culture surrounding play. In fact, such a player would likely even assume that having knowledge of troll counters would be encouraged, since knowing the meta is typically regarded as a sign of system awareness and player skill/mastery. TTRPGs is really the only medium that uses "metagame" as a pejorative used for DMs to shout at players for "ruining" what they planned. And yes, this use does foster in the players a "DM decides" approach that is at least comparable to MMI. Because implicit in this is the player having to constantly play with the question "Is it permissible, DM, that my character knows this?"



I'll counter by saying it's on the player to think as her character would think and use only the knowledge that her character would have.  It's then on the DM to ensure that enough information comes out to allow the player a reasonable idea of what knowledge her character has or doesn't have.



> And some metagaming seems inherently impossible. Let us imagine that we were running the Caves of Chaos in the Keep on the Borderlands. There is a Total Party Kill. The party rolls up new characters. The reality is that these player characters will play things differently albeit with knowledge of the prior scenario. Party 1 cared about talking to the different NPCs. This time Party 2 doesn't give a flying duck about it, because they just want to get back to the CoC. Per (TTRPG) definition, that's metagaming. But the DM forcing them through those hoops again would also be largely performative, if not a punitive.
> 
> They arrive at the CoC. Which cave will they pick? Is it metagaming if they pick the cave they knew they experienced the TPK? (Probably.) The players know that the cave likely has less monsters in it now. The players know that their old loot is there on the bodies of the corpses or looted by the orcs. So they pick Cave no. 4 and resume orc-killing.



I'd say it would depend on how the players approach it all as PCs.  If they skip the town and head straight to the Caves then yeah, they're on their own and metagaming might become a problem.

However, I'd say they should have to interact with the town NPCs again, but that the interaction will take a different turn very quickly when an NPC says: "You're the second bunch of people been through here in just a few weeks intending to head out that way.  No idea what became of the first lot; nobody's seen 'em since they left."  It's on the DM to make sure this happens sooner rather than later.

That alone should inform the new PCs that a) there's other adventurers out there, be they alive or dead, and b) that they haven't returned red-flags the danger level, and c) that if the PCs don't already have a Ranger in the group they might want to recruit one to track the first adventuring group and see where it went.

And voila: metagaming issues largely headed off at the pass. 



> I think it is as much as   [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said: this basically informs the DM what the players want to engage. They don't care about playing through the red tape again; they want to resume what they had previously been doing prior to the TPK.



I've just above provided a fast-track means of achieving this end which is also perfectly plausible in the fiction.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> I'll counter by saying it's on the player to think as her character would think and use only *the knowledge that her character would have*.  It's then on the DM to ensure that enough information comes out to allow the player a reasonable idea of what knowledge her character has or doesn't have.



Wouldn't you say that this is probably the crux of contention?  



> I'd say it would depend on how the players approach it all as PCs.  If they skip the town and head straight to the Caves then yeah, they're on their own and metagaming might become a problem.



The extent of the "problem" is generally exaggerated. 



> However, I'd say they should have to interact with the town NPCs again,...
> 
> And voila: metagaming issues largely headed off at the pass.
> 
> I've just above provided a fast-track means of achieving this end which is also perfectly plausible in the fiction.



I'm not so sure. All you are doing is creating a post hoc in-game justification for the metagaming (with big spoonful of self-delusion) rather than actually stopping the metagaming.


----------



## Ovinomancer

ReL Metagaming

Metagaming, as noted by others, is talking about the game from outside of the game.  Houserules are part of metagaming, as you've evaluated how the game works as a game and decided to change it.  Party composition is metagaming, as the players discuss covering what skill areas the game will present.  Also, niche protection is part of metagaming.  All of these are okay.

The crux issue here is how GM centered game also define metagaming:  player knowledge of secret GM backstory that has not yet been revealed in play. I'll call this "backstory metagaming"

That's it, and it only exists in GM centered games.  Metagaming in Blades, for instance, is talking about the game as a game. It's important because Blades can deal with some pretty ugly themes, and having the ability to step away and discuss if that's okay and then modify the game being played based on that discussion is important.  Very important.  But there's never any problem with knowing secret GM backstory because there isn't any.

So, this problem of "backstory metagaming" where players act on secret GM backstory they haven't yet been told in this GM's game (to include monster statistics, sometimes) is only an issue for games that have secret GM backstory as an element of play.  This is a feed in for MMI play, as excessive secret GM backstory as a means to control play intrudes into the MMI space.  Secret GM backstory does not, inherently, do so, nor does some reasonable limitation of backstory metagaming, but, like all things, taking backstory metagaming to extremes results in bad play.


----------



## pemerton

sd_jasper said:


> As an aside: Monster knowledge does matter in my games, and if PCs start charging a troll with fire w/o making a monster identification check, they may just end up running into Trolls that are healed by fire.



You say this like it's a threat of punishment.

But if you want to play a puzzle game, then you need to set puzzles to which the players don't already know the answers. I can't see how that's not obvious.



sd_jasper said:


> Let's say I'm playing a game with a "scholar" class or character type. My character's strength is the things that he knows. If any player can just declare that they know everything about monster X, then my characters role in the groups is greatly diminished or even made totally unnecessary. Even if I were not a scholar, but my character had invested in knowledge skills (over other abilities), then again I could be "playing the game wrong" if the GM was willing to just give out the info my character should have unique access too, to any PC.
> 
> Or if I were a GM and expected the players to invest in such skills/abilities, and that discovering a monsters weakness to play a major part of the game's combat... then I sure wouldn't allow players to simply declare that they know all about whatever monster



How do you expect the combat with trolls to unfold if _players_ know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but you want them to play their PCs as ignorant? Do you expect the player to allow his/her PC to be killed by the trolls, in the name of roleplaying the PC's ignorance? If not, how do you envisage it unfolding.


----------



## Arilyn

pemerton said:


> You say this like it's a threat of punishment.
> 
> But if you want to play a puzzle game, then you need to set puzzles to which the players don't already know the answers. I can't see how that's not obvious.
> 
> How do you expect the combat with trolls to unfold if _players_ know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but you want them to play their PCs as ignorant? Do you expect the player to allow his/her PC to be killed by the trolls, in the name of roleplaying the PC's ignorance? If not, how do you envisage it unfolding.




Yes, at what point do you as a player decide that maybe fire will work on a regenerating troll? Fire could easily be a solution the characters might come up with. It won't die, burn it!!

Also, the characters live in the world. They hear stories, and unlike our world, many superstitions are correct, like stakes and sunlight on vampires. As players, we can't know how much worldly knowledge our characters have picked up. As a GM, I don't worry about players acting on their knowledge about trolls, vampires and zombies, etc. Everyone is presumed to be literate, so there must be books around, plus bard tales and songs, and oral traditions. I think it is very unfair to force players to continually swing ineffectually away at a critter they actually know how to beat. I've never had players super knowledgeable about the monster manuals. If I did, I might change some of the more obscure creatures, but monsters like trolls? Nah, it can be easily explained narratively.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> Wouldn't you say that this is probably the crux of contention?
> 
> The extent of the "problem" is generally exaggerated.
> 
> I'm not so sure. All you are doing is creating a post hoc in-game justification for the metagaming (with big spoonful of self-delusion) rather than actually stopping the metagaming.




Value system differences. I believe what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is putting a high value on is inducing a mental state during play which is focused on "thinking like the character", not on achieving goals or narrative, nor anything else particularly. Narrative serves then simply as a medium by which the proper inputs arrive at the players and they can adjust their pretended character mental state and shared understanding of the fictive world they form a part of. Other things are there, gamist considerations, player goals, etc. but only in a secondary place. At least this is how it looks if idealized, actual play is rarely so clear-cut. 
 [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] is not really THAT interested in the character mental state and maybe it is simply a part of the general fiction state which conditions how the game proceedes. It may have mechanical constraints and systems associated with it, etc. The content of the fiction and narrative, and the fun derived from "doing cool stuff" (or something) prevails. 

I'd note that D&D (even 4e) has an absolute insistence on PC's thought process being entirely free of mechanical constraints. The unspoken assumption being that this is the domain of 'RP' in which it is the player's job/prerogative to model the PC's mental state without constraints. Well, I would note that there ARE some constraints, but they seem, mostly, to be aimed at insuring more consistent modeling. Alignment for instance, ideally, provides a scaffold on which to hang the character's different proclivities and traits (albeit it doesn't necessarily work too well). Alignment change punishments then simply show up as 'sticks' to encourage this consistency. There are also some things like charms and whatnot, but those fall basically into the category of gotchas that are there to act as penalties for lack of skilled play, much like any trap or poison monster, etc.

So, in this sense D&D has always had a big giant 'thing' going for enabling this kind of play. This also explains why 5e really can't do much in the way of narrative 'story' type player-side mechanics, except as very mild optional add-ons, or alignment-like 'stuff' (personality traits). 

4e gets a couple of things explained here, one being the hostility to it, and the other being the lack of really explicit discussion of and more pervasive implementation of story mechanics or player-side mechanics. They are sort of 'unwritten rules' but not very explicit and you can basically play 4e like 2e if you want from the RP perspective.


----------



## sd_jasper

pemerton said:


> You say this like it's a threat of punishment.
> 
> But if you want to play a puzzle game, then you need to set puzzles to which the players don't already know the answers. I can't see how that's not obvious.




Punishment? I guess you could call it that. Not obvious? Oh, it is clearly indicated to the players before hand. There is no "ha ha, gotcha!" here. In fact the rules I most recently used explicitly state what skills are needed to identify various monster types. 



pemerton said:


> How do you expect the combat with trolls to unfold if _players_ know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but you want them to play their PCs as ignorant? Do you expect the player to allow his/her PC to be killed by the trolls, in the name of roleplaying the PC's ignorance? If not, how do you envisage it unfolding.




Well, assuming I am running a game where (1) there are trolls, (2) trolls and their weaknesses are not common knowledge to whatever civilization that the PCs are part of, and (3) the party hasn't previously run into trolls and learned all about them, then...

First, any PCs with the appropriate skill can roll to see if the recognize the troll. If they roll well, then I tell them they know what they are dealing with, what the weaknesses are, etc.

If they fail the skill roll, then I let them know they see "Large green humanoids" that they cannot identify. It is up to the PCs what happens next. I rarely ambush my players, so there is a good chance that if they are running into a new monster, they will have options to avoid or retreat. Maybe they decide to go back to town and research it. But, assuming they have somehow got themselves into a combat situation, then after a few rounds it will be clear that the creature they are battling has incredible regenerative capabilities. What happens then, again depends on the players. I would probably allow the players to say that they try to burn it, because trying fire is a pretty common thing no matter what the actual weakness might be. Or I might give a simple intelligence or perception check, that could give them some clue ("You notice that the creature is shying away from your torch even when it attacks"). Or they might just run away (again to try and research).

I actually had something like this happen in a game a couple of years ago. The PCs did know what trolls were and what could harm them, but they were not prepared but started the fight anyway (they were trying to rescue a comrade who had unwisely started drinking with trolls and passed out). They fought and chopped limbs off the trolls, but they kept reattaching. The group came close to getting the trolls disabled long enough to rescue their friend, but a bit of bad luck and the trolls were recovering quickly while the PCs were not. They ran to lick their wounds (and get some proper gear/spells).

Edit: I wanted to add that I don't think I have ever run a game where trolls are unknown to the players.


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## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> I'm sincerely curious on how [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] would approach it




I wouldn't do anything at that moment.  If the player metagames, that would be cheating, even if it saves the party.  A win via cheating cheapens the game for all of my players as we are on the same page with regards to metagaming, so the player would be spoken to afterwards and given a first and final about cheating.  What I wouldn't do is stop the declared action.  It's not my job to to control the PCs.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> How is "metagaming" not a pejorative when "it's a defined act that [you] view as cheating" and has decidedly negative connotations?




My view is not the only way to view it.  For many, metagaming works just fine with the definition it has.  They don't use a different term.  My viewing it as cheating for my game does not change a defined word into a pejorative.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Value system differences. I believe what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is putting a high value on is inducing a mental state during play which is focused on "thinking like the character", not on achieving goals or narrative, nor anything else particularly. Narrative serves then simply as a medium by which the proper inputs arrive at the players and they can adjust their pretended character mental state and shared understanding of the fictive world they form a part of. Other things are there, gamist considerations, player goals, etc. but only in a secondary place.



Something like that, yes. 



> At least this is how it looks if idealized, actual play is rarely so clear-cut.



Yup.  I speak to ideals here, knowing full well they are often just that: ideals.



> I'd note that D&D (even 4e) has an absolute insistence on PC's thought process being entirely free of mechanical constraints. The unspoken assumption being that this is the domain of 'RP' in which it is the player's job/prerogative to model the PC's mental state without constraints. Well, I would note that there ARE some constraints, but they seem, mostly, to be aimed at insuring more consistent modeling. Alignment for instance, ideally, provides a scaffold on which to hang the character's different proclivities and traits (albeit it doesn't necessarily work too well). Alignment change punishments then simply show up as 'sticks' to encourage this consistency.



Well, there'd be some in-character mental constraints - even something as simple as a caster considering what spell to cast next and realizing she's out of 3rd-level slots for the day.

But other than things like that, you're right.



> There are also some things like charms and whatnot, but those fall basically into the category of gotchas that are there to act as penalties for lack of skilled play, much like any trap or poison monster, etc.



I'm not so sure these are always penalties for lack of skilled play.  Oftentimes they're simply penalties for sheer bad luck: no matter how skilled you've been in reducing the odds of something bad happening, reducing those odds to true zero is a rare achievement.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Something like that, yes.
> 
> Yup.  I speak to ideals here, knowing full well they are often just that: ideals.
> 
> Well, there'd be some in-character mental constraints - even something as simple as a caster considering what spell to cast next and realizing she's out of 3rd-level slots for the day.
> 
> But other than things like that, you're right.
> 
> I'm not so sure these are always penalties for lack of skilled play.  Oftentimes they're simply penalties for sheer bad luck: no matter how skilled you've been in reducing the odds of something bad happening, reducing those odds to true zero is a rare achievement.




True, D&D in its classic form has a habit of being fairly random . And yeah, there are of course mechanical constraints on what you can actually do, like which spells you can remember. I think though that D&D will never have a mechanic like the DM being able to tell you what your character thinks of something, or that they have to change alignment or whatever. Even something like DW's 'Spout Lore' is a bit outside the wheelhouse of classic D&D.


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## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Value system differences. I believe what @_*Lanefan*_ is putting a high value on is inducing a mental state during play which is focused on "thinking like the character", not on achieving goals or narrative, nor anything else particularly. Narrative serves then simply as a medium by which the proper inputs arrive at the players and they can adjust their pretended character mental state and shared understanding of the fictive world they form a part of. Other things are there, gamist considerations, player goals, etc. but only in a secondary place. At least this is how it looks if idealized, actual play is rarely so clear-cut.
> @_*Aldarc*_ is not really THAT interested in the character mental state and maybe it is simply a part of the general fiction state which conditions how the game proceedes. It may have mechanical constraints and systems associated with it, etc. The content of the fiction and narrative, and the fun derived from "doing cool stuff" (or something) prevails.




Insightful post @_*AbdulAlhazred*_, deserving of more than 1XP! This really puts the differing roleplaying styles very much in perspective and why this disconnect exists between the various posters, especially for participants deeply engaged within a particular roleplaying style.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> True, D&D in its classic form has a habit of being fairly random . And yeah, there are of course mechanical constraints on what you can actually do, like which spells you can remember. I think though that D&D will never have a mechanic like the DM being able to tell you what your character thinks of something, or that they have to change alignment or whatever.



The DM can't, but there's certainly items in the game that can forcibly change one's alignment...and were a DM to force one of these onto a character it wouldn't be the first time I've seen it done. 

(a long time ago a PC got a bit - well, quite a bit more than a bit - out of hand and was put on trial; on being found guilty part of the sentence was a forced alignment change)



> Even something like DW's 'Spout Lore' is a bit outside the wheelhouse of classic D&D.



Is it, though?  The descriptions of it I saw further upthread reminded me greatly of the Legend Lore ability of a D&D Bard.


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> My view is not the only way to view it.  For many, metagaming works just fine with the definition it has.  They don't use a different term.  My viewing it as cheating for my game does not change a defined word into a pejorative.



This is just a roundabout way of saying that you personally use "metagaming" as a pejorative.



Lanefan said:


> *Is it, though?* The descriptions of it I saw further upthread reminded me greatly of the Legend Lore ability of a D&D Bard.



Yes.


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## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Is it, though?  The descriptions of it I saw further upthread reminded me greatly of the Legend Lore ability of a D&D Bard.






Aldarc said:


> Yes.



 To expand, Legend Lore was/is just a more powerful way to pierce more closely guarded GM secrets.  You're still asking the GM to tell you what's in his notes, which may be "nothing".

Spout Lore obliges the GM to tell you something relevant and useful in accordance with what you ask.  

The difference is pretty big in use. Legend lore gets gets at more of the GM's fiction, while Spout Lore obliges the GM to create fiction in accordance with your question.


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## darkbard

Ovinomancer said:


> To expand, Legend Lore was/is just a more powerful way to pierce more closely guarded GM secrets.  You're still asking the GM to tell you what's in his notes, which may be "nothing".
> 
> Spout Lore obliges the GM to tell you something relevant and useful in accordance with what you ask.
> 
> The difference is pretty big in use. Legend lore gets gets at more of the GM's fiction, while Spout Lore obliges the GM to create fiction in accordance with your question.




Right. And this is a huge difference between player-facing and GM-facing games. Exposure to more than one of these categories might help you see this,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].


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## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> Right. And this is a huge difference between player-facing and GM-facing games. Exposure to more than one of these categories might help you see this,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].




Do you really think that after all these discussions we don't understand the difference?


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## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> Do you really think that after all these discussions we don't understand the difference?




I really can't speak to what you do or don't understand,  Max. But I can state with confidence that Lanefan's posts, in general and in this specific instance, demonstrate that he filters his observations through a very particular scrim. And this specific post of his to which I responded demonstrates a conflation of two very different game design principles. If that isn't misunderstanding, I don't know what would be!


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## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> To expand, Legend Lore was/is just a more powerful way to pierce more closely guarded GM secrets.  You're still asking the GM to tell you what's in his notes, which may be "nothing".
> 
> Spout Lore obliges the GM to tell you something relevant and useful in accordance with what you ask.
> 
> The difference is pretty big in use. Legend lore gets gets at more of the GM's fiction, while Spout Lore obliges the GM to create fiction in accordance with your question.



And Spout Lore is akin to making a Intellegence (knowledge) check, while Legend Lore hides this sort of agency to learn such knowledge (much like many other things in D&D) behind a spell. 



Maxperson said:


> Do you really think that after all these discussions we don't understand the difference?



You mean after all these discussions where y'all repeat the same misunderstandings, errors, and baseless assumptions regarding basic points about other playstyles and how other games are played and we are forced to repeat ourselves in explaining the basics all over again even after y'all claim to get it? You may understand it, but hopefully you can appreciate how we are often led to believe that y'all don't.  

I know, for example, that the discussion of "fail forward" will inevitably come up again in some thread. And when it does, certain people who I know have been in conversations where "fail forward" is explained at great length by people in this thread will likely contribute their same misunderstandings about it. Which will result in the usual group attempting to correct their understanding, only for this person to just go back to square one again either in the same conversation or in a future one. 

So if you have knowledge and understanding of these differences, then please demonstrate it at the outset rather than forcing us to retread old ground... again. 

But if these differences between approaches and systems were actually understood and appreciated, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], would someone be asking a question that deliberately seeks to suggest that there is no difference?


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Do you really think that after all these discussions we don't understand the difference?



Bluntly? Yes.  The true mark of understanding a thing is the ability to advicate for it.  I do not think you could fairly advocate for the play of, say, Dungeon World.  

Change my mind.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> Just going to point something out-
> 
> If there are, let's just say .... two points of view.*
> 
> And people who subscribe to those two points of view repeatedly say that the other side just doesn't understand them, that they don't have a real knowledge of the differences, and so on...
> 
> 
> Maybe the real issue is that there isn't a failure of understanding, or communication, but simply that the two sides don't agree?
> 
> 
> More often than not, most arguments between good-willed people that devolve into "You don't understand me," are really about, "Why don't you agree with me? Because I am right, and you are not."
> 
> 
> *Yeah, yeah, that's very Manichean, and life ain't like that.



True, but not entirely.  Yes, often "you don't understand" is subbed in for "you don't agree" but, having been on one side and then actually grokking the other and now doing both, actually not understanding is a big part of the problem.  Not understanding leads to the common mischaracterizations.  It's only if not agreeing if the disagreement is almost always couched in sly mischaracterization instead of open disagreement your point would hold, and that's expecting pretty bad behavior.  I don't think that poorly of any poster on either side, here.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> Just going to point something out-
> 
> If there are, let's just say .... two points of view.*



Sure, but I am talking not so much about debating general preferences regarding cats or dogs, but the frustration of having to repeatedly explain what a cat is to a dog-owner who refuses to believe or mentally-engage with the fact that other pets behave in non-doglike ways. Sure overlap exists between these domesticated carnivores, but it's also important to recognize what those meaingful differences are. And this repeated inability to recognize this often leads to absurd sitatutions like dog-owners telling cat-owners that their is something wrong with their pets because the cat is not barking. Or telling cat-owners that cats have no need for their claws since their dogs can't climb trees.


----------



## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> Maybe! Anything is possible.
> 
> On the other hand, what you term "common mischaracterizations" are what other people view as the reasons they may not like something.
> 
> Put another way, this is the same as any debate about preferences (from something as simple as "steak v. sushi" to as complicated as "my political party" v. "your political party"). It's not that there is a lack of understanding that's the problem; it's that people have expressed a preference for something, and then they chose to characterize the other side in a way that the other side views as a "common mischaracterization."
> 
> "Why are you eating that. It's just some raw fish and seaweed, man."
> 
> "That's a common mischaracterization. It's really...."
> 
> "Yeah, it's gross. Ima go to Texas Roadhouse.
> 
> People like what they like. Maybe they might change their preferences over time, maybe they will like both steak and sushi.
> 
> Instead of telling them that they're wrong, and they need to like other stuff and understand you better, take 'em to a sushi restaurant.



Honestly, it's more like trying to talk about sushi to someone that just rephrases what you say to be about steak.

"Well, it is raw fish..."

"RAW BEEF?!?"

"No, it's fish, and..."

"I'd never eat raw beef.  Have you tried to cook your sushi? Maybe a good medium well, with some loaded baked potatoes?  That sounds like it would be better sushi that what you're talking about."

This is, quite often, what these discussions feel like to the "sushi" crowd.  So, I respectfully disagree with you.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]
 [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]
> 
> Sure. You guys are right.
> 
> I mean, whether we're talking about politics, or religion, or playstyle preferences, or steak/sushi ....
> 
> ...or someone saying that maybe it's not a communication issue ...
> 
> the real problem is people just don't understand you well enough.
> 
> Got it! Carry on. I'm back out of this thread, because I'm too dense to understand y'all.



Wait, I thought this was just a disagreement!


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> I literally might be too dense. Have you seen this thread? It's got, like, over a thousand posts.
> 
> And most of them contain words.
> 
> BIG WORDS!




On the plus side, the whole discussion can be boiled down to about five lines:

10 Playing a game isn't like real life
20 I never said it was
30 Well, it isn't is what I'm saying
40 Yeah, I know. I never said it was
50 Mother may I loop to 30?


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## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> I literally might be too dense. Have you seen this thread? It's got, like, over a thousand posts.
> 
> And most of them contain words.
> 
> BIG WORDS!




Yes, but due to repetition, the actual number of unique words is much lower than you'd expect.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> To expand, Legend Lore was/is just a more powerful way to pierce more closely guarded GM secrets.  You're still asking the GM to tell you what's in his notes, which may be "nothing".
> 
> Spout Lore obliges the GM to tell you something relevant and useful in accordance with what you ask.
> 
> The difference is pretty big in use. Legend lore gets gets at more of the GM's fiction, while Spout Lore obliges the GM to create fiction in accordance with your question.



People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.

First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid 

Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.

Are we good so far?  Excellent.

Now here's what I don't understand: *why does it matter* where that new information comes from or how it is generated?  

Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)

Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*.  We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found.  The ability/check succeeds and we learn that _yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work_.

From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?

* - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)


----------



## Lanefan

lowkey13 said:


> I literally might be too dense. Have you seen this thread? It's got, like, over a thousand posts.
> 
> And most of them contain words.
> 
> BIG WORDS!



If it wasn't for board rules it'd probably contain naughty words too.


----------



## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> What if we remove synonyms for, "Suck it, Trebek."




14 words left.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.
> 
> First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid
> 
> Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
> Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.
> 
> Are we good so far?  Excellent.
> 
> Now here's what I don't understand: *why does it matter* where that new information comes from or how it is generated?
> 
> Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)
> 
> Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*.  We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found.  The ability/check succeeds and we learn that _yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work_.
> 
> From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?
> 
> * - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)




It's a question of method, not the result. You're right in that the result could be largely the same. Or similar, at least. 

But would you say that reading a novel and writing a novel are the same? Because what happens on page 78 is the same for the reader as it is for the author, but the way they got there is certainly different.

Edited to add:

Generally, the DW world is generated not before hand, but rather through play. This may also be true of D&D, depending on how one plays it, but the mechanics of D&D assume that the world is largely predetermined either by the DM, by the DM and players through collaboration, or by some published setting. 

With DW, establishing fiction as you go as a result of dice rolls is the standard procedure. The GM has a predetermined set of "moves" that he can make in response to player actions and their level of success. This is how the fiction of the game is built. I'm not an expert, so others may have more to say on this; I've only played DW a few times, and never GMed it myself.


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.
> 
> First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid
> 
> Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
> Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.
> 
> Are we good so far?  Excellent.
> 
> Now here's what I don't understand: *why does it matter* where that new information comes from or how it is generated?
> 
> Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)
> 
> Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*.  We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found.  The ability/check succeeds and we learn that _yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work_.
> 
> From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?
> 
> * - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)




Let me try 

Spout Lore is a standard Move (check) on Int, available to any Pc.
 On a success the Gm says something interesting and useful on the subject, on a partial something only interesting (is up to the players to make it useful), on a failure it's the Gm's turn (to make something happen against the Pcs, following Gm procedures, moves.... etc). 
The info provided by the Gm can come from prep or improv, doesn't matter, it's "true" either way. 
The Gm may/should ask the player, in return,  how the Pc knows about it (adding new content, background info, to be taken into account for the future). 
(The Bard in DW, in particular,  has also some Class specific Moves/powers to "know stuff" when she encounters that stuff/Npc for the first time)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I'd say it would depend on how the players approach it all as PCs.  If they skip the town and head straight to the Caves then yeah, they're on their own and metagaming might become a problem.
> 
> However, I'd say they should have to interact with the town NPCs again, but that the interaction will take a different turn very quickly when an NPC says: "You're the second bunch of people been through here in just a few weeks intending to head out that way.  No idea what became of the first lot; nobody's seen 'em since they left."  It's on the DM to make sure this happens sooner rather than later.
> 
> That alone should inform the new PCs that a) there's other adventurers out there, be they alive or dead, and b) that they haven't returned red-flags the danger level, and c) that if the PCs don't already have a Ranger in the group they might want to recruit one to track the first adventuring group and see where it went.
> 
> And voila: metagaming issues largely headed off at the pass.
> 
> I've just above provided a fast-track means of achieving this end which is also perfectly plausible in the fiction.





Aldarc said:


> I'm not so sure. All you are doing is creating a post hoc in-game justification for the metagaming (with big spoonful of self-delusion) rather than actually stopping the metagaming.



What Aldarc said! In the scenario desdribed the players are using out-of-game knowledge (eg their knowledge that this is the second set of PCs to tackle the Caves) and are declaring actions based on that (eg trying to trigger certain GM-narration-via-NPCs).

Wouldn't it just be quicker if the GM told the players _As you travel to the Caves, you past peasant and tinkers travelling two and from the Keep. They all shake their heads when they see you, muttering about a similar group who headed off a fortnight earlier and never returned._

Or if the table cares about this sort of thing, the _players_ could make something up.



hawkeyefan said:


> Not every example of metagaming is bad.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Perhaps in the context of D&D only you may claim that, but even then, it's just your opinion. I am very comfortable with certain types of metagaming in D&D.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think there are degrees that are allowed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So really, the question is "how much is allowed?" rather than "is any allowed?"
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There are plenty of ways to allow metagaming that are acceptable and which can enhance the game rather than take away from it.



D&D has its origins in wargaming.

When I replay a waragme, I'm expected to use the skill and information I acquired the first time I played it. That's how I get better.

When D&D was invented, players were expected to use the skill and information they acquired the first time the played. That was how players got better. That's part of what Gygax had in mind when he advocated "skilled play".

This is why early D&D is characterised by so much new content introduction (new monsters, new traps, etc), and sharing of these items among referees. Referees needed a constant supply of new puzzles to keep challenging their players.

(And the idea that this has anything in common with cheating at a module is ludicrous. The only person who has trouble distinguishing the two cases is [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION].)

The idea that a player who has skill would, in the course of playing the game, pretend not to have it, is one that post-dates the origins of D&D. It's certainly not the only way to play D&D, and frankly to me it seems rather degeneate - no one in this thread has even explained how it would work.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the PC already has the knowledge because, for instance, *the player has the knowledge and is acting on it*, then obviously no check is required and the monster knowledge check rules do not apply.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you house rule the bolded portion in, sure.  The skill itself is intended to be used to determine PC knowledge when there is no in game reason for the PC to know the information
Click to expand...




Lanefan said:


> They are also devices for telling a knowledgeable player playing an ignorant character when the player knowledge may be used (success on the skill check) and when it may not (failure on said check).



The two of you are just making this up. I"ve quoted the rule. The rule says nothing about when a check is or isn't required: it explains how to adjudicate a check if one is made. Obviously if a player already knows, s/he won't seek to make the check; and there is nothing in the rule that suggests the GM is to use checks to gate players' use of their knowledge.

I don't know what the 5e rule for this stuff is, but frrankly it's laughable that you're trying to school me on 4e!



Maxperson said:


> If you have to rationalize the knowledge, you've failed.  There should be an appropriate reason for it.
> 
> "ra·tion·al·ize
> 
> verb
> 1.
> attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, *even if these are not true or appropriate*."



And now you're trying to school me on logic and the English language?

_Rationalise_ means to explain/justify with reasons. _Even if_ those reason are not true. But also if those reasons _are true_ but (eg) not self-evident.

In other words, _even if_ isn't a synonym for _when_.



Maxperson said:


> When I already know something as a player, but my character doesn't, I am indeed discovering what he knows via those activities I described. For me discovery is happening.  For you, not so much.



This is incoherent. If you've _deciding_ that your PC doesn't know about trolls, although _you_ already do know about trolls, you're not discovering anything. _Deciding_ isn't _discoverying_.



Maxperson said:


> if my PC doesn't know about troll weaknesses, it's good roleplaying to portray that in character.



How does this even work? Do you just let your PC be killed by the trolls?



Maxperson said:


> I wouldn't do anything at that moment.  If the player metagames, that would be cheating, even if it saves the party.  A win via cheating cheapens the game for all of my players as we are on the same page with regards to metagaming, so the player would be spoken to afterwards and given a first and final about cheating.  What I wouldn't do is stop the declared action.  It's not my job to to control the PCs.



This doesn't answer [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]'s question: what do you expect _good_ play to look like in this sort of case.


----------



## pemerton

sd_jasper said:


> Well, assuming I am running a game where (1) there are trolls, (2) trolls and their weaknesses are not common knowledge to whatever civilization that the PCs are part of, and (3) the party hasn't previously run into trolls and learned all about them, then...
> 
> First, any PCs with the appropriate skill can roll to see if the recognize the troll. If they roll well, then I tell them they know what they are dealing with, what the weaknesses are, etc.
> 
> If they fail the skill roll, then I let them know they see "Large green humanoids" that they cannot identify. It is up to the PCs what happens next. I rarely ambush my players, so there is a good chance that if they are running into a new monster, they will have options to avoid or retreat. Maybe they decide to go back to town and research it. But, assuming they have somehow got themselves into a combat situation, then after a few rounds it will be clear that the creature they are battling has incredible regenerative capabilities. What happens then, again depends on the players. *I would probably allow the players to say that they try to burn it*, because trying fire is a pretty common thing no matter what the actual weakness might be. Or I might give a simple intelligence or perception check, that could give them some clue ("You notice that the creature is shying away from your torch even when it attacks"). Or they might just run away (again to try and research).



I asked about how it is meant to work if _the players know about trolls_ but are expected to play _ignorant PCs_. Is that what you're explaining here? Or are you talking about ignorant players?

Also, I've bolded one bit which I don't understand: if the players declare that their PCs try and use fire against trolls, why do they need you as GM to allow this. At your table is the GM allowed to override/veto a player's action declaration for his/her PC?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> why this disconnect exists between the various posters



_Differences of preference_ are not a _disconnect_. I'm not misunderstanding what  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.

  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] perhaps doesn't understand some of my posts (and some others') because he seems not to appreciate the difference between _a player move that obliges the GM to reveal some pre-established backstory_ (eg Bardic Legend Lore, a Commune spell, etc) and _a player move that obliges the GM to author some new, immediately relevant, fiction_ (eg DW's Spout Lore move).



Lanefan said:


> People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.
> 
> First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid
> 
> Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
> Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.
> 
> Are we good so far?  Excellent.



I'm not good, for two reasons.

(1) In DW, a player doesn't declare Spout Lore (either -as-player or -as-PC, whatever exactly that means).

Here is the relevant rule (DW rulebook, p 18):

Moves are rules that tell you when they trigger and what effect they have. A move depends on a fictional action and always has some fictional effect.​
So players don't _declare moves_ in DW. They describe what their PCs are doing in the fiction. And this can then trigger moves. For instance (as per p 66), Spout Lore is triggered if a player declares that his/her PC "consult [his/her] accumulated knowledge about something".

(2) In DW, the information provided is new to player and GM, and is authored by the GM based on a sense of _current narrative trajectory_: in particular, it should build on past GM moves as well as player intent (that is what makes it _interesting_and _useful_).

In D&D, the assumption is that the information is already established by the GM in advance of play. And if the GM find him-/herself having to ad lib, the assumption is that this will be done as much as possible as if it were an organic outgrowth of what is already recorded in the GM's notes.



Lanefan said:


> *why does it matter* where that new information comes from or how it is generated?



For the same resaon that plagiarism is academic wrongdoing.

For the same reason that I enjoy playing mediocre guitar, but don't really enjoy listening to others play mediocre guitar.

For the same reason that people got to life drawing classes on weekends.

_Creativity is a human talent_ , and _creating things is a human pleasure_. And for this reason (perhaps others too, but it's the one that I'm focusing on at the momennt), creating a fiction togehter with your friends is different from having one of them tell you a story.



Lanefan said:


> ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?



There's no difference in _the content of the fiction_between the fiction generated in my last session of Traveller, and me writing a short story about some adventurers on a planet, some of whom get captured but then escape first by stealing a gun and then by stealing some powered armour from their captors.

But the different in play is pretty obvious.

The difference, at the table, between the GM telling me a story and the GM responding to my creative inputs is important. And, I can tell you from experience, is also obvious in play.

EDIT: I thought I'd add that another difference, besides creativity, is exciting. Learning what the GM has decided will happen to my PC is not as exciting as finding out _with the GM_ what happens to my PC. And, as a GM, this excitement difference obtains in exactly the same way as for a player.


----------



## sd_jasper

pemerton said:


> I asked about how it is meant to work if _the players know about trolls_ but are expected to play _ignorant PCs_. Is that what you're explaining here? Or are you talking about ignorant players?




Yes I was explaining a situation where the players would know about the monster but the PCs would not. But also in that situation, I wouldn't flat out say what the monster was. I'd describe it in somewhat ambiguous terms to give the players the impression of uncertainty.




pemerton said:


> Also, I've bolded one bit which I don't understand: if the players declare that their PCs try and use fire against trolls, why do they need you as GM to allow this. At your table is the GM allowed to override/veto a player's action declaration for his/her PC?




Okay, I feel we are drifting pretty quick here... So, in a hypothetical situation where a player tried to do something that I felt was based on player knowledge, I'd stop the action, ask them to explain how they character can justify that action, hash things out, then resume.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> People are claiming I don't understand stuff, and in this case it's true.
> 
> First off, can we agree that the following two steps are valid
> 
> Step 1 - player-as-PC declares Spout Lore; or her Bard uses Legend Lore; or does whatever the system-in-use equivalent may be, if such exists; in order to gather some info
> Step 2 - on success, the GM in response provides some new information centered around whatever it is the PC is inquiring about.
> 
> Are we good so far?  Excellent.
> 
> Now here's what I don't understand: *why does it matter* where that new information comes from or how it is generated?
> 
> Put another way, ignoring the root source and looking only at the info gleaned, from the player's side what's the difference? (consider, say, an online-play context where you can't physically see the GM and thus have no way of knowing whether the new info comes from prepped notes or from spur-of-the-moment - how are you-as-player ever going to know the difference?)
> 
> Let's say I'm a player in a game, and we've just by whatever means found what we think might be the long-lost Statue of Adonis*.  We're not sure if it's the real one, however, all we know is that the real one was made by the famous sculptor Agrippa Kimenestra and it's rumoured that some fake copies were made later. So someone uses an info-gathering ability (along the lines of Spout Lore, Legend Lore, a knowledge or artistry check, etc.) to try to determine who made this statue we've found.  The ability/check succeeds and we learn that _yes indeed this statue is an authentic Kimenestra work_.
> 
> From my perspective as a player, and ignoring anything the GM does other than the words she speaks, what difference can it possibly make to me whether the source of this info is the GM's notes or spur-of-the-moment improvising or something else?
> 
> * - recovering the real statue could be a stated goal for a PC or a mission goal for a party or whatever - all that matters for this purpose is that for some reason we're looking for it. (or maybe we've stumbled onto it while doing something else entirely?)




This is a good question, Lan, I'll try to work through it.

I'll start a bit differently from the other responses:  in your given example, there's no difference.  Yup, I agree there's no difference in outcome and the source of information is largely irrelevant.

But.... (come on, you knew this was coming)...

There's still a big difference in how you get to the outcome, and to illustrate, I'm going to change a bit of your example.  I'm going to say, "what happens if the check _fails_?"

In the Legend Lore case (yes, I know the spell cannot fail if the statue is the Statue, but you also referenced mechanics that can fail), if you fail, the statue still is the Statue of Adonis, you just can't tell right now.

In the Spout Lore case, if you fail the check, the GM gets to make a move against you.  This may be to 'state an unwelcome truth' that this is NOT the Statue of Adonis.  Or it may be that some other calamity looms because of the time you spent examining the Statute, possibly putting the Statue at risk of destruction.  Or, some other bad thing. 

The point here is that while success states may look very similar, the means to get there is pretty different and failure states look very, very different.  In your Legend Lore case, the characters are risking nothing by making a check to tell if this is the Statue they seek -- failure just means knowledge is delayed.  However, in the other case, failure can mean that this isn't the Statue after all, or that you think it is, but it's a fake, or that it is the Statue, but now it's at risk of destruction!  The tension and story importance of the checks is wildly different.

Add onto this a few things others have said -- that knowledge that you're just getting more information that the GM decides is less thrilling for some (although it can be very thrilling for many others, as evidences by GM centered games being, by far, the dominate playstyle) vs knowledge that this roll will mean that the searching part of the Quest for the Statue has concluded and now we're moving onto the recovery part or it will mean that we must continue searching.  The difference is in the import of the roll, and this is a very big difference.  Outcomes may look the same, but how you got there, what you risked, is the crux, here.


----------



## Manbearcat

Before this gets away from us, here is the thing.

When you shout an ally’s hand back on, it’s important to understand that gorges are Shrodinger-ey, hit points aren’t meaty, Fire effects are flame-y, and misses and Wizards are damage-y and overpowered-ey respectively.

* 1275 posts and we’re somehow still roughly on target!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The DM can't, but there's certainly items in the game that can forcibly change one's alignment...and were a DM to force one of these onto a character it wouldn't be the first time I've seen it done.
> 
> (a long time ago a PC got a bit - well, quite a bit more than a bit - out of hand and was put on trial; on being found guilty part of the sentence was a forced alignment change)



True, there are a bunch of such items. Universally reviled by players and often panned as things that should probably not be used exception in some pretty specific situations. I guess old school classic D&D also is envisaging an environment where buying a 'remove curse' is not super hard (just expensive, haha, you got dinged!). 



> Is it, though?  The descriptions of it I saw further upthread reminded me greatly of the Legend Lore ability of a D&D Bard.




Yeah, kinda. I mean, it somewhat depends on exactly what the situation is. There are certainly a bunch of times when 'Spout Lore' might simply deal with "do you know about X?" and that's pretty much 'Legend Lore' in a can. BUT it can go into other territory, like what if the DM starts telling you stuff about your character? That's definitely not out of bounds! Now, some of that stuff would be fine in D&D too, "you learn your great grandfather is a vampire!" or whatever. You learn YOU are a vampire! Eek! That's just a soft move in DW... (of course getting bit is just hard luck in D&D, so I wouldn't say DW is TOO much different from D&D, but Torchbearer OTOH is WAY different!).


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> I really can't speak to what you do or don't understand,  Max. But I can state with confidence that Lanefan's posts, in general and in this specific instance, demonstrate that he filters his observations through a very particular scrim. And this specific post of his to which I responded demonstrates a conflation of two very different game design principles. If that isn't misunderstanding, I don't know what would be!




He didn't say it was exactly like the Legend Lore ability.  He was saying that it is similar enough to still be in the "wheelhouse" of classic D&D, and it is.  They are similar enough.  

 [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] was also incorrect in his statement about the Bard ability Legend Lore/Bardic Knowledge.  If a Bard in 3.5 used his Bardic knowledge to find out about an important place, it's purpose wasn't get at DM secrets.  The DM probably doesn't even have secrets about most of the important places, items and people that the Bard could use the ability on.  In all likelihood, the DM will have to make up something relevant and useful about that important thing, just like he describes Spout Lore as doing.  The big(little) difference is that in D&D, the DM might have something written down ahead of time that is relevant and useful to tell the bard, so sometimes he won't have to improv it.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> And Spout Lore is akin to making a Intellegence (knowledge) check, while Legend Lore hides this sort of agency to learn such knowledge (much like many other things in D&D) behind a spell.




He wasn't talking about the spell.  He was talking about the Bard's knowledge class ability. 



> You mean after all these discussions where y'all repeat the same misunderstandings, errors, and baseless assumptions regarding basic points about other playstyles and how other games are played and we are forced to repeat ourselves in explaining the basics all over again even after y'all claim to get it? You may understand it, but hopefully you can appreciate how we are often led to believe that y'all don't.




You mean much like you, @Ovinomance, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others continually misrepresent/misunderstand our playstyle?  Calling it "Mother May I", "Railroading" and more, just because it's a DM facing style?  I get what you mean.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Bluntly? Yes.  The true mark of understanding a thing is the ability to advicate for it.  I do not think you could fairly advocate for the play of, say, Dungeon World.
> 
> *Change my mind.*




There are people here I would make that effort for.  You are not one of them, as you have repeatedly shown me that you are not interested in discussing things with me in good faith.  You asked me to explain realism to you for the 6th or 7th time earlier in the thread.  The reason I ignored is that you wouldn't have bothered with the explanation, and just come back with your stock, "Realism doesn't exist in D&D, it's just being internally consistent."  If you want me to be willing to go out of my way for you, you're going to first have to show me that you are willing to discuss in good faith.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The two of you are just making this up. I"ve quoted the rule. The rule says nothing about when a check is or isn't required: it explains how to adjudicate a check if one is made. Obviously if a player already knows, s/he won't seek to make the check; and there is nothing in the rule that suggests the GM is to use checks to gate players' use of their knowledge.




And you are just making that up.  There's no rule that says the players can use the knowledge that they have as players to avoid a check.  That's a fiction you are perpetrating here.



> This is incoherent. If you've _deciding_ that your PC doesn't know about trolls, although _you_ already do know about trolls, you're not discovering anything. _Deciding_ isn't _discoverying_.




That should have been, "My character might not..."  The rolls, background or other ideas might or might not reveal that he does have the knowledge.  I have to discover that.



> How does this even work? Do you just let your PC be killed by the trolls?




Or I escape.  Or I discover the weakness through other means.  If I didn't know about trolls and encountered one, I'd beat it down into the negatives and then run my rear off to get away before it gets back up.  No need for my PC to die.  Then I would research how to kill them and go back for revenge, or at least be able to kill the next ones I come across.  So how it works is quite well, thank you/



> This doesn't answer [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]'s question: what do you expect _good_ play to look like in this sort of case.




It does answer it.  I expect it to not contain metagaming.  That's very evident from my response.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> you are not interested in discussing things with me in good faith.




Hahahahaha.



> If you want me to be willing to go out of my way for you, you're going to first have to show me that you are willing to discuss in good faith.




Oh, man! You're killing it tonight!


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> Hahahahaha.
> 
> Oh, man! You're killing it tonight!




I always.  100% of the time.  Discuss in good faith with people who do the same for me.  You wouldn't know that, though, since you've decided to take that one comment I made in that old thread out of context.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> I always.  100% of the time.  Discuss in good faith with people who do the same for me.  You wouldn't know that, though, since you've decided to take that one comment I made in that old thread out of context.




No, Max. I believed that about you before that post. It only confirmed it.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> No, Max. I believed that about you before that post. It only confirmed it.




How does confirming that I treat people like they treat me(what I said in that post) equate to not discussing in good faith?


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> How does confirming that I treat people like they treat me(what I said in that post) equate to not discussing in good faith?




As I said in my initial post (last year): you *infer* that others are twisting words, so you deliberately twist words. I have no patience for nonsense like that. Participate in good faith, or don't participate at all.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> He didn't say it was exactly like the Legend Lore ability.  He was saying that it is similar enough to still be in the "wheelhouse" of classic D&D, and it is.  They are similar enough.
> 
> [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] was also incorrect in his statement about the Bard ability Legend Lore/Bardic Knowledge.  If a Bard in 3.5 used his Bardic knowledge to find out about an important place, it's purpose wasn't get at DM secrets.  The DM probably doesn't even have secrets about most of the important places, items and people that the Bard could use the ability on.  In all likelihood, the DM will have to make up something relevant and useful about that important thing, just like he describes Spout Lore as doing.  The big(little) difference is that in D&D, the DM might have something written down ahead of time that is relevant and useful to tell the bard, so sometimes he won't have to improv it.



No, I wasn't.  That's the "success" state that I mentioned, you know, where I said they're the same outcome?  You have to read my posts, Max.  They're actually a bit more detailed that you want them to be in your quick characterizations. However, it's worth nothing that a sufficient GM answer to a Bardic Knowledge check is "nothing special."  This is never a proper response to Spout Lore.  If the player asks and succeeds, then the location is important by default.  You elide this a bit by establishing that the location is important in your example, but that's not always the case when Bardic Knowledge is used in 3.5.

Further, the different in fail states is massive, and that was the crux of my point.  



Maxperson said:


> He wasn't talking about the spell.  He was talking about the Bard's knowledge class ability.



Well, Legend Lore is a spell,  If it was the Bardic Knowledge class ability, then my answer is even more apt because the spell has no failure state if the target is actually legendary.




> You mean much like you, @Ovinomance, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others continually misrepresent/misunderstand our playstyle?  Calling it "Mother May I", "Railroading" and more, just because it's a DM facing style?  I get what you mean.



Dude.  I'm running a 5e game _right now_.  I'm on record saying 5e fights against a non-GM centered play, so I'm running a GM centered game.  I like running 5e, it scratches certain itches very well, and my players enjoy it.

If you'd bother to read my posts, I've specifically called out MMI as degenerate play -- ie, what happens if you use the tools poorly.  GM centered play requires saying no, and telling players what's in your notes, and the other things -- in moderation.  Take any of those to extremes and you end up with MMI, or Railroading (which requires MMI).  Do them in moderation and with principled play and you don't.  I really don't know how many times I have to say this to get it through to you.

In non-GM centered play, degenerate play is Czerge principle (the players proposing both the problem and the solution), and squibing (the GM not making hard moves, just continuing soft ones).  Both of these lead to bad play.  This play also requires the players to bring as much of the game as the GM, so there's multiple points where the game can stumble.  Neither style is better, they're just different.  One can be better for you, though, and that's good for each person.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> There are people here I would make that effort for.  You are not one of them, as you have repeatedly shown me that you are not interested in discussing things with me in good faith.  You asked me to explain realism to you for the 6th or 7th time earlier in the thread.  The reason I ignored is that you wouldn't have bothered with the explanation, and just come back with your stock, "Realism doesn't exist in D&D, it's just being internally consistent."  If you want me to be willing to go out of my way for you, you're going to first have to show me that you are willing to discuss in good faith.




I'm truly sorry you feel this way, Max, especially since it couldn't be further from the truth.  However, since you openly state that you reciprocate bad faith when you believe you receive it, I see no further benefit in discussion with someone intentionally acting in bad faith as some form of payback for imagined slights.


----------



## Manbearcat

Alright, I'm going to transliterate the Torchbearer play excerpt to Dungeon World so the differences between the two systems can shed some light on the conversation.

[sblock]Level 1 

Dwarf Adventurer
Elf Ranger
Halfling Burglar

They're at the end of their initial Adventure, a foray into a crystalline cavern network long ago abandoned by its demihuman denizens due to a calamity. Every member of the group has multiple Conditions, they're running low on rations, their skins are empty, and they only have 4 torches left between them.

They dealt with a Cave-in Twist awhile back that cut them off from the known route back to the surface. With severely dwindling resources and growing Conditions, they couldn't afford to spend the Turns trying to dig their way out. So, in hopes of finding a new way out, they struck off in another direction where active air flow worked the flames of their dying torchlight.

They reach a bottomless chasm spanned by an incredibly rickety rope bridge that is in near ruin in the middle and gently swaying in an unseen breeze. The ceiling is too high to see with the minuscule light of their torch and the endless dark below promises swift death. 

Another torch goes out. 6 Turns of light left...(3 torches * 2 Turns).

The Grind also hits on this turn (every 4 turns = Condition Clock ticks). Hungry and Thirsty. The last of the rations stave that off...

How to cross?

Time is the enemy.

The stakes are very high for this obstacle.

Conditions are grinding down the team (the Halfling is Afraid so he can't Help, the Elf is Injured so -1D to Nature/Will/Health/ Skills, the Dwarf is Angry and Exhausted so can't use Traits to help and all tests increase by 1). 

They have to weigh the potential time it would take to try to (a) find another way around, (b) attempt to repair the bridge, vs (c) the danger of a mad dash across (and the Twist or Condition that would arise from failure...) while still (d) dealing with the unknown of what lies ahead. 

A mad dash across would just be 1 turn but would test Dungeoneer or Will (nerves) for all.

Repairing/jury-rigging it would be 2 turns, but the Elf has Survivalist 2 and he can tap his Nature for 4 more (though it will tax his Nature because its out of his descriptor portfolio) with his Persona point he earned earlier for playing against a Belief, can use his 1/Session "Brave" Trait for 7 total. -1 for Injured. Someone has to scramble out there and hold the torch while the Elf does his work. The Angry and Exhausted Dwarf has to be the one (Halfing can't) and he has Dungeoneering, so fair enough. There is another 1, though the Obstacles factor increases by 1 from OB3 to OB4. Needs 4 or better on 4 out of his 7 dice. 

They consider the possible Twists they can think of; losing gear, torch snuffing early and being stuck in the pitch black on the rickety bridge, some kind of Indiana Jones conflict with the the bridge snapping with them hung up in the tattered remnants...slamming them against the sheer face on the other side...while the Halfling is stuck back there, some unforeseen predator that haunts the cavern, one of them falls through to certain death but the other can grab him with a successful test...or fall too...

Then there is the prospect of getting across but another crushing Condition accrued for the Dwarf and Elf (putting them closer to death). 

Its the best shot they have and they're reaching the proverbial end of the rope (/rimshot).[/sblock]

*(TORCHBEARER) TOWN PHASE FOR OPENING ADVENTURE AND GM'S MAPS VS (DUNGEON WORLD) COLLECTIVE PREMISE AND COLLECTIVE MAP W/ BLANKS*

1)  Dungeon World doesn't have Phases.  Its all free-form roleplay with a snowballing resolution engine and tightly integrated feedbacks/reward cycles.  So if a Dwarf Fighter, and Elf Ranger, and a Halfling Thief were on the above adventure to begin play, it wouldn't emerge during a Town phase in the way that it would in Torchbearer (which is akin to Blades in the Dark Information Gathering/Free Play phase where you're sorting out a Score and gathering intelligence about it before you gear up and execute the plan).  Being the 1st adventure of a Dungeon World game, the premise of this little excursion would arise out of the conversation of collective map-making and character-building at the beginning of the game.  

a)  GM makes an abstract map on the spot with a thematic name for a site or two that heralds danger/adventure and a few main features (topographical, maybe a town), leaving a lot of blanks.

b)  We make characters together (some or all of them already know each other as they have Bonds together...sometimes a few Bonds are left open to flesh out at the End of Session 1) and find out a little bit about these characters as we do (primarily via Alignment statement and Bonds).

c)  As we're finishing the characters, we'll also fill out the map a little bit more as we find out where characters are from or a site central to their character (where they are or where they are headed).  However, the map will still have plenty of blanks at this point.

d)  With that all done, we'd figure out how this started and just go from there.  I can see something like:

Dwarf has the Bond:

_I worry about the ability of <Halfling> to survive in the dungeon_

Elf has the Bond and below Alignment :  
_
I have guided <Halfling> before and they owe me for it.

Good - Endanger yourself to combat an unnatural threat._

Halfling has the Bond: 
_
<Dwarf> has my back when things go wrong._


So maybe the GM puts Winter Wood on the map (it is cursed to perpetually snow there) and one of the players puts Crystalline Caverns underneath it.  Through conversation, its determined that the Elf needs something from the caverns to lift the curse on the wood, has leveraged the Halfling to help, and the Dwarf and the Halfling's are longtime pals so the Dwarf is in.  Could hook into more than just those 4 character features, but that is typically enough to get the game rolling.  

I'll stop there for now.  The generation of a Town and a Dungeon/Ruin in Torchbearer is very involved (akin to Lifepath creation in Traveller).  While play progresses as a result of player choice and is inspired by/hooks into the PCs' thematic portfolio, the procedure to generate content (and the relative abstraction of that content) is starkly different.  Prospective GM Fronts (threats that create danger and portend a grim future of some sort) aren't devised until AFTER the first session (unlike Torchbearer).

Later, I'll put out another post with the hypothetical Dungeon World gameplay of the sblocked situation.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> As I said in my initial post (last year): you *infer* that others are twisting words, so you deliberately twist words.




I infer nothing.  What happens is that I will say something.  They get it wrong.  I explain again.  They get it wrong.  I explain yet again.  They get it wrong.  When it gets to the 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th time that they get it wrong after being corrected, it's no longer possible that it's an accident.  They are deliberately twisting things at that point.



> I have no patience for nonsense like that. Participate in good faith, or don't participate at all.




Do not EVER tell me what to do.  If you want to have a conversation with me, all you have to do is respond nicely, instead of with the rude and crass behavior that you have demonstrated in this thread.  If you don't want to have a conversation with me, then you don't have to.  You have no right or ability to tell me what to do, though.  The next time it happens I will report the post to the mods and let them deal with you.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> However, it's worth nothing that a sufficient GM answer to a Bardic Knowledge check is "nothing special."




Sure, but only if the Bard picks up a rock or something off the ground, or uses it on some other mundane object.  The vast majority of the time, the bard is going to use it on important/unusual things, which means that "nothing special" is not going to be sufficient.  It's really easy to figure out what the important or unusual things are when you encounter them.



> This is never a proper response to Spout Lore.  If the player asks and succeeds, then the location is important by default.




This is a difference.  Yes.



> Further, the different in fail states is massive, and that was the crux of my point.




I'm not sure I would call it massive, but it's definitely a significant difference.  In D&D if you fail the roll, you don't know anything about the thing in question.



> Well, Legend Lore is a spell,  If it was the Bardic Knowledge class ability, then my answer is even more apt because the spell has no failure state if the target is actually legendary.




 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] confused things by calling it the Legend Lore Bard ability.  Legend Lore is the spell.  Bardic Knowledge is the Bard ability.  I figured that since he tacked on the "Bard ability," that he was talking about Bardic Knowledge.



Dude.  I'm running a 5e game _right now_.  I'm on record saying 5e fights against a non-GM centered play, so I'm running a GM centered game.  I like running 5e, it scratches certain itches very well, and my players enjoy it.



> If you'd bother to read my posts, I've specifically called out MMI as degenerate play -- ie, what happens if you use the tools poorly.  GM centered play requires saying no, and telling players what's in your notes, and the other things -- in moderation.  Take any of those to extremes and you end up with MMI, or Railroading (which requires MMI).  Do them in moderation and with principled play and you don't.




Fair enough, though I don't think Railroading requires "Mother May I."  All it really requires is a lack of options or forcing things behind the screen so that player choice is removed.  Removing player choice doesn't equate to players having to ask to do things.

For example, if the DM has a forked path and down the right path is the hermit with the adventure hook, and down the left is nothing, it's railroading if when the players take the left path the DM moves the hermit there.  He gave the illusion of choice, but there really wasn't any.  Nor does that involve any players questioning the DM about something and being told no.



> Neither style is better, they're just different.  One can be better for you, though, and that's good for each person.




Agreed.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Let me try
> 
> Spout Lore is a standard Move (check) on Int, available to any Pc.
> On a success the Gm says something interesting and useful on the subject, on a partial something only interesting (is up to the players to make it useful), on a failure it's the Gm's turn (to make something happen against the Pcs, following Gm procedures, moves.... etc).
> The info provided by the Gm can come from prep or improv, doesn't matter, it's "true" either way.
> The Gm may/should ask the player, in return,  how the Pc knows about it (adding new content, background info, to be taken into account for the future).
> (The Bard in DW, in particular,  has also some Class specific Moves/powers to "know stuff" when she encounters that stuff/Npc for the first time)




Right, the key is that the GM has to talk about the subject the player indicated his PC is spouting about. It also (may) have to be useful to the players (IE it gets them out of a jam or moves them closer to some goal, maybe allows a bond to be resolved, etc.) and it MUST be 'interesting'. Beyond that it could be anything. 

Legend Lore (for specific types of subject) IS fairly similar, but given the lack of constraints on the GM that exist in DW (player advocate, moves challenge players, etc.) it often takes on a different sort of significance. For instance LL might simply relate some uninteresting information. It might even elicit "nothing legendary is known about this boring fork" or something like that. Spout Lore WILL produce a result, and it WILL be engaging the party, this is inherent. The player is also likely to be given an explicit chance to embellish the fiction in a specific way -how do you know this- which always adds something to character backstory.

I'd also note that you probably don't want to OVERUSE Spout Lore. Mechanically as a player you subject yourself to a DM soft or hard move on a 6- and in any case it is usually overkill since nothing prevents the players and GM from simply describing what they do and where they are without the need to make checks (though only to the extent that the state of the fiction doesn't change materially).


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> What Aldarc said! In the scenario desdribed the players are using out-of-game knowledge (eg their knowledge that this is the second set of PCs to tackle the Caves) and are declaring actions based on that (eg trying to trigger certain GM-narration-via-NPCs).



Yes, which means they're metagaming.  I'm just trying to point out that in some cases - of which this is clearly one - a DM can take some simple steps to help line character knowledge up with player knowledge...



> Wouldn't it just be quicker if the GM told the players _As you travel to the Caves, you past peasant and tinkers travelling two and from the Keep. They all shake their heads when they see you, muttering about a similar group who headed off a fortnight earlier and never returned._



 ...such as this; which is even more efficient than what I'd suggested.



> When D&D was invented, players were expected to use the skill and information they acquired the first time the played. That was how players got better. That's part of what Gygax had in mind when he advocated "skilled play".
> 
> This is why early D&D is characterised by so much new content introduction (new monsters, new traps, etc), and sharing of these items among referees. Referees needed a constant supply of new puzzles to keep challenging their players.



Yet when a DM changes things up e.g. with red dragons that breathe gas or trolls that can only be perma-damaged by cold, players cry foul.



> The idea that a player who has skill would, in the course of playing the game, pretend not to have it, is one that post-dates the origins of D&D. It's certainly not the only way to play D&D, and frankly to me it seems rather degeneate - no one in this thread has even explained how it would work.



How it works is really quite simple: as a player you have to put yourself strictly in the mind of your PC and think as your PC would think while using only the knowledge that your PC has, and as far as possible forget what you yourself know as a real-world player.  Sometimes it's easy to do this, other times not - personally I find it's easier if the character I'm playing has a personality more similar to my own, and more difficult if my character's personality is very different than my own.

And yes, when done right it can on occasion mean playing your PC straight into its grave in full awareness that you-as-player have knowledge that could have saved it.



> The two of you are just making this up. I"ve quoted the rule. The rule says nothing about when a check is or isn't required: it explains how to adjudicate a check if one is made. Obviously if a player already knows, s/he won't seek to make the check



As you're pretty good about using player when you mean player as opposed to character, then I'll come back with this: it's on the GM to force the check if she feels player knowledge is being used in place of character knowledge to avoid making a check.

But if the _character_ already knows then of course there's no check.



> and there is nothing in the rule that suggests the GM is to use checks to gate players' use of their knowledge.



Other than the overall suggestion to players that they think like thier characters - but now I can't remember whether I saw this in the 4e or 5e PH, I glanced though both last night and saw it in one of 'em.



> How does this even work? Do you just let your PC be killed by the trolls?



If it comes to that and there's no out-clauses or escape hatches, then yes.

And I'd consider this excellent play.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] perhaps doesn't understand some of my posts (and some others') because he seems not to appreciate the difference between _a player move that obliges the GM to reveal some pre-established backstory_ (eg Bardic Legend Lore, a Commune spell, etc) and _a player move that obliges the GM to author some new, immediately relevant, fiction_ (eg DW's Spout Lore move).



I don't appreciate the difference because in my view there is no difference, or at least none that's at all relevant to anything.

Here's what both of those examples really are:

The player makes a move that obliges the GM to narrate some fiction relevant to that move
The GM narrates that fiction.



> I'm not good, for two reasons.
> 
> (1) In DW, a player doesn't declare Spout Lore (either -as-player or -as-PC, whatever exactly that means).
> 
> Here is the relevant rule (DW rulebook, p 18):
> 
> Moves are rules that tell you when they trigger and what effect they have. A move depends on a fictional action and always has some fictional effect.​
> So players don't _declare moves_ in DW. They describe what their PCs are doing in the fiction. And this can then trigger moves. For instance (as per p 66), Spout Lore is triggered if a player declares that his/her PC "consult [his/her] accumulated knowledge about something".



Though I got the terminology wrong, in the end the mechanic still gets invoked.



> (2) In DW, the information provided is new to player and GM, and is authored by the GM based on a sense of _current narrative trajectory_: in particular, it should build on past GM moves as well as player intent (that is what makes it _interesting_and _useful_).



The information provided is new to the player.  My whole point is that it doesn't matter a rat's behind whether it's new to the GM or not, from the point of view of the player receiving the information.



> In D&D, the assumption is that the information is already established by the GM in advance of play. And if the GM find him-/herself having to ad lib, the assumption is that this will be done as much as possible as if it were an organic outgrowth of what is already recorded in the GM's notes.



Yes...and then eventually you might find that for most of the time the GM hasn't had any notes at all and pretty much ad-libbed the whole thing!  Been there, done that, cleaned up the mess afterwards. 



> For the same resaon that plagiarism is academic wrongdoing.



Plagiarism might be academic wrongdoing but to me the end reader (analagous here to the player at the table) it makes no difference whether what I'm reading is original or plagiarized as long as it's a) new to me and b) correct.



> For the same reason that I enjoy playing mediocre guitar, but don't really enjoy listening to others play mediocre guitar.
> 
> For the same reason that people got to life drawing classes on weekends.
> 
> _Creativity is a human talent_ , and _creating things is a human pleasure_. And for this reason (perhaps others too, but it's the one that I'm focusing on at the momennt), creating a fiction togehter with your friends is different from having one of them tell you a story.



And creativity can take many forms, even just around an RPG table.  Creating the in-game fiction is just one aspect of it.  Creating the setting is another, creating characters and personalities is another, and never mind the poems and songs and artwork and so forth that are inspired by the game.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I'll start a bit differently from the other responses:  in your given example, there's no difference.  Yup, I agree there's no difference in outcome and the source of information is largely irrelevant.
> 
> But.... (come on, you knew this was coming)...



Bracing myself... 



> There's still a big difference in how you get to the outcome, and to illustrate, I'm going to change a bit of your example.  I'm going to say, "what happens if the check _fails_?"
> 
> In the Legend Lore case (yes, I know the spell cannot fail if the statue is the Statue, but you also referenced mechanics that can fail), if you fail, the statue still is the Statue of Adonis, you just can't tell right now.



Legend Lore isn't a spell, btw; it's an at-will ability for old-school Bards.  The main limitations on use is that it's a bit time-consuming in the fiction, and you can only use it once on any given thing until you gain a level.

And for all that, the statue might be a fake - you still don't know that either. 



> In the Spout Lore case, if you fail the check, the GM gets to make a move against you.  This may be to 'state an unwelcome truth' that this is NOT the Statue of Adonis.  Or it may be that some other calamity looms because of the time you spent examining the Statute, possibly putting the Statue at risk of destruction.  Or, some other bad thing.
> 
> The point here is that while success states may look very similar, the means to get there is pretty different and failure states look very, very different.  In your Legend Lore case, the characters are risking nothing by making a check to tell if this is the Statue they seek -- failure just means knowledge is delayed.  However, in the other case, failure can mean that this isn't the Statue after all, or that you think it is, but it's a fake, or that it is the Statue, but now it's at risk of destruction!  The tension and story importance of the checks is wildly different.



Depending on in-fiction circumstance, Legend Lore isn't always no-risk largely because of the time it takes (and because it's a Bard singing and-or playing, it can't really be done all that quietly); wandering monsters etc. can happen by or be attracted by the noise, or whatever.  And there's nothing stopping a GM from introducing other complications, though DW seems better at encouraging and mechanizing that process.



> Add onto this a few things others have said -- that knowledge that you're just getting more information that the GM decides is less thrilling for some (although it can be very thrilling for many others, as evidences by GM centered games being, by far, the dominate playstyle) vs knowledge that this roll will mean that the searching part of the Quest for the Statue has concluded and now we're moving onto the recovery part or it will mean that we must continue searching.  The difference is in the import of the roll, and this is a very big difference.  Outcomes may look the same, but how you got there, what you risked, is the crux, here.



From the player side, even in a GM-driven game learning this is the real statue would still mean the searching part of the Quest is done.  The outcome is just as important to the PCs in the fiction (which in theory is what's important) in either system.



			
				AbdluAlhazred said:
			
		

> True, there are a bunch of such items. Universally reviled by players and often panned as things that should probably not be used exception in some pretty specific situations. I guess old school classic D&D also is envisaging an environment where buying a 'remove curse' is not super hard (just expensive, haha, you got dinged!).



You're assuming alignment change is a simple curse that can be removed.

Well, sorry, friend; but now you've seen the error of your previous ways why would you ever want to go back to that?


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> Before this gets away from us, here is the thing.
> 
> When you shout an ally’s hand back on, it’s important to understand that gorges are Shrodinger-ey, hit points aren’t meaty, Fire effects are flame-y, and misses and Wizards are damage-y and overpowered-ey respectively.



How did you not get alignment in there somewhere? 



> * 1275 posts and we’re somehow still roughly on target!



Yeah, we're still aiming for that big target in the middle of the field but if the damn parachute doesn't open soon we're going to hit it a lot harder than recommended...


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] confused things by calling it the Legend Lore Bard ability.  Legend Lore is the spell.  Bardic Knowledge is the Bard ability.



In 3e maybe.  In 1e - which is what I was referring to - Bards didn't have their own spells.  They had certain abilities, of which Legend Lore was one*; and could cast a few Druid spells.

* - some others were Charm, Item Knowledge, Suggestion, Sonic Attack Negation, and Morale.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> it doesn't matter a rat's behind whether it's new to the GM or not, from the point of view of the player receiving the information.



By _the player_ you mean _@Lanefan_. I can tell you that when I'm the player it matters to me how and why the GM is establishing the information. It makes a very big difference to my play experience.

Here's a post from you that illustrates the point:



Lanefan said:


> then eventually you might find that for most of the time the GM hasn't had any notes at all and pretty much ad-libbed the whole thing! Been there, done that, cleaned up the mess afterwards.



What you call "a mess" is what DW calls _playing the game_. That's the difference, right there. It's a real thing that really matters to play.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> How it works is really quite simple: as a player you have to put yourself strictly in the mind of your PC and think as your PC would think while using only the knowledge that your PC has, and as far as possible forget what you yourself know as a real-world player.  Sometimes it's easy to do this, other times not - personally I find it's easier if the character I'm playing has a personality more similar to my own, and more difficult if my character's personality is very different than my own.



By itself, this doesn't explain what a player who knows about trolls and fire is meant to do when playing a supposedly-ignorant PC.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How does this even work? Do you just let your PC be killed by the trolls?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If it comes to that and there's no out-clauses or escape hatches, then yes.
> 
> And I'd consider this excellent play.
Click to expand...




Maxperson said:


> Or I escape.  Or I discover the weakness through other means.  If I didn't know about trolls and encountered one, I'd beat it down into the negatives and then run my rear off to get away before it gets back up.  No need for my PC to die.  Then I would research how to kill them and go back for revenge, or at least be able to kill the next ones I come across.



Two comments:

(1) This produces the odd result that a newbie player, whose PC encounters trolls for the first time, might be able to beat them (getting lucky with an attempt at using fire); whereas the veteran player's PC never accidentally discovers that fire works against trolls.

(2) Personally, I find it absolutely baffling, this pretending that a puzzle is still a puzzle when, in fact, you already know the answer. And there is nothing _traditional_ about this way of playing D&D. It is virtually the opposite of what Gygax describes as "skilled play" in his PHB.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> the overall suggestion to players that they think like thier characters - but now I can't remember whether I saw this in the 4e or 5e PH



From the 4e PHB (pp 9, 18, 24):

Your "piece" in the Dungeons & Dragons game is your character. He or she is your representative in the game world. Through your character, you can interact
with the game world in any way you want. . . .

The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about taking on the role of a character in the game. . . .

[T]hinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.​
The question of what knowledge a player is able to impute to his/her PC is not explicitly addressed.



Maxperson said:


> There's no rule that says the players can use the knowledge that they have as players to avoid a check.  That's a fiction you are perpetrating here.



Huh? I'm not making anything up. Here's the 4e PHB (p 269) on declaring attack actions during a combat:

During your turn, you can take a few actions. You decide what to do with each, considering how your actions can help you and your allies achieve victory.​
This is entirely consistent with the fact that 4e D&D is a game, in which players use their cognitive capacities to make "moves" in the form of action declarations. If a player believes, based on his/her accumulated knowledge, that a good move to declare against a troll is a Fire-attack, because s/he knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, then s/he can declare such a move. Conversely, if a player is uncertain about what would be a good move, s/he is always entitled to attempt a monster knowledge check (which does not require an action). If this is successful, it may help the player choose an action which s/he believes will help him/her and his/her allies achieve victory.

As I said, the 5e rules on this are not something I'm very familiar with, but the 4e rules are crystal clear: the player character is the player's "piece" in the game, and the player gets to decide what his/her PC does, and when it comes to declaring attacks is expected to consider how a declared act will lead to victory in combat.



Lanefan said:


> it's on the GM to force the check if she feels player knowledge is being used in place of character knowledge to avoid making a check.



The GM doesn't get to "force a check" in these circumstances.

Knowledge checks are used "to remember a useful bit of information in [a skill's] field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it . . . [or] to identify certain kinds of monsters" (4e PHB p 179). That is (as I've already said), knowledge checks are a mechanical device that a player can use to oblige the GM to provide more information; they are not a gate on the player's use of information s/he already has.There's simply no such rule in 4e. It's not a game in which the GM is allowed to gate player action declarations in the way you are advocating for, and in the way that [MENTION=6888436]sd_jasper[/MENTION] appears to suggest here:



sd_jasper said:


> in a hypothetical situation where a player tried to do something that I felt was based on player knowledge, I'd stop the action, ask them to explain how they character can justify that action, hash things out, then resume.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> By _the player_ you mean _@Lanefan_. I can tell you that when I'm the player it matters to me how and why the GM is establishing the information. It makes a very big difference to my play experience.



Because for some reason you've conditioned yourself to pay attention to these things, and focus your play experience around the source of the fiction/information rather than the content.

Your will, your way, I suppose...



> Here's a post from you that illustrates the point:
> 
> What you call "a mess" is what DW calls _playing the game_. That's the difference, right there. It's a real thing that really matters to play.



The "mess" I refer to is the post-hoc note-taking so that I can be consistent next session with the stuff I ad-libbed tonight, as I know full well I'll never remember it all and I also know full well that the one detail I forget or get wrong will be the one a player calls me on as they too expect consistency, as is their right.

Surely this has happened to you as well - you've got a big elaborate scene framed and action ongoing, and then the session has to end in mid-scene as it's getting too late and people have to work in the morning.  Now you have to remember (or write down) the details so you can present the same scene next week at the same point in the action that the players remember from this week. (player memories and notes can help too, of course, as can a quick photo on someone's phone if you're using minis or a map)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Because for some reason you've conditioned yourself to pay attention to these things, and focus your play experience around the source of the fiction/information rather than the content.



If you mean _I'm conditioned to recognise the difference between playing a game and being told a story_, then sure. I wouldn't have thought that's a very unusual thing to be sensitive to.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> From the 4e PHB (pp 9, 18, 24):
> 
> Your "piece" in the Dungeons & Dragons game is your character. He or she is your representative in the game world. Through your character, you can interact
> with the game world in any way you want. . . .
> 
> The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it’s all about *taking on the role of a character* in the game. . . .
> 
> [T]hinking about your birthplace, family, and upbringing can help you decide how to play your character.​
> The question of what knowledge a player is able to impute to his/her PC is not explicitly addressed.



I've bolded the relevant bit here: taking on the role of a character means playing that role as if you were that character, using its knowledge*, its senses*, its feelings*^, its emotions^, and its personality^.

* - the information for what these provide comes from the GM, and if it's not enough, ask for more.
^ - these come from the player
(and both of these can be interrupted by various magical effects, of course: darkness or silence can affect the senses, charm can affect the emotions, and so on)





> Huh? I'm not making anything up. Here's the 4e PHB (p 269) on declaring attack actions during a combat:
> 
> During your turn, you can take a few actions. You decide what to do with each, considering how your actions can help you and your allies achieve victory.​
> This is entirely consistent with the fact that 4e D&D is a game, in which players use their cognitive capacities to make "moves" in the form of action declarations. If a player believes, based on his/her accumulated knowledge, that a good move to declare against a troll is a Fire-attack, because s/he knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, then s/he can declare such a move. Conversely, if a player is uncertain about what would be a good move, s/he is always entitled to attempt a monster knowledge check (which does not require an action). If this is successful, it may help the player choose an action which s/he believes will help him/her and his/her allies achieve victory.
> 
> As I said, the 5e rules on this are not something I'm very familiar with, but the 4e rules are crystal clear: the player character is the player's "piece" in the game, and the player gets to decide what his/her PC does, and when it comes to declaring attacks is expected to consider how a declared act will lead to victory in combat.



Which actually goes against what you quoted from the 4e PH above.  There it says you take on the role of a character (1e has it that you "become" the character), where here it wants you to be remote from the character.



> The GM doesn't get to "force a check" in these circumstances.
> 
> Knowledge checks are used "to remember a useful bit of information in [a skill's] field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it . . . [or] to identify certain kinds of monsters" (4e PHB p 179). That is (as I've already said), knowledge checks are a mechanical device that a player can use to oblige the GM to provide more information; they are not a gate on the player's use of information s/he already has.There's simply no such rule in 4e. It's not a game in which the GM is allowed to gate player action declarations in the way you are advocating for, and in the way that [MENTION=6888436]sd_jasper[/MENTION] appears to suggest here:



Depends whether you're prioritizing player knowledge or character knowledge.  If you're prioritizing character knowledge then the player's own knowledge is irrelevant - and if the player is being honest is should be she who calls for the check if she feels she knows something that the character might not!

And if a GM feels a player isn't being honest then AFAIC she's well within her rights to say "Hey, wait a minute - you know that, but does your character?  Roll a check." (this happens often in low-level play in our games here too, though using different mechanics, and we're all fine with it)


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> If you mean _I'm conditioned to recognise the difference between playing a game and being told a story_, then sure. I wouldn't have thought that's a very unusual thing to be sensitive to.



 "Being told a story" implies you're just sitting there like a lump with no choice and no input to anything.

Other than the most extreme of railroads and hard-wired APs, the players individually and-or collectively are always going to have input* into the story even in the most Viking-hat GM-driven game - if only because their decisions and actions (and sometimes their dice) are going to in many cases determine what happens in the fiction and almost always will determine how it happens.  Did we beat the BBEG or did our dice let us down and let him get away?  Do we go after him again or find something else to do?  Or is he even really a BBEG or is the Duke feeding us a line - maybe we should check into the Duke?  Am I going to park Tabatha in town for the nonce and cycle in Bjarnni for a tour of duty - change up the party a bit?

In any sort of sandbox game this effect is even more pronounced.

* - assuming they want to, of course - some are quite content to just go along for the ride.

On a broader scale, I wonder if part of our differences lie in that I usually tend to see the PCs as small-ish fish in a very big pond - sure they might have an effect on some things but the world went on for a long time before them and it'll keep on going long after they're all dead - where you see them as the biggest or only fish in a pond that only exists for them.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I wonder if part of our differences lie in that I usually tend to see the PCs as small-ish fish in a very big pond - sure they might have an effect on some things but the world went on for a long time before them and it'll keep on going long after they're all dead - where you see them as the biggest or only fish in a pond that only exists for them.



To me, this reads as confused.

In Graeme Greene's The Quiet American, there is no suggestion that what happens to Fowler, Pyle and Phuong is more important in any objective sense than what happens to others in the war. But of course the story is primarily about them.

In a RPG fiction, the gameworld is what it is: in my Traveller game, for instance, it's the whole of the Imperium, and there is no particular reason to think that what the PCs are doing is the biggest deal in the Imperium. But obviously it's the biggest deal _at the table_ - we are playing a game which will reveal what is going on with these PCs. Within the context of our play, the PCs are not just "small-ish fish". They are the focus of the fiction that we are creating.



Lanefan said:


> I've bolded the relevant bit here: taking on the role of a character means playing that role as if you were that character, using its knowledge*, its senses*, its feelings*^, its emotions^, and its personality^.
> 
> * - the information for what these provide comes from the GM, and if it's not enough, ask for more.
> ^ - these come from the player
> (and both of these can be interrupted by various magical effects, of course: darkness or silence can affect the senses, charm can affect the emotions, and so on)
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Which actually goes against what you quoted from the 4e PH above.  There it says you take on the role of a character (1e has it that you "become" the character), where here it wants you to be remote from the character.



If you're interpreting the rulebook in such a way as to yield contradiction, that's a good reason to rethink your interpretation!

For instance, nothing in the 4e rules say that everything the PC knows comes from the GM. Nor does anything imply such a thing. If I as a player know that trolls are allergic to fire, and I want to play a PC who knows this, then nothing in the 4e rules precludes me from playing a PC with that knowledge, nor - as per the bit on _background_ that I quoted upthread - from writing up some backstory for my PC that explains how I came by that knowledge.

(For instance, one of the PCs in my 4e game was in his mid-40s at the start of the campaign, and had seen his home city sacked by orcs and other humanoids. It stands to reason that he might know a thing or two about trolls, and nothing in the game makes the GM the gatekeeper of that.)



Lanefan said:


> If you're prioritizing character knowledge then the player's own knowledge is irrelevant - and if the player is being honest is should be she who calls for the check if she feels she knows something that the character might not!



This all rests on an assumption that the player is not free to specify what the character knows. Nothing in the game rules say or suggest this, however. A player is free to decide that his/her PC knows that trolls are allergic to fire. Or to decide that his/her PC is ignorant of that (in which case s/he would hardly call for a check, which would contradict the backstory that s/he has established for his/her PC).



Lanefan said:


> And if a GM feels a player isn't being honest then AFAIC she's well within her rights to say "Hey, wait a minute - you know that, but does your character?



The notiong of _being honest_ is misplaced here. It assumes that it is cheating for a player to decide that his/her PC knows this or that. But the game expressly says that the player gets to decide the PC's background (I quoted the relevant bit above). Not the GM.

Hence [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s example (of a player who decides that his/her PC's uncle told stories of the wilds and the creatures there) is completely within the 4e rules.

I'm not making any suggestion about how 5e is to be played. I'm simply talking about what the 4e rules say.


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> On a broader scale, I wonder if part of our differences lie in that I usually tend to see the PCs as small-ish fish in a very big pond - sure they might have an effect on some things but the world went on for a long time before them and it'll keep on going long after they're all dead - where you see them as the biggest or only fish in a pond that only exists for them.




Immersion. Thermal baths. Ponds. I see a recurrent methaphor. I will add 'diving', then. 
The immersive type 'might' be content enough of just bathing in the open water, knowing the ocean had been there for billions of years and will be in the future, or else enjoying a rest on a desert beach in a remote island after encountering a monster of the abyss along the way. The main goal would be to forget their past lives and habits, so no cellphones, no motor boats, no canned food. 
The diving type also craves the open water, but prefers a precise location, an involving, focused, experience, in order to obtain which, doesn't disdain the latest tech gadget, if needed, so preparation and procedures are vital. To forget oneself in the process is a welcomed side effect (?), or the main goal as well, but gained with different means.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> He wasn't talking about the spell.  He was talking about the Bard's knowledge class ability.



There isn't such a class ability, at least in 5e. Legend Lore exists only as a spell in 5e. I believe that it was a bard ability in 1e, which forms the framework for [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s modus operandi, but I am not sufficiently knowledgeable enough to answer how it operates in 1e. 



Lanefan said:


> The information provided is new to the player.  My whole point is that it doesn't matter a rat's behind whether it's new to the GM or not, from the point of view of the player receiving the information.



Having played DW from the perspective of a player, I don't think that it is the same. Similar, but not the same. In DW I as the player will have a grasp of the potential stakes inherent in the roll. There is potential tension involved with Spout Lore that amounts to more than "new knowledge" vs. "no knowledge." And if you are aware of how DW works, even as a player, then you understand that the DM is effectively drawing in the blanks as opposed to telling you what they previously drew. 



Lanefan said:


> I've bolded the relevant bit here: taking on the role of a character means playing that role as if you were that character, using its knowledge*, its senses*, its feelings*^, its emotions^, and its personality^.
> 
> * - the information for what these provide comes from the GM, and if it's not enough, ask for more.
> ^ - these come from the player
> (and both of these can be interrupted by various magical effects, of course: darkness or silence can affect the senses, charm can affect the emotions, and so on)



The distinctions you are trying to make here are a bunch of hogwash, and you should know better.


----------



## sd_jasper

pemerton said:


> Knowledge checks are used "to remember a useful bit of information in [a skill's] field of knowledge or to recognize a clue related to it . . . [or] to identify certain kinds of monsters" (4e PHB p 179). That is (as I've already said), knowledge checks are a mechanical device that a player can use to oblige the GM to provide more information; they are not a gate on the player's use of information s/he already has.There's simply no such rule in 4e. It's not a game in which the GM is allowed to gate player action declarations in the way you are advocating for, and in the way that @_*sd_jasper*_ appears to suggest here:




So by that logic, you would allow a player who knows how to gather and combine in the correct ratios, the ingredients for blackpowder/gunpowder to have their character do that in your (fantasy) game? What if you were playing a historical game? Could the player use their knowledge of history have their character at the right place at the right time?

edit: comma


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> (2) Personally, I find it absolutely baffling, this pretending that a puzzle is still a puzzle when, in fact, you already know the answer. And there is nothing _traditional_ about this way of playing D&D. It is virtually the opposite of what Gygax describes as "skilled play" in his PHB.




The section talking about skilled play does not say anything about the players being able to use metagame knowledge.  Further, he says this...

"As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter. You know how strong, intelligent, wise, healthy, dexterous and, *relatively speaking, how commanding a personality* you have. Details as to your appearance your body proportions, and your history can be produced by you or the Dungeon Master. You act out the game as this character, staying within your "godgiven abilities", and as molded by your philosophical and moral ethics (called alignment). You interact with your fellow role players, not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic! The Dungeon Master will act the parts of "everyone else", and will present to you a variety of new characters to talk with, drink with, gamble with, adventure with, and often fight with! Each of you will become an artful thespian as time goes by - and you will acquire gold, magic items, and great renown as you become Falstaff the Invincible!"

The player knows that Falstaff has a 14 charisma, but explicitly, Falstaff does not.  

The following is from page 110 of the 1e DMG where he is talking about troublesome players.

"Peer pressure is another means which can be used to control players who are not totally obnoxious and who you deem worth saving. These types typically attempt to give orders and instructions even when their characters are not present, tell other characters what to do even though the character role they have has nothing to do with that of the one being instructed, *or continually attempt actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of."*

Gygax is flat out calling people who metagame their knowledge to their characters, troublesome players.  The bolded section is explicitly talking about knowledge the player has, but the characters would not have.

From page 111 of the DMG.

"In general the multiple characters belonging to a single player should not be associates. *One should not "know" information, or be able to communicate knowledge which is peculiar to him or her to the other.*"

Here, despite the player having the knowledge of both PCs, Gygax is saying that the knowledge one PC has should not be known by the other.  That's Gygax again saying that metagame knowledge should not be given to the PCs.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Huh? I'm not making anything up. Here's the 4e PHB (p 269) on declaring attack actions during a combat:
> 
> During your turn, you can take a few actions. You decide what to do with each, considering how your actions can help you and your allies achieve victory.​
> This is entirely consistent with the fact that 4e D&D is a game, in which players use their cognitive capacities to make "moves" in the form of action declarations. If a player believes, based on his/her accumulated knowledge, that a good move to declare against a troll is a Fire-attack, because s/he knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, then s/he can declare such a move. Conversely, if a player is uncertain about what would be a good move, s/he is always entitled to attempt a monster knowledge check (which does not require an action). If this is successful, it may help the player choose an action which s/he believes will help him/her and his/her allies achieve victory.




The 4e DMG tells you to discourage metagame thinking and says players get more enjoyment when they don't engage in it.  It also tells you to be sure that the explorer player type doesn't use his knowledge of the game world to his advantage.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> There isn't such a class ability, at least in 5e. Legend Lore exists only as a spell in 5e. I believe that it was a bard ability in 1e, which forms the framework for [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s modus operandi, but I am not sufficiently knowledgeable enough to answer how it operates in 1e.




Yes, I know there isn't that ability for 5e Bards, which is why I went back to 5e.  I completely forgot about 1e Bards, because I refused to ever play one.  Not that I played 3e Bards, but I had players that did.  I feel about bards the way [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] feels about Paladins.


----------



## jonesy

pemerton said:


> For instance, nothing in the 4e rules say that everything the PC knows comes from the GM. Nor does anything imply such a thing. If I as a player know that trolls are allergic to fire, and I want to play a PC who knows this, then nothing in the 4e rules precludes me from playing a PC with that knowledge, nor - as per the bit on _background_ that I quo



It's been some time since I've read the 4th edition rules, but I'm pretty sure that every edition of D&D has dungeon masters discretion written in. The player can't write up whatever they want into their characters backstory without talking about it with the DM first, yes? Otherwise what's to stop someone from making their character a former best friend of the BBEG's and by being that already knowing some portion of the BBEG's plans? I know that knowing that trolls don't like fire seems like common knowledge, and is quite a bit smaller issue than that, but is it really and wouldn't you still need to talk to the DM about it?


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> The 4e DMG tells you to discourage metagame thinking and says players get more enjoyment when they don't engage in it.  It also tells you to be sure that the explorer player type doesn't use his knowledge of the game world to his advantage.



Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell, 1984


----------



## Maxperson

jonesy said:


> It's been some time since I've read the 4th edition rules, but I'm pretty sure that every edition of D&D has dungeon masters discretion written in. The player can't write up whatever they want into their characters backstory without talking about it with the DM first, yes? Otherwise what's to stop someone from making their character a former best friend of the BBEG's and by being that already knowing some portion of the BBEG's plans? I know that knowing that trolls don't like fire seems like common knowledge, and is quite a bit smaller issue than that, but is it really and wouldn't you still need to talk to the DM about it?




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] enjoys a certain style of play, which is fine.  What he does, though, is instead of admitting that he's house ruling something, he tries to use weak justifications to "show" that the game is supporting his playstyle in ways that it really isn't.  4e explicitly says to discourage metagaming, not to let players use knowledge of the game world to their advantage, and gives the players knowledge skills explicitly designed to be the vehicle to finding out monster knowledge of weaknesses and such.  Yet because 4e doesn't have the words, "PCs only get knowledge of monsters from knowledge skills" or something similar, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is using that as "proof" that 4e allows metagame knowledge of monsters and only rolls those skills when the player doesn't know.


----------



## sd_jasper

Numidius said:


> Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
> George Orwell, 1984




What are you trying to say here? What contradictory beliefs?

Or are you implying that acting is an imposable skill, because the actor playing Sherlock couldn't act like he didn't already know who committed the crime?


----------



## Numidius

jonesy said:


> It's been some time since I've read the 4th edition rules, but I'm pretty sure that every edition of D&D has dungeon masters discretion written in. The player can't write up whatever they want into their characters backstory without talking about it with the DM first, yes? Otherwise what's to stop someone from making their character a former best friend of the BBEG's and by being that already knowing some portion of the BBEG's plans? I know that knowing that trolls don't like fire seems like common knowledge, and is quite a bit smaller issue than that, but is it really and wouldn't you still need to talk to the DM about it?



I guess it depends if the BBEG plans are widely obvious in the setting, or they are inside the Gm notes. 

I'd say go with DW's Discern Reality Move to find out (risking an unexpected twist in case of failure) or with any Strategy skill check. 

If the game involves high level Pcs deeply rooted in the setting, why not having a new hi-lev Pc being the Good Twin/Brother/Former Comrade of the Evil Boss? I mean, what's the problem?


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> I guess it depends if the BBEG plans are widely obvious in the setting, or they are inside the Gm notes.
> 
> *I'd say go with DW's Discern Reality Move to find out* (risking an unexpected twist in case of failure) or with any Strategy skill check.
> 
> If the game involves high level Pcs deeply rooted in the setting, why not having a new hi-lev Pc being the Good Twin/Brother/Former Comrade of the Evil Boss? I mean, what's the problem?




He did specify D&D, though.  Bringing in DW's Discern Reality Move is fine, but it's a house rule to do that.  You're altering the game at that point.

As far as whether the PC could be the brother/comrade/twin of the BBEG, that could work out, but it would need the DM's approval for it to happen.  Players cannot just decide that it happens unless you've altered the game to be more player facing.


----------



## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> You sure about that? I mean, that's a fairly high bar.
> 
> My hatred of Paladins is the fuel that warms the cold, dark cockles of my heart. I hate Paladins like a young child loves Christmas morning.
> 
> I only drink to separate my knowledge of the existence of Paladins from my consciousness.




Heh.  Pretty close.  I loathe bards.  "Look, it's a dragon!  I know, let me sing a little ditty so that our ashes are a little coarser after the save!"


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> He did specify D&D, though.  Bringing in DW's Discern Reality Move is fine, but it's a house rule to do that.  You're altering the game at that point.
> 
> As far as whether the PC could be the brother/comrade/twin of the BBEG, that could work out, but it would need the DM's approval for it to happen.  Players cannot just decide that it happens unless you've altered the game to be more player facing.



Of course


----------



## Numidius

sd_jasper said:


> What are you trying to say here? What contradictory beliefs?
> 
> Or are you implying that acting is an imposable skill, because the actor playing Sherlock couldn't act like he didn't already know who committed the crime?



Immersion/metagame are two contradictory thinking at once. 
Reminded me of Orwell's doublethink. Infer what you will from the quote, you talking about acting. Rpg btw is not like acting on a script


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> I feel about bards the way [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] feels about Paladins.




You must love the last page of most Asterix books


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The 4e DMG tells you to discourage metagame thinking and says players get more enjoyment when they don't engage in it.  It also tells you to be sure that the explorer player type doesn't use his knowledge of the game world to his advantage.



Here is the passage about "metagame thinking" (DMG p 15). It says _nothing_ about knowledge of trolls:

Players get the best enjoyment when they preserve the willing suspension of disbelief. A roleplaying game’s premise is that it is an experience of fictional people in a fictional world.

Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like a character in a movie knowing he’s in a movie and acting accordingly. "This dragon must be a few levels higher than we are," a player might say. "The DM wouldn’t throw such a tough monster at us!" Or you might hear, "The read aloud text spent a lot of time on that door - let’s search it again!"

Discourage this by giving players a gentle verbal reminder: "But what do your characters think?" Or, you could curb metagame thinking by asking for Perception checks when there’s nothing to see, or setting up an encounter that is much higher level than the characters are. Just make sure to give them a way to avoid it or retreat.​
A player deciding that his/her PC uses fire against a troll isn't "thinking about the game as a game". It's thinking about the ficiton - in particular, the in-fiction weakness of the troll. If the GM asks "What is your character thinking?", the answer would be "That this troll is vulnerable to fire."

(Also: a "gentle verbal reminder" is not a permission to the GM to gate player action declarations behind knowledge checks.)

And if you look at the discussion of player types, each has a "Be sure that the X doesn't . . ." followed by a list of possible player behaviours that might spoil the game for the other players. In the case of the explorer, this says "Be sure the explorer doesn't . . . se knowledge of the game world to his own advantage." The "his" here contrasts with the playing group as a whole. An "explorer" who uses knowledge of trolls' vulnerabilities to beat a troll isn't engaging in disruptive behaviour to his (purely personal) advantage.



jonesy said:


> The player can't write up whatever they want into their characters backstory without talking about it with the DM first, yes? Otherwise what's to stop someone from making their character a former best friend of the BBEG's and by being that already knowing some portion of the BBEG's plans?



I'm not sure how you envisage this working.

It's pretty clear in 4e who has authority over what aspects of the fiction. There can be borderline cases - if a player writes up some backstory which includes the introduction of some NPCs into the fiction, and then one of these backstory NPCs is introduced into play by the GM, who has authority over that NPC - player or GM? In practice my view is that it's wise for the GM to (at least) take the players' opinion seriously, rather than just run roughshod over some player-authored backstory.

But that's not what's going on in your case, where - at least as I take it - the BBEG is a NPC who has been introduced into the fiction by the GM, not the player.

If a player declares, _I use to know Z and Z's secret plan is such-and-such_, and Z is a NPC known by the table to be under the GM's control - which is what I take it you are positing when you refer to a BBEG - then the GM is free to just ignore this. Because the player has no authority to tell the GM how to play a GM-controlled NPC. If Z is a NPC who was introduced into the fiction by the GM, then the GM is also entitled to deny the player's posited connection between the PC and Z, although whether that would be good or bad GMing will depend almost completely on context. And obviously a GM might accept the player's stipulation as stating a truth about the PC's beliefs - eg by deciding that Z changed his/her mind, or lied to and manipulated his/her childhood friend.

Likewise, the fact that a player knows about trolls and fires, and plays his/her PC as having the same knowledge, doesn't have any implications for what monsters the GM can use. Eg the GM is free to use fire-immune trolls if s/he wants. But this doesn't stop a player establishing what his/her PC believes about trolls.

4e is a tightly-designed game. It doesn't assume that (1) the GM will use puzzles to which (2) the players know the answers but which (3) the players must pretend they don't know in the play of the game. Because that - to be frank - is terrible design!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> *or continually attempt actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of."*



Using fire to attack a troll is not _an action that a character would have no knowledge of_. Heck, the class table in the AD&D PHB even lists whether or not each class can use flaming oil (all can except monks).

I'm telling you how the game was actually played, in the skilled play paradigm, at the time Gygax was writing his rules. _It was taken for granted that players improved their knowledge of the game over time._ That was an aspect of what skilled play meant. In that respect, it was a form of wargaming.

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], upthread, following the logic of your (that is, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s) preferences, said that it woudl be _good roleplaying_ to let your PC be killed by a troll rather than rely on your knowledge that a troll is vulnerable to fire. That's the opposite of skilled play as Gygax describes it. Playing the game your and Lanefan's way will not mean that the PCs of more experienced players are more successful as adventurers, because - if the game is played your and Lanefan's way - then an experienced player will deliberately _not_ draw upon his/her experience in playing his/her PC.

What you and Lanefan are advocating is an approach to play that I would say had its first express system support in RuenQuest or Chivalry & Sorcery, in the late 70s. No doubt people were playing D&D that way in that time also, but in doing so they were _disregarding_ Gygax's advice, not following it.


----------



## jonesy

pemerton said:


> jonesy said:
> 
> 
> 
> It's been some time since I've read the 4th edition rules, but I'm pretty sure that every edition of D&D has dungeon masters discretion written in. The player can't write up whatever they want into their characters backstory without talking about it with the DM first, yes? Otherwise what's to stop someone from making their character a former best friend of the BBEG's and by being that already knowing some portion of the BBEG's plans? I know that knowing that trolls don't like fire seems like common knowledge, and is quite a bit smaller issue than that, but is it really and wouldn't you still need to talk to the DM about it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure how you envisage this working.
> 
> It's pretty clear in 4e who has authority over what aspects of the fiction. There can be borderline cases - if a player writes up some backstory which includes the introduction of some NPCs into the fiction, and then one of these backstory NPCs is introduced into play by the GM, who has authority over that NPC - player or GM? In practice my view is that it's wise for the GM to (at least) take the players' opinion seriously, rather than just run roughshod over some player-authored backstory.
Click to expand...


I'm not sure why you aren't sure how I envisage this working. It's called talking. The player talks to the DM, and together they determine whether a certain, shall we say fine print, in a characters backstory is set up, and whether that works for the story in question. There's no 'roughshod' implied, and taking something seriously doesn't mean it has to be agreed with or accepted into the gameworld, if there is a clear disagreement with what the player wants to inject into the world and the world itself as setup by the DM.



> But that's not what's going on in your case, where - at least as I take it - the BBEG is a NPC who has been introduced into the fiction by the GM, not the player.
> 
> If a player declares, _I use to know Z and Z's secret plan is such-and-such_, and Z is a NPC known by the table to be under the GM's control - which is what I take it you are positing when you refer to a BBEG - then the GM is free to just ignore this. Because the player has no authority to tell the GM how to play a GM-controlled NPC. If Z is a NPC who was introduced into the fiction by the GM, then the GM is also entitled to deny the player's posited connection between the PC and Z, although whether that would be good or bad GMing will depend almost completely on context. And obviously a GM might accept the player's stipulation as stating a truth about the PC's beliefs - eg by deciding that Z changed his/her mind, or lied to and manipulated his/her childhood friend.
> 
> Likewise, the fact that a player knows about trolls and fires, and plays his/her PC as having the same knowledge, doesn't have any implications for what monsters the GM can use. Eg the GM is free to use fire-immune trolls if s/he wants. But this doesn't stop a player establishing what his/her PC believes about trolls.



I was using an extreme example of a backstory fine print to try and illustrate why it's alway good for DM to go through the character backstories (together with the players) to ensure that everyone is on same page as to what kind of a world they are playing in.

A player writing in advance knowledge of enemy weakness into a characters backstory is fine if such a thing works within the particular world, but what if the world in question has no such knowledge? What if in this particular world knowledge of the weaknesses of trolls is secret, because no trolls have been seen or heard for hundreds or thousands of years? Where did the knowledge come from in such a case?

Understand that I'm not saying that the player categorically can't do such a thing. I'm saying it needs be discussed with the DM.



> 4e is a tightly-designed game. It doesn't assume that (1) the GM will use puzzles to which (2) the players know the answers but which (3) the players must pretend they don't know in the play of the game. Because that - to be frank - is terrible design!



This part I can't parse at all. I honestly don't know what you're saying here. The sentence structure is confusing.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> "Peer pressure is another means which can be used to control players who are not totally obnoxious and who you deem worth saving. These types typically attempt to give orders and instructions even when their characters are not present, tell other characters what to do even though the character role they have has nothing to do with that of the one being instructed, *or continually attempt actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of."*
> 
> Gygax is flat out calling people who metagame their knowledge to their characters, troublesome players.  The bolded section is explicitly talking about knowledge the player has, but the characters would not have.



So who gets to determine what "actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of"? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a town? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge of basic math? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a troll's weakness? 

If the answer is 'yes,' then we are indeed engaging the sort of degenerate play that leads to Mother-May-I scenarios, because I am passively participating in a game where my character's knowledge and experiences requires permission from the DM. My own character's head space and history becomes a Schrödinger's Box of knowledge. Is knowledge of a troll's weakness there or not? My character's cognitive capacity is being determined entirely by the capricious dispensations of the DM. At this point, I would indeed be better off just letting the DM roleplay my character in my stead. 

I personally think that there is a difference of categories between a player operating their PC with knowledge about what's behind Door #1 vs. Door #2 and a player who believes that it's reasonable that their player character knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire. If you genuinely believe that your character is ignorant of a troll's vulnerablities then you are certainly free to roleplay your player character with ignorance (and die, as per Lanefan) while other players roleplay their characters with cognizance.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> If you genuinely believe that your character is ignorant of a troll's vulnerablities then you are certainly free to roleplay your player character with ignorance (and die, as per Lanefan) while other players roleplay their characters with cognizance.




Method roleplaying is not for sissies.

EDIT: So I have heard.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Method roleplaying isn't for sissies.
> 
> EDIT: So I have heard.



But the point is that you can method roleplay that your characters are cognizant of troll vulnerabilities. The idea that they must method roleplay from a (DM) predetermined position of ignorance or be accused of "cheating" is the point of contention. 

Imagine that we were students in a college course and the class professor presumed that we should all be ignorant about a subject matter, no matter how obscure that they may regard it, and they subsequently penalized us for having and exercising prior knowledge of the material. Why should my choices be restricted to going through the motions of feigning ignorance (largely for the sake of the professor's ego) or be penalized for having acquired prior knowledge in my experiences? And yet this is the scenario that we are facing.


----------



## Numidius

jonesy said:


> This part I can't parse at all. I honestly don't know what you're saying here. The sentence structure is confusing.




It means 4e does not assume orwellian doublethink


----------



## sd_jasper

Numidius said:


> Immersion/metagame are two contradictory thinking at once.
> Reminded me of Orwell's doublethink. Infer what you will from the quote, you talking about acting. Rpg btw is not like acting on a script




No, but I do think they are related skills. Acting, improve, and even writing are similar to what I consider good roleplaying. They all require you to get "into the mind" of someone else. To make actions and statements seem natural even when they are not natural to you.

I, the player, am always aware that an RPG is just a game and that nothing that happens in that game really matters. But if I were to have my character act with knowledge that they were not real and the whole world was fiction, well I don't think that it would end up much fun for anyone.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> But the point is that you can method roleplay that your characters are cognizant of troll vulnerabilities. The idea that they must method roleplay from a (DM) predetermined position of ignorance or be accused of "cheating" is the point of contention.
> 
> Imagine that we were students in a college course and the class professor presumed that we should all be ignorant about a subject matter, no matter how obscure that they may regard it, and they subsequently penalized us for having and exercising prior knowledge of the material. Why should my choices be restricted to going through the motions of feigning ignorance (largely for the sake of the professor's ego) or be penalized for having acquired prior knowledge in my experiences? And yet this is the scenario that we are facing.




I'm sure you were aware my response was largely tongue-and-cheek, but you make an interesting point. I will attempt to play devil's advocate here, but I'm not all convinced of this position. I think @_*Lanefan*_ or @_*Maxperson*_ might probably do a better job defending this.

In 5e, when one plays true to their character, one may be incentivised with an Inspiration Point. i.e. the penalty might be offset by a mechanical advantage that may be used in the fiction. I don't know if that is possible in earlier editions (3.x and earlier, including BECMI).

Practically (in play) after the first round of attacks and only after some have hit (this is important), the DM could/should give the players a chance to roll an Intelligence check to figure out something with regards to the beast's vulnerability or they could just Say Yes and provide the information since the _gotcha moment_ of the puzzle has been passed.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> The section talking about skilled play does not say anything about the players being able to use metagame knowledge.  Further, he says this...
> 
> "As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter. You know how strong, intelligent, wise, healthy, dexterous and, *relatively speaking, how commanding a personality* you have. *Details as to your appearance your body proportions, and your history can be produced by you or the Dungeon Master. You act out the game as this character, staying within your "godgiven abilities", and as molded by your philosophical and moral ethics (called alignment). You interact with your fellow role players, not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic! The Dungeon Master will act the parts of "everyone else", and will present to you a variety of new characters to talk with, drink with, gamble with, adventure with, and often fight with! Each of you will become an artful thespian as time goes by - and you will acquire gold, magic items, and great renown as you become Falstaff the Invincible!"
> 
> The player knows that Falstaff has a 14 charisma, but explicitly, Falstaff does not.
> *



*

Two things. 

1) If a player, at the time of character generation or session 0, says that he has an adventuring uncle in whose footsteps he's following, and that he was raised hearing stories of the uncle's exploits, how would you handle that? Would you allow such a character the option to know about a monster vulnerability? Would you require a check, but lower the DC compared to another character possibly knowing it?

What if D&D 5E actually addressed this specifically in the rules? They don't; it's left entirely up to the DM (and/or players, depending). But let's say that Session 0 resulted in a very loose sketch of each PC. They have a their Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, and their Background, but no other details. The rest is to be filled in during the course of play. 

Is it somehow better if this kind of fictional detail is decided ahead of time rather than during play? I think this is the actual question here. Or perhaps, is it somehow worse to decide such things during play rather than ahead of time? 

I don't see why; there's no metagaming going on in the strict sense; there's no reason that characters cannot in any way know such a detail. It's perfectly plausible to have decided it ahead of time....with approval from the DM, of course. Which is delving into the Mother May I form of play. 

2) Do players in your game ever act with a mind to their current HP and/or other resources? I mean, does the Fighter get more cautious when his HP get lower? Does he try to save his single use abilities like Second Wind and Action Surge for when they are truly needed? 

Isn't this a case of Falstaff acting explicitly with the stats in mind? Shouldn't Falstaff act cautious toward every single attack directed at him because we all know that any attack could be lethal? Only by acting with the metaknowledge of HP and death saves and (except at low level) a whole process that ensures the character doesn't simply die outright from a gnoll hitting him in the head with a flail (!) does the character boldly wade into combat with no fear. 

Which is fine.....I want Fighters to boldly wade into combat with no fear. I don't mind how HP and death saves and related mechanics work. 

But, in this way, isn't metagaming happening in every game, and by every player? Everyone involved knows you're playing a game. It's meant to be played. Why pretend that's not happening? 

There are very few instances of metagaming that I can think of that can't be justified in some fictional way after the fact just as easily as they could be before the fact. So the question really does boil down to what are the benefits and drawbacks to establishing fictional elements (such as character knowledge) ahead of play or during play. 

Which I think is the interesting part of the discussion, and which relates to the Mother May I topic. 

"Metagaming is always cheating" is clearly not true even across all editions of D&D, let alone when we start to include other games.*


----------



## Numidius

sd_jasper said:


> No, but I do think they are related skills. Acting, improve, and even writing are similar to what I consider good roleplaying. They all require you to get "into the mind" of someone else. To make actions and statements seem natural even when they are not natural to you.
> 
> I, the player, am always aware that an RPG is just a game and that nothing that happens in that game really matters. But if I were to have my character act with knowledge that they were not real and the whole world was fiction, well I don't think that it would end up much fun for anyone.



Sure. On acting / writing skill: it would need a system in which it is important; mechanically, procedurally, useful for the resolution 

Dogs in the vineyard comes to mind. 

Moreover, the seminal game (that also inspired DitV) Trollbabe, by Ron Edwards (circa y 2000), relies on player's description of 'failed' outcomes in the very moment of mechanical resolution (also incorporating bits, or lots, from Npc and the scene framed in advance for that conflict), in order to procede further; the Gm describes the successful ones, so Gm content authority and pc protagonism/protection, are preserved. Gm describes successes, Player failures; the fiction has changed, and eventually the Player describes if and how the Pc tries again to reach the stated goal for the conflict (putting forth unused resources from his character sheet), and rerolls... Rinse. Repeat. 

This is just a single rule from Trollbabe game (of course there's more in it), but puts Player descriptions under the spotlight, after the roll, setting the changed situation with new fiction/content introducted, before continuing the game. 

I run a Vampire mini game with it, cause I couldn't bear anymore the White Wolf original system. And Vampire is well known for his immersive type players, but when declaring pompose actions, the Gm was like: "Err... yeah, roll the dice first and then 'I' will describe the outcome".


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> So who gets to determine what "actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of"? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a town? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge of basic math? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a troll's weakness?



In order:

1. Yes.  Knowledge level regarding a town (a part of the setting) would be GM-determined in concert with looking at your character's background and history to see if you've ever been here before or have any other legitimate reason to know much about the place. (and if you don't have a background/history done up, dice are plan B)

2. Maybe.  This one would largely depend on class, stats, and background.  Any wizard, most clerics, and some rogues would reasonably have had some basic math training; as would almost anyone from a wealthy or merchant-based or trade-based background.  But a simple farmer who has taken up fighter as an adventuring class?  Nowhere near as likely, and a GM trying to play to medieval realism (where peasants got next to no formal education beyond what they were told in church) might enforce this.

3. Probably.  The GM (and you-as-player if you've been in for the whole campaign) will know whether she's ever used trolls as foes before in that campaign.  If no, then it comes down to how else might your PC know this; and most GMs would either give you a roll of some sort or give the collective party a roll to see if this useful nugget of info had ever crossed your transom (and - less likely but still relevant - whether you happen to remember it under stress!).  But note that by 'give a roll' I also mean 'force a roll' if players start using knowledge their PCs might not have.



> If the answer is 'yes,' then we are indeed engaging the sort of degenerate play that leads to Mother-May-I scenarios, because I am passively participating in a game where my character's knowledge and experiences requires permission from the DM. My own character's head space and history becomes a Schrödinger's Box of knowledge. Is knowledge of a troll's weakness there or not? My character's cognitive capacity is being determined entirely by the capricious dispensations of the DM. At this point, I would indeed be better off just letting the DM roleplay my character in my stead.



That's taking it to the extreme, I think.

You're right in that we don't know everything our characters know.  The question is how do we handle this lack of knowledge at the table, particularly when there's a clear advantage to having said knowledge (e.g. the troll example).  My feeling is that the default should be that the character doesn't know something unless there's evidence that it does (which can be provided by a successful die roll).  Never been to this town?  Unless my background says I've been here before the best I can hope for is that a die roll tells me I've heard about the town from others, or from past study.  And it's on me as player to be honest enough to make (or call for) these sort of rolls.



> I personally think that there is a difference of categories between a player operating their PC with knowledge about what's behind Door #1 vs. Door #2 and a player who believes that it's reasonable that their player character knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire.



Where I don't see all that much of a difference between these.  Unless something informs to the contrary and says the PC has the knowledge you're still operating your PC with knowledge of troll-lore that it doesn't have.

Same can be true of the doors.  Maybe your PC received divine guidance and knows going in that Door #1 is the killer and Door #2 is safe.  But without this the PC is left to guess.



> If you genuinely believe that your character is ignorant of a troll's vulnerablities then you are certainly free to roleplay your player character with ignorance (and die, as per Lanefan) while other players roleplay their characters with cognizance.



That sounds like a roaring table argument just looking for a place to happen.

If one of the PCs legitimately knows about troll vulnerabilities then one would hope she'd tell the rest of us before we die.  But if none of them know then none of them know, and it's on us as players to play accordingly even if it means running our PCs into a ditch.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Two things.
> 
> 1) If a player, at the time of character generation or session 0, says that he has an adventuring uncle in whose footsteps he's following, and that he was raised hearing stories of the uncle's exploits, how would you handle that?



First off, it wouldn't get to the point of a player just saying this.  If a player wants to delve into their character's family history before puck drop that's fine, but it'd be handled the same way any other PC's family history is handled: you can choose basic stuff that doesn't give any potential advantages (e.g. you come from a long line of farmers or brewers or what-have-you), or you can randomly roll to see if there's anything more significant but you're stuck with whatever you roll even if it's something you could have chosen.



> Would you allow such a character the option to know about a monster vulnerability? Would you require a check, but lower the DC compared to another character possibly knowing it?



If the earlier rolls had come up saying there was another adventurer in the family I'd probably give an overall check to start with to determine just how much info was passed on, i.e. did your uncle tell you tales of adventure every night or did you almost never see him, and base any subsequent checks* on that.

* - including monster knowledge; and things like dungeoneering, survival skills, and so forth at low level until the PC would have learned for herself anyway.

(side note: the place I always run into player knowledge v character knowledge isn't trolls, it's vampires)



> What if D&D 5E actually addressed this specifically in the rules? They don't; it's left entirely up to the DM (and/or players, depending). But let's say that Session 0 resulted in a very loose sketch of each PC. They have a their Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, and their Background, but no other details. The rest is to be filled in during the course of play.
> 
> Is it somehow better if this kind of fictional detail is decided ahead of time rather than during play? I think this is the actual question here. Or perhaps, is it somehow worse to decide such things during play rather than ahead of time?



Anything like this that could make a material difference in play is ideally sorted out ahead of time...but that's ideally, and doesn't reflect reality where people just want to get char-gen over with and drop the puck.

Plan B, and IME the more usual outcome, is to sort it out whenever it first comes up in play.  The problem, of course, is that doing so can sometimes put a 15-minute hole in the session while we do it.



> 2) Do players in your game ever act with a mind to their current HP and/or other resources? I mean, does the Fighter get more cautious when his HP get lower? Does he try to save his single use abilities like Second Wind and Action Surge for when they are truly needed?
> 
> Isn't this a case of Falstaff acting explicitly with the stats in mind? Shouldn't Falstaff act cautious toward every single attack directed at him because we all know that any attack could be lethal? Only by acting with the metaknowledge of HP and death saves and (except at low level) a whole process that ensures the character doesn't simply die outright from a gnoll hitting him in the head with a flail (!) does the character boldly wade into combat with no fear.
> 
> Which is fine.....I want Fighters to boldly wade into combat with no fear. I don't mind how HP and death saves and related mechanics work.



So do I, and any character always has a reasonably good idea of how badly she's hurt and-or fatigued.  Players speak in numbers*, of course, but in the fiction I always translate it to using words to describe their situation.  A fighter who just took a hit from 25 h.p. down to 10, for example, might yell in the fiction "Ow, that hit me hard!  Not sure I can take another one of those!  Medic!!!".

* - trying to get players to speak in in-fiction words rather than metagame numbers was once a crusade of mine, but eventually I kinda gave up.



> But, in this way, isn't metagaming happening in every game, and by every player? Everyone involved knows you're playing a game. It's meant to be played. Why pretend that's not happening?



Paradoxically enough, we have to pretend one thing (the game play) isn't happening in order to better pretend that something else (the fiction) is.

It really is doublethink sometimes. 



> There are very few instances of metagaming that I can think of that can't be justified in some fictional way after the fact just as easily as they could be before the fact. So the question really does boil down to what are the benefits and drawbacks to establishing fictional elements (such as character knowledge) ahead of play or during play.
> 
> Which I think is the interesting part of the discussion, and which relates to the Mother May I topic.
> 
> "Metagaming is always cheating" is clearly not true even across all editions of D&D, let alone when we start to include other games.



While metagamed results can be often justified in the fiction after the fact, this is by no means preferable in the slightest - all you're doing there is damage control.  Justifying it ahead of time (or even at the time, which happens occasionally) takes it out of metagame and pre-sets it in the fiction.

And a very easy example of unjustifiable metagaming: a PC scout is sent ahead to reconnoiter.  The other PCs can't see her, can't hear her, and can't communicate with her.  She runs afoul of a sentry and dies.  The players at the table know she's dead but their characters don't...and so if they act on that player knowledge to do anything differently than had they known the scout survived the encounter with the sentry, that's metagaming that can't be retro-fitted.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> But the point is that you can method roleplay that your characters are cognizant of troll vulnerabilities. The idea that they must method roleplay from a (DM) predetermined position of ignorance or be accused of "cheating" is the point of contention.
> 
> Imagine that we were students in a college course and the class professor presumed that we should all be ignorant about a subject matter, no matter how obscure that they may regard it, and they subsequently penalized us for having and exercising prior knowledge of the material. Why should my choices be restricted to going through the motions of feigning ignorance (largely for the sake of the professor's ego) or be penalized for having acquired prior knowledge in my experiences? And yet this is the scenario that we are facing.




It isn't the only way to do things, but these are totally different examples. Your professor isn't playing a totally different game than a GM, and the GM is under the assumption that character knowledge and player knowledge are separate things (and while it isn't an assumption of every group or system) that divide is a widespread assumption in the hobby. No one is faulting you for knowing what hurts trolls. You are getting faulted for acting on that information as if your character knows what you know. I get there are different approaches here. Because I understand for some people the draw of the game is you, the player, solving the puzzle, not simulating a character solving the puzzle. Personally I favor the player being the one solving the puzzle. But I understand why people often have the expectation that you don't act on player knowledge your character doesnt have.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> First off, it wouldn't get to the point of a player just saying this.  If a player wants to delve into their character's family history before puck drop that's fine, but it'd be handled the same way any other PC's family history is handled: you can choose basic stuff that doesn't give any potential advantages (e.g. you come from a long line of farmers or brewers or what-have-you), or you can randomly roll to see if there's anything more significant but you're stuck with whatever you roll even if it's something you could have chosen.
> 
> If the earlier rolls had come up saying there was another adventurer in the family I'd probably give an overall check to start with to determine just how much info was passed on, i.e. did your uncle tell you tales of adventure every night or did you almost never see him, and base any subsequent checks* on that.
> 
> * - including monster knowledge; and things like dungeoneering, survival skills, and so forth at low level until the PC would have learned for herself anyway.
> 
> (side note: the place I always run into player knowledge v character knowledge isn't trolls, it's vampires)




So when a player creates a character, they can't select something that has some kind of advantage? Like being of a noble family, so they start with more coin....that kind of thing. No one gets to do that? Because I think almost every character in my game has exactly that kind of thing going on....some kind of perk based on their background. These are baked into 5E but we also go a step or two beyond that. 



Lanefan said:


> Anything like this that could make a material difference in play is ideally sorted out ahead of time...but that's ideally, and doesn't reflect reality where people just want to get char-gen over with and drop the puck.
> 
> Plan B, and IME the more usual outcome, is to sort it out whenever it first comes up in play.  The problem, of course, is that doing so can sometimes put a 15-minute hole in the session while we do it.




But what makes it so okay to decide it ahead of time rather than later? Here is were I ask you the same question....how is this result different from the perspective of the player? 



Lanefan said:


> So do I, and any character always has a reasonably good idea of how badly she's hurt and-or fatigued.  Players speak in numbers*, of course, but in the fiction I always translate it to using words to describe their situation.  A fighter who just took a hit from 25 h.p. down to 10, for example, might yell in the fiction "Ow, that hit me hard!  Not sure I can take another one of those!  Medic!!!".
> 
> * - trying to get players to speak in in-fiction words rather than metagame numbers was once a crusade of mine, but eventually I kinda gave up.




This is not my point....sure, people may know they're hurt. But no one would ever rush into a fight thinking "it'll be at least 10 or 12 hits before I'm down!" But Fighters do exactly that when they have full HP. 

Metagaming is constantly happening in the game. Avoiding some while turning a blind eye to a whole lot more just seems odd. There are degrees, sure, and even I would say that some metagaming actions would be "bad", but no game is free of metagaming. 



Lanefan said:


> Paradoxically enough, we have to pretend one thing (the game play) isn't happening in order to better pretend that something else (the fiction) is.
> 
> It really is doublethink sometimes.




I don't know what this means. As immersive as the game gets, I can't forget that I'm rolling dice and marking numbers on a character sheet. 



Lanefan said:


> While metagamed results can be often justified in the fiction after the fact, this is by no means preferable in the slightest - all you're doing there is damage control.  Justifying it ahead of time (or even at the time, which happens occasionally) takes it out of metagame and pre-sets it in the fiction.




Why is it only damage control? Tommy decides his fighter is following in the footsteps of his uncle, and that he's heard all kinds of stories about monsters and dungeons. Why does it matter if Tommy decides this in session 0 or session 4? 



Lanefan said:


> And a very easy example of unjustifiable metagaming: a PC scout is sent ahead to reconnoiter.  The other PCs can't see her, can't hear her, and can't communicate with her.  She runs afoul of a sentry and dies.  The players at the table know she's dead but their characters don't...and so if they act on that player knowledge to do anything differently than had they known the scout survived the encounter with the sentry, that's metagaming that can't be retro-fitted.




There are any number of ways to allow for this. Perhaps she screams before she dies? Perhaps she actually holds off long enough to shout a warning? Perhaps the cleric or wizard get a weird hunch? Perhaps she leaves signs that things are all okay up to this point, and the PCs reach a point where they expect the next sign but none is to be found? 

But even if you don't want to go with anything like that.....wouldn't the lack of her return be enough to "justify" that the other PCs proceed with caution? 

And even if you didn't want to do that....couldn't they just be cautious anyway? Do you make them proceed carelessly?


----------



## pemerton

jonesy said:


> they determine whether a certain, shall we say fine print, in a characters backstory is set up
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I was using an extreme example of a backstory fine print to try and illustrate why it's alway good for DM to go through the character backstories



"Fine print" normally refers to elements of a contract that are concealed/obscured from a consumer party to the contract.

I'm not sure how you see this term applying in the case of a RPG.

If a player knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, the GM can't direct the player not to know it: if a player knows something, s/he knows it. What's the "fine print"?

If a player purports to stipulate that NPC Z believes such-and-such and has such-and-such intentions, and the GM actually has control of Z in play, then the GM can stipulate whatever s/he wants about Z's beliefs and intentions. (The GM may or may not which to have some regard to what the player has stipulated, depending on the details of who introduced Z into the fiction and who is responsible in play for playing Z - as I discussed in my post not far upthread.) What's the "fine print"?

I'm not certain, but you seem to be suggesting that if a player writes into his/her PC's backstory _I know what Z thinks_, where Z is a NPC played by the GM, then the GM is obliged to tell stuff to the player about Z's thoughts. But 4e doesn't work like that. If a player wants to oblige the GM to provide that sort of information, then the player has to declare an appropriately-framed Knowledge check.



jonesy said:


> A player writing in advance knowledge of enemy weakness into a characters backstory is fine if such a thing works within the particular world, but what if the world in question has no such knowledge?



Again it's not clear to me what you have in mind.

I am asserting that if a player _actually knows that standard D&D trolls are vulnerable to fire_, and if a GM _frames that player's PC into a confrontation with a standard D&D troll_, then there is no rule in 4e that directs the player not to use his/her knowledge, nor any rule that permits the GM to decide what action declaration the player should make.

If a player wants to write something into his/her PC's background that would explain that knowledge about trolls, that's the player's prerogative.



jonesy said:


> What if in this particular world knowledge of the weaknesses of trolls is secret, because no trolls have been seen or heard for hundreds or thousands of years? Where did the knowledge come from in such a case?



That's up to the player and GM to decide.

But it also goes back to my principal point: if a GM wants to run a game in which XYZ is secret, but in fact the players in the game know XYZ, then something has gone wrong. Because - self-evidently - XYZ in that case is not secret!


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I personally think that there is a difference of categories between a player operating their PC with knowledge about what's behind Door #1 vs. Door #2 and a player who believes that it's reasonable that their player character knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire.



There are at least two differences here:

(1) It is generally considered that _sneaking a peek at a module_ is cheating. Modules tend to say things like "If you're a player, don't read past this point." Whereas learning that trolls are vulnerable to fire is not cheating. It's part of learning to play the game well.

And related to this, _re-playing_ a module you've already played isn't a core activity for D&D, and arguably it's not something the game is designed around. Whereas there is a clear intention that the Monster Manual is to be re-used from campaign to campaign.

(2) If it turns out that a player is re-playing a module, most of the time it is easy for that player to avoid deploying his/her knowledge of the module. Nothing will go wrong, for instance, if the player doesn't mention that there is treasure in such-and-such a chest. There may be some exceptions to this - eg the idea of replaying ToH yet remaining silent makes almost no sense. The "player" in that case would really be more like a co-GM playing a NPC.

Whereas a player who knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire, yet declines to use fire to fight some trolls his/her PC has encountered, is actively subverting the play of the game. S/he is not trying to win the combat, and is precluded even from taking the actions that a newbie player might take in that situation to try and win the combat. It's degenerate!



sd_jasper said:


> if I were to have my character act with knowledge that they were not real and the whole world was fiction, well I don't think that it would end up much fun for anyone.



But attacking trolls with fire is _not_ a case of acting as if the situation is not real and the whole gameworld a fiction.



sd_jasper said:


> Acting, improve, and even writing are similar to what I consider good roleplaying. They all require you to get "into the mind" of someone else. To make actions and statements seem natural even when they are not natural to you.



If you know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but are pretending that your PC does not, _when does it become natural to try fire_? Players who are _actually_ ignorant of the trolls' vulnerability, but whose PCs are engaged in combat with trolls, will try various stuff to try and beat the trolls - including, pehaps, fire.

If you already know the puzzle, how do you work this out? _Actors_ who portray characters solving puzzles to which the actors already know the answer are following a script, and contrive their response. But how is a player in a RPG supposed to do this?


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:


> 4e is a tightly-designed game. It doesn't assume that (1) the GM will use puzzles to which (2) the players know the answers but which (3) the players must pretend they don't know in the play of the game. Because that - to be frank - is terrible design!





jonesy said:


> This part I can't parse at all. I honestly don't know what you're saying here. The sentence structure is confusing.





Numidius said:


> It means 4e does not assume orwellian doublethink



To elaborate on what Numidius said:

(A) 4e is a tightly-designed game. Therefore it lacks terrible design.

(B) Here is an example of terrible RPG design: the GM is encouraged to use puzzles, knowing that the players know the answers to those puzzles, but expecting that the players - when they play the game - will pretend that they don't know those answers.

Because 4e lacks terrible design, the example I've just spelled out is not part of 4e.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Practically (in play) after the first round of attacks and only after some have hit (this is important), the DM could/should give the players a chance to roll an Intelligence check to figure out something with regards to the beast's vulnerability or they could just Say Yes and provide the information since the _gotcha moment_ of the puzzle has been passed.



So how is this better play - everyone at the table knows what the situation is, but the players aren't allowed to act on it until they make a successful roll - than allowing the players to just make the choices they want to make from the start?

I mean, there isn't any "gotcha" moment if the players already know.


----------



## sd_jasper

pemerton said:


> If you know that trolls are vulnerable to fire, but are pretending that your PC does not, _when does it become natural to try fire_? Players who are _actually_ ignorant of the trolls' vulnerability, but whose PCs are engaged in combat with trolls, will try various stuff to try and beat the trolls - including, pehaps, fire.




Yup, which is why I stated:


sd_jasper said:


> Well, assuming I am running a game where (1) there are trolls, (2) trolls and their weaknesses are not common knowledge to whatever civilization that the PCs are part of, and (3) the party hasn't previously run into trolls and learned all about them, then...
> 
> First, any PCs with the appropriate skill can roll to see if the recognize the troll. If they roll well, then I tell them they know what they are dealing with, what the weaknesses are, etc.
> 
> If they fail the skill roll, then I let them know they see "Large green humanoids" that they cannot identify. It is up to the PCs what happens next. I rarely ambush my players, so there is a good chance that if they are running into a new monster, they will have options to avoid or retreat. Maybe they decide to go back to town and research it. But, assuming they have somehow got themselves into a combat situation, then *after a few rounds it will be clear that the creature they are battling has incredible regenerative capabilities.* What happens then, again depends on the players. I would probably *allow the players to say that they try to burn it, because trying fire is a pretty common thing no matter what the actual weakness might be*. Or I might give a simple intelligence or perception check, that could give them some clue ("You notice that the creature is shying away from your torch even when it attacks"). Or they might just run away (again to try and research).








pemerton said:


> If you already know the puzzle, how do you work this out? _Actors_ who portray characters solving puzzles to which the actors already know the answer are following a script, and contrive their response. But how is a player in a RPG supposed to do this?




You stop and think, "What would my character do in this situation given what they know?" If you honestly can't do that... well maybe take a class on improv?


----------



## hawkeyefan

sd_jasper said:


> Yup, which is why I stated:
> 
> You stop and think, "What would my character do in this situation given what they know?" If you honestly can't do that... well maybe take a class on improv?




But what player can say that they know the entirety of their character’s knowledge? That’s the issue.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> So how is this better play - everyone at the table knows what the situation is, but the players aren't allowed to act on it until they make a successful roll - than allowing the players to just make the choices they want to make from the start?
> 
> I mean, there isn't any "gotcha" moment if the players already know.




Some people enjoy the rolls and enjoy seeing how that leads to things playing out. this isn't what I generally like but I've played with enough people who like it to see that it is a real playstyle difference. I see it all the time with investigation adventures.  The difference between wanting to simulate  Sherlock Holmes and wanting to be in Sherlock Holmes' shoes, solving the mysteries. He interest isn't in having the player skill tested, it is in having a system that enables them to realize the character they want to create.


----------



## hawkeyefan

I think a recent eye opener for me....in the form of a game rule that reminded me things don’t have to be the way I expect them to be....was the use of Flashbacks in Blades in the Dark. The game doesn’t really make a difference between actions in the present and those in the past. 

Players can call for a flashback and take an action at some earlier point in the fiction. They cannot undo what’s been established, but they can introduce some past action that makes them better prepared to deal with a current threat or complication. 

The more complicated the action, the higher the cost in Stress, a valuable and finite PC resource in the game. 

This opens up such a new avenue of play that’s really exciting.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Here is the passage about "metagame thinking" (DMG p 15). It says _nothing_ about knowledge of trolls:
> 
> Players get the best enjoyment when they preserve the willing suspension of disbelief. A roleplaying game’s premise is that it is an experience of fictional people in a fictional world.
> 
> Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It’s like a character in a movie knowing he’s in a movie and acting accordingly. "This dragon must be a few levels higher than we are," a player might say. "The DM wouldn’t throw such a tough monster at us!" Or you might hear, "The read aloud text spent a lot of time on that door - let’s search it again!"
> 
> Discourage this by giving players a gentle verbal reminder: "But what do your characters think?" Or, you could curb metagame thinking by asking for Perception checks when there’s nothing to see, or setting up an encounter that is much higher level than the characters are. Just make sure to give them a way to avoid it or retreat.​
> A player deciding that his/her PC uses fire against a troll isn't "thinking about the game as a game". It's thinking about the ficiton - in particular, the in-fiction weakness of the troll. If the GM asks "What is your character thinking?", the answer would be "That this troll is vulnerable to fire."




It is thinking about the game as a game.  By going outside of the character to his own knowledge of the monster books, he is treating the game as a game, rather than remaining in the game world and just using the PC's more limited knowledge of things.  Then he metagames that into the PC's world with some sort of weak justification like his uncle told him about it.



> And if you look at the discussion of player types, each has a "Be sure that the X doesn't . . ." followed by a list of possible player behaviours that might spoil the game for the other players. In the case of the explorer, this says "Be sure the explorer doesn't . . . se knowledge of the game world to his own advantage." The "his" here contrasts with the playing group as a whole. An "explorer" who uses knowledge of trolls' vulnerabilities to beat a troll isn't engaging in disruptive behaviour to his (purely personal) advantage.





No.  While most of the behaviors are ones that might spoil the game for others, not all of them are.  The explorer gaining advantage does not equate to spoiling the game for others.  It can just as easily just be about him gaining an unfair advantage over the for himself.  Similarly, the slayer rushing past social and skill encounters is about him, not the others as they don't have to rush past them.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Using fire to attack a troll is not _an action that a character would have no knowledge of_. Heck, the class table in the AD&D PHB even lists whether or not each class can use flaming oil (all can except monks).




Nice Red Herring.  Sure, using fire is something the character would have knowledge of.  Knowing the trolls weakness to fire is not something the character is guaranteed to have knowledge of.



> I'm telling you how the game was actually played, in the skilled play paradigm, at the time Gygax was writing his rules. _It was taken for granted that players improved their knowledge of the game over time._ That was an aspect of what skilled play meant. In that respect, it was a form of wargaming.




Skill at strategy.  Skill at not forgetting to search for traps.  Things like that is the skill improvement he was talking about.  He very clearly said "or continually attempt actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of."  You can try to avoid those words by hiding behind, "Well this is the way we did it back then," but I'm not going to be swayed by your personal playstyle.  His words are his words, and they are very clear.



> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], upthread, following the logic of your (that is, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s) preferences, said that it woudl be _good roleplaying_ to let your PC be killed by a troll rather than rely on your knowledge that a troll is vulnerable to fire. That's the opposite of skilled play as Gygax describes it.




It's utterly irrelevant if that's the opposite of "skilled play" since I corrected your very clearly in my response to you when you asked if I would let my PC die, stating in no uncertain terms that I would not and then explaining to you how I would not.  I have a hard time believing that this misstatement by you is an accident.  So let me be clear again.  Nowhere did I say that it's good roleplay to let your PC be killed by a troll.  Full stop.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> So who gets to determine what "actions or activities their characters would have no knowledge of"? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a town? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge of basic math? Does the GM get to determine that I have no prior knowledge about a troll's weakness?
> 
> If the answer is 'yes,' then we are indeed engaging the sort of degenerate play that leads to Mother-May-I scenarios, because I am passively participating in a game where my character's knowledge and experiences requires permission from the DM. My own character's head space and history becomes a Schrödinger's Box of knowledge. Is knowledge of a troll's weakness there or not? My character's cognitive capacity is being determined entirely by the capricious dispensations of the DM. At this point, I would indeed be better off just letting the DM roleplay my character in my stead.
> 
> I personally think that there is a difference of categories between a player operating their PC with knowledge about what's behind Door #1 vs. Door #2 and a player who believes that it's reasonable that their player character knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire. If you genuinely believe that your character is ignorant of a troll's vulnerablities then you are certainly free to roleplay your player character with ignorance (and die, as per Lanefan) while other players roleplay their characters with cognizance.




You are trying to set this in terms of the DM always saying "yes" or "no," when the reality is that the DM will very rarely be saying "yes" or "no."   Circumstances around the PC, his skills, background, etc. will all factor into whether not the PC knows, doesn't know, or might know.  For example, if the PC is from the middle of the desert and has spent his whole life there, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it's pretty certain that he won't have knowledge of trolls based on his background.  If he doesn't have some sort of skill or play experience that could give him knowledge of trolls, the DM should rule that he doesn't know about them.  On the other hand, if the PC is from a town right next to the Troll Moors, it's going to be certain that he will know about them, regardless of what skills he might have.  Unless there is crystal clear information like that, and it won't be that clear the vast majority of the time, the DM will call for a roll since the outcome is uncertain.  Calling for a roll is not the DM saying "yes" or "no," so there is no "Mother May I possible."  A few occasional instances of "yes" or "no" doesn't come close to rising to the level of "Mother May I."


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Two things.
> 
> 1) If a player, at the time of character generation or session 0, says that he has an adventuring uncle in whose footsteps he's following, and that he was raised hearing stories of the uncle's exploits, how would you handle that? Would you allow such a character the option to know about a monster vulnerability? Would you require a check, but lower the DC compared to another character possibly knowing it?




So the first thing I would do upon getting that background is figure out what level the uncle is.  A level 5 adventurer uncle will have far less monsters encountered and learned about than a level 15 adventurer uncle.  Then I would look at the area of the world the uncle adventured in and what monsters would be commonly encountered up to his level.  For those monsters, yes the PC would get a check and I would treat it similar to having a knowledge skill.  The DC would be the same as someone who didn't have the background, but had the appropriate skill.



> What if D&D 5E actually addressed this specifically in the rules? They don't; it's left entirely up to the DM (and/or players, depending). But let's say that Session 0 resulted in a very loose sketch of each PC. They have a their Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws, and their Background, but no other details. The rest is to be filled in during the course of play.




I ask my players for a written background so that I have an idea about their PCs.  It's not all encompassing, but it gives a pretty good general idea of what they might know or not know.  They can add in more details later, but only with respect to something they've put into their background.  For example, they can add a limp to their uncle received by a raging owlbear later on, so long as the adventurer uncle was in the original background.  They can't just keep adding in new uncles to suit their desires.



> 2) Do players in your game ever act with a mind to their current HP and/or other resources? I mean, does the Fighter get more cautious when his HP get lower? Does he try to save his single use abilities like Second Wind and Action Surge for when they are truly needed?




The players know about the HPs and other resources, but the character does not.  The character would be aware that he is tiring and getting bruised up, slowing him down and/or making him more sloppy, which is more likely to get him killed, but he won't know that he dropped from 30 hit points to 10.  The player is the only one to know about something like second wind.  A character isn't going to be able to just trigger a second wind at will.  Second winds come when they come in the game world, but outside of that the player is choosing.  Since metagaming is having the character act on player knowledge about something the character wouldn't know about, none of that is metagaming.



> Everyone involved knows you're playing a game. It's meant to be played. Why pretend that's not happening?




Bringing out of character knowledge into the game is where metagaming happens.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> So when a player creates a character, they can't select something that has some kind of advantage? Like being of a noble family, so they start with more coin....that kind of thing. No one gets to do that? Because I think almost every character in my game has exactly that kind of thing going on....some kind of perk based on their background. These are baked into 5E but we also go a step or two beyond that.




In my game players can pick any common background.  If they want a chance for something better like nobility, they can roll for it and if they get lucky, they are a noble or come from a family of wealthy merchants, with all the advantages that come with that.  However, if they roll, they can also end up a street urchin, which comes with less money than normal.  It's up to them if they want to chance it.



> This is not my point....sure, people may know they're hurt. But no one would ever rush into a fight thinking "it'll be at least 10 or 12 hits before I'm down!" But Fighters do exactly that when they have full HP.




No they don't.  The first half of hit point loss never even touches the PC at all.  A 100 hit point fighter would have to be at 50 hit points before he takes even a scratch or bruise.  Then it takes hitting 0 before any major wound happens, and that's all it takes for a high level fighter to potentially die.  One hit.  The other "hits" aren't really hits.  They're close calls that the character isn't aware of as hits.



> Why is it only damage control? Tommy decides his fighter is following in the footsteps of his uncle, and that he's heard all kinds of stories about monsters and dungeons. Why does it matter if Tommy decides this in session 0 or session 4?




Because one is all about unfair advantages and the other is not.  If the player waits until he is right in front of a hydra to tell me that his uncle was a hydra hunter, that's really hinky.  Setting it up in advance, though, doesn't guarantee the player that it will ever be useful as the PC might not encounter a hydra.  It's just a background piece that may or may not be useful.  Personally, I like bringing bits of PC backgrounds into the game.  I've found it makes the players happy when it happens and it's fun to surprise them with something like that.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> I guess it depends if the BBEG plans are widely obvious in the setting, or they are inside the Gm notes.
> 
> I'd say go with DW's Discern Reality Move to find out (risking an unexpected twist in case of failure) or with any Strategy skill check.
> 
> If the game involves high level Pcs deeply rooted in the setting, why not having a new hi-lev Pc being the Good Twin/Brother/Former Comrade of the Evil Boss? I mean, what's the problem?




I'd go further and say this kind of thing is GOLD. I am thrilled when a player takes this sort of initiative. There are like 1000 awesome things I can do with this as a GM! And another 1000 the player can do as well, it is so cool. I'm guessing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] feels roughly the same way, its possible to frame a LOT of different scenes off of this sort of relationship and knowledge. Quite dramatic ones, and probably quite interesting to the player who would think of this background.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'd go further and say this kind of thing is GOLD. I am thrilled when a player takes this sort of initiative. There are like 1000 awesome things I can do with this as a GM! And another 1000 the player can do as well, it is so cool. I'm guessing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] feels roughly the same way, its possible to frame a LOT of different scenes off of this sort of relationship and knowledge. Quite dramatic ones, and probably quite interesting to the player who would think of this background.



Well, I've posted from time-to-time about my Burning Wheel game where one PC's main goal was to redeem his balrog-possessed brother.

In my current Traveller game, the initial patron was the friend of one PC, the (one-off, James Bond-ish) lover of another, and the fencing rival of a third.

To me, good RPGing requires that the PCs be clearly embedded in the setting and situation - that's where the player lines of engagement, and the GM twists of the knife, come from.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> So how is this better play - everyone at the table knows what the situation is, but the players aren't allowed to act on it until they make a successful roll - than allowing the players to just make the choices they want to make from the start?




This is how I imagine I would be running it in Lanefan's or Maxperson's preferred style. It is not a question of _better play_, it is about authenticity of character, internal consistency for the table, limiting/nullifying the metagame.

That is not to say that @_*hawkeyefan*_'s example is not a valid way of introducing fiction or in any way not authentic, but in a game where the players have limited say in terms of setting backstory or introducing fiction that kind input would have to be cleared with the DM.



> I mean, there isn't any "gotcha" moment if the players already know.



You're right it is not a gotcha moment for the players, but for the characters.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I think a recent eye opener for me....in the form of a game rule that reminded me things don’t have to be the way I expect them to be....was the use of Flashbacks in Blades in the Dark. The game doesn’t really make a difference between actions in the present and those in the past.
> 
> Players can call for a flashback and take an action at some earlier point in the fiction. They cannot undo what’s been established, but they can introduce some past action that makes them better prepared to deal with a current threat or complication.
> 
> The more complicated the action, the higher the cost in Stress, a valuable and finite PC resource in the game.
> 
> This opens up such a new avenue of play that’s really exciting.



I remember suggesting this back c 2009 as a way of using Diplomacy or Streetwise to contribute to a secret/magic door skill challenge in 4e - _I spoke with a [sage/prophet/secretive-purveyor-of-arcane-knowledge/etc], who taught me some passwords in one of the ancient tongues_. My recollection is that some posters found it a controversial suggestion.

4e doesn't have a Stress resource, but the GM could certainly set a higher difficulty for such an action declaration to reflect the degree of fortuity involved in the posited preparation having now paid off.


----------



## pemerton

sd_jasper said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you already know the puzzle, how do you work this out? Actors who portray characters solving puzzles to which the actors already know the answer are following a script, and contrive their response. But how is a player in a RPG supposed to do this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You stop and think, "What would my character do in this situation given what they know?" If you honestly can't do that... well maybe take a class on improv?
Click to expand...


OK, let me try it another way: what do you anticipate as a likely outcome to this inquiry?

We're talking about a very specific context of inquiry here: the PC is in a combat, declaring combat-type actions (including attacks in most cases); the PC almost certainly knows that fire is a viable attack form; the _player_ knows that fire is a _required_ attack form.

When, and under what conditions, is the player entitled to decide that his/her PC uses fire?



Maxperson said:


> if the PC is from the middle of the desert and has spent his whole life there, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it's pretty certain that he won't have knowledge of trolls based on his background.  If he doesn't have some sort of skill or play experience that could give him knowledge of trolls, the DM should rule that he doesn't know about them.



This may be how you run your games, but it is not how the 4e rulebooks state the game is to be run. Establishing the PC background is a player function, not a GM function. If a player wants to play a PC who deviates from what would be normal, that's the player's prerogative (obviously subject to table consensus around genre, good taste and the like, but knowledge that trolls are vulnerable to fire isn't going to cross those sorts of boundaries!).

And as one consequence of that, the GM has no authority to rule that a PC doesn't know about trolls. That's for the player to decide. (Of course if the player is ignorant of trolls, then s/he can't write knowledge of them into his/her PC background for the obvious reason that s/he has no knowledge to write in. That's when monster knowledge checks come into play.)



Maxperson said:


> It is thinking about the game as a game.  By going outside of the character to his own knowledge of the monster books, he is treating the game as a game, rather than remaining in the game world and just using the PC's more limited knowledge of things.



But you're begging the question here, by assuming the PC doesn't know. Whereas the point I'm making (building on [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s earlier post) is that _there is nothing in the game rules that precludes the character having the knowledge_. 

You seem to be assuming that there are only three ways a PC can know something:

(1) The GM tells the player that the PC knows it;

(2) The player succeeds on a knowledge check;

(3) The PC comes to know it through the actual events of play.​
But there is no such rule in 4e. The player can decide that his/her PC knows about trolls, can establish some suitable backstory if desired/appropriate, and then deploy that knowledge. None of which involves thinking about the game as a game - it just involves PC building and action declaration.



Maxperson said:


> Because one is all about unfair advantages and the other is not.  If the player waits until he is right in front of a hydra to tell me that his uncle was a hydra hunter, that's really hinky.



And here, again, we see something that seems to me completely pointless: if you want a hydra (or whatever) to be a puzzle for your players, then _choose a monster that will in fact be puzzling for them_.

The idea that _solving a puzzle_ by using one's _knowledge of the solution_ should count as an _unfair advantage_ makes no sense. That's exactly how people solve puzzles! And getting the players to _pretend_ to be puzzled when in fact they're not just seems utterly pointless - insipid, even.



Sadras said:


> It is not a question of _better play_, it is about authenticity of character, internal consistency for the table, limiting/nullifying the metagame.



Metagame is a red herring. There's no _metagaming_ in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC. That's just PC building. And if, in fact, my PC knows about trolls or hydras (be that from an uncle, or reading a book, or divine revelation, or whatever) then there is no inauthenticity in playing my PC as acting on such knowledge - in fact it would be inauthentic to do otherwise!

There are two main things that distinguish a RPG - even classic, dungeoncrawling D&D - from a standard wargame. One is that the players can play the fiction directly. The other, arguably most important, is that the players each play a single "figure" (to use the old-fashioned terminology) or character, and engage the game from the perspective of that character.

Forcing a player to alienate him-/herself from the character, and having the play of the character be mediated through the _GM's_ decision about what the character might or might not know and do, seems to completely undercut the main thing that makes RPGing different from playing a boardgame.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Metagame is a red herring. There's no _metagaming_ in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC. That's just PC building. And if, in fact, my PC knows about trolls or hydras (be that from an uncle, or reading a book, or divine revelation, or whatever) then there is no inauthenticity in playing my PC as acting on such knowledge - in fact it would be inauthentic to do otherwise!




I agree with you, the example presented by Hawkeyefan is PC building but that is only if you accept that style of play where players may introduce fiction in that way.

Let us take another example....

1st level character, straight-out-of-a-village, finds a shard. As a player (and previous DM) s/he recognises the tell-tale signs that this shard is the Rod of 7 Parts. Did his/her fisherman uncle tell him/her about that? or was it a Solar's visit that informed the character of the Rod, its description, all its abilities and drawbacks?

You're arguing if it is player knowledge the character has knowledge of it too, right? So there is no limit, especially for those who have DMed.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> 1st level character, straight-out-of-a-village, finds a shard. As a player (and previous DM) s/he recognises the tell-tale signs that this shard is the Rod of 7 Parts. Did his/her fisherman uncle tell him/her about that? or was it a Solar's visit that informed the character of the Rod, its description, all its abilities and drawbacks?
> 
> You're arguing if it is player knowledge the character has knowledge of it too, right? So there is no limit, especially for those who have DMed.



Well, I'm saying that - in 4e - the player can impute his/her knowledge to the PC. Not that s/he has to. In your shard example, if the player wants to play his/her PC as ignorant that seems much easier than in the troll case (because there's no _bad_ action declaration s/he's making when s/he knows what a good one would be).

But if the player wants to play his/her PC as knowing, then sure. In my 4e game when the PCs found a sword which had some-or-other backstory (I'm not recalling all the details at present), there was enough there that one player suspected it was the Sword of Kas, and confirmed that knowledge when his PC took damage from handling it (because his PC had an affiliation with Vecna).

To my mind part of the point of using the Sword of Kas or the Rod of Seven Parts is that players will recognise and enjoy them!

Conversely, if you want to use a shard whose character is secret from the PCs, then I think you should use something which is secret from the players. That's how people do dungeons - they don't normally recycle the same dungeons over and over but expect their players to pretend not to recognise them. Why handle monsters, magic items, etc any differently?

As I've posted upthread, this is why Gygax had those long lists of traps and magic items and monsters: those early D&D players kept generating new content _precisely so_ they could use puzzles and secrets in their games. They didn't recycle the same stuff and then ask their players to pretend not to recognise it!


----------



## Sadras

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I don't think we disagree on this. I was just describing a particular style of play. 
Can this style of play lead to dangerous character situations (troll example) requiring what some might describe as a disconnect to occur? Sure.

As for what Gygax intended, I leave that for the experts who new him, played with him and have read much of what he has written, I'm in no position to comment on that.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This may be how you run your games, but it is not how the 4e rulebooks state the game is to be run. Establishing the PC background is a player function, not a GM function. If a player wants to play a PC who deviates from what would be normal, that's the player's prerogative (obviously subject to table consensus around genre, good taste and the like, but knowledge that trolls are vulnerable to fire isn't going to cross those sorts of boundaries!).
> 
> And as one consequence of that, the GM has no authority to rule that a PC doesn't know about trolls. That's for the player to decide. (Of course if the player is ignorant of trolls, then s/he can't write knowledge of them into his/her PC background for the obvious reason that s/he has no knowledge to write in. That's when monster knowledge checks come into play.)




Perhaps in your other games, but not in D&D.  In D&D the DM absolutely has the authority to rule that the PC does not know about trolls.  The following is from 4e on backgrounds.  Note how it puts what information the PC knows due to his background in the hands of the DM, not the player.

"Invent situations where their backgrounds are useful. Let the character who was raised by a blacksmith charm some important information out of the baroness’s blacksmith—or notice an important fact about how a metal lock was forged.Give the characters important information they know because of their past history, such as the location of a particular shrine or magical location that appears in the lore of their original homeland."



> But you're begging the question here, by assuming the PC doesn't know. Whereas the point I'm making (building on  @_*hawkeyefan*_'s earlier post) is that _there is nothing in the game rules that precludes the character having the knowledge_.




In games, preclusion does not equate to inclusion.  In D&D if the game doesn't explicitly give the player an ability to do something, the player does not have that ability unless the DM grants it.



> But there is no such rule in 4e. The player can decide that his/her PC knows about trolls, can establish some suitable backstory if desired/appropriate, and then deploy that knowledge. None of which involves thinking about the game as a game - it just involves PC building and action declaration.




There is.  I just quoted it above.  The DM decides what information the PC knows due to his backstory.  It's 4e RAW.



> And here, again, we see something that seems to me completely pointless: if you want a hydra (or whatever) to be a puzzle for your players, then _choose a monster that will in fact be puzzling for them_.




That's because you don't get my playstyle.  That's okay.  Everyone is entitled to enjoy their own favorite playstyles and we aren't required to understand the playstyles of others.  You've repeatedly demonstrated that lack of understanding in the various threads here.  It's why you get what my playstyle is about wrong so often.



> The idea that _solving a puzzle_ by using one's _knowledge of the solution_ should count as an _unfair advantage_ makes no sense. That's exactly how people solve puzzles! And getting the players to _pretend_ to be puzzled when in fact they're not just seems utterly pointless - insipid, even.




Monster weaknesses aren't a puzzle to solve.  They exist to give the PC an advantage if the PC can find out about them and then take advantage of them.  



> There's no _metagaming_ in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC.




So now you're claiming that the very definition of metagaming is not metagaming?



> There are two main things that distinguish a RPG - even classic, dungeoncrawling D&D - from a standard wargame. One is that the players can play the fiction directly. The other, arguably most important, is that the players each play a single "figure" (to use the old-fashioned terminology) or character, and engage the game from the perspective of that character.
> 
> Forcing a player to alienate him-/herself from the character, and having the play of the character be mediated through the _GM's_ decision about what the character might or might not know and do, seems to completely undercut the main thing that makes RPGing different from playing a boardgame.




And here you are again demonstrating that you do not understand the playstyle.  Nobody is forcing a player to alienate himself from his character.  There is no alienation at all.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Well, I'm saying that - in 4e - the player can impute his/her knowledge to the PC. Not that s/he has to. In your shard example, if the player wants to play his/her PC as ignorant that seems much easier than in the troll case (because there's no _bad_ action declaration s/he's making when s/he knows what a good one would be).




There's no "bad action declaration" involved with roleplaying a PC who doesn't know about trolls as not knowing about trolls, either.  The idea that such roleplaying decisions are "bad action declaration" is gamist behavior(thinking about the game as a game, otherwise known as metagaming).



> But if the player wants to play his/her PC as knowing, then sure. In my 4e game when the PCs found a sword which had some-or-other backstory (I'm not recalling all the details at present), there was enough there that one player suspected it was the Sword of Kas, and confirmed that knowledge when his PC took damage from handling it (because his PC had an affiliation with Vecna).




And for your games that's fine since you allow it, but D&D(even 4e) doesn't automatically let the player decide what the PC knows due to backstory.  It explicitly puts that into the hands of the DM.



> To my mind part of the point of using the Sword of Kas or the Rod of Seven Parts is that players will recognise and enjoy them!
> 
> Conversely, if you want to use a shard whose character is secret from the PCs, then I think you should use something which is secret from the players. That's how people do dungeons - they don't normally recycle the same dungeons over and over but expect their players to pretend not to recognise them. Why handle monsters, magic items, etc any differently?




You don't understand why, because you don't understand the playstyle.  You like something different, so your mind has difficulty wrapping itself around the idea that other people can and do enjoy other things.



> As I've posted upthread, this is why Gygax had those long lists of traps and magic items and monsters: those early D&D players kept generating new content _precisely so_ they could use puzzles and secrets in their games. They didn't recycle the same stuff and then ask their players to pretend not to recognise it!




Yes, they absolutely recycled monsters and items and expect players to pretend not to recognize them.  I know, because I played in several different games that did that.  Not one DM ever said it was okay to metagame.  Not only player I played with back in 1e and 2e thought it was okay to metagame.  Gygax himself in his quotes which I have quoted in this thread said not to do it.  And your assumptions that "skilled play" entails metagaming is not born out by the rest of the quotes in the DMG.  Skilled play is just the player becoming better at playing.  i.e. learning to search for traps after being killed by a few of them, not splitting the party after dying a few times that way, etc.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> You are trying to set this in terms of the DM always saying "yes" or "no," when the reality is that the DM will very rarely be saying "yes" or "no."   Circumstances around the PC, his skills, background, etc. will all factor into whether not the PC knows, doesn't know, or might know.  For example, if the PC is from the middle of the desert and has spent his whole life there, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it's pretty certain that he won't have knowledge of trolls based on his background.  If he doesn't have some sort of skill or play experience that could give him knowledge of trolls, the DM should rule that he doesn't know about them.  On the other hand, if the PC is from a town right next to the Troll Moors, it's going to be certain that he will know about them, regardless of what skills he might have.  Unless there is crystal clear information like that, and it won't be that clear the vast majority of the time, the DM will call for a roll since the outcome is uncertain.  Calling for a roll is not the DM saying "yes" or "no," so there is no "Mother May I possible."  A few occasional instances of "yes" or "no" doesn't come close to rising to the level of "Mother May I."



Of course it is true that these things may have more complexity in praxis at the table. However, this is also a long-winded way of confirming my point about how this makes my character prior knowledge's dependent on DM's permission, creating a sort of Schrödinger's Character Knowledge. And this suspicion is even confirmed by your most recent post: 


Maxperson said:


> Perhaps in your other games, but not in D&D.  In D&D the DM absolutely has the authority to rule that the PC does not know about trolls.



Translation: "Dungeon Mother, may I know about trolls?" 



> Monster weaknesses aren't a puzzle to solve.  They exist to give the PC an advantage if the PC can find out about them and then take advantage of them.



Puzzles take many different forms. 



> So now you're claiming that the very definition of metagaming is not metagaming?



There are multiple definitions and senses of metagaming, Max. 



> And here you are again demonstrating that you do not understand the playstyle.  Nobody is forcing a player to alienate himself from his character.  There is no alienation at all.



You don't get a say in whether or not this alienates me from my character.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Of course it is true that these things may have more complexity in praxis at the table. However, this is also a long-winded way of confirming my point about how this makes my character prior knowledge's dependent on DM's permission, creating a sort of Schrödinger's Character Knowledge. And this suspicion is even confirmed by your most recent post: Translation: "Dungeon Mother, may I know about trolls?"




Except not, because as I explained in a prior post, 95% of the time I'm not saying yes or no.  I'm going to the dice to determine whether such knowledge is had by the PC.  DM permission or denial rarely comes into it, so there is no "Mother May I."


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> There are multiple definitions and senses of metagaming, Max.




Which at the very least would include the standard definition that I use, so it's wrong to say that it isn't metagaming.



> You don't get a say in whether or not this alienates me from my character.




If it does, then you are playing in the wrong game and should go find one that better suits your needs.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Except not, because as I explained in a prior post, 95% of the time I'm not saying yes or no.  I'm going to the dice to determine whether such knowledge is had by the PC.  DM permission or denial rarely comes into it, so there is no "Mother May I."



And that's fine. But regardless of whether or not you are utilizing "or roll the dice," you are nevertheless arguing that the DM can say "no" to player characters knowing about troll weaknesses. I personally dislike how this can degenerate into MMI regardless of whether you are doing MMI or not.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> And that's fine. But regardless of whether or not you are utilizing "or roll the dice," you are nevertheless arguing that the DM can say "no" to player characters knowing about troll weaknesses. I personally dislike how this can degenerate into MMI regardless of whether you are doing MMI or not.




You have the option to play a different game or change the rules and run your D&D game differently.  

You say that you don't like how it can degenerate into "Mother May I," but any rule or system can be abused and degenerate into something bad.  The ability for a rule or system to be abused doesn't make the non-abusive play bad.  If it did, we wouldn't have any RPGs to play.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Which at the very least would include the standard definition that I use, so it's wrong to say that it isn't metagaming.



Okay. However, I would not say that a player inputing their knowledge of trolls into their characters is metagaming anymore than a player inputting their knowledge about apple pie to thermodynamics in their characters entails metagaming. Trolls are part of the world that the characters inhabit. And if it seems reasonable, then a player should have sufficient autonomy over their character to declare passing knowledge of troll weaknesses. Again, these players also have the same option to roleplay ignorance, if they feel it fits their characters.  

Again,  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], if you have not done so already, I highly recommend reading Angry DM's article on metagaming which discusses the issue of troll weakness: Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault.

There is also this lovely blog post by a different author: Metagaming is Good, which talks about embracing player knowledge of troll weaknesses as an opportunity for players to establish new fiction and characterization surrounding their characters. However, I am sure that your buttocks will clench shut once you read his statement "*Realism is boring anyways*" in bold.  



> If it does, then you are playing in the wrong game and should go find one that better suits your needs.



Of course, and many have done so. This is why some people dislike games like Fate. I have to accept that regardless of how immersed my players are in roleplaying their characters using Fate, some people will have their immersion broken by some of its mechanics. And I have seen and experienced players who told me that they felt alienated from their characters due by things like DMs saying "no" to what their character knows or what sort of action declarations they can make upon the fiction. You can call this "jerk DM" behavior all you want, but as you yourself declare for your sense of the game: the GM has authority over what a character can know, so they can delineate character knowledge without player consent or the player's own sense for who their character is, what they know, or what is reasonable. 

If the DM have the authority over what a player character knows, can they declare that a PC knows something even if the player believes that their PC shouldn't or doesn't?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Raven loft has a good solution to this problem: make every monster, or st least a great many of them, have individual weaknesses. For example maybe standard vampires can be stalked through the heart and have their heads chopped off, but some might require a particular kind of wood related to their background. That kind of customization gets at the original purpose of things like trolls being vulnerable to fire but prevents knowledge of the monster manual from disrupting the mystery.


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## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> Raven loft has a good solution to this problem: make every monster, or st least a great many of them, have individual weaknesses. For example maybe standard vampires can be stalked through the heart and have their heads chopped off, but some might require a particular kind of wood related to their background. That kind of customization gets at the original purpose of things like trolls being vulnerable to fire but prevents knowledge of the monster manual from disrupting the mystery.




I've never liked doing that.  It smacks too much of DM vs. Player to me.  Also, it invalidates the skills and backgrounds involving monster lore.  Instead of a wizard being able to draw upon his knowledge of arcane lore to find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a Flesh Golem are, now the skill would be useless, because a successful check would just reveal that they are very often different.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> I've never liked doing that.  It smacks too much of DM vs. Player to me.  Also, it invalidates the skills and backgrounds involving monster lore.  Instead of a wizard being able to draw upon his knowledge of arcane lore to find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a Flesh Golem are, now the skill would be useless, because a successful check would just reveal that they are very often different.




That is fair. But not my cup of tea. Keep in mind the closest we had to skills st the time was NWPs and those were optional (and not assumed to be in play in all campaigns). There were other skill options in the PHB but it was still a very different game from WOTC D&D. Personally I think this works great for horror and mystery adventures. The Van Richten books get deep into this and those are some of my favorite RPG material hands down. Not for everyone. But hopefully we can all see things from different points of view here.

EDIT: Also keep in mind, it wouldn't counter your Arcane Lore. You could still use it, and you'd still know the standard vampire weaknesses, and you would also know that some vampires have unique weaknesses. The whole point is this is great approach if you want a campaign built around hunting monsters (particularly the same kind of monster). Figuring out the weakness of the villain became a pretty important part of Ravenloft. Again not for everyone, but I had a blast playing this way.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Okay. However, I would not say that a player inputing their knowledge of trolls into their characters is metagaming anymore than a player inputting their knowledge about apple pie to thermodynamics in their characters entails metagaming. Trolls are part of the world that the characters inhabit. *And if it seems reasonable*, then a player should have sufficient autonomy over their character to declare passing knowledge of troll weaknesses. Again, these players also have the same option to roleplay ignorance, if they feel it fits their characters.




The bold portion is the key there.  If the PC grew up near the Troll Moors or had an uncle who was a troll hunter, it would be reasonable.  If the PC grew up in the middle of a desert, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it wouldn't be reasonable.  For everything in-between an automatic yes or no, it's uncertain and would require a roll.



> Again,  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], if you have not done so already, I highly recommend reading Angry DM's article on metagaming which discusses the issue of troll weakness: Dear GMs: Metagaming is YOUR Fault.




The few times I've read his stuff, I've disagreed with him on a lot of what he said, so I stopped reading his articles.



> There is also this lovely blog post by a different author: Metagaming is Good, which talks about embracing player knowledge of troll weaknesses as an opportunity for players to establish new fiction and characterization surrounding their characters. However, I am sure that your buttocks will clench shut once you read his statement "*Realism is boring anyways*" in bold.




And I don't see how an article by someone who plays a different playstyle is going to help.  If you like the way he plays, you'll agree with him.  If you don't, you won't.



> If the DM have the authority over what a player character knows, can they declare that a PC knows something even if the player believes that their PC shouldn't or doesn't?




I wouldn't do that.  Sometimes when something is common knowledge I will say something to the effect of, "Your character knows X."  Sometimes, though, the player will say, "No, I wouldn't know X, because of Y in my background."  At that point I have always said, "Ok. You don't know that."  The reverse isn't the same, though.  If a player says, "My PC would know X, because of Y," then I look at Y and figure out of it's something I flat out agree with, or a roll the dice situation.  I can't think of a single instance where the player had a reason for possibly knowing something that ended up an flat out no.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> Of course it is true that these things may have more complexity in praxis at the table. However, this is also a long-winded way of confirming my point about how this makes my character prior knowledge's dependent on DM's permission, creating a sort of Schrödinger's Character Knowledge. And this suspicion is even confirmed by your most recent post:
> Translation: "Dungeon Mother, may I know about trolls?"




Are you saying when you DM you have no parameters or limits at all? 

I consider myself a pretty lenient DM when it comes to backstory, but I'm not so sure that I have no limits, probably because I cannot think of each and every possible backstory variation.

Also, let's say a player came up to me and requested to play an ancient dragon who for some reason was _True Polymorphed_ into a 20 year old girl. The girl is suffering from a serious case of amnesia so she does not recall her true nature. All she knows is that she ages slowly, has knowledge of the draconic language and magic seems incredibly familiar and easy to grasp (hence her class being a Sorcerer, Draconic Bloodline). At times visions or lore about the cosmos, history, artifacts and the like bleed into her conscious mind.
Her sudden revelations scare and intrigue her, and those who know her refer to her as _old beyond her years_. I'd easily say yes to all that.

But the player would be checking with me, the DM, to see if their concept does not cause conflict with the setting, the possible campaigns/storylines and the rest of the table. That is still seeking approval from the DM and thus falls within your understanding of MMI


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> That is fair. But not my cup of tea. Keep in mind the closest we had to skills st the time was NWPs and those were optional (and not assumed to be in play in all campaigns). There were other skill options in the PHB but it was still a very different game from WOTC D&D. Personally I think this works great for horror and mystery adventures. The Van Richten books get deep into this and those are some of my favorite RPG material hands down. Not for everyone. But hopefully we can all see things from different points of view here.




I love the Van Richten books.  And for Ravenloft they fit right in.  Outside of Ravenloft, I use them very sparingly for the reasons I gave.  And yes, before 3e it was harder to find out about monsters outside of personal experience or in game research(sages, etc.).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> I love the Van Richten books.  And for Ravenloft they fit right in.  Outside of Ravenloft, I use them very sparingly for the reasons I gave.  And yes, before 3e it was harder to find out about monsters outside of personal experience or in game research(sages, etc.).




I never found 3E Ravenloft to have quite the same feel. It just lost something that I enjoyed. It wasn't until I went back to running Ravenloft strictly with 2E that I realized how big an impact the 3E system had on my enjoyment of that setting (also I wasn't as into the setting material put out by S&S)


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> I never found 3E Ravenloft to have quite the same feel. It just lost something that I enjoyed. It wasn't until I went back to running Ravenloft strictly with 2E that I realized how big an impact the 3E system had on my enjoyment of that setting (also I wasn't as into the setting material put out by S&S)




Huh.  To me Ravenloft is primarily fluff, with some modifications to spells, horror check, Ravenloft checks, etc.  How does 3e change that over 2e?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> Huh.  To me Ravenloft is primarily fluff, with some modifications to spells, horror check, Ravenloft checks, etc.  How does 3e change that over 2e?




Challenge ratings, skills, etc all had a big effect. 3E combat took longer in my view. Played very differently from how I ran it with 2E.

It wasn't so much about the Ravnloft mechanics themselves, as about the 2E versus 3E mechanics. Though the Ravenloft mechanics are still important. 

I think another issue was more focus on grids and tactics in 3E. Its comprehensiveness as a system was another. The major difference was the atmosphere felt totally different to me, and largely, i think, this was due to skills that players would roll often rather than interacting directly with the setting. The vibe was just totally different. I thought it was just me (I ran Ravenloft in the 90s and figured maybe I was just getting nostalgic. But went back to 2E shortly after 4E came out, and man, it was night and day. Right away, it felt like the old setting I had loved. I never once had that experience running it with 3E. It never felt the same. 

With 3E also, I just didn't like the S&S books for it.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> *The bold portion is the key there.*  If the PC grew up near the Troll Moors or had an uncle who was a troll hunter, it would be reasonable.  If the PC grew up in the middle of a desert, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it wouldn't be reasonable.  For everything in-between an automatic yes or no, it's uncertain and would require a roll.



Indeed, so let me clarify further with this addition: "And if it seems reasonable _for the player's sense of their character_,..." 



> The few times I've read his stuff, I've disagreed with him on a lot of what he said, so I stopped reading his articles.
> 
> And I don't see how an article by someone who plays a different playstyle is going to help.  If you like the way he plays, you'll agree with him.  If you don't, you won't.



So you only read articles with viewpoints that reinforce your own? Seems a bit limiting. I also have found myself at odds with many things that Angry DM has written, yet I still enjoy reading articles that present different viewpoints than my own because, I find myself able to learn from them even when I disagree with them. Pity then. 



> I wouldn't do that.  Sometimes when something is common knowledge I will say something to the effect of, "Your character knows X."  Sometimes, though, the player will say, "No, I wouldn't know X, because of Y in my background."  At that point I have always said, "Ok. You don't know that."  The reverse isn't the same, though.  If a player says, "My PC would know X, because of Y," then I look at Y and figure out of it's something I flat out agree with, or a roll the dice situation.  I can't think of a single instance where the player had a reason for possibly knowing something that ended up an flat out no.



That is fairly close to "say yes or roll the dice"; however, I disagree with the assertion that somehow if the player believes that it's reasonable for their character to know troll weaknesses that they are engaging in metagaming/cheating. 



Sadras said:


> Are you saying when you DM you have no parameters or limits at all?
> 
> I consider myself a pretty lenient DM when it comes to backstory, but I'm not so sure that I have no limits, probably because I cannot think of each and every possible backstory variation.



IME, most players create their own parameters and limits, especially when they are invested in the game and its fiction. And since we have been talking at great lengths in this thread about how "system matters," I will raise the obvious point that my own limits and parameters as a DM will be naturally dependent on the system. 



> Also, let's say a player came up to me and requested to play an ancient dragon who for some reason was _True Polymorphed_ into a 20 year old girl. The girl is suffering from a serious case of amnesia so she does not recall her true nature. All she knows is that she ages slowly, has knowledge of the draconic language and magic seems incredibly familiar and easy to grasp (hence her class being a Sorcerer, Draconic Bloodline). At times visions or lore about the cosmos, history, artifacts and the like bleed into her conscious mind.
> Her sudden revelations scare and intrigue her, and those who know her refer to her as _old beyond her years_. I'd easily say yes to all that.



So the character of Tehanu from Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books? That's an incredibly cool character concept. 



> But the player would be checking with me, the DM, to see if their concept does not cause conflict with the setting, the possible campaigns/storylines and the rest of the table. That is still seeking approval from the DM and thus falls within your understanding of MMI



Regardless of whether this is DM permission or not, I'm not sure if this is the sort of scenario we are talking about here. And I think that we would be better served by keeping to the front we have rather than opening a new one. However, I will say that my own approach would be less about seeing this as "permission" and more about the player asking me for assistance about how we could collaboratively make the concept work in the fiction. And this process may even involve other players. One player hearing this may then think, "Cool! Could I play the character who found and then befriended you?" The other player may like this idea, and I may even give player 2 some additional knowledge or secret about her that they would be at liberty to tell her or keep secret. Maybe he found a pendant nearby that belonged to her that signifies some part of her past.


----------



## sd_jasper

hawkeyefan said:


> But what player can say that they know the entirety of their character’s knowledge? That’s the issue.




Sure there are going to be things that a fictional person in a fictional world may have "common knowledge" of that the player might not. That's where you ask the GM, "Would my character know about X?" The GM may say "yes", or "Let's see, make an IQ roll at -2", or "Do you have the Lore: X skill?".




pemerton said:


> OK, let me try it another way: what do you anticipate as a likely outcome to this inquiry?
> 
> We're talking about a very specific context of inquiry here: the PC is in a combat, declaring combat-type actions (including attacks in most cases); the PC almost certainly knows that fire is a viable attack form; the _player_ knows that fire is a _required_ attack form.
> 
> When, and under what conditions, is the player entitled to decide that his/her PC uses fire?




Again, if I were running such an encounter (and I'd like to stress that I personally don't like this hypothetical b/c I've never run a game where Trolls were outside of "common knowledge"), it would likely go something like this:

As the GM I would not tell the players that they were fighting a troll. They would only know what the characters can see, ie "a large greenish humanoid with long arms and sparse stringy hair" or something similar. Even if the players assume it is a troll, it might not be, it could be some sort of mutant ogre or hobgoblin. The key points are that (A) the characters don't recognize what the creature is and (B) the players don't know for certain what it is.

If the players go ahead and assume that it is a troll, and use that metagame knowledge to immediately attack with fire, I'd stop the game ask why their character would do that, and only allow it if the player could convince me that this is what the character would naturally do, and not based on the player's knowledge. This might be where they find out they are NOT dealing with a troll and that throwing fire at random green humanoids is a bad idea. Maybe it was a Green-tar man, and now is a flaming green-tar man!

Otherwise if they proceed into combat in what is a normal fashion for the group. Then after a few turns they will learn that the creature is healing very rapidly. I'd probably also tell anyone with any form of "magical sensitivity" to know that the healing doesn't seem to be magical.

With that knowledge the players might think, "what would my character do?" The answer might be:
1) "We should run as we can't hurt this thing! Maybe back in town we can find someone that has encountered such a beast and can tell us what it is and how to beat it."
2) "Maybe we can try to deal damage faster than it can heal."
3) "Maybe a different types of damage might prevent it from healing. Fire and Acid scar the flesh so that might work!"

2 is a risky proposition, but if the character is the "berserker" type they may opt for it. 1 probably would appeal to the scholarly type, or more injury adverse characters. And 3 is probably going to work for most characters that don't see a better option.

But what is chosen and the exact reasons why are up to the player, and what they think that their character would be likely to do. That's good roleplaying.

In the games I typically play, good RP is better than killing the monsters. I give XP, CP, epps, for roleplaying not for slaying monsters. If at your table there is more "game" where killing monsters is more important than character motivations and story, then maybe using whatever you can to "win" works for you. That's not how I run games, and it is not how the people I game with play their characters.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I remember suggesting this back c 2009 as a way of using Diplomacy or Streetwise to contribute to a secret/magic door skill challenge in 4e - _I spoke with a [sage/prophet/secretive-purveyor-of-arcane-knowledge/etc], who taught me some passwords in one of the ancient tongues_. My recollection is that some posters found it a controversial suggestion.
> 
> 4e doesn't have a Stress resource, but the GM could certainly set a higher difficulty for such an action declaration to reflect the degree of fortuity involved in the posited preparation having now paid off.




I'm not surprised. It's a pretty drastic change to the game. Or at least, it seems like it is. The players in my Blades in the Dark game are all long time D&D players, and the concept blew their minds. We've incorporated it into the game slowly as a result, but now that it's been used a few times, they really like the idea. 

It makes for a very cinematic approach to the game....much like a heist movie, where a complication comes up, and we see a flashback to the characters preparing for it in some way. This is a different approach than the more procedural aspect of the typical D&D game. I think you'd have to adjust a D&D game a bit to allow for this kind of option.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> That is not to say that @_*hawkeyefan*_'s example is not a valid way of introducing fiction or in any way not authentic, but in a game where the players have limited say in terms of setting backstory or introducing fiction that kind input would have to be cleared with the DM.




So doesn't this kind of sound like Mother May I? 

Don't get me wrong....I don't think any and every instance of needing DM approval counts as Mother May I. I love D&D and run and play it regularly, and these concerns rarely come up. But I certainly am aware of the risk that having so much DM authority presents to the game. I actively work to not let it become an issue....but the risk is there, I think. And this examples starts to move in that direction, I'd say. 

Would you agree with that?


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:
			
		

> IME, most players create their own parameters and limits, especially when they are invested in the game and its fiction. And since we have been talking at great lengths in this thread about how "system matters," I will raise the obvious point that my own limits and parameters as a DM will be naturally dependent on the system.




That is fair.



> So the character of Tehanu from Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books?




I'm actually not familiar with the character, but I have seen these books around - bookshop/library.



> Regardless of whether this is DM permission or not, I'm not sure if this is the sort of scenario we are talking about here. And I think that we would be better served by keeping to the front we have rather than opening a new one. However, I will say that my own approach would be less about seeing this as "permission" and more about the player asking me for assistance about how we could collaboratively make the concept work in the fiction. And this process may even involve other players. One player hearing this may then think, "Cool! Could I play the character who found and then befriended you?" The other player may like this idea, and I may even give player 2 some additional knowledge or secret about her that they would be at liberty to tell her or keep secret. Maybe he found a pendant nearby that belonged to her that signifies some part of her past.




I think then on this issue we seem to view it similarly.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> So doesn't this kind of sound like Mother May I?
> 
> Don't get me wrong....*I don't think any and every instance of needing DM approval counts as Mother May I.* I love D&D and run and play it regularly, and these concerns rarely come up. But I certainly am aware of the risk that having so much DM authority presents to the game. I actively work to not let it become an issue....but the risk is there, I think. And this examples starts to move in that direction, I'd say.
> 
> Would you agree with that?




Bolded emphasis mine.
It is tricky. I understand Pemerton and maybe other posters may view any _Say No_ as strictly Mother May I. I usually would reserve such a word for a table-style that is very authoritarian. But even there, I defeat my own definition because I use the word very, and that is a subjective word. What may be _very_ to me, maybe excessive to you, maybe moderate to Max.

I do not have an issue with your example (adventuring uncle told your PC about trolls), in fact I would allow it at my table, even though I reserve the right to use Say No in other instances. See it is messy.

But I do agree with you, _Saying No_ in that instance, can tend to move in the direction of MMI, obviously. BUT classifying someone else's game as MMI, well - I would need more data points and even then, it would be my opinion.
I will say Pemerton's definition is cleaner as it does not allow for any _Say No's_, the only issue is that the word is a pejorative so it has the ability to offend.
But feelings are not necessarily my concern (which gets me into issues on other topics). 

I know a simple yes or no could have sufficed but you know how it goes.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> So the first thing I would do upon getting that background is figure out what level the uncle is.  A level 5 adventurer uncle will have far less monsters encountered and learned about than a level 15 adventurer uncle.  Then I would look at the area of the world the uncle adventured in and what monsters would be commonly encountered up to his level.  For those monsters, yes the PC would get a check and I would treat it similar to having a knowledge skill.  The DC would be the same as someone who didn't have the background, but had the appropriate skill.




Seems like potentially a lot of effort to avoid an otherwise simple solution. I think that, as with many examples, you're assuming that the player continually does this kind of thing. He's constantly introducing new uncles that have various areas of expertise and who have imparted their knowledge on the character. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one instance, and it was an instance related to the players being uninterested in the content of play, so they help move things along. 

That specific example aside, I don't have a problem if the dice are used to determine such things. Maybe the uncle is introduced to the fiction as a result of a successful dice roll. I think that's the kind of emergent play that many are advocating. 



Maxperson said:


> I ask my players for a written background so that I have an idea about their PCs.  It's not all encompassing, but it gives a pretty good general idea of what they might know or not know.  They can add in more details later, but only with respect to something they've put into their background.  For example, they can add a limp to their uncle received by a raging owlbear later on, so long as the adventurer uncle was in the original background.  They can't just keep adding in new uncles to suit their desires.




Why not have them create that background as you play? Why write anything down ahead of time? 

I genuinely mean that. I am not saying that writing a background is bad in and of itself, but rather that it has pros and cons. One of the cons seems to be it locks things in place, but the brief nature of such a background means that what's locked in place is limited. 

It seems arbitrary to me to hold the players to that kind of limited detail. Again, nothing wrong with writing it down, but I think allowing for additions to their background is likely a good idea. 



Maxperson said:


> The players know about the HPs and other resources, but the character does not.  The character would be aware that he is tiring and getting bruised up, slowing him down and/or making him more sloppy, which is more likely to get him killed, but he won't know that he dropped from 30 hit points to 10.  The player is the only one to know about something like second wind.  A character isn't going to be able to just trigger a second wind at will.  Second winds come when they come in the game world, but outside of that the player is choosing.  Since metagaming is having the character act on player knowledge about something the character wouldn't know about, none of that is metagaming.




The character would, whether at full HP or 1 HP, expect a flail strike to the head by a gnoll to be a lethal blow. However, when the fighter has full HP, he will be less concerned about any individual attack. Hence, he is acting on the game mechanics, or out of fiction knowledge. 

Again, I don't have a problem with this. I just think it demonstrates that metagaming is present in every game, and is actually often very beneficial to play. 



Maxperson said:


> Bringing out of character knowledge into the game is where metagaming happens.




Sure. Whether that's a bad thing or not, and whether the DM can block it, is what we're talking about. Again, I know you're coming at this from a D&D perspective, but to insist that metagaming is always cheating is where I disagree. 




Maxperson said:


> In my game players can pick any common background.  If they want a chance for something better like nobility, they can roll for it and if they get lucky, they are a noble or come from a family of wealthy merchants, with all the advantages that come with that.  However, if they roll, they can also end up a street urchin, which comes with less money than normal.  It's up to them if they want to chance it.




Okay. I personally find that such backgrounds are not "better". They may offer an advantage such as more starting money, or maybe an extra skill or language or something similar. But they also often come with related drawbacks....familial obligations, established enemies, expectations of behavior, and so on. 



Maxperson said:


> No they don't.  The first half of hit point loss never even touches the PC at all.  A 100 hit point fighter would have to be at 50 hit points before he takes even a scratch or bruise.  Then it takes hitting 0 before any major wound happens, and that's all it takes for a high level fighter to potentially die.  One hit.  The other "hits" aren't really hits.  They're close calls that the character isn't aware of as hits.




Well, this is your very specific take on HP. There are many ways to narrate HP and what they mean (and I don't want to add that topic to this debate as well), but this doesn't change the fact that the character with full HP will tend to act more decisively because he knows he's at less risk of dying. 



Maxperson said:


> Because one is all about unfair advantages and the other is not.  If the player waits until he is right in front of a hydra to tell me that his uncle was a hydra hunter, that's really hinky.  Setting it up in advance, though, doesn't guarantee the player that it will ever be useful as the PC might not encounter a hydra.  It's just a background piece that may or may not be useful.  Personally, I like bringing bits of PC backgrounds into the game.  I've found it makes the players happy when it happens and it's fun to surprise them with something like that.




I wouldn't say it's an unfair advantage, especially since the players already have the knowledge. Rather, it's a way of reconciling that player/character knowledge discrepancy. 

I get the distinction you're making, but I don't think it's an unfair advantage so much as _having to commit to a background detail at the time of character creation knowing it may never be relevant is more of an unfair disadvantage_. Isn't it cooler to have characters whose backgrounds matter? Isn't that better for play? 

This is the kind of relevance that many are pointing toward. Sure, the DM can take a background element and incorporate it into the story...I do that all the time. But letting the player introduce it as it comes up ensures that it happens, and that it happens in a way the player would like to see. And it really shouldn't be a hindrance to the DM in any way....so I really don't see the issue.


----------



## hawkeyefan

sd_jasper said:


> Sure there are going to be things that a fictional person in a fictional world may have "common knowledge" of that the player might not. That's where you ask the GM, "Would my character know about X?" The GM may say "yes", or "Let's see, make an IQ roll at -2", or "Do you have the Lore: X skill?".




But I don't even mean common knowledge that everyone knows. I mean specific knowledge that may vary from person to person, and may come from a variety of sources. Even someone living in a desert may have read a book, or may have spoken to merchants who crossed the desert, or may have traveled to other areas. Are all these things off the table? 

Another way to look at it is: why do we trust the GM to make a rational judgment call, but not the player? Everyone seems to assume the GM will make a principled call and abdicate accordingly, but that the player is just somehow trying to scheme a "win" out of things. Can't a player be reasonable? 

I've found that a lot of times, when given the freedom to decide for themselves, players are reasonable. They're often less agreeable to some of their ideas than I would be.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> Bolded emphasis mine.
> It is tricky. I understand Pemerton and maybe other posters may view any _Say No_ as strictly Mother May I. I usually would reserve such a word for a table-style that is very authoritarian. But even there, I defeat my own definition because I use the word very, and that is a subjective word. What may be _very_ to me, maybe excessive to you, maybe moderate to Max.
> 
> I do not have an issue with your example (adventuring uncle told your PC about trolls), in fact I would allow it at my table, even though I reserve the right to use Say No in other instances. See it is messy.
> 
> But I do agree with you, _Saying No_ in that instance, can tend to move in the direction of MMI, obviously. BUT classifying someone else's game as MMI, well - I would need more data points and even then, it would be my opinion.
> I will say Pemerton's definition is cleaner as it does not allow for any _Say No's_, the only issue is that the word is a pejorative so it has the ability to offend.
> But feelings are not necessarily my concern (which gets me into issues on other topics).
> 
> I know a simple yes or no could have sufficed but you know how it goes.




I do agree it is tricky. I don't think that GM driven games must all be Mother May I. I generally think if it's gotten to that point, it's because something has gone very wrong, or perhaps there is some other strong reason....maybe a group made up of entirely new and/or young players who need guidance to grasp how the game is supposed to work. But in such an instance, you would expect it to be a temporary thing. 

But I do think that one of the potential concerns about GM driven games is that the possibility of Mother May I type issues developing is there. It's something I think a GM should be aware of and guard against. Much like running a published Adventure Path may lend itself to railroading, so the GM should be aware of that and do what he can to mitigate it. 

Every game has potential potholes, regardless of system or style, and it's a smart thing to be aware of what those are. 

As for pejoratives....I prefer to try and avoid them myself, and I know they can provoke a strong response, but I also know that context and intent matter greatly in such matters. At least as far as talking about RPGs go.


----------



## sd_jasper

hawkeyefan said:


> But I don't even mean common knowledge that everyone knows. I mean specific knowledge that may vary from person to person, and may come from a variety of sources. Even someone living in a desert may have read a book, or may have spoken to merchants who crossed the desert, or may have traveled to other areas. Are all these things off the table?




No, which is why I said that if this sort of situation came up, I'd ask the player to justify their action. Based on that I might agree, or ask for a roll ("Sure you've read a lot, but was THIS creature in those books?"), or say no ("You character is an illiterate barbarian that spent your first 20 years as a slave... but you somehow read a book that tells you the weakness to this rare creature that has never been seen before in this kingdom?").




hawkeyefan said:


> Another way to look at it is: why do we trust the GM to make a rational judgment call, but not the player? Everyone seems to assume the GM will make a principled call and abdicate accordingly, but that the player is just somehow trying to scheme a "win" out of things. Can't a player be reasonable?
> 
> I've found that a lot of times, when given the freedom to decide for themselves, players are reasonable. They're often less agreeable to some of their ideas than I would be.




Sure. And like I said, this is all hypothetical because the people I've played with, do play in a reasonable way. I'm just pointing out what I would do *IF* a situation came up where I felt the player was using metagame knowledge to have their character act in a way that was not consistent with what the character knows.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> (A) 4e is a tightly-designed game. *Therefore it lacks terrible design*.



That which I've bolded might just be the most controversial statement you've ever posted in here.

And though to argue it would re-open edition wars best left in the past, bait which I'll decline this time, don't assume for a second that silence denotes agreement.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> So when a player creates a character, they can't select something that has some kind of advantage? Like being of a noble family, so they start with more coin....that kind of thing. No one gets to do that?



Correct.  If it gives an advantage you can't select it; and the random roll aspect reflects the reality of some people just being born luckier than others.



> Because I think almost every character in my game has exactly that kind of thing going on....some kind of perk based on their background. These are baked into 5E but we also go a step or two beyond that.



If it was decided up front that all the PCs would have some sort of advantage via their backgrounds, that's a fine table rule.  The reality is, though, that the vast majority of people in ye olde typical medieval society were peasants who really didn't have much going for them at all; and I don't mind if the game reflects this at least to some extent.



> But what makes it so okay to decide it ahead of time rather than later? Here is were I ask you the same question....how is this result different from the perspective of the player?



It's different because when being decided on the fly it's usually being decided for a reason: the player/PC needs or wants (and thus is asking for) an advantage in the here and now.

Chances are that had the player/PC known about the advantage ahead of time, the roleplay leading up to this point would have been somewhat different.

Example: party arrives at Karnos, an unfamiliar and not-that-friendly town.  Player A, who has up to now left her character background mostly blank, suddenly declares "Oh, don't worry - I'm the local noble here and my word is the law.  Everyone knows me.  And look, here come some of my personal guards now - they saw us coming.".

If this (that a party member is the local noble here) had been known from square one the party's dealing with and feelings toward Karnos would have almost certainly been much different.  Very likely they'd have used it as a safe home base all along, rather than only coming here now because they have to.

In fairness, it's always possible that the player for some reason had kept her PC's noble status a secret up to now; but that's a different matter.



> This is not my point....sure, people may know they're hurt. But no one would ever rush into a fight thinking "it'll be at least 10 or 12 hits before I'm down!" But Fighters do exactly that when they have full HP.



I'd say it's more they rush in anyway, and only after taking a hit or two do they Steve Rogers up on it: "I can do this all day."



> Metagaming is constantly happening in the game. Avoiding some while turning a blind eye to a whole lot more just seems odd. There are degrees, sure, and even I would say that some metagaming actions would be "bad", but no game is free of metagaming.



Agreed.  But where possible, let's minimize it.



> I don't know what this means. As immersive as the game gets, I can't forget that I'm rolling dice and marking numbers on a character sheet.



In the best moments, I can.  The rolling etc. is done almost unconsciously by muscle memory, while my conscious thought is in the fiction.

Gotta run - more in a bit...


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I don't think we disagree on this. I was just describing a particular style of play.
> Can this style of play lead to dangerous character situations (troll example) requiring what some might describe as a disconnect to occur? Sure.



_Dissociation_, even!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> As far as whether the PC could be the brother/comrade/twin of the BBEG, that could work out, but it would need the DM's approval for it to happen.  Players cannot just decide that it happens unless you've altered the game to be more player facing.




I think you are quite rigid in your interpretation of what is within the bounds in D&D. Nowhere does 'classic' D&D really talk about backstory in concrete terms. It is something which exists at the level of simply things that participants might do, not do, etc. Thus there are no such things as 'rules' about it. You don't need to 'alter the game' in order for a player to establish such a fact, with or without DM approval. 

Classic D&D DMs, and 5e ones too AFAIK, can basically tell you to take a hike, but that usually results in players simply going elsewhere for their D&D! In practical terms I've never had a DM insist that he/she is going to fight me on backstory. Anyway, it is certainly most effective when the player is collaborating with the DM in terms of what is already established.

This is of course part of the reason that DW is very close to 'zero myth' (the DM generally does establish a small set of basic initial conditions, a map with a couple of things on it for instance). The players are free to embellish the setting in any respect which relates to their PCs. They can establish origin stories and other backstory during the initial session, and then can embellish that later on by using Spout Lore, or simply by asking questions. The GM is also supposed to constantly ask questions and make notes of whatever the players express interest in or whatever they describe so that it can be input to the fiction. In no case is there any such thing in DW as a pre-established fact, only narrative in play can establish that in DW.

That being said, the GM is expected to create fronts and generate ideas and such himself too.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Using fire to attack a troll is not _an action that a character would have no knowledge of_. Heck, the class table in the AD&D PHB even lists whether or not each class can use flaming oil (all can except monks).
> 
> I'm telling you how the game was actually played, in the skilled play paradigm, at the time Gygax was writing his rules. _It was taken for granted that players improved their knowledge of the game over time._ That was an aspect of what skilled play meant. In that respect, it was a form of wargaming.
> 
> @_*Lanefan*_, upthread, following the logic of your (that is, @_*Maxperson*_'s) preferences, said that it woudl be _good roleplaying_ to let your PC be killed by a troll rather than rely on your knowledge that a troll is vulnerable to fire. That's the opposite of skilled play as Gygax describes it. Playing the game your and Lanefan's way will not mean that the PCs of more experienced players are more successful as adventurers, because - if the game is played your and Lanefan's way - then an experienced player will deliberately _not_ draw upon his/her experience in playing his/her PC.
> 
> What you and Lanefan are advocating is an approach to play that I would say had its first express system support in RuenQuest or Chivalry & Sorcery, in the late 70s. No doubt people were playing D&D that way in that time also, but in doing so they were _disregarding_ Gygax's advice, not following it.




I think this is one of those areas where it is hard to really parse what Gygax, or, maybe even more importantly, Arneson, was thinking. There were BOTH aspects of RP, including a concept of being 'in character', AND aspects of 'skilled play' which originate in wargames; from which D&D is directly derived. Thus it is QUITE POSSIBLE that Gary or Dave might have considered some instances of skilled play of the sort you describe as crossing a line, but not others.

While I played D&D in the 1974-1979 period it is hard to really define exactly how things evolved. Virtually every group in 1974 was an isolated group of players who had little, if any, contact with other groups. Often entirely idiosyncratic approaches grew out of these games with little reference to what was intended by the game's authors, and no real way of knowing how they used it. Usually someone went and played with some other group, someone somewhere had gone to Gen Con, Strategic Review or The Dragon showed up with some sort of 'stuff' in it that gave some direction, but I would be hard pressed to be able to tell you what very many people did before 1978-ish when I had the fortune to join a LARGE gaming club (100's of active members that probably played 4-5 different D&D games every week just in the club space). There were common practices there, but I would say that there was usually not much concern for purity of approaches, and maybe the few GMs who had any hard notions about such things were considered fairly hard-core.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> If one of the PCs legitimately knows about troll vulnerabilities then one would hope she'd tell the rest of us before we die.  But if none of them know then none of them know, and it's on us as players to play accordingly even if it means running our PCs into a ditch.




A few problems arise:

First we have the known knowns, that's easy, the PC knows it, and the players know that the PC knows it, like 'how to swing a sword'. Even then the player probably doesn't know the thing itself, so we run into the problem of being able to describe doing it, or even exactly what the results are. Still, no meta-gaming seems to arise here.

Second we have the known unknowns, this is fairly easy in the sense of we just don't know, the PC and the player will find out through play, dungeon exploration at work.

Third we have the unknown knowns, and this seems to be where we are stuck now, which is that we don't even know that there is something for the character TO know, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know it, just that the player (and maybe the GM) are ignorant of the existence of such a fact. This would be where "does the player know about the town?" arise.

Then we have the unknown unknowns, most everything falls into this category, nobody even knows the knowledge exists. Since the world is so 'thin' in description this is most stuff. 

In any of those cases the player might have the knowledge, and/or the PC might, but given that we don't generally know what PCs do or do not know, as general facts, you can never rule out, nor can a player be accused of meta-gaming, for trying to establish some sort of knowledge. 

To reduce this to concrete, if my PC meets a troll, and I know to fight trolls with fire, why is it unfair for me to assume my PC has this knowledge? Why is it fair for me to assume he does not? This is arbitrary. Not only is it arbitrary, but it is a situation rife with bias, the player wants his character to know and act, the GM may not! What is better about one vs the other having the authority here?

This is why I think a lot of narrative focus games have it good, this sort of question doesn't really arise in the same way. The focus isn't on imagining that a certain character exists in a certain way that is deemed 'the proper way', but instead on telling a story. If it is an interesting story for the PC to fight the troll with fire, then he does, and it works. If not, well, maybe it doesn't work, or maybe he just doesn't do it because the player isn't trying to 'win', he's trying to participate in a drama about what happens. Thus in DW this kind of thing wouldn't be an issue, for instance.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I think a recent eye opener for me....in the form of a game rule that reminded me things don’t have to be the way I expect them to be....was the use of Flashbacks in Blades in the Dark. The game doesn’t really make a difference between actions in the present and those in the past.
> 
> Players can call for a flashback and take an action at some earlier point in the fiction. They cannot undo what’s been established, but they can introduce some past action that makes them better prepared to deal with a current threat or complication.
> 
> The more complicated the action, the higher the cost in Stress, a valuable and finite PC resource in the game.
> 
> This opens up such a new avenue of play that’s really exciting.




My own 4e hack also allows for this, by the expenditure of your Inspiration (basically taking a bad turn based on some attribute of your character, but potentially deferred). You could, for instance, simply decide that you DO have enough water, because you thought to bring it along. Maybe the axle will fall off your wagon, but that's just all the more fun and drama


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> In games, preclusion does not equate to inclusion.



The qualification "in games" is redundant. _Preclusion_ does not equate to _inclusion_ in any circumstance.



Maxperson said:


> Monster weaknesses aren't a puzzle to solve.  They exist to give the PC an advantage if the PC can find out about them and then take advantage of them.



This is self-contradictory - _they're not a puzzle, they're just something to work out so as to better succeed in the game_!



Maxperson said:


> Nobody is forcing a player to alienate himself from his character.  There is no alienation at all.



Playing my character as ignorant of something that I, the player, am not ignorant of is a textbook example of _alienation_!



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As I've posted upthread, this is why Gygax had those long lists of traps and magic items and monsters: those early D&D players kept generating new content precisely so they could use puzzles and secrets in their games. They didn't recycle the same stuff and then ask their players to pretend not to recognise it!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, they absolutely recycled monsters and items and expect players to pretend not to recognize them.  I know, because I played in several different games that did that.
Click to expand...


You played with Gygax and co?

The only player posting in this thread who played D&D back in the mid-70s, as far as I know, is [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. What you are describing is not "the earluy days of D&D" - it's the sort of "world simulationist" style that emerged in the late 70s and which, at that time, would be especially associated with systems like RQ and C&S.

AbdulAlhazred has posted that it's hard to know what was going on and how early GMs (including Gygax and Arneson) were reconciling wargamng with _being a character_. My own view is that _nothing_ in their game texts, in the scoring rules for the tournament modules, in accounts of tournament play, etc suggests that players were expected to pretend their PCs were ignorant of monster vulnerabilities that the players themselves knew. And this is reinforced by such things as the Moldvay Basic rulebook (p B3) instructing new players to read the Monster chapter.

The bottom line is that it's impossible to engage in "skilled play" when you're deliberately holding back from taking what you know to be the skilled decision.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There's no metagaming in imputing my knowledge of trolls or hydras to my PC.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So now you're claiming that the very definition of metagaming is not metagaming?
Click to expand...




Aldarc said:


> I would not say that a player inputing their knowledge of trolls into their characters is metagaming anymore than a player inputting their knowledge about apple pie to thermodynamics in their characters entails metagaming. Trolls are part of the world that the characters inhabit.



Adding to what Aldarc said: _metagame thinking_, according to the 4e DMG, is to make in-character decisions that treat the game as a game. This can also be called a form of "breaking the 4th wall". Imputing knowledge to my PC isn't doing this - it's simply a part of PC building.

I could play my PC as ignorant of what a crossbow is, if I wanted to, but not doing so is not metagaming. Likewise for trolls. (This is another thing that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has elaborated on not far upthread.)



Maxperson said:


> In D&D if the game doesn't explicitly give the player an ability to do something, the player does not have that ability unless the DM grants it.



Alternatively, from p 9 of the 4e PHB: "Through your character you can interact with the game world in any way you want."



Maxperson said:


> If the PC grew up near the Troll Moors or had an uncle who was a troll hunter, it would be reasonable.  If the PC grew up in the middle of a desert, a thousand miles from the nearest troll, it wouldn't be reasonable.





Maxperson said:


> In D&D the DM absolutely has the authority to rule that the PC does not know about trolls.  The following is from 4e on backgrounds.  Note how it puts what information the PC knows due to his background in the hands of the DM, not the player.
> 
> "Invent situations where their backgrounds are useful. Let the character who was raised by a blacksmith charm some important information out of the baroness’s blacksmith—or notice an important fact about how a metal lock was forged.Give the characters important information they know because of their past history, such as the location of a particular shrine or magical location that appears in the lore of their original homeland."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The DM decides what information the PC knows due to his backstory.  It's 4e RAW.





Maxperson said:


> D&D(even 4e) doesn't automatically let the player decide what the PC knows due to backstory.  It explicitly puts that into the hands of the DM.



There is no such rule in 4e D&D.

The text you quote from p 11 of the 4e DMG advises the GM, in some circumstances, to provide a player with information. It doesn't instruct the GM, either expressly or by implication, to regulate what a player decides his/her PC knows.

The fact that you read it the latter way, and assert a GM's unilateral authority to decide what is or isn't reasonable for a PC to know, appearrs to demonstate a desire, as GM, to dominate the fiction and to tell the players how to play their PCs and how to approach the game. That's fine if that's what you and your table enjoy, but (i) there is little support for it in the 4e rules taxt, and (ii) surely it can't be surprising that some other posters would look at that and see "Mother may I" and railroading.


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## pemerton

sd_jasper said:


> if I were running such an encounter (and I'd like to stress that I personally don't like this hypothetical b/c I've never run a game where Trolls were outside of "common knowledge"), it would likely go something like this:
> 
> As the GM I would not tell the players that they were fighting a troll. They would only know what the characters can see, ie "a large greenish humanoid with long arms and sparse stringy hair" or something similar. Even if the players assume it is a troll, it might not be, it could be some sort of mutant ogre or hobgoblin. The key points are that (A) the characters don't recognize what the creature is and (B) the players don't know for certain what it is.
> 
> If the players go ahead and assume that it is a troll, and use that metagame knowledge to immediately attack with fire, I'd stop the game ask why their character would do that, and only allow it if the player could convince me that this is what the character would naturally do, and not based on the player's knowledge.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Otherwise if they proceed into combat in what is a normal fashion for the group. Then after a few turns they will learn that the creature is healing very rapidly. I'd probably also tell anyone with any form of "magical sensitivity" to know that the healing doesn't seem to be magical.
> 
> With that knowledge the players might think, "what would my character do?" The answer might be:
> 1) "We should run as we can't hurt this thing! Maybe back in town we can find someone that has encountered such a beast and can tell us what it is and how to beat it."
> 2) "Maybe we can try to deal damage faster than it can heal."
> 3) "Maybe a different types of damage might prevent it from healing. Fire and Acid scar the flesh so that might work!"
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 3 is probably going to work for most characters that don't see a better option.
> 
> But what is chosen and the exact reasons why are up to the player, and what they think that their character would be likely to do. That's good roleplaying.





sd_jasper said:


> I'd ask the player to justify their action. Based on that I might agree, or ask for a roll ("Sure you've read a lot, but was THIS creature in those books?"), or say no ("You character is an illiterate barbarian that spent your first 20 years as a slave... but you somehow read a book that tells you the weakness to this rare creature that has never been seen before in this kingdom?").
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm just pointing out what I would do *IF* a situation came up where I felt the player was using metagame knowledge to have their character act in a way that was not consistent with what the character knows.



Why is it metagame knowledge? If the PC recognises the creature as a troll, and knows that it is vulnerable to fire, then this is just the player playing his/her character.

To me, your number (3) seems rather contrived. The player is not reasoning _what would my character think?_ The player is reasoning _what story can I tell about my character to license the use of fire to attack this troll?_ That doesn't seem like roleplaying at all, because it's not first-person in-character reasoning, but rather third-person _how can I satisfy the expectations of the GM and table_ reasoning.

It actually reminds me of the following remark by Eero Tuovinen:

_nstead of only having to worry about expressing his character and making decisions for him, the player is thrust into a position of authorship: he has to make decisions that are not predicated on the best interests of his character, but on the best interests of the story itself. . . .

I find that the riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship._​_

This is the alienation that I mentioned about in response to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]: the method that you describe, which seems like a version of what Maxperson is also putting forward, requires the player to subordinate playing as one's character and pursuing the character's interests to what does my table regard as a sufficient basis for a character to recognise the vulnerability of a troll to fire. To me, the second thing seems quite unappealing, even insipid._


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Are you saying when you DM you have no parameters or limits at all?
> 
> I consider myself a pretty lenient DM when it comes to backstory, but I'm not so sure that I have no limits, probably because I cannot think of each and every possible backstory variation.
> 
> Also, let's say a player came up to me and requested to play an ancient dragon who for some reason was _True Polymorphed_ into a 20 year old girl. The girl is suffering from a serious case of amnesia so she does not recall her true nature. All she knows is that she ages slowly, has knowledge of the draconic language and magic seems incredibly familiar and easy to grasp (hence her class being a Sorcerer, Draconic Bloodline). At times visions or lore about the cosmos, history, artifacts and the like bleed into her conscious mind.
> Her sudden revelations scare and intrigue her, and those who know her refer to her as _old beyond her years_. I'd easily say yes to all that.
> 
> But the player would be checking with me, the DM, to see if their concept does not cause conflict with the setting, the possible campaigns/storylines and the rest of the table. That is still seeking approval from the DM and thus falls within your understanding of MMI



This is all about PC building, and how the player and the GM's conceptions of the shared fiction are to be integrated. Should the GM yield to the player? Should the player yield to the GM? Different systems make different suggestions, and different tables operationalise those suggestions in different ways.

But it doesn't tell us anyting about whether the GM is entitled to direct a player to pretend to be ignorant of something that s/he knows. Nor whether that makes for good play. In the troll case, insisting that the player not act on his/her knowledge is insisting that the player deliberately declare what s/he knows to be suboptimal attack actions. Which is, in my view, pretty weird in general, and especially in a game that makes _players succeeding in combat challenges_ a fairly big part of play.



Maxperson said:


> There's no "bad action declaration" involved with roleplaying a PC who doesn't know about trolls as not knowing about trolls, either.  The idea that such roleplaying decisions are "bad action declaration" is gamist behavior(thinking about the game as a game, otherwise known as metagaming).



I said it's a _bad action declaration_ because it is deliberately choosing something which the player knows to be suboptimal. It's the opposite of good wargaming/"skilled play".


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## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Another way to look at it is: why do we trust the GM to make a rational judgment call, but not the player? Everyone seems to assume the GM will make a principled call and abdicate accordingly, but that the player is just somehow trying to scheme a "win" out of things. Can't a player be reasonable?



I would push this further, at least in the troll case.

How does it count as a _win_ to be allowed to use fire vs a troll _if you already know that that's how one beats trolls_? In his/her first ever troll encounter, a player _wins_ by figuring out to use fire. It's impossible to replicate that win (short of a bout of amnesia or similar). Future encounters with trolls don't provide any opportunity for such a win. It's just a particular instance of the general point that's puzzles, riddles etc are one-off things (again, subject to forgetfulness).



Aldarc said:


> If the DM have the authority over what a player character knows, can they declare that a PC knows something even if the player believes that their PC shouldn't or doesn't?



This relates back to p 11 of the 4e DMG, about the GM possibly providing knowledge on the basis of the background that a player has established for his/her PC. I think it is taken for granted that if the player doesn't want it, the GM shouldn't do it - it is intended as a way of making the background "useful or important" (p 11), not a burden.

Of course, using _failure_ results to do such things might be a different kettle of fish, depending how open the table is to that sort of thing. (4e doesn't encourage this in the way that - say - Burning Wheel does, but it doesn't preclude it either.)



hawkeyefan said:


> It's a pretty drastic change to the game. Or at least, it seems like it is. The players in my Blades in the Dark game are all long time D&D players, and the concept blew their minds.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is a different approach than the more procedural aspect of the typical D&D game. I think you'd have to adjust a D&D game a bit to allow for this kind of option.



In the context of 4e I don't think much adjustment is required. 4e isn't really a "procedural" game in the way that (say) Moldvay Basic and other versions of classic D&D are.

The obvious "worry" is that players use this sort of thing to establish fictional grouinding for any old action declaration that they like, so that the GM's framing ceases to be relevant or constraining. And the "solution" to that worry is to take the players' fiction seriously, and use it to hang complications on - _especially_ when declared checks fail.

And a final comment about 4e methods:



Maxperson said:


> it invalidates the skills and backgrounds involving monster lore.  Instead of a wizard being able to draw upon his knowledge of arcane lore to find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a Flesh Golem are, now the skill would be useless, because a successful check would just reveal that they are very often different.



With respect, that does not seem very imaginative. Why could a successful check not notice the tell-tale sign on this particular creature that it is vulnerable to such-and-such?

This is not new RPG tech. 4e does not preclude the use of Monster Knowledge checks against unique creatures. And Burning Wheel handles the Folklore skill, used to learn wards against the living dead, in something like this way also.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The only player posting in this thread who played D&D back in the mid-70s, as far as I know, is @_*AbdulAlhazred*_. What you are describing is not "the early days of D&D" - it's the sort of "world simulationist" style that emerged in the late 70s and which, at that time, would be especially associated with systems like RQ and C&S.
> 
> AbdulAlhazred has posted that it's hard to know what was going on and how early GMs (including Gygax and Arneson) were reconciling wargamng with _being a character_. My own view is that _nothing_ in their game texts, in the scoring rules for the tournament modules, in accounts of tournament play, etc suggests that players were expected to pretend their PCs were ignorant of monster vulnerabilities that the players themselves knew. And this is reinforced by such things as the Moldvay Basic rulebook (p B3) instructing new players to read the Monster chapter.
> 
> The bottom line is that it's impossible to engage in "skilled play" when you're deliberately holding back from taking what you know to be the skilled decision.




I agree. While I don't know what the original intent or practice was in Wisconsin in the mid 70's WRT player knowledge I suspect that things like the nature and characteristics of magic items, monsters, and well-known traps and such was not really considered something you'd normally hold against a player for mining in a game with a PC who didn't obviously know the information. First of all there's no way to know what they don't know, and in OD&D there wasn't any mechanics to even TRY to solve that (albeit it still leaves your issues with how you resolve the difference in knowledge in terms of action declarations even if you DO have such a mechanic).

DEFINITELY I am sure there was a lot of 'practice' which was considered purely player skill and which it was expected you would play. I can remember we learned to listen at doors, and then we learned to SMELL at the doors, and to listen using a cup (to avoid the ear seekers), and then to slide things under the bottom edge of the door to find traps and such, etc. We even codified this into a standard door practice which we named "sniff and listen." Every character used this same approach, no DM would ever think to argue 'meta-game' on that, they'd have been laughed at! 

Likewise you'd be considered a dolt if you didn't immediately apply a torch to the green slime when it got on your PC, that is JUST WHAT YOU DID! I would say that hitting skeletons with blunt weapons, trolls with fire, using smoke against insects, etc. all common basic 'dungeoneering' practice. That is what the game was pretty much about. If the DM wanted a unique puzzle or surprise, the sky was the limit, they didn't expect every character to start out in kindergarten. They would have all died at level 1, lol.

If you found a girdle, everyone knew it could be a girdle of masculinity to femininity. Heck, there was always that player who would try it on and just laugh if he got that curse because it was silly.


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## Hussar

Heh, if we want to get right down to it, virtually all of skilled play would be considered "meta-gaming".  After all, you didn't just "check for traps", you detailed to the DM what exactly you were doing.  There was no notion that your character wouldn't know how to check for a trap or a hidden compartment, or, conversely that your character would know anything that you didn't.

I mean, what does my 15 year old squire know about finding secret compartments in a statue?  How would he possibly know?  But, you had modules and adventures that specifically played to player knowledge as being part and parcel to skilled play.  You were EXPECTED to roll marbles down the hallway.  Why would anyone actually do this?  Oh, right, because a sloped down passageway could cause you to go from one level of a dungeon to another level and the monsters would be harder to deal with.  

Yeah, no metagaming going on there at all.


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## S'mon

Re trolls, I remember having fun playing in a 4e D&D adventure where we met a troll coming out of the water. I immediately yelled:

"It's a Scrag! They can only regenerate in water! Get it onto the land!"

I was pretty sure there was no such rule or monster in 4e, but was interested to see where the GM would go with it - he had it regenerate normally on land, which was ok. It would have been ok if he'd accepted my contribution to the 'shared fiction', too.

I think if I'm running a game in a world where troll fire regeneration is not widely known, I might require a Knowledge check - eg Nature - for a PC meeting trolls for the first time to have that info on hand. Generally though I'll just treat it as an 'everyone knows' thing - after all if I want a troll that's fire resistant but vulnerable to salt, I can always do that!


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## Lanefan

Right - back at it...sorry 'bout the gap there... 


hawkeyefan said:


> Why is it only damage control? Tommy decides his fighter is following in the footsteps of his uncle, and that he's heard all kinds of stories about monsters and dungeons. Why does it matter if Tommy decides this in session 0 or session 4?



Because in session 0 there's no here-and-now stakes, and no clear and obvious immediate advantage to the PC/player.  In session 4 when the stakes have become serious it's a bit beyond the pale if Tommy pulls the answer out of thin air like that.

And even then it's probably not the end of the world, except that if Tommy does this once what's to stop him doing a similar thing - that his PC just happens to have the answer to a situation or puzzle or whatever - again, every time his PC is stuck but he-as-player knows the answer?  And the answer is, of course, nothing; because the precedent has already been set by the DM allowing it to happen in session 4.  Pretty short hop from there to outright bad-faith play.



> There are any number of ways to allow for this. Perhaps she screams before she dies? Perhaps she actually holds off long enough to shout a warning? Perhaps the cleric or wizard get a weird hunch? Perhaps she leaves signs that things are all okay up to this point, and the PCs reach a point where they expect the next sign but none is to be found?



Any of those is possible, sure, given the right situation (e.g. screaming or shouting a warning is only any use if the rest of the party is still within earshot; the PCs reading signs assumes they are following and not staying put so the scout can find them when she returns).  The "hunch" one is valid, but would get contrived if done too often.



> But even if you don't want to go with anything like that.....wouldn't the lack of her return be enough to "justify" that the other PCs proceed with caution?



Oh, absolutely.

It's when players start talking in-character about their late companion and how they need to go back to town and find a replacement when they don't and can't even know she's dead yet and she's not due to return for another hour or so...that's when the smackdown hammer comes out. 

(even worse is while she's still alive and out scouting other players won't just shut up and let her player play it out, they insist on offering suggestions or even telling her what to do when their PCs have no way of knowing any specifics of the situation at hand)



> And even if you didn't want to do that....couldn't they just be cautious anyway? Do you make them proceed carelessly?



No.  I ask why are they suddenly moving now when they'd agreed to wait here for at least an hour for her to get back - are they intending to abandon her?  And if the answer comes back "well, she's dead" then someone's probably about to get yelled at.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> It's when players start talking in-character about their late companion and how they need to go back to town and find a replacement when they don't and can't even know she's dead yet and she's not due to return for another hour or so...that's when the smackdown hammer comes out.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I ask why are they suddenly moving now when they'd agreed to wait here for at least an hour for her to get back - are they intending to abandon her?  And if the answer comes back "well, she's dead" then someone's probably about to get yelled at.



The GM policing action declarations in this way does seem to contain hints, at least, of "Mother may I".



Lanefan said:


> it's probably not the end of the world, except that if Tommy does this once what's to stop him doing a similar thing - that his PC just happens to have the answer to a situation or puzzle or whatever - again, every time his PC is stuck but he-as-player knows the answer?



If the player knows the answer, how is the PC stuck? What's the point of putting puzzles in the game, but then not letting players who know the answer solve them?

It absolutely baffles me.



S'mon said:


> I think if I'm running a game in a world where troll fire regeneration is not widely known, I might require a Knowledge check - eg Nature - for a PC meeting trolls for the first time to have that info on hand.



But if the player knows (because an experienced player) yet fails the check, how do you handle that? That's the situation that to me seems unsatisfactory.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> The GM policing action declarations in this way does seem to contain hints, at least, of "Mother may I".
> .




I would disagree with this. If the player is clearly meta gaming with out of character knowledge, while meta gaming that way is permitted in some kinds of campaigns, it is pretty standard in many games to draw a clear line and prevent it. Unless the GM is using this as an excuse to block all kinds of actions, and just limiting it to genuine places where meta game knowledge is being used, it doesn't strike me as mother may I (especially since the players are going to know in such a game that meta gaming is a line). Honestly I really don't understand why both sides are even debating this. Obviously some people like allowing meta game out of character knowledge stuff, some don't. Some are a place in between. It is something that even gets addressed in a lot of rulebooks. People play the game differently than one another. That shouldn't surprise anyone, and it shouldn't serve as a reason to feel better than other people.


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## S'mon

pemerton said:


> But if the player knows (because an experienced player) yet fails the check, how do you handle that? That's the situation that to me seems unsatisfactory.




"You can't act on information your PC does not know."

IME players accept the mediation of the dice, assuming the target number is at all reasonable. In a game with no knowledge skills one could roll vs INT, eg d20 roll under INT in Moldvay B/X.

Something like this came up once in my 4e game - a player (guarding the southern exit from Stonefang Pass) knew a traitorous (Zhent agent) NPC was lying to her, because player had seen some previous RP, so we rolled NPC Bluff vs PC Insight to see if the NPC could bluff his way past her. He rolled well and succeeded. The player was happy with this approach.


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Seems like potentially a lot of effort to avoid an otherwise simple solution. I think that, as with many examples, you're assuming that the player continually does this kind of thing. He's constantly introducing new uncles that have various areas of expertise and who have imparted their knowledge on the character. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about one instance, and it was an instance related to the players being uninterested in the content of play, so they help move things along.




I suppose it would only be done for monsters with strengths or weaknesses, which is a lot of them.  I have a hard time believing that they wouldn't be okay with trolls and bring in the uncle, but would be golems and not bring in some "reason" to know about golems.  



> That specific example aside, I don't have a problem if the dice are used to determine such things. Maybe the uncle is introduced to the fiction as a result of a successful dice roll. I think that's the kind of emergent play that many are advocating.
> 
> Why not have them create that background as you play? Why write anything down ahead of time?




I don't like this playstyle and my players don't like this playstyle.  Those are pretty good reasons I think.



> I genuinely mean that. I am not saying that writing a background is bad in and of itself, but rather that it has pros and cons. One of the cons seems to be it locks things in place, but the brief nature of such a background means that what's locked in place is limited.
> 
> It seems arbitrary to me to hold the players to that kind of limited detail. Again, nothing wrong with writing it down, but I think allowing for additions to their background is likely a good idea.




There are pros and cons to allowing them to create on the fly as well.  It all depends on which way is best for you, and your way isn't best for me and my game.



> The character would, whether at full HP or 1 HP, expect a flail strike to the head by a gnoll to be a lethal blow. However, when the fighter has full HP, he will be less concerned about any individual attack. Hence, he is acting on the game mechanics, or out of fiction knowledge.
> 
> Again, I don't have a problem with this. I just think it demonstrates that metagaming is present in every game, and is actually often very beneficial to play.
> 
> Well, this is your very specific take on HP. There are many ways to narrate HP and what they mean (and I don't want to add that topic to this debate as well), but this doesn't change the fact that the character with full HP will tend to act more decisively because he knows he's at less risk of dying.




The PC is not aware of hit points and knows he can die to a single hit, whether 1st level or 20th level.  And if by "Well, this is your very specific take on  HP," you mean RAW, then yes it is.

"Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious."

The first part about describing hit point loss in different ways simply means that I might describe a "hit" that leaves no mark due to the fighter still being over 50% as a close miss, while you might describe it as a ringing blow to the helm that doesn't penetrate.  The context of the rest of the paragraph makes that clear with how it directs hit points to be used.



> Sure. Whether that's a bad thing or not, and whether the DM can block it, is what we're talking about. Again, I know you're coming at this from a D&D perspective, but to insist that metagaming is always cheating is where I disagree.




I disagree as well, which is probably why I've said over and over again that in MY GAME it's cheating.



> Okay. I personally find that such backgrounds are not "better". They may offer an advantage such as more starting money, or maybe an extra skill or language or something similar. But they also often come with related drawbacks....familial obligations, established enemies, expectations of behavior, and so on.




Fair enough.  "Better" in the way I was using it was in the context of the money advantage you mentioned, but I can see where that would not be clear and could be read as better overall.  Roleplaying wise, a noble can be as fun to play as an urchin, merchant, soldier or whatever, so there would be no "better" in that regard.



> I wouldn't say it's an unfair advantage, especially since the players already have the knowledge. Rather, it's a way of reconciling that player/character knowledge discrepancy.




It is an unfair advantage.  The creature's difficulty is based on those strengths and weaknesses being an actual challenge.  If the players are using their knowledge such that they get to automatically know about the monsters' strengths and weaknesses, those monsters become weaker as challenges and I would have to cut down the XP value of them to compensate.

I have no problem if they know about it through reasonable in game means, though, such as pre-written backgrounds and skills, because those are limited and they will sometimes get the info they need, sometimes fail to get it, and sometimes partially get it.  The game accounts for that sort of inconsistent knowledge via skills and such, so that would preserve the challenge value of monsters in general.



> I get the distinction you're making, but I don't think it's an unfair advantage so much as _having to commit to a background detail at the time of character creation knowing it may never be relevant is more of an unfair disadvantage_. Isn't it cooler to have characters whose backgrounds matter? Isn't that better for play?
> 
> This is the kind of relevance that many are pointing toward. Sure, the DM can take a background element and incorporate it into the story...I do that all the time. But letting the player introduce it as it comes up ensures that it happens, and that it happens in a way the player would like to see. And it really shouldn't be a hindrance to the DM in any way....so I really don't see the issue.




So no, it's not more of an unfair disadvantage to have the player write a background in advance.  The purpose of backgrounds is informational about the PC, not to gain mechanical advantages during game play.  Sure, there will be the occasional mechanical advantage such as information about some sort of monster or other, but by and large the background is just fluff.  Even when I bring in a portion of it, making that aspect of the background matter and being better for play, it will generally be fluff and carry no mechanical value at all.  For example, a player in my game had his PC befriend a hermit.  I might one day have that hermit one day track his PC down and ask him to help with some bandits that have taken up residence near the hermit's remote location, making it difficult for him to live.


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## Bedrockgames

S'mon said:


> "You can't act on information your PC does not know."
> 
> IME players accept the mediation of the dice, assuming the target number is at all reasonable. In a game with no knowledge skills one could roll vs INT, eg d20 roll under INT in Moldvay B/X.
> 
> Something like this came up once in my 4e game - a player (guarding the southern exit from Stonefang Pass) knew a traitorous (Zhent agent) NPC was lying to her, because player had seen some previous RP, so we rolled NPC Bluff vs PC Insight to see if the NPC could bluff his way past her. He rolled well and succeeded. The player was happy with this approach.




I am not particularly rigid about meta game stuff. But in one of my campaigns I have players who don't like it, and one of the players will raise it as an issue if someone uses out of character knowledge (and the other players seem on board with this approach). So I think it is also something that isn't even always a GM thing. If enough players seem to be bothered by people acting on out of character knowledge, unless it is particularly crucial to the campaign that out of character knowledge be admissible for some reason, I will generally go with it.


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## sd_jasper

pemerton said:


> Why is it metagame knowledge? If the PC recognises the creature as a troll, and knows that it is vulnerable to fire, then this is just the player playing his/her character




You seem to have misunderstood... the character does NOT recognize the creature. That's the point.




pemerton said:


> This is the _alienation_ that I mentioned about in response to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]: the method that you describe, which seems like a version of what Maxperson is also putting forward, requires the player to subordinate _playing as one's character and pursuing the character's interests_ to _what does my table regard as a sufficient basis for a character to recognise the vulnerability of a troll to fire_. To me, the second thing seems quite unappealing, even insipid.




Insipid? Well excuse me for having Bad Wong Fun. Good day.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Preclusion does not equate to inclusion in any circumstance.




And yet you keep using preclusion as inclusion.



> This is self-contradictory - _they're not a puzzle, they're just something to work out so as to better succeed in the game_!




It's not.  A puzzle is a specific kind of information seeking game.  Not everything you don't know and seek to find out is a puzzle.



> Playing my character as ignorant of something that I, the player, am not ignorant of is a textbook example of _alienation_!




No it's not.  A textbook example of alienation would also apply to me and my players, and yet there is no alienation at all.  Your textbook has failed.



> You played with Gygax and co?




I don't need to.  I have his words explicitly stating that, as well as early play with multiple DMs who didn't play that way.



> The only player posting in this thread who played D&D back in the mid-70s, as far as I know, is [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. What you are describing is not "the earluy days of D&D" - it's the sort of "world simulationist" style that emerged in the late 70s and which, at that time, would be especially associated with systems like RQ and C&S.




D&D has been going for about 45 years now.  At this point the first 10-15 years would be early play, and I played during that period.  I started in 1983, so not too long after those mid 70s.



> The bottom line is that it's impossible to engage in "skilled play" when you're deliberately holding back from taking what you know to be the skilled decision.




This is just not true.  You can be skilled in play, learning how best to go through the game world to minimize dangers.  Searching for traps everywhere, learning where secret doors are more likely to be placed, and so on, without relying on metagame knowledge.  



> Adding to what Aldarc said: _metagame thinking_, according to the 4e DMG, is to make in-character decisions that treat the game as a game. This can also be called a form of "breaking the 4th wall". Imputing knowledge to my PC isn't doing this - it's simply a part of PC building.




Inputting knowledge to gain an unfair advantage over a monster is gaming the system, which is treating the game as a game.  Even if you just seek to avoid having to "learn" something you as the player already know, that is also treating the game as a game.



> Alternatively, from p 9 of the 4e PHB: "Through your character you can interact with the game world in any way you want."




That's just disingenuous.  You know very well that you cannot have your character interact with the game world in "any way you want."  My 1st level fighter in 4e cannot interact with the game world via the 15th level wizard power Bigby's Grasping Hands.  Once you know that the statement "any way you want." is false, all that remains is to figure out the limitations.  Clearly from the DMG quotes I've given, as well as preclusion not equating to inclusion, the player is limited by how the game explicitly tells him his character can interact with the world.  If there is a hole in the game, a spot where there is not inclusion or preclusion, the DM has to make the call.  It's not up to the player unless the DM has set up that playstyle and given the player that ability.



> The text you quote from p 11 of the 4e DMG advises the GM, in some circumstances, to provide a player with information. It doesn't instruct the GM, either expressly or by implication, to regulate what a player decides his/her PC knows.




It is the only rule allowing such background information to yield information, so the DM is the only one explicitly allowed to do it.  If you want to give the player the ability to do it as well, that's on you, but the game does not allow it any other way.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> With respect, that does not seem very imaginative. Why could a successful check not notice the tell-tale sign on this particular creature that it is vulnerable to such-and-such?




Because it's rare for there to be visible sign of a strength or weakness.  It's not as if they run around with words on their foreheads explaining things.



> This is not new RPG tech. 4e does not preclude the use of Monster Knowledge checks against unique creatures.




Sure.  If you are going to face the only Banderfratcher in existence, there more be lore on it.  I'd give skill rolls to see if they might know about the creature.  They couldn't just tell me that some previously unknown to me cousin of theirs once faced it and survived, telling them of all it's strengths and weaknesses, though.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> "You can't act on information your PC does not know."
> 
> IME players accept the mediation of the dice, assuming the target number is at all reasonable. In a game with no knowledge skills one could roll vs INT, eg d20 roll under INT in Moldvay B/X.
> 
> Something like this came up once in my 4e game - a player (guarding the southern exit from Stonefang Pass) knew a traitorous (Zhent agent) NPC was lying to her, because player had seen some previous RP, so we rolled NPC Bluff vs PC Insight to see if the NPC could bluff his way past her. He rolled well and succeeded. The player was happy with this approach.



I think lying has different dimensions, though - in the case you describe the player just has to let the NPC go past. (Iin a skill challenge framing, that could be treated as one of three failures.)

But in the troll case, if the player was in fact a newebie s/he could experiment with fire, etc however much s/he liked; but how does this work for the player who is not using the information? Roll a die each round to see if s/he thinks of using fire?

Putting it in more analytical terms: the player letting the NPC go past is barely action resolution (what action has the player declared?P). It's really the player acquiescing in the GM's framing of a scene (_the NPC enters, having got past your guard_) which is a potentially contentious framing because sometimes guards stop intruders.

But the troll case is action resolution to the max!


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> But in the troll case, if the player was in fact a newebie s/he could experiment with fire, etc however much s/he liked; but how does this work for the player who is not using the information? Roll a die each round to see if s/he thinks of using fire?




Yeah I guess so - I'd probably first give everyone an INT (Nature) check, then if they all failed they'd have to wait until they saw it regenerating before I'd give a second check. I think this kind of thing would be player-GM negotiated, and normally I'd be happy with "OK, it's well known that trolls are vulnerable to fire" in any case where the result seemed to break immersion. I don't use a lot of 'trick' monsters and I can't recall anything much like this actually coming up.

I think the point is that the Gamist challenge of the trick monster causes difficulty for immersion when player knowledge and PC knowledge differ. I think the old school approach of assuming player knowledge = PC knowledge is not a bad solution and it's certainly one I'll typically accept.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I think the point is that the Gamist challenge of the trick monster causes difficulty for immersion when player knowledge and PC knowledge differ.



Yeah, that's why I said way upthread there's a collision of expectations.

It's a while since I've looked through a RuneQuest monster listing, but at least in my memory they don't exhibit the same lists of immunities, vulnerabilities, etc. And I think there's a logic to that.

Ron Edwards, in his "story now" essay, talks about "karaoke RPGing". He's got in mind a slightly different context, and gives Over the Edge as his example:

This is a serious problem that arises from the need to sell thick books rather than to teach and develop powerful role-playing. Let's say you have a game that consists of some Premise-heavy characters and a few notes about Situation, and through play, the group generates a hellacious cool Setting as well as theme(s) regarding those characters. Then, publishing your great game, you present that very setting and theme in the text, in detail. . . .

I'm not saying that improvisation is better or more Narrativist than non-improvisational play. I am saying, however, that if playing this particular game worked so wonderfully to free the participants into wildly successful brainstorming during play ... and since the players were a core source during this event, as evident in the game's Dedication and in various examples of play ... then why present the _results _of the play-experience as the _material _for another person's experience?​
I think that D&D - really dating from the publication of AD&D (cf B/X) - has suffered from a form of this, though (as you say) connected more to "gamist"/wargaming play than to the "story now" Edwards was focusing on in his remarks.

What produced the classic early D&D gamist/wargaming play was GM ingenuity, player experimentation, new monsters with wacky immunities, variations on variations on pit traps, researching new spells to counteract new GM tricks, etc. But (especially in AD&D), instead of getting presented with techniques for running this sort of game, we get canonical lists of monsters, canonical lists of magic items with cautions about breaking the game by making up new ones, canonical lists of spells with all the adjudication (does or doesn't fireball metl gold, or generate blast pressure?) already prescribed, etc.

Which I think can push the game towards karaoke/alienation/imagining what would make a good/plausible/reasonable story about this PC, rather than the _play to beat the GM's tricks_ spirit that seems to have actually animated those early games.

That's not to say that I'm against immersion/simulationist RPGing of the RQ and C&S sort, but I don't think these puzzle elements that are such a predominant feature of D&D are a good fit for it. (It's not a coincidence, in my view, that they're not a big part of Rolemaster either.)


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hussar said:


> Heh, if we want to get right down to it, virtually all of skilled play would be considered "meta-gaming".  After all, you didn't just "check for traps", you detailed to the DM what exactly you were doing.  There was no notion that your character wouldn't know how to check for a trap or a hidden compartment, or, conversely that your character would know anything that you didn't.
> 
> I mean, what does my 15 year old squire know about finding secret compartments in a statue?  How would he possibly know?  But, you had modules and adventures that specifically played to player knowledge as being part and parcel to skilled play.  You were EXPECTED to roll marbles down the hallway.  Why would anyone actually do this?  Oh, right, because a sloped down passageway could cause you to go from one level of a dungeon to another level and the monsters would be harder to deal with.
> 
> Yeah, no metagaming going on there at all.




And this explains the basic Gygaxian position that PCs are 'default omnicompetent' (and hence there are no skill systems or checks in Gygaxian D&D). Note even how the original Greyhawk thief skills are phrased. ANYONE can climb a basic climbable wall, but a thief can "climb nearly sheer surfaces". Likewise anyone might disarm a trap or open a lock (simply by describing how the character manipulates the mechanism) but a thief can "open locks by picking or foiling magical closures" literally doing something magical or beyond normal human skill.

Thus there were a lot less situations in Gygaxian play where these sorts of questions came up. It was pretty easy to simply assume that adventurers, by default, had a good understanding of the weaknesses of trolls, although each new batch of players would have to figure that out for themselves the first time or three.

I tend to think Gygax was more likely to get bothered by PLOT things that PCs shouldn't know. This was often due to troupe play where most players had a range of PCs. Note that the 1e DMG DOES talk about THIS as an undesirable kind of meta-gaming and encourages DMs to make sure that a given player's PCs don't simply act like one gestalt character in effect. This is entirely different however from knowledge of trolls and such.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> That's not to say that I'm against immersion/simulationist RPGing of the RQ and C&S sort, but I don't think these puzzle elements that are such a predominant feature of D&D are a good fit for it. (It's not a coincidence, in my view, that they're not a big part of Rolemaster either.)




I agree. There was a cool scene recently in my Primeval Thule game where the party encountered a sewer ooze, the Dhari barbarian leapt to the fray, cleft it in twain... and found himself fighting two sewer oozes. But for that to happen it required the veteran player in the group to keep silent, for her to not warn her fellow player, and allow the scene to play out. That is very un-Gygaxian 'Skilled Play'. 

5e D&D uses the old trick monsters, but is sufficiently forgiving that you can get away with stuff like that, where old-school D&D would be much more punitive - two ochre jellies might TPK a beginner party. 

There's not too much tension between the approaches with one-attack-to-figure-out creatures, but trolls that keep on regenerating create a major disjunction. I think a typical solution (apart from ruling 'everyone knows') is to switch to fire after the first attacks don't work. It's not particularly satisfactory, and I normally go with 'everyone knows'. If I want a Gamist challenge I can use a non-troll regenerator. PCs then start with fire and if that fails, they try other options/damage types. (Funnily enough, 5e made the humble zombie a trick monster, since they now need radiant damage to reliably put down - this catches out a lot of players!)


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## pemerton

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION], what you say about the forgiving nature of 5e seems consistent with other remarks about the system.

I didn't mind the way 4e handled some of these things (though I'm not sure if it was deliberate design or byproduct): the real "trick" is bringing the serious fire attack to bear on the troll. Even for a party of veterans that creates a tactical challenge, in the context of an otherwise well-designed 4e encounter, that requires some figuring out. And sometimes the sequencing won't work out for whatever reason, or the fire attack will miss, and the troll will get its regeneration to work.

Also, I think the veteran staying quiet is a bit awkward (and I agree not Gygaxian), but not as bad as having to exercise that "silence" in respect of one's own PC. That's the bit I really can't wrap my head around!


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I tend to think Gygax was more likely to get bothered by PLOT things that PCs shouldn't know. This was often due to troupe play where most players had a range of PCs. Note that the 1e DMG DOES talk about THIS as an undesirable kind of meta-gaming and encourages DMs to make sure that a given player's PCs don't simply act like one gestalt character in effect. This is entirely different however from knowledge of trolls and such.



I think there are a a lot of points of difference that can be identified.

Even with the plot-type stuff, does a repeat player with a new PC have to walk his/her PC into the pit? Make the same bad guess at the riddle?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> it invalidates the skills and backgrounds involving monster lore.  Instead of a wizard being able to draw upon his knowledge of arcane lore to find out what the strengths and weaknesses of a Flesh Golem are, now the skill would be useless, because a successful check would just reveal that they are very often different.





Maxperson said:


> If you are going to face the only Banderfratcher in existence, there more be lore on it.  I'd give skill rolls to see if they might know about the creature.



You've changed your mind on this?



Maxperson said:


> They couldn't just tell me that some previously unknown to me cousin of theirs once faced it and survived, telling them of all it's strengths and weaknesses, though.



I think you might be running two things together: a player _deploying knowledge s/he already has_, and imputing that knowledge to his/her PC; and a player _seeking to acquire new knowledge_.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> You can be skilled in play, learning how best to go through the game world to minimize dangers.  Searching for traps everywhere, learning where secret doors are more likely to be placed, and so on, without relying on metagame knowledge.



I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] already responded to this - if my PC can know how to check for traps, etc, because that's "what people know how to do", then s/he can know about trolls because that's "what my uncle taught me as a kid".


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] already responded to this - if my PC can know how to check for traps, etc, because that's "what people know how to do", then s/he can know about trolls because that's "what my uncle taught me as a kid".




Except there is an obvious difference here in that, this is a specific piece of information about a monster in the game that is clearly intended to create a challenge for groups to figure out. The problem with it, is every player knows the solution now. Again, my view is they probably should pull a page from ravenloft if they want to preserve that early feeling we got with trolls by having each troll, or each group of trolls have their own weakness that the players need to figure out.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Except there is an obvious difference here in that, this is a specific piece of information about a monster in the game that is clearly intended to create a challenge for groups to figure out.



But if the player already knows the answer then there is nothing to figure out. That's the point I've been making for many posts now. 



Bedrockgames said:


> The problem with it, is every player knows the solution now. Again, my view is they probably should pull a page from ravenloft if they want to preserve that early feeling we got with trolls by having each troll, or each group of trolls have their own weakness that the players need to figure out.



I've been posting this too, for about the same number of posts: if a puzzle is desired, then come up with one that the player's don't know the answer to.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> But if the player already knows the answer then there is nothing to figure out. That's the point I've been making for many posts now.




I am very sympathetic to this view. It is my own personal preference on the matter (because I've always liked investigations and monster hunts). So I actually don't disagree with you. If we were playing at the same table, I'd probably be on the same side of this issue as you (at least in terms of the fundamental issue behind this). The only point I would raise though, I have met a lot of players who are very adamant about separating player and character knowledge. Not everyone is there for the direct solving of the puzzle. Some people want to literally feel like they are their character, some people want their character to fulfill their conception of the character. 



> I've been posting this too, for about the same number of posts: if a puzzle is desired, then come up with one that the player's don't know the answer to.




I think we are in agreement here. I do get that there is an alternative point of view on the matter and it seems to have a lot of currency. But I think with trolls is would be much better to give them some kind of shifting weakness that players can't know just by reading the Monster Manual. Again, I'd point to the Van Richten books because in a lot of ways those were meant to solve this very problem. Ravenloft was basically using them make hunting monsters a viable, regular type of adventure. And that did tend to get dull once players knew how to kill every monster (seriously what player doesn't know about silver and werewolves, phylacteries and liches, stakes and vampires?). Those books totally reinvigorated my ability to run that classic horror campaign of the monster hunter.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> Except there is an obvious difference here in that, this is a specific piece of information about a monster in the game that is *clearly intended to create a challenge for groups to figure out.* The problem with it, is every player knows the solution now. Again, my view is they probably should pull a page from ravenloft if they want to preserve that early feeling we got with trolls by having each troll, or each group of trolls have their own weakness that the players need to figure out.



That's debatable. And regardless of original intent, D&D has developed its own D&Disms as parts of its game culture regarding its in-game assumptions about its settings and its monsters. 

So do I have to let my character be turned to stone and die like a chump to figure out that the medusa/gorgon turns people to stone with sight? How many times must I go through that ringer before I can play a character who knows basic legends and folklore of their own setting? If my only contextual answer is having an appropriate backstory or forced to roll, then I think that this leads to a scenario where everyone creates characters who are the multi-generational children of a monster-hunting family just so they don't have to faff around with the prospect of feigning ignorance of trolls. 

Assuming we were not pulling something like "our vampires are different," then there is folklore about dealing with vampires. D&D follows many of these same tropes for theirs. Is the challenge about vampires meant to be knowing their vulnerabilities? Or is the actual challenge about preparing for and being able to create the opportunity to actually exploit that knowledge? 

I don't think that challenges like trolls, vampires, or medusas should necessarily be about being forced to go through a game of charades where you "pretend ignorance" about it until the DM permits you to know or have your characters figure it out. That's not roleplaying. That's essentially metagaming about not metagaming. 

The Troll Vulnerability Mini-Game, IMHO, makes more sense in the context of the resource game in D&D that has been subsequently minimized in importance. You need fire to fight the troll. You don't really have anything apart from your torches to use. Your wizard prepared one Fireball and only one, but if they spend it, then they will not have that spell available for later encounters, which could include other trolls. But in the current context where wizards now commonly have Firebolt as a cantrip to cast at-will and can spontaneously cast a prepared Fireball spell? Yeah, the whole faffing-around with the Troll Vulnerability Mini-Game seems more tedious and pointless now than it was before. 

And so it is worth considering that although the monsters are roughly the same in that they exist throughout editions, perhaps how they are used as a challenge should also change?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> That's debatable. And regardless of original intent, D&D has developed its own D&Disms as parts of its game culture regarding its in-game assumptions about its settings and its monsters.
> 
> So do I have to let my character be turned to stone and die like a chump to figure out that the medusa/gorgon turns people to stone with sight? How many times must I go through that ringer before I can play a character who knows basic legends and folklore of their own setting? If my only contextual answer is having an appropriate backstory or forced to roll, then I think that this leads to a scenario where everyone creates characters who are the multi-generational children of a monster-hunting family just so they don't have to faff around with the prospect of feigning ignorance of trolls.
> 
> Assuming we were not pulling something like "our vampires are different," then there is folklore about dealing with vampires. D&D follows many of these same tropes for theirs. Is the challenge about vampires meant to be knowing their vulnerabilities? Or is the actual challenge about preparing for and being able to create the opportunity to actually exploit that knowledge?
> 
> I don't think that challenges like trolls, vampires, or medusas should necessarily be about being forced to go through a game of charades where you "pretend ignorance" about it until the DM permits you to know or have your characters figure it out. That's not roleplaying. That's essentially metagaming about not metagaming.
> 
> The Troll Vulnerability Mini-Game, IMHO, makes more sense in the context of the resource game in D&D that has been subsequently minimized in importance. You need fire to fight the troll. You don't really have anything apart from your torches to use. Your wizard prepared one Fireball and only one, but if they spend it, then they will not have that spell available for later encounters, which could include other trolls. But in the current context where wizards now commonly have Firebolt as a cantrip to cast at-will and can spontaneously cast a prepared Fireball spell? Yeah, the whole faffing-around with the Troll Vulnerability Mini-Game seems more tedious and pointless now than it was before.
> 
> And so it is worth considering that although the monsters are roughly the same in that they exist throughout editions, perhaps how they are used as a challenge should also change?




There are always preferences on these matters. Personally, I just have to say, I don't see the fun of simulating a vampire hunt, nor do I see the fun of knowing monster weaknesses that are something of a secret in the campaign. I can understand if a character class has something like 'know monster weakness' as a feature. That is one thing. But my view is probably closer to Pemerton's on this matter, which is these monsters should be done in the style of Ravenloft in the core game and there should be more variety that is placed in the hands of the GM when it comes to figuring out their weaknesses and solutions to combatting them. I've just seen how these kinds of creatures can go from being amazing bad guys to boring once the players know the solution. 

I think calling it the troll vulnerability 'mini-game' really misses the magic of what is going on with these kinds of creatures. It isn't a mini-game. A mini-game, to me, suggests mechanics. Their vulnerability is a feature that can, in the right circumstances, become a whole adventure unto itself. It is a trope, not a mini-game (monster is invulnerable except for X, and the hero has to figure it out or face terrible doom----or run away).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> That's debatable. And regardless of original intent, D&D has developed its own D&Disms as parts of its game culture regarding its in-game assumptions about its settings and its monsters.




I think it is pretty obvious what the intent was. Obviously if there is some quote where Gygax says 'no I wanted the players to use knowledge of the monster from the book to defeat it', then sure. But this is something where the content and intent seem to be one thing, and I'd need actually evidence to the contrary to shift my opinion. On the latter point I think you are right. But then, the whole meta game line that Maxperson is defending is another aspect of that evolution as well. Again, there is preference and there is what is in the hobby. I get that in the books they have this vulnerability, most people know it, and there may be a sense of 'why be coy about it?' How you answer that question will likely depend on where you reside when it comes to metagming in or out of character knowledge. My contention though is this whole conversation could be avoided if they just did what I suggested, which is have the vulnerability shift (either by individual trolls, by groups, or by each individual campaign world).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You've changed your mind on this?




No. You said unique creature.  A unique creature is like the Tarrasque.  There is only one.  That means that when it is seen, it would be visibly unusual enough for someone with knowledge to seek out lore about it in what he has learned.  Unlike the Tarrasque, flesh golem with different abilities would most probably not be recognizable as anything other than a normal flesh golem.  There would be nothing to trigger any other lore.  While there may be only one of them, it does not get the "unique" tag as it is used in D&D.  It's still a flesh golem and not something else.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I think @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ and @_*Hussar*_ already responded to this - if my PC can know how to check for traps, etc, because that's "what people know how to do", then s/he can know about trolls because that's "what my uncle taught me as a kid".




I've never checked for traps for real in my life, but I can still check for them.  You are just searching for things that are out of the ordinary and indicate that a trap is present, and you get better with practice.  It doesn't take metagame knowledge to look for them.  Nor is there any guarantee of finding them.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> So do I have to let my character be turned to stone and die like a chump to figure out that the medusa/gorgon turns people to stone with sight?




That's a really bad example since you aren't likely to know it's a medusa without seeing it, unless you were warned by villagers or the like, in which case you could do research, use skills, etc. to know about it in advance.  The gorgon at least doesn't turn you to stone when you look at it.



> How many times must I go through that ringer before I can play a character who knows basic legends and folklore of their own setting?




0 times.  Basic monsters are orcs, goblins and other similar basic monsters with basic legends.  Unless there is an in game reason not to let the players know, I just tell them they they see an orc, goblin or whatever basic creature it is.  Gorgons and Medusae are not basic monsters.  The average person is not very likely to know about them.



> If my only contextual answer is having an appropriate backstory or forced to roll, then I think that this leads to a scenario where everyone creates characters who are the multi-generational children of a monster-hunting family just so they don't have to faff around with the prospect of feigning ignorance of trolls.




Sure.  If you want to treat D&D as a board game to "win" and not an RPG, then doing this is the way to go.  I avoid playing with gamist people, though, so it's not an issue I or my players have.



> Assuming we were not pulling something like "our vampires are different," then there is folklore about dealing with vampires.




Folklore very often gets things wrong, as it's just folklore and not based on any solid knowledge.  Folkore varied from region to region, often from village to village, about the same creature.  If a player wants to rely on folklore, I will come up with some folklore about the creature, assign a chance that any given tidbit is the real deal, and then give the player the folklore about the monster.  It might turn out to be useful.



> Is the challenge about vampires meant to be knowing their vulnerabilities? Or is the actual challenge about preparing for and being able to create the opportunity to actually exploit that knowledge?




Both.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> That's a really bad example since you aren't likely to know it's a medusa without seeing it, unless you were warned by villagers or the like, in which case you could do research, use skills, etc. to know about it in advance.  The gorgon at least doesn't turn you to stone when you look at it.



I meant the classical sense of "gorgon," since Medusa is actually the personal name of _a_ gorgon. I thought that would have been obvious given the and/or slash. :shrug: 



> 0 times.  Basic monsters are orcs, goblins and other similar basic monsters with basic legends.  Unless there is an in game reason not to let the players know, I just tell them they they see an orc, goblin or whatever basic creature it is.  Gorgons and Medusae are not basic monsters.  The average person is not very likely to know about them.



That's only how you choose to run it, Max. 



> Sure.  If you want to treat D&D as a board game to "win" and not an RPG, then doing this is the way to go.  I avoid playing with gamist people, though, so it's not an issue I or my players have.



Leaving your play preference snobbery aside, this was how RPGs were played before people got into their head notions of acting and voicing characters using silly accents. It's still an RPG. Incidentally, the word "game" exists in "roleplaying game." This is also a part of how OSR plays a number of its games: overcome the challenges. 



Bedrockgames said:


> I think it is pretty obvious what the intent was.



That's your certainly your assumption. It's also worth considering how much of the OSR materials you directed me towards emphasized player-knowledge and wits as the key for overcoming challenges as opposed to character-knowledge and wits. 



> My contention though is this whole conversation could be avoided if they just did what I suggested, which is have the vulnerability shift (either by individual trolls, by groups, or by each individual campaign world).



That solution just kicks the can down the road and reinvents the problem anew.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I meant the classical sense of "gorgon," since Medusa is actually the personal name of _a_ gorgon. I thought that would have been obvious given the and/or slash. :shrug:




It wasn't, since both the Medusa and Gorgon are D&D creatures that turn people to stone, so you could have been putting them together with the slash as creatures that turn things to stone.



> That's only how you choose to run it, Max.




There's a big difference between common creatures, and rare or very rare creatures.  The latter simply aren't going to be common knowledge, and even uncommon creatures won't be known by all.  You're arguing that some peasant who has lived his whole life in the middle of a forest is going to have working knowledge of what Solars can do, because folklore. 



> Leaving your play preference snobbery aside, this was how RPGs were played before people got into their head notions of acting and voicing characters using silly accents. It's still an RPG. Incidentally, the word "game" exists in "roleplaying game." This is also a part of how OSR plays a number of its games: overcome the challenges.




Even Gygax talked about developing personality traits and other aspects of the personae for the characters.  He also gave out roleplaying traits for different races, like dwarves being dour and such.  It's clear that even as far back as 1e, players were expected to "act" out their character and not just treat the game as a game.  

It's also pretty telling that you ignored my comment about how inconsistent and frequently wrong folklore is.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> There's a big difference between common creatures, and rare or very rare creatures.  The latter simply aren't going to be common knowledge, and even uncommon creatures won't be known by all.  You're arguing that some peasant who has lived his whole life in the middle of a forest is going to have working knowledge of what Solars can do, because folklore.



That's only how you choose to run it, Max. 



> Even Gygax talked about developing personality traits and other aspects of the personae for the characters.  He also gave out roleplaying traits for different races, like dwarves being dour and such.  It's clear that even as far back as 1e, players were expected to "act" out their character and not just treat the game as a game.



It's also clear that players were supposed to use their knowledge and wits to overcome challenges to achieve the victory conditions of the game.  



> It's also pretty telling that you ignored my comment about how inconsistent and frequently wrong folklore is.



You should know better to equate silence with agreement or victory. Please, stop treating conversations as something to be won. The reality is that I don't necessarily want to pursue every single adventure path or plot hook you put forth.


----------



## darkbard

Aldarc said:


> You should know better to equate silence with agreement or victory. Please, stop treating conversations as something to be won. The reality is that I don't necessarily want to pursue every single adventure path or plot hook you put forth.




QFT. This grows tiresome and resembles baiting or bullying more than debate and analysis.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> It wasn't, since both the Medusa and Gorgon are D&D creatures that turn people to stone, so you could have been putting them together with the slash as creatures that turn things to stone.
> 
> 
> 
> There's a big difference between common creatures, and rare or very rare creatures.  The latter simply aren't going to be common knowledge, and even uncommon creatures won't be known by all.  You're arguing that some peasant who has lived his whole life in the middle of a forest is going to have working knowledge of what Solars can do, because folklore.
> 
> 
> 
> Even Gygax talked about developing personality traits and other aspects of the personae for the characters.  He also gave out roleplaying traits for different races, like dwarves being dour and such.  It's clear that even as far back as 1e, players were expected to "act" out their character and not just treat the game as a game.
> 
> It's also pretty telling that you ignored my comment about how inconsistent and frequently wrong folklore is.




Read the Van Richten books. It really doesn’t.each monster can be unique


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> That's only how you choose to run it, Max.




Yes, I choose to run with the intent of Gygax.  Rarity is a thing.  You just aren't going to encounter as many hydras as you do goblins.



> It's also clear that players were supposed to use their knowledge and wits to overcome challenges to achieve the victory conditions of the game.



Yes, but within the restriction of not having the characters use knowledge that the player has, but the PCs don't.  Gygax was clear about that in the quotes I used from the 1e DMG.



> You should know better to equate silence with agreement or victory. Please, stop treating conversations as something to be won.




Cool, as I didn't do either.



> The reality is that I don't necessarily want to pursue every single adventure path or plot hook you put forth.




You cut out the most important point in that post to burble about the unimportant ones.  That smells very much like an evasion.  That doesn't mean win or loss for me, it's just telling that you evaded like that.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> Read the Van Richten books. It really doesn’t.each monster can be unique




In an environment that is like that, sure.  I have a Van Richten book and it's more about building undead types, than on specific monsters.  The customization makes a ghoul more of an undead of consuming, than a "ghoul," as the end result will likely not be very much like a ghoul at all.  It gives so many options and varieties to mix and match, that you are basically building new monsters from scratch, using specific type of undead as the base.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Yes, I choose to run with the intent of Gygax.



LOL. 



> Yes, but within the restriction of not having the characters use knowledge that the player has, but the PCs don't.  Gygax was clear about that in the quotes I used from the 1e DMG.



So clear that you still had plenty enough disagreement about the issue. Hardly as clear cut as you like to pretend it is. You have an incredibly Manichaean approach to reading text. You remind me of Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch who made the argument (albeit before joining SCOTUS) that law should be read and interpreted as "plain text," which his future Supreme Court Justices (including those with similar political leanings) found a laughably indefensible position. It's as if you have no room for ambiguity when you read anything or present any text. There is Max's reading or nothing.  



> Cool, as I didn't do either.



Even now, you can't help but avoid treating every conversation as something to be won with a quip. When will you leave your arrested development?


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Even now, you can't help but avoid treating every conversation as something to be won with a quip.




You don't get to tell me what I am doing or why I am doing it.  Only I can do that.  And I'm telling you in no uncertain terms, I am not doing these things to "win."  If you are seeing that, then it's caused by your misperception.  Now that you understand that you are perceiving things incorrectly, any further such accusations by you will be deliberate misstatements on your part.


----------



## Manbearcat

Maxperson said:


> I also don't view the competition as bastardized, as I and my players view roleplaying your character properly, even to the detriment of character and party, as good roleplaying.  The competition doesn't override good roleplay.  Roleplaying is a part of that competition and helps define it.
> 
> That means that if my PC doesn't know about troll weaknesses, it's good roleplaying to portray that in character.  You may disagree and that's fine.  People have different views and desires when playing the game.  My way doesn't become bastardized or lose the discovery aspect I mentioned just because you view things differently, though.




*On Competition*

So what you're saying here is that in your table's hierarchy of play priorities, (your perception of) "good roleplay" is a higher priority than "competition".  To wit, when play at the table puts these two priorities at tension, "competition" becomes subordinate (possibly to the extent of rendering it null) to (your perception of) "good roleplay".

Is that correct? (if its not, I don't know what you're saying here, so I'd appreciate clarification in terms of play priorities and tension).

If that is correct, I don't see how it disagrees with what I wrote at all.  I said the following:

a)  Competition becoming subordinate (to anything really) challenges the authentic agency of the participants in dictating outcomes as an expression of their competitive interests, which in turn causes this particular moment of play to lose its "competitive integrity" (because competition in this case is a binary thing...just like with an egregiously bad call in sports completely changing the trajectory of play/dictating outcomes and undermining the participant's agency).

b)   Do something else so you don't have Competition and (your perception of) "good roleplay" at tension (eg if "Trolls vulnerable to fire" isn't an adventuring zeitgeist that social creatures pass on from town to town to town to town until it becomes a foundational premise for travelers or defenders of the wall or spook stories alike...then change your Trolls to be vulnerable to Cold Iron, Silver, Radiance, et al for this game).



Maxperson said:


> I didn't misunderstand.  I was offering a different viewpoint, and a failure to understand different viewpoints is where these discussions tend to go wrong.  When I already know something as a player, but my character doesn't, I am indeed discovering what he knows via those activities I described. For me discovery is happening.  For you, not so much.




*On Discovery*

So I'm going to frame this in terms of Dungeon World because it does the best work in communicating my meaning.  



> *End of Session*
> When you reach the end of a session, choose one of your bonds that you feel is resolved (completely explored, no longer relevant, or otherwise). Ask the player of the character you have the bond with if they agree. If they do, mark XP and write a new bond with whomever you wish.
> 
> Once bonds have been updated look at your alignment. If you fulfilled that alignment at least once this session, mark XP. Then answer these three questions as a group:
> 
> *Did we learn something new and important about the world?*
> Did we overcome a notable monster or enemy?
> Did we loot a memorable treasure?
> 
> For each “yes” answer everyone marks XP.




See the bolded question above.  This is the one I'm referring to.  Pretend you're a player in Dungeon World and you have to answer that question.  Any good Dungeon World End of Session move is going to have each player answering this question as "yes" and then depicting their answer.

Could you depict how you would answer this question if you were a player of an orthodox Troll encounter and you (the player) already knew that Trolls were vulnerable to fire but you've decided that your character did not.

In case you need reference, here is an example of an answer for the PCs in one of my past Dungeon World games to that question and the brief game context for how this Discovery emerged in play:



> * Did we learn something new and important about the world?
> 
> There is a Fey Crossing smack in the middle of the Coldlands that cuts dead into the heart of the Vale of the Long Night, the territory of the Winter Fey.




The Arcane Duelist in my game used the Cast a Spell move as the following:



> *Contact Spirits Summoning*
> Name the spirit you wish to contact (or leave it to the GM). You pull that creature through the planes, just close enough to speak to you. It is bound to answer any one question you ask to the best of its ability.
> 
> Cast a Spell (Int)
> 2, 3 + 3 = 8
> 
> I'll take the complication:
> 
> You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.




This complication triggered a soft move from me.  The PCs were looking to alert the Feywild about a Far Realm incursion into their home realm from the material world.  They got their alert, but their alert manifested as the malign presence of the Winter Court and specifically an Eladrin Fey Knight and a noble Bralani.  Summer Court vs Winter Court wasn't a thing in this game.  After a parley turned nasty because of snowballing move complications (and ultimate failure) between the two Summer Court Elf PCs and the Winter Court, it became a thing (a new Front in DW parlance).

So this move complication created a Discovery...which snowballed into a Front (new source of antagonism) that wasn't a part of the game prior.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Unlike the Tarrasque, flesh golem with different abilities would most probably not be recognizable as anything other than a normal flesh golem.  There would be nothing to trigger any other lore.  While there may be only one of them, it does not get the "unique" tag as it is used in D&D.  It's still a flesh golem and not something else.



This is all arbitrary, though. The notion that there is some contrast between "unique" and "variant" is barely a rules construct, as opposed to a table convention. It's easy to decide that a creature's vulnerability will be reflected in its appearance or constitution in some form which is evident to those trained in arcane or occult ways.



Maxperson said:


> I've never checked for traps for real in my life, but I can still check for them.  You are just searching for things that are out of the ordinary and indicate that a trap is present



What does this mean, though? What is an "unusual" bump on a stone wall or statue? What is an unusual component of a door handle? People aren't born knowing these things.



Maxperson said:


> Gorgons and Medusae are not basic monsters.  The average person is not very likely to know about them.



Again, this is just stipulation.



Maxperson said:


> If you want to treat D&D as a board game to "win" and not an RPG, then doing this is the way to go. I avoid playing with gamist people, though, so it's not an issue I or my players have.



And this is uncalled for.

For many players (me, I suspect [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]), the essence of roleplaying is "inhabiting" one's character, and declaring actions from that position of inhabitation. And the objection to your treatment of troll vulnerability, in the context of a player who already knows what it is, is that it _inhibits_ inhabitation because instead of playing my PC from within, I have to step outside and speculate about what a person who, unlike me, is ignorant of trolls, might do. It is a move from first to third person; a move from sincere inhabititon to alienated authorship.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> So this move complication created a Discovery...which snowballed into a Front (new source of antagonism) that wasn't a part of the game prior.



But Manbearcat, surely you realise that only "gamists" who wan to play D&D to WIN accept the sort of Schroedinger's Feywild you are describing here!

Real roleplayers learn about the Feywild by reading about it in a book published by TSR/WotC.


----------



## chaochou

pemerton said:


> Real roleplayers learn about the Feywild by reading about it in a book published by TSR/WotC.




And then fake-pretend not to know about it until the DM decides they're 'allowed' to.

Feigning ignorance until given permission to stop must be what makes such games so super realistic. And isn't Mother May I at all.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> I agree. There was a cool scene recently in my Primeval Thule game where the party encountered a sewer ooze, the Dhari barbarian leapt to the fray, cleft it in twain... and found himself fighting two sewer oozes. But for that to happen it required the veteran player in the group to keep silent, for her to not warn her fellow player, and allow the scene to play out. That is very un-Gygaxian 'Skilled Play'.
> 
> 5e D&D uses the old trick monsters, but is sufficiently forgiving that you can get away with stuff like that, where old-school D&D would be much more punitive - two ochre jellies might TPK a beginner party.
> 
> There's not too much tension between the approaches with one-attack-to-figure-out creatures, but trolls that keep on regenerating create a major disjunction. I think a typical solution (apart from ruling 'everyone knows') is to switch to fire after the first attacks don't work. It's not particularly satisfactory, and I normally go with 'everyone knows'. If I want a Gamist challenge I can use a non-troll regenerator. PCs then start with fire and if that fails, they try other options/damage types. (Funnily enough, 5e made the humble zombie a trick monster, since they now need radiant damage to reliably put down - this catches out a lot of players!)




'Everyone knows' is OK, or it can be a reasonably easy monster knowledge check. If the whole party manages to fail that check, well they be having a bum day... 

OTOH it is probably just as well to not make it a mystery but then reveal some other unwelcome truth, like that supply of oil you counted on to light your way out of the dungeon is now going up in flames. Sure, you beat the trolls, but how are you getting out? Or maybe 'you burned up your oil supply, and now you meet MORE trolls...' There's always a way for a challenge to arise without the need for something being secret, which is generally what creates most meta-gaming.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I think there are a a lot of points of difference that can be identified.
> 
> Even with the plot-type stuff, does a repeat player with a new PC have to walk his/her PC into the pit? Make the same bad guess at the riddle?




I think Gary would tend to have said 'no' to that notion, either someone who survived the pit tells the tale, or when you arrive at that spot the pit is no longer hidden, or maybe the player describes his new PC as pretty cautious about where he steps! But I don't KNOW, and I would not swear that Gary or Dave was necessarily consistent either, or that they didn't change their minds at some point on such things.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I think we are in agreement here. I do get that there is an alternative point of view on the matter and it seems to have a lot of currency. But I think with trolls is would be much better to give them some kind of shifting weakness that players can't know just by reading the Monster Manual. Again, I'd point to the Van Richten books because in a lot of ways those were meant to solve this very problem. Ravenloft was basically using them make hunting monsters a viable, regular type of adventure. And that did tend to get dull once players knew how to kill every monster (seriously what player doesn't know about silver and werewolves, phylacteries and liches, stakes and vampires?). Those books totally reinvigorated my ability to run that classic horror campaign of the monster hunter.




This though brings up a line of reasoning which is one of the primary, if not THE primary, one that lead me to consider a more story/narrative/zero myth kind of an approach to most RPGing. There is not much value in gotchas. Running into some monster which has a weakness you cannot possibly know and which can't otherwise be defeated, or running into an almost entirely unanticipatable trap (one simply positioned in the midst of an otherwise unremarkable path where no reason exists to suspect traps in that area) etc. These aren't good challenges. They are just "oh, look, you didn't bring salt, you can't defeat the giant leeches" or "oh, too bad, you got ganked by the poison dart trap in hallway #6". It isn't even an interesting challenge because no challenge existed, you're just now rolling up a new PC just because...

I mean, Tomb of Horrors is fine. It advertises itself as stupid deadly "nobody can survive this" stuff, and then it delivers. Clearly you don't take a single footstep in that dungeon until you've taken serious precautions against the utterly deadly trap which IS THERE in pretty close to all cases! But when the DM puts a deadly trap in some random hallway in "the dwarf ruin" it just doesn't add anything. If you just wanted to convey that the place could be deadly, then show me a rusted out trap filled with its last victim! If you want to telegraph that kobolds have taken root here, then spring some minor annoyance trap on the party that was obviously made by them (heck, it can be detected automatically, it doesn't NEED to go off to do its job). 

This inevitably leads by successive steps to the idea that the purpose of the obstacles in the game isn't really to defeat the players or PCs, its to make life interesting, and the best and most interesting stuff is when it directly bears on what the players WANT to do.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This though brings up a line of reasoning which is one of the primary, if not THE primary, one that lead me to consider a more story/narrative/zero myth kind of an approach to most RPGing. There is not much value in gotchas. Running into some monster which has a weakness you cannot possibly know and which can't otherwise be defeated, or running into an almost entirely unanticipatable trap (one simply positioned in the midst of an otherwise unremarkable path where no reason exists to suspect traps in that area) etc. These aren't good challenges. They are just "oh, look, you didn't bring salt, you can't defeat the giant leeches" or "oh, too bad, you got ganked by the poison dart trap in hallway #6". It isn't even an interesting challenge because no challenge existed, you're just now rolling up a new PC just because...
> .




Except you are framing it too extremely. There is nothing wrong with challenges like monsters that have weaknesses you have to discover. And I think there is place in games for really challenging monsters (who have weaknesses that may be very hard to discover). I think it is fine if you don't like that. But I get a lot of enjoyment from games where there is a risk of dying because I don't figure out how to kill some kind of weird monster. I find that very exciting.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This inevitably leads by successive steps to the idea that the purpose of the obstacles in the game isn't really to defeat the players or PCs, its to make life interesting, and the best and most interesting stuff is when it directly bears on what the players WANT to do.




But I don't want this.


----------



## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> *On Competition*
> 
> So what you're saying here is that in your table's hierarchy of play priorities, (your perception of) "good roleplay" is a higher priority than "competition".  To wit, when play at the table puts these two priorities at tension, "competition" becomes subordinate (possibly to the extent of rendering it null) to (your perception of) "good roleplay".
> 
> Is that correct? (if its not, I don't know what you're saying here, so I'd appreciate clarification in terms of play priorities and tension).
> 
> If that is correct, I don't see how it disagrees with what I wrote at all.  I said the following:
> 
> a)  Competition becoming subordinate (to anything really) challenges the authentic agency of the participants in dictating outcomes as an expression of their competitive interests, which in turn causes this particular moment of play to lose its "competitive integrity" (because competition in this case is a binary thing...just like with an egregiously bad call in sports completely changing the trajectory of play/dictating outcomes and undermining the participant's agency).
> 
> b)   Do something else so you don't have Competition and (your perception of) "good roleplay" at tension (eg if "Trolls vulnerable to fire" isn't an adventuring zeitgeist that social creatures pass on from town to town to town to town until it becomes a foundational premise for travelers or defenders of the wall or spook stories alike...then change your Trolls to be vulnerable to Cold Iron, Silver, Radiance, et al for this game).




Neither one is subordinate.  They influence each other.  So the PC not knowing about the troll's weakness and the player roleplaying that lack of knowledge are a part of defining the competition.  The PC discovering the troll regeneration and the player reacting to it in character is part the competition defining the roleplay.



> So I'm going to frame this in terms of Dungeon World because it does the best work in communicating my meaning.
> 
> See the bolded question above.  This is the one I'm referring to.  Pretend you're a player in Dungeon World and you have to answer that question.  Any good Dungeon World End of Session move is going to have each player answering this question as "yes" and then depicting their answer.
> 
> Could you depict how you would answer this question if you were a player of an orthodox Troll encounter and you (the player) already knew that Trolls were vulnerable to fire but you've decided that your character did not.




How is discovering that the PC does or does not know about trolls and their weaknesses not discovering something new and important about the game word?  The PC is a part of the game world.  That discovery sure seems important to me.

In case you need reference, here is an example of an answer for the PCs in one of my past Dungeon World games to that question and the brief game context for how this Discovery emerged in play:



> This complication triggered a soft move from me.  The PCs were looking to alert the Feywild about a Far Realm incursion into their home realm from the material world.  They got their alert, but their alert manifested as the malign presence of the Winter Court and specifically an Eladrin Fey Knight and a noble Bralani.  Summer Court vs Winter Court wasn't a thing in this game.  After a parley turned nasty because of snowballing move complications (and ultimate failure) between the two Summer Court Elf PCs and the Winter Court, it became a thing (a new Front in DW parlance).
> 
> So this move complication created a Discovery...which snowballed into a Front (new source of antagonism) that wasn't a part of the game prior.




That seems pretty cool.  Do things have to be so grand in order to count as an important discovery?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is all arbitrary, though. The notion that there is some contrast between "unique" and "variant" is barely a rules construct, as opposed to a table convention. It's easy to decide that a creature's vulnerability will be reflected in its appearance or constitution in some form which is evident to those trained in arcane or occult ways.




It's easy to do, but ridiculous to do on a constant basis.  Just like constant drama is nonsensical.  Constantly having monsters telegraph all of their weaknesses is equally absurd.  



> What does this mean, though? What is an "unusual" bump on a stone wall or statue? What is an unusual component of a door handle? People aren't born knowing these things.




It's 100% true that people aren't born knowing what is unusual on a wall or statue.  By the time they are old enough to adventure, though, they've seen enough walls to know what is normal, and when the examine a wall and see gears through a crack, they're going to know that not a usual part of a wall.  



> Again, this is just stipulation.




It beats stipulating limited omniscience for PCs and NPCs, such that they know all the strengths and weaknesses about all monsters.



> And this is uncalled for.
> 
> For many players (me, I suspect [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]), the essence of roleplaying is "inhabiting" one's character, and declaring actions from that position of inhabitation. And the objection to your treatment of troll vulnerability, in the context of a player who already knows what it is, is that it _inhibits_ inhabitation because instead of playing my PC from within, I have to step outside and speculate about what a person who, unlike me, is ignorant of trolls, might do. It is a move from first to third person; a move from sincere inhabititon to alienated authorship.




It's treating the game as a game to make it easier to win the encounter.  Also, if you're just going to have the PC know everything you know, because trying to figure out any differences moves you out of first person, you are not really roleplaying a character.  You are just roleplaying yourself in that world.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> Except you are framing it too extremely. There is nothing wrong with challenges like monsters that have weaknesses you have to discover. And I think there is place in games for really challenging monsters (who have weaknesses that may be very hard to discover). I think it is fine if you don't like that. But I get a lot of enjoyment from games where there is a risk of dying because I don't figure out how to kill some kind of weird monster. I find that very exciting.




And I will add that there's nothing wrong with a monster that is unbeatable the first time you encounter it.  It is also exciting to many players to meet, fight and run away from a new and unbeatable monster.  Then after they lick their wounds, they do research about it to find out the way to victory.  That is also a very exciting and satisfactory way to have an encounter of this type.  It's not for everyone, but then very little ever is.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It's 100% true that people aren't born knowing what is unusual on a wall or statue.  By the time they are old enough to adventure, though, they've seen enough walls to know what is normal, and when the examine a wall and see gears through a crack, they're going to know that not a usual part of a wall.



Really? You know this for sure? Even if the PC background is being born and raised in a peasant village, living in mud-and-timber housing?

But you're equally sure that they won't know what a troll's weakness is?

It does baffle me that you cannot see that this is a completely arbitrary way in which to draw lines about what player knowledge a PC is or is not permitted to draw upon.



Maxperson said:


> Constantly having monsters telegraph all of their weaknesses is equally absurd.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It beats stipulating limited omniscience for PCs and NPCs, such that they know all the strengths and weaknesses about all monsters.



Why are you assuming that all knowledge checks would succeed?



Maxperson said:


> the PC not knowing about the troll's weakness and the player roleplaying that lack of knowledge are a part of defining the competition.



What is the nature of the competition?

In the first ever encounter with a troll, or yellow mould, or whatever, the players had to solve a puzzle in order to succeed in the encounter. The nature of the competition (or challenge, if one prefers) in that sort of case is pretty obvious.

But what is the competition in your case? The challenge of beating the troll is _not_ the central focus of the encounter, because the player is _deliberately_ choosing to make sub-optimal action declarations.

Is the competition a roleplaying competition? To be judged by whom?



Maxperson said:


> How is discovering that the PC does or does not know about trolls and their weaknesses not discovering something new and important about the game word?



But there is no genuine discovery here. The player already knows about trolls. The player even knows that, if it actually matters, his/her PC will learn about trolls, eventually, one way or another. What is being discovered is how exactly the GM is going to gate that PC knowledge, and what sorts of steps will be required to open the gate.



Maxperson said:


> it's treating the game as a game to make it easier to win the encounter.  Also, if you're just going to have the PC know everything you know, because trying to figure out any differences moves you out of first person, you are not really roleplaying a character.  You are just roleplaying yourself in that world.



Trying to win a fight to the death in which my PC finds him-/herself is not _treating the game as a game_. It's playing my character.

What _does_ seem to me to constitute treating the game like a game is declaring stuff I know are suboptimal while hoping to flick the GM "switch" that will allow me to use fire against the troll. That is, trying to identify and play out the right "script", rather than inhabiting my character. It could hardly get more game-playing than that!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Really? You know this for sure? Even if the PC background is being born and raised in a peasant village, living in mud-and-timber housing?
> 
> But you're equally sure that they won't know what a troll's weakness is?




Congrats for finding an edge case exception.  Not that it proves anything.  



> Why are you assuming that all knowledge checks would succeed?




What knowledge checks?  If I can have an uncle that knows about monsters that I have knowledge of, I can have an uncle that knows about monsters that I as a player do not have knowledge of and that he has told my PC about.  If trying to metagame knowledge in signals to the DM that the players don't want to pretend not to know a weakness, then having an uncle tell you about the new monster signals the DM that the players do not want to lack knowledge of monster weaknesses.



> What is the nature of the competition?
> 
> In the first ever encounter with a troll, or yellow mould, or whatever, the players had to solve a puzzle in order to succeed in the encounter. The nature of the competition (or challenge, if one prefers) in that sort of case is pretty obvious.
> 
> But what is the competition in your case? The challenge of beating the troll is _not_ the central focus of the encounter, because the player is _deliberately_ choosing to make sub-optimal action declarations.




Yes, the challenge is in fact beating the troll.  That does not change just because we don't metagame.  Nor is the player deliberately making a sub-optimal action declaration.  The reality is that the player is making an optimal action declaration for the knowledge his PC has.  There's probably nothing sub-optimal going on.  I suppose he might be making a sub-optimal declaration based on what his PC knows, but not bringing in metagame knowledge has nothing to do with whether the choice is optimal or not.



> But there is no genuine discovery here. The player already knows about trolls. The player even knows that, if it actually matters, his/her PC will learn about trolls, eventually, one way or another. What is being discovered is how exactly the GM is going to gate that PC knowledge, and what sorts of steps will be required to open the gate.




Yes, there 100% is genuine discovery going on.  I am discovering what my PC knows or does not know.  Prior to the encounter with the troll I did not know the answer.  You don't get to rob me of that genuine discovery.



> Trying to win a fight to the death in which my PC finds him-/herself is not _treating the game as a game_. It's playing my character.
> 
> What _does_ seem to me to constitute treating the game like a game is declaring stuff I know are suboptimal while hoping to flick the GM "switch" that will allow me to use fire against the troll. That is, trying to identify and play out the right "script", rather than inhabiting my character. It could hardly get more game-playing than that!




By bringing in player knowledge, it's no longer about PC vs. troll, it's player vs. game. It's what you know vs. what the game has in front of you.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Congrats for finding an edge case exception.  Not that it proves anything.



How is it an edge case? In a mediaeval campaign few people will have grown up in stone buildings, especially if you treat "advantages" like _noble birth_ and the like as benefits to be rationed by the GM.

And how does it prove anything less than your suggestion, upthread, that a character who grew up in a desert wouldn't know much about trolls? If my example is an edge case, then why is yours not?

My real point is that the notion that there is "natural" or "inevitable" knowledge - like how to find traps in stonework - and then there is "special" knowledge which it wouldn't be reasonable for a starting PC to know - like the vulnerability of trolls to fire - is hopeless. In the actual practice of gameplay, this is all _player_ knowledge - D&D players _know_, for instance, that traps in stonework figure prominently in the game, either because they've read the books or they've been brutally educated in a 1st level dungeon - and it gets imputed to the player's PC.

Imagine a RPGer whose first game was Classic Traveller. Doors, traps and all the other paraphernalia of D&D dungeoneering play no role in Traveller, and a player could be a first-rate Traveller player but be very unskilled in a D&D game because unfamiliar with the tropes and expectations of dungeon exploration. That wouldn't in any sense make his/her PC unrealistic or unreasonably ignorant!



Maxperson said:


> What knowledge checks?  If I can have an uncle that knows about monsters that I have knowledge of, I can have an uncle that knows about monsters that I as a player do not have knowledge of and that he has told my PC about.



I have no idea where you're pulling this from. Self-evidently you're not describing your own opinion of the situation. And you're not describing anything that I, or  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], or  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] has suggested. So whose game, whose play, do you think you're pointing to here.

I'll start with 4e, because that's the version of D&D I know best. In 4e, there are three ways it can become the case that a PC can know something:

(1) The player imputes knowledge;

(2) The GM tells the player something that the PC knows, whether because of ingame situation (eg "You're in a windowless room") or because of background (eg "You remember that, as a child, all the householders in the village would sprinkle salt on the doorstep on the night of the full moon");

(3) The player succeeds at a knowledge check which obliges the GM to tell the player something that the PC knows (in some circumstances a successful ritual may augment or take the place of the check).​
There is no way a player, in 4e, can establish a background element that _obliges_ the GM to tell the player stuff that the GM knows without requiring a knowledge check. That I have an adventuring uncle might be a bit of backstory that explains why I know about trolls. It might also explain why I have training in Dungeoneering. It can't _oblige_ the GM to tell about the weakness or immunities of Gricks if I don't already know, and I don't make a successful Dungeoneering check to gain knowledge about an Aberration.

I suspect that 5e defaults to much the same working as 4e, but will let  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] elaborate if he cares to.

In AD&D or B/X the first two possibilities are there - player imputes knowledge; GM tells the player something - but the third option is much less common because there is no knowledge check system, just spellcasting. But just as in 4e and (I believe) 5e, so in AD&D and B/X there is no way that a player can establish a background that _obliges_ the GM to tell the player stuff, as PC knowledge, that the GM knows but the player doesn't.

In know version of D&D that I'm familiar with can a player, in virtue of a background about his/her adventuring uncle, _oblige_ the GM to provide information about the weaknesses of monsters that the PC encounters.



Maxperson said:


> By bringing in player knowledge, it's no longer about PC vs. troll, it's player vs. game. It's what you know vs. what the game has in front of you.





Maxperson said:


> If trying to metagame knowledge in signals to the DM that the players don't want to pretend not to know a weakness, then having an uncle tell you about the new monster signals the DM that the players do not want to lack knowledge of monster weaknesses.



First point: _it's not metagame knowledge if the PC also knows it_. Which is what I,  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] (at least - maybe other posters also) are positing. _You_ are asserting that the PC doesn't/can't know it, but no one else currently posting in this thread on this topic seems to agree with you.

Second point: _if a player signals to the GM that they don't want to pretend to be ignorant of a troll's weakness_, why would you possibly infer from that that they want to be informed about weaknesses that they are ignorant of? To me, that doesn't seem a very good reading of human preferences, either in general or in the context of playing a RPG.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Really? You know this for sure? Even if the PC background is being born and raised in a peasant village, living in mud-and-timber housing?
> 
> But you're equally sure that they won't know what a troll's weakness is?
> 
> It does baffle me that you cannot see that this is a completely arbitrary way in which to draw lines about what player knowledge a PC is or is not permitted to draw upon.



Were it me, a PC with a peasant background would very likely have a penalty on such a knowledge check, while a PC with an engineering background or any sort of Rogue/Thief training would have a bonus or even not require a check at all (potential bonuses would be looked at first and if any existed then any penalties would go away).



> Why are you assuming that all knowledge checks would succeed?



Earlier you were suggesting that if the player (but not the PC) had the requisite knowledge then there wouldn't even be a check; that the knowledge would be automatic.



> What is the nature of the competition?



In general terms, it's the PCs vs the game world: the game world is out to mess them up, or kill them; and they're out to survive and make a difference (hopefully) for the better.



> In the first ever encounter with a troll, or yellow mould, or whatever, the players had to solve a puzzle in order to succeed in the encounter. The nature of the competition (or challenge, if one prefers) in that sort of case is pretty obvious.



Right.

However, when next those players run out a posse of brand new adventurers in a different campaign those PCs as PCs still have to solve the same puzzle again; because *for those PCs* it is the first ever encounter with that type of creature.  That the players have done it before is irrelevant.  Thus the challenge - and you're quite right when you suggest that it's a challenge - for the players is to role-play those PCs true to their (the PCs') level of knowledge...which, as this is the first-ever encounter, is likely just as limited as the first batch of PCs from the other campaign. 



> But what is the competition in your case? The challenge of beating the troll is _not_ the central focus of the encounter, because the player is _deliberately_ choosing to make sub-optimal action declarations.



The challenge isn't competitive in this case, it's how to remain true to your PC's knowledge level when you-as-player know more...and often this can and does lead to intentionally making some "sub-optimal" choices through trying to put yourself-as-player into a mindspace from a time when you didn't know what "optimal" was.  It's hard.  It's also essential, IMO.



> But there is no genuine discovery here.



Not for the player, but there is for the PC.



> The player already knows about trolls. The player even knows that, if it actually matters, his/her PC will learn about trolls, eventually, one way or another.



In theory, yes. 



> What is being discovered is how exactly the GM is going to gate that PC knowledge, and what sorts of steps will be required to open the gate.



In dry academic terms, I suppose so; though not all of us look at it that way.  In the fiction it's a question of how much grief are the PCs going to face before they figure it out.



> Trying to win a fight to the death in which my PC finds him-/herself is not _treating the game as a game_. It's playing my character.



But if you're using player knowledge over character knowledge then he's right: you're role-playing yourself rather than your PC.



> What _does_ seem to me to constitute treating the game like a game is declaring stuff I know are suboptimal while hoping to flick the GM "switch" that will allow me to use fire against the troll. That is, trying to identify and play out the right "script", rather than inhabiting my character. It could hardly get more game-playing than that!



Point taken, but IMO this is by far the lesser of two evils.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> By bringing in player knowledge, it's no longer about PC vs. troll, it's player vs. game. It's what you know vs. what the game has in front of you.



Incidentally, player vs. game is a guiding tenet and point of identity for the OSR community. They largely agree this was the principle focus of the "old school D&D" era. And this is congruent with what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] have said. I know that [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] also has experience with the OSR community and games, so he may also have some insight to shed on this issue as well. 

This player vs. game approach also underlies the "Second Zen Moment" in Matthew Finch's "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming," which became a rallying cry for rediscovering the old school play of OD&D, D&D B/X, and 1E among the OSR community. 

*Second Zen Moment: Player Skill, Not Character Abilities *


> Original D&D and Swords & Wizardry are games of skill in a few areas where modern games just rely on the character sheet. You don’t have a “spot” check to let you notice hidden traps and levers, you don’t have a “bluff” check to let you automatically fool a suspicious city guardsman, and you don’t have a “sense motive” check to tell you when someone’s lying to your character. You have to tell the referee where you’re looking for traps and what buttons you’re pushing. You have to tell the referee whatever tall tale you’re trying to get the city guardsman to believe. You have to decide for yourself if someone’s lying to your character or telling the truth. In a 0e game, you are always asking questions, telling the referee exactly what your character is looking at, and experimenting with things. Die rolls are much less frequent than in modern games.
> 
> Also: these games aren’t simulations of what a dwarf raised in a particular society, and having a particular level of intelligence, would do when faced with certain challenges. Old-style play is about keeping your character alive and making him into a legend. The player’s skill is the character’s guardian angel – call it the character’s luck or intuition, or whatever makes sense to you, but don’t hold back on your skill as a player just because the character has a low intelligence. Role-playing is part of the game, but it’s not a suicide pact with your character.



The last paragraph is particularly poignant to our present discussion. And this is again congruent with how story now-oriented gamers like pemerton, and Abdul Alhazred, and designer Luke Crane have described the play of "old school D&D" as well.


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> These aren't good challenges. They are just "oh, look, you didn't bring salt, you can't defeat the giant leeches"




To me that looks like a good challenge, since it suggests various solutions such as "Run away" and "Run away then come back with salt". I'm very much in favour of 'Run Away - Live to Another Day' as a food solution to many challenges.  Another good solution for stuff like static traps and slow moving monsters is 'Go Around It'. I like these because they are not pixel-bitching tactics, they should be fairly apparent to and useable by almost anyone who'd paying attention.

In my current Primeval Thule game, where there are not Balanced Encounters or Monster XP (I use a variant XP system), the default player solution seems to be "Make Friends With Monsters/Get 
Control of the Monsters" - which has been a lot of fun. In the big battle in the game yesterday the PCs brought a menagerie to the battlefield:

2 Skeletal Cyclops
1 Beastwoman Curse-Chanter
1 Giant Guard Lizard

They routinely outnumber the opposition  - and despite being generally well-underleveled for the adventures, tend to do very well.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> food solution to many challenges



I'm not sure I want my PC to be a _food solution_ to the giant leech challenge, whether or not seasoned with salt!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Earlier you were suggesting that if the player (but not the PC) had the requisite knowledge then there wouldn't even be a check; that the knowledge would be automatic.



Sorry, this is incoherent: it can't be the case _both_ that something is automatically known to the PC, and that it is known to the player but not the PC. So I don't know what you're trying to say here.



Lanefan said:


> if you're using player knowledge over character knowledge then he's right: you're role-playing yourself rather than your PC.



The point that I, [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and others are making is that _there is no reaosn to doubt that it is character knowledge_. If the player imputes the knowledge to the character, then the player is using character knowledge.

 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is asserting that the rules of the game _forbid_ the player from imputing such knowledge to a character, while asserting at the same time that there is no problem with imputing to the character knowledge of how to search for traps, look for secret doors, etc. My claim, in response, is that this distinction is arbitrary and without foundation except as a local table convention.



Lanefan said:


> Were it me, a PC with a peasant background would very likely have a penalty on such a knowledge check, while a PC with an engineering background or any sort of Rogue/Thief training would have a bonus or even not require a check at all (potential bonuses would be looked at first and if any existed then any penalties would go away).



Knowledge checks don't come into it. In the AD&D, B/X other D&D rules, a player doesn't need to make a knowledge check in order to declare that his/her PC searches for secret doors, or that s/he is tapping the floor looking for pressure plates.

My point is that it is no more "metagaming" to declare that my PC had an uncle that taught her about trolls, than to take it for granted that my PC has had some experience or training that means s/he knows about the possibility of moving masonry, presssure plates, and the like. (And when I say "my point", really I mean [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point.)



Lanefan said:


> when next those players run out a posse of brand new adventurers in a different campaign those PCs as PCs still have to solve the same puzzle again; because *for those PCs* it is the first ever encounter with that type of creature.  That the players have done it before is irrelevant.  Thus the challenge - and you're quite right when you suggest that it's a challenge - for the players is to role-play those PCs true to their (the PCs') level of knowledge
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The challenge isn't competitive in this case, it's how to remain true to your PC's knowledge level when you-as-player know more...and often this can and does lead to intentionally making some "sub-optimal" choices



I don't think you're really engaging with what I'm saying about the monster with the puzzle immunity/vulnerability.

Puzzles aren't interesting because the PCs solve them. I mean, I could sit back and have the GM regale me with a story about how my PC solves such-and-such a puzzle, but that wouldn't make for good RPGing. Puzzles are interesting _because people at the table engage with them_.

What you're saying, in the quote just above, is that the challenge of the puzzle is _replaced_ with a challenge of playing your PC subobtipmally until the GM lets you "flip the switch". What I'm saying is that that is insipid roleplaying that alienates the player from the character. Instead of inhabiting my character and playing him/her to the hilt, I'm playing a game of "persuade the GM".



Lanefan said:


> In the fiction it's a question of how much grief are the PCs going to face before they figure it out.



But, to repeat, I could experience that story having the GM just narrate it to me. But RPGing is meant to be more than that. At the least, it's meant to be involve _the players_ figuring things out.



Lanefan said:


> trying to put yourself-as-player into a mindspace from a time when you didn't know what "optimal" was. It's hard. It's also essential, IMO.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Point taken, but IMO this is by far the lesser of two evils.



Essential to what? And what "evils"?

The basic "pitch" for roleplaying is _you can be a hero trying to change, maybe save, the world_. How does it get so changed to become _pretend to be a hero who doesn't know yet how to change, or save, the world_?



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But there is no genuine discovery here.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not for the player, but there is for the PC.
Click to expand...


When [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] talks about "discovery", he is not talking about _imaging_ one's PC learning something that one already knows. He's talking about a real thing that actually happens at the table: the participants in the game learning new things about the shared fiction.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Incidentally, player vs. game is a guiding tenet and point of identity for the OSR community. They largely agree this was the principle focus of the "old school D&D" era. And this is congruent with what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] have said. I know that [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] also has experience with the OSR community and games, so he may also have some insight to shed on this issue as well.
> .




I am just one point of view, and there are much better people at explaining the OSR than me. All I will say is OSR, at this point, is not so easily boiled down to one thing. It is a spectrum of views. I think it leans to challenging the player (though I have absolutely seen OSR people raise concerns about split between character and player knowledge---you can take either view and be old school in my view). I think the chief, governing, viewpoint though is: does this work in practice on a weekly basis (preferably in a long term campaign). Also I think OSR folks tend to eschew anything that feels like RPG theory (especially if they are reductionist or if the terminology and categorization seems to drain all the life and magic out of what is going on at the table). So even a categorization of 'player vs. game', would be one, even if accurate, would make many OSR adherents wince I believe. Perhaps I am wrong though. Again, just one point of view here. And I tend to have one foot in the OSR, one foot in more new school stuff.


----------



## Sadras

So we have a couple of choices as DMs

1) DM _Say Yes_ - characters know about the trolls vulnerabilities;
2) Player provides in-game fiction which allows characters to know about the trolls vulnerabilities;
3) DM instructs players to make a check to see what they know and then roleplay accordingly;
4) Characters are considered not to know of troll vulnerabilities. This lack of knowledge and possible discovery about Troll lore is roleplayed out during the combat adhering to the table's internal consistency;
5) Combination of 3 and 4; or
6) None of the above is necessary, metagame/player knowledge trumps in character knowledge.

I have played/used 1,3, 4 and 5. These days it is 1 and 3 given the characters levels at my table.
I quite like 2 for future games.
6 is too meta for my tastes.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I have no idea where you're pulling this from. Self-evidently you're not describing your own opinion of the situation. And you're not describing anything that I, or [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION], or  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] has suggested. So whose game, whose play, do you think you're pointing to here.
> 
> There is no way a player, in 4e, can establish a background element that _obliges_ the GM to tell the player stuff that the GM knows without requiring a knowledge check. That I have an adventuring uncle might be a bit of backstory that explains why I know about trolls. It might also explain why I have training in Dungeoneering. It can't _oblige_ the GM to tell about the weakness or immunities of Gricks if I don't already know, and I don't make a successful Dungeoneering check to gain knowledge about an Aberration.
> 
> I suspect that 5e defaults to much the same working as 4e, but will let  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] elaborate if he cares to.




 [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said that the DM is being a jerk if he doesn't allow the player to bring in the uncle for troll knowledge, since the players are signaling that they don't want to jump through the hoops of figuring out the troll's weakness.  If that's so, then the DM is also being a jerk if he doesn't allow the player to bring in the same uncle for your unique monster, since they are equally signaling that they don't want to jump through the hoops of figuring out your monster's weakness.  The same logic applies to both situations.



> In know version of D&D that I'm familiar with can a player, in virtue of a background about his/her adventuring uncle, _oblige_ the GM to provide information about the weaknesses of monsters that the PC encounters.




In no version of D&D is a player entitled to a unilateral background.  3e was probably the most forgiving in that regard, but 4e states that the DM should work with the players on their backgrounds so that they fit the story the DM has in mind.  In 5e backgrounds are pre-written.  In 1e the DM chose them for the players.  And so on.

What no edition allows, though, is for the addition of background after play has started, such as when you encounter a troll.  Even 3e talks about it as something provided at character creation.



> First point: _it's not metagame knowledge if the PC also knows it_. Which is what I, [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] (at least - maybe other posters also) are positing. _You_ are asserting that the PC doesn't/can't know it, but no one else currently posting in this thread on this topic seems to agree with you.




I have had others agree with me that adding in background right as you encounter something to gain advantage against it is hinky(cheating).  I have also had others agree with me that the PC doesn't just automatically get to know what the player knows.  Those are my assertions.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> By bringing in player knowledge, it's no longer about PC vs. troll, it's player vs. game. It's what you know vs. what the game has in front of you.




Frankly, I find this weird. More so in light of a system like D&D. 
Sounds way more "narrativey, storygamey" than a fancy indie game, considering that all of it is played solely under table/Gm consensus, in practice: freeform. 

Like: that one, unique, thing that keeps the table together, is utterly made up and not present in the rulebook. 
Which is cool, absolutely ice-box, but not 'the game' as is, (just) your particular game at your table, under Gm authority and table consensus.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> When [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] talks about "discovery", he is not talking about _imaging_ one's PC learning something that one already knows. He's talking about a real thing that actually happens at the table: the participants in the game learning new things about the shared fiction.




Yeah.

This line of conversation has borderline unnavigable for myself.

When I’m talking about Discovery and Competition I have a particular meaning that doesn’t appear to be relatable to some. 

It’s central to player and mediated through a particular game’s principles and play priorities/goals. Competition is going to mean something slightly (or significantly) different in 4e than it does in Torchbearer than it does in Dogs in the Vineyard than it does in My Life With Master. But fundamentally it’s going to mean players advocating for their PCs as vigorously as they can as mediated through the PC build aspects, the resolution mechanics, and the reward cycles...all as a coherent expression of the game’s premise (eg, some games you actually WANT your PC to struggle in thematic conflict...and you’re rewarded for it; this is also Competition as it’s a representation of your skill in advocating for your PC, which isn’t just on the singular axis of attaining bigger numbers but can also mean change via failure, against the obstacles set before it). The last part is a BIG ONE. If the game’s premise isn’t coherently expressed by all of the other stuff I mentioned, then there is going to be some weird results now and again (sometimes a lot more often).

And, in line with Competition, Discovery is about the player finding new things out (as a child might) about character (their own and others) and setting as they advocate for their PC (as above) in engagements with situations that challenge them thematically.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The point that I, [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and others are making is that _there is no reaosn to doubt that it is character knowledge_. If the player imputes the knowledge to the character, then the player is using character knowledge.




We have provided you multiple reasons to doubt that it is character knowledge, and you have discussed those reasons.  You might be of the opinion that there is no GOOD reason, but to say that there is no reason is something you know to be false.



> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is asserting that the rules of the game _forbid_ the player from imputing such knowledge to a character, while asserting at the same time that there is no problem with imputing to the character knowledge of how to search for traps, look for secret doors, etc. My claim, in response, is that this distinction is arbitrary and without foundation except as a local table convention.




I've never argued for inputting player knowledge to the PCs with regard to searching and such.  That's your Strawman of my argument.  What I am saying is that PCs aren't morons(generally) and can use reason.  I've never seen a mud hut up close, but were I in one looking around and I saw holes in the wall, with barbed points in said holes, I would know that this is unusual.  It's a trap!!



> My point is that it is no more "metagaming" to declare that my PC had an uncle that taught her about trolls, than to take it for granted that my PC has had some experience or training that means s/he knows about the possibility of moving masonry, presssure plates, and the like. (And when I say "my point", really I mean [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point.)




No edition of D&D allows you to do that, though.  The DM can choose to allow it, but players have no ability to just declare such things in order to get metagame knowledge to their PCs in order to do an end around metagaming.



> What you're saying, in the quote just above, is that the challenge of the puzzle is _replaced_ with a challenge of playing your PC subobtipmally until the GM lets you "flip the switch". What I'm saying is that that is insipid roleplaying that alienates the player from the character. Instead of inhabiting my character and playing him/her to the hilt, I'm playing a game of "persuade the GM".




Why even bother trying to "flip the switch?"  When I play and encounter trolls, I usually just beat them down and leave.  Most of the time I find out how to kill these beasts later, but sometimes I don't even bother to do that much.  So yes, if you step back into gamist behavior to try and "win" the game, it makes sense to start engaging in "flip the switch."



> The basic "pitch" for roleplaying is _you can be a hero trying to change, maybe save, the world_. How does it get so changed to become _pretend to be a hero who doesn't know yet how to change, or save, the world_?




Is the idea of growing into a hero who saves the world so foreign to you?



> When [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] talks about "discovery", he is not talking about _imaging_ one's PC learning something that one already knows. He's talking about a real thing that actually happens at the table: the participants in the game learning new things about the shared fiction.




When I learn what my PC knows or doesn't know, it's a new thing learned about the shared fiction.  The participants didn't know until that moment.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> What I am saying is that PCs aren't morons(generally) and can use reason.  I've never seen a mud hut up close, but were I in one looking around and I saw holes in the wall, with barbed points in said holes, I would know that this is unusual.  It's a trap!!



Your character has never encountered a trap before. Good roleplay involves intentionally triggering the trap to doom your character.  



> When I learn what my PC knows or doesn't know, it's a new thing learned about the shared fiction.  The participants didn't know until that moment.



Ah, yes. Again, the previously discussed situation where the mental headspace of your PC exists as Schrödinger's Cat.


----------



## Numidius

If Player knowledge must be separated from Pc knowledge, what's the point of talking IC in first person?
Pc is on trial, Player must debate IC before being allowed to roll/set the difficulty. Why? The Player ain't no lawyer, ain't no Bard. 
Pc is under siege, Player must come up with a detailed escape plan before being allowed to proceed. Why? Player ain't no expert tactician, Battlemaster, or anything. 
Hey, but freeform RP is awesome! But:
How can one Drama roleplay at all, or why people gets upset if the silent Player likes to play Bards, if Pc/Player are separated? How can one value pure roleplay if there's no way to tell which is which?


----------



## Numidius

Aldarc said:


> the previously discussed situation where the mental headspace of your PC exists as Schrödinger's Cat.




Wanted: dead or alive
Schrodinger's Cat


----------



## Imaculata

Numidius said:


> If Player knowledge must be separated from Pc knowledge, what's the point of talking IC in first person?
> Pc is on trial, Player must debate IC before being allowed to roll/set the difficulty. Why? The Player ain't no lawyer, ain't no Bard.
> Pc is under siege, Player must come up with a detailed escape plan before being allowed to proceed. Why? Player ain't no expert tactician, Battlemaster, or anything.
> Hey, but freeform RP is awesome! But:
> How can one Drama roleplay at all, or why people gets upset if the silent Player likes to play Bards, if Pc/Player are separated? How can one value pure roleplay if there's no way to tell which is which?




My take on this is that I don't expect my players to fake ignorance, nor do I expect them to possess the knowledge that their character should have. Their characters are allowed to use what ever assumptions they have as players, but their guess is as good as that of an unexperienced player. Where their knowledge as players is lacking, I provide them with the information that I believe their characters would have so that they are able to play the competent adventurer they are trying to portray.

For example, last night my players defeated two Liches, and being an experienced player, the priest in the party asked me if his character knew about philacteries. I decided to have him make a check to determine the outcome, but I might as well have said 'yes', because my campaign does not hinge on finding and destroying the philacteries of those Liches. I have no intention to have those Liches make a surprise return, and so whether they destroy the philacteries is irrelevant to the campaign honestly.

Is it really a problem that the player uses his knowledge of Liches in the game? His character is a priest, so it is entirely possible that he has some how obtained this knowledge over the years. But even if he hadn't been a priest and had no reason to have this knowledge at all, would it really make a big difference? Does it make the game easier to know what a philactery is when dealing with a Lich? Honestly, to me as a DM the difficulty of my encounters does not hinge on some obscure bit of gotcha knowledge. My players can decide for themselves if their character knows something, and if they are in doubt I'm happy to make that ruling for them. But more often than not, I simply ask my players 'Do YOU think your character would have this knowledge?' rather than telling them 'NO'.

I will however correct misunderstandings about the facts as established in the campaign, if I believe their characters should know better. Players can sometimes get confused or misremember details, especially over the course of a long campaign (which is understandable). For example, the same player thought that the God of Death would disapprove of another player laying the souls of the Liches to rest, but I corrected him on this. I corrected him because I felt that his priest would have a deep understanding of the gods in my campaign world and know things that the player might not.

To me it is all about facilitating my players, and helping them with what they are trying to do. If one player wants to play the wise priest who informs his party about Liches, I try to give him the freedom to do this. I pass that information to him, so the gameplay can continue, rather than come to an abrupt halt. To me there is no benefit to hiding this information from my players or their characters.


----------



## Numidius

Imaculata said:


> My take on this is that I don't expect my players to fake ignorance, nor do I expect them to possess the knowledge that their character should have. Their characters are allowed to use what ever assumptions they have as players, but their guess is as good as that of an unexperienced player. Where their knowledge as players is lacking, I provide them with the information that I believe their characters would have so that they are able to play the competent adventurer they are trying to portray.
> 
> For example, last night my players defeated two Liches, and being an experienced player, the priest in the party asked me if his character knew about philacteries. I decided to have him make a check to determine the outcome, but I might as well have said 'yes', because my campaign does not hinge on finding and destroying the philacteries of those Liches. I have no intention to have those Liches make a surprise return, and so whether they destroy the philacteries is irrelevant to the campaign honestly.
> 
> Is it really a problem that the player uses his knowledge of Liches in the game? His character is a priest, so it is entirely possible that he has some how obtained this knowledge over the years. But even if he hadn't been a priest and had no reason to have this knowledge at all, would it really make a big difference? Does it make the game easier to know what a philactery is when dealing with a Lich? Honestly, to me as a DM the difficulty of my encounters does not hinge on some obscure bit of gotcha knowledge. My players can decide for themselves if their character knows something, and if they are in doubt I'm happy to make that ruling for them. But more often than not, I simply ask my players 'Do YOU think your character would have this knowledge?' rather than telling them 'NO'.
> 
> I will however correct misunderstandings about the facts as established in the campaign, if I believe their characters should know better. Players can sometimes get confused or misremember details, especially over the course of a long campaign (which is understandable). For example, the same player thought that the God of Death would disapprove of another player laying the souls of the Liches to rest, but I corrected him on this. I corrected him because I felt that his priest would have a deep understanding of the gods in my campaign world and know things that the player might not.
> 
> To me it is all about facilitating my players, and helping them with what they are trying to do. If one player wants to play the wise priest who informs his party about Liches, I try to give him the freedom to do this. I pass that information to him, so the gameplay can continue, rather than come to an abrupt halt. To me there is no benefit to hiding this information from my players or their characters.



Seems legit and perfectly reasonable. But let's take nothing for granted: How do you know for sure the God of Death will not take offense? 

More: that moment of uncertainty from the Player couldn't foresee an important instance of play, I dunno: a dilemma for religious priests in the setting? (Or at least for the Pc?) that even a responsible Gm takes for granted, because see the OP?

What I'm saying is that not only a Gm telling the world is not like reality, also it is not like The Setting. 

I'm sure your game is awesome (like everyone's poster here), but things run smoothly and fine until they don't (see the Chaotic Barbarian's Lawful Wife Incident up-thread). Eg: in my game with the thermal bathers things reached a point in which the Gm would not support my lonely Pc in town because in his mind my requests were "beyond realism". But infact I only needed a sort of Patron Check like in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Classic Traveller game, to propel the story forward. We reached the point where we were not supported anymore by agreement and did not have a rule to refer to.


----------



## Numidius

Moreover, from a Gm perspective, why should a Gm always be careful to what decides, pay attention to what is reasonable for Pc to know, regard players as in need of freedom, but also protect them from the perils of the game-world by deploying adequate challenges, enforcing a neutral, plausible realism without negating their protagonism. 

"Ornat et fovet. Regit et tuetur"


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Correct. If it gives an advantage you can't select it; and the random roll aspect reflects the reality of some people just being born luckier than others.
> 
> If it was decided up front that all the PCs would have some sort of advantage via their backgrounds, that's a fine table rule. The reality is, though, that the vast majority of people in ye olde typical medieval society were peasants who really didn't have much going for them at all; and I don't mind if the game reflects this at least to some extent.




Sorry to take so long to reply....I had a busy weekend.

I think the bit I quoted here is really just about preference. I know based on our past discussions that you prefer to play with the expectation that the PCs are "no one special", they're just another person in their world. Which is fine, of course. I don't really care to try and hew to some kind of quasi-medieval social class expectations; my players come up with characters they want to play, and I work with them to make that happen. Any advantage they get from their background is easily offset with an equal disadvantage. 

I also think that the life of an adventurer is simply different from whatever society woudl consider "normal", so to me, PCs are special no matter what. They don't need to be some kind of "chosen one" or anything, but I don't think that they are typical by any means.

But again, this is simply preference. 




Lanefan said:


> It's different because when being decided on the fly it's usually being decided for a reason: the player/PC needs or wants (and thus is asking for) an advantage in the here and now.
> 
> Chances are that had the player/PC known about the advantage ahead of time, the roleplay leading up to this point would have been somewhat different.
> 
> Example: party arrives at Karnos, an unfamiliar and not-that-friendly town. Player A, who has up to now left her character background mostly blank, suddenly declares "Oh, don't worry - I'm the local noble here and my word is the law. Everyone knows me. And look, here come some of my personal guards now - they saw us coming.".
> 
> If this (that a party member is the local noble here) had been known from square one the party's dealing with and feelings toward Karnos would have almost certainly been much different. Very likely they'd have used it as a safe home base all along, rather than only coming here now because they have to.
> 
> In fairness, it's always possible that the player for some reason had kept her PC's noble status a secret up to now; but that's a different matter.




Aren't many of the choices made by players for their characters made to gain an advantage? Weapon or ability selection, spell choice, feats versus stat increses, what magic item to wear in their belt slot.....all these things are done with advantage in mind. There may be other factors as well, but mechanical advantage is likely always a consideration. 

Why is that a problem in the scenario you describe? I will point out I think it's a bit of an extreme, and certainly different than the one I presented in a couple of key ways, but still it may be interesting to discuss. What's the big deal if the player does decide to claim lordship of Karsos? Sure, it may make things easier for them in the immediate "hey the guards aren't gonna kill us" kind of way, but I woudl also think it would open up several opportunities. What's the PC's place in Korsos? Are people happy for him to turn back up? Was his family glad he was gone? All kinds of political angles seem to present themselves. 

Now, if the goal of play is not to get embroiled in the political situation in Karsos, these concerns don't need to be raised. Perhaps something else can be done with this bit of info. But the question is if this isn't the goal....if this isn't what the player wants, then why would they introduce this idea? Just to avoid being bothered by some guards in a potentially hostile town? Seems a bit of a big card to play for that reason. 

Does this interfere with the DM's plans? Or the other players? If so, can that be reconciled? I would imagine a conversation would happen, and the best way to proceed would be decided on by all. 




Lanefan said:


> Right - back at it...sorry 'bout the gap there...
> Because in session 0 there's no here-and-now stakes, and no clear and obvious immediate advantage to the PC/player.  In session 4 when the stakes have become serious it's a bit beyond the pale if Tommy pulls the answer out of thin air like that.
> 
> And even then it's probably not the end of the world, except that if Tommy does this once what's to stop him doing a similar thing - that his PC just happens to have the answer to a situation or puzzle or whatever - again, every time his PC is stuck but he-as-player knows the answer?  And the answer is, of course, nothing; because the precedent has already been set by the DM allowing it to happen in session 4.  Pretty short hop from there to outright bad-faith play.




Again, I don't see the problem with the stakes. To me, it's the idea of the player's background actually becoming important in play. That means the player will likely be more invested because the character is more tied to things. 

As for the "slippery slope" kind of argument....I don't think that's really a concern. Perhaps with certain players or certain groups, but I think that in general most players can actually handle this without abusing it. It may take a little adjustment to actually incorporate this kind of thing into a game where it previously didn't exist, but I think it's achievable. 




Lanefan said:


> Any of those is possible, sure, given the right situation (e.g. screaming or shouting a warning is only any use if the rest of the party is still within earshot; the PCs reading signs assumes they are following and not staying put so the scout can find them when she returns).  The "hunch" one is valid, but would get contrived if done too often.




Well, in the case of a wizard or cleric, I don't know. In my 5E game, one of the characters is a Diviner. She gets those kinds of hunches all the time. Perfectly within the fiction that's been established. 

And I'm sure we could come up with an explanation for just about any scenario.

The easiest would be to not confirm that the PC is actually dead. Just cut away leaving her actual status unknown. Maybe she's in negative HP, or making death saves or whatever. Then you'll actually get honest action from the players.  This would probably be ideal if you want to avoid metagaming. 



Lanefan said:


> Oh, absolutely.
> 
> It's when players start talking in-character about their late companion and how they need to go back to town and find a replacement when they don't and can't even know she's dead yet and she's not due to return for another hour or so...that's when the smackdown hammer comes out.
> 
> (even worse is while she's still alive and out scouting other players won't just shut up and let her player play it out, they insist on offering suggestions or even telling her what to do when their PCs have no way of knowing any specifics of the situation at hand)
> 
> No.  I ask why are they suddenly moving now when they'd agreed to wait here for at least an hour for her to get back - are they intending to abandon her?  And if the answer comes back "well, she's dead" then someone's probably about to get yelled at.




Don't you just flash forward past the hour of waiting? I would expect so. "Okay, an hour's passed and the scout has not returned....you all have an uneasy feeling about this," and you're all set. Play proceeds largely as it would have without the need for pretending not to know what we know thing. The players can play their characters without their knowledge of the scout's death impacting their decision making. 

Sometimes I think the attempt to avoid metagaming involves more metagaming than what is trying to be avoided.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I suppose it would only be done for monsters with strengths or weaknesses, which is a lot of them.  I have a hard time believing that they wouldn't be okay with trolls and bring in the uncle, but would be golems and not bring in some "reason" to know about golems.




This is the same kind of fear of abuse that people worried about Mother May I are citing. They see it as a GM having the ability to decide things that could lead to abuse. In this case, the players are allowed to decide things, and you're immediately concerned about abuse. "If it can be done once, then why not every time?" applies to both concerns. 

I hope that at this point you at least understand how a game's design or how a group chooses to play it could be cause for concern. 



Maxperson said:


> I don't like this playstyle and my players don't like this playstyle.  Those are pretty good reasons I think.
> 
> There are pros and cons to allowing them to create on the fly as well.  It all depends on which way is best for you, and your way isn't best for me and my game.




That's perfectly fine. You should definitely do what works for you. I was not asking you to actually change your ways, just asking you to think about how it would go if you did.



Maxperson said:


> The PC is not aware of hit points and knows he can die to a single hit, whether 1st level or 20th level.  And if by "Well, this is your very specific take on  HP," you mean RAW, then yes it is.




I'm not really concerned with how HP are described in the book because that's changed over the years, and everyone does it the way they prefer. 

But if you're telling me that your players are equally cautious when they have 110 HP as they are when they have 14 HP, I would be amazed. 



Maxperson said:


> I disagree as well, which is probably why I've said over and over again that in MY GAME it's cheating.




I appreciate you making the clarification. I don't think it's always been clear that you are talking about your game. 



Maxperson said:


> It is an unfair advantage.  The creature's difficulty is based on those strengths and weaknesses being an actual challenge.  If the players are using their knowledge such that they get to automatically know about the monsters' strengths and weaknesses, those monsters become weaker as challenges and I would have to cut down the XP value of them to compensate.




I don't know if the fact that new players won't know about vulnerabilities is what's factored into difficulty so much as the fact that they have resistance to standard attacks or regeneration and the like is what's factored in. A troll is worth whatever XP its worth because it can regenerate, not because characters know or don't know it can regenerate. 

If your PCs learn about troll vulnerability through some reasonable in game means, do you then lower the XP reward for any trolls they face? If they meet a merchant guard captain who tells them "there are trolls in the hills....make sure you burn them, or else they'll regenerate" is this an unfair advantage? 




Maxperson said:


> I have no problem if they know about it through reasonable in game means, though, such as pre-written backgrounds and skills, because those are limited and they will sometimes get the info they need, sometimes fail to get it, and sometimes partially get it.  The game accounts for that sort of inconsistent knowledge via skills and such, so that would preserve the challenge value of monsters in general.




So I think that what's really the core of the disagreement is the "when" that these things are decided. Would you agree with that? 



Maxperson said:


> So no, it's not more of an unfair disadvantage to have the player write a background in advance.  The purpose of backgrounds is informational about the PC, not to gain mechanical advantages during game play.  Sure, there will be the occasional mechanical advantage such as information about some sort of monster or other, but by and large the background is just fluff.  Even when I bring in a portion of it, making that aspect of the background matter and being better for play, it will generally be fluff and carry no mechanical value at all.  For example, a player in my game had his PC befriend a hermit.  I might one day have that hermit one day track his PC down and ask him to help with some bandits that have taken up residence near the hermit's remote location, making it difficult for him to live.




The purpose of backgrounds is informational, yes, but I would say more importantly that it's also to grant context to the character's place in the world. This can manifest in a variety of ways. Why can't some of them be advantageous to the character? 

I think that "background is just fluff" and "I might one day include the PC background" are pretty telling that you expect DM authority on these matters. And again, that's fine....but this is kind of why some folks are critical of this method. They don't want their backgrounds to be "just fluff". They want the GM to actively involve their background into play, or they want a game that allows this to happen. They want the story to be their character's story to a large extent, and not something that could happen to any character. 

Look at Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.....both have background elements that come into play heavily in the Star Wars stories. Luke's is more central to the overall story, but Han's is also very important, too....it provides him with motivation, characterization, context in the fictional world, and complications when his past comes back to bite him. 

Ideally, we don't go into Star Wars knowing all these details. They emerge as we watch the fiction. Han Solo's background isn't given to us ahead of time in the "Episode IV" scroll. We learn it as we watch the movie....he's a smuggler....he owes a dangerous person a debt....and so on. Those details can also emerge through play in an RPG, rather than being pre-determined. This is the kind of "Discovery" that I think is what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] is talking about. 

So, if a player in a hypothetical game decides to play a smuggler, and a hypothetical GM decides to treat that as just fluff....don't you think that a huge opportunity for a game with potentially strong player investment is being missed?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said that the DM is being a jerk if he doesn't allow the player to bring in the uncle for troll knowledge, since the players are signaling that they don't want to jump through the hoops of figuring out the troll's weakness.  If that's so, then the DM is also being a jerk if he doesn't allow the player to bring in the same uncle for your unique monster, since they are equally signaling that they don't want to jump through the hoops of figuring out your monster's weakness.  The same logic applies to both situations.




I said that in context, yes. Imagine the players saying "Hey, we don't want to play Cursre of Strahd" and the DM looks at them blankly for a moment. Then he raises his copy of Curst of Strahd and says "Guess what we're playing?"

A GM of any game that so blatantly ignores what the players are telling him may indeed be a jerk. I also allowed for other reasons....he could be clueless or he could be totally unprepared or incapable of doing things otherwise. But regardless of the reason, this is what makes the situation different. 

Removing the bit about the player cuing the DM in to what they want takes away the point I was making. 

I think that most games with players who've been aruond for a while don't bother worrying about trolls and fire a whole lot. I'd expect them to have better things to devote their game time to. Does that mean I don't use trolls? Nope.....I love em and use them frequently. What I don't do is use them in such as way that their vulnerability to fire is the major point of the encounter. Their weakness is just a thing....the PCs can try to exploit it to do some more damage to them and to finish them off, but it's not a mystery to be guessed. 

We played that encounter when we were kids. 



Maxperson said:


> In no version of D&D is a player entitled to a unilateral background.  3e was probably the most forgiving in that regard, but 4e states that the DM should work with the players on their backgrounds so that they fit the story the DM has in mind.  In 5e backgrounds are pre-written.  In 1e the DM chose them for the players.  And so on.
> 
> What no edition allows, though, is for the addition of background after play has started, such as when you encounter a troll.  Even 3e talks about it as something provided at character creation.




No edition restricts the addition of background after play has started. 

I agree that there are certain details about a character background that require collaboration between the player and DM. I just don't think that all needs to be done ahead of time. An idea introduced in play can be one the DM approves. Or he could deny it. I think that it all depends on the specifics.


----------



## Lanefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I am just one point of view, and there are much better people at explaining the OSR than me. All I will say is OSR, at this point, is not so easily boiled down to one thing. It is a spectrum of views. I think it leans to challenging the player (though I have absolutely seen OSR people raise concerns about split between character and player knowledge---you can take either view and be old school in my view).



The bracketed bit about sums up where I sit, along with most of our crew here - we're old-school but we are concerned about the character/player knowledge split and take steps to try to minimize it (e.g. someone scouting alone has their actions handled by note, or by he and the DM going into another room for a moment, so that the other players don't now what's become of the scout; pleasant side effect is that it also allows the returning scout to report her findings in her own words, just like it'd happen were it real).



> I think the chief, governing, viewpoint though is: does this work in practice on a weekly basis (preferably in a long term campaign).



From here, yes it does.

One of the benefits, I suppose, of having our campaigns go on for ages is that the PC learning curve e.g. regarding trolls v fire doesn't have to be repeated/replayed very often.

For my current campaign I renamed some common monsters (orcs, ogres, goblins and kobolds were renamed grash, turvitians, knill and quitchi respectively) while leaving their physical descriptions etc. mostly as they were.  Worked really well, gave some "freshness" for some long-term players, and gave the campaign a bit of identity of its own.



> Also I think OSR folks tend to eschew anything that feels like RPG theory (especially if they are reductionist or if the *terminology and categorization seems to drain all the life and magic out of what is going on at the table*).



Yeah, the bit I've bolded drives me nuts; and I see it - either direct from some poster or other or as a quote from some "expert" game designer or theorist - in here far too often. 



> So even a categorization of 'player vs. game', would be one, even if accurate, would make many OSR adherents wince I believe. Perhaps I am wrong though.



For my part, player-v-game is an example of a quite reasonable jumping-off point for discussion.  This stuff is nigh-impossible to discuss without reducing a few concepts down to their basics in order to give us some definition, mostly because every table - and every person involved - does it differently or would if they could.


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> When I’m talking about Discovery and Competition I have a particular meaning that doesn’t appear to be relatable to some.
> 
> It’s central to player and mediated through a particular game’s principles and play priorities/goals. Competition is going to mean something slightly (or significantly) different in 4e than it does in Torchbearer than it does in Dogs in the Vineyard than it does in My Life With Master. But fundamentally it’s going to mean *players advocating for their PCs as vigorously as they can* as mediated through the PC build aspects, the resolution mechanics, and the reward cycles...all as a coherent expression of the game’s premise (eg, some games you actually WANT your PC to struggle in thematic conflict...and you’re rewarded for it; this is also Competition as it’s a representation of your skill in advocating for your PC, which isn’t just on the singular axis of attaining bigger numbers but can also mean change via failure, against the obstacles set before it). The last part is a BIG ONE. If the game’s premise isn’t coherently expressed by all of the other stuff I mentioned, then there is going to be some weird results now and again (sometimes a lot more often).



I'm not sure I 100% follow you here so if I get this wrong please correct me, but the bit I bolded carries another aspect as well which is I think at (or very close to) the core of much of this discussion: that this advocacy for one's PC extends to trying to gain whatever in-game advantage you can for it.

In the examples at hand, this includes:

- advocating for use of player knowledge in situations where it is better than character knowledge (e.g. trolls v fire)
- arbitrarily giving your PC a background that carries a built-in advantage in the fiction (e.g. nobility grants wealth, prestige, and authority)
- basing one's play around the meta-rewards rather than what makes sense in the fiction (e.g. taking on needless combats just to gain xp)

However.  Just as it is the player's duty to try to advocate for any advantage they can for their PC (which taken to its extreme can include outright cheating), I see it as the DM's duty to push back hard against this advocacy when it goes too far.

The question then becomes what is "too far"?  The first two advocacy examples (player knowledge and background) above are in my view too far, and a DM is well within her rights to shut this down when she sees it.  The third one is fuzzier; if there's a halfway-reasonable in-fiction reason to do it then fine, but if it makes no sense at all then something's gone adrift.



> And, in line with Competition, Discovery is about the player finding new things out (as a child might) about character (their own and others) and setting as they advocate for their PC (as above) in engagements with situations that challenge them thematically.



More or less.  One thing to note, however, is that to discover something as a player - particularly about the setting - it perforce needs to be something previously unknown; which means if the players are also involved in setting creation this discovery aspect is going to be greatly lessened.


----------



## Lanefan

Imaculata said:


> My take on this is that I don't expect my players to fake ignorance, nor do I expect them to possess the knowledge that their character should have. Their characters are allowed to use what ever assumptions they have as players, but their guess is as good as that of an unexperienced player. Where their knowledge as players is lacking, I provide them with the information that I believe their characters would have so that they are able to play the competent adventurer they are trying to portray.
> 
> For example, last night my players defeated two Liches, and being an experienced player, the priest in the party asked me if his character knew about philacteries. I decided to have him make a check to determine the outcome, but I might as well have said 'yes', because my campaign does not hinge on finding and destroying the philacteries of those Liches. I have no intention to have those Liches make a surprise return, and so whether they destroy the philacteries is irrelevant to the campaign honestly.



But as neither the players nor PCs know this it only makes sense that if they know about philacteries they're likely to bend some effort into finding/destroying them to prevent those liches from coming back later...particularly as the PCs would probably realize they just kinda peed those liches off by destroying their skeletal forms!



> Is it really a problem that the player uses his knowledge of Liches in the game? His character is a priest, so it is entirely possible that he has some how obtained this knowledge over the years.



If the priest is experienced enough to be defeating liches then it's certainly more than possible he's been told about this stuff in his training: hence, an easy-to-pass check to see if he was told and-or whether he was paying attention at the time.



> But even if he hadn't been a priest and had no reason to have this knowledge at all, would it really make a big difference?



Absolutely!  Massive difference.  Very difficult check to know this - unless you-as-DM have run liches against this PC or party before, but I'm assuming this is a first-encounter scenario.



> Does it make the game easier to know what a philactery is when dealing with a Lich?



In the here-and-now moment, no.  But for potential later consequences, very much so.

Even if you-as-DM have decided those liches won't bother the PCs again, the PCs don't know that and will likely be looking over their shoulders for quite some time. 



> Honestly, to me as a DM the difficulty of my encounters does not hinge on some obscure bit of gotcha knowledge. My players can decide for themselves if their character knows something, and if they are in doubt I'm happy to make that ruling for them. But more often than not, I simply ask my players 'Do YOU think your character would have this knowledge?' rather than telling them 'NO'.



And if the players are truly advocating for their PCs then of course their answer will be "Yes, we have this knowledge", whether there's good in-game reason for it or not.



> I will however correct misunderstandings about the facts as established in the campaign, if I believe their characters should know better. Players can sometimes get confused or misremember details, especially over the course of a long campaign (which is understandable). For example, the same player thought that the God of Death would disapprove of another player laying the souls of the Liches to rest, but I corrected him on this. I corrected him because I felt that his priest would have a deep understanding of the gods in my campaign world and know things that the player might not.



I do this sort of thing - remind them of things they in theory would know or remember - all the time on both a large and small scale; largely because what was a week for the players might only have been an hour for the PCs (or several years real v 6 months in-game on a larger scale).



> To me it is all about facilitating my players, and helping them with what they are trying to do. If one player wants to play the wise priest who informs his party about Liches, I try to give him the freedom to do this. I pass that information to him, so the gameplay can continue, rather than come to an abrupt halt. To me there is no benefit to hiding this information from my players or their characters.



To me there is.

The liches example is a great one for this.  Fine, they destroy the liches and loot their lair.  But six months or a year later back come those same liches looking for a) revenge and b) their loot back.  At this point the PCs might start wondering if there's something else they need to do to finish these guys off for good...and thus you in effect get two adventures out of one.  Benefits all round, I say.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Sorry to take so long to reply....I had a busy weekend.



No worries. 



> I think the bit I quoted here is really just about preference. I know based on our past discussions that you prefer to play with the expectation that the PCs are "no one special", they're just another person in their world. Which is fine, of course. I don't really care to try and hew to some kind of quasi-medieval social class expectations; my players come up with characters they want to play, and I work with them to make that happen. Any advantage they get from their background is easily offset with an equal disadvantage.



As long as you're applying disadvantages to cancel off advantages I'd likely have no problem with it were I in your game.



> I also think that the life of an adventurer is simply different from whatever society woudl consider "normal", so to me, PCs are special no matter what. They don't need to be some kind of "chosen one" or anything, but I don't think that they are typical by any means.
> 
> But again, this is simply preference.



I tend to prefer the zero-to-hero arc, particularly as it helps allow for some long-term growth and change during a long campaign.



> Aren't many of the choices made by players for their characters made to gain an advantage? Weapon or ability selection, spell choice, feats versus stat increses, what magic item to wear in their belt slot.....all these things are done with advantage in mind. There may be other factors as well, but mechanical advantage is likely always a consideration.



Indeed, but in my game almost all of that happens at char-gen which to me largely falls in the meta realm anyway.  The magic item one - that's almost always explainable in the fiction through the PC's own sense of self-preservation.



> Why is that a problem in the scenario you describe? I will point out I think it's a bit of an extreme, and certainly different than the one I presented in a couple of key ways, but still it may be interesting to discuss. What's the big deal if the player does decide to claim lordship of Karsos? Sure, it may make things easier for them in the immediate "hey the guards aren't gonna kill us" kind of way, but I woudl also think it would open up several opportunities. What's the PC's place in Korsos? Are people happy for him to turn back up? Was his family glad he was gone? All kinds of political angles seem to present themselves.



Two problems leap to mind.

One, if player A claims lordship of Karsos it denies players B, C and D the option of doing so should they have so desired.

Two, it grants potential advantages (wealth, status, authority) that wouldn't otherwise be present; and while some of that can be cancelled out by political considerations etc., to do so presents a here-and-now headache for the DM which could have been thought out earlier had this fact of nobility been known earlier e.g. at char-gen.



> Now, if the goal of play is not to get embroiled in the political situation in Karsos, these concerns don't need to be raised. Perhaps something else can be done with this bit of info. But the question is if this isn't the goal....if this isn't what the player wants, then why would they introduce this idea? Just to avoid being bothered by some guards in a potentially hostile town? Seems a bit of a big card to play for that reason.



It comes under the aegis of player advocacy for their PC, and looking for an advantage.



> Does this interfere with the DM's plans? Or the other players? If so, can that be reconciled? I would imagine a conversation would happen, and the best way to proceed would be decided on by all.



Well for one thing if it did interfere with my plans the last thing I'm going to want to do is tell them that!   That said, again if I-as-DM had known earlier about this nobility bit then I could have planned around it and even incorporated it in somewhere else if it made sense in the fiction. (e.g. the PC would likely have been dealt with much differently in some towns previously visited, and approached said visits differently also, had the nobility piece been known up front)



> Again, I don't see the problem with the stakes. To me, it's the idea of the player's background actually becoming important in play. That means the player will likely be more invested because the character is more tied to things.



Yes, which means let's get the important bits of the background known up front rather than appearing out of nowhere halfway through.

I can't make something important in play if I don't know it exists. 



> As for the "slippery slope" kind of argument....I don't think that's really a concern. Perhaps with certain players or certain groups, but I think that in general most players can actually handle this without abusing it. It may take a little adjustment to actually incorporate this kind of thing into a game where it previously didn't exist, but I think it's achievable.



For me it's a very great concern.



> Well, in the case of a wizard or cleric, I don't know. In my 5E game, one of the characters is a Diviner. She gets those kinds of hunches all the time. Perfectly within the fiction that's been established.



Fair enough.



> And I'm sure we could come up with an explanation for just about any scenario.
> 
> The easiest would be to not confirm that the PC is actually dead. Just cut away leaving her actual status unknown. Maybe she's in negative HP, or making death saves or whatever. Then you'll actually get honest action from the players.  This would probably be ideal if you want to avoid metagaming.



The way to achieve this (and how I do it, when I can) is to take the scout's player aside and sort the scouting out beyond the hearing/knowledge of the other players, then leave the scout's player aside while I deal with the rest of 'em.



> Don't you just flash forward past the hour of waiting? I would expect so. "Okay, an hour's passed and the scout has not returned....you all have an uneasy feeling about this," and you're all set. Play proceeds largely as it would have without the need for pretending not to know what we know thing. The players can play their characters without their knowledge of the scout's death impacting their decision making.



Sometimes yes, other times something might happen during that hour e.g. the main party are forced to move and thus won't be there for the scout to find on her return.  Or, if the scout doesn't return after an hour and they really don't know why, for all I know they might say "Let's give her another half-hour"; an outcome much less likely if they-as-players already know she ain't coming back at all.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> If Player knowledge must be separated from Pc knowledge, what's the point of talking IC in first person?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> How can one Drama roleplay at all, or why people gets upset if the silent Player likes to play Bards, if Pc/Player are separated? How can one value pure roleplay if there's no way to tell which is which?



To me, it seems there are two uncontroversial ways it can become true in the fiction that a PC knows something:

* The player has some knowledge and imputes it to the PC;

* The GM informs the player of something that the the PC knows.​
The extent to which a GM is able to veto/gate the first approach will depend primarily on table conventions. Off the top of my head I can't think of any rulebook that expressly says talks about the GM being able to veto this.

A third way is for the player to succeed at some sort of knowledge/Discern Realities/etc check. Whether such a check generates player-authored knowledge (eg Burning Wheel) or GM-authored knowledge (eg 4e D&D, Dungeon World) will depend on the system details as mediated through table conventions.

When it comes to drama/freeform/"first person" roleplaying and resolution, these methods are not all created equal. If the player can't declare actions until the GM tells him/her what the PC knows, we're getting close to the GM roleplaying with him-/herself. Likewise if the GM is exercising lots of veto/gating over player-to-PC imputed knowledge. A lot of knowledge checks, especially when it is the GM who provides the answers, can also get in the way.



Numidius said:


> Seems legit and perfectly reasonable. But let's take nothing for granted: How do you know for sure the God of Death will not take offense?



This goes to a variation of player-imputes-knowledge-to-PC, which (at least in my experience), is helpful to first-person roleplaying: the player is entitled to make up setting elements and incorporate them into his/her roleplaying of his/her PC.

I have one player in particular who likes to do this - sometimes drawing on his recollections of how a system or a setting works (he's been RPGing for over 30 years and so has a lot of such recollections), and sometimes just projecting his best sense (given past episodes of play plus genre logic) of how things should be in the setting.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> No edition restricts the addition of background after play has started.



I think this comment can be generalised: [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s assertions about how PC knowledge, PC background etc are to be handled may be true accounts of how he likes to play the game, but find little support in D&D rules texts, esepecially 4e.



Maxperson said:


> The purpose of backgrounds is informational about the PC, not to gain mechanical advantages during game play.  Sure, there will be the occasional mechanical advantage such as information about some sort of monster or other, but by and large the background is just fluff.  Even when I bring in a portion of it, making that aspect of the background matter and being better for play, it will generally be fluff and carry no mechanical value at all.  For example, a player in my game had his PC befriend a hermit.  I might one day have that hermit one day track his PC down and ask him to help with some bandits that have taken up residence near the hermit's remote location, making it difficult for him to live.





hawkeyefan said:


> The purpose of backgrounds is informational, yes, but I would say more importantly that it's also to grant context to the character's place in the world. This can manifest in a variety of ways. Why can't some of them be advantageous to the character?
> 
> I think that "background is just fluff" and "I might one day include the PC background" are pretty telling that you expect DM authority on these matters. And again, that's fine....but this is kind of why some folks are critical of this method. They don't want their backgrounds to be "just fluff". They want the GM to actively involve their background into play, or they want a game that allows this to happen.



This relates to what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread about PC backgrounds and PC goals being the MEAT of play.

If the only significance of befriending a hermit is that he might give my PC a fetch quest, that is about as far from MEAT as we can get while still having the hermit figure in play. And this isn't even about "advantage" - it's about what establishes the dramatic trajectory and focus of play.



Lanefan said:


> Example: party arrives at Karnos, an unfamiliar and not-that-friendly town.  Player A, who has up to now left her character background mostly blank, suddenly declares "Oh, don't worry - I'm the local noble here and my word is the law.  Everyone knows me.  And look, here come some of my personal guards now - they saw us coming.".
> 
> If this (that a party member is the local noble here) had been known from square one the party's dealing with and feelings toward Karnos would have almost certainly been much different.  Very likely they'd have used it as a safe home base all along, rather than only coming here now because they have to.





hawkeyefan said:


> Aren't many of the choices made by players for their characters made to gain an advantage? Weapon or ability selection, spell choice, feats versus stat increses, what magic item to wear in their belt slot.....all these things are done with advantage in mind. There may be other factors as well, but mechanical advantage is likely always a consideration.
> 
> Why is that a problem in the scenario you describe? I will point out I think it's a bit of an extreme, and certainly different than the one I presented in a couple of key ways, but still it may be interesting to discuss. What's the big deal if the player does decide to claim lordship of Karsos? Sure, it may make things easier for them in the immediate "hey the guards aren't gonna kill us" kind of way, but I woudl also think it would open up several opportunities. What's the PC's place in Korsos? Are people happy for him to turn back up? Was his family glad he was gone? All kinds of political angles seem to present themselves.
> 
> Now, if the goal of play is not to get embroiled in the political situation in Karsos, these concerns don't need to be raised. Perhaps something else can be done with this bit of info. But the question is if this isn't the goal....if this isn't what the player wants, then why would they introduce this idea? Just to avoid being bothered by some guards in a potentially hostile town? Seems a bit of a big card to play for that reason.
> 
> Does this interfere with the DM's plans? Or the other players? If so, can that be reconciled? I would imagine a conversation would happen, and the best way to proceed would be decided on by all.



Some further thoughts on this example: what do the mechanics of the system say? For instance, if my PC _is_ a noble, what are the rules for attracting and/or commanding an entourage?

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s presentation of the example rests on some assumptions about the answers to those questions. But those aren't the only assumptions that are possible.

For instance, in Cortex+ Heroic, an entourage would normally be either a resource or an asset (similar mechanical devices, but established via different mechanical processes). Neither can just be brougjht into being by way of player stipulation.

In some versions of D&D there are Loyalty mechanics. If the PC has been absent from home for a long period, in those rules that would probably affect the loyalty of the entourage, and hence the likelihood of them willingly turning up upon the PCs' arrival.

Etc.

The bigger point is that most RPGs have ways of establishing fiction other than simply fiat narration (whether by GM or player). Posts that proceed on the assumption that the only alternative to player fiat is GM fiat; or that if GM fiat is abandoned, then player fiat will take it's place; seem to wilfully disregard this fact. (Which is a point I've been making, on-and-off, basically since the start of this thread.)


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> This goes to a variation of player-imputes-knowledge-to-PC, which (at least in my experience), is helpful to first-person roleplaying: the player is entitled to make up setting elements and incorporate them into his/her roleplaying of his/her PC.
> 
> I have one player in particular who likes to do this - sometimes drawing on his recollections of how a system or a setting works (he's been RPGing for over 30 years and so has a lot of such recollections), and sometimes just projecting his best sense (given past episodes of play plus genre logic) of how things should be in the setting.




Right, and that is from player' side. I was asking from the Gm side, since I understand [MENTION=6801286]Imaculata[/MENTION] is the Gm in the Death God example, and me being a bit provocative, like: how even if is the Gm, can he/she be sure if a Death God will take offense?


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Your character has never encountered a trap before. Good roleplay involves intentionally triggering the trap to doom your character.




It depends.  PC's have brains, so it would depend on what the trap looked like.  A spear trap in a wall is pretty clearly something you don't want to trigger, even if you've never encountered a trap.  A button on the wall might be something the PC pushes.  Circumstances will determine whether it's good or bad roleplay.



> Ah, yes. Again, the previously discussed situation where the mental headspace of your PC exists as Schrödinger's Cat.




Which is the same exact position every other PC's mental headspace is at.  Every time your PC encounters a new situation that you as a player have no knowledge of, the same Schrodinger's headspace exists.  The PC both knows and does not know the knowledge until determined by a roll or game play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> Except you are framing it too extremely. There is nothing wrong with challenges like monsters that have weaknesses you have to discover. And I think there is place in games for really challenging monsters (who have weaknesses that may be very hard to discover). I think it is fine if you don't like that. But I get a lot of enjoyment from games where there is a risk of dying because I don't figure out how to kill some kind of weird monster. I find that very exciting.




Dying just has no real appeal. I mean, if I died because some fact was so obscure nobody in the party could figure out that the dragon had a peanut allergy, then really, killing all the characters was a positive thing? It was suspenseful? I just can't see it. I have DMed 1000's of games and really almost never seen something like that come back as "wow! Good game!". 

OTOH I've seen plenty of times when something happened roughly like what 4e seems to aim for by design. That is something like a monster that is TOUGH, but beatable if you aren't zeroed in on its exact weakness. Treants in 4e are a decent example, they are vulnerable to fire and take some extra damage from it. If you didn't know that, then they're a bit tougher to beat, but you CAN chop one up. 

Or, a scenario where someone who thought ahead gets a decent extra benefit, again the treant comes to mind, if you packed fire, you got the prize. 

Now, 4e trolls admittedly break that design, but I don't think that was a great idea. OTOH its hard to find a 4e party with NO fire damage, and its clear that even neophyte players can make monster knowledge checks to learn to do that. Its not GREAT, but it isn't a perfect game. Given the means PCs have at their disposal by the levels trolls are common it isn't worth complaining about much.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> This is the same kind of fear of abuse that people worried about Mother May I are citing. They see it as a GM having the ability to decide things that could lead to abuse. In this case, the players are allowed to decide things, and you're immediately concerned about abuse. "If it can be done once, then why not every time?" applies to both concerns.




It's not about a fear of abuse.  It's about common sense and reason.  It makes no sense for a group to want to use player knowledge about trolls out of a desire not to have to feign ignorance, but but okay with feigning ignorance about vampires and golems.  It's not at all the same kind of situation as "Mother May I."



> I'm not really concerned with how HP are described in the book because that's changed over the years, and everyone does it the way they prefer.
> 
> But if you're telling me that your players are equally cautious when they have 110 HP as they are when they have 14 HP, I would be amazed.




It's true that people run hit points how they prefer, but it's equally true that I wasn't stating "my way," but rather RAW when I spelled out what hit points are.  

As for my players being equally cautious at 110 hit points as they are at 14, no they aren't.  That's only because they are not perfect.  They try, though.  They will avoid a 30 foot fall at 110 hit points and at 14 hit points, because a 30 foot fall can mean death.  The PCs don't have any knowledge of hit points, so they don't know they are at 110.



> I appreciate you making the clarification. I don't think it's always been clear that you are talking about your game.




In my first post I forgot to specify that it was for my game.  In my follow-up I did specify.  I have repeated it a number of time as well.  The reason that there is "confusion" is that there are poster's here who would rather ignore the truth in favor of false statements in order to try and "win."  I'm not referring to you, but rather to those who just don't want to have discussions with me in good faith the way you do.  If they did, they would be having the same civil conversation that we are.  



> I don't know if the fact that new players won't know about vulnerabilities is what's factored into difficulty so much as the fact that they have resistance to standard attacks or regeneration and the like is what's factored in. A troll is worth whatever XP its worth because it can regenerate, not because characters know or don't know it can regenerate.




A troll is very unlikely to even be able to regenerate if the party knows the truth.  They will use methods that take advantage of the weakness, to the xp value should be diminished if metagaming player knowledge is allowed.



> If your PCs learn about troll vulnerability through some reasonable in game means, do you then lower the XP reward for any trolls they face? If they meet a merchant guard captain who tells them "there are trolls in the hills....make sure you burn them, or else they'll regenerate" is this an unfair advantage?




No, it's not an unfair advantage, because it's not guaranteed that they will find out.  The game has rules for determining if players can find out, or it did.  5e leaves that in the DM's hands again.  I believe that the players sometimes knowing and sometimes not is the balance point of monsters with weaknesses.  Players never knowing would make them worth more.  Players always knowing would make them worth less.



> So I think that what's really the core of the disagreement is the "when" that these things are decided. Would you agree with that?




I think so.  It may not be the only disagreement, but it seems like the largest one.  I'm even okay with the player adding in background later if it makes sense for the PC, but not if it's done for immediate gain.  



> The purpose of backgrounds is informational, yes, but I would say more importantly that it's also to grant context to the character's place in the world. This can manifest in a variety of ways. Why can't some of them be advantageous to the character?




They can be.  I've already agreed that it can.  They just can't come up with it on the fly to take advantage of what's in front of them.  That to me is as much cheating as metagaming is.



> I think that "background is just fluff" and "I might one day include the PC background" are pretty telling that you expect DM authority on these matters. And again, that's fine....but this is kind of why some folks are critical of this method. They don't want their backgrounds to be "just fluff". They want the GM to actively involve their background into play, or they want a game that allows this to happen. They want the story to be their character's story to a large extent, and not something that could happen to any character.
> 
> Look at Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.....both have background elements that come into play heavily in the Star Wars stories. Luke's is more central to the overall story, but Han's is also very important, too....it provides him with motivation, characterization, context in the fictional world, and complications when his past comes back to bite him.
> 
> Ideally, we don't go into Star Wars knowing all these details. They emerge as we watch the fiction. Han Solo's background isn't given to us ahead of time in the "Episode IV" scroll. We learn it as we watch the movie....he's a smuggler....he owes a dangerous person a debt....and so on. Those details can also emerge through play in an RPG, rather than being pre-determined. This is the kind of "Discovery" that I think is what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] is talking about.




I don't think you understood what I meant by "fluff," even though I provided an example that is similar what happens to Han Solo.  Fluff just means "not mechanical."  A fluff background can and will be very important.  It can provide motivations, context, and become part of play.  There's nothing wrong with being fluff.  Fluff is often more important in my game than mechanics are.



> So, if a player in a hypothetical game decides to play a smuggler, and a hypothetical GM decides to treat that as just fluff....don't you think that a huge opportunity for a game with potentially strong player investment is being missed?



No, because the player investment will be there.  Fluff does not mean "unused" and "unimportant."  It just means that it will not be mechanical in nature.  Han Solo's background with Jaba had a huge influence, even though it was fluff.  Leia's fluff background as a princess is important throughout the movies, even though her planet is destroyed.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> To me that looks like a good challenge, since it suggests various solutions such as "Run away" and "Run away then come back with salt". I'm very much in favour of 'Run Away - Live to Another Day' as a food solution to many challenges.  Another good solution for stuff like static traps and slow moving monsters is 'Go Around It'. I like these because they are not pixel-bitching tactics, they should be fairly apparent to and useable by almost anyone who'd paying attention.




I don't actually have an issue with 'this is unbeatable', in that case it isn't a monster, it is just some sort of obstacle you aren't prepared to beat. Of course most such obstacles don't kill you! Walls don't kill you, but you can't go through them (at least without special stuff). 

So, what should be true then is that the leeches/salt thing should be automatically known to the PCs, just like the impermeability and durability of walls is. Once the players see that the PCs will need salt, then they can arrange for it, or maybe they did some sort of recon or intelligence gathering and learned about the leeches, and brought their salt. 

And maybe you can cut leeches off too, if you REALLY don't mind losing HS all over the place, but maybe that's a choice you will consider if going for salt is a costly move. This is all the sorts of ways that a 'gotcha' monster can work well in a scenario. I think this is a lot of what Gygax was doing with things like Green Slime. Maybe the first time he laughed as some character dissolved into goo, but after that it was just a hazard that you might or might not happen to be equipped for RIGHT NOW, but you can always come back later.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> No edition restricts the addition of background after play has started.




No edition allows it, either, which means that it is not allowed unless the DM allows it.  Failure to preclude something does not equate with inclusion.  Games only include what they explicitly say can or can't happen.  All else is outside the rules and the DM has to allow it in for it to be included. 



> I agree that there are certain details about a character background that require collaboration between the player and DM. I just don't think that all needs to be done ahead of time. An idea introduced in play can be one the DM approves. Or he could deny it. I think that it all depends on the specifics.




I agree.  But inclusion after play begins in my game needs to make sense with what is already know about the PC, and cannot be used to "cheat" the player's way through the current challenge.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> If the only significance of befriending a hermit is that he might give my PC a fetch quest, that is about as far from MEAT as we can get while still having the hermit figure in play. And this isn't even about "advantage" - it's about what establishes the dramatic trajectory and focus of play.




You're being short sighted.  The PCs will undoubtedly have other desires and obligations.  Will the do what the hermit asks and abandon others that need them?  How will they help him if they do decide to help?  Will they refuse him?  How will they refuse him?  How does the hermit reaction to rejection(which can be handled numerous ways)?  Will any of hundreds of other possibilities that I didn't mention here come to pass?  There's plenty of drama to be had.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It beats stipulating limited omniscience for PCs and NPCs, such that they know all the strengths and weaknesses about all monsters.





Maxperson said:


> If I can have an uncle that knows about monsters that I have knowledge of, I can have an uncle that knows about monsters that I as a player do not have knowledge of and that he has told my PC about.  If trying to metagame knowledge in signals to the DM that the players don't want to pretend not to know a weakness, then having an uncle tell you about the new monster signals the DM that the players do not want to lack knowledge of monster weaknesses.





Maxperson said:


> It makes no sense for a group to want to use player knowledge about trolls out of a desire not to have to feign ignorance, but but okay with feigning ignorance about vampires and golems.



Your claim - which I have just quoted - was that if a player uses the _uncle_ device to underpin an imputation to his/her PC of his/her knowledge about trolls, then that player will also want to use the same device to have the GM inform him/her about new, hitherto unknown weaknesses.

But that claim was, and is, unfounded. ecause If a player _don't actually know_, then when playing an ignorant PC who tries to guess the weakness, s/he is not _feiging_ ignorance.



Maxperson said:


> inclusion after play begins in my game needs to make sense with what is already know about the PC, and cannot be used to "cheat" the player's way through the current challenge.



In 4e, at least, t's not cheating to know that trolls need fire to kill them even if the topic has never come up before in the campaign. And it's not cheating to impute that knowledge to one's PC.

Or to put it another way: there is no rule in 4e that says _In a given campaign, the first time trolls are encounteed players who know their weakness are obliged nevertheless to pretend that their PCs are ignorant of the weakness, until something happens to confer that knowledge in the course of play_. Nor is there any rule that even hints at this.



Maxperson said:


> hawkeyefan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No edition restricts the addition of background after play has started.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No edition allows it, either, which means that it is not allowed unless the DM allows it.
Click to expand...


From the 4e PHB, p 18:

*Roleplaying*
The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it's all about taking on the role of a character in the game. Some people take to this payacting naturally and easily; others find it more of a challenge. This section is here to help you out, whether you're comfortable and familiar with roleplaying or you're new to the concept.

Your character is more than a combination of race, class, and feats. He or she is also one of the protagonists in a living, evolving story line. Like th hero of any fantasy novel or film, he or she has ambitions and fears, likes and dislikes, otivations and mannerisms, moments of glory and of failure. The best D&D characters belnd the ongoing story of their adventuring career with memorable characterisitcs or traits. . . . A well-crafted character personality expands your experience o the game dramatically.​
What follows this is a series of headings, which suggest various ways of developing the non-mechanical aspects of one's PC: _Alignment_, _Deities_, _Personality_, _Mannerisms_, _Appearance_ and _Background_. Nothing suggests that all these things must be specified in advance of play - and the general tenor of the introductory text, as just quoted by me, is that someone might do this as they go along to enrich their RPG experience.

Then there is this, at p 258, under the heading *Quests*:

Sometimes a quest is spelled out for you at the start of an adventure . . . You can also, with your DM's approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character's background. For instance, perhaps your mother is the person whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring. . . . Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign's unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.​
Complementing that text from the PHB is this from the DMG (p 103):

*Player-Designed Quests*
You should allow and even encourage payers to come up with their own quests that are tied to their invididual goals or specific circumstances in the adventure. . . . Rember to say yes as often as possible!​
Nothing in what I've quoted is unrepresentative of 4e; it is typical of it. 4e does not encourage the gating of player contributions to the fiction - in the form of backgrounds and backstory, PC goals, etc - behind GM veto and tight GM control. Quite the opposite.

If a 4e player knows about trolls, and imputes that knowledge to his/her PC, that is not breaking any rule of the game. If the player comes up with some bit of backstory to give colour to that imputation of knowledge, that is not breaking any rule either. 4e simply doesn't work in the way that you are describing.

It's indeed bizarre that this even needs arguing - it's not like people who didn't/don't like 4e were jumping at shadows. There are actual features of the game that make it different from (say) typical approaches to 3E/PF, and its orientation towards player contributions to the shared fiction - which has obvious implications also for the GM's role in that respect - is just one of them.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the only significance of befriending a hermit is that he might give my PC a fetch quest, that is about as far from MEAT as we can get while still having the hermit figure in play. And this isn't even about "advantage" - it's about what establishes the dramatic trajectory and focus of play.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You're being short sighted.  The PCs will undoubtedly have other desires and obligations.  Will the do what the hermit asks and abandon others that need them?  How will they help him if they do decide to help?  Will they refuse him?  How will they refuse him?  How does the hermit reaction to rejection(which can be handled numerous ways)?  Will any of hundreds of other possibilities that I didn't mention here come to pass?  There's plenty of drama to be had.
Click to expand...


I'm not being shortsighted. I'm saying that being offered a quest from my hermit to kill some orcs is not very dramatic or character-driven roleplaying (ie it lacks MEAT).

This comes through in the questions you pose (as opposed to the "hundreds of other" that you leave as an exercise for the reader):

Will the do what the hermit asks and abandon others that need them?  How will they help him if they do decide to help?  Will they refuse him?  How will they refuse him?  How does the hermit react to rejection?​
The only stakes that you identify are _abandoning others_ and _upsestting the hermit_.

Let's take a well-known example and contrast:

Luke Skywalker has to choose between _abandoning his family who are dependent upon him to help them with their farm_ and _upsetting the hermit who knew his father and can mentor him into a wider world_; 

Later on, he has to choose between _abandoning the hermit to his fate, as the hermit directs him to_ and _helping the hermit who will otherwise surely die, even though the hermit doesn't want this help_;

Later on again, he has to choose between _abandoning his friends_ and _upsetting the hermits who have placed their hope in him as the last of their order_.​
Those aren't the only choices that Luke has to make, but are the main hermit-related ones. And in each case there are elements of the situation (which I've helpfully underlined) that make the stakes more than simply _do I help A or do I help B, given that I can't do both_.

It's quite possible to have a RPG give rise to choices for players that are laden with stakes in that sort of way. In my experience, however, it's almost impossible to achieve them in a game in which everything that comes into the fiction, and every player decision about his/her PC, is gate-kept by the GM in the way that you advocate for. And nothing that I've read about others' experiences, nor any more abstract or theoretical reflection on the art and techniques of RPGing, has led me to doubt that my experiences are a good guide here.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Your claim - which I have just quoted - was that if a player uses the _uncle_ device to underpin an imputation to his/her PC of his/her knowledge about trolls, then that player will also want to use the same device to have the GM inform him/her about new, hitherto unknown weaknesses.
> 
> But that claim was, and is, unfounded. ecause If a player _don't actually know_, then when playing an ignorant PC who tries to guess the weakness, s/he is not _feiging_ ignorance.




The claim, since I made it, was that signaling the players' desires = signaling the players' desires.  Whether that signal is not wanting to guess weaknesses that the players know about, or not wanting to have to guess at monster weaknesses, the players are showing the DM what they want.

That means that if the DM not allowing the players to just know about trolls is a jerk for not going with what the players are signaling that they want, then so is the DM for not just handing just telling the players the weaknesses of unknown monsters/



> In 4e, at least, t's not cheating to know that trolls need fire to kill them even if the topic has never come up before in the campaign. And it's not cheating to impute that knowledge to one's PC.




It's not allowed by RAW.  The DM has to allow it to happen.



> Or to put it another way: there is no rule in 4e that says _In a given campaign, the first time trolls are encounteed players who know their weakness are obliged nevertheless to pretend that their PCs are ignorant of the weakness, until something happens to confer that knowledge in the course of play_. Nor is there any rule that even hints at this.




Metagaming like the above is treating the game as a game.  DMs are instructed not to discourage that sort of thing.



> *Roleplaying*
> The Dungeons & Dragons game is, first and foremost, a roleplaying game, which means that it's all about taking on the role of a character in the game. Some people take to this payacting naturally and easily; others find it more of a challenge. This section is here to help you out, whether you're comfortable and familiar with roleplaying or you're new to the concept.




Nothing there allows players to use metagame knowledge.



> Your character is more than a combination of race, class, and feats. He or she is also one of the protagonists in a living, evolving story line. Like th hero of any fantasy novel or film, he or she has ambitions and fears, likes and dislikes, otivations and mannerisms, moments of glory and of failure. The best D&D characters belnd the ongoing story of their adventuring career with memorable characterisitcs or traits. . . . A well-crafted character personality expands your experience o the game dramatically.




Nothing there, either.



> What follows this is a series of headings, which suggest various ways of developing the non-mechanical aspects of one's PC: _Alignment_, _Deities_, _Personality_, _Mannerisms_, _Appearance_ and _Background_. Nothing suggests that all these things must be specified in advance of play - and the general tenor of the introductory text, as just quoted by me, is that someone might do this as they go along to enrich their RPG experience.




That's because you are looking in the wrong place.  Backgrounds are specifically a part of character creation in the PHB.  Character creation happens BEFORE the campaign begins, not after.



> Sometimes a quest is spelled out for you at the start of an adventure . . . You can also, with your DM's approval, create a quest for your character. Such a quest can tie into your character's background. For instance, perhaps your mother is the person whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring. . . . Individual quests give you a stake in a campaign's unfolding story and give your DM ingredients to help develop that story.




This has nothing to do with background, unless you are going to the background RAW had you make prior to the campaign beginning as the inspiration.  Nothing there allows you to create background during game play.  If you want to add in background creation during game play, you need to talk your DM into allowing it.



> Nothing in what I've quoted is unrepresentative of 4e; it is typical of it. 4e does not encourage the gating of player contributions to the fiction - in the form of backgrounds and backstory, PC goals, etc - behind GM veto and tight GM control. Quite the opposite.




Nothing in what you quote allows players to create new background information after the campaign begins, either.  



> f a 4e player knows about trolls, and imputes that knowledge to his/her PC, that is not breaking any rule of the game.




It's breaking the instruction to the DM to discourage metagame thinking, but I suppose if you don't view that as a rule it's not breaking a rule.  However, it's not following any rule of the game, either.  Since there is no rule that allows it, it is not allowed unless the DM decides that it is.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I'm not being shortsighted. I'm saying that being offered a quest from my hermit to kill some orcs is not very dramatic or character-driven roleplaying (ie it lacks MEAT).



And you are wrong, since it adds drama in one or more of the manners that I stated.  If you don't like it, it doesn't cease to be meat.  @_*pemerton*_ is not the one true god of MEAT who knows the one true way to serve it.



> This comes through in the questions you pose (as opposed to the "hundreds of other" that you leave as an exercise for the reader):





It's neither my job, nor necessary to spell out all the ways it can happen.  I provided more than enough examples.



> Let's take a well-known example and contrast:
> Luke Skywalker has to choose between _abandoning his family who are dependent upon him to help them with their farm_ and _upsetting the hermit who knew his father and can mentor him into a wider world_;
> 
> Later on, he has to choose between _abandoning the hermit to his fate, as the hermit directs him to_ and _helping the hermit who will otherwise surely die, even though the hermit doesn't want this help_;
> 
> Later on again, he has to choose between _abandoning his friends_ and _upsetting the hermits who have placed their hope in him as the last of their order_.​
> Those aren't the only choices that Luke has to make, but are the main hermit-related ones. And in each case there are elements of the situation (which I've helpfully underlined) that make the stakes more than simply _do I help A or do I help B, given that I can't do both_.




You don't get to use all of those.  I provided only one example and did not indicate that it was exhaustive of how the hermit might interact with the PC and the rest of the group.  I gave one example, so you can use one example like this one, "Luke Skywalker has to choose between _abandoning his family who are dependent upon him to help them with their farm_ and _upsetting the hermit who knew his father and can mentor him into a wider world." which is virtually identical to the one I provided.




			It's quite possible to have a RPG give rise to choices for players that are laden with stakes in that sort of way. In my experience, however, it's almost impossible to achieve them in a game in which everything that comes into the fiction, and every player decision about his/her PC, is gate-kept by the GM in the way that you advocate for.
		
Click to expand...



My experience is very different.  Perhaps I just have a more open mind about my playstyle._


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Some further thoughts on this example: what do the mechanics of the system say? For instance, if my PC _is_ a noble, what are the rules for attracting and/or commanding an entourage?
> 
> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s presentation of the example rests on some assumptions about the answers to those questions. But those aren't the only assumptions that are possible.
> 
> For instance, in Cortex+ Heroic, an entourage would normally be either a resource or an asset (similar mechanical devices, but established via different mechanical processes). Neither can just be brougjht into being by way of player stipulation.
> 
> In some versions of D&D there are Loyalty mechanics. If the PC has been absent from home for a long period, in those rules that would probably affect the loyalty of the entourage, and hence the likelihood of them willingly turning up upon the PCs' arrival.
> 
> Etc.
> 
> The bigger point is that most RPGs have ways of establishing fiction other than simply fiat narration (whether by GM or player). Posts that proceed on the assumption that the only alternative to player fiat is GM fiat; or that if GM fiat is abandoned, then player fiat will take it's place; seem to wilfully disregard this fact. (Which is a point I've been making, on-and-off, basically since the start of this thread.)



The bigger headache, no matter what the rules are, is if you're declaring you're a noble now that means you've in fact been a noble all along; which in turn means the question of your entourage (what it consists of, its general level of loyalty, its capabilities, and [most important to play!] _whether any of it would have come with you into the field_) should have been dealt with before you first entered play.



			
				AbdulAlhazred said:
			
		

> Dying just has no real appeal. I mean, if I died because some fact was so obscure nobody in the party could figure out that the dragon had a peanut allergy, then really, killing all the characters was a positive thing? It was suspenseful? I just can't see it. I have DMed 1000's of games and really almost never seen something like that come back as "wow! Good game!".



One of my long-time players, whose RPG career has been about 99.9% as a player and about .1% as a DM, came up with a quote many years ago during a table discussion on game lethality: "Dungeons without mortality are dungeons without life".

The fear of death has to be there.

As for the dragon, was it beatable without the use of peanuts?  If no, did the PCs/players even consider running away or bargaining with it or (gasp!) surrendering to it?



			
				Maxperson said:
			
		

> Metagaming like the above is treating the game as a game. DMs are instructed not to discourage that sort of thing.



Max, I think you got this one backwards: DMs are in fact instructed not to *en*courage that sort of thing.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Max, I think you got this one backwards: DMs are in fact instructed not to *en*courage that sort of thing.




Bah.   I meant "Instructed to discourage."


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> The bigger headache, no matter what the rules are, is if you're declaring you're a noble now that means you've in fact been a noble all along; which in turn means the question of your entourage (what it consists of, its general level of loyalty, its capabilities, and [most important to play!] _whether any of it would have come with you into the field_) should have been dealt with before you first entered play.




It's an even bigger issue if you're like me and have nobility actually mean nobility, and not just as some empty title and a PC who wears nice clothes, and is stuck up.  If a player is nobility in my game, they have access to tremendous resources and influence compared to other social classes.  That sort of advantage is not something that I will just let a player pick at the drop of a hat.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The bigger headache, no matter what the rules are, is if you're declaring you're a noble now that means you've in fact been a noble all along; which in turn means the question of your entourage (what it consists of, its general level of loyalty, its capabilities, and [most important to play!] _whether any of it would have come with you into the field_) should have been dealt with before you first entered play.



But it's possible to resolve all this stuff during the course of play. And possible resolutions aren't hard to think of - anything from _the PC has been travelling incognito_ to _the PC has been banished because on the losing side of a power struggle_ to _the PC's family is impoverished and hence the PC went out to try and make his/her fortune_.



Maxperson said:


> It's an even bigger issue if you're like me and have nobility actually mean nobility, and not just as some empty title and a PC who wears nice clothes, and is stuck up.  If a player is nobility in my game, they have access to tremendous resources and influence compared to other social classes.  That sort of advantage is not something that I will just let a player pick at the drop of a hat.



Again we see three things:

(1) A strong assumption of GM authorship/gating;

(2) Assumptions about the fiction;

(3) Assumptions about system.​
It's actually quite easy to have fiction that involves a noble who lacks the sorts of resources and influence you refer to: I mentioned some possibilities earlier in this post, and examples from fiction/legendary history abound: Aragorn; Richard the Lionheart (at various points in his endeavours); some versions of Robin Hood; and the film Hari-Kiri: Death of a Samurai are the ones I think of straight away. There are also strictly historical examples such as White Russians in exile, Free Imperial Knights in the last days of the Holy Roman Empire, and the like.

As far as system is concerned, there are many ways to treat nobility. In Classic Traveller, every PC has a Social Standing score, and a 12+ indicates nobility. In my game, when the players (as their PCs) are debating what course of action to choose, I sometimes call for opposed checks to resolve the dispute, and allocate bonuses for nobility (as well as appropriate skills like Leadership).

In Burning Wheel, characrers who are Born Noble acquire the Mark of Privilege trait, which confers an advantage on Circles checks to meet members of the nobility, but also imposes a penalty on Inconspicuous checks to move among the common folk. Whether a PC who is born noble has many resources, or few, will depend on the choices made by the player during PC building (BW uses a fairly complex lifepath system) - obviously being wealthy has its advantages, but so does being a mage who knows lots of spells, and the PC build system makes it hard to have both.

In Cortex+ Heroic, being a wealth noble could be expressed as a Distinction, or could be the fictional logic behind an appropriate skill - but the dice added to the pool for such abilities are no bigger or greener than the dice other players get to add for their PCs' abilities. HeroQuest revised would treat nobility in a similar way. In other words, it is possible for _wealthy noble_ to be a defining trait of a character without that character therefore dominating play - because in mechanical terms there is no need for that trait to be more significant than any other PCs' defining trait.

Obviousy some systems treat nobility as an aspect of colour/flavour, rather than a discrete system element. Rolemaster is an example: in one RM campaign I ran two of the PCs were nobles (samurai), and this fictional positioniong obviously conferred certain benefits in some social contexts; but the other PCs also had interesting backstories (eg one was formerly an animal lord, who had been banished from Heaven and stripped of powers and memory as retribution for wrongdoing).

The last time I _played_ in an AD&D campaign, my character was a noble (from memory, I had taken the Cavalier kit from some rulebook or other). It had relatively little impact on play. My backstory explained why I didn't have an entourage.

The idea that having PCs be nobles will break the game in some way, and thus needs super-special GM policing, isn't something that I've seen in my play experience.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], why don't you post some examples of how GM-driven RPGing produced moments of dramatic choice for the players?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> But it's possible to resolve all this stuff during the course of play. And possible resolutions aren't hard to think of - anything from _the PC has been travelling incognito_ to _the PC has been banished because on the losing side of a power struggle_ to _the PC's family is impoverished and hence the PC went out to try and make his/her fortune_.



Any and all of which would have been really nice to know before the character started play in order that I and-or the player could have incorporated this aspect of the character into play.

For example if the PC has been banished I'd like to know from where, and why, and then determine if anyone happens to recognize him during his travels.  Character's gained the advantage of never being recognized or challenged or whatever if none of us (incuding the player) know he's a noble until the player decides so one day.



> Again we see three things:
> 
> (1) A strong assumption of GM authorship/gating;
> 
> (2) Assumptions about the fiction;
> 
> (3) Assumptions about system.​
> It's actually quite easy to have fiction that involves a noble who lacks the sorts of resources and influence you refer to: I mentioned some possibilities earlier in this post, and examples from fiction/legendary history abound: Aragorn; Richard the Lionheart (at various points in his endeavours); some versions of Robin Hood; and the film Hari-Kiri: Death of a Samurai are the ones I think of straight away. There are also strictly historical examples such as White Russians in exile, Free Imperial Knights in the last days of the Holy Roman Empire, and the like.



Don't get me wrong - I've had noble PCs in my game over the years (two queens, two crown princes, and a duke or three to start with) - and I've no problem with it provided that either a) the noble background/profession came up as a part of char-gen and thus has been known (at least to that player and the DM) all along, or b) the title was acquired as a part of the run-of-play fiction via marriage or quest or bequeathal or reward or whatever...or by drawing the right/wrong card from a Deck! (nearly every PC I've seen gain a title from a Deck has soon had to retire from adventuring in order to deal with all that being a noble entails)

What I have a problem with is that the player can on a whim declare a PC to be a noble during the run of play at just the right moment where it would be most advantageous to do so.

Of the various nobles I've had in my game:

- one crown prince had a small entourage adventuring with him as bodyguards; they died, the prince survived (just!) but was forced into retirement by his family after a few adventures because of the dangers involved
- one crown prince had no entourage, survived his adventuring career but then had to come to the defense of his realm which was being invaded; the entire royal family was wiped out, along with the country, by the invaders
- one queen had no entourage, wasn't very well-liked by her people due to her constant absence while adventuring, ended up marrying another PC (and making him King, more or less); after this they juggled adventuring and ruling reasonably well until the game (and world!) ended
- one queen came by her title through the run of play (via AD&D modules C4 and C5) and on acquiring the throne pretty much had to immediately retire to deal with all the headaches; she would have considered an entourage an insult to her own not-inconsiderable ability as a warrior

I also played a crown prince as my very first character.  He was from a very foreign land (different world, in fact) to where we were adventuring, but he still acted as if his word was the law because that's how he had been bred and raised and how dare these peasants tell him what to do!  He didn't last long; and deservedly died at the hands of his own party.



> As far as system is concerned, there are many ways to treat nobility. In Classic Traveller, every PC has a Social Standing score, and a 12+ indicates nobility. In my game, when the players (as their PCs) are debating what course of action to choose, I sometimes call for opposed checks to resolve the dispute, and allocate bonuses for nobility (as well as appropriate skills like Leadership).
> 
> In Burning Wheel, characrers who are Born Noble acquire the Mark of Privilege trait, which confers an advantage on Circles checks to meet members of the nobility, but also imposes a penalty on Inconspicuous checks to move among the common folk. Whether a PC who is born noble has many resources, or few, will depend on the choices made by the player during PC building (BW uses a fairly complex lifepath system) - obviously being wealthy has its advantages, but so does being a mage who knows lots of spells, and the PC build system makes it hard to have both.
> 
> In Cortex+ Heroic, being a wealth noble could be expressed as a Distinction, or could be the fictional logic behind an appropriate skill - but the dice added to the pool for such abilities are no bigger or greener than the dice other players get to add for their PCs' abilities. HeroQuest revised would treat nobility in a similar way. In other words, it is possible for _wealthy noble_ to be a defining trait of a character without that character therefore dominating play - because in mechanical terms there is no need for that trait to be more significant than any other PCs' defining trait.



That these systems build such things right into their mechanics indicates a baked-in expectation that the nobility-to-commoner ratio among PCs is going to be much higher than among the overall population.  Fair enough, if unrealistic.



> The last time I _played_ in an AD&D campaign, my character was a noble (from memory, I had taken the Cavalier kit from some rulebook or other). It had relatively little impact on play. My backstory explained why I didn't have an entourage.



Can Cavaliers as written even have followers, other than a squire, before reaching high-ish level? (long time since I looked at RAW Cavaliers!)  

Either way, all these examples have the noble status being determined during char-gen; and that's A-OK.



> The idea that having PCs be nobles will break the game in some way, and thus needs super-special GM policing, isn't something that I've seen in my play experience.



It doesn't break the game at all if it's a known thing all along, but if the nobility only comes to light partway through the campaign it very much risks rendering invalid some or even all of the play that has gone before, under the heading "What would or should have happened differently in the fiction had this aspect of this PC been known to the player and-or DM right from square one?".


----------



## S'mon

hawkeyefan said:


> I said that in context, yes. Imagine the players saying "Hey, we don't want to play Cursre of Strahd" and the DM looks at them blankly for a moment. Then he raises his copy of Curst of Strahd and says "Guess what we're playing?"
> 
> A GM of any game that so blatantly ignores what the players are telling him may indeed be a jerk.




That sounds like the GM made a mistake not telling the players in advance that this was going to be a Curse of Strahd campaign. That doesn't make him a jerk, just foolish. If a player said "No, run Waterdeep Dragon Heist!" I think that would be jerkier. What should actually happen is that the group cancels the session until/unless they're on the same page. But GMs should always run the game they want to run and feel enthusiastic for, while players should play if interested, or not play if they don't fancy it. If the GM can't get players for his Strahd game, maybe someone else will run Dragon Heist.


----------



## S'mon

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't actually have an issue with 'this is unbeatable', in that case it isn't a monster, it is just some sort of obstacle you aren't prepared to beat. Of course most such obstacles don't kill you! Walls don't kill you, but you can't go through them (at least without special stuff).




Plenty of obstacles do kill. Pits & chasms are an obvious example. PCs can get themselves 
killed trying to leap the chasm, or can try climbing down it - hopefully with rope - or go look for another path. Slow but deadly monsters are very similar in game effect.


----------



## S'mon

pemerton said:


> The idea that having PCs be nobles will break the game in some way, and thus needs super-special GM policing, isn't something that I've seen in my play experience.




I think it's more that 'No Myth' (that's the phrase right?)  where the player can inject significant world elements, such as his PC is a powerful noble of this town, without GM veto, can mess with the challenge of Gamist play - such as the intended challenge of negotiating safety with this town.

I think it's uncontroversial that different play agendas can clash. In 4e the GM may have a "Negotiate with Town" Skill Challenge set up, which could be messed with by a player (who's read Robin
 Laws in the 4e DMG2)  just declaring it was his home town.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It's actually quite easy to have fiction that involves a noble who lacks the sorts of resources and influence you refer to: I mentioned some possibilities earlier in this post, and examples from fiction/legendary history abound: Aragorn; Richard the Lionheart (at various points in his endeavours); some versions of Robin Hood; and the film Hari-Kiri: Death of a Samurai are the ones I think of straight away. There are also strictly historical examples such as White Russians in exile, Free Imperial Knights in the last days of the Holy Roman Empire, and the like.




This is treating nobility as, "...*some empty title* and a PC who wears nice clothes, and is stuck up."

As far as system is concerned, there are many ways to treat nobility. In Classic Traveller, every PC has a Social Standing score, and a 12+ indicates nobility.[/quote]

This doesn't really say anything about nobles being treated as nobles, and not just an empty title.



> In Burning Wheel, characrers who are Born Noble acquire the Mark of Privilege trait, which confers an advantage on Circles checks to meet members of the nobility, but also imposes a penalty on Inconspicuous checks to move among the common folk. Whether a PC who is born noble has many resources, or few, will depend on the choices made by the player during PC building (BW uses a fairly complex lifepath system) - obviously being wealthy has its advantages, but so does being a mage who knows lots of spells, and the PC build system makes it hard to have both.




This is artificially limiting.  Why should mage nobles be less common than say fighter nobles?



> In Cortex+ Heroic, being a wealth noble could be expressed as a Distinction, or could be the fictional logic behind an appropriate skill - but the dice added to the pool for such abilities are no bigger or greener than the dice other players get to add for their PCs' abilities. HeroQuest revised would treat nobility in a similar way. In other words, it is possible for _wealthy noble_ to be a defining trait of a character without that character therefore dominating play - because in mechanical terms there is no need for that trait to be more significant than any other PCs' defining trait.
> 
> Obviousy some systems treat nobility as an aspect of colour/flavour, rather than a discrete system element. Rolemaster is an example: in one RM campaign I ran two of the PCs were nobles (samurai), and this fictional positioniong obviously conferred certain benefits in some social contexts; but the other PCs also had interesting backstories (eg one was formerly an animal lord, who had been banished from Heaven and stripped of powers and memory as retribution for wrongdoing).
> 
> The last time I _played_ in an AD&D campaign, my character was a noble (from memory, I had taken the Cavalier kit from some rulebook or other). It had relatively little impact on play. My backstory explained why I didn't have an entourage.




And now we're back to empty title.



> The idea that having PCs be nobles will break the game in some way, and thus needs super-special GM policing, isn't something that I've seen in my play experience.



Having the odd noble here and there with an empty title is okay.  It does happen.  The great majority of the time, however, it's not going to be an empty title, so treating every PC noble title as empty doesn't jive with me.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], why don't you post some examples of how GM-driven RPGing produced moments of dramatic choice for the players?




Sure.

I'll give one example from when I was a player and one from when I was a DM.

Example 1.

There was a game that I was playing in where we had to find a powerful witch in order to stop a powerful group of NPCs from having their way with our homeland.  While I was out alone shopping for some stuff my character would need before we left to find the witch, some of those NPCs found me and took me to their leader.  The leader told me that he had my wife and kids captured and that when we found the witch, I was to call them via a magical device so that they could come and get her.  I was told that if I said anything to anyone else, my wife and kids would be killed.

We adventured for a while trying to find this witch, and one of the things that happened was that we saved an 8 year old girl from some marauders that had killed the rest of her family before we arrived.  we decided to take her to the next town and turn her over to the authorities.  As we were traveling through a swamp on the way to that town, we came across a hut in the swamp with an old woman who was an herbalist.  I had the great idea of using the device to call the NPCs on this woman, who I knew wasn't the witch we were looking for, but who could easily be mistaken for a witch.  That way I could alert my companions as to what was going on via an "honest mistake."

The NPCs arrived to collect the "witch" and when they did, they took one look at the girl we had rescued and thanked me for calling them to get the witch.  Apparently the girl was who we were looking for and nobody in the party had any idea.  The rest of the group took up positions to defend the girl.  My PC however was now in the position of turning the girl over to the NPCs and allowing them to retain control over the land, or stand against the NPCs and let my wife and kids be killed.  It was a very hard choice, but I made it and stood with the NPCs telling the rest of the group that they had my family and I would kill anyone who tried to stop them from taking the witch.  Now the rest of the group was in the position of letting her go and allowing the NPCs to retain control, or attack and possibly kill the friend they grew up with and adventuring companion.  They eventually relented and the girl was taken by the NPCs.

Plenty of drama to go around in this DM facing game.  That's not the only example, but it is the biggest that happened in that game.


Example 2.

A low level group was in a town that was attacked by orc raiders in the night.  They killed some orcs, but there were too many for them to stop entirely.  The raiders grabbed a bunch of children as the kids were easy to carry quickly, and they set off to their village.  In the aftermath the following morning, the PCs learned that about 20 children had been taken.  

The PCs being heroes, decided that they would go off and rescue the kids.  The orcs, though, had a sizable lead.  Nevertheless, the PCs set out and started tracking the orcs hoping to catch up with them and save the kids.  Towards the evening of the first day they came across a place where the orcs had made their camp.  They found an area with a fire pit and while investigating the fire pit and the area around it, they found some child sized bones.  

Everyone at the table got really quiet as they realized that the orcs were using the kids as food.  Suddenly the rescue got really serious as they realized that they were now in a time crunch to rescue the kids that remained before more were killed and eaten.  The decided to forgo resting and push through to gain ground on the orcs and hope that they would come upon them in time, even though that meant taking penalties for lack of rest.

Plenty of drama to go around in DM facing games.


----------



## pemerton

S'mon said:


> I think it's more that 'No Myth' (that's the phrase right?)  where the player can inject significant world elements, such as his PC is a powerful noble of this town, without GM veto, can mess with the challenge of Gamist play - such as the intended challenge of negotiating safety with this town.
> 
> I think it's uncontroversial that different play agendas can clash. In 4e the GM may have a "Negotiate with Town" Skill Challenge set up, which could be messed with by a player (who's read Robin Laws ijn the 4e DMG2)  just declaring it was his home town.



Yes and no! If it's really "no myth", then new challenges can be narrated! Or, in your "negotiate with the town" example, the GM can frame a situation (and associated check) that puts the PC's nobility to the test.

This also takes me back to the alternatives to fiat (player or GM). Roll more dice!


----------



## Imaculata

Numidius said:


> Seems legit and perfectly reasonable. But let's take nothing for granted: How do you know for sure the God of Death will not take offense?
> 
> More: that moment of uncertainty from the Player couldn't foresee an important instance of play, I dunno: a dilemma for religious priests in the setting? (Or at least for the Pc?) that even a responsible Gm takes for granted, because see the OP?




To me these are excellent moments for the DM to share some lore on the setting, and intrigue the players. I explained to the cleric-player that to the God of Death the unnatural life of a Lich would be seen as a great disruption of the natural balance of life and death. It is a defilement of how life and death are supposed to work; a profane magical loophole. Laying their souls to rest, would return them to face judgement before the God of Death, which he would approve of very much.

The players were intrigued by this logic, and I feel this allows me as a DM to really make the world come alive.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That these systems build such things right into their mechanics indicates a baked-in expectation that the nobility-to-commoner ratio among PCs is going to be much higher than among the overall population.  Fair enough, if unrealistic.



What's a realistic nobility-to-commoner ratio among PCs? Is it the same or different from the elf-to-dwarf ratio? The fighter-to-MU ratio?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> This is treating nobility as, "...*some empty title* and a PC who wears nice clothes, and is stuck up."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This doesn't really say anything about nobles being treated as nobles, and not just an empty title.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And now we're back to empty title.
> 
> 
> Having the odd noble here and there with an empty title is okay.  It does happen.  The great majority of the time, however, it's not going to be an empty title, so treating every PC noble title as empty doesn't jive with me.



I think many readers of LotR would not agree with you that Aragorn's title was an "empty" one.

Nor would everyone agree that Richard the Lionheart's claim to kingship is an "empty title" when he reenters England covertly to try and retake his throne from his sinister brother.

I don't think the White Russians regarded their titles as empty either, but that is more debatable.



Maxperson said:


> This is artificially limiting.  Why should mage nobles be less common than say fighter nobles?



So it's not OK for players to have advantages like nobility, but when they have them it's not OK for there to be trade-offs?

Or are you just not familiar with how PC build in BW works?


----------



## pemerton

Here's some stuff from RuneQuest (Avalon Hill Deluxe Edition, 1993, p 8):

*The Player*
As a player, your first duty is to play within the limits of the characters you generate. Even though you are a chemistry major, for instance, your shepherd character cannot (without learning or training) stroll to a game world village and open an alchemy shop.

Operating within your adventurers' limits will challenge your imagination. How well you act out the roles you create defines how well you roleplay, the ultimate enjoyment which this art form affords. . . .

Always have some idea of your character before you start, but also allow new eents in his or her game life to help shape the character's personality. . . .

*Cooperation and Competition*
Gaming is social. . . .

Cooperation is essential to enjoyable roleplaying games, for the participants work together for a common goal - overcoming opponents, or a hostile setting controlled by an impartial gamemaster.

For instance, a party of adventurers will not survive against a bunch of monsters if they are not willing to aid each other . . .

Players too must work together. . . . If you know something appropriate to a situation, share it gently, not with disparaging remarks. Leave personal animosities out of the game.

There also needs to be cooperation between players and gamemaster. Though the gamemaster creates the world and manipulates its details, it's also true that the game remains a game for him as well, and that he likes to have fun playing too. Players should pit their ingenuity against the game world, not the gamemaster.

The gamemaster should be interested in his players' opinions on game matters, and the players should debate rules questions and play opportunities with him. Gamemaster decisions are final, and players must be will to take losses if the gamemaster sticks to his ruling. All the same, strive to work out questions by discussion. Both palyers and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds if necessary and occasionally adjust the game to the situation at hand. . . .

Simple communication builds enjoyable and understandable worlds for adventuring. The rewards of cooperation are great . . .​
It's interesting to see that there is no statement of any universal metagame ban - eg players are expected to play their PCs as cooperative to one another for reasons to do with _gameplay_, not ingame reasons.

It's also interesting to see the approach to rules questions, and the emphasis on collaboration/consensus rather than GM rulings and GM decision-making.

And this is from a hardcore simulationist game!


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Here's some stuff from RuneQuest (Avalon Hill Deluxe Edition, 1993, p 8):
> 
> *The Player*
> As a player, your first duty is to play within the limits of the characters you generate. Even though you are a chemistry major, for instance, your shepherd character cannot (without learning or training) stroll to a game world village and open an alchemy shop.
> 
> Operating within your adventurers' limits will challenge your imagination. How well you act out the roles you create defines how well you roleplay, the ultimate enjoyment which this art form affords. . . .
> 
> Always have some idea of your character before you start, but also allow new eents in his or her game life to help shape the character's personality. . . .
> 
> *Cooperation and Competition*
> Gaming is social. . . .
> 
> Cooperation is essential to enjoyable roleplaying games, for the participants work together for a common goal - overcoming opponents, or a hostile setting controlled by an impartial gamemaster.
> 
> For instance, a party of adventurers will not survive against a bunch of monsters if they are not willing to aid each other . . .
> 
> Players too must work together. . . . If you know something appropriate to a situation, share it gently, not with disparaging remarks. Leave personal animosities out of the game.
> 
> There also needs to be cooperation between players and gamemaster. Though the gamemaster creates the world and manipulates its details, it's also true that the game remains a game for him as well, and that he likes to have fun playing too. Players should pit their ingenuity against the game world, not the gamemaster.
> 
> The gamemaster should be interested in his players' opinions on game matters, and the players should debate rules questions and play opportunities with him. Gamemaster decisions are final, and players must be will to take losses if the gamemaster sticks to his ruling. All the same, strive to work out questions by discussion. Both palyers and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds if necessary and occasionally adjust the game to the situation at hand. . . .
> 
> Simple communication builds enjoyable and understandable worlds for adventuring. The rewards of cooperation are great . . .​
> It's interesting to see that there is no statement of any universal metagame ban - eg players are expected to play their PCs as cooperative to one another for reasons to do with _gameplay_, not ingame reasons.
> 
> It's also interesting to see the approach to rules questions, and the emphasis on collaboration/consensus rather than GM rulings and GM decision-making.
> 
> And this is from a hardcore simulationist game!




I think you are really misinterpreting this throughs he lens of your own playstyle. Nothing in there is controversial or shocking for any old school, run the setting GMs or groups. I talk to my players all the time about rulings, and change my mind about rulings. But the GMs determination is final. And nothing about pitting the players against the setting, running the setting as a living world, rulings over rules, etc means there isn't collaborative discussion. But you are stretching what they are saying into territory they clearly don't intend (and not that the territory you are shifting it to is bad, it just doesn't reflect what is written there). Also, the point about the challenge of playing within the limits of your character, to me that very much suggests a thought about meta gaming. Been ages since I've read Runequest, so I am not about to parse the system line by line here. But just from that section, I feel it doesn't really do anything to clarify the discussion at all.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I think many readers of LotR would not agree with you that Aragorn's title was an "empty" one.




Because it got filled at the end.  Until then, he was unknown and his title really didn't mean much. 



> Nor would everyone agree that Richard the Lionheart's claim to kingship is an "empty title" when he reenters England covertly to try and retake his throne from his sinister brother.




Again, filling it later doesn't meant that it meant much until then.



> So it's not OK for players to have advantages like nobility, but when they have them it's not OK for there to be trade-offs?
> 
> Or are you just not familiar with how PC build in BW works?




I get the balance reasons for the trade-off style of PC building, but it doesn't sit well with me when designers use balance to justify things that don't make sense.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Here's some stuff from RuneQuest (Avalon Hill Deluxe Edition, 1993, p 8):
> *The Player*
> *As a player, your first duty is to play within the limits of the characters you generate. Even though you are a chemistry major, for instance, your shepherd character cannot (without learning or training) stroll to a game world village and open an alchemy shop.
> *
> Operating within your adventurers' limits will challenge your imagination. How well you act out the roles you create defines how well you roleplay, the ultimate enjoyment which this art form affords. . . .
> 
> Always have some idea of your character before you start, but also allow new eents in his or her game life to help shape the character's personality. . . .
> 
> *Cooperation and Competition*
> Gaming is social. . . .
> 
> Cooperation is essential to enjoyable roleplaying games, for the participants work together for a common goal - overcoming opponents, or a hostile setting controlled by an impartial gamemaster.
> 
> For instance, a party of adventurers will not survive against a bunch of monsters if they are not willing to aid each other . . .
> 
> Players too must work together. . . . If you know something appropriate to a situation, share it gently, not with disparaging remarks. Leave personal animosities out of the game.
> 
> There also needs to be cooperation between players and gamemaster. Though the gamemaster creates the world and manipulates its details, it's also true that the game remains a game for him as well, and that he likes to have fun playing too. Players should pit their ingenuity against the game world, not the gamemaster.
> 
> The gamemaster should be interested in his players' opinions on game matters, and the players should debate rules questions and play opportunities with him. Gamemaster decisions are final, and players must be will to take losses if the gamemaster sticks to his ruling. All the same, strive to work out questions by discussion. Both palyers and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds if necessary and occasionally adjust the game to the situation at hand. . . .
> 
> Simple communication builds enjoyable and understandable worlds for adventuring. The rewards of cooperation are great . . .​
> It's interesting to see that there is no statement of any universal metagame ban - eg players are expected to play their PCs as cooperative to one another for reasons to do with _gameplay_, not ingame reasons.
> 
> It's also interesting to see the approach to rules questions, and the emphasis on collaboration/consensus rather than GM rulings and GM decision-making.
> 
> And this is from a hardcore simulationist game!




Dude.  The first paragraph says you can't use player knowledge and have your PC's know it.  I bolded it so that you can see it.  The players working together just means that they shouldn't be jerks about  ideas on what to do.  Not that they can bring knowledge of trolls into the game when the PC doesn't have said knowledge.

As for cooperation between players and DM, well that's also the way it always has been.  The DM should consider his players, and the player should be able to discuss rules.  And the rules you quoted say that the DM's decision is final and if sticks to his guns, the players lose the debate.  He has full authority in this example.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Sure.
> 
> I'll give one example from when I was a player and one from when I was a DM.
> 
> Example 1.
> 
> There was a game that I was playing in where we had to find a powerful witch in order to stop a powerful group of NPCs from having their way with our homeland.  While I was out alone shopping for some stuff my character would need before we left to find the witch, some of those NPCs found me and took me to their leader.  The leader told me that he had my wife and kids captured and that when we found the witch, I was to call them via a magical device so that they could come and get her.  I was told that if I said anything to anyone else, my wife and kids would be killed.
> 
> We adventured for a while trying to find this witch, and one of the things that happened was that we saved an 8 year old girl from some marauders that had killed the rest of her family before we arrived.  we decided to take her to the next town and turn her over to the authorities.  As we were traveling through a swamp on the way to that town, we came across a hut in the swamp with an old woman who was an herbalist.  I had the great idea of using the device to call the NPCs on this woman, who I knew wasn't the witch we were looking for, but who could easily be mistaken for a witch.  That way I could alert my companions as to what was going on via an "honest mistake."
> 
> The NPCs arrived to collect the "witch" and when they did, they took one look at the girl we had rescued and thanked me for calling them to get the witch.  Apparently the girl was who we were looking for and nobody in the party had any idea.  The rest of the group took up positions to defend the girl.  My PC however was now in the position of turning the girl over to the NPCs and allowing them to retain control over the land, or stand against the NPCs and let my wife and kids be killed.  It was a very hard choice, but I made it and stood with the NPCs telling the rest of the group that they had my family and I would kill anyone who tried to stop them from taking the witch.  Now the rest of the group was in the position of letting her go and allowing the NPCs to retain control, or attack and possibly kill the friend they grew up with and adventuring companion.  They eventually relented and the girl was taken by the NPCs.




So, we have Gm controlled Npcs that kidnap Gm contr. Npcs that force Pc* to search for a Gm cntr Npc** in order to invade a land of Gm cntr Npcs... 

Man, if that's not railroad, I don't know what else could be. 

I would dare say that Gm is violating the Czege Principle  

*because family
**curiously appearing in the midst of events; also gotcha moment in the end


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Dude.  The first paragraph says you can't use player knowledge and have your PC's know it.  I bolded it so that you can see it.  The players working together just means that they shouldn't be jerks about  ideas on what to do.  Not that they can bring knowledge of trolls into the game when the PC doesn't have said knowledge.




Not player knowledge of Real World, we're debating, but P K of Game World, and the quoted part from RQ doesn't say anything on the latter. 

It does speak of Pc boundaries, so everithing is still open to debate where this limit is, but the provided example warns only on OBVIOUS real world knowledge.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Example 2.
> 
> A low level group was in a town that was attacked by orc raiders in the night.  They killed some orcs, but there were too many for them to stop entirely.  The raiders grabbed a bunch of children as the kids were easy to carry quickly, and they set off to their village.  In the aftermath the following morning, the PCs learned that about 20 children had been taken.
> 
> The PCs being heroes, decided that they would go off and rescue the kids.  The orcs, though, had a sizable lead.  Nevertheless, the PCs set out and started tracking the orcs hoping to catch up with them and save the kids.  Towards the evening of the first day they came across a place where the orcs had made their camp.  They found an area with a fire pit and while investigating the fire pit and the area around it, they found some child sized bones.
> 
> Everyone at the table got really quiet as they realized that the orcs were using the kids as food.  Suddenly the rescue got really serious as they realized that they were now in a time crunch to rescue the kids that remained before more were killed and eaten.  The decided to forgo resting and push through to gain ground on the orcs and hope that they would come upon them in time, even though that meant taking penalties for lack of rest.
> 
> Plenty of drama to go around in DM facing games.





Ok so we have some pretty straightforward bad Npc that threaten lives of innocent Npc: linear railroad with evident psicological use of Force (because children + heroes pc, for Goodness sake). 
And the Drama is, what? A metagamey resource management?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> As long as you're applying disadvantages to cancel off advantages I'd likely have no problem with it were I in your game.




Sure. I don't know if it's as formalized as that....generally speaking, all the backgrounds in 5E come with a benefit of some kind, so each player will have some equivalent perk associated with what they've chosen. 

But then, I pretty much just use that choice as a starting point for the fiction, and use it to help shape the events and complications that they face. A noble just comes with all manner of connections and obligations and so forth.....so I use that to help inform the challenges the party will face. 



Lanefan said:


> I tend to prefer the zero-to-hero arc, particularly as it helps allow for some long-term growth and change during a long campaign.




I tend to prefer a variety of character types and backgrounds and so on. Nothing wrong with a zero to hero type story, but there's no reason to limit everyone to that approach.




Lanefan said:


> Two problems leap to mind.
> 
> One, if player A claims lordship of Karsos it denies players B, C and D the option of doing so should they have so desired.
> 
> Two, it grants potential advantages (wealth, status, authority) that wouldn't otherwise be present; and while some of that can be cancelled out by political considerations etc., to do so presents a here-and-now headache for the DM which could have been thought out earlier had this fact of nobility been known earlier e.g. at char-gen.




One, so the solution is to simply deny them all that option? I don't really see this as a major concern....each player can come up with something cool, or we can work together to come up with something cool. No one's going to complain "but Billy gets to be a noble, why can't I be one too?" Or if they are, then I think it's more a player issue than a game issue, and they'd likely make similar complaints about class choice and gear and so on at every step of the way. 

Two, I think this may be a headache if things in the game are largely predetermined, but is not a concern if the game is more about finding the fiction through play. But even with a heavily GM driven game, I think it's just a matter of considering the situation; a character has just revealed a noble heritage that until now has been hidden. This kind of thing happens all the time in genre fiction. All you have to do is ask questions; why was your heritage hidden? Why reveal it now? What will happen now that you've revealed it? 

Where you see a headache, I see a ton of opportunity. 




Lanefan said:


> It comes under the aegis of player advocacy for their PC, and looking for an advantage.
> 
> Well for one thing if it did interfere with my plans the last thing I'm going to want to do is tell them that!   That said, again if I-as-DM had known earlier about this nobility bit then I could have planned around it and even incorporated it in somewhere else if it made sense in the fiction. (e.g. the PC would likely have been dealt with much differently in some towns previously visited, and approached said visits differently also, had the nobility piece been known up front)




Well, in my original example, it wasn't so much about the advantage as it was about sending a signal to the DM about a kind of play that they found boring. 

And even though I recognize that we'll likely never bridge this metagame gap we have, I have to assume that you know how small an advantage the fire versus trolls bit is. It's a bit of info to speed one encounter along, not some kind of campaign modifying revelation. 

regarding the second point, again, I think this is about looking at the fiction that's been established. Why were there no such reactions in the previous towns visited? Why has no one treated this character as a noble till now? You answer those questions and the ones I mentioned above, and the fiction emerges through play. Again, this is the kind of "Discovery" for which some are advocating. 

It doesn't have to be contradictory. You can incorporate it in, and see how it fits and interacts with what's been established. 



Lanefan said:


> Yes, which means let's get the important bits of the background known up front rather than appearing out of nowhere halfway through.
> 
> I can't make something important in play if I don't know it exists.




Yes, you can! I mean, I believe you can. Obviously, this may not be something everyone's immediately comfortable with, or even that they may enjoy, of course....but you certainly are capable of it. 



Lanefan said:


> The way to achieve this (and how I do it, when I can) is to take the scout's player aside and sort the scouting out beyond the hearing/knowledge of the other players, then leave the scout's player aside while I deal with the rest of 'em.




Sure, something like this....or if the mechanics of the game allow the GM to just "fade to black" before the character's actual fate is determined, or something similar, then you've avoided the metagame concern. 



Lanefan said:


> Sometimes yes, other times something might happen during that hour e.g. the main party are forced to move and thus won't be there for the scout to find on her return.  Or, if the scout doesn't return after an hour and they really don't know why, for all I know they might say "Let's give her another half-hour"; an outcome much less likely if they-as-players already know she ain't coming back at all.




Okay, here's where I think one of the sticking points with metagaming concerns come up. Because there is a difference between the characters doing something that they'd have no idea they need to do, and the characters choosing to do something perfectly reasonable for them to do. If your group says "it's been an hour, let's go look for the scout" and your DM instinct is to say "well why wouldn't you guys wait another hour?" you need to rethink that. Why would they not do what they said? Why find a reason to shoot it down just because it's possible they could do something else? 

This is the DM creating a metagame situation where none actually exists. Why fret over the metagame concerns when there's a game to actually get on with? A PC has died and the rest of the group is going to find that out.....why delay such a moment? Why get in the way?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> It's not about a fear of abuse.  It's about common sense and reason.  It makes no sense for a group to want to use player knowledge about trolls out of a desire not to have to feign ignorance, but but okay with feigning ignorance about vampires and golems.  It's not at all the same kind of situation as "Mother May I."




Sure it is. "If it can be done once, what's to stop if from happening every time?" 

Perhaps I misremembered, but I thought you compared the troll bit to a unique monster and the players demanding to know about that, and that seems like an extreme example. 

Vampires and golems and the established monsters? Yes, those would be similar; I'd just let the players act on what they know, and chalk it up to folk lore and word of mouth, and then think no more of it. I can't see the value add of halting progress to turn this into a metagame issue where it simply does not have to be one. 





Maxperson said:


> A troll is very unlikely to even be able to regenerate if the party knows the truth.  They will use methods that take advantage of the weakness, to the xp value should be diminished if metagaming player knowledge is allowed.




Okay, cool. So then maybe tell the players that and see if they think the drop in XP is worth it in order to avoid pretending they don't know what they know. Or if they say okay sounds cool, then play the encounter with the intent of establishing a justification for using fire. 

Of these two options, I know which I'd prefer, but I certainly wouldn't ever begrudge a DM asking for player input into how the game is played. 




Maxperson said:


> No, it's not an unfair advantage, because it's not guaranteed that they will find out.  The game has rules for determining if players can find out, or it did.  5e leaves that in the DM's hands again.  I believe that the players sometimes knowing and sometimes not is the balance point of monsters with weaknesses.  Players never knowing would make them worth more.  Players always knowing would make them worth less.




I think whether or not they find out through "reasonable" means is largely DM dependent, no? 

Unless the players all get some kind of lore roll for every creature they encounter and then their knowledge is based on the results of the roll. 



Maxperson said:


> I think so.  It may not be the only disagreement, but it seems like the largest one.  I'm even okay with the player adding in background later if it makes sense for the PC, but not if it's done for immediate gain.




Fair enough. For me, I don't think my example was really about the gain so much as it was about moving the game along, but having said that, I don't even care if the player does something like that with gain in mind. 

Especially playing so much Blades in the Dark lately, which allows for all kinds of player introduced content, some of which is about making things easier for characters or playing to their strengths, but just as much is about making things hard for the characters. I've stopped worrying so much about "advantage" or "disadvantages" and instead I'm more concerned about "interesting". I just have an open mind about players introducing things to the fiction in an attempt to make things interesting. 

If I thought they were only doing it to gain an advantage, then I'd be more concerned. But then it's clearly about abuse, which brings us back to the beginning of this post and how that relates to the concern over "Mother May I". 



Maxperson said:


> I don't think you understood what I meant by "fluff," even though I provided an example that is similar what happens to Han Solo.  Fluff just means "not mechanical."  A fluff background can and will be very important.  It can provide motivations, context, and become part of play.  There's nothing wrong with being fluff.  Fluff is often more important in my game than mechanics are.




I understood the term fluff....crunch and fluff and all that....it was the "Just" in front of it that made it seem unimportant. 



Maxperson said:


> No, because the player investment will be there.  Fluff does not mean "unused" and "unimportant."  It just means that it will not be mechanical in nature.  Han Solo's background with Jaba had a huge influence, even though it was fluff.  Leia's fluff background as a princess is important throughout the movies, even though her planet is destroyed.




Right. 

Is this what you do with your player backgrounds? The only example I recall that you've shared at this point is that one PC had a hermit friend who you might have show up one day. If you have others,  it'd be cool if you share them. If I missed any, my apologies...it's a long thread and I haven't caught up on all new posts yet.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> What's a realistic nobility-to-commoner ratio among PCs? Is it the same or different from the elf-to-dwarf ratio? The fighter-to-MU ratio?



Elf-to-dwarf would ideally sort of reflect the overall population ratio in the area, over the long run (i.e. if there's more elves in the local area than dwarves I'd expect to see more elves in play than dwarves and (though players can usually choose) I'd set up any random tables to reflect this.  

MU-to-fighter has a vaguely suggested ratio in the 1e DMG of about 1-to-4, which has proven surprisingly accurate over the years in our games.

Nobility-to-commoner in medieval society would be about 1-to-a great many (1-to-hundreds? 1-to-thousands?), thus nobility - particularly high nobility e.g. monarchs or other rulers of places - as adventurers would also be somewhat rare one would think.  Lesser nobility e.g. landless knights might almost be dime-a-dozen in adventuring circles, such as your cavalier, but that carries little to no in-game advantage.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Are people really having this much trouble understanding where Maxperson is coming from. It isn't like he is saying he enjoys smashing his player's heads on teh table. He just appreciates making a distinction between character knowledge and player knowledge. This isn't something every group will have the same sensibility about. But it is super common and not at all unusual (and the preference makes complete sense). I do not understand why people are having such a hard time empathizing with his point of view on the matter (not saying you have to agree with him, just not sure why people can't even seem to grasp why he likes this and why it might be good for some groups). Again, i think this is part of a larger issue with these conversations. If you are just here to advocate for a playstyle, you are only doing harm to your playstyle by making it seem obnoxious and you are not helping anyone understand why you do what you do. At the same time, your not learning anything about alternative approaches.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. I don't know if it's as formalized as that....generally speaking, all the backgrounds in 5E come with a benefit of some kind, so each player will have some equivalent perk associated with what they've chosen.



Fair enough.



> But then, I pretty much just use that choice as a starting point for the fiction, and use it to help shape the events and complications that they face. A noble just comes with all manner of connections and obligations and so forth.....so I use that to help inform the challenges the party will face.



As would I were someone to hit nobility on the random chart; I've had to do just this a few times in the past.

But note that the 5e example still has the noble status being determined at char-gen along with the background, rather than dropped into play on the fly.  It's the dropped-into-play-on-the-fly bit I have problems with, in that a) chances are it's being done just to gain an advantage in the here and now, and b) as the PC has thus always been a noble who knows how much previous play would have to be looked askance at - or worse, outright retconned - had this information been available all along.



> I tend to prefer a variety of character types and backgrounds and so on. Nothing wrong with a zero to hero type story, but there's no reason to limit everyone to that approach.



Fair enough, but that's the arc the overall campaign will take regardless. (as opposed to, say, the 4e approach where the PCs are already heroes at 1st level)



> One, so the solution is to simply deny them all that option? I don't really see this as a major concern....each player can come up with something cool, or we can work together to come up with something cool. No one's going to complain "but Billy gets to be a noble, why can't I be one too?" Or if they are, then I think it's more a player issue than a game issue, and they'd likely make similar complaints about class choice and gear and so on at every step of the way.



You think they don't? 



> Two, I think this may be a headache if things in the game are largely predetermined, but is not a concern if the game is more about finding the fiction through play. But even with a heavily GM driven game, I think it's just a matter of considering the situation; a character has just revealed a noble heritage that until now has been hidden. This kind of thing happens all the time in genre fiction. All you have to do is ask questions; why was your heritage hidden? Why reveal it now? What will happen now that you've revealed it?



The difference being that in genre fiction at least someone (the author) knows all along that the character has a hidden noble heritage.  In the reveal-on-the-fly instance in an RPG the DM didn't know ahead of time and it's entirely possible the player didn't either, if this decision was made on a whim; and that's my objection: had this been known all along even if just by the one player and the DM the odds are high that the player would have approached some things differently during the PC's adventuring career up to that point, and there's a chance the DM might have tried to work something in as well.



> regarding the second point, again, I think this is about looking at the fiction that's been established. Why were there no such reactions in the previous towns visited? Why has no one treated this character as a noble till now? You answer those questions and the ones I mentioned above, and the fiction emerges through play. Again, this is the kind of "Discovery" for which some are advocating.



I don't see this as Discovery (in either big D or small d terms), I see it as nothing more than a headache for the DM - and maybe the player(s) - as they retcon the fiction to fit this new info in.

And by the way, did I mention there's nothing more evil than retcons? 



> Yes, you can! I mean, I believe you can. Obviously, this may not be something everyone's immediately comfortable with, or even that they may enjoy, of course....but you certainly are capable of it.



How?

How can I do anything with the idea of Falstaff in fact being King Falstaff if neither I nor his player know he's a king?  If I arbitrarily introduced this as DM I'd likely get in trouble, and if the player arbitrarily introduces it then that means he's been a king all along...which leads right back to retcons.



> Okay, here's where I think one of the sticking points with metagaming concerns come up. Because there is a difference between the characters doing something that they'd have no idea they need to do, and the characters choosing to do something perfectly reasonable for them to do. If your group says "it's been an hour, let's go look for the scout" and your DM instinct is to say "well why wouldn't you guys wait another hour?" you need to rethink that. Why would they not do what they said? Why find a reason to shoot it down just because it's possible they could do something else?



If they wait for the hour my DM instinct wouldn't say anything if they decided not to wait for another hour.

It's if the scout dies ten minutes in and suddenly the party decide to - fancy that - get on the move after ten minutes that my DM instinct flies a red flag.



> This is the DM creating a metagame situation where none actually exists. Why fret over the metagame concerns when there's a game to actually get on with? A PC has died and the rest of the group is going to find that out.....why delay such a moment? Why get in the way?



Maybe they're not going to find that out.

All they know is that she didn't return.  Is she captured?  Dead?  Dying at the bottom of a cliff somewhere because she slipped and fell?  Teleported halfway round the world?  On her way back to town having abandoned the party and mission?


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> You think they don't?



You should exercise faith in your players. I think that players have a widely diverse array of character concepts that they want to play regardless of what choices other players make.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> As would I were someone to hit nobility on the random chart; I've had to do just this a few times in the past.
> 
> But note that the 5e example still has the noble status being determined at char-gen along with the background, rather than dropped into play on the fly.  It's the dropped-into-play-on-the-fly bit I have problems with, in that a) chances are it's being done just to gain an advantage in the here and now, and b) as the PC has thus always been a noble who knows how much previous play would have to be looked askance at - or worse, outright retconned - had this information been available all along.




Sure, a lot of this may happen at character generation. This may apply to many games, and 5E as presented does expect for a background to be selected when the character is created. But, there's no reason you can't let's say allow a player to delay the choice and then select his background at some point during play. This would allow for our spontaneous noble example. Or some other twist depending on how it's deployed. The advantage of this method is that the DM would perhaps be at least somewhat prepared because he'd be expecting a choice of some sort. 

Then outside the realm of D&D there are games and systems that allow this kind of thing all the time. 



Lanefan said:


> Fair enough, but that's the arc the overall campaign will take regardless. (as opposed to, say, the 4e approach where the PCs are already heroes at 1st level)




Maybe. Depends on the game and what happens. Maybe it's a tragedy like Oedipus. The character starts out with a lot, and falls. Blades in the Dark pretty much assumes that the characters are doomed and it's just a matter of time until they're either killed by another faction or forced into retirement due to trauma. 



Lanefan said:


> You think they don't?




Mine don't, so this is a bit surprising to me, yeah. Do you DM for kids? I could see this being an issue with younger players or newer players, but I always got the impression you're playing with a long standing group, so I'd be surprised by that kind of thing, absolutely. 



Lanefan said:


> The difference being that in genre fiction at least someone (the author) knows all along that the character has a hidden noble heritage.  In the reveal-on-the-fly instance in an RPG the DM didn't know ahead of time and it's entirely possible the player didn't either, if this decision was made on a whim; and that's my objection: had this been known all along even if just by the one player and the DM the odds are high that the player would have approached some things differently during the PC's adventuring career up to that point, and there's a chance the DM might have tried to work something in as well.
> 
> I don't see this as Discovery (in either big D or small d terms), I see it as nothing more than a headache for the DM - and maybe the player(s) - as they retcon the fiction to fit this new info in.




The author may or may not know something like that all along. You're thinking of it from the perspective a book that's already completed, and the players are reading it. They don't know what's to come, but the DM is the author, so he knows. But I think that an RPG is more like a book that's still being written rather than a book that's still being read. 

There's no reason that something like this can't come up during play. Now, my advocacy for this is not a blanket statement that anything can be decided at any time. I think if a player wanted to try and introduce something like this spontaneously, then he and the DM need to look at what's been established, and figure out how it could be so. There may be a case where it's not possible based on what's been established. I'm not saying that this kind of thing needs to always be approved. 

It's more that when others say it can't be done, I like to ask "why not?" 



Lanefan said:


> And by the way, did I mention there's nothing more evil than retcons?




No, but it's not surprising to hear you say that!

I personally don't mind them that much. I'd prefer to avoid them where possible, but it's impossible not to have some come up. Usually, they're my own fault. I've learned to accept it, and the best thing to do is not actually retcon something, but to just correct it. Just acknowledge the error and then move on rather than try to explain how the error wasn't actually an error. 

But, I don't think that retcons are as necessary to make things like the spontaneous noble work. Because when this is revealed, you immediately think of the questions relating to "how could this be so?"



Lanefan said:


> How?
> 
> How can I do anything with the idea of Falstaff in fact being King Falstaff if neither I nor his player know he's a king?  If I arbitrarily introduced this as DM I'd likely get in trouble, and if the player arbitrarily introduces it then that means he's been a king all along...which leads right back to retcons.




How can you not do anything with it? It's something that kind of needs to be addressed, no? 

Let's imagine an alternate world where this came up in one of your games and you decide to go with it....I don't think you're as clueless about how to deal with it as you seem to claim. You ask questions. 
- Why was this not revealed till now? Seems like maybe there would be an interesting answer there. 
- Why didn't the nobles of the last city we visited recognize the character? Possibly a mundane reason like they've never met, or perhaps just a case of context, or maybe the character was disguised. Or maybe there's another interesting answer here....maybe it involves magic, or a curse, or something like that. 
- Why not let the other PCs know before now? Come up with a reason that works. 

No retcons are necessary. this is simply new information that doesn't actually contradict the past. 

Do you see how this kind of thing may excite players or GMs? 



Lanefan said:


> If they wait for the hour my DM instinct wouldn't say anything if they decided not to wait for another hour.
> 
> It's if the scout dies ten minutes in and suddenly the party decide to - fancy that - get on the move after ten minutes that my DM instinct flies a red flag.




But what's the difference? At the table I mean. You're not sitting there actually counting out the minutes and then at minute ten the players say "we've waited long enough". You just say "the hour passes, and the scout doesn't return. What do you do?" Boom. Get to the fun. 



Lanefan said:


> Maybe they're not going to find that out.
> 
> All they know is that she didn't return.  Is she captured?  Dead?  Dying at the bottom of a cliff somewhere because she slipped and fell?  Teleported halfway round the world?  On her way back to town having abandoned the party and mission?




What? The players absolutely know. And the characters know that she didn't return......so I don't think it would be at all odd that they'd want to try and see what happened to her. Again, the players are concerned, and the characters would likewise be concerned.....so there's really no metagaming going on. Sure, if we want to really examine it, the players may be thinking of revenge while the characters are thinking of finding out what happened and hopefully helping their friend....but ultimately it's all leading to the same thing: moving forward. 

Why would you not let them find this out? Why would a DM ever steer the game away from such a potentially dramatic moment? 

I'm really not getting your point at all here.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I think you are really misinterpreting this
> 
> <snip>
> 
> you are stretching what they are saying into territory they clearly don't intend
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the point about the challenge of playing within the limits of your character, to me that very much suggests a thought about meta gaming.



What interpretation? Do you disagree that "there is no statement of any universal metagame ban"? Do you disagree that "the approach to rules questions, and the emphasis on collaboration/consensus rather than GM rulings and GM decision-making" is interesting?



Maxperson said:


> The first paragraph says you can't use player knowledge and have your PC's know it.



As [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] posted, it talks about player knowledge of chemistry, not player knowledge of the gameworld.



Maxperson said:


> The players working together just means that they shouldn't be jerks about  ideas on what to do.



It encourages metagaming - that is, making decisions having regard not to _the fiction_ and _the character_, but rather _what will make the game work as a game_.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think many readers of LotR would not agree with you that Aragorn's title was an "empty" one.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Because it got filled at the end.  Until then, he was unknown and his title really didn't mean much.
Click to expand...


I think this is an extremely shallow reading of LotR. Aragorn's status as the rightful king is fundamental to his character from the moment he enters the story.



Maxperson said:


> I get the balance reasons for the trade-off style of PC building, but it doesn't sit well with me when designers use balance to justify things that don't make sense.



Assuming you use the standard D&D rules for starting money, aren't they exactly an example of this?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Elf-to-dwarf would ideally sort of reflect the overall population ratio in the area, over the long run (i.e. if there's more elves in the local area than dwarves I'd expect to see more elves in play than dwarves and (though players can usually choose) I'd set up any random tables to reflect this.
> 
> MU-to-fighter has a vaguely suggested ratio in the 1e DMG of about 1-to-4, which has proven surprisingly accurate over the years in our games.
> 
> Nobility-to-commoner in medieval society would be about 1-to-a great many (1-to-hundreds? 1-to-thousands?), thus nobility - particularly high nobility e.g. monarchs or other rulers of places - as adventurers would also be somewhat rare one would think.  Lesser nobility e.g. landless knights might almost be dime-a-dozen in adventuring circles, such as your cavalier, but that carries little to no in-game advantage.



My comment really was intended as rhetorical humour. But given you've offered a literal reply: why would one expect any given party of characters to be a representative sample of the gameworld society as a whole? Society as a whole, in the typical fantasy game, is farmers and pastoralists. But in my experience very few players player farmers or herders.

Eg if 1 in 5 PCs is a MU, that's a much higher ratio than in the population as a whole, where far fewer than 1 in 5 people is a MU. Why is that acceptable, but a similar ratio for nobles not?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> What interpretation? Do you disagree that "there is no statement of any universal metagame ban"? Do you disagree that "the approach to rules questions, and the emphasis on collaboration/consensus rather than GM rulings and GM decision-making" is interesting?




I think it is strongly implied by the whole playing within the limits of your character. I think the second portion of your statement is a complete misreading of what it says. That has always been an aspect of rulings (in no way is it a collaboration versus GM rulings. It clearly says the GMs word is final on the matter. But look at my posts through both these threads. I've emphasized both GM rulings and building trust by working with your group. But none of that has anything do with the kind of collaboration and consensus on game fiction you've been talking about across both threads.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> You're thinking of it from the perspective a book that's already completed, and the players are reading it. They don't know what's to come, but the DM is the author, so he knows. But I think that an RPG is more like a book that's still being written rather than a book that's still being read.



Well, clearly an RPG _can_ be more like a book that's still being read. A lot of RPGing seems to take this form, as best I can tell.

But I agree with you that RPGing is _better_ when it is approached through the lens of group authorship as much as group audience. I think that brings out what is strong in RPGing (the collective creation) while reducing the impact of what is weak in RPGing (producing stories that are objectively good for a critical audience tends to require skilled authorship and skilled editing, whereas RPGing tends to be by amateurs, and the format doesn't provide for much editing).

This is a point that I, and some other posters, have been making for a long time.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you disagree that "there is no statement of any universal metagame ban"?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think it is strongly implied by the whole playing within the limits of your character.
Click to expand...


Well, I think your interpretation makes no sense. How can it be true both that _there is a universal metagame ban_ and that players are told to cooperate _so as to make the game work_? The latter is precisely an instruction to metagame!


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, a lot of this may happen at character generation. This may apply to many games, and 5E as presented does expect for a background to be selected when the character is created. But, there's no reason you can't let's say allow a player to delay the choice and then select his background at some point during play. This would allow for our spontaneous noble example. Or some other twist depending on how it's deployed. The advantage of this method is that the DM would perhaps be at least somewhat prepared because he'd be expecting a choice of some sort.



And the player would also be aware of the choice and could play to it if desired.



> Maybe. Depends on the game and what happens. Maybe it's a tragedy like Oedipus. The character starts out with a lot, and falls. Blades in the Dark pretty much assumes that the characters are doomed and it's just a matter of time until they're either killed by another faction or forced into retirement due to trauma.



Never played it, but I hear Call of Cthulhu has a similar inevitability to it. 



> Mine don't, so this is a bit surprising to me, yeah. Do you DM for kids? I could see this being an issue with younger players or newer players, but I always got the impression you're playing with a long standing group, so I'd be surprised by that kind of thing, absolutely.



And because it's a long-standing group I know exactly what I have: one player in particular who will push for any in-fiction advantage he can get (though at times they all will to some extent); and other players who will be resentful should this squeaky-wheeling get someone any extra grease.

My means of shutting some of this down is to make backgrounds (other than the most basic ones) random.



> The author may or may not know something like that all along. You're thinking of it from the perspective a book that's already completed, and the players are reading it. They don't know what's to come, but the DM is the author, so he knows. But I think that an RPG is more like a book that's still being written rather than a book that's still being read.



Even when a book's still being written the author almost certainly has some clue as to what makes each significant character tick and a bare-bones idea about its background.  As Aragorn has come up as an example I'll use him: at what point did JRRT decide Aragorn would be a hidden king? (my guess is it came pretty early on, before pen was seriously put to paper)



> There's no reason that something like this can't come up during play. Now, my advocacy for this is not a blanket statement that anything can be decided at any time. I think if a player wanted to try and introduce something like this spontaneously, then he and the DM need to look at what's been established, and figure out how it could be so. There may be a case where it's not possible based on what's been established. I'm not saying that this kind of thing needs to always be approved.



The sense I'm getting from some in here is that yes, it always has to be approved if the system allows it.



> It's more that when others say it can't be done, I like to ask "why not?"



As do I, but on this issue I answered the 'why not?' question about 35 years ago. 



> No, but it's not surprising to hear you say that!
> 
> I personally don't mind them that much. I'd prefer to avoid them where possible, but it's impossible not to have some come up. Usually, they're my own fault. I've learned to accept it, and the best thing to do is not actually retcon something, but to just correct it. Just acknowledge the error and then move on rather than try to explain how the error wasn't actually an error.
> 
> But, I don't think that retcons are as necessary to make things like the spontaneous noble work. Because when this is revealed, you immediately think of the questions relating to "how could this be so?"



How could this be so is only one of the questions that will arise, however, and probably the easiest to answer.

Much harder if not impossible to answer is the question "What would have happened differently in the fiction had this been known all along, at least by that PC's player and the DM?"; and that's always the very first question that leaps to my mind.  And the problem is that if anything would or even might have happened differently in the fiction then what actually did happen has just been rendered invalid, along with everything since that might have been affected by this initial difference (an in-fiction butterfly effect, as it were).  Put another way, it retroactively causes those sessions to have been largely a waste of everyone's time at the table; wich I think we can all agree is hardly a desirable outcome. 

(side note: this is also why allowing PCs access to any sort of controllable time travel is a Bad Idea; I learned this one the hard way a few campaigns back)



> How can you not do anything with it? It's something that kind of needs to be addressed, no?



Yes, by informing the player that it's far too late to be making a past-fiction-altering decision like that.  However, if one must insist on allowing it, then...



> Let's imagine an alternate world where this came up in one of your games and you decide to go with it....I don't think you're as clueless about how to deal with it as you seem to claim. You ask questions.
> - Why was this not revealed till now? Seems like maybe there would be an interesting answer there.
> - Why didn't the nobles of the last city we visited recognize the character? Possibly a mundane reason like they've never met, or perhaps just a case of context, or maybe the character was disguised. Or maybe there's another interesting answer here....maybe it involves magic, or a curse, or something like that.
> - Why not let the other PCs know before now? Come up with a reason that works.



All of these can be done provided a) the answer to a preceding question "WHY is this being revealed now?" passes muster (e.g. it's not being done just to gain some immediate advantage either in the fiction or at the table) and b) there's no obvious place where knowledge of this by either the PC's player or DM would or could have had any impact on what has gone before in the played fiction.

Get past those - which ain't easy - and yes, then we're into exactly the questions you ask here.  But it's point b) where most such things will run aground, unless the campaign has only just started.



> No retcons are necessary. this is simply new information that doesn't actually contradict the past.
> 
> Do you see how this kind of thing may excite players or GMs?



As a GM it sure wouldn't excite me if I didn't know about it ahead of time as now I have to stop and think about any point b) headaches this is going to cause.

As a player the excitement comes from having made the decision back at char-gen and then roleplaying keeping it secret (I've done this numerous times - played a character with some hidden but very significant thing to it e.g. a hidden class); but the GM would always be in on it.  There'd be no excitement in just coming up with it on the spur of the moment and dropping it in like a bombshell - unless my goal is to be an asshat and disrupt things.



> But what's the difference? At the table I mean. You're not sitting there actually counting out the minutes and then at minute ten the players say "we've waited long enough". You just say "the hour passes, and the scout doesn't return. What do you do?" Boom. Get to the fun.



Sure (other than potential interruptons e.g. wandering monsters), that's how it'd go - with one exception: I'd first ask if they do anything while she's gone other than just wait.  For all I know they might want to send another scout off in a different direction...   If nothing, then I'd say OK, the hour's up and she's not come back - what now?

(side story: I'm reminded of a party I once played in that had serious - and justified - trust issues: four (!) hidden assassins, all operating independently, in a party of seven.  We sent out a scout to check a castle they were supposed to be infiltrating; then another PC* stealthily followed the first scout to make sure she didn't turn us in, then another followed the follower (same reason), and a fourth followed the lot (I think hoping to knock off one of the other three).  So, four characters - all assassins - out sneaking around while the remaining three waited behind...for a few minutes, until they decided to go around, knock on the castle's front door, and warn the occupants of the approaching sneaks before hightailing it to the woods never to be seen again.  End of party.....)

* - I think this one was my PC; it was 30 years ago and my memory's a bit fuzzy.  Either that or I was the third sneak.



> What? The players absolutely know.



My position is that they shouldn't, and that their knowledge would thus equal that of their PCs.

And if they do know, it's still on them to play as if they don't.



> And the characters know that she didn't return......so I don't think it would be at all odd that they'd want to try and see what happened to her. Again, the players are concerned, and the characters would likewise be concerned.....so there's really no metagaming going on. Sure, if we want to really examine it, the players may be thinking of revenge while the characters are thinking of finding out what happened and hopefully helping their friend....but ultimately it's all leading to the same thing: moving forward.
> 
> Why would you not let them find this out? Why would a DM ever steer the game away from such a potentially dramatic moment?
> 
> I'm really not getting your point at all here.



Quite a bit of the drama is in the not knowing, and in the steps taken to try to find out, and in the possible consequences of so doing.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> My comment really was intended as rhetorical humour. But given you've offered a literal reply: why would one expect any given party of characters to be a representative sample of the gameworld society as a whole? Society as a whole, in the typical fantasy game, is farmers and pastoralists. But in my experience very few players player farmers or herders.
> 
> Eg if 1 in 5 PCs is a MU, that's a much higher ratio than in the population as a whole, where far fewer than 1 in 5 people is a MU. Why is that acceptable, but a similar ratio for nobles not?



Because the party is, by convention, made up of adventuring characters who are usually a minority within the overall population.  And so when we look at the MU-to-fighter ratio we're only looking within the adventuring subest of the overall population.

When looking at backgrounds, however, the entire population comes into it as an adventurer can come from any background - farmer, miner, merchant, orphan, knight, jeweller, sailor, pirate, slave, and hundreds of others of which one uncommon one is nobility.

Within any given party, of course there's perhaps going to be some wild skewing of all of these ratios - maybe this time the players decided to take an all-thief party into the field and all of them happen to come from a merchanting background, and to top it off they all chose Part-Orc for their race.  But over the long to very long term over many characters things should in theory move toward a representative average.

Lan-"the character who recently became my longest-serving out of all of 'em has as her previous profession: herder"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, I think your interpretation makes no sense. How can it be true both that _there is a universal metagame ban_ and that players are told to cooperate _so as to make the game work_? The latter is precisely an instruction to metagame!



Yes, which is why I don't insist on player and-or PC co-operation within the fiction. 

Sometimes it'll happen, sometimes it won't, but I don't enforce it until-unless disputes leave the fiction and move out of character.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Well, I think your interpretation makes no sense. How can it be true both that _there is a universal metagame ban_ and that players are told to cooperate _so as to make the game work_? The latter is precisely an instruction to metagame!




No it isn't. You are once again building a straw man here. That isn't meta gaming at all. I don't think Maxperson has been advocating against people discussing the game during play (or rulings the GM makes). He is talking about players using out of character knowledge to inform their actions in play. A ban on that kind of meta gaming is in no way contradictory with what the text advises. 

Here is the wikipedia definition: 

Metagaming is a term used in role-playing games, which describes a player's use of real-life knowledge concerning the state of the game to determine their character's actions, when said character has no relevant knowledge or awareness under the circumstances. This can refer to plot information in the game such as secrets or events occurring away from the character, as well as facets of the game's mechanics such as abstract statistics or the precise limits of abilities. Metagaming is an example of "breaking character", as the character is making decisions based on information they couldn't know and thus would not make in reality.


----------



## Numidius

Lanefan said:


> Even when a book's still being written the author almost certainly has some clue as to what makes each significant character tick and a bare-bones idea about its background.  As Aragorn has come up as an example I'll use him: at what point did JRRT decide Aragorn would be a hidden king? (my guess is it came pretty early on, before pen was seriously put to paper)
> 
> -----
> 
> Quite a bit of the drama is in the not knowing, and in the steps taken to try to find out, and in the possible consequences of so doing.




A better analogy is serialized fiction. Conan by Howard, or the X-men by Claremont, are the first that come to mind. 

---

Instead of drama, I would call it suspance, anticipation, taking risks, trepidation for the unknown.


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> No it isn't.




Yes, by your own source, it is metagaming:

_In role-playing games, metagaming is a term often used to describe players' use of assumed characteristics of the game. *In particular, metagaming often refers to having an in-game character act on knowledge that the player has access to but the character should not.* For example, tricking Medusa to stare at a mirror when the character has never heard of Medusa and would not be aware of her petrifying stare.

For instance, a player might adjust his character's actions if the player has some foreknowledge of the long-term intentions of the gamemaster, or, more commonly, the gamemaster's tendency to have (or lack) mercy on players whose characters do things that would cause them to fail at their objectives. *A player changing how they play the game based on their knowledge of the gamemaster would be metagaming.* _

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming#Role-playing_games


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> Yes, by your own source, it is metagaming:
> 
> _In role-playing games, metagaming is a term often used to describe players' use of assumed characteristics of the game. *In particular, metagaming often refers to having an in-game character act on knowledge that the player has access to but the character should not.* For example, tricking Medusa to stare at a mirror when the character has never heard of Medusa and would not be aware of her petrifying stare.
> 
> For instance, a player might adjust his character's actions if the player has some foreknowledge of the long-term intentions of the gamemaster, or, more commonly, the gamemaster's tendency to have (or lack) mercy on players whose characters do things that would cause them to fail at their objectives. *A player changing how they play the game based on their knowledge of the gamemaster would be metagaming.* _
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming#Role-playing_games




That is not the wikipedia page i quoted. I was quoting this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_(role-playing_games)

But even so, I think that still isn't really the case. I mean they are clearly talking about things like the player taking the left passage because he knows the GM always puts traps in the right passageway. They are not talking about talking about rules disputes, giving the GM feedback, etc. To me it is just pretty obvious things are being projected onto that Runequest that don't really apply.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Just a quick bit of play that happened my last 5e session:

One of the characters has entered into the pit-fighting arena to earn a bit of money and fame, and because he's a dwarven battle-rager.  Over the past few sessions, he's made a small name for himself in the amateur leagues, having won a district amateur championship tourney.  He's also spent his winnings buying up minor magical enhancements to his armor, so that now it smokes on command and the eyes of his helmet glow red.  Nifty effect, been fun so far, and the player is, obviously, loving this downtime sideline for his character.  The character had just been invited to the pro-circuit as an opening act (ie, undercard), and the character hopes to earn a spot at the top of the card.  Really, at this point, this is the WWE of pit-fighting, with characters and everything.  It's been a hoot.

So, then, last session, another character tried to improve his status with one of the city Factions (this is a Sigil based game), the Fraternity of Order, but was stymied by a previous association with the Xaosects (imagine trying to get in good with the DA while having a record with some radical terrorists and you won't be far off).  Some rolls were failed, so the Fraternity wasn't very friendly and set a task of bringing a notorious criminal to justice.  Some more investigation, and the party heads off to apprehend a foul murderer hiding in the Hive (very bad neighborhood) with his gang.

Things go very, very, badly for the party.  On them, they split up and ran all over the place, alerting the entire gang almost at once while being unable to provide support.  Sigh.  But, one of the things that the gang had was a pro-level pit-fighter named Maul, known for his, wait for it, use of a maul.  Hey, I'm not winning awards, here.  So, as soon as he was woken up by the commotion, and after hearing the barbarian character's warcry he's popularized with his pit-fighting persona ("TIME FOR HUGS!!!" -- he wears spiked armor, so...), Maul ran out and issued a challenge.  Well, the barbarian failed to overcome Maul (he was already beat up by a group of thugs), and the entire party also went down with him (he was already the last one standing, did I mention they split up going four separate ways?). 

Enter one of my few houserules of this game -- your character can only die if you say so.  No one said so, so the second half of that comes in which is "I get to do something bad to you in exchange."  So, what I did to the barbarian player was to have Maul take the barbarian's magical greataxe, which will now be used in the pit as a prop.  The barbarian's player is over-the-moon about this. Sure, he's lost a nice magic item, and his character's reputation has suffered a bad blow (and also he was generally robbed by the gang), but he now has a full up WWE style nemesis.  I've actually never once had a player so damn happy he lost a fight (and gear, and rep). This outcome alone has made this experimental houserule worth it's metaphorical weight in gold.

The other characters have similar bad things -- the ex-Illithid-thrall will be finding out he volunteered to become a thrall (I don't know why, but that's something the player will really chew on), the Grave cleric has become haunted, and the Warforged rogue has... met his maker.

And the amount of this planned before the game?  None.  Well, I had a few good city-slums maps and it was a simple matter to build up a criminal gang from stock NPCs (some bandits, some thugs, an assassin for the murder, a few scouts for lookouts, and a gladiator for the, well, gladiator).  I let the players lead with ideas and used checks to determine outcomes.  I did set DCs, but I have a handly, public chart for DCs for dealing with NPCs of various dispositions, and the player looking to get in with the Fraternity knew they were unfriendly (due to the outcome of a failed roll to improve relations with the Xaosects leading to a bender and a vague recollection that something went very badly wrong), so he knew going in it would be a uphill battle.

So, for me, I've tried to use say yes or roll the dice a bit (it's still 5e, so it will fight you if you go too far with this) for the player's downtime* goals. I'm also using fail-forward techniques to generate new circumstances.  Another example for this was the barbarian's attempt to find out more about his out-of-the-ring nemesis, the man(?) who had his clan and his mentor slaughtered.  I introduced a complication in a previous mission (the party recovers things as a means of making money) as being caused by his nemesis, so he was looking for him.  Three checks were made, two failed, so I introduced that the nemesis was no longer in Sigil, that people were scared of crossing him, and that the nemesis was looking for information about an artifact that the party was also tracking.  None of this was anything the player really wanted to hear, but it was useful information nonetheless.

/ramble



*I'm using a downtime phase of 1 game week with a few very broad activities that I have some general rules for adjudication, in this case the player attempted to Improve Relations with a faction, which is set of three checks depending on what's being specifically attempted.  There's results for failing none, one, or two or more checks (essentially, you get everything you wanted, you get some of what you wanted but at a cost, and things don't go your way and you've made it worse).  I'm trying sets of three checks for things to generate a more granular outcome than a single pass/fail check.


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> That is not the wikipedia page i quoted. I was quoting this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_(role-playing_games)
> 
> But even so, I think that still isn't really the case. I mean they are clearly talking about things like the player taking the left passage because he knows the GM always puts traps in the right passageway. They are not talking about talking about rules disputes, giving the GM feedback, etc. To me it is just pretty obvious things are being projected onto that Runequest that don't really apply.




That one old DnD grognard would reply in discussion about metagaming: "what do you call hit points?"

Which is to say, there is always some metagaming going on, if just to streamline the game. The RQ advice is just to act in character. I can say definitely that the term metagaming is fairly new, we didn't use it in the 70's or 80's, for sure.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Because the party is, by convention, made up of adventuring characters who are usually a minority within the overall population.  And so when we look at the MU-to-fighter ratio we're only looking within the adventuring subest of the overall population.
> 
> When looking at backgrounds, however, the entire population comes into it as an adventurer can come from any background - farmer, miner, merchant, orphan, knight, jeweller, sailor, pirate, slave, and hundreds of others of which one uncommon one is nobility.
> 
> Within any given party, of course there's perhaps going to be some wild skewing of all of these ratios - maybe this time the players decided to take an all-thief party into the field and all of them happen to come from a merchanting background, and to top it off they all chose Part-Orc for their race.  But over the long to very long term over many characters things should in theory move toward a representative average.
> 
> Lan-"the character who recently became my longest-serving out of all of 'em has as her previous profession: herder"-efan




What a weird thing this is!  It's okay to be the rare portion of society when it comes to you class (which is what, exactly?), but that rarity cannot every translate into backgrounds.  Because, you know, in a pseudo-medieval society the vast majority of men-at-arms are either favored retainers of a noble house or minor nobility themselves.  What, praytell, what do you think a knight is but a noble?!

Those that have the time and resources to pursue training in many of the classes are already going to be predominately nobility, if you're hewing to a pseudo-medieval (or even Renaissance) world.  I just don't get the 'well, 1 in 4 party members are mages, who've spent years getting super-expensive training to go out and try and kill some goblins with their 1 magic missile spell (because, you know, people that invested in that education are going to let that happen) but the odds of these people receiving pricelessly expensive educations are going to be a cross-section of the population at large rather than the subset of that population that can actually afford such education.  This makes total sense.  Or rather, it doesn't, but it does showcase a common weirdness about how D&D has generally treated such things as world consistency and coherence -- which is to say pretty much not at all.  I gave up a long time ago trying to create believable gameworlds where characters are not nearly uniquely special within the world as a fool's errand.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> the party is, by convention, made up of adventuring characters who are usually a minority within the overall population. And so when we look at the MU-to-fighter ratio we're only looking within the adventuring subest of the overall population.
> 
> When looking at backgrounds, however, the entire population comes into it as an adventurer can come from any background - farmer, miner, merchant, orphan, knight, jeweller, sailor, pirate, slave, and hundreds of others of which one uncommon one is nobility.



Who established these conventions, and the contrast they draw between "class" and "background" - Lanefan's table?

Your complaint was that it is unrealistic to permit significant numbers of PCs of noble background. But now you say you are happy with realism giving way to a "convention" whereby a signifcant nunber of PCs are MUs or highly-trained warriors.

Well maybe at some tables there is a convention that PCs can be nables in larger-than-population-typical numbers! Or to put it another way - can you not see how arbitrary and idiosyncratic the distinctions are that you are drawing?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> There was a game that I was playing in where we had to find a powerful witch in order to stop a powerful group of NPCs from having their way with our homeland.



Where did this come from? I am assuming the GM - that is, I am assuming that it was not a player action declaration or an element of player-atuhored background that made the witch a focus of play.



Maxperson said:


> The leader told me that he had my wife and kids captured and that when we found the witch, I was to call them via a magical device so that they could come and get her. I was told that if I said anything to anyone else, my wife and kids would be killed.



I am also assuming that this came from the GM, in the sense that the leader, and the leader's connection to your family, were not things that resulted from player action declaration nor from an element of player-authored backgorund.



Maxperson said:


> we came across a hut in the swamp with an old woman who was an herbalist. I had the great idea of using the device to call the NPCs on this woman, who I knew wasn't the witch we were looking for, but who could easily be mistaken for a witch. That way I could alert my companions as to what was going on via an "honest mistake."



OK. This reads like a clever puzzle solution. But am I right in taking it that the herbalist was a story element established by the GM, and made no particular reference to elements of PC backstory or PC goals?

Also, did the fact that your "great idea" presumalby had rather sorry implications for the herbalist (who, as you present it, seems to be harmless at worst, generous at best) come into play here?



Maxperson said:


> The NPCs arrived to collect the "witch" and when they did, they took one look at the girl we had rescued and thanked me for calling them to get the witch. Apparently the girl was who we were looking for and nobody in the party had any idea.



This seems like a GM reveal/"gotcha". Was it pre-authored, or did the GM make this decision so as to negate your solution?



Maxperson said:


> It was a very hard choice, but I made it and stood with the NPCs telling the rest of the group that they had my family and I would kill anyone who tried to stop them from taking the witch. Now the rest of the group was in the position of letting her go and allowing the NPCs to retain control, or attack and possibly kill the friend they grew up with and adventuring companion. They eventually relented and the girl was taken by the NPCs.



And what resulted from this? Were your family released? Did you homeland get destroyed?

The hard choice seems to be between two options both established by the GM - _lose family_ or _lose homeland_. Is that correct?



Numidius said:


> So, we have Gm controlled Npcs that kidnap Gm contr. Npcs that force Pc* to search for a Gm cntr Npc** in order to invade a land of Gm cntr Npcs...
> 
> Man, if that's not railroad, I don't know what else could be.
> 
> I would dare say that Gm is violating the Czege Principle
> 
> *because family
> **curiously appearing in the midst of events; also gotcha moment in the end



Well, I did ask for examples of GM-driven RPGing, so in that sense there's no surprise that the example should be one that is heavily GM-driven!

Taking that context as given, the two things that I am curious about are the two moments of player choice: _to summon the NPCs to attack an innocent herbalist_ and _to stand with the NPCs at the end_. I am very interested in the first in particular, as it seems to be harder choice - sacrificing an innocent person to save one's family.



Maxperson said:


> the PCs set out and started tracking the orcs hoping to catch up with them and save the kids. Towards the evening of the first day they came across a place where the orcs had made their camp. They found an area with a fire pit and while investigating the fire pit and the area around it, they found some child sized bones.
> 
> Everyone at the table got really quiet as they realized that the orcs were using the kids as food. Suddenly the rescue got really serious as they realized that they were now in a time crunch to rescue the kids that remained before more were killed and eaten. The decided to forgo resting and push through to gain ground on the orcs and hope that they would come upon them in time, even though that meant taking penalties for lack of rest.





Numidius said:


> Ok so we have some pretty straightforward bad Npc that threaten lives of innocent Npc: linear railroad with evident psicological use of Force (because children + heroes pc, for Goodness sake).
> And the Drama is, what? A metagamey resource management?



I don't find this example as interesting as the first one. The only player choice is to take a modest mechanical penalty in order to establish some colour ("we're moving quickly"). It's not clear whether the colour is _mere_ colour, or whether it factors into the actual resolution, because it's not clear what mechanics (if any) are being used to resolve the chase. And the issue of how many children are eaten and how many saved by getting to the orcs at time T rather than time T+1 seems to be entirely under the GM's control.

But anyway, I would expect this sort of thing to be pretty standard in "heroes vs orcs" FRPGing.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> He is talking about players using out of character knowledge to inform their actions in play. A ban on that kind of meta gaming is in no way contradictory with what the text advises.



The text advises players to _inform their declared actions_ by considerations of _the need, in the real world, to maintain harmony at the table_. That second thing is "out of character knowledge" - the _characters_ don't know that they are pieces in a game whose participants can't easily have fun if the characters don't hang out together in a more-or-less friendly fashion.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> The text advises players to _inform their declared actions_ by considerations of _the need, in the real world, to maintain harmony at the table_. That second thing is "out of character knowledge" - the _characters_ don't know that they are pieces in a game whose participants can't easily have fun if the characters don't hang out together in a more-or-less friendly fashion.




But they ate just  talking about not being a jerk (i.e. killing another PC and saying 'that is what my character would'). You are stretching the meaning very far from the intent


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> That one old DnD grognard would reply in discussion about metagaming: "what do you call hit points?"
> 
> Which is to say, there is always some metagaming going on, if just to streamline the game. .




Not following the point here


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> But they ate just  talking about not being a jerk (i.e. killing another PC and saying 'that is what my character would').



No they're not. They're also talking about sticking together and cooperating as a party ("the participants work together for a common goal").

By way of contrast, here's an extract from some advice from Ron Edwards on how to run a setting-focused game using a set of rules that doesn't directly address the issue:

Preparation
1. Choose a location. The group must discuss and become enthusiastic about the setting, and in many cases, the game organizer will have to present a home-grown summary text painting a big and sketchy picture of the whole setting as well as a more detailed look at the location.

2. Make player-characters in it. In doing so, drive this into your brain: _**** “the adventurer.”_

• Not all types of characters described in the character creation options are OK. They need to be characters who would definitely be at that location, not just someone who could be there. They have something they ordinarily do there, and are engaged in doing it.

• All characters, player-characters too, have lives, jobs, families, acquaintances, homes, and everything of that sort. Even if not native to that location, they have equivalents there.

• Player-characters do not comprise a “team.” They are who they are, individually. Each of them carries a few NPCs along, implied by various details, and those NPCs should be identified. It is helpful for at least one, preferably more of them to be small walking soap operas.​
Post-character creation prep
3. Along with the adventurer, _**** “the adventure.”_

• They aren’t going anywhere, as in, filling their backpacks and traipsing somewhere besides their immediate location. We’re in this location because this is where the action is.

• Note that sometimes the player-characters wind up in the same culturally-acknowledged “group” and sometimes they don’t. Either way is fine.​
4. Identify the immediate tensions the player-characters and their associated NPCs provoke or experience.

5. Aggravate the situation with a Trigger event – anything which destabilizes one or more of power, money, status, or resources.

• Consider everything about that location! Geography, ethnicity, politics, economics, religion, cultural practices, and just keep going with anything and everything related to all that stuff.​
And now, into play
6. Situation: given the Trigger event, the political becomes ever more personal.

• Specifics: consider who’s where, doing what – effectively, play your NPCs with verve.​
The contrast between this and the RQ text I quoted is pretty clear: the idea is to set up characters, and a game context around those character, which will generate dramatic action _without_ any need for player metagaming about "the party", cooperation, etc.

The bottom line is this: it doesn't stop being _metagaming_ just because it's metagaming that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] doesn't notice, or doesn't object to. (And note that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] _does_ notice it and _does_ object to it.)


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> Not following the point here




No, I don't think you get it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Why is Ron Edwards the expert on setting focused games here?


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> No, I don't think you get it.




Be polite man


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> Be polite man




I am noticing you're not getting what metagaming is. I am the soul of kindness, however, I feel you are trying to create a distraction.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> I am noticing you're not getting what metagaming is. I am the soul of kindness, however, I feel you are trying to create a distraction.




Well, you'd be wrong Dragoner. On both counts. I just didn't understand the point you were trying to make. Could you rephrase it?


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> So, we have Gm controlled Npcs that kidnap Gm contr. Npcs that force Pc* to search for a Gm cntr Npc** in order to invade a land of Gm cntr Npcs...
> 
> Man, if that's not railroad, I don't know what else could be.




It was absolutely not a railroad.  A railroad is robbing the player of choice and forcing him down a narrow track.  I had plenty of choices.  I could save my family.  I could save the people.  I could have said screw it and gone to Waterdeep to become a sailor.  I could have enlisted my companions to try and free my family, despite being told that would kill them.  I could have retired and become a farmer.  There was no railroad that I was forced down.



> Not player knowledge of Real World, we're debating, but P K of Game World, and the quoted part from RQ doesn't say anything on the latter.
> 
> It does speak of Pc boundaries, so everithing is still open to debate where this limit is, but the provided example warns only on OBVIOUS real world knowledge.




One example doesn't overcome that it very clearly said the players first duty was to play within the limits of the CHARACTER, not the player.  It's talking about all player knowledge, not just real world or game knowledge, but just in case, I will point this out.  The Monster Manual is in the real world, and it and everything in it is real world knowledge.  We use that real world knowledge to play the game and construct the game world, but if real world knowledge isn't allowed into the game, the player cannot use any knowledge gained from the Monster Manual.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Perhaps I misremembered, but I thought you compared the troll bit to a unique monster and the players demanding to know about that, and that seems like an extreme example.




I didn't compare them.  I used your logic and applied it to a similar situation.  If the DM is a jerk for ignoring group A's desire to avoid pretending not to know about weaknesses, then he is also a jerk if he ignores group B's desire not to be surprised by monster weaknesses and strengths.  If the DM should allow group A to use player knowledge to kill trolls and such, then he should also give out all unknown strength and weakness information to group B.  



> I think whether or not they find out through "reasonable" means is largely DM dependent, no?
> 
> Unless the players all get some kind of lore roll for every creature they encounter and then their knowledge is based on the results of the roll.




It's more player dependent than DM dependent.  They come up with the ideas on how to find out the knowledge. The DM just establishes the odds of success or failure as fairly as he can. 



> Is this what you do with your player backgrounds? The only example I recall that you've shared at this point is that one PC had a hermit friend who you might have show up one day. If you have others,  it'd be cool if you share them. If I missed any, my apologies...it's a long thread and I haven't caught up on all new posts yet.




I only provided one example, but I also mentioned that I enjoy bringing in PC backgrounds, because it makes the players very happen when that sort of thing happens.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I think this is an extremely shallow reading of LotR. Aragorn's status as the rightful king is fundamental to his character from the moment he enters the story.




And yet virtually nobody knows, so his title is empty.  He could have said he was King of the Deer for all that it mattered to the world at large.  At least until he stepped into the role and revealed himself.



> Assuming you use the standard D&D rules for starting money, aren't they exactly an example of this?




How so?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The bigger headache, no matter what the rules are, is if you're declaring you're a noble now that means you've in fact been a noble all along; which in turn means the question of your entourage (what it consists of, its general level of loyalty, its capabilities, and [most important to play!] _whether any of it would have come with you into the field_) should have been dealt with before you first entered play.




It strikes me that this entire concept, and all the baggage attendant onto it, which includes a lot of the anti-meta-gaming creed, as well as the whole "you're just a small guy without any special place in the world" is all basically just a shadow of Gygax (or again maybe I should be more fair to call it a shadow of Dave Arneson). 

Particularly Blackmoor, from what I understand, was basically a pure 'skilled play' experience. The mechanics of the game were merely a tool, much like weather tables in Kriegspiel games. EVERYTHING was a challenge to the player, his knowledge and skill at play of the game. Any advantage imputed to a player (his PC) HAD to be earned because this was a competitive game! At the same time, skill must produce advantages, so there was always the nut of a problem there.

The irony is that the lesson "never give the players anything for free" was fully absorbed, but the actual context of skilled play dungeoneering was lost! There is no reason, from a standpoint of how a game should or must work for these things to exist anymore, unless you really do play very much like Dave did (and if so, that's great). But in terms of modern D&D play these restrictions are, well, highly restrictive! And they carry with them a sort of antagonistic play paradigm where a main part of the DM's job is to crack down on players, to make them toe some sort of line and not get out of hand. Its weird, and to be perfectly honest [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] a lot of your responses to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] kind of reek of it. 

It isn't to put down any style of play, it just REALLY does seem very unexamined, like this is maybe how I would have thought if this was 1974 and D&D was just starting.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Where did this come from? I am assuming the GM - that is, I am assuming that it was not a player action declaration or an element of player-atuhored background that made the witch a focus of play.




The DM supplies the story hook and we decided to go with it.



> I am also assuming that this came from the GM, in the sense that the leader, and the leader's connection to your family, were not things that resulted from player action declaration nor from an element of player-authored backgorund.




I authored my family.  Putting my family into play allowed them to be the target of the world at large.



> But am I right in taking it that the herbalist was a story element established by the GM, and made no particular reference to elements of PC backstory or PC goals?




The herbalist was an encounter.  I have no idea what the encounter was originally intended to be as I cut it short by summoning the bad guys.



> Also, did the fact that your "great idea" presumalby had rather sorry implications for the herbalist (who, as you present it, seems to be harmless at worst, generous at best) come into play here?




She was not happy with me, and went inside after it was over and refused to speak with us further.



> This seems like a GM reveal/"gotcha". Was it pre-authored, or did the GM make this decision so as to negate your solution?




The girl was always the witch and not a "gotcha."  We would have been given the clues to figure it out eventually, but we never got to that point due to my "great idea."  It ended up being a surprise to us(and the DM who did not expect me to do that) when she was revealed to us in the way that it played out.



> And what resulted from this? Were your family released? Did you homeland get destroyed?




They took the girl.  We decided to try and free my family, then rescue the witch.  The campaign ended early due to reasons not pertaining to the game, so we never did save our homeland.  We got my family and were close to the witch when it ended.



> The hard choice seems to be between two options both established by the GM - _lose family_ or _lose homeland_. Is that correct?




No.  The NPC game me those choices, but I had any number of options that I could have taken.  I could have attacked them and died.  I could have been overcome by conflicting emotions and just retreated from both options, leaving the land to fend for itself.  I could have picked one of the two options given.  I could have risked my family and got my companions to try and free them, even though I was told that my family would be killed if I did that, and that we were being watched.  And more.  We play in a sandbox game.  No choices are forced on us.

Well, I did ask for examples of GM-driven RPGing, so in that sense there's no surprise that the example should be one that is heavily GM-driven!



> Taking that context as given, the two things that I am curious about are the two moments of player choice: _to summon the NPCs to attack an innocent herbalist_ and _to stand with the NPCs at the end_. I am very interested in the first in particular, as it seems to be harder choice - sacrificing an innocent person to save one's family.




My character's belief was that they would show up due to my "mistake," revealing my situation in a manner that would not get my family killed as I was obeying their instruction.  He did not think they would kill the herbalist as she was not the witch.  It was a risk for sure, because they might have decided to kill her anyway, but he was desperate to find a way out of the bind he was in.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> It was absolutely not a railroad.  A railroad is robbing the player of choice and forcing him down a narrow track.  I had plenty of choices.  I could save my family.  I could save the people.  I could have said screw it and gone to Waterdeep to become a sailor.  I could have enlisted my companions to try and free my family, despite being told that would kill them.  I could have retired and become a farmer.  There was no railroad that I was forced down.
> 
> 
> 
> One example doesn't overcome that it very clearly said the players first duty was to play within the limits of the CHARACTER, not the player.  It's talking about all player knowledge, not just real world or game knowledge, but just in case, I will point this out.  The Monster Manual is in the real world, and it and everything in it is real world knowledge.  We use that real world knowledge to play the game and construct the game world, but if real world knowledge isn't allowed into the game, the player cannot use any knowledge gained from the Monster Manual.



My character knows trolls' weakness is fire.  His uncle told him.  Prove me wrong.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The irony is that the lesson "never give the players anything for free" was fully absorbed, but the actual context of skilled play dungeoneering was lost! There is no reason, from a standpoint of how a game should or must work for these things to exist anymore, unless you really do play very much like Dave did (and if so, that's great). But in terms of modern D&D play these restrictions are, well, highly restrictive! And they carry with them a sort of antagonistic play paradigm where a main part of the DM's job is to crack down on players, to make them toe some sort of line and not get out of hand. Its weird, and to be perfectly honest [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] a lot of your responses to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] kind of reek of it.




I actually enjoy giving out things to the players, and do so every campaign.  The reason nobility is different is because of just how powerful it is.  The last noble in my game was a high ranking noblewoman as the player rolled really well as second time and managed to be born into a family with holdings and influence roughly equal to a Duke.  When the party came back to her country, they needed help.  Due to time constraints, she was only able to get several thousand gold and one powerful magic item.  Had they had time to bring more of her family's influence into play, she could have gotten a lot more.  If a player wants that kind of power and resources, he's going to have to roll it.  I'm not going to allow that to be picked.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> My character knows trolls' weakness is fire.  His uncle told him.  Prove me wrong.




His uncle died 6 years before he was born.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The idea that having PCs be nobles will break the game in some way, and thus needs super-special GM policing, isn't something that I've seen in my play experience.




Again, this is simply a relic. In OD&D, or B/X, you would all start with a toss of 3d6x10 gold pieces and equip yourselves as best you could, then plunge into the dungeon in the hope of gathering loot to spend on more equipment, etc. This was the very ur-game of D&D, the origin and font of all its traditions and concepts. Even magic items and such were originally just sort of lucky finds or rewards for cleverness that let you loot better, or increase survival.

In that paradigm, to admit of a character which has an entourage, or even a suite of armor, is grossly unfair! The game is a contest in which the players compete (even though the PCs cooperate, this is a subtle point). A suite of chain armor was 90gp, a BIG advantage! You don't just give that away, its to be earned.

This is literally the schema which is still being played out in all these protestations of strictures, even though the form of the game is almost utterly different and they make little sense today.

Consider, this kind of thinking is almost meaningless in 4e. The PCs totally cooperate as a team, with no provision for any other possibility. It doesn't matter where some extra equipment comes from, or who's background produces the companion character. At worst one might consider how to insure that the 'noble' and the other character backgrounds lead to reasonably equitable 'screen time'.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Why is Ron Edwards the expert on setting focused games here?



I don't care whether you think he's an expert or an amateur. The point is that he shows how a game can proceed with _metagaming_ about "the party", "team cooperation" etc - which helps us identify the presence of such metagaming advice in the RQ rules.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

S'mon said:


> Plenty of obstacles do kill. Pits & chasms are an obvious example. PCs can get themselves
> killed trying to leap the chasm, or can try climbing down it - hopefully with rope - or go look for another path. Slow but deadly monsters are very similar in game effect.




But a chasm is passive, so you can choose to engage it or not, and it can be defeated with ropes, spikes, etc. Sure, it is dangerous, but it isn't by any means a 'gotcha!'. Pits likewise, unless they're hidden somehow. In that case my comments on randomly placed traps apply. If a covered pit appears in a context where it makes sense and is either expected, expectable, or simply an element like 'damaging terrain', then its fine.


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> I just didn't understand the point you were trying to make. Could you rephrase it?




_The_ point is that you don't understand what metagaming is. Geezer's statement about hit points is that there are a thousand mechanics that you interact with that are metagame, even dice rolls could be called "meta". In fact the whole game starts metagame and then proceeds IC, for trad games at least, maybe you only play modern narrative storygames only? That's cool if you do, and then I do understand why you would not get old geezer's point. I don't have a lot of experience in that arena myself with those sorts of pure narrative games.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It strikes me that this entire concept, and all the baggage attendant onto it, which includes a lot of the anti-meta-gaming creed, as well as the whole "you're just a small guy without any special place in the world" is all basically just a shadow of Gygax (or again maybe I should be more fair to call it a shadow of Dave Arneson).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The irony is that the lesson "never give the players anything for free" was fully absorbed, but the actual context of skilled play dungeoneering was lost! There is no reason, from a standpoint of how a game should or must work for these things to exist anymore, unless you really do play very much like Dave did
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It isn't to put down any style of play, it just REALLY does seem very unexamined, like this is maybe how I would have thought if this was 1974 and D&D was just starting.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, this is simply a relic. In OD&D, or B/X, you would all start with a toss of 3d6x10 gold pieces and equip yourselves as best you could, then plunge into the dungeon in the hope of gathering loot to spend on more equipment, etc. This was the very ur-game of D&D, the origin and font of all its traditions and concepts. Even magic items and such were originally just sort of lucky finds or rewards for cleverness that let you loot better, or increase survival.
> 
> In that paradigm, to admit of a character which has an entourage, or even a suite of armor, is grossly unfair! The game is a contest in which the players compete (even though the PCs cooperate, this is a subtle point). A suite of chain armor was 90gp, a BIG advantage! You don't just give that away, its to be earned.
> 
> This is literally the schema which is still being played out in all these protestations of strictures, even though the form of the game is almost utterly different and they make little sense today.



These are really strong posts. They capture what I was trying to get at upthread with some remarks about "cargo cult" and similar. That is to say, particular design/play features that can work well as elements in a "skilled play" game simply don't make any sense in other RPGing contexts. Hence treating those particular design/play features as if they're _part of what it means to roleplay_ makes no sense.

And the point extends beyond nobility and loot. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] asks whether the noble PC's entourage would come "out into the field". But the very notion of "the field" itself rests on an assumption about play which simply doesn't generalise across all of RPGing. In the Burning Wheel game that I GM, for instance, there is no "field".


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Ok so we have some pretty straightforward bad Npc that threaten lives of innocent Npc: linear railroad with evident psicological use of Force (because children + heroes pc, for Goodness sake).
> And the Drama is, what? A metagamey resource management?




Eh, it is a perfectly solid 'quest'. This would be a fine and perfectly acceptable 4e kind of scenario, played in the sort of way that we play. I mean, there are stakes, the lives of children, which the players have themselves expressed an interest in. They set out in pursuit. The initial framing, with the orcs taking some children COULD be a consequence of a failed SC, or even just simply the framing of a scene where the players get a choice. Assuming they were already invested in the well-being of this town that option hangs together pretty well too.

Obviously if the players were pretty much railroaded into chasing the orcs, then it would be different, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Possibly you could feel that the setup with the town is kind of that sort of thing, but I think this stuff is really all in the presentation. Its THEIR TOWN, then orcs raided it is just a fact. This would simply be a 'hard move' in DW for instance.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Aragorn's status as the rightful king is fundamental to his character from the moment he enters the story.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And yet virtually nobody knows, so his title is empty.
Click to expand...


Providence knows, and that's virtually everything in Tolkien's world.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I get the balance reasons for the trade-off style of PC building, but it doesn't sit well with me when designers use balance to justify things that don't make sense.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Assuming you use the standard D&D rules for starting money, aren't they exactly an example of this?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> How so?
Click to expand...


There's no reason in the fiction why a 20-something year old, inexperienced wizard could not have inherited a fortune of many thousands of gold pieces. But the standard D&D rules for starting money make this impossible, purely for balance reasons.

One fantasy RPG that makes it possible to be a wealthy yet novice wizard is Burning Wheel. Cortex+ Heroic and HeroQuest revised could also handle it pretty easily.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The reason nobility is different is because of just how powerful it is.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> she was only able to get several thousand gold and one powerful magic item
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If a player wants that kind of power and resources, he's going to have to roll it. I'm not going to allow that to be picked.



To relate this to   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s posts: a really strong set of assumptions underlies this post. Some of those are sociological/economic: that a noble family has readily available assets that it is able to repurpose at the behest of the character. As a matter of human history this isn't always true; in the context of a fantasy RPG it's even easier not to proceed on the basis of its truth.

But probably more importantly, it rests on assumptions about _how resolution is handled_ - for instance, that there are "equipment lists" that generate fictional positioning that can make a big difference in action resolution, either directly because of the gear, or indirectly because the money on the list is - in mechanical terms - freely transferable to equipment.

Some RPGs work like this. Classic D&D, 3E and 5e are examples. So is Classic Traveller.

Some RPGs have elements of this, but don't implement the full model. Burning Wheel is like this (it has equipment lists, but they don't include money, which is an attribute - Resources - that has to be used in a successful check in order to buy stuff).

Some RPGs don't have this at all - Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic is an example of this. As I've already posted, being a noble would most naturally be expressed as a Distinction, and when used that will contribute d8 to the dice pool. One of the PCs in my Cortex+ Vikings game has the Noble Ancestry distinction. Another has the Distinction At Home Among the Peasantry, and that contributes d8 to dice pools too. HeroQuest revised would be broadly similar to this.

A literary analogue of the approach mentioned in the previous paragraph is Lord of the Rings. Aragorn's Noble Ancestry is an important element in his strivings and success, and we can imagine a mechanical implementation of that as a dice pool component. But Sam's Love of Animals and Plants is an important element in _his_ strivings and success, and we can see that it plays a comparable role in driving the story.

Or to point to a different medium, Power Man and Iron Fist are equal partners in their adventures, and contribute equally, although one is very wealthy while the other is from a poor background.

In a LotR or superhero RPG conceived along these lines (as MHRP is), there is no greater advantage - from the point of view of successful action resolution - in being a wealthy noble than a loyal hobbit. Though those differences will colour action declarations and therefore, perhaps, consequences.

EDIT: It is also possible to have a RPG that has the trappings, but not the substance, of the D&D approach to equipment and money. Prince Valiant is an example of this. PCs have equipement and coins on their PC sheets, and the equipment matters in mechanical terms. But the game has no equipment price lists (we use the ones from Pendragon when it comes up), and equipment is gained and lost as "story consequences" (eg for winning or losing a joust) rather than horded and managed in the fashion that is characteristic of (say) AD&D or Classic Traveller.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, it is a perfectly solid 'quest'. This would be a fine and perfectly acceptable 4e kind of scenario, played in the sort of way that we play. I mean, there are stakes, the lives of children, which the players have themselves expressed an interest in. They set out in pursuit. The initial framing, with the orcs taking some children COULD be a consequence of a failed SC, or even just simply the framing of a scene where the players get a choice. Assuming they were already invested in the well-being of this town that option hangs together pretty well too.
> 
> Obviously if the players were pretty much railroaded into chasing the orcs, then it would be different, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Possibly you could feel that the setup with the town is kind of that sort of thing, but I think this stuff is really all in the presentation. Its THEIR TOWN, then orcs raided it is just a fact. This would simply be a 'hard move' in DW for instance.



The big issue for me, in the setup [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] describes, is _how do we know how many children are eaten_? In a skill challenge, this can be managed through failures - each failure is more children dead. But in other D&D versions, which have no rule for determining _children eaten per orc-time-mile-unit_, it becomes GM fiat. So the stakes and the action resolution become somewhat illusory.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It strikes me that this entire concept, and all the baggage attendant onto it, which includes a lot of the anti-meta-gaming creed, as well as the whole "you're just a small guy without any special place in the world" is all basically just a shadow of Gygax (or again maybe I should be more fair to call it a shadow of Dave Arneson).



Errrr...OK, I suppose?



> Particularly Blackmoor, from what I understand, was basically a pure 'skilled play' experience. The mechanics of the game were merely a tool, much like weather tables in Kriegspiel games. EVERYTHING was a challenge to the player, his knowledge and skill at play of the game. Any advantage imputed to a player (his PC) HAD to be earned because this was a competitive game! At the same time, skill must produce advantages, so there was always the nut of a problem there.
> 
> The irony is that the lesson "never give the players anything for free" was fully absorbed, but the actual context of skilled play dungeoneering was lost! There is no reason, from a standpoint of how a game should or must work for these things to exist anymore, unless you really do play very much like Dave did (and if so, that's great). But in terms of modern D&D play these restrictions are, well, highly restrictive! And they carry with them a sort of antagonistic play paradigm where a main part of the DM's job is to crack down on players, to make them toe some sort of line and not get out of hand. Its weird, and to be perfectly honest [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] a lot of your responses to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] kind of reek of it.



As I wasn't there at the time I have no real idea how Dave Arneson played, and from what little I know of Gygax's actual play it didn't always hew too close to what was written in his own DMG.

That said, I do see the game as having an element of DM-v-players, in two ways:
One, that it's the players' duty to advocate for their characters however they can and it's the DM's duty to stop them when said advocacy goes too far.
Two, that it's the DM's duty to (within the bounds of fairness) make things miserable for the PCs and thus by extension the players, and it's the players' duty to - via their PCs - try to overcome whatever the DM throws at them.

Throw in that it's also very possible for the players via their PCs to make things miserable for each other should they so desire*. 

* - e.g. one PC steals a very valuable magic item from another PC, gets a near-exact duplicate of it made, then sets up an entire adventure by hiding them both and sending some characters - including the ex-owner - in after them.  Been there, done that; it was my item that was stolen and duplicated, and I got it back after some risk.  This happened a very long time ago real-time; both the thief and I are still active today, and let's just say revenge is a dish best served cold.... 

As for never give the players (or PCs) anything for free: more or less, correct.  And if something is to be given for free try to ensure everyone has a vaguely even chance at it e.g. through a random table if only to avoid any appearance of favouritism.  By the same token, however, rewards earned through the game's reward mechanism (xp, in D&D) should go only to those who earned them.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, this is simply a relic. In OD&D, or B/X, you would all start with a toss of 3d6x10 gold pieces and equip yourselves as best you could, then plunge into the dungeon in the hope of gathering loot to spend on more equipment, etc. This was the very ur-game of D&D, the origin and font of all its traditions and concepts. Even magic items and such were originally just sort of lucky finds or rewards for cleverness that let you loot better, or increase survival.
> 
> In that paradigm, to admit of a character which has an entourage, or even a suite of armor, is grossly unfair! The game is a contest in which the players compete (even though the PCs cooperate, this is a subtle point). A suite of chain armor was 90gp, a BIG advantage! You don't just give that away, its to be earned.



Exactly!



> This is literally the schema which is still being played out in all these protestations of strictures, even though the form of the game is almost utterly different and they make little sense today.



But why is the form of the game so different today, is the question; and my own take on answering that won't please many here I'm sure: 

Player entitlement.

Starting with 3e it was obvious that the game was being designed by ex-players to remove many of the frustrations encountered by players in earlier editions - examples: no more level loss, spellcasting much easier, level-up much faster - without perhaps realizing that it was those very frustrations that made success all the more worth celebrating.



> Consider, this kind of thinking is almost meaningless in 4e. *The PCs totally cooperate as a team, with no provision for any other possibility.* It doesn't matter where some extra equipment comes from, or who's background produces the companion character. At worst one might consider how to insure that the 'noble' and the other character backgrounds lead to reasonably equitable 'screen time'.



The bit I've bolded tells me a lot.  

First and foremost, it screams out that the system would like to severely limit player choice as to their PCs' personalities, characterizations and - yes - alignments.  No chaotic free-thinkers need apply here, folks; you have to be part of the groupthink, always do what's expected of you, and always stick to the plan both as player and PC.  No individualism allowed in these parts, bucko; no going off script, no standing out from the crowd.  Bleah!

Second, it tells me the system wants all resources to belong to the party rather than to any one PC even if that PC is the reason those resources exist (e.g. the entourage).  Individual greed?  Not here.

Third, it tells me the system expects the players to focus on optimization in all things from party composition through individual character builds to field tactics.

And fourth, it removes yet one more source of player frustration; that being other players who don't go along with the herd.

No wonder 4e never appealed to me.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> And the point extends beyond nobility and loot. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] asks whether the noble PC's entourage would come "out into the field". But the very notion of "the field" itself rests on an assumption about play which simply doesn't generalise across all of RPGing. In the Burning Wheel game that I GM, for instance, there is no "field".



In that BW game there's no downtime, then; no safe place the PCs can hole up and relax for a while.

If the above are both true then the PCs are "in the field" all the time; and regardless, the question of whether the entourage would have accompanied the noble remains valid in any case.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> In that BW game there's no downtime, then; no safe place the PCs can hole up and relax for a while.
> 
> If the above are both true then the PCs are "in the field" all the time; and regardless, the question of whether the entourage would have accompanied the noble remains valid in any case.



There's no "field" because there are no "adventures" in the D&D sense, at least as I run it. The PCs don't go "into the field" to adventure, and then return to a "safe place" for downtime. The PCs do their thing as their motivations and capabilities dictate.



Lanefan said:


> the question of whether the entourage would have accompanied the noble remains valid in any case.



There are rules for having an entourage as an element of one's PC. But they don't depend upon any idea of, or contrast between, "at home" and "in the field".


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> But in other D&D versions, which have no rule for determining children eaten per orc-time-mile-unit, ....



Just because of this, if something like this ever comes up in my game I'll design a rule for it and call it the Pemerton Otmu rule.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> There's no "field" because there are no "adventures" in the D&D sense, at least as I run it. The PCs don't go "into the field" to adventure, and then return to a "safe place" for downtime. The PCs do their thing as their motivations and capabilities dictate.



So in effect they're always adventuring, then, and thus always in the field.  Fair enough.



> There are rules for having an entourage as an element of one's PC. But they don't depend upon any idea of, or contrast between, "at home" and "in the field".



Sure; but when the player decides ten sessions in that his PC is a high noble the questions still arise: should this PC have an entourage somewhere and if yes, would any of it have been accompanying him right from square one and-or still accompanying him now.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> but when the player decides ten sessions in that his PC is a high noble the questions still arise: should this PC have an entourage somewhere and if yes, *would any of it have been accompanying him right from square one and-or still accompanying him now*.



But we already know the answer to the bit that I've bolded - the PC was not accompanied by any entourage, given that absence of such entourage is already an established element in the fiction.

(Subject to corner cases - maybe as part of collaboration between players, another PC is revealed to have been an entourage all along!)


----------



## Sadras

Lanefan said:


> ...when the player decides ten sessions in that his PC is a high noble the questions still arise: should this PC have an entourage somewhere and if yes, would any of it have been accompanying him right from square one and-or still accompanying him now.




My issue with this is not the entourage but I would like the player to provide a reason why their character may not have been recognised in these 10 sessions OR maybe they were (DM move to be played out later).


----------



## pemerton

I've never had a player decide that his/her PC was a noble during the course of play.

But I have had a player do something similar. At the start of the campaign we thought his PC was an animal (fox) that had been able (through meditation and other appropriate practices) to transform itself into a human (inspired by the movie Green Snake). At the start of the campaign the character was living in a monastery, where he had been taken by the monks when they found him dazed and confused in the nearby forest.

(The system was Rolemaster and, mechanically, the character was a human with variant stat modifiers and access to the Control Lycanthropy skill, which he could use to turn into a fox.)

But some time into the campaign (maybe a year or so?) the player decided that his PC was really an animal lord who had been banished to earth from Heaven, and stripped of memories and power, for some transgression. This revelation was authored by the player between sessions, and presented in the form of a written reflection by the abbot of the monastery, expressing doubt that an ordinary fox could really, no matter how diligently it tried, turn itself into a human having the full capabilities (which included mentalism spellcasting) that this person had.

This is c 20 years ago now, and so I can't remember the details of what the player established at that time, and how much of the PC's backstory came out subsequently during play - the campaign involved a significant animal lords arc (derived from the module OA7 Test of the Samurai) and that certainly drove some of this. The change of backstory certainly gave me material from which to establish ingame situations, like attempts by Constables of Hell to capture the PC and take him back to Heaven to be tried for his wrongful violation of the terms of his banishment (ie by living as a human rather than a fox).

This didn't cause problems. It propelled the game forward. As did other elements of the PCs in that game, like the social connections and obligations of the two noble PCs, and the affair that their retainer was having with a daughter of a powerful dragon family. (Which also had soap-operatic connections to one of the animal lords.)

As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread, there is a Gygaxian/Arnesonian tradition of PCs as "a small guy without any special place in the world", rootless wanderers with no motivations other than entering dungeons to beat traps and collect loot, and no social connections other than the NPCs they meet in the dungeon and, perhaps, the armies they establish when they reach name level (turning the game from a RPG in the stricter sense into a combination of wargame and Diplomacy).

But that's not the only possible approach, and games won't break if players play more socially and cosmologically grounded characters. I didn't need to bring any new RPG tech to Rolemaster to make the campaign I've described work.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> His uncle died 6 years before he was born.



I read his diary, obvs.

Also, if you as GM are doing this kind of thing, you're very much in.MMI territory.  The point I'm nakinng is that it's very much in character to have knowledge about the game world while having knowledge of modern chemistry is not.


----------



## Ovinomancer

dragoner said:


> _The_ point is that you don't understand what metagaming is. Geezer's statement about hit points is that there are a thousand mechanics that you interact with that are metagame, even dice rolls could be called "meta". In fact the whole game starts metagame and then proceeds IC, for trad games at least, maybe you only play modern narrative storygames only? That's cool if you do, and then I do understand why you would not get old geezer's point. I don't have a lot of experience in that arena myself with those sorts of pure narrative games.



Hitpoints aren't metagame at all, they are _abstract._  abstractions are required for the game to function, or you'd spend vastly more time simulating a single sword swing than most sessions last.  Further, actually playing the game _can't be metagaming_ so thinking about or using hitpoints is just playing the game.

RPGs have developed this weird idea that metagaming is anything outside the fictional mental state of the character.  This is useless as a concept because it presupposes a one-true-way of playing and also moves actually playing the game into the metagame. Metagaming, by definition, is thinking outside the game, not playing it or using abstract mechanics.  Metagaming is making sure the party covers all roles, or that someone plays a cleric, or how modern chemistry works.  Not hitpoints.

I disagreed when [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said something similar upthread, but things had moved past that by the time I could respond.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> But why is the form of the game so different today, is the question; and my own take on answering that won't please many here I'm sure:
> 
> Player entitlement.



Hey, look what we have here. It's an old man yelling at the sky while complaining about young kids these days.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> _The_ point is that you don't understand what metagaming is. Geezer's statement about hit points is that there are a thousand mechanics that you interact with that are metagame, even dice rolls could be called "meta". In fact the whole game starts metagame and then proceeds IC, for trad games at least, maybe you only play modern narrative storygames only? That's cool if you do, and then I do understand why you would not get old geezer's point. I don't have a lot of experience in that arena myself with those sorts of pure narrative games.




First off, quit it with the snipes. It was bad enough you were trying to tie me to views I don't hold in the orc thread in a very deceptive way. But this kind of posting tactic is getting particularly frustrating in this thread. If you have a personal problem with me, please take it to PM. 

If we are including HP and dice rolls as metagaming, I would say that is an overly strict definition of the term. Usually when people invoke meta gaming they are talking about players applying knowledge outside the game events to their actions. And that is the kind of meta gaming Maxperson is discussing.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I don't care whether you think he's an expert or an amateur. The point is that he shows how a game can proceed with _metagaming_ about "the party", "team cooperation" etc - which helps us identify the presence of such metagaming advice in the RQ rules.




Well, you were contrasting them. And I just found him to be an odd person to use to provide an example of this sort of play (since he is pretty antagonistic towards it). But I don't think people consider that meta gaming generally. Not in the sense that it is a problem for play the way a player using his or her knowledge of Trolls would be if the assumption is that line ought to be in play. I've only heard complaints about the conceit fo the party being together being a problem from players who are particularly focused on seeing and experiencing everything as their character without any outside forces shaping them. But that is an unusually strict view of meta gaming and kind of sketches the meaning of what Max Person is even talking about. And it is equally obvious the RQ rules are advising against the use of player knowledge that Max Person has in mind.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> And it is equally obvious the RQ rules are advising against the use of player knowledge that Max Person has in mind.



Because a player can use their college-learned knowledge of real life trolls in this game?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Because a player can use their college-learned knowledge of real life trolls in this game?




Then you are not being genuine. Obviously we are talking about the player’s knowledge of the MM or their knowledge gained from previous D&D experiences.


----------



## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, it is a perfectly solid 'quest'. This would be a fine and perfectly acceptable 4e kind of scenario, played in the sort of way that we play. I mean, there are stakes, the lives of children, which the players have themselves expressed an interest in. They set out in pursuit. The initial framing, with the orcs taking some children COULD be a consequence of a failed SC, or even just simply the framing of a scene where the players get a choice. Assuming they were already invested in the well-being of this town that option hangs together pretty well too.
> 
> Obviously if the players were pretty much railroaded into chasing the orcs, then it would be different, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. Possibly you could feel that the setup with the town is kind of that sort of thing, but I think this stuff is really all in the presentation. Its THEIR TOWN, then orcs raided it is just a fact. This would simply be a 'hard move' in DW for instance.



Right, I see. The example was provided as an ...example.. of drama in Gm-driven play. I can't see any drama. 
It's a quest, like many others.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> Then you are not being genuine. Obviously we are talking about the player’s knowledge of the MM or their knowledge gained from previous D&D experiences.



...as previously rebutted by others.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> It was absolutely not a railroad.  A railroad is robbing the player of choice and forcing him down a narrow track.  I had plenty of choices.  I could save my family.  I could save the people.  I could have said screw it and gone to Waterdeep to become a sailor.  I could have enlisted my companions to try and free my family, despite being told that would kill them.  I could have retired and become a farmer.  There was no railroad that I was forced down.




Robbing the player of choice, or feeding him with an illusory one. 
That's why they call it illusionism, because you can't see the trick. 

So me, the Gm, decide that you, the Pc, will have to choose between your family and the land by the end of the next adventure, making sure you will find the McGuffin lil witch. 

Dear old rail road

Yeah, your Pc could just put down the guns and retire on a small island living out of fishing and letting the years go by drinking rhum to drown the remorse for his lost family, but odds are you, the Player, are gonna fight to save them.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There's no reason in the fiction why a 20-something year old, inexperienced wizard could not have inherited a fortune of many thousands of gold pieces. But the standard D&D rules for starting money make this impossible, purely for balance reasons.




The players can write up a background, or they have the option of rolling in Central Casting.  The old Central Casting book has many possible things that can be rolled.  Some of those provide bonuses.  Some penalties.  Some are neutral.  One of the bonuses you can roll is an inheritance, and another is nobility.  My players are big on rolling things, so they almost always choose to roll in the book.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> ...as previously rebutted by others.




Not sure what this means in terms of what I said


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The big issue for me, in the setup [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] describes, is _how do we know how many children are eaten_? In a skill challenge, this can be managed through failures - each failure is more children dead. But in other D&D versions, which have no rule for determining _children eaten per orc-time-mile-unit_, it becomes GM fiat. So the stakes and the action resolution become somewhat illusory.




I don't know about you, but to me and my players even 1 kid being eaten is too many.  It's also not a skill challenge where failures/successes will yield a number.  The orcs butcher some when they camp and that's that.  You either get there before that happens, or you get there after it happens.  It's not as if the orcs were bringing them out over a period of time that would allow the PCs to have a partial success/failure. The PCs were rushing to catch up to the orcs before they could camp again and hopefully keep any more kids from dying.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I read his diary, obvs.




Of that jokester?  Nothing he wrote could be trusted.



> Also, if you as GM are doing this kind of thing, you're very much in.MMI territory.  The point I'm nakinng is that it's very much in character to have knowledge about the game world while having knowledge of modern chemistry is not.




Don't think I'm answering you seriously.  You have no interest in good faith discussion with me, as that drive by post blurb still shows.  

Oh, and chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology and oceanography were all fields of study for sages.  And with good reason.  Chemistry would be something people in ancient times knew about.  Not to the same degree as modern chemistry, but then the player can't bring in ANY chemistry he knows if the PC has no reason to know it, which goes along with the first portion of that paragraph that indicates that it's player knowledge in general, and not just "real world" knowledge that is forbidden.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Robbing the player of choice, or feeding him with an illusory one.
> That's why they call it illusionism, because you can't see the trick.




Or else there was no trick and I could make any choice I wanted, which is the true situation.  Trying to armchair quarterback this isn't going to work out for you.  You aren't right about this.



> So me, the Gm, decide that you, the Pc, will have to choose between your family and the land by the end of the next adventure, making sure you will find the McGuffin lil witch.




Then it's probably a good thing that you weren't the one there and I was.  You would have somehow forgotten that you have other choices you could make and felt forced into only those two choices for some unknown reason.  Of course, that would be your doing, not the DM's. 



> Yeah, your Pc could just put down the guns and retire on a small island living out of fishing and letting the years go by drinking rhum to drown the remorse for his lost family, but odds are you, the Player, are gonna fight to save them.




Not all PC's are saints.  Some have human troubles and feelings, and humans are very complicated.  Some people, when faced with super hard decisions, will retreat and hide from them, even though they aren't bad people.  Running away from the hard choice was a perfectly valid decision that I could have made for my character.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> One example doesn't overcome that it very clearly said the players first duty was to play within the limits of the CHARACTER, not the player.  It's talking about all player knowledge, not just real world or game knowledge, but just in case, I will point this out.  The Monster Manual is in the real world, and it and everything in it is real world knowledge.  We use that real world knowledge to play the game and construct the game world, but if real world knowledge isn't allowed into the game, the player cannot use any knowledge gained from the Monster Manual.




MM talks about gameworld, not real world.  If I bring to the table my chemistry schoolbook and want to use it in the game, then it's real world knowledge. 

Anyway if the genre is Alchemic Steampunk, I would probably allow even the chemistry manual 

During DW first session of worldbuilding, the Cleric player actually had a real book about Etruscan religion ( the pre-roman italian civilization known for their complex necropolis)


----------



## pemerton

There is a point that may have come up earlier in this thread, or perhaps in another one - I remeber I was responding to  [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] - that I want to come back to: the role of _GM sentimentality_.

In the campaign with the fox and the nobles and so on, the resolution of the campaign saw the PCs acting in defiance of Heaven. In addition to the edict-disobeying fox, there was a paladin whose patron was a dead god trapped in an eternal, timeless, but ultimately corrupting and hence fatal struggle with entities from the outer void. The paladin had cleansed echoes of the dead god of their voidal taint, violating certain karmic principles; and the PCs had befriended an exiled god who had, back in the day, been the best friend of the dead god and had helped him prepare for his eternal struggle.

The ultimate failure of the dead god's struggle - due to his corruption by the voidal forces he was opposing - occurred in the course of the campaign, meaning that the voidal beings were able to once again threaten the earth. The PCs - powerful mages and warriors by the end of the campaign (Rolemaster level 27 or so) - were able to drive them off. But to secure the earth on a long-term basis, they needed to re-establish a bulwark in the outer void itself.

At the time, I had read (not played) Paul Czege's RPG Nicotine Girls, and so was framing this climax to the campaign very deliberately as an end-game which would establish the fate and subsequent denouement for each PC. So the players appreciated that there was no need to hold back!

In this context, the player of the paladin decided that the dead god had suffered enough, and that his PC would take the dead god's place in the eternal struggle. A noble sacrifice! He also intended to bring some of the PC's powerful cosmological enemies - evil, former Lords of Karma - with him, to trap them also in the void. A cunning plan!

But then, as the players were discussing how to operationalise all this, they realised that they had an item leant to them by the exiled god - the Soul Totem, a device for transmitting and even altering karmic burdens - which they could use to create a karmic duplicate of the paladin PC (the base for the duplicate would be a simulacrum of the paladin that the fox could create using his magic) who would then be able to take up the mantle of the dead god while the PC himself retired to found and administer a monastery on an island that had (i) been an important focus of events in the latter part of the campaign and (ii) happened to be the head of the stone body of the dead god, kneeling in the sea at the entrance to a harbour.

As GM, I acquiesced to this plan by "saying 'yes'", rather than forcing checks to see whether the plan involving the Soul Totem would succeed.  (This was also easier mechanically, as the Soul Totem had not really been defined in RM mechanical terms.) This is mostly because I am a very sentimental GM and audience member, and when the players came up with a way to spare the PC from an eternity of horrible suffering in the void I was very happy to accept it. So GM fiat in response to player suggestion precluded the possibility of a tragic ending to this PC's story arc.

Another manifestation of GM sentimentality in that campaign finale was in relation to the PC whose player had built up the character's social and artistic skills to facilititate his wooing of an NPC sorcerer who'd been rescued froma demonic prison. When the player posited that the PC and sorcerer would found a dynasty who would be the earthly "key" that would keep the voidal threats locked away, and that the fact that they were a dynasty (hence ever-renewing) rather than one immortal person meant that they wouldn't succumb to corruption as the dead god had, I acquiesced in that again without requiring any checks.

One reason I find GMing Burning Wheel demanding is because it stomps on such GM sentimentality at just about every point. The GM is forced to be cruel to the PCs. I find that hard.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Don't think I'm answering you seriously.  You have no interest in good faith discussion with me, as that drive by post blurb still shows.



Don't blame me for your paranoia, Max. I've been nothing but honest.  This is all you.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> MM talks about gameworld, not real world.  If I bring to the table my chemistry schoolbook and want to use it in the game, then it's real world knowledge.




It doesn't matter what it talks about.  The knowledge is gained here in the real world, making it real world knowledge.  I've read many books on Greek Mythology.  That's real world knowledge, despite those myths not being real and talking about a fantasy land called Olympus.



> Anyway if the genre is Alchemic Steampunk, I would probably allow even the chemistry manual




Which is fine for your game.  We all have different ways we play.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I just found him to be an odd person to use to provide an example of this sort of play (since he is pretty antagonistic towards it).



No he's not. In 2000, Ron Edwards wrote a very praising review of Hero Wars. In 2003, he discussed setting-based "story now" play, again putting forward Hero Wars as an example. In 2011, he wrote the "setting dissection" that I linked to upthread, that is, a fuller account of how to run setting-based "story now" games (unsurprisingly, HeroWars/Quest again figures as a prominent example).



Bedrockgames said:


> I don't think people consider that meta gaming generally. Not in the sense that it is a problem for play the way a player using his or her knowledge of Trolls would be
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I've only heard complaints about the conceit fo the party being together being a problem from players who are particularly focused on seeing and experiencing everything as their character without any outside forces shaping them. But that is an unusually strict view of meta gaming and kind of sketches the meaning of what Max Person is even talking about



 In this thread, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has repeatedly talked about a "focus on seeeing and experience everything as his character". That's his basis for criticising metagaming. But now you're saying that some departures from this, like the paty conceit, aren't _really_ metagaming because Maxperson doesn't mind it. (I'm not sure why Maxperson's view counts for more than [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, who has said that he minds it.)

Your defence of Maxperson makes it obvious that there is no objective notion of metagaming, let alone cheating, at work here. Maxperson may not like how [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s imagined player handles the troll case, via the story of the uncle; but there is no objective concept of metagaming that explains how what hawkeyefan is suggesting is wrong, whereas the party conceit is completley unproblematic. There's nothing here besides table preferences.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Yeah, your Pc could just put down the guns and *retire on a small island living out of fishing and letting the years go by drinking rhum* to drown the remorse for his lost family, but odds are you, the Player, are gonna fight to save them.



I highlighted the bolded bit only because surely a better choice would be to retire to the thermal baths.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> In this thread, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has repeatedly talked about a "focus on seeeing and experience everything as his character". That's his basis for criticising metagaming. But now you're saying that some departures from this, like the paty conceit, aren't _really_ metagaming because Maxperson doesn't mind it. (I'm not sure why Maxperson's view counts for more than [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, who has said that he minds it.)
> .




I am not particularly concerned about definitional arguments. I am just reacting to Maxperson's actual position, rather than forcing him to take one by expanding the terms he is using to include things he isn't talking about. Look when most people complain about meta gaming, they are not talking about party united ness, they are talking exactly about the things that Maxperson is describing. By the way, I don't particularly adhere to Maxperson's position. i just have seen it enough to know it is a real thing. You guys are rplaying this linguistic game to act like he is being deceptive, insincere, or deeply confused. If you just look at the spirit of what he is saying, it is quite clear (just like the spirit of the RQ text was sincere.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> I highlighted the bolded bit only because surely a better choice would be to retire to the thermal baths.



Yeah  why bother fishing at all? 

Otium: god of downtime, forever resting in a circular cosmic hot bath surrounding the Outer Void, worshipped only by a few and far between Pcs, when they're not in The Field.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> No he's not. In 2000, Ron Edwards wrote a very praising review of Hero Wars. In 2003, he discussed setting-based "story now" play, again putting forward Hero Wars as an example. In 2011, he wrote the "setting dissection" that I linked to upthread, that is, a fuller account of how to run setting-based "story now" games (unsurprisingly, HeroWars/Quest again figures as a prominent example).
> 
> .




I understand what you are saying. I actually watch his videos and have read many of his articles. But when I think 'setting focused' I think things like sandbox or exploration. Which Ron Edwards has been antagonistic toward. This end of the playing spectrum is pretty much where arguments over Edward's ideas begin. Again, I don't have anything personally against Edwards. I find him to be a very intelligent and nice person. I think a lot of what gets him on peoples bad side is his sense of humor (which can be a bit cutting). But his point of view on these things can certainly be described as strident. And he's even gone so far as to label sandbox, Kitty Box (or litterbox if my memory is not serving me well here). And made arguments to the effect that sandboxes are really just multiple choice railroads. This is the point of view I was coming at it from.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Your defence of Maxperson makes it obvious that there is no objective notion of metagaming, let alone cheating, at work here. Maxperson may not like how [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s imagined player handles the troll case, via the story of the uncle; but there is no objective concept of metagaming that explains how what hawkeyefan is suggesting is wrong, whereas the party conceit is completley unproblematic. There's nothing here besides table preferences.




I am not having any trouble following Maxperson's preferences at all, because I've gamed with people who express them and have no difficulty abiding by their concerns in play. I am not saying you have to game the way he does, or that his way is the best. I am just saying, it is a real way of playing the game that is not at all uncommon and most of what he is talking about centers on players not using their out of game knowledge to advantage their character's decisions. Again I think you are just making linguistic arguments that are not terrible sincere. These are classic "there is no table" arguments you are making. You are just defining away the concern he has raised.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Or else there was no trick and I could make any choice I wanted, which is the true situation.  Trying to armchair quarterback this isn't going to work out for you.  You aren't right about this.
> 
> 
> 
> Then it's probably a good thing that you weren't the one there and I was.  You would have somehow forgotten that you have other choices you could make and felt forced into only those two choices for some unknown reason.  Of course, that would be your doing, not the DM's.
> 
> 
> 
> Not all PC's are saints.  Some have human troubles and feelings, and humans are very complicated.  Some people, when faced with super hard decisions, will retreat and hide from them, even though they aren't bad people.  Running away from the hard choice was a perfectly valid decision that I could have made for my character.



Fair enough. It was you in that game and I have to take your words as final. 

I am left with the suspicion that your Gm had everything planned in advance, and the events went accordingly.       Which is fine, btw. 
I value drama (hard choices) also from the Gm perspective, so having all planned detracts from my enjoyment when I run. And I consider drama best served as emergent in play: be it from a strong premise, or from unexpected dice rolls, rather than from a Gm's planning. 

First time I read "armchair quarterback"


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The big issue for me, in the setup @_*Maxperson*_ describes, is _how do we know how many children are eaten_?




The only way I see this being important is if all the kids were eaten, which means the chase becomes revenge/justice instead of rescue and possible revenge/justice OR based on estimations if by the time the characters catch up to the orcs all the kids would be eaten, so again revenge/justice solely.
Unless the party plans to make their speed slower if 2 kids were eaten instead of 3.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> There is a point that may have come up earlier in this thread, or perhaps in another one - I remeber I was responding to [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] - that I want to come back to: the role of _GM sentimentality_.




I don't believe one has to go that far to see signs of GM sentimentality.
Everytime a GM has the opportunity to kill a PC and doesn't follow through is an example of GM sentimentality - the most obvious would be in combat.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not particularly concerned about definitional arguments.



Nor am I. I'm responding to  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s claim that it is cheating to (i) impute my knowledge of troll weaknesses to my PC, and (ii) to explain this, within the fiction, as stuff I learned from my dear old uncle.

All "cheating" means here is that Maxperson doesn't like it. But he presents it as if it is something more. And his argument for the "something more" rests on a general critique of metagaming that _encompasses practices that he himself engages in_.

No one in this thread, other than him, cares what his preferences are. But some do get frustrated with his presentation of essentially arbitrary preferences as hard-and-fast rules, especially when the formulation of those rules seems to have a strong element of special pleading if not outright hypocrisy.



Bedrockgames said:


> most of what he is talking about centers on players not using their out of game knowledge to advantage their character's decisions.



If my character knows it then it is not "out of game knowledge". Maxperson has no objection to my PC knowing what a crossbow is, or a spear trap, even though it is quite conceivable that some people in the gameworld are ignorant of such things, just as in the real world there are people ignorant of such things. But he objects to my PC knowing what a troll's vulnerability is.

No one in this thread is confused about what Maxperson's preference is. They are objecting to his attempt to present it as resting on anything but a convention that is largely if not completely arbitrary. And - consistent with the thread topic - they are also connecting this issue to questions of _who gets to decide what a PC knows_ - player or GM?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I don't believe one has to go that far to see signs of GM sentimentality.
> Everytime a GM has the opportunity to kill a PC and doesn't follow through is an example of GM sentimentality - the most obvious would be in combat.



What systems do you have in mind? I assume D&D.

EDIT: Depending on system, _killing a PC_ may be a consequence of failed action resolution on the part of the player; a framing device on the part of the GM; or sheer fiat narration of the fiction. Which it is is relevant to whether or not it constitutes sentimentality in action resolution.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> just like the spirit of the RQ text was sincere.



I have not suggested, nor even remotely hinted, that the RQ text is insincere. I think it's compoletely sincere. And it doesn't say the same things as some posters in this thread have suggested is definitive of good roleplaying.

Gygax's AD&D rulebooks talk about the importance of party composition, but they have no discussion of the idea that _playing one's PC_ should be guided by considerations of party cooperation so as to facilitate table enjoyment. (And this is just a special case of the general fact that they do not discuss how to play one's PC at all, except by indicating that a good player will pursue his/her class's principal functions.)

Some RPG rulebooks discourage players from debating rules with the GM. The RQ book I quoted does not. Some say that the GM's word is always final. The RQ text I quoted says that the GM should expect to yield from time to time.

_Because _I treat the text as sincere, I don't treat these evident differences as meaningless.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I don't believe one has to go that far to see signs of GM sentimentality.
> Everytime a GM has the opportunity to kill a PC and doesn't follow through is an example of GM sentimentality - the most obvious would be in combat.



I think that the cost to the GM for killing characters is a factor here, too.  Loss of previous effort, requirement to incorporate replacement, etc.   It's not just sentimentality for the players.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> (just like the spirit of the RQ text was sincere.



We are sincere in our readings of the RQ text, though you seem to be insinuating here that we are not, or that we are misreading it. So perhaps you are confused that others would have different genuine readings from yours? 



pemerton said:


> Nor am I. I'm responding to  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s claim that it is cheating to (i) impute my knowledge of troll weaknesses to my PC, and (ii) to explain this, within the fiction, as stuff I learned from my dear old uncle.
> 
> All "cheating" means here is that Maxperson doesn't like it. But he presents it as if it is something more. And his argument for the "something more" rests on a general critique of metagaming that _encompasses practices that he himself engages in_.
> 
> No one in this thread, other than him, cares what his preferences are. But some do get frustrated with his presentation of essentially arbitrary preferences as hard-and-fast rules, especially when the formulation of those rules seems to have a strong element of special pleading if not outright hypocrisy.



This. 



pemerton said:


> If my character knows it then it is not "out of game knowledge". Maxperson has no objection to my PC knowing what a crossbow is, or a spear trap, even though it is quite conceivable that some people in the gameworld are ignorant of such things, just as in the real world there are people ignorant of such things. But he objects to my PC knowing what a troll's vulnerability is.
> 
> No one in this thread is confused about what Maxperson's preference is. They are objecting to his attempt to present it as resting on anything but a convention that is largely if not completely arbitrary. And - consistent with the thread topic - they are also connecting this issue to questions of _who gets to decide what a PC knows_ - player or GM?



And also this.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Which is fine for your game.  We all have different ways we play.




That's for sure. I can hardly imagine going to my players and starting a session saying: "Your family has been kidnapped" (table flips, turmoil ensues) 

Following your line of thought, it would be perfectly fine if your hypothetical Gm says: "Your whole treasure has been stolen"


----------



## Bedrockgames

I don’t regard it as cheating. But regarding it as cheating is a thing, no matter how many crossbows you bring up. Obviously a crossbow is not secret info. Burning trolls by fire is more obviously a secret. This is painfully common. And it isn’t hard to understand. You guys are using clever arguments to obscure his point (a point I don’t even really agree with but think makes sense).


----------



## Disappointment

I think that the disagreement here is that we want our RPG's to be realistic to actual life.  However, with only dice, pencils, and paper, our GM's can only do so much to mirror life's complexities.  We simply can not make a pen and paper game intricate enough to match the everyday laws occurring in our world.  Besides, who really wants RPG's to  be realistic, we want dragons, fire-balls, laser swords, and interracial mating.   We can't really do that in real life.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> It doesn't matter what it talks about.  The knowledge is gained here in the real world, making it real world knowledge.



My knowledge of trees comes from the real world, does this mean that my character can't recognize trees with it being metagaming? Or how about a sword? Or how about what it's like being a peasant? 



Bedrockgames said:


> I don’t regard it as cheating. But regarding it as cheating is a thing, no matter how many crossbows you bring up. Obviously a crossbow is not secret info. Burning trolls by fire is more obviously a secret. This is painfully common. And it isn’t hard to understand. You guys are using clever arguments to obscure his point (a point I don’t even really agree with but think makes sense).



Why do you keep using the word "obviously" as if your opinions were self-evident truths? It's not just here in this post but also in many beforehand.


----------



## Numidius

Disappointment said:


> I think that the disagreement here is that we want our RPG's to be realistic to actual life.  However, with only dice, pencils, and paper, our GM's can only do so much to mirror life's complexities.  We simply can not make a pen and paper game intricate enough to match the everyday laws occurring in our world.  Besides, who really wants RPG's to  be realistic, we want dragons, fire-balls, laser swords, and interracial mating.   We can't really do that in real life.



Personally I'd play or run even an hyper realistic game, content wise. But if it has to be mostly Gm-driven, Gm decides, I'd pass. And if it had too many rules and minutiae, especially if on a single arena of play (say: combat) I'd pass either.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> My knowledge of trees comes from the real world, does this mean that my character can't recognize trees with it being metagaming? Or how about a sword? Or how about what it's like being a peasant?
> 
> Why do you keep using the word "obviously" as if your opinions were self-evident truths? It's not just here in this post but also in many beforehand.





Because it is pretty self evident to anyone who has been in the hobby for ten minutes


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> Because it is pretty self evident to anyone who has been in the hobby for ten minutes



Such presumptive condescension you have. But _obviously_ others disagree with your assertion. And thus it is not self-evident as you assert here. But I suppose if you put the word 'obviously' in your opinion then you can present your singular reading as a fact while discounting the genuine readings that others have? You are obviously not being genuine, Bedrockgames.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Such presumptive condescension you have. But _obviously_ others disagree with your assertion. And thus it is not self-evident as you assert here. But I suppose if you put the word 'obviously' in your opinion then you can present your singular reading as a fact while discounting the genuine readings that others have? You are obviously not being genuine, Bedrockgames.




I am being genuine, but there has been a style of argumentation here that doesn't strike me as genuine at all. And you are misunderstanding what I am saying about RQ. I am saying people are looking at it through a skewed lens, interpreting it through their own playstyle and not seeing what I think most people see when they read that. In terms of Maxperson's use of metagaming being the obviously common, mainstream use of the term. I base that on my experience in the real world. I've encountered so many people using the term metagming as he is. And I've encountered so many people who take his view. It has never been difficult for me or anyone else at the table to understand what these people mean. This thread is literally the first time I've seen a conflict over this. And it just seems part of the MO here with certain posters: go after the person's language, make it be an argument about the history of a word or concept in the hobby and don't really address the actual points they seem to be trying to make. Again, I want to point out, I don't agree with Maxperson. I am fine with the kind of meta gaming he doesn't like. but I totally understand what he is saying, and I understand the argument he is making. And I wouldn't try to persuade him to my viewpoint by undermining the language he is using.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I have not suggested, nor even remotely hinted, that the RQ text is insincere. .




I never intended to suggest that you did say or think this.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I don’t regard it as cheating. But regarding it as cheating is a thing, no matter how many crossbows you bring up. Obviously a crossbow is not secret info. Burning trolls by fire is more obviously a secret. This is painfully common. And it isn’t hard to understand. You guys are using clever arguments to obscure his point (a point I don’t even really agree with but think makes sense).




I don't have a hard time understanding Max's reasons for considering metagaming cheating. I simply disagree, and in the example of the troll and uncle (and therefore similar game situations where a player is involved in deciding what hi character does or does not know), I don't see how it can be considered metagaming. My character knows about trolls because of his uncle. 

If that is not allowed in a game because the DM decides that it's metagaming, then that's something I would disagree with, and so that is what I'm challenging. It's not metagaming, and if it's categorized as such, then I think that's a case of the DM resorting to Mother May I. 

To put it another way: there are two options to pick from, described below. In both cases, the players know about troll vulnerabilities. Which would you prefer? 

- The characters encounter trolls. The players go through the encounter playing their characters as if they do not know about trolls and fire. They continue until they get to some point where they can "justify" the use of fire, and then they finish off the trolls. 

- The characters encounter trolls. One player has his character say "These things look like Trolls! My Uncle Elmo told me the only way to be sure they're dead is to burn them!" and the players immediately deploy fire based attacks, and they finish off the trolls.

The first one may be fun for some....who am I to question or judge anyone's idea of fun? But what it doesn't do is prevent metagaming. In my opinion, it makes the entire encounter revolve around metagaming.....because the players spend much of their time wondering "when can I use fire? When can I bring my out of game knowledge to bear by justifying it in the fiction?" They go through all kinds of hoops to justify the use, and we can never actually know if the answer is truly sufficient because there is no actual mystery to preserve. No one is actually surprised by the revelation. There's no learning happening.

The second option just gets on with things. It's kind of like a band-aid. The first option is where you peel it slowly in an attempt to mitigate the sting, but really all you're doing is drawing it out.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Some RPG rulebooks discourage players from debating rules with the GM. The RQ book I quoted does not. Some say that the GM's word is always final. The RQ text I quoted says that the GM should expect to yield from time to time.




The rulebook just says that they should discuss things. But it also says the GMs word is final. I don't disagree that rulebooks say different things. I don't know why we are debating this point though as the relevant one is the section at the start of the text that strongly suggests discouragement of metagaming (again in the sense Maxperson is talking about). I realize you are trying to make this about all kinds of metagaming under the son in order to win the discussion. but that isn't really what Maxperson had in mind when this conversation started (and it isn't typically what people have in mind when they draw lines around metagaming).


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't have a hard time understanding Max's reasons for considering metagaming cheating. I simply disagree, and in the example of the troll and uncle (and therefore similar game situations where a player is involved in deciding what hi character does or does not know), I don't see how it can be considered metagaming. My character knows about trolls because of his uncle.




I think it is pretty clear having knowledge that is in the Monster Manual, no matter what explanation you provide, would generally be considered metagaming. I understand what you are arguing. But honestly, in just about every group I've been in, the way that would be handled, unless the system had something in it prioritizing player backgrounds and letting them impact this, you would be expected to say to the GM something like "Hey can I know about troll weaknesses because of my uncle?". If the GM thinks you are just fabricating the uncle for that purpose, he or she may say no. If it is established and makes sense, the GM might say yes. I think however troll fire is clearly secret information player characters are not expected to start out with (and keep in mind a lot of gamers, particularly OSR gamers, avoid giving characters extensive histories for this reason and have an approach of your background really begins day 1 of the campaign). 

By the way, I don't really agree with him either. I just think, if he is running a campaign, and he wants to consider this cheating, that is totally fair and logical (and not hard at all to understand as player). I would have no trouble operating under this restriction.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> I
> 
> If that is not allowed in a game because the DM decides that it's metagaming, then that's something I would disagree with, and so that is what I'm challenging. It's not metagaming, and if it's categorized as such, then I think that's a case of the DM resorting to Mother May I.




How is this not metagaming? I just think this is like basic metagaming that everybody would pretty much agree is metagaming. Again, it might vary by system. But if I were in a group and the GM said okay, you guys can't metagame stuff like knowing how to kill trolls. I'd say 'fair enough'. And if someone went to the mat like people are here, I'd regard them as being disruptive. I mean, it is a fairly minor requirement. If you can't enjoy the game because of it, I think you may be an overly rigid player. 

By the same token though, I'd expect max person as a player in my group to understand if it doesn't bother us that players can know how to kill trolls because they already have that information in real life.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> ... the example of the troll and uncle ...



The "a-ha!" moment just hit: the PC's uncle was a troll.....


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't have a hard time understanding Max's reasons for considering metagaming cheating. I simply disagree, and in the example of the troll and uncle (and therefore similar game situations where a player is involved in deciding what hi character does or does not know), I don't see how it can be considered metagaming. My character knows about trolls because of his uncle.
> 
> If that is not allowed in a game because the DM decides that it's metagaming, then that's something I would disagree with, and so that is what I'm challenging. It's not metagaming, and if it's categorized as such, then I think that's a case of the DM resorting to Mother May I.
> 
> To put it another way: there are two options to pick from, described below. In both cases, the players know about troll vulnerabilities. Which would you prefer?
> 
> - The characters encounter trolls. The players go through the encounter playing their characters as if they do not know about trolls and fire. They continue until they get to some point where they can "justify" the use of fire, and then they finish off the trolls.
> 
> - The characters encounter trolls. One player has his character say "These things look like Trolls! My Uncle Elmo told me the only way to be sure they're dead is to burn them!" and the players immediately deploy fire based attacks, and they finish off the trolls.
> 
> The first one may be fun for some....who am I to question or judge anyone's idea of fun? But what it doesn't do is prevent metagaming. In my opinion, it makes the entire encounter revolve around metagaming.....because the players spend much of their time wondering "when can I use fire? When can I bring my out of game knowledge to bear by justifying it in the fiction?" They go through all kinds of hoops to justify the use, and we can never actually know if the answer is truly sufficient because there is no actual mystery to preserve. No one is actually surprised by the revelation. There's no learning happening.
> 
> The second option just gets on with things. It's kind of like a band-aid. The first option is where you peel it slowly in an attempt to mitigate the sting, but really all you're doing is drawing it out.




Yep, this.  There's metagaming in both situations, but play suffers worse in one than the other.  To avoid the implied rhetorical, it's the former where the play suffers.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I think it is pretty clear having knowledge that is in the Monster Manual, no matter what explanation you provide, would generally be considered metagaming. I understand what you are arguing. But honestly, in just about every group I've been in, the way that would be handled, unless the system had something in it prioritizing player backgrounds and letting them impact this, you would be expected to say to the GM something like "Hey can I know about troll weaknesses because of my uncle?". If the GM thinks you are just fabricating the uncle for that purpose, he or she may say no. If it is established and makes sense, the GM might say yes. I think however troll fire is clearly secret information player characters are not expected to start out with (and keep in mind a lot of gamers, particularly OSR gamers, avoid giving characters extensive histories for this reason and have an approach of your background really begins day 1 of the campaign).
> 
> By the way, I don't really agree with him either. I just think, if he is running a campaign, and he wants to consider this cheating, that is totally fair and logical (and not hard at all to understand as player). I would have no trouble operating under this restriction.




I would prefer a game where such a restriction was not in place. Could I handle such a restriction? Yes. But do I think it's a meaningful restriction based on sound logic? Not really. 

I play with the same group of friends I've always played with (for the most part), so we've periodically addressed concerns like these and decided what's best for the group. So I wouldn't have to worry about this in my home game; we'd talk it out, and work toward something everyone could agree with. But if I was joining a public game, or an online game, where there are plenty of potential games to join.....I'd probably pass a game with such restrictions up in favor of one that didn't have them. 

Regarding trolls and fire....to me, once players know, the cat is pretty much out of the bag. I don't see the advantage of enforcing this ruling....I don't see what it adds to the game. Unless everyone likes the idea of pretending to discover a secret they already know. 



Bedrockgames said:


> How is this not metagaming? I just think this is like basic metagaming that everybody would pretty much agree is metagaming. Again, it might vary by system. But if I were in a group and the GM said okay, you guys can't metagame stuff like knowing how to kill trolls. I'd say 'fair enough'. And if someone went to the mat like people are here, I'd regard them as being disruptive. I mean, it is a fairly minor requirement. If you can't enjoy the game because of it, I think you may be an overly rigid player.
> 
> By the same token though, I'd expect max person as a player in my group to understand if it doesn't bother us that players can know how to kill trolls because they already have that information in real life.




What if the DM said to the player of the fighter "You recognize these creatures as trolls. Your Uncle Elmo said he faced them in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and that they must be burned to be destroyed." Is this metagaming? 

If not, then it's not the actual Uncle Elmo solution that's the problem....it's just the source of that solution. If it comes from the DM, it's okay. If it comes from the player, then it's not. 

And that's the issue, and is why I brought this tangent up in the first place. Because it relates to the question of Mother May I. "May I use fire now?"


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> And the player would also be aware of the choice and could play to it if desired.
> 
> Never played it, but I hear Call of Cthulhu has a similar inevitability to it.




Yeah, for the most part. There are plenty of games that have similar arcs. The zero to hero arc you describe is pretty particular to level progression games such as D&D. But I think the idea of a "hero" has enough flexibility to it to work in a variety of games. I tend to think of it in the literary sense of "protagonist" rather than the concept of someone who performs heroic deeds. 



Lanefan said:


> And because it's a long-standing group I know exactly what I have: one player in particular who will push for any in-fiction advantage he can get (though at times they all will to some extent); and other players who will be resentful should this squeaky-wheeling get someone any extra grease.
> 
> My means of shutting some of this down is to make backgrounds (other than the most basic ones) random.




Well, every table has its own needs, so you do what you got to. My players aren't working to eek out every advantage possible so much as they want to have interesting things happen in the game. 



Lanefan said:


> Even when a book's still being written the author almost certainly has some clue as to what makes each significant character tick and a bare-bones idea about its background.  As Aragorn has come up as an example I'll use him: at what point did JRRT decide Aragorn would be a hidden king? (my guess is it came pretty early on, before pen was seriously put to paper)




No idea, really. Who knows how many versions of the story he went through, or if he wrote it in chronological sequence or what. Either way, I'm sure there were some things that surprised even Tolkein during the writing. 

And I think that's part of the disconnect here. You seem to want the players to get as close to being the actual characters as possible, from a mental standpoint. Think like them, act like them, and so on. I kind of view it as being an observer and also a writer.....like I get to watch and enjoy a show that I'm also helping to write. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] had a recent post about this that I think explained it really well. 



Lanefan said:


> The sense I'm getting from some in here is that yes, it always has to be approved if the system allows it.




Well, it depends on the system, right? In D&D, I don't think there are existing rules for allowing such on the fly content creation, so if people wanted this in their game, they'd have to kind of homebrew it, or port it from other systems and tweak accordingly. 

But in other games, it's just part of the assumed mode of play. If that's the case, then yes, it should always be allowed, right? 




Lanefan said:


> How could this be so is only one of the questions that will arise, however, and probably the easiest to answer.
> 
> Much harder if not impossible to answer is the question "What would have happened differently in the fiction had this been known all along, at least by that PC's player and the DM?"; and that's always the very first question that leaps to my mind.  And the problem is that if anything would or even might have happened differently in the fiction then what actually did happen has just been rendered invalid, along with everything since that might have been affected by this initial difference (an in-fiction butterfly effect, as it were).  Put another way, it retroactively causes those sessions to have been largely a waste of everyone's time at the table; wich I think we can all agree is hardly a desirable outcome.




Well, I meant that there would indeed be many questions, all summarized by "how could this be so". 

But I think there is nothing harder and certainly not impossible about what has already happened. The answer is that everything that happened still happened. Nothing changes. You just work to understand how it could have happened that way. Why did no one recognize the secret noble? Why didn't he use his status to get them out of that jam? And so on. If you answer these questions, then there's no need to retcon a retinue that's been traveling with the party all along. That would be absurd. 

Instead of changing the fiction, this simply sheds new light on the fiction. 



Lanefan said:


> All of these can be done provided a) the answer to a preceding question "WHY is this being revealed now?" passes muster (e.g. it's not being done just to gain some immediate advantage either in the fiction or at the table) and b) there's no obvious place where knowledge of this by either the PC's player or DM would or could have had any impact on what has gone before in the played fiction.
> 
> Get past those - which ain't easy - and yes, then we're into exactly the questions you ask here.  But it's point b) where most such things will run aground, unless the campaign has only just started.
> 
> As a GM it sure wouldn't excite me if I didn't know about it ahead of time as now I have to stop and think about any point b) headaches this is going to cause.
> 
> As a player the excitement comes from having made the decision back at char-gen and then roleplaying keeping it secret (I've done this numerous times - played a character with some hidden but very significant thing to it e.g. a hidden class); but the GM would always be in on it.  There'd be no excitement in just coming up with it on the spur of the moment and dropping it in like a bombshell - unless my goal is to be an asshat and disrupt things.




I don't think it's fair to assume that people are doing this to be an asshat. Maybe this would be frustrating to you as a DM....okay, that's fine. But are you not able to understand how other players and DMs may actually enjoy this kind of emergent fiction? That they don't think it's a headache, but instead is a source for inspiration to propel the story forward or maybe in some new direction?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I didn't compare them.  I used your logic and applied it to a similar situation.  If the DM is a jerk for ignoring group A's desire to avoid pretending not to know about weaknesses, then he is also a jerk if he ignores group B's desire not to be surprised by monster weaknesses and strengths.  If the DM should allow group A to use player knowledge to kill trolls and such, then he should also give out all unknown strength and weakness information to group B.




But that's not what I'm saying. The DM doesn't have to provide the characters with knowledge that their players don't have in such a case. So if there's a new monster with weaknesses the players have no idea about, then unless the thing is meant to be something that the characters may have knowledge of in which case the DM could share it or could call for a roll, I'd play it out as is. This is the ideal situation in a case where you want such monster vulnerabilities to be secret knowledge and to matter to the encounter as such....both players and characters are ignorant of the info. Why would I change that? 

It's the case where the players know that I think this judgment applies.....let their characters know, too, because in the grand scheme it does nothing for the game to block that knowledge. Especially since the characters could conceivably know. 

I'll ask you the question I asked Bedrockgames:
What if the DM said to the player of the fighter "You recognize these creatures as trolls. Your Uncle Elmo said he faced them in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and that they must be burned to be destroyed." Is this metagaming? 



Maxperson said:


> It's more player dependent than DM dependent.  They come up with the ideas on how to find out the knowledge. The DM just establishes the odds of success or failure as fairly as he can.




I don't know if I'd say it's more player dependent. The players may come up with the ideas, but the DM has a huge say in if those ideas have a chance of succeeding, and what that chance may be. And obviously, has the ability to veto ideas outright, i.e. "No, your Uncle Elmo never told you about trolls". 

So the player's idea is subject to DM review, and then if it passes that review, then subject to DM adjudication in the form of DC scores and the like. 

Seems much more slanted toward the DM, no? If it was indeed player dependent, then you'd probably be more open to accepting the player's idea that he learned from his Uncle Elmo, no?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Hitpoints aren't metagame at all, they are _abstract._  abstractions are required for the game to function, or you'd spend vastly more time simulating a single sword swing than most sessions last.  Further, actually playing the game _can't be metagaming_ so thinking about or using hitpoints is just playing the game.
> 
> RPGs have developed this weird idea that metagaming is anything outside the fictional mental state of the character.  This is useless as a concept because it presupposes a one-true-way of playing and also moves actually playing the game into the metagame. Metagaming, by definition, is thinking outside the game, not playing it or using abstract mechanics.  Metagaming is making sure the party covers all roles, or that someone plays a cleric, or how modern chemistry works.  Not hitpoints.
> 
> I disagreed when [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said something similar upthread, but things had moved past that by the time I could respond.




I realize the distinction you're making, and it's not a perfect example, perhaps, but to me, I would find a DM who said "wait, why is your fighter willing to take the hit from that gnoll....he doesn't know he has 76 HP and a tmost the gnoll can do 36" to be pretty much on par with the DM saying "Wait, how does your fighter know that trolls are vulnerable to fire?" 

I just....I don't know.....why are so many DMs determined to get in the way of the game moving forward?


----------



## Numidius

This Uncle Elmo should have kept his mouth shut! 

Well I imagine children singing unclaimed tunes about trolls & fire all over the game world and grannies telling the same tale to them before sleeping


----------



## Numidius

hawkeyefan said:


> I just....I don't know.....why are so many DMs determined to get in the way of the game moving forward?




This is the right question. Everything is in there.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> I realize the distinction you're making, and it's not a perfect example, perhaps, but to me, I would find a DM who said "wait, why is your fighter willing to take the hit from that gnoll....he doesn't know he has 76 HP and a tmost the gnoll can do 36" to be pretty much on par with the DM saying "Wait, how does your fighter know that trolls are vulnerable to fire?"



Well... because "hits" and "hitpoints" are abstract respresentations.  Taking the gnoll's hit doesn't imply taking a spear to the gut, it make mean a glancing blow, a scratch, a last second dodge, a block with more effort than expected, etc, etc.  Whether you can defend against the gnoll's attack is something a fighter should know, roughly speaking.  I think this is a case where not thinking broadly enough about the fictional outcomes is causing issues.


> I just....I don't know.....why are so many DMs determined to get in the way of the game moving forward?



If you ask me, based on my oersonal past thinking, it's because players aren't supposed to know what's in the GM's notes.  Thise secret notes are where the fun is, or so I believed, and not knowing made the game better, or so I believed.  Then, one year, I realized that I can tell my players absolutely everything and they'll still find ways to screw it up most entertainingly.  So, I now pretty much tell my players what's what with statblocks.  I play online these days, and so post the entire rules text from statblicks when an ability is used and provide resistances and immunities pretty freely.  The challenge isn't guessing the monster abilities, it's being pressed anyway even though you know.

Between being open about abilities and using the no death unless the players agrees rule, I've really been able to up  the danger factors.  The players take more risks, and I don't pull punches.  Both sides are more free to engage the fiction without having to worry about who knows what.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> I would prefer a game where such a restriction was not in place. Could I handle such a restriction? Yes. But do I think it's a meaningful restriction based on sound logic? Not really.
> 
> I play with the same group of friends I've always played with (for the most part), so we've periodically addressed concerns like these and decided what's best for the group. So I wouldn't have to worry about this in my home game; we'd talk it out, and work toward something everyone could agree with. But if I was joining a public game, or an online game, where there are plenty of potential games to join.....I'd probably pass a game with such restrictions up in favor of one that didn't have them.
> 
> Regarding trolls and fire....to me, once players know, the cat is pretty much out of the bag. I don't see the advantage of enforcing this ruling....I don't see what it adds to the game. Unless everyone likes the idea of pretending to discover a secret they already know.




And all that is fine. That is a clear preference. I like my investigations to put player skill agains the mystery. And for ages I just figured this was naturally superior to other approaches. But I played with enough people who I saw genuinely had more fun if their character was a simulation of Sherlock Holmes, to understand there are just different preferences when it comes to this. By the same token, there are people who, no matter how much of the mystery they have figured out because of out of character knowledge, will strive to not allow that knowledge help their character solve it (and its because they enjoy keeping the line between character and out of character knowledge). 

I just feel people are unnecessarily dismantling Maxperson's preference, when it is a perfectly grokable and valid way to play the game. If you don't like it, that is fine. I don't particularly like it either. I just think people are acting like they are master game analysts, yet all their analysis is shaped by bias. And people are taking such steps as pulling the words out from under posters, or declaring obviously valid preferences to be nonsensical. It is as weird as the foundation this thread is built upon (a strange argument about the impossibility of simulating reality).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> This is the right question. Everything is in there.




This mentality reaches a counter productive point where it places anything the GM might do under suspicion. GMing is not easy work. It takes more effort and time than the players have to invest. So when I play, I am generally very open minded about what the GM wants, and wants to do. And I just don't get this mindset. Unless the GM is genuinely bad. But I feel like people are predisposed toward criticism here, they are going to label perfectly good GMs terrible.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> This mentality reaches a counter productive point where it places anything the GM might do under suspicion. GMing is not easy work. It takes more effort and time than the players have to invest. So when I play, I am generally very open minded about what the GM wants, and wants to do. And I just don't get this mindset. Unless the GM is genuinely bad. But I feel like people are predisposed toward criticism here, they are going to label perfectly good GMs terrible.



I know, cause I'm a Gm too. That's why I see the matter from both sides of the barricade. And since mainstream games are so Gm-centric, I think it's from Gm's role that it all starts and must be discussed. 
A deeply rooted habit, extended also to players, is still in place, and that prevents me from running or playing a game in a satisfying manner.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Well... because "hits" and "hitpoints" are abstract respresentations.  Taking the gnoll's hit doesn't imply taking a spear to the gut, it make mean a glancing blow, a scratch, a last second dodge, a block with more effort than expected, etc, etc.  Whether you can defend against the gnoll's attack is something a fighter should know, roughly speaking.  I think this is a case where not thinking broadly enough about the fictional outcomes is causing issues.




This all may be, sure. I don't really disagree. But I think it's pretty broad to look at it as a combatant in actual combat would be aware that at any moment, they could simply be killed. They can mitigate the risk to some extent, sure....take cover, wear armor, etc....but any single wound could be fatal. And in that sense, acting differently based on amount of HP kind of aligns with the metagaming examples that have been provided. 

Don't get me wrong....I'd never question a player who played his fighter this way. I just don't question other ways people play their characters either. 




Ovinomancer said:


> If you ask me, based on my oersonal past thinking, it's because players aren't supposed to know what's in the GM's notes.  Thise secret notes are where the fun is, or so I believed, and not knowing made the game better, or so I believed.  Then, one year, I realized that I can tell my players absolutely everything and they'll still find ways to screw it up most entertainingly.  So, I now pretty much tell my players what's what with statblocks.  I play online these days, and so post the entire rules text from statblicks when an ability is used and provide resistances and immunities pretty freely.  The challenge isn't guessing the monster abilities, it's being pressed anyway even though you know.
> 
> Between being open about abilities and using the no death unless the players agrees rule, I've really been able to up  the danger factors.  The players take more risks, and I don't pull punches.  Both sides are more free to engage the fiction without having to worry about who knows what.




Yeah, I had a similar realization based on a couple of things that happened in my games, and I've really altered my thinking on the way we play, and the way I GM.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> And all that is fine. That is a clear preference. I like my investigations to put player skill agains the mystery. And for ages I just figured this was naturally superior to other approaches. But I played with enough people who I saw genuinely had more fun if their character was a simulation of Sherlock Holmes, to understand there are just different preferences when it comes to this. By the same token, there are people who, no matter how much of the mystery they have figured out because of out of character knowledge, will strive to not allow that knowledge help their character solve it (and its because they enjoy keeping the line between character and out of character knowledge).
> 
> I just feel people are unnecessarily dismantling Maxperson's preference, when it is a perfectly grokable and valid way to play the game. If you don't like it, that is fine. I don't particularly like it either. I just think people are acting like they are master game analysts, yet all their analysis is shaped by bias. And people are taking such steps as pulling the words out from under posters, or declaring obviously valid preferences to be nonsensical. It is as weird as the foundation this thread is built upon (a strange argument about the impossibility of simulating reality).




I'm not dismantling his preference. He can like whatever he likes. 

But I don't agree with all of the things he's presenting as reasons for his preferences. So I'm asking questions and providing counter examples. 




Bedrockgames said:


> This mentality reaches a counter productive point where it places anything the GM might do under suspicion. GMing is not easy work. It takes more effort and time than the players have to invest. So when I play, I am generally very open minded about what the GM wants, and wants to do. And I just don't get this mindset. Unless the GM is genuinely bad. But I feel like people are predisposed toward criticism here, they are going to label perfectly good GMs terrible.




I think that in order to understand the pros and cons of whatever approach, we have to look at how things can go wrong. So when looking at a GM centric approach, we have to look at the places where that can become problematic. Too much GM authority would seem to be one potential pitfall. 

Obviously, always assuming the worst can be annoying and can get in the way of discussion....like always assuming a player would introduce a fictional element only for a mechanical advantage and not for any other reason.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> I think that in order to understand the pros and cons of whatever approach, we have to look at how things can go wrong. So when looking at a GM centric approach, we have to look at the places where that can become problematic. Too much GM authority would seem to be one potential pitfall.
> 
> Obviously, always assuming the worst can be annoying and can get in the way of discussion....like always assuming a player would introduce a fictional element only for a mechanical advantage and not for any other reason.




Sure, but I think it is very telling where all the analysis leads: all the places things can go wrong, seem to reside amid other peoples' playstyle preference. When your analysis slowly but surely builds an argument for the playstyle you prefer, you might want to question how much bias is leaking into the debate. This just does not appear to me to be a healthy exploration of game style preferences, gaming issues, and problems. It looks like a fight between play styles where people are couching their point of view as objective analysis even though it isn't anything approaching that. 

The problem isn't GM authority. GM authority can be a perfectly valid thing in a game. The issue is some GMs don't wield it well, some players bristle at it, etc. Again, if you prefer games with less GM authority, that is totally fine. But treating it as a universal problem because you don't like it: that is where this conversation goes off the rails.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> Obviously, always assuming the worst can be annoying and can get in the way of discussion....like always assuming a player would introduce a fictional element only for a mechanical advantage and not for any other reason.




I am not assuming the worst about this. There are honest differences in preference on this matter. But know the group your in. And in certain groups, claiming your uncle would give you that kind of information, might be perceived as cheating (unless there was a very good reason for it to be the case in the campaign). Again, I don't even share Maxperson's preference here. I just think people are betraying an unwillingness to even engage his playstyle. He isn't asking anyone to eat nails. He is saying at his table, you shouldn't act on things your character wouldn't know, and he includes among those things like monster vulnerabilities. That is not a difficult lane to stay inside at all.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> Sure, but I think it is very telling where all the analysis leads: all the places things can go wrong, seem to reside amid other peoples' playstyle preference. When your analysis slowly but surely builds an argument for the playstyle you prefer, you might want to question how much bias is leaking into the debate. This just does not appear to me to be a healthy exploration of game style preferences, gaming issues, and problems. It looks like a fight between play styles where people are couching their point of view as objective analysis even though it isn't anything approaching that.
> 
> The problem isn't GM authority. GM authority can be a perfectly valid thing in a game. The issue is some GMs don't wield it well, some players bristle at it, etc. Again, if you prefer games with less GM authority, that is totally fine. But treating it as a universal problem because you don't like it: that is where this conversation goes off the rails.




Yeah, I don't think I've done that. 

I run a 5E D&D game which is of course very GM driven. As I said, it may allow for more player input than the average D&D game, or than what most would allow based on the rules as presented. But it's still got plenty of GM authority in it. 

There's nothing at all wrong with that. 

But then, I also didn't take offense to the use of the term Mother May I....because I can see how it applies.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I am not assuming the worst about this. There are honest differences in preference on this matter. But know the group your in. And in certain groups, claiming your uncle would give you that kind of information, might be perceived as cheating (unless there was a very good reason for it to be the case in the campaign). Again, I don't even share Maxperson's preference here. I just think people are betraying an unwillingness to even engage his playstyle. He isn't asking anyone to eat nails. He is saying at his table, you shouldn't act on things your character wouldn't know, and he includes among those things like monster vulnerabilities. That is not a difficult lane to stay inside at all.




Sure. But what a character would or wouldn't know is subjective, right? The lane has some wavy lines, in that sense. This is what's interesting to me, and is what I'm talking about.

But that aside, I get what would be expected at his game, absolutely. I don't think anyone here doesn't get that.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> But then, I also didn't take offense to the use of the term Mother May I....because I can see how it applies.




My position on this hasn't changed. I've been banging this drum for years when it comes to labels like Magic Tea Party and Mother May I. Threads like this just demonstrate why those kinds of labels are such an issue in gaming discussions.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> My position on this hasn't changed. I've been banging this drum for years when it comes to labels like Magic Tea Party and Mother May I. Threads like this just demonstrate why those kinds of labels are such an issue in gaming discussions.



I see different issues than you do. You point to labels, I point to behaviours being enforced by long standing habits and fostered by more recent manuals, eventually exemplified by labels. 

I just scrolled on the 5e forum on this very board and found someone seeking help to un-knot his game that went too much binding for his Players and constrictive for the Gm to have a way out and to proceed forward.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> I see different issues than you do. You point to labels, I point to behaviours being enforced by long standing habits and fostered by more recent manuals, eventually exemplified by labels.
> 
> I just scrolled on the 5e forum on this very board and found someone seeking help to un-knot his game that went too much binding for his Players and constrictive for the Gm to have a way out and to proceed forward.




Again, this is a playstyle issue, not an universal problem in need of fixing. I think the problem  is you are pathologizing playstyle preference. Look 5E is a mainstream game. Maybe the problem isn't deeply rooted habits that need to be fixed. Maybe this is just what a mainstream RPG looks like. But 5E isn't the only game out there. It isn't a zero sum game. I don't play 5E because I realize my preferences are not fully aligned with mainstream gaming. So I play other systems. I don't feel a need to take apart the preferences that make up mainstream play or act like there is something deeply flawed about it. Instead I try to understand why people like these things. I am not getting a sense that that is what is going on here. This whole analysis feels like it is really just a defensive reaction to people not sharing your preference


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## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> My position on this hasn't changed. I've been banging this drum for years when it comes to labels like Magic Tea Party and Mother May I. Threads like this just demonstrate why those kinds of labels are such an issue in gaming discussions.




Sure, and that’s fine. I agreed that some terms are loaded and can get in the way, or can provoke a response that distracts from discussion. But I also thibk we’ve largely moved past that concern in this conversation, and any use of Mother May I is now to describe an undesirable amount of GM Authority.


----------



## dragoner

Bedrockgames said:


> First off, quit it with the snipes. It was bad enough you were trying to tie me to views I don't hold in the orc thread in a very deceptive way. But this kind of posting tactic is getting particularly frustrating in this thread. If you have a personal problem with me, please take it to PM.
> 
> If we are including HP and dice rolls as metagaming, I would say that is an overly strict definition of the term. Usually when people invoke meta gaming they are talking about players applying knowledge outside the game events to their actions. And that is the kind of meta gaming Maxperson is discussing.




Yes, we have no snipes today. lol

I am not doing anything, if you feel tied with those "vilest people" (not my words, but apt), it is not due to my noticing it or not, this isn't a Schrödinger's cat type situation. Nor do I want to hear what you have to say in private, that you would not say publicly. As it appears you do understand what geezer's point was, it does seem somewhat disingenuous, your previous statements.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> Yes, we have no snipes today. lol
> 
> I am not doing anything, if you feel tied with those "vilest people" (not my words, but apt), it is not due to my noticing it or not, this isn't a Schrödinger's cat type situation. Nor do I want to hear what you have to say in private, that you would not say publicly. As it appears you do understand what geezer's point was, it does seem somewhat disingenuous, your previous statements.




I think the way you presented that characterization on the other thread definitely suggested I believed things I don't. And those are things aI publicly spoke out against at the time, so I was especially bothered by your breakdown of the history.


----------



## Bedrockgames

dragoner said:


> Nor do I want to hear what you have to say in private, that you would not say publicly. As it appears you do understand what geezer's point was, it does seem somewhat disingenuous, your previous statements.




I honestly don't understand this part of our conversation. I viewed your invocation of Old Geezer's statement (which I hadn't recalled seeing before) as a non sequitur when I first saw it.


----------



## dragoner

Ovinomancer said:


> Hitpoints aren't metagame at all, they are _abstract._  abstractions are required for the game to function, or you'd spend vastly more time simulating a single sword swing than most sessions last.  Further, actually playing the game _can't be metagaming_ so thinking about or using hitpoints is just playing the game.
> 
> RPGs have developed this weird idea that metagaming is anything outside the fictional mental state of the character.  This is useless as a concept because it presupposes a one-true-way of playing and also moves actually playing the game into the metagame. Metagaming, by definition, is thinking outside the game, not playing it or using abstract mechanics.  Metagaming is making sure the party covers all roles, or that someone plays a cleric, or how modern chemistry works.  Not hitpoints.
> 
> I disagreed when [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] said something similar upthread, but things had moved past that by the time I could respond.




It is metagaming, it's just a strict definition, too strict in that we deal with some metagaming to play, it is just that sometimes there is too much, or it appears in places we don't want it, or feel it doesn't belong. It's what the argument about metagaming is about, except it comes down to different horses for different courses, which isn't necessarily satisfying.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> Again, this is a playstyle issue, not an universal problem in need of fixing.I think the problem  is you are pathologizing playstyle preference. Look 5E is a mainstream game. Maybe the problem isn't deeply rooted habits that need to be fixed. Maybe this is just what a mainstream RPG looks like. But 5E isn't the only game out there. It isn't a zero sum game. I don't play 5E because I realize my preferences are not fully aligned with mainstream gaming. So I play other systems. I don't feel a need to take apart the preferences that make up mainstream play or act like there is something deeply flawed about it. Instead I try to understand why people like these things. I am not getting a sense that that is what is going on here. This whole analysis feels like it is really just a defensive reaction to people not sharing your preference




For my part I try to understand why people play this things even if their games collapse in the long term (if lucky), again and again. All IME. 
I'd really like to play a trad/Gm driven fantasy game, but I find either slow railroads or clueless sandboxes, with no player inputs considered, and Gm fiat or freeform endless downtime outside combat encounters. 

I understand clearly the will of a mainstream publisher to sell their product to the masses, nonetheless I see the limit of said product, and as other posters have already explained, the roots are deep. 

I don't think we're discussing preferences in this thread, and I don't feel being defensive, but, who knows, you might be right. I actually proposed my ideas to the afore mentioned forumer seeking advice for his campaign in the 5e section. 
 I have already been in dead end game situations. I have no problem admitting that I made my games collapse in the past because I did not focus on/didn't know how to resolve issues of play. 

Btw, you spoke about investigative rpgs. Friends asked me to run Trail of Cthulhu for them. We gonna start soon. Prewritten adventure, clues gathered by Pc skill, mistery solved by Players acuity... Hope it will run smooth


----------



## Ovinomancer

dragoner said:


> It is metagaming, it's just a strict definition, too strict in that we deal with some metagaming to play, it is just that sometimes there is too much, or it appears in places we don't want it, or feel it doesn't belong. It's what the argument about metagaming is about, except it comes down to different horses for different courses, which isn't necessarily satisfying.




Saying this is like saying paying rent in Monopoly is metagaming.  It's nonsensical.  Actual elements of the game _cannot be metagaming_.  Using actual elements if the game as they are intended to he used in the game _cannot be metagaming_.  It's only RPGs that have this weird definitional crusis with the term metagaming, and then only because of the tradition of secret GM notes and who decides what's part of thise notes.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Obviously a crossbow is not secret info. Burning trolls by fire is more obviously a secret.





Bedrockgames said:


> Because it is pretty self evident to anyone who has been in the hobby for ten minutes



It's never been obvious to me that the troll thing is a secret - because the first version of D&D I played was Moldvay Basic, and as per the instructions to new players I read the monster section. And I did the same when I got the Expert book.

The idea that players who know about the troll weakness, but whose characters have never encountered a troll, would pretend to be ignorant about the troll weakness, is not one I encountered until I saw people advocating it on ENworld. Back when I played D&D in a club and at tournaments, part of the job of an experienced player was to bring knowledge to the table like how to beat trolls.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Tthe section at the start of the text that strongly suggests discouragement of metagaming (again in the sense Maxperson is talking about)



How is _knowing about trolls because I've played the game and/or read the rulebook_ the same as _using my knowledge of real-world chemistry_?


----------



## dragoner

Ovinomancer said:


> Saying this is like saying paying rent in Monopoly is metagaming.  It's nonsensical.  Actual elements of the game _cannot be metagaming_.  Using actual elements if the game as they are intended to he used in the game _cannot be metagaming_.  It's only RPGs that have this weird definitional crusis with the term metagaming, and then only because of the tradition of secret GM notes and who decides what's part of thise notes.




Right. RPG's have this because precisely they are RPG's; there is no meta- in settlers or squad leader. Using the mechanics of the game is meta- but an acceptable meta vs an unacceptable; that is the only difference. Really about the time when one hears about unacceptable meta, it's with mechanics such as Fate Points. As an aside, adversarial GM'ing is bad, imo; though I'm more learned my style from Classic Traveller which supports a neutral adjudicator of the universe style.


----------



## dragoner

pemerton said:


> It's never been obvious to me that the troll thing is a secret - because the first version of D&D I played was Moldvay Basic, and as per the instructions to new players I read the monster section. And I did the same when I got the Expert book.
> 
> The idea that players who know about the troll weakness, but whose characters have never encountered a troll, would pretend to be ignorant about the troll weakness, is not one I encountered until I saw people advocating it on ENworld. Back when I played D&D in a club and at tournaments, part of the job of an experienced player was to bring knowledge to the table like how to beat trolls.




Plus there has to be the logic that if the PC and Troll exist together in the same world, the PC will have heard how to defeat the Troll. Which brings us to an odd situation of the player not knowing things that the character should know.


----------



## Manbearcat

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But a chasm is passive, so you can choose to engage it or not, and it can be defeated with ropes, spikes, etc. Sure, it is dangerous, but it isn't by any means a 'gotcha!'. Pits likewise, unless they're hidden somehow. In that case my comments on randomly placed traps apply. If a covered pit appears in a context where it makes sense and is either expected, expectable, or simply an element like 'damaging terrain', then its fine.




Not if its a Schrodinger's Gorge spanning a river (with egress into the safety of the forest on the other side) and you've got an overwhelming enemy force chasing you on horseback through the badlands (and the success or failure of the Skill Challenge is riding on this last action declaration/Group Check!)!


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> It's never been obvious to me that the troll thing is a secret - because the first version of D&D I played was Moldvay Basic, and as per the instructions to new players I read the monster section. And I did the same when I got the Expert book.
> 
> The idea that players who know about the troll weakness, but whose characters have never encountered a troll, would pretend to be ignorant about the troll weakness, is not one I encountered until I saw people advocating it on ENworld. Back when I played D&D in a club and at tournaments, part of the job of an experienced player was to bring knowledge to the table like how to beat trolls.



I remember playing a bit of 2E in high school. I came in late during the campaign. We encountered a troll, and the other players informed me that trolls in the game were vulnerable to fire and acid. So that's what we used to defeat it. When we started a new campaign in 3E, our new characters were never forced to "relearn" this weakness. It was understood that these were things that our characters as competent adventurers would have sufficient knowledge of. 

I would also push back against the idea that D&D presents a "zero-to-hero" narrative. The earliest fantasy of D&D, IMHO, never really seemed to care about "heroes." Or zeroes. It seemed to be about "rags-to-riches". Or at the very least: the game words may have said one thing or referenced heroes on occasion, but the "meat" that propelled the game said something else entirely. You are not leveling up to become a hero. You are leveling up to gain riches, titles, and property. This point was even brought up earlier in our discussion in another thread of how D&D's fantasy is rooted in a lot of Americanisms (success = accumulation of wealth) rather than Medieval European values whose aesthetic the game supposedly simulates. I don't really think that D&D got into fantasy about "heroes" until Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. Before that, it was rooted more in the Sword & Sorcery genre, which has an incredibly cynical view of heroes. Most of the genre's "heroes" aren't heroes at all, but, instead, selfish bastards. So I don't really see the whole idea that D&D is about playing "zeros to heroes" seems like a later addition to the game representing an alternative approach.


----------



## Manbearcat

Even if a setting is working as a Point of Light theme (which the classic standards of modern D&D's prepackaged, high resolution settings - eg Forgotten Realms - fundamentally do not), there is still going to be communication that significantly exceeds that of European Middle Ages and Feudal Japan (which weren't short on communication themselves).  

- Adventurers are going to be coming back (sometimes short a limb or eye) from perilous journeys and delves, and by the light of the tavern hearth they'll have the entirety of a township held hostage by their tales of overcoming grizzly traps, trading blows with mythical monsters, and extracting shiny treasures.  

- Bards will package those narratives into song and ballad and mass produce them for coin in other taverns as they travel.

- Kids will use the tropes to tell ghost stories.

- Elders will use the tropes as cautionary tales for the children.

- Specific intelligence about bandits controlling roads or trolls guarding bridges might come in the way of raven.

- Wizardly divination will fill in the blanks.


Personally, only in the bleakest of the bleakest of the bleak PoL settings with seriously low magic and travel so deadly that inter-settlement trade is nary a thing (except perhaps once every several months when things are most desperate or you can muster the numbers for a robust caravan) can I imagine a scenario where Trolls being vulnerable to fire and Perytons tearing hearts from chests and Wyvern having stingers that can kill a horse straight-dead not being trivial third-hand-knowledge for your average person, let alone an actual adventurer.

I would need a good reason NOT to believe that an adventurer would be aware of it.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> How is _knowing about trolls because I've played the game and/or read the rulebook_ the same as _using my knowledge of real-world chemistry_?




I never said it was.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It's never been obvious to me that the troll thing is a secret - because the first version of D&D I played was Moldvay Basic, and as per the instructions to new players I read the monster section. And I did the same when I got the Expert book.
> 
> The idea that players who know about the troll weakness, but whose characters have never encountered a troll, would pretend to be ignorant about the troll weakness, is not one I encountered until I saw people advocating it on ENworld. Back when I played D&D in a club and at tournaments, part of the job of an experienced player was to bring knowledge to the table like how to beat trolls.




This is something I've seen from when I started playing in the mid-80s. I don't think it needs to extend to the early days of the hobby though to be a clearly visible thing in the gaming culture.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> For my part I try to understand why people play this things even if their games collapse in the long term (if lucky), again and again. All IME.
> I'd really like to play a trad/Gm driven fantasy game, but I find either slow railroads or clueless sandboxes, with no player inputs considered, and Gm fiat or freeform endless downtime outside combat encounters.




With this attitude, you are never going to understand what you are examining.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, for the most part. There are plenty of games that have similar arcs. The zero to hero arc you describe is pretty particular to level progression games such as D&D. But I think the idea of a "hero" has enough flexibility to it to work in a variety of games. I tend to think of it in the literary sense of "protagonist" rather than the concept of someone who performs heroic deeds.



Yeah, same here, but "hero" as a generic term meaning "the later stages of protagonist development" is a lot shorter to type! 



> No idea, really. Who knows how many versions of the story he went through, or if he wrote it in chronological sequence or what. Either way, I'm sure there were some things that surprised even Tolkein during the writing.



I wonder if he was more surprised by things he found in his research, than by what he wrote using it.  Guess we'll never know.



> And I think that's part of the disconnect here. You seem to want the players to get as close to being the actual characters as possible, from a mental standpoint. Think like them, act like them, and so on. I kind of view it as being an observer and also a writer.....like I get to watch and enjoy a show that I'm also helping to write. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] had a recent post about this that I think explained it really well.



To me-as-player the observer part comes later, when I read the game log.  To me-as-DM the observer part comes both during play and then later when I write the game log.



> Well, it depends on the system, right? In D&D, I don't think there are existing rules for allowing such on the fly content creation, so if people wanted this in their game, they'd have to kind of homebrew it, or port it from other systems and tweak accordingly.
> 
> But in other games, it's just part of the assumed mode of play. If that's the case, then yes, it should always be allowed, right?



Yes...except for this...



> Well, I meant that there would indeed be many questions, all summarized by "how could this be so".
> 
> But I think there is nothing harder and certainly not impossible about what has already happened. The answer is that everything that happened still happened. Nothing changes. You just work to understand how it could have happened that way. Why did no one recognize the secret noble? Why didn't he use his status to get them out of that jam? And so on. If you answer these questions, then there's no need to retcon a retinue that's been traveling with the party all along. That would be absurd.
> 
> Instead of changing the fiction, this simply sheds new light on the fiction.
> 
> I don't think it's fair to assume that people are doing this to be an asshat. Maybe this would be frustrating to you as a DM....okay, that's fine. But are you not able to understand how other players and DMs may actually enjoy this kind of emergent fiction? That they don't think it's a headache, but instead is a source for inspiration to propel the story forward or maybe in some new direction?



Not just as a DM; this sort of thing would bug the hell out of me as a player as well because I'd still be asking the same question: does something only just now being learned or introduced, that in theory was present all along, possibly cause any retcons or change any previously-done actions and-or roleplay?

Which also means that were I playing in a situation where players could introduce major elements of the fiction, one top-of-mind consideration for me would always be whether anything I was planning on introducing on the fly would cause these same issues - an example being the "my PC is a high noble" declaration - and if it would I wouldn't introduce it.

Huge red flag goes up the second someone says "Had we known this earlier {xxx} would have been done differently!", where what's just now been revealed is something that should have been known earlier.  The noble isn't the best example here as there may be valid reasons to have kept it secret (though the noble PC's player and the GM should still have known all along), so I'll use an example that happened to me way back when:

A friend was writing an adventure module - great big thing - and I was DMing it kind of as it got written*.  Party is out in the wilderness following a road (the only road in the area) to an important assassin's hideaway.  Eventually it comes out in the module that the assassins use wagons to get their supplies in from civilization - and on hearing this the players quite rightly ask me "Well, why didn't we see any wagon tracks in the dirt, all the way along the road?  Things might have been different if we had!".  The meta-game answer, which I openly told the players, was that the wagons hadn't yet been written into the module at the time and so I couldn't read ahead and factor them in.  They were understanding, if a bit annoyed, and on we went; but it stuck with me as something both as player and DM to watch out for and never to repeat.

* - at one point about halfway through I told my friend he'd better do some serious writing that coming week, as the previous session had played to within 9 words (!) of where he'd left off writing!


----------



## Lanefan

dragoner said:


> Plus there has to be the logic that if the PC and Troll exist together in the same world, the PC will have heard how to defeat the Troll.



You forgot to mention the more telling question: has (or should have) the Troll heard how to defeat the PC?


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] Why not simply say that the assassins, keen on keeping their lair hidden, had somehow managed to obtain an enchantment that kept their wagon from leaving tracks? 

There’s almost always a fictional way to address such concerns.


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> Not if its a Schrodinger's Gorge spanning a river (with egress into the safety of the forest on the other side) and you've got an overwhelming enemy force chasing you on horseback through the badlands (and the success or failure of the Skill Challenge is riding on this last action declaration/Group Check!)!



Schroedinger's Gorge is so going on a map somewhere in my game world! 



			
				Aldarc said:
			
		

> I would also push back against the idea that D&D presents a "zero-to-hero" narrative. The earliest fantasy of D&D, IMHO, never really seemed to care about "heroes." Or zeroes. It seemed to be about "rags-to-riches". Or at the very least: the game words may have said one thing or referenced heroes on occasion, but the "meat" that propelled the game said something else entirely. You are not leveling up to become a hero. You are leveling up to gain riches, titles, and property.



So zero to hero then, only in a financial/capitalist way rather than social.

Perhaps a better term for a PC's progression might be "little fish to big fish".


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] Why not simply say that the assassins, keen on keeping their lair hidden, had somehow managed to obtain an enchantment that kept their wagon from leaving tracks?
> 
> There’s almost always a fictional way to address such concerns.



Two reasons I can remember (this was 30 years ago!): one, that I simply didn't think of it; and two, that I was trying to run the module as written as closely as I could, and when the wagons finally appeared in the writing there was no mention of any enchantments on them.


----------



## Ovinomancer

dragoner said:


> Right. RPG's have this because precisely they are RPG's; there is no meta- in settlers or squad leader.



I think we're having a fundamental failure to communicate, here.  Settlers and Squad Leader both have metagames.  Granted, Settlers' meta is a bit light, but IIRC there are a few ways to use SL's rules to achieve unintended outcomes that allowed for a higher win rate.  That's meta -- treating the game as something to be gamed rather than played.



> Using the mechanics of the game is meta-but an acceptable meta vs an unacceptable; that is the only difference.



Again, playing the game _cannot be metagaming_.  

I'll say it again, actually playing a game cannot be metagaming.  Definitionally.  Metagaming is gaming the game, ie, thinking outside of the rules of the game to find ways to twist/use/employ those rules in ways not intended to achieve a goal.  MtG meta is about the current deck zeitgeist -- what decks are being played and how is not part of the game rules or actually playing the game, but building to take advantage or counter that meta is very much a big part of competitive play.  This is acceptable and preferred for competitive MtG play.  

In the scope of RPGs, planning out your party as you're making characters to ensure that you cover all of the basics is metagaming -- you're considering the game as a game and making choices to ensure the best outcome from most to all game situations possible.  This isn't part of actually playing the game, though, so it's metagaming.  Similarly, using your real-world knowledge of chemistry to try to force an outcome in game is metagaming, because real world chemistry is not part of the game.  

Conversely, using your player knowledge of trolls being weak to fire is technically not metagaming because that is part of the game and knowledge of rules isn't usually considered a form of metagaming in most cases.  However, there's a large set of playstyles that considers using knowledge of "secret" GM notes to be metagaming (and, in some cases it clearly is definitionally), but then what counts as "secret" GM notes varies widely.  In some cases it's monster stats, although this is obviously not universally understood to be metagaming in RPGs as demonstrated by this very thread (and many others).  Sadly, NOT using "secret" knowledge is also metagaming, as you're making choices for play using that knowledge by avoiding those choices that said knowledge implicates.  It's a catch-22, really, but those that are worried about it seem to prefer the version of metagaming that preserves the danger of "secret" GM knowledge best.  It's funny how it's almost always the danger that gets this treatment, though.




> Really about the time when one hears about unacceptable meta, it's with mechanics such as Fate Points. As an aside, adversarial GM'ing is bad, imo; though I'm more learned my style from Classic Traveller which supports a neutral adjudicator of the universe style.



Sigh, Fate Points _are not meta_.  They are a game mechanic.  They are dissociated, often, but not meta.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> You forgot to mention the more telling question: has (or should have) the Troll heard how to defeat the PC?




Usually claw/claw/bite/rend does the trick.


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> With this attitude, you are never going to understand what you are examining.



Ipse dixit


----------



## dragoner

Lanefan said:


> You forgot to mention the more telling question: has (or should have) the Troll heard how to defeat the PC?




Ah, the troll wouldn't listen anyway.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Numidius said:


> Ipse dixit




If you have total contempt for the style of play you are examining and sneer at the people who make and play mainstream stuff, I am sorry but I do think that skews your ability to understand. If you can’t put yourself in other peoples shoes but instead assume their reasons for liking these things just have something to do with idiocy, how can you really see what they find of value?


----------



## Numidius

Bedrockgames said:


> If you have total contempt for the style of play you are examining and sneer at the people who make and play mainstream stuff, I am sorry but I do think that skews your ability to understand. If you can’t put yourself in other peoples shoes but instead assume their reasons for liking these things just have something to do with idiocy, how can you really see what they find of value?



Man, these are your words, not mine.


----------



## dragoner

Ovinomancer said:


> I think we're having a fundamental failure to communicate, here.  Settlers and Squad Leader both have metagames.  Granted, Settlers' meta is a bit light, but IIRC there are a few ways to use SL's rules to achieve unintended outcomes that allowed for a higher win rate.  That's meta -- treating the game as something to be gamed rather than played.
> 
> 
> Again, playing the game _cannot be metagaming_.
> 
> I'll say it again, actually playing a game cannot be metagaming.  Definitionally.  Metagaming is gaming the game, ie, thinking outside of the rules of the game to find ways to twist/use/employ those rules in ways not intended to achieve a goal.  MtG meta is about the current deck zeitgeist -- what decks are being played and how is not part of the game rules or actually playing the game, but building to take advantage or counter that meta is very much a big part of competitive play.  This is acceptable and preferred for competitive MtG play.
> 
> In the scope of RPGs, planning out your party as you're making characters to ensure that you cover all of the basics is metagaming -- you're considering the game as a game and making choices to ensure the best outcome from most to all game situations possible.  This isn't part of actually playing the game, though, so it's metagaming.  Similarly, using your real-world knowledge of chemistry to try to force an outcome in game is metagaming, because real world chemistry is not part of the game.
> 
> Conversely, using your player knowledge of trolls being weak to fire is technically not metagaming because that is part of the game and knowledge of rules isn't usually considered a form of metagaming in most cases.  However, there's a large set of playstyles that considers using knowledge of "secret" GM notes to be metagaming (and, in some cases it clearly is definitionally), but then what counts as "secret" GM notes varies widely.  In some cases it's monster stats, although this is obviously not universally understood to be metagaming in RPGs as demonstrated by this very thread (and many others).  Sadly, NOT using "secret" knowledge is also metagaming, as you're making choices for play using that knowledge by avoiding those choices that said knowledge implicates.  It's a catch-22, really, but those that are worried about it seem to prefer the version of metagaming that preserves the danger of "secret" GM knowledge best.  It's funny how it's almost always the danger that gets this treatment, though.
> 
> 
> 
> Sigh, Fate Points _are not meta_.  They are a game mechanic.  They are dissociated, often, but not meta.




+1 for giving a thoughtful response.

In war games, we call the players that game the rules, rules lawyers, vs metagaming. Could you call it metagaming? Sure, and that puts you right back into my point is that there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of metagaming in RPG's. Pretty much the same with war and board games where there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of rules lawyering. The fact that you are mentioning as a catch 22, which it is, I agree; it is a lie agreed upon. No metagaming except what is considered acceptable. Fate points are a good example of the whole argument, vs other games, because that's the target definition moving for each game. It's like the party composition, because that could be thought of as playing the game also, yet it is still metagaming, it's something you need to do to make the game function.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I think this is an extremely shallow reading of LotR. Aragorn's status as the rightful king is fundamental to his character from the moment he enters the story.



Utterly central. The very first scene in Frodo's room at the Prancing Pony is enough to drive this home. Frodo can SEE it, the nobility of the line of Elendil, and Aragorn reinforces it, he swears on the shards of Narsil that he will help Frodo, and nobody doubts that he means it for one second. Not even Sam; albeit he starts as a skeptic! 



> Assuming you use the standard D&D rules for starting money, aren't they exactly an example of this?




Yeah, this is HIGHLY unnatural! It is however, 'balanced' in a purely gamist sense. It is actually an example (albeit involving a different model of play) to what we are talking about. This is one of the ironies of the whole 'OSR' thing, I am pretty convinced that Gary Gygax, sitting down today to play one of these modern narrativist games, would be thrilled and would think of it as very much in keeping with what he was doing, albeit recognizing the significant differences in how the game play is conceptualized and structured. I think he would absolutely love Dungeon World and totally get it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> No it isn't. You are once again building a straw man here. That isn't meta gaming at all. I don't think Maxperson has been advocating against people discussing the game during play (or rulings the GM makes). He is talking about players using out of character knowledge to inform their actions in play. A ban on that kind of meta gaming is in no way contradictory with what the text advises.
> 
> Here is the wikipedia definition:
> 
> Metagaming is a term used in role-playing games, which describes a player's use of real-life knowledge concerning the state of the game to determine their character's actions, when said character has no relevant knowledge or awareness under the circumstances. This can refer to plot information in the game such as secrets or events occurring away from the character, as well as facets of the game's mechanics such as abstract statistics or the precise limits of abilities. Metagaming is an example of "breaking character", as the character is making decisions based on information they couldn't know and thus would not make in reality.




I have to agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], this IS meta-gaming. The players know that they need to work together in order to have an enjoyable game experience. There's no reason for it which arises within the game, except secondarily as a lampshade over the fact that it is driven by necessary table dynamics. This is why problems like thieves and paladins not being able to get along are an issue, because the game mechanics and necessary process of play actively conflict! 

Everyone who's ever seen this happen at a table knows this is absolutely meta-gaming, and it goes on at a low level in every game. The characters get along, like, and trust one another in a way that is HIGHLY unnatural for real human beings, and it is utterly at the service of the table, something which does not exist within the game itself.


----------



## Ovinomancer

dragoner said:


> +1 for giving a thoughtful response.
> 
> In war games, we call the players that game the rules, rules lawyers, vs metagaming. Could you call it metagaming? Sure, and that puts you right back into my point is that there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of metagaming in RPG's. Pretty much the same with war and board games where there are acceptable and unacceptable levels of rules lawyering. The fact that you are mentioning as a catch 22, which it is, I agree; it is a lie agreed upon. No metagaming except what is considered acceptable. Fate points are a good example of the whole argument, vs other games, because that's the target definition moving for each game. It's like the party composition, because that could be thought of as playing the game also, yet it is still metagaming, it's something you need to do to make the game function.




Okay, let's try again.  In a wargame, yes, you can exploit rules and that's likely metagaming (gaming the game), but you can also know your opponent, and know that when Bob plays, he likes to flank left, so you can set up a feint to draw in Bob's flanking left and then crush it.  This is also metagaming; you're using your out of game knowledge about how Bob plays to beat him in the game.  Normally, this isn't considered bad at all, but part of the competitive nature of wargames.

Metagaming just means outside of the game.  It's what the word literally means, "meta" meaning "beyond" and "game" meaning, well, game.  Metagame concepts exist outside of the defined scope of the game.  So, if there's a rule in the game, like Fate points, then that is not metagaming because that's not outside the game.

In RPGs, this gets twisted up a bit, as there's a large swath of players that consider thinking only in character and only with the information the GM provides to the character to be a constraint on players in the game.  In this case, knowledge of trolls and fire may be metagaming if that information has not been afforded to the characters by the GM yet.  The catch-22 comes from the fact that you can't actually remove the knowledge from the players, so they're acting on out of game knowledge one way or the other.  It's generally preferable by groups that play in this style to pretend ignorance until the necessary gates are opened by the GM, but that doesn't actually make the play non-metagame.  It's just the preferred metagame.

Quite often, metagame is used as a synonym for cheating in these discussions, rightly or no.  What's missed by this is that metagaming is part and parcel of most games, especially the social ones.  You're always tailoring your play to how your GM and other players engage the game.  If, for instance, you know your GM doesn't allow hiding in combat (a seemingly not-uncommon ruling in 5e) so you don't spend resources on stealth because it won't come up often, then that's metagaming -- you're playing the game based on out of game considerations.  I don't think anyone would be too upset by this, though.  However, in the metagaming = cheating mindset, this is often just flatly denied to even be metagaming, despite it clearly being so, because metagaming is only those behaviors that are disapproved.  This is the problem with frank and clear discussions about metagaming -- it's far too loaded a term in RPG contexts because how it's defined is so variable based on the individual.  

This conversation we're having is a good example of these variable definitions -- you keep moving back to metagaming being things that don't obviously follow from the fiction (Fate points) with a side of the "secret" knowledge wall (trolls and fire).  I'm using metagaming as it's actually defined and not considering it automatically negative (in fact, it's often beneficial).  As such, we've been unable to effectively discuss metagaming.


----------



## Ovinomancer

To put metagaming in a slightly different context to showcase a few things, let's look at two cases of metagaming in baseball.

The first is the current trend towards statistical analysis of long-term play to build rosters (ignoring that roster building is meta to baseball as well).  The movie Moneyball showcases this in an entertaining way (or, at least, I enjoyed the flick).  

The second is the complicated set of signals and false signals used on the field to communicate play instructions.  This is a metagame around baseball, and it's a heavily played one as signals constantly change to confuse other teams and efforts to break the code are always being used to gain advantage by knowing what the other team is about to do.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Fair enough. It was you in that game and I have to take your words as final.
> 
> I am left with the suspicion that your Gm had everything planned in advance, and the events went accordingly.       Which is fine, btw.
> I value drama (hard choices) also from the Gm perspective, so having all planned detracts from my enjoyment when I run. And I consider drama best served as emergent in play: be it from a strong premise, or from unexpected dice rolls, rather than from a Gm's planning.




The planning isn't as important in our games as you might think.  Upthread quite a ways I mentioned how I once prepped a demon invasion storyline.  First session in, the players were like, "Demons!?  Screw this.  Let's go south, steal a ship and become pirates.  So that's what they did.  The demon story progressed without them.  They heard about it mostly via rumors, but occasionally it affected them in minor ways directly, as it was a very large spanning plot, but beyond that it was entirely pirates.  If they had in the middle of being pirates decided to take their booty, hire mercenaries and builders, and go to Chult to carve out a small kingdom, that's the direction the game would have gone and the pirates portion would be over.

My group has three of us who DM.  I DM about 80% of the time, and the other two give me breaks sometimes by running the other 20% of the time.  They run the game like I do.  Nobody is required to take the story hook or follow a plot, and none of us gets bitter about it if the players don't want to engage.  The players choose the direction that the game goes, and the DM preps along those lines.



> First time I read "armchair quarterback"




Really?  It's a fairly common saying.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Nor am I. I'm responding to  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s claim that it is cheating to (i) impute my knowledge of troll weaknesses to my PC, and (ii) to explain this, within the fiction, as stuff I learned from my dear old uncle.
> 
> All "cheating" means here is that Maxperson doesn't like it. But he presents it as if it is something more. And his argument for the "something more" rests on a general critique of metagaming that _encompasses practices that he himself engages in_.




That's just plain wrong.  Cheating means that it gives an unfair advantage to the player.  Do I dislike metagame cheating?   Yes.  Because it gives an unfair advantage to the players.  It's also a fact that it's cheating in my game.  It's not a "claim."



> No one in this thread, other than him, cares what his preferences are. But some do get frustrated with his presentation of essentially arbitrary preferences as hard-and-fast rules, especially when the formulation of those rules seems to have a strong element of special pleading if not outright hypocrisy.




So first, I've said at least a half dozen time, maybe more, that it's cheating for MY GAME, so it's pretty darn disingenuous for you to make the claim that I am presenting metagame cheating as "hard-and-fast rules.:  Second, I've not said that metagaming is okay, so there's no hypocrisy going on at all.



> If my character knows it then it is not "out of game knowledge". Maxperson has no objection to my PC knowing what a crossbow is, or a spear trap, even though it is quite conceivable that some people in the gameworld are ignorant of such things, just as in the real world there are people ignorant of such things. But he objects to my PC knowing what a troll's vulnerability is.




False Equivalences are false.  Troll vulnerabilities are not even remotely as common knowledge as crossbows, or as easily reasoned out as "Look, it's a spear trap."


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> My knowledge of trees comes from the real world, does this mean that my character can't recognize trees with it being metagaming? Or how about a sword? Or how about what it's like being a peasant?




What part of metagaming being "Bringing in real world knowledge *THAT THE PC DOESN'T HAVE*." do you not understand?


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> The "a-ha!" moment just hit: the PC's uncle was a troll.....




And he taught me how to kill trolls dead, which is why I always carry a flask of apple juice on me.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> But that's not what I'm saying. The DM doesn't have to provide the characters with knowledge that their players don't have in such a case. So if there's a new monster with weaknesses the players have no idea about, then unless the thing is meant to be something that the characters may have knowledge of in which case the DM could share it or could call for a roll, I'd play it out as is. This is the ideal situation in a case where you want such monster vulnerabilities to be secret knowledge and to matter to the encounter as such....both players and characters are ignorant of the info. Why would I change that?




So if I'm understanding you, the DM is a jerk if he ignores the players' signaling when they want to use knowledge of weaknesses they have, but he's not a jerk if he ignores the players' signaling that they want to know the weaknesses of unique monsters.  So now you've established that the DM isn't automatically a jerk if he ignores player signaling.  Now I have to ask, though, where's the line drawn?  Is there a list of what player signals the DM cannot ignore without being a jerk?



> What if the DM said to the player of the fighter "You recognize these creatures as trolls. Your Uncle Elmo said he faced them in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and that they must be burned to be destroyed." Is this metagaming?




No.  

1. The DM is not the player, so he cannot be bringing in player knowledge to the character.

2. The DM is has the authority to grant boons like that.

3. Presumably Uncle Elmo is already a part of the PC's background and there's a reasonable change he knows about that.

However, I wouldn't do that, because a description is no substitute for the real thing, and it was a long time ago.  Elmo might not have even met a troll, and even if Elmo did meet trolls and tell the PC about it, remembering isn't guaranteed, so the best I would do is give the player a roll to remember.  And since it's something in doubt, I wouldn't bring it up as an idea the PC might have.  That goes dangerously close to me playing the PC for the player and that's not something I would do.  It would be his job to remember that Elmo might have said something and then make the roll.



> I don't know if I'd say it's more player dependent. The players may come up with the ideas, but the DM has a huge say in if those ideas have a chance of succeeding, and what that chance may be. And obviously, has the ability to veto ideas outright, i.e. "No, your Uncle Elmo never told you about trolls".



As long as the DM is trying to be as fair and impartial as he can be, he's not going to outright say no about the trolls.  The answer will either be yes, or roll the die.  The pre-established background already had Elmo as an adventurer who went to the Temple of Elemental evil and survived.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Saying this is like saying paying rent in Monopoly is metagaming.  It's nonsensical.  Actual elements of the game _cannot be metagaming_.  Using actual elements if the game as they are intended to he used in the game _cannot be metagaming_.  It's only RPGs that have this weird definitional crusis with the term metagaming, and then only because of the tradition of secret GM notes and who decides what's part of thise notes.




Hit points are for the player.  The PC doesn't know what hit points are, or how many he has.  So if the PC acts on knowledge the player has(hit points), and that the PC doesn't have(hit points), then that is metagaming.


----------



## Sadras

Lanefan said:


> You forgot to mention the more telling question: has (or should have) the Troll heard how to defeat the PC?




From its uncle, who told it to go for the cleric first.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> But they ate just  talking about not being a jerk (i.e. killing another PC and saying 'that is what my character would'). You are stretching the meaning very far from the intent




But he isn't, really. There is a lot more too it than that. How often do 5 random people meet in a bar and suddenly become an indivisible team of highly cooperating members? How often do 5 rootless people (OK, usually) manage to even know how to cooperate well with others? I mean, its all HIGHLY implausible from the get go. Nothing about it strikes me as even faintly likely or reasonable given any kind of understanding I have of human nature (and as a Program Manager and someone with more than 50 years of life experience I suspect I am at least not totally clueless about how people behave). 

I am sure we can devise situations where the creation of a party does seem plausible BTW, but they are mostly not anything like the "the characters are nobody special in the world" sort of assumptions that are being tossed around here. Nor is such an arrangement likely to persist for long, nor fail to end in acrimony a high percentage of the time (heck, I have problems getting 5 software developers not to decide to kill each other before the end of a project, and they're not ninjas, paladins, and warlocks!). 

And parties go FAR beyond that, the PCs are expected to work with others of races they are culturally hostile to, sublimate their own best interests ALWAYS to the best interests of the group, often take long digressions from their own primary interests and motives to assist these others, trust them with their wealth and shares of vastly valuable treasures, etc. etc. etc. Many people wouldn't even consider treating their own families so well in reality.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> You forgot to mention the more telling question: has (or should have) the Troll heard how to defeat the PC?




Troll #1:  What are those things approaching us?

Troll #2:  Those are PCs!  My uncle once met an Elmo in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and he said the trick to killing one is...


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> Hit points are for the player.  The PC doesn't know what hit points are, or how many he has.  So if the PC acts on knowledge the player has(hit points), and that the PC doesn't have(hit points), then that is metagaming.




Max you realise given your above relationship between knowledge of character hit points and metagaming, players will inadvertently metagame. The only way to realistically (with assurety) say that your players don't meta on this issue, is if the DM was the sole bookkeeper of the characters' hit point scores. 

In a similar vain, some on Enworld (myself included) in an attempt to stamp out meta play have players roll for all their Death Saves at the time of rescue or at combat end, whichever may come first.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> These are really strong posts. They capture what I was trying to get at upthread with some remarks about "cargo cult" and similar. That is to say, particular design/play features that can work well as elements in a "skilled play" game simply don't make any sense in other RPGing contexts. Hence treating those particular design/play features as if they're _part of what it means to roleplay_ makes no sense.
> 
> And the point extends beyond nobility and loot. @_*Lanefan*_ asks whether the noble PC's entourage would come "out into the field". But the very notion of "the field" itself rests on an assumption about play which simply doesn't generalise across all of RPGing. In the Burning Wheel game that I GM, for instance, there is no "field".




Right, you might have some sort of resource(s) that represent (IE are explained as) 'being a noble', but they're still simply based on some dice pool or set of character distinctions, and the other players' PCs equally have 'stuff'. Some might actually work out to be more advantageous than others, or players might deploy them with greater or lesser skill at play, but they should have roughly similar 'plot power' notionally. 

I think Champions was one of the early games to practice something like this. You simply built your character out of 'points' IIRC. One guy had an iron fist that did a lot of damage when he punched things. Another guy had a hallucinogenic drug habit that let him bend the bad guys minds. It didn't even matter how your 'power' came about, that was irrelevant and you were allowed to flavor it any way you wanted. As I recall some flavorings had a limited narrative and mechanical impact. So if your power was a 'gun' then the possibility existed it could get lost or broken or something and so maybe it was a bit cheaper. This was still pretty limited though compared with the deep mechanical and game process integration of aspects into FATE for example, or even moves into Dungeon World. 

I don't really think Gygaxian player challenge games are less sophisticated than modern 'indie' games, particularly, or necessarily less interesting, but there sure seem to be a lot of people who literally cannot tell the difference between OD&D and role playing in general, and are carrying around a lot of baggage!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The big issue for me, in the setup @_*Maxperson*_ describes, is _how do we know how many children are eaten_? In a skill challenge, this can be managed through failures - each failure is more children dead. But in other D&D versions, which have no rule for determining _children eaten per orc-time-mile-unit_, it becomes GM fiat. So the stakes and the action resolution become somewhat illusory.




Right. I kind of naturally thought of it in terms of 4e, but this is a really big problem with running games which focus on 'story' using classic versions of D&D (or 3e or 5e either). There is simply no framework for regulating what winning and losing mean. This is why projecting a 'combat like' system into all aspects of the game is so revolutionary in 4e. I found nothing more telling in the community than the prevalence of a profound inability to appreciate this point. Obviously the types of games you often discus, BW, etc. all have even more pervasive and robust features in this direction, though aimed at producing slightly different types of games.

HoML, my 4e hack, simply states this as an invariant game play process, ALL conflict is a challenge, you can't even roll dice outside of one.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> Max you realise given your above relationship between knowledge of character hit points and metagaming, players will inadvertently metagame. The only way to realistically (with assurety) say that your players don't meta on this issue, is if the DM was the sole bookkeeper of the characters' hit point scores.




Yes, mistakes will happen.  Nobody is perfect and I'm not really concerned with accidents.  It's the intentional act that is the issue for me.  I don't claim to be perfect, so I'm not going to hold others to a higher standard than I hold myself.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> I never said it was.



Then why do you think a RQ rulebook admonition against using real-world chemistry in playing one's PC equates to, or implies, an admonition against using one's knowledge of trollish vulnerabilities in playing one's PC?


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I have to agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], this IS meta-gaming. The players know that they need to work together in order to have an enjoyable game experience. There's no reason for it which arises within the game, except secondarily as a lampshade over the fact that it is driven by necessary table dynamics. This is why problems like thieves and paladins not being able to get along are an issue, because the game mechanics and necessary process of play actively conflict!
> 
> Everyone who's ever seen this happen at a table knows this is absolutely meta-gaming, and it goes on at a low level in every game. The characters get along, like, and trust one another in a way that is HIGHLY unnatural for real human beings, and it is utterly at the service of the table, something which does not exist within the game itself.



Agreed; which is why I don't object in the slightest if the PCs in fact don't get along or always trust each other etc.

The party composition piece, though, is very easily explainable in the fiction: in-character someone looks at the group assembled in the tavern and says "OK, we've got two sneaky-types, a wizard, and me: a bard.  Guys, I think we'd better recruit ourselves a healer and a front-line tank or two 'cause if we don't you just know those'll be exactly what we find we really need once crap gets real out there."


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> you shouldn't act on things your character wouldn't know, and he includes among those things like monster vulnerabilities.



But surely you can see that this begs the very question at issue: _why would the character not know?_

You are posting as if those who disagree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] are spinning nonsense out of whole cloth. But in my case I have the whole of the play tradition that I started with on my side: the rulebook told me to read it, so I did; articles in White Dwarf, by people like Lewis Pulsipher and Roger Musson, told me that a skilled player is aware of monster weaknesses and factors that into choices (eg use Charm Monster on a troll or an ochre jelly, because few monsters carry oil or torches); and nothing ever hinted that I was expected to play my character ignorant of these things that I learned as part of mastering the game.



hawkeyefan said:


> Regarding trolls and fire....to me, once players know, the cat is pretty much out of the bag. I don't see the advantage of enforcing this ruling....I don't see what it adds to the game. Unless everyone likes the idea of pretending to discover a secret they already know.



So much this.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But he isn't, really. There is a lot more too it than that. How often do 5 random people meet in a bar and suddenly become an indivisible team of highly cooperating members?



They don't, which is why it's on the DM* to come up with a plausible reason that these people suddenly find themselves a) together and b) with a common purpose, no matter how temporary.

* - though the players can do it themselves too, as happened to start my current campaign (bless their little hearts!) 



> I am sure we can devise situations where the creation of a party does seem plausible BTW, but they are mostly not anything like the "the characters are nobody special in the world" sort of assumptions that are being tossed around here. Nor is such an arrangement likely to persist for long, nor fail to end in acrimony a high percentage of the time (heck, I have problems getting 5 software developers not to decide to kill each other before the end of a project, and they're not ninjas, paladins, and warlocks!).



The only base assumption underlying the process is that the PCs have either chosen to become adventurers or for whatever reason have the skills and abilities for it anyway.

Whether the arrangement persists or crashes into acrimony, I don't care.  All I need to worry about is getting 'em together in the first place; after which if they all want to kill each other that's fine by me. 



> And parties go FAR beyond that, the PCs are expected to work with others of races they are culturally hostile to, sublimate their own best interests ALWAYS to the best interests of the group, often take long digressions from their own primary interests and motives to assist these others, trust them with their wealth and shares of vastly valuable treasures, etc. etc. etc. Many people wouldn't even consider treating their own families so well in reality.



The work-with-hostile-races (or cultures) piece bugs me too, and if any of my PCs find themselves in that situation there's usually a problem before too long. (e.g. my upstanding small-p paladinic 3e Ranger finding himself running with a nasty half-dragon PC in the same party: "I've spent half my adult life training up on how to kill these things and now you expect me to run with one?!".  Yeah, that didn't last long.)

Always working in the best interests of the group?  Not always so much; more often it's merely going through the motions of working with the group in order to better fulfill one's own agenda and plans.   But it looks good from the outside.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> Troll #1:  What are those things approaching us?
> 
> Troll #2:  Those are PCs!  My uncle once met an Elmo in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and he said the trick to killing one is...




Troll #1: Do they taste good with salt?  I heard yes, after 3 hours over a hot open fire....


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> this sort of thing would bug the hell out of me as a player as well because I'd still be asking the same question: does something only just now being learned or introduced, that in theory was present all along, possibly cause any retcons or change any previously-done actions and-or roleplay?
> 
> Which also means that were I playing in a situation where players could introduce major elements of the fiction, one top-of-mind consideration for me would always be whether anything I was planning on introducing on the fly would cause these same issues - an example being the "my PC is a high noble" declaration - and if it would I wouldn't introduce it.
> 
> Huge red flag goes up the second someone says "Had we known this earlier {xxx} would have been done differently!", where what's just now been revealed is something that should have been known earlier.  The noble isn't the best example here as there may be valid reasons to have kept it secret (though the noble PC's player and the GM should still have known all along), so I'll use an example that happened to me way back when:
> 
> A friend was writing an adventure module - great big thing - and I was DMing it kind of as it got written*.  Party is out in the wilderness following a road (the only road in the area) to an important assassin's hideaway.  Eventually it comes out in the module that the assassins use wagons to get their supplies in from civilization - and on hearing this the players quite rightly ask me "Well, why didn't we see any wagon tracks in the dirt, all the way along the road?  Things might have been different if we had!".  The meta-game answer, which I openly told the players, was that the wagons hadn't yet been written into the module at the time and so I couldn't read ahead and factor them in.  They were understanding, if a bit annoyed, and on we went; but it stuck with me as something both as player and DM to watch out for and never to repeat.
> 
> * - at one point about halfway through I told my friend he'd better do some serious writing that coming week, as the previous session had played to within 9 words (!) of where he'd left off writing!



But this is just poor management of the fiction: introducing an element which contradicts what's already established (in this case, the absence of tracks on a muddy road). (And as per [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s post, without introducing something else - like a magic spell or  charm of traceless passage - to explain away the seeming inconsistency.)

If a player is going to write in new bits of fiction, it shouldn't be too hard to reconcile it with what's gone before. To reiterate a point made by [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] upthread, the _established_ fiction of most RPG campaigns is pretty thin, meaning that the reconciliation task is not normally going to be that demanding.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Troll vulnerabilities are not even remotely as common knowledge as crossbows, or as easily reasoned out as "Look, it's a spear trap."



How do you know? I have no idea how to reason out either of the things you mention; and I certainly know more about troll vulnerabilities than some of the polearms listed on Gygax's weapon table.

This is what I mean when I say you are making arbitrary assertions. Nothing in the rulebooks of any version of AD&D supports this claim. It's purely a table convention for your game.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Max you realise given your above relationship between knowledge of character hit points and metagaming, players will inadvertently metagame. The only way to realistically (with assurety) say that your players don't meta on this issue, is if the DM was the sole bookkeeper of the characters' hit point scores.



And this idea, of the player keeping keeping hp scores secret, was a widely-discussed technique around 40 years ago. But I don't think it's much in vogue anymore.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The party composition piece, though, is very easily explainable in the fiction: in-character someone looks at the group assembled in the tavern and says "OK, we've got two sneaky-types, a wizard, and me: a bard.  Guys, I think we'd better recruit ourselves a healer and a front-line tank or two 'cause if we don't you just know those'll be exactly what we find we really need once crap gets real out there."



But that generates my next question: these PCs know enough about what "dungeoneering" is to understand what a proper "combined arms" force looks like; but are completely ignorant of trolls' vulnerability to fire.

They know that dungeons have traps that the "sneaky-types" might spot and disarm; they know that dungeons have monsters who will hurt them, thus generating a need for healing; but they don't know which of those monsters is vulnerable to what sort of damage the wizard might do.

That's a very arbitrary set of stipulations about "common knowledge".


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> But surely you can see that this begs the very question at issue: _why would the character not know?_
> 
> You are posting as if those who disagree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] are spinning nonsense out of whole cloth. But in my case I have the whole of the play tradition that I started with on my side: the rulebook told me to read it, so I did; articles in White Dwarf, by people like Lewis Pulsipher and Roger Musson, told me that a skilled player is aware of monster weaknesses and factors that into choices (eg use Charm Monster on a troll or an ochre jelly, because few monsters carry oil or torches); and nothing ever hinted that I was expected to play my character ignorant of these things that I learned as part of mastering the game.
> .




Pemerton I understand your preferred position on the issue. Like I said, I personally don't adhere to Maxperson's view. But your argument seems to be coming from a place of feigned ignorance. Because anyone with passing familiarity with the hobby has seen exactly what he is talking about. Your just nitpicking every other possible case of character knowledge until you can find logical cracks. But at most tables where this is a thing, you see people effortlessly make the distinctions he is making. Honestly, I'd say like 80 to 90s percent of the groups I've seen, draw the line Maxperson draws. It doesn't have to be a 100% air tight logical line to be a line. D&D is full of things that have all kinds of exceptions and cracks under a microscope. I'd say in the vast majority of games I've played in, the people at the table expected players not to act on information their character didn't have. How that was determined? Usually common sense consensus at the table (or just by the GM----in those kinds of campaigns the player asking "would my character know X" is pretty common). And I've played in a ton of campaigns with people from all over the globe. What Maxperson is describing is far from rare, not hard to understand and the scrutiny being applied to it makes zero sense to me.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> anyone with passing familiarity with the hobby has seen exactly what he is talking about.



I've been playing RPGs for over 30 years. The idea that players who know about trolls have to pretend not to know is something that I've never encountered in real life. I'd not come across it until I encountered it on ENworld.

Which I posted already upthread.



Bedrockgames said:


> Your just nitpicking every other possible case of character knowledge until you can find logical cracks.



 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is the one who suggested that if a table is happy with not feigning ignorance about trolls, then they must also - by parity of logic - have no objections to someone cheating by reading ahead in the module.

And is the one who seemed to suggest that if a table is happy with not feigining ignorance about trolls, then they must also - by parity of logic - expect the GM to tell the players the weaknesses of monsters that they (the players) actually _are_ ignorant of.

If you're going to go meta-, it would make more sense to go meta- about all the participants.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Hit points are for the player.  The PC doesn't know what hit points are, or how many he has.  So if the PC acts on knowledge the player has(hit points), and that the PC doesn't have(hit points), then that is metagaming.



I'm going to treat this as an honest response.

Hitpoints are not metagane, they are _abstract._ They are a way to summarize fir the player a huge wealth of in fiction information available to the character.  As such, while the player knows how many hitpoints his character has left, the character knows how tired/bruised/motivated/blessed they are.  The player says hitpoints but the character translates this into fictional terms.

Going back to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s fighter taking a hit from a gnoll because he has enough hitpoints.  In fiction the fighter doesn't just stand there and take a clean hit, they make a risky move to feint past the gnoll, but overexert themselves a bit and now knows that next time they may not be fast enough.  Or some other fiction.  Doesn't matter, as the point is that hitpoints abstract the fighter's current fictional state, they don't metagame it.

If you are using a game mechanic (hitpoints) to make decisions within the scope of the game (combat and the resource management subgame), then you are just playing the game, not metagaming.      Hitpoints aren't explicitly understood by the characters, sure, but the fiction that is abstracted into hitpoints for the players _is._


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> The planning isn't as important in our games as you might think.  Upthread quite a ways I mentioned how I once prepped a demon invasion storyline.  First session in, the players were like, "Demons!?  Screw this.  Let's go south, steal a ship and become pirates.  So that's what they did.  The demon story progressed without them.  They heard about it mostly via rumors, but occasionally it affected them in minor ways directly, as it was a very large spanning plot, but beyond that it was entirely pirates.  If they had in the middle of being pirates decided to take their booty, hire mercenaries and builders, and go to Chult to carve out a small kingdom, that's the direction the game would have gone and the pirates portion would be over.
> 
> My group has three of us who DM.  I DM about 80% of the time, and the other two give me breaks sometimes by running the other 20% of the time.  They run the game like I do.  Nobody is required to take the story hook or follow a plot, and none of us gets bitter about it if the players don't want to engage.  The players choose the direction that the game goes, and the DM preps along those lines.
> 
> 
> 
> Really?  It's a fairly common saying.






Maxperson said:


> The planning isn't as important in our games as you might think.  Upthread quite a ways I mentioned how I once prepped a demon invasion storyline.  First session in, the players were like, "Demons!?  Screw this.  Let's go south, steal a ship and become pirates.  So that's what they did.  The demon story progressed without them.  They heard about it mostly via rumors, but occasionally it affected them in minor ways directly, as it was a very large spanning plot, but beyond that it was entirely pirates.  If they had in the middle of being pirates decided to take their booty, hire mercenaries and builders, and go to Chult to carve out a small kingdom, that's the direction the game would have gone and the pirates portion would be over.
> 
> My group has three of us who DM.  I DM about 80% of the time, and the other two give me breaks sometimes by running the other 20% of the time.  They run the game like I do.  Nobody is required to take the story hook or follow a plot, and none of us gets bitter about it if the players don't want to engage.  The players choose the direction that the game goes, and the DM preps along those lines.
> 
> 
> 
> Really?  It's a fairly common saying.




Having multiple Gms is so cool. I believe this single feature would have solved most of the problems and saved most of the tables I been playing at. 

If I had prepped Demons, and Players wanted Pirates, I'd probably got very bitter  

If you had to start a new campaign, would you discuss with Players the theme in advance, mindful of the Demon-Pirates episode, or would it be considered like an immersion-breaker? I know many players that would refuse to discuss themes, plots, goals, in advance with the Gm.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> But that generates my next question: these PCs know enough about what "dungeoneering" is to understand what a proper "combined arms" force looks like; but are completely ignorant of trolls' vulnerability to fire.
> 
> They know that dungeons have traps that the "sneaky-types" might spot and disarm; they know that dungeons have monsters who will hurt them, thus generating a need for healing; but they don't know which of those monsters is vulnerable to what sort of damage the wizard might do.
> 
> That's a very arbitrary set of stipulations about "common knowledge".



Again, the distinction becomes a bit more obvious when you consider it from the GM notes side of things.  Monster stats are part of GM notes and used by GMs, therefore they are part of those things that players shouldn't know until revealed by the GM.  Set aside any in-fiction reasons, this is really the fundamental division of what's knowable and what isn't. 

Characters can know of traps, and skills to find them and bypass them, but they cannot know the details of _this_ trap until such information isprovided by the GM.

Characters can know of the general existence of monsters, and train in ways to fight and kill them, but can't know of _this_ monster (a troll) and its abilities until such information is provided by the GM.

The gate here is what's in the GM's notes.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> The gate here is what's in the GM's notes.



The point is understood. It's generalisation to trolls still puzzles me, because (i) when I started playing the rulebook told me to read the monster chapter (so not secret), and (ii) whether or not I've read the book, once the monster's been encountered, it's continuing status as a "secret" in the GM's notes is a bit weird.

To me, it seems very clear that the reason why _new_ monsters and _new_ magic items and _new_ traps - that is to say, new stuff for GM's lists - were such a big part of the game in the late 70s/early 80s was recisely to keep GMs suppplied with stuff that would be _genuinely_ secret.

I can see that there's a tension between ever-growing lists and "living, breathing" world-building. But pretending that trolls are secret is still weird.

Presumably, in this style of play, the players also have to pretend to be ignorant of (say) details of the Forgotten Realms, even if they've read the campaign guide and/or played many campaigns in that setting before.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> The point is understood. It's generalisation to trolls still puzzles me, because (i) when I started playing the rulebook told me to read the monster chapter (so not secret), and (ii) whether or not I've read the book, once the monster's been encountered, it's continuing status as a "secret" in the GM's notes is a bit weird.




I carefully didn't say "secret." 

It does not matter what you, as player, know.  If it is within the bounds of GM notes, then your character cannot know it until revealed by the GM.  If you apply this lens, it resolves nicely.

And, I don't say this to be mean, just blunt.  I very much thought this way until rather recently, so I'm just analyzing what I thought and what was taught to me by many groups.  It's a valid way to play, as evidenced by the large number of people who do play this way (evidence: ENW).  That I no longer care to play that way doesn't make it non-valid.  

Consider how many people have tried more narrative games and bounced off because they prefer more GM control as players.  Playing in a GM centered game is low emotional risk compared to many more player centered games where players must constantly abd voluntarily risk things they care about.  It's not for everyone.

This is just a microcism of that larger divide.



> To me, it seems very clear that the reason why _new_ monsters and _new_ magic items and _new_ traps - that is to say, new stuff for GM's lists - were such a big part of the game in the late 70s/early 80s was recisely to keep GMs suppplied with stuff that would be _genuinely_ secret.
> 
> I can see that there's a tension between ever-growing lists and "living, breathing" world-building. But pretending that trolls are secret is still weird.
> 
> Presumably, in this style of play, the players also have to pretend to be ignorant of (say) details of the Forgotten Realms, even if they've read the campaign guide and/or played many campaigns in that setting before.



Yep.  Yep.  And, IME, yep.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Then why do you think a RQ rulebook admonition against using real-world chemistry in playing one's PC equates to, or implies, an admonition against using one's knowledge of trollish vulnerabilities in playing one's PC?




Probably because that's what it said.  The admonition was to play what the character knows, and that doesn't change just because you have one single example of real world knowledge.  Especially given that the MM information is also knowledge gained in the real world, so it isn't any different in that regard than chemistry.  You learn chemistry in the real world.  You learn about the monsters in the MM in the real world.  Knowledge of both of those things can be taken into the game world and used.  Why would you think that one example of knowledge gained in the real world(chemistry) would be forbidden, but the other example of knowledge gained in the real world(MM info) isn't forbidden?


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I've been playing RPGs for over 30 years. The idea that players who know about trolls have to pretend not to know is something that I've never encountered in real life. I'd not come across it until I encountered it on ENworld.




It is very, very, very common IRL.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You are posting as if those who disagree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] are spinning nonsense out of whole cloth. But in my case I have the whole of the play tradition that I started with on my side: the rulebook told me to read it, so I did; articles in White Dwarf, by people like Lewis Pulsipher and Roger Musson, told me that a skilled player is aware of monster weaknesses and factors that into choices (eg use Charm Monster on a troll or an ochre jelly, because few monsters carry oil or torches); and nothing ever hinted that I was expected to play my character ignorant of these things that I learned as part of mastering the game.




Those articles are just opinions by those people.  They aren't rules.



> So much this.




Yes, we are aware that you don't get our playstyle. That has been apparent for years.  Maybe, you never understood it despite your claims to have run the playstyle long ago.  Maybe you once understood it, but like the man of average income that wins the lottery, you now are out of touch.  Whichever it is, you have shown repeatedly that you don't understand the playstyle enough to get why people enjoy it, and even in some examples a basic understanding of aspects the playstyle itself, which causes you to attribute negative things to it that aren't there.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Probably because that's what it said.  The admonition was to play what the character knows, and that doesn't change just because you have one single example of real world knowledge.  Especially given that the MM information is also knowledge gained in the real world, so it isn't any different in that regard than chemistry.  You learn chemistry in the real world.  You learn about the monsters in the MM in the real world.  Knowledge of both of those things can be taken into the game world and used.  Why would you think that one example of knowledge gained in the real world(chemistry) would be forbidden, but the other example of knowledge gained in the real world(MM info) isn't forbidden?



Real world chemistry does not exist in the game.  Monsters from the MM do.  My character has no way in game of discovering stoichiometry, but can learn, from many potential sources about trolls.  There's a category difference, here, that you keep neatly eliding.

To take your example to the absurd, I know about breathing from the real world, how does my character possibly know about breathing?  It's not in the rules (it's implied by the suffication rules, but there's nothing about what is beathed, how often, or through what mechanism -- do I breath through my eyes?).  Yet, this is assumed character knowledge, because it makes sense of the world.  So, clearly there are things that the character knows because the player does (walking, talking, etc) that are arbitrarily excluded from being badwrong.  The question begged is why?  I submit it's because breathing isn't in the GM's notes.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Troll #1: Do they taste good with salt?  I heard yes, after 3 hours *over a hot open fire*....




Troll #2:  Psh!  That's just an old troll's tale to scare little kids.  Uncle Oscar said that first you throw an old banana peel in front of them.  Then when they are prone, you jump on them and rip off their arms.  Then they can't fight, heal or cast spells.  After that you wait a few minutes until they are done and dig in.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> It is very, very, very common IRL.



Are you suggesting that my life as a RPGer isn't "RL"?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> How do you know? *I have no idea how to reason out either of the things you mention*; and I certainly know more about troll vulnerabilities than some of the polearms listed on Gygax's weapon table.




I do.  It's really easy.  Are trolls as common as crossbows?  No.  Are trolls seen in villages and cities as often as crossbows?  No.  Do common people see crossbows used far more often than they see a troll? Yes.  Is it likely that they have used a crossbow at some point as part of the village militia?  Yes.  

As for the bolded part, YOU would, but your PC would not.  The PC grew up with those weapons being used by soldiers they see, guards they see, adventurers they see, and so on.  Unless they grew up in or really close to a troll village, the same would not be true for trolls.



> This is what I mean when I say you are making arbitrary assertions. Nothing in the rulebooks of any version of AD&D supports this claim. It's purely a table convention for your game.




Nyet!  What I do is based on reason, so it is not arbitrary.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But that generates my next question: these PCs know enough about what "dungeoneering" is to understand what a proper "combined arms" force looks like; but are completely ignorant of trolls' vulnerability to fire.




Sure, why not?  Basic tactics is far more common for a group to understand than very specific monsters that are not seen commonly, or for the vast majority of monsters, EVER, in towns and cities.  There's no good reason why you would treat them the same, other than perhaps that it helps you win the game easier to have that monster knowledge.



> They know that dungeons have traps that the "sneaky-types" might spot and disarm; they know that dungeons have monsters who will hurt them, thus generating a need for healing; but they don't know which of those monsters is vulnerable to what sort of damage the wizard might do.




Again, sure, why not?  Knowing dungeons have bad things in general is not even close to being the same as somehow having knowledge of which specific monsters are in the dungeon, or what the even more specific knowledge of their vulnerabilities are.



> That's a very arbitrary set of stipulations about "common knowledge".




There's nothing arbitrary about it.  It's very reasoned.  The fact that you keep going back to calling it "arbitrary," is just another example of how you seem to be compelled to belittle things you don't understand or dislike, rather than just discuss those things.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Are you suggesting that my life as a RPGer isn't "RL"?




No. I am saying it is exceedingly common in real life. That is literally all I am saying.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Hitpoints are not metagane, they are _abstract._ They are a way to summarize fir the player a huge wealth of in fiction information available to the character.  As such, while the player knows how many hitpoints his character has left, the character knows how tired/bruised/motivated/blessed they are.  The player says hitpoints but the character translates this into fictional terms.




It doesn't have to be one or the other, though.  Hit points are both metagame AND abstract.  They are knowledge that only the player has, and they are abstract in their usage.  In the fiction, the fighter is going to be worried about being crushed by the giant's fist at both full hit points and a quarter hit points.  He might be a bit more fearful at a quarter, since he is moving slower now, but he's not going to have any idea about what hit points are.  Hit points are metagame, even if there is some vague way that they show up in the fiction for the PC's to experience.  



> If you are using a game mechanic (hitpoints) to make decisions within the scope of the game (combat and the resource management subgame), then you are just playing the game, not metagaming.      Hitpoints aren't explicitly understood by the characters, sure, but the fiction that is abstracted into hitpoints for the players _is._




I've seen some players have their PCs jump off a 30 foot wall, because 3d6 cannot kill their 40 hit point PC.  Using hit points in game is metagaming.  Using that vague fiction you are describing is not, but it's also not hit points.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Having multiple Gms is so cool. I believe this single feature would have solved most of the problems and saved most of the tables I been playing at.




Yeah.  It's VERY nice to take off the DM hat once in a while and just play one character.



> If I had prepped Demons, and Players wanted Pirates, I'd probably got very bitter



LOL  A lot of people would.  I've just done sandbox for so long that it doesn't bother me.  Besides, some the specifics of what was prepped can be salvaged for later use as encounters if I want to, so it hasn't all gone to waste.



> If you had to start a new campaign, would you discuss with Players the theme in advance, mindful of the Demon-Pirates episode, or would it be considered like an immersion-breaker? I know many players that would refuse to discuss themes, plots, goals, in advance with the Gm.




90% of the time we have a session zero where we all brainstorm ideas, putting the top 10 in the pool.  Then we all individually rank them from 1-10, with 10 being the most desired, and 1 being the least.  Then we add up the top 3(or occasionally 4 if there is a tie) and discuss which of those 3 will be the next campaign for me to prep.  However, sometimes they just ask me to come up with something, like I did with the demons.  And equally rare, I will have an idea that I know they will like and want to surprise them with and ask them to trust me.  They haven't been disappointed with that and gone off to do something else yet.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Real world chemistry does not exist in the game.  Monsters from the MM do.  My character has no way in game of discovering stoichiometry, but can learn, from many potential sources about trolls.  There's a category difference, here, that you keep neatly eliding.




Yes it does.  Gunpowder and other chemical reactions have been described in the DMGs, as well as modules.




> To take your example to the absurd, I know about breathing from the real world, how does my character possibly know about breathing? It's not in the rules (it's implied by the suffication rules, but there's nothing about what is beathed, how often, or through what mechanism -- do I breath through my eyes?). Yet, this is assumed character knowledge, because it makes sense of the world. So, clearly there are things that the character knows because the player does (walking, talking, etc) that are arbitrarily excluded from being badwrong. The question begged is why? I submit it's because breathing isn't in the GM's notes.




Why are you begging a question that has been answered at least 20 times, probably close to 50-60.  I've said why and let you know what metagaming is.  Hint, it's not something like breathing.


----------



## iserith

I think the easiest way to deal with "metagaming" is to just set the expectation that the DM (and other players) shouldn't care how another player makes decisions for his or her character - it's nobody's business but that player's. However, the player is forewarned that his or her assumptions may not be correct and that it's smart play to verify one's assumptions by taking action in the game. A troll might best be defeated with fire - but maybe not _this_ troll. Act upon your assumptions at your own peril. Maybe you're correct. Maybe you're dead wrong. (And hopefully the DM telegraphed this possibility when describing the environment.)

This is how I handle it in my games and, in my view, and is more in line with how modern versions of D&D treat "metagame thinking," that is, it's an issue of assumptions leading to bad play experiences rather than any particular concern about what a character may or may not know. For example, a TPK occurring because the players think "the DM would never throw such difficult monsters against us at this level" or wasting valuable session time searching an otherwise unimportant door because the DM described it in more detail than usual.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Yeah.  It's VERY nice to take off the DM hat once in a while and just play one character.
> 
> 
> LOL  A lot of people would.  I've just done sandbox for so long that it doesn't bother me.  Besides, some the specifics of what was prepped can be salvaged for later use as encounters if I want to, so it hasn't all gone to waste.
> 
> 
> 
> 90% of the time we have a session zero where we all brainstorm ideas, putting the top 10 in the pool.  Then we all individually rank them from 1-10, with 10 being the most desired, and 1 being the least.  Then we add up the top 3(or occasionally 4 if there is a tie) and discuss which of those 3 will be the next campaign for me to prep.  However, sometimes they just ask me to come up with something, like I did with the demons.  And equally rare, I will have an idea that I know they will like and want to surprise them with and ask them to trust me.  They haven't been disappointed with that and gone off to do something else yet.



Very good  Your table is way less Gm-centric/driven than those I played in, or run, and been complaining about all the time. 

I see that you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], who advocate for no-metagame at all, have both "unusual" games (IME), like multiple Gms, or multiple parties under same Gm/Setting. I guess avoiding meta is functional for you in having a fair standard among different combination of tables, Gms, timelines, plots. 
 [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], regarding open mindness and attitude on my part


----------



## Numidius

iserith said:


> I think the easiest way to deal with "metagaming" is to just set the expectation that the DM (and other players) shouldn't care how another player makes decisions for his or her character - it's nobody's business but that player's. However, the player is forewarned that his or her assumptions may not be correct and that it's smart play to verify one's assumptions by taking action in the game. A troll might best be defeated with fire - but maybe not _this_ troll. Act upon your assumptions at your own peril. Maybe you're correct. Maybe you're dead wrong. (And hopefully the DM telegraphed this possibility when describing the environment.)
> 
> This is how I handle it in my games and, in my view, and is more in line with how modern versions of D&D treat "metagame thinking," that is, it's an issue of assumptions leading to bad play experiences rather than any particular concern about what a character may or may not know. For example, a TPK occurring because the players think "the DM would never throw such difficult monsters against us at this level" or wasting valuable session time searching an otherwise unimportant door because the DM described it in more detail than usual.




"Telegraphed" being the bare minimum; better a clear and transparent phase to describe the situation, or, if not appropriate, at least a check to bring some light, or whatever. Otherwise we go back to the Outguessing-the-Gm minigame, bordering on ... I dare not say it... starts with M...


----------



## iserith

Numidius said:


> "Telegraphed" being the bare minimum; better a clear and transparent phase to describe the situation, or, if not appropriate, at least a check to bring some light, or whatever. Otherwise we go back to the Outguessing-the-Gm minigame, bordering on ... I dare not say it... starts with M...




In a D&D 5e context, the DM describes the environment (which would include the necessary telegraphing, one hopes) then the player can describe what he or she wants to do. That might include some attempt to recall lore about trolls, or make a deduction about this troll in particular, which the DM can then adjudicate into success, failure, or uncertainty, the latter of which would call for an ability check. Even if the DM decides that the result of that action is failure (or the roll indicates the same), the player is still free to have the character act as he or she sees fit. He or she just wouldn't have anything concrete to confirm any assumptions.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> So if I'm understanding you, the DM is a jerk if he ignores the players' signaling when they want to use knowledge of weaknesses they have, but he's not a jerk if he ignores the players' signaling that they want to know the weaknesses of unique monsters.  So now you've established that the DM isn't automatically a jerk if he ignores player signaling.  Now I have to ask, though, where's the line drawn?  Is there a list of what player signals the DM cannot ignore without being a jerk?




No, I think you're still missing a vital bit; the signal in the scenario I described is not "we want to know this monster's weakness" it's "we don't want to pretend we don't know this monster's weakness, please don't make us". 

If the DM says "too bad, you all have to pretend you don't know about their fire vulnerability until something happens that makes me think 'okay you can use fire now'" then I think that DM is being a bit of a jerk. He's ignoring what the players want, and it isn't even over something vital or essential to the story....it's a minor factor in one encounter.

Is that clearer? It's not about the players trying to get an "unfair advantage", it's about the players being able to have input in some way on where the game goes and how it's played. 

As for where the line is drawn, I would expect it would be different for everyone, given varying tastes and preferences. 



Maxperson said:


> No.
> 
> 1. The DM is not the player, so he cannot be bringing in player knowledge to the character.
> 
> 2. The DM is has the authority to grant boons like that.
> 
> 3. Presumably Uncle Elmo is already a part of the PC's background and there's a reasonable change he knows about that.
> 
> However, I wouldn't do that, because a description is no substitute for the real thing, and it was a long time ago. Elmo might not have even met a troll, and even if Elmo did meet trolls and tell the PC about it, remembering isn't guaranteed, so the best I would do is give the player a roll to remember. And since it's something in doubt, I wouldn't bring it up as an idea the PC might have. That goes dangerously close to me playing the PC for the player and that's not something I would do. It would be his job to remember that Elmo might have said something and then make the roll.




Your answers make me think that this may be more about preserving the DM as the authority to introduce elements to the game, and also to decide when they can be introduced. A player cannot decide what his character may know in the world, but the DM either has to determine it, or grant it as a boon. 

I think the way that sounds seems a bit problematic for some. 

I realize you go on to say that you wouldn't run things that way, so I get that and appreciate it. But I think that the DM authority angle is what people are taking issue with. Again, I think a game can run perfectly fine with the DM having such authority. However, I think one of the challenges of such a game is for the DM to not overdo it. This is how railroads and Mother May I happen. Things to be cautious about when running such a game. 

You don't seem to share such concern, so I think that's what's causing some of the conflict, as well. 



Maxperson said:


> As long as the DM is trying to be as fair and impartial as he can be, he's not going to outright say no about the trolls.  The answer will either be yes, or roll the die.  The pre-established background already had Elmo as an adventurer who went to the Temple of Elemental evil and survived.




I think this is a great solution, and one many have advocated for throughout the thread.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> No. I am saying it is exceedingly common in real life. That is literally all I am saying.




I don't know how common it is, but I can say that I have seen plenty of folks who play this way. I've been in games where this is the expectation. One of the reasons I decided not to run my own games that way was the fact that I found it really boring to play things out that way. It just took a fight with trolls and stretched it out so that it took longer. There seemed to be little point to it other than to "preserve" some sense of metagaming as cheating. 

When people who are into this hobby meet and have discussions about what's so great about RPGing, and talk about some of their experiences, I can't ever imagine anyone giveing this example: 

"One time I pretended my fighter didn't know trolls need to be burned to be killed, so I let him get knocked down until the thief in the party ran out of daggers to throw, so the DM let him throw a flask of oil, and we realized fire would hurt them. Was awesome."


----------



## iserith

hawkeyefan said:


> There seemed to be little point to it other than to "preserve" some sense of metagaming as cheating.




Having been steeped in this mode of play for more than half of my D&D life (but no longer), I think that it is really just a form of tribal identification, since the approach doesn't really seem to achieve its purported goals in my experience, at least not as well as other methods. "Our tribe thinks and does things _this_ way. Other tribes do things _some other way_." This tribal loyalty would also explain why people will fight to the death over maintaining or defending it no matter how many different ways the approach is shown to be logically inconsistent or otherwise flawed. The more you point out the holes, the more entrenched its proponents become.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> But this is just poor management of the fiction: introducing an element which contradicts what's already established (in this case, the absence of tracks on a muddy road). (And as per [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s post, without introducing something else - like a magic spell or  charm of traceless passage - to explain away the seeming inconsistency.)
> 
> If a player is going to write in new bits of fiction, it shouldn't be too hard to reconcile it with what's gone before. To reiterate a point made by [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] upthread, the _established_ fiction of most RPG campaigns is pretty thin, meaning that the reconciliation task is not normally going to be that demanding.



That depends, I suppose, on whether you're only looking at trying to make the new element fit in with what's established (which, as you say, is often not that hard to do) or whether - and here's my sticking point - you're looking deeper to see if the new element would or could have caused anything already established to have been established differently at the time, had the new element been in place all along.  And this is where it can get difficult, if the new element is anything significant.

With the wagons, the players stopped at asking about tracks; but given the size of the place they ultimately found (and obliterated, but that's another tale) they'd have also been very justified in asking why they hadn't met quite a few empty wagons coming back from the place or passed full ones on their way up; never mind asking how the wagons could have got through one or two rather significant obstacles (written in as mini-adventure sites and challenges for the PCs) along the road.  And had they seen wagons it's quite reasonable to think the idea of posing as a wagon train would have at some point occurred to the players/PCs as a means of getting into the hideout covertly...

Oh, and I just remembered why the enchanted-wagon idea wouldn't have occurred to me: it couldn't have worked over the long term given the setting parameters.  Much of the outdoors area in that region was pretty much null-magic; magic only worked if you were underground or in a heavily-constructed building such that there was some solid stone between you and the outside.  Cave entrances and such gave unpredictable results. (to Readers'-Digest a very long story: a built-in element of the setting from day 1 was that magic was unstable and getting worse, and areas of wild magic and null magic were a fact of life - this was one such, and was a large part of the reason the hideout was there in the first place; the assassins had found a place where magic worked more or less OK in the middle of a region where it didn't.  And while travelling the PCs tried to sack out in caves or buildings each night, and each night did a quick inventory to see if anything they were carrying had been disenchanted during the day)


----------



## Bedrockgames

iserith said:


> Having been steeped in this mode of play for more than half of my D&D life (but no longer), I think that it is really just a form of tribal identification, since the approach doesn't really seem to achieve its purported goals in my experience, at least not as well as other methods. "Our tribe thinks and does things _this_ way. Other tribes do things _some other way_." This tribal loyalty would also explain why people will fight to the death over maintaining or defending it no matter how many different ways the approach is shown to be logically inconsistent or otherwise flawed. The more you point out the holes, the more entrenched its proponents become.




Or they just see things differently than you and like different things. Maybe you have moved to a new style that doesn't do this. But that doesn't mean you are enlightened. It just means your tastes changed.


----------



## iserith

Bedrockgames said:


> Or they just see things differently than you and like different things. Maybe you have moved to a new style that doesn't do this. But that doesn't mean you are enlightened. It just means your tastes changed.




You will note that nowhere in my post do I say that I think I'm "enlightened." We're all subject to tribalism.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> And this idea, of the player keeping keeping hp scores secret, was a widely-discussed technique around 40 years ago. But I don't think it's much in vogue anymore.



And there's a valid question to be asked as to whether this trend has been a good or bad thing; and the answer is probably some version of "both" for most of us.



> But that generates my next question: these PCs know enough about what "dungeoneering" is to understand what a proper "combined arms" force looks like; but are completely ignorant of trolls' vulnerability to fire.



Exactly.  They might not know a thing about what they're potentially going to face but they know, or have a vague idea at least, what resources are available to them before going out to face it.  And even then if they decide to run out a party consisting of nothing but thieves I ain't gonna stop 'em, and they'll learn in-character where their shortfalls lie. 



> They know that dungeons have traps that the "sneaky-types" might spot and disarm; they know that dungeons have monsters who will hurt them, thus generating a need for healing; but they don't know which of those monsters is vulnerable to what sort of damage the wizard might do.



Not necessarily.

They can surmise that it's likely there will be times when quiet scouting or infiltration will be more useful than a frontal charge; they can surmise that there's likely going to be times when having some muscle around would be helpful (even if only to carry out all the valuable loot we're gonna find!); and while they might not appreciate the need for a healer right away they probably will after their first foray into the wild.

As for the wizard - no idea what use he's gonna be but he's keen, so might as well haul him along with us.   And I - the bard - am coming along as tale recorder and, later if things go well, party advertising agency.....



> That's a very arbitrary set of stipulations about "common knowledge".



Not as arbitrary as you want to make it appear, I don't think.


----------



## Bedrockgames

iserith said:


> You will note that nowhere in my post do I say that I think I'm "enlightened." We're all subject to tribalism.




I really don't think tribalism is a part of it at all. I think tribalism exists in the hobby. But I've never encountered it around metagaming (I've encountered it around more concrete and divisive playstyle or system issues). I just don't think folks are investing much of their identity into that idea. 

But I do think when you frame it as an issue of people clinging to tribalism, it does come off as sounding like your enlightened and the masses are not. I also think, like I've been saying this whole thread, if you reduce peoples reason for preferring something to a ridiculous pejorative, you'll never understand why they like something. It would be like attributing people liking chocolate ice-cream to being lazy or needing to be coddled (and then trying to talk them out of their love of chocolate ice cream like logic is going to affect that "You say you like it because its sweet, but honey's sweet and you just stated you have no love for honey at all!").


----------



## iserith

Bedrockgames said:


> I really don't think tribalism is a part of it at all. I think tribalism exists in the hobby. But I've never encountered it around metagaming (I've encountered it around more concrete and divisive playstyle or system issues). I just don't think folks are investing much of their identity into that idea.




From what I've seen, I think some do. I know I did and groups with whom I played did. We were the real roleplayers. Those other guys - those metagamers - they weren't roleplaying. Not really.



Bedrockgames said:


> But I do think when you frame it as an issue of people clinging to tribalism, it does come off as sounding like your enlightened and the masses are not. I also think, like I've been saying this whole thread, if you reduce peoples reason for preferring something to a ridiculous pejorative, you'll never understand why they like something. It would be like attributing people liking chocolate ice-cream to being lazy or needing to be coddled (and then trying to talk them out of their love of chocolate ice cream like logic is going to affect that "You say you like it because its sweet, but honey's sweet and you just stated you have no love for honey at all!").




Tribalism isn't good or bad (or is both good and bad depending on outcomes). It just is.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> That depends, I suppose, on whether you're only looking at trying to make the new element fit in with what's established (which, as you say, is often not that hard to do) or whether - and here's my sticking point - you're looking deeper to see if the new element would or could have caused anything already established to have been established differently at the time, had the new element been in place all along.  And this is where it can get difficult, if the new element is anything significant.




Why would you ever do this? Why go back and tamper with anything? 

You said you hate retcons, and here you say that the problem is if you want to retcon things. 

Again, I'm not following at all.


----------



## Numidius

iserith said:


> From what I've seen, I think some do. I know I did and groups with whom I played did. We were the real roleplayers. Those other guys - those metagamers - they weren't roleplaying. Not really.
> 
> 
> 
> Tribalism isn't good or bad (or is both good and bad depending on outcomes). It just is.



Makes sense. I heard similar conversations in person


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> Sure, but I think it is very telling where all the analysis leads: all the places things can go wrong, seem to reside amid other peoples' playstyle preference. When your analysis slowly but surely builds an argument for the playstyle you prefer, you might want to question how much bias is leaking into the debate. This just does not appear to me to be a healthy exploration of game style preferences, gaming issues, and problems. It looks like a fight between play styles where people are couching their point of view as objective analysis even though it isn't anything approaching that.




This thread isn't about it, and if you want to make a thread about it I'll participate, but how about a quick breakdown of what can go wrong when running a Powered By the Apocalypse game?  Dungeon World since its been discussed?

* Its difficult to improvise.

* Its difficult to improvise while simultaneously managing the cognitive burden of integrating specific and differentiated character themes.

* GM's who don't have the exposure of giving up authority or having their authority constrained by system will find that difficult; difficult to do at all and difficult to trust that the process will produce a lively and satisfying play experience.

* Its difficult to consistently come up with interesting complications that provoke compelling decision-points which arise from failure and partial success...and its made especially so if your GMing mental framework has been conditioned exclusively around a naturalistic, causal logic framework.

* Conditioning players to assume authority and understand the nature and empowerment of the play conversation (if those players are used to traditional authority structures) can be difficult.

* It can be difficult to be patient with yourself, take a moment to take a breath and consider a move choice your about to make (or not make), when pacing of play is so important.

* On certain specific, rare corner cases the Soft > Hard move structure can be sticky to navigate ("was I transparent enough and was my communication clear with respect to me prior Soft Move and the implications of the impending doom of a Hard move?"  Or "does this 6- truly warrant a Soft move or am I just being too meek?").

* Asking the right questions and/or drawing interesting answers from the players can sometimes be difficult.  Integrating them to introduce content that is thematically interesting and relevant can be difficult.

* These games require that all participants bring their creative energy to bear and engage every session.  There are lots of TTRPG players who prefer a passive experience and this can just be too much for them.



These games, and games like them, have a particular (and likely peculiar to some people) cognitive load to them.  They can go wrong at first...until they go right.  Or a GM who is looking for a particular experience may find that the experience of GMing them is anathema to what they enjoy about running games.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> This thread isn't about it, and if you want to make a thread about it I'll participate, but how about a quick breakdown of what can go wrong when running a Powered By the Apocalypse game?  Dungeon World since its been discussed?
> 
> * Its difficult to improvise.
> 
> * Its difficult to improvise while simultaneously managing the cognitive burden of integrating specific and differentiated character themes.
> 
> * GM's who don't have the exposure of giving up authority or having their authority constrained by system will find that difficult; difficult to do at all and difficult to trust that the process will produce a lively and satisfying play experience.
> 
> * Its difficult to consistently come up with interesting complications that provoke compelling decision-points which arise from failure and partial success...and its made especially so if your GMing mental framework has been conditioned exclusively around a naturalistic, causal logic framework.
> 
> * Conditioning players to assume authority and understand the nature and empowerment of the play conversation (if those players are used to traditional authority structures) can be difficult.
> 
> * It can be difficult to be patient with yourself, take a moment to take a breath and consider a move choice your about to make (or not make), when pacing of play is so important.
> 
> * On certain specific, rare corner cases the Soft > Hard move structure can be sticky to navigate ("was I transparent enough and was my communication clear with respect to me prior Soft Move and the implications of the impending doom of a Hard move?"  Or "does this 6- truly warrant a Soft move or am I just being too meek?").
> 
> * Asking the right questions and/or drawing interesting answers from the players can sometimes be difficult.  Integrating them to introduce content that is thematically interesting and relevant can be difficult.
> 
> * These games require that all participants bring their creative energy to bear and engage every session.  There are lots of TTRPG players who prefer a passive experience and this can just be too much for them.
> 
> 
> 
> These games, and games like them, have a particular (and likely peculiar to some people) cognitive load to them.  They can go wrong at first...until they go right.  Or a GM who is looking for a particular experience may find that the experience of GMing them is anathema to what they enjoy about running games.




This is loaded with the bias I am talking about. It is all framed fairly neutrally or tacitly positive about people who like these games. Reading this I come away feeling the list suggests this is more challenging, for more intelligent people and gaming at a higher level. But what we like is just Mother May I; do you see the issue?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That depends, I suppose, on whether you're only looking at trying to make the new element fit in with what's established (which, as you say, is often not that hard to do) or whether - and here's my sticking point - you're looking deeper to see if the new element would or could have caused anything already established to have been established differently at the time, had the new element been in place all along.  And this is where it can get difficult, if the new element is anything significant.



No.

There is some established fiction - call it F. And there is a newly-introduced element - call it X.

I am confident for any F, and for any X, there are indefinitely many ways of reconciling them as fictions - call these R. Any valid R will render it evident (if it's not already) why F happened given that X.

You seem to be focusing on identifying possibilities that _aren't_ R - call them N - which exhibit tension between F and X. Obviously there are indefinitely many Ns also, but I don't know why you are focusing on the Ns rather than the Rs. We already know that no N is a valid candidate for the evolving shared fiction, and so there's no need to obsess over them as opposed to work on giving effect to some R or other.

In my personal experience this isn't that hard. And is a fundamental GMing skill. (The earliest D&D mechanic that I'm aware of that requires deploymnent of this skill is the wandering monster mechanic.)


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> Its difficult to improvise.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Its difficult to consistently come up with interesting complications that provoke compelling decision-points which arise from failure and partial success



Here's Eero Tuovinen on the GMing demands imposed by (what he calls) "the standard narrativistic model" of RPGing:

The GM might . . . needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).​
DungeonWorld/PbtA may not be a pure examle of the standard narrativistic model, and it has some distinctive techniques of its own (eg "fronts"), but I think there is a high degree of overlap between your points and Eero's.


----------



## Manbearcat

Bedrockgames said:


> This is loaded with the bias I am talking about. It is all framed fairly neutrally or tacitly positive about people who like these games. Reading this I come away feeling the list suggests this is more challenging, for more intelligent people and gaming at a higher level. But what we like is just Mother May I; do you see the issue?




Jesus man.  

You think my post above reveals me to have a bias issue?  Yet your complete lack of analyzing the utterly obvious implications of what I wrote and instead going with with "look how biased you are(!)" instead...isn't your cognitive blind spot shouting from the mountaintop?

Alright, since you won't do the math on my post, let me do it for you.

At the risk of offending myself, how about I call degenerate Dungeon World play:

"DADDY YOUR GAME IS UNINTERESTING, BORING, INCOHERENT, SUCKY NONSENSE AND YOU'RE TERRIBLE AT THINKING ON YOUR FEET SO IT LOOKS LIKE THIS GAME DOESN'T WORK CAN WE PLAY SOMETHING ELSE PLEASE?"


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> "DADDY YOUR GAME IS UNINTERESTING, BORING, INCOHERENT, SUCKY NONSENSE AND YOU'RE TERRIBLE AT THINKING ON YOUR FEET SO IT LOOKS LIKE THIS GAME DOESN'T WORK CAN WE PLAY SOMETHING ELSE PLEASE?"



This reminds me of a Ron Edwards post that I've posted from time-to-time: if your "story now"/"scene framed" game sucks, what you probably need to work on is coming up with interesting situations!


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Why would you ever do this? Why go back and tamper with anything?
> 
> You said you hate retcons, and here you say that the problem is if you want to retcon things.



No, the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.

The only way to avoid the evil these retcons represent is to not allow major elements to be introduced out of nowhere...which is pretty much my whole point.  If your PC didn't have a noble background at char-gen and the run of play hasn't given it one in the meantime, then no noble background for you.  The same constraints apply equally to the GM, of course: if the town didn't even have a defensive wooden palisade two weeks ago when the PCs last were here it can't* suddenly have centuries-old feet-thick walls now.

* - barring the vagaries of wishes etc., but it would soon be obvious by the behaviour of the townsfolk that those walls came out of nowhere.

And this also sums up much of my issue with the 'no-myth' type of games where everything is made up on the fly: sure it can work great for a while when there's little-to-no established fiction, but the longer the campaign goes and as more and more fictional elements get established (and thus locked in), the more care has to be taken that things introduced now aren't invalidating things established earlier; all in the name of internal consistency.  This puts a ton of work on the GM's shoulders** to keep everything straight; and as nobody is perfect it's inevitable errors will happen.  Minor errors can usually be smoothed over.  Major errors (of which I'd count my wagon example as one) wreck the game.

** - nothing at all says it can't be a player doing most or all of the recordkeeping; but I call out the GM specifically here as someone has to be the final arbiter should disagreements arise in the collective table memory regarding something bit of established fiction, and that would usually be the GM.

And the inevitable corollary question: if someone introduces a fictional element that might cause these sort of consistency problems, is anyone else (be it the GM or another player) allowed to veto it then and there on those grounds?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No.
> 
> There is some established fiction - call it F. And there is a newly-introduced element - call it X.
> 
> I am confident for any F, and for any X, there are indefinitely many ways of reconciling them as fictions - call these R. Any valid R will render it evident (if it's not already) why F happened given that X.



Of course.  

But let's add a few more variables, shall we?  Let's say F fiction was established at time 1, and X is being introduced somewhat later at time 2; and the fiction that came between these events is, in sum total, FF. 

Back at 1, F was established using the known information at the time - information of which X would have been a part had it been introduced at or before 1; and from there FF proceeded.

Now we get to 2, and X is introduced.  And while you can come up with many versions of R that maintain FF, my contention is that had X been known at 1 then the resulting fiction could just as easily have been GG or HH or II or JJ by now - all different fictions that are not FF that could have happened but did not because X wasn't known about.  This calls all of FF into question, and in the worst case renders it completely invalid.



> You seem to be focusing on identifying possibilities that _aren't_ R - call them N - which exhibit tension between F and X. Obviously there are indefinitely many Ns also, but I don't know why you are focusing on the Ns rather than the Rs. We already know that no N is a valid candidate for the evolving shared fiction, and so there's no need to obsess over them as opposed to work on giving effect to some R or other.



We don't already know that one or more Ns are not valid candidates - just because they weren't what was played out doesn't invalidate them - and had X been known back at time 1 then who knows where the fiction might have gone.  It might have stayed true to FF, for all we know - but the very fact that it might not have is what calls it into question.

Put another way, introducing X now in effect retcons X as having been present all along; meaning the fiction needs to also be retconned in order to account for the presnece of X the entire time.  And as retcons are bad, the simplest way to prevent this is to veto X on the spot.



> In my personal experience this isn't that hard. And is a fundamental GMing skill. (The earliest D&D mechanic that I'm aware of that requires deploymnent of this skill is the wandering monster mechanic.)



Yeah, the whole bit about where do they come from, how come there's a seemingly infinite supply of them, why don't they beat each other up more often when of clearly opposed types, and all that.  Never been a fan of it, paticularly in a closed dungeon setting.

Some module authors are wise enough to give the DM a total for each wandering monster type (and sometimes they even note where they'll be found if not met wandering) which then gets counted down by the DM as the PCs knock them off, until none are left.  This is an excellent start; now all I have to consider is whether the different types of wandering monsters will get along. (e.g. what are the odds of the 2d4 wandering guards [based in room 14] getting in a fight with the 1d3 wandering giant ants [from the nest in cave 23] should they ever happen to meet; and how many of each would survive?)


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> No, the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.




No you don’t. 

I mean, we could be working with a different definition of retcon, but you don’t have to change anything. Everything happened as it did. There’s no reason the new element introduced needs to be contradictory.

In the event of any possible contradictions, you figure out why there is no contradiction. The new element fits into the established fiction.

Now, there of course could be cases where contradiction can’t be avoided, or there is just no satisfactory way toget the new thing to fit. In such cases, maybe the new element has to be denied or changed a bit. I think it’d be a case by case thing.

I mean, Blades in the Dark allows for flashbacks. The players can call for a flashback to reveal something their character had done earlier. By your reasoning, this game element cannot work. Yet it does. 





Lanefan said:


> The only way to avoid the evil these retcons represent is to not allow major elements to be introduced out of nowhere...which is pretty much my whole point.  If your PC didn't have a noble background at char-gen and the run of play hasn't given it one in the meantime, then no noble background for you.  The same constraints apply equally to the GM, of course: if the town didn't even have a defensive wooden palisade two weeks ago when the PCs last were here it can't* suddenly have centuries-old feet-thick walls now.
> 
> * - barring the vagaries of wishes etc., but it would soon be obvious by the behaviour of the townsfolk that those walls came out of nowhere.




Anything added to the fiction has the risk of being contradictory. Do you think it’s the case that the DM is better suited to avoiding such contradictions? Or that players are more susceptible?

Are you worried only about what’s been established? Or are you equally worried about potential story elements that haven’t yet been introduced being contradicted?




Lanefan said:


> And this also sums up much of my issue with the 'no-myth' type of games where everything is made up on the fly: sure it can work great for a while when there's little-to-no established fiction, but the longer the campaign goes and as more and more fictional elements get established (and thus locked in), the more care has to be taken that things introduced now aren't invalidating things established earlier; all in the name of internal consistency.  This puts a ton of work on the GM's shoulders** to keep everything straight; and as nobody is perfect it's inevitable errors will happen.  Minor errors can usually be smoothed over.  Major errors (of which I'd count my wagon example as one) wreck the game.




It seems like it could be a reasonable concern. Which game did you have in mind? Have you played any such games? 




Lanefan said:


> ** - nothing at all says it can't be a player doing most or all of the recordkeeping; but I call out the GM specifically here as someone has to be the final arbiter should disagreements arise in the collective table memory regarding something bit of established fiction, and that would usually be the GM.




For me, I find that sharing the burden of tracking all this information with the players makes it easier. We talk about that stuff all the time...kind of recap things to make sure everything’s clear. I do this in bith my D&D game and my Blades in the Dark game. With Blades, that’s more the expected mode, but I find it useful in D&D as well. 

Funny enough, in D&D we don’t keep written campaign log of any kind. In Blades, I use the Score Tracker included in the game to keep a breif summary of each score. 



Lanefan said:


> And the inevitable corollary question: if someone introduces a fictional element that might cause these sort of consistency problems, is anyone else (be it the GM or another player) allowed to veto it then and there on those grounds?




That’s a gokd question. I would hope that the game would address this in some way. I think most games that allow this kind of thing do have processes for how to handle this. Blades in the Dark works as a conversation between the players and GM, and does place final judgment with the GM. But it does allow for player introduced content, including flashbacks, and it also encourages discussion and trying to persuade the GM. 

In D&D, this isn’t the expected method of play, so it’s not really addressed. If a group wanted to play this way, they’d have to decide how such instances should be handled. In my game, we have a discussion about it and try to make the idea work. If we can’t, then we change it or deny it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Of course.
> 
> But let's add a few more variables, shall we?  Let's say F fiction was established at time 1, and X is being introduced somewhat later at time 2; and the fiction that came between these events is, in sum total, FF.
> 
> Back at 1, F was established using the known information at the time - information of which X would have been a part had it been introduced at or before 1; and from there FF proceeded.
> 
> Now we get to 2, and X is introduced.  And while you can come up with many versions of R that maintain FF, my contention is that had X been known at 1 then the resulting fiction could just as easily have been GG or HH or II or JJ by now - all different fictions that are not FF that could have happened but did not because X wasn't known about.  This calls all of FF into question, and in the worst case renders it completely invalid.




This is really strange. It’s making an issue where none needs to exist. 

It’s the equivalent of being thirsty, and someone hands you a glass of water, and you toss it aside and grab a glass of sand instead.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] - one moral of your posts is that there's no uniform thing _good GMing_ (and hence no uniform thing _jerk GMing_). This can be set out in terms of both _risks_ and _skills_.

An obvous risk in GMing AD&D in a non-class dungeoncrawling context (and 2nd ed AD&D really brings this risk to the fore) is railroading/"Mother may I" - because the system simply lacks a mechanical framework beyond _GM decides_ for making important decision about the fiction outside of combat. We can see this in the orc cannibilism chase situation: AD&D barely has the mechanics to determine whether or not the PCs forgoing rest lets them catch the orcs (at best there are movement rates, but nothing for determining whether eg the orcs get slowed by a flooded creek or twisted ankles), let alone for determining how frequently and how many children the orcs eat.

That particular risk simply doesn't arise in (say) Burning Wheel, which has robust mechanics for resolving an indefinitely wide range of conflicts. 

A risk that arises in classic ("skilled play"/dungeoncrawling) D&D is that the GM lacks impartiality and "gets involved". And the flipside of that is that a good GM for that sort of game _need the skill_ of remaining impartial and impassive, and of judging what's the proper amount of information to communicate so as to keep the "free kriegsspiel" going but not just telegraph the solutions. As I've often posted, it's a skill I lack.

Conversely, my love of _getting involved_ - of taunting and poking the players and seeing how far and in which direction I can push them - which would be a liability if I was running a ToH tournament, is a virtue when GMing Burning Wheel, or Prince Valiant, or 4e. It lets the players know what I think is at stake in a situation, gives them something to play off and push back against, creates conversations in which they can correct misapprehensions if they think I've made them, etc.

That's not to say that there can't be multi-purpose systems. A lot of people think of Classic Traveller as a game to be GMed by an impartial referee. But I'm finding it to be eminently playable in something closer to a DW style (and even in the original, 1977 rulebooks there are passages that point in this direction, like the observation (Book 3 p 19) that "in many cases" the referee "has a responsibility" "to impose encounters to further the cause of the adventure being played").

But most systems tend to foreground one set of skills and techniques and make some other approaches a liability. A strong sense of _how things will unfold_  is pretty crucial if a GM-driven, 2nd ed AD&D type game is going to reliably produce strong story - if the GM doesn't bring that to the table, then in the absence of mechanics that will reliably deliver it, or player authority to do it, where's it going to come from? (Hence we get the typical AD&D 2nd ed era, CoC, etc module design.)

But bringing that inclination to the GMing of (say) a DW game will just cause headaches and heartaches.


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## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> No you don’t.
> 
> I mean, we could be working with a different definition of retcon, but you don’t have to change anything. Everything happened as it did. There’s no reason the new element introduced needs to be contradictory.
> 
> In the event of any possible contradictions, you figure out why there is no contradiction. The new element fits into the established fiction.
> 
> Now, there of course could be cases where contradiction can’t be avoided, or there is just no satisfactory way toget the new thing to fit. In such cases, maybe the new element has to be denied or changed a bit. I think it’d be a case by case thing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I would hope that the game would address this in some way. I think most games that allow this kind of thing do have processes for how to handle this. Blades in the Dark works as a conversation between the players and GM, and does place final judgment with the GM. But it does allow for player introduced content, including flashbacks, and it also encourages discussion and trying to persuade the GM.
> 
> In D&D, this isn’t the expected method of play, so it’s not really addressed. If a group wanted to play this way, they’d have to decide how such instances should be handled. In my game, we have a discussion about it and try to make the idea work. If we can’t, then we change it or deny it.



To me this all seems very obvious. Which is not to criticise you for posting it (on the contrary - XP given!) but rather to say that it's odd to me that this needs spelling out in such detail.

I mean, the very first time a wandering monster appeared from _around a corner that the PCs had themseles just walked around_, the need to fit newly-authored elements into the established fiction arose. And it doesn't generally seem to have caused many crises.



Lanefan said:


> the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.





Lanefan said:


> Let's say F fiction was established at time 1, and X is being introduced somewhat later at time 2; and the fiction that came between these events is, in sum total, FF.
> 
> Back at 1, F was established using the known information at the time - information of which X would have been a part had it been introduced at or before 1; and from there FF proceeded.
> 
> Now we get to 2, and X is introduced.  And while you can come up with many versions of R that maintain FF, my contention is that had X been known at 1 then the resulting fiction could just as easily have been GG or HH or II or JJ by now - all different fictions that are not FF that could have happened but did not because X wasn't known about.  This calls all of FF into question, and in the worst case renders it completely invalid.



For someone who purports to hate metagaming, you sure do seem to do a lot of it!

Sure, _had the authors of the fiction at T1_ known that X was coming along at T2, they might have authored a different F. Just like, had Stan Lee invented Mysterio earlier, he might have used Mysterio rather than Sand Man (? am I remembering right?) as one of Spidey's first villains. Likewise, had the players or GM thought of X back at T1, they might have gone on to produce a different FF.

But so what? Those are all facts _about how the game might have unfolded at the table_ - ie facts about authorship. It's all metagame speculation. The possibility that someone might have written a different FF is not a fact _about the gameworld itself_. FF is what it is. And X is what it is. So as far as the shared fiction is concerned, we already know that FF unfolded as it did despite X. There're almost always many readily available Rs that will explain how this is so - pick one!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Right, I see. The example was provided as an ...example.. of drama in Gm-driven play. I can't see any drama.
> It's a quest, like many others.




While I agree it isn't presented so as to highlight all the drama, there seems to be quite a bit inherent in the situation. I've certainly watched movies with much weaker plots! I mean "can we catch up with the orcs before they eat our children" seems like a _fairly dramatic_ concept for an adventure to me...

I agree it is presented in a rather DM-driven way, and the system that is assumed lacks a mechanism for determining levels of success and failure. This turns the tension of the situation into basically "how mean will the GM be to the imaginary children", but at least you can presume that the greater skill and alacrity evinced in the pursuit would let you advocate more strongly for less lunch and more child. I have already agreed that 4e and using SC mechanics, for example, vastly strengthen the whole concept. Furthermore you can imagine many subsidiary scenarios, do you pay 1000 gp to the trolls to let you use the bridge so you can gain a march on the orcs? That's all your treasure! Maybe the thief is not such a nice guy, do you beat him up and take his share, or do honor his choice and don't pay. Maybe you can fight the trolls. What does the thief owe the dwarf when the dwarf dies fighting them because the thief was stingy? Anyway, you can go on and on, and cast things in more fantastical or mundane, but equally fraught terms.

Nor need it be the end of things. This is a simple scenario in essence, but you can always ask all about why the orcs were there, who's to blame, should we be nicer to our neighbors or are they just subhuman, etc. (or other completely different questions as you wish). It is really the play process of scene framing and pushing on player interests and such that distinguishes the different types of game, not so much the narratives (though some are unlikely to result from specific types of game).


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## pemerton

Over the Edge (a Jonathan Tweet RPG) includes a three-column essay by Robin Laws, "The Literary Edge" (at pp 1912-93 of my 20th Anniversary edition).

I'm not going to type out the whole thing, but it has some interesting stuff to say about "metagaming" and about authorship of the shared fiction:

Role-playing games changed forever the first time a player said, "I know it's the best strategy, but my character wouldn't _do_ that." Suddenly an aesthetic concern had been put ahead of a gaming one, ie establishing characterization over a scenario's "victory conditions." At that unheralded moment, role-playing stopped being a game at all and began quietly evolving into a narrative art form, a junior cousin of drama, film, and literature. . . .

The closest analogue to role-playing is improvised theatre, in which actors invent scenes as they go along. Participants must be receptive to contributions of others and use their own input to build on them. The Prime Directive of the improviser is “never negate,” which means that the actors must accept all ideas as they come up and work with them.

In role-playing, however, the GM is often called on to say “no” to players’ desires for their characters; this is because roleplaying games are ongoing epics centred around the adventure genre rather than brief comedy skits. The GM is responsible for decisions about characters’ successes in the physical world, and will often decide that attempts at given actions fail. After all, stories in which the leads breeze over every obstacle without opposition are undramatic and therefore fail to entertain.

But GMs should also be prepared to say “yes” to players when a suggestion inspires new possibilities for the storyline. In fact, a good GM will work to incorporate player input into his plans. In drama, character is the most important thing, and this element belongs to the players. The GM is not a movie director, able to order actors to interpret a script a given way. Instead, he should be seeking ways to challenge PCs, to use plot developments to highlight aspects of their character, in hopes of being challenged in return. . . .

When viewing role-playing as an art form, rather than a game, it becomes less important to keep from the players things their characters wouldn’t know. When character separate, you can “cut” back and forth between scenes involving different characters, making each PC the focus of his own individual sub-plot. This technique has several benefits. First, it allows players to develop characters toward their own goals without having to subsume them to the demands of the “party” as a whole. Secondly, it quickens the pace, allowing players to think while their characters are “off-screen,” cutting down on dead time in which players thrash over decisions. . . . Finally, this device is entertaining for players out of the spotlight, allowing them to sit back and enjoy the adventures of others’ characters.

The price of this is allowing players access to information know to PCs other than their own. But it’s simple enough to rule out of play any actions they attempt based on forbidden knowledge. This doesn’t mean there will be any shortage of mystery. Any OTE GM will still have secrets to spare. In fact, by allowing the number of sub-plots to increase, the GM is introducing even more questions the players will look forward to seeing answered.

GMs who employ this multi-plotting device will find it changes the nature of PC interaction, making meetings between them more remarkable and meaningful as they become rarer. Now PCs will interact because they want to for reasons arising from the story, not merely because they have to as part of a team. After all, parties of adventurers in roleplaying sessions are often made up of wildly disparate types who would never ally with each other, except for reasons outside the storyline: the players all want to be included, and the GM has one plotline prepared, so they all get shoehorned together. . . .

For years, role-players have been simulating fictional narratives the way wargamers recreate historical military engagements. They’ve been making spontaneous, democratized art for their own consumption, even if they haven’t seen it in these terms. Making the artistry conscious is a liberating act, making it easier to emulate the classic tales that inspire us. Have fun with it, and enjoy your special role in aesthetics history – it’s not everybody who gets to be a pioneer in the development of a new art form.​
You can see, in the notion of the GM establishing the fiction so as to challenge the PCs, the idea of “scene framed” play. You can also see, in the suggestion that _GM decides_ is the main resolution mechanism, the underdevelopment of resolution techniques to fit scene-framing. (Prince Valiant is an earlier game than OtE, and has such techniques, but Greg Stafford was a pioneer and a genius!)


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> What part of metagaming being "Bringing in real world knowledge *THAT THE PC DOESN'T HAVE*." do you not understand?



The part where you actually manage to establish that this is knowledge that the PC doesn't have.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> The only way I see this being important is if all the kids were eaten, which means the chase becomes revenge/justice instead of rescue and possible revenge/justice OR based on estimations if by the time the characters catch up to the orcs all the kids would be eaten, so again revenge/justice solely.
> Unless the party plans to make their speed slower if 2 kids were eaten instead of 3.




You do have a point, how many imaginary children the imaginary orcs ate is a bit of an 'angels on the head of a pin' sort of a question. Still, classic D&D guarantees the PCs NOTHING. Even if they give up every possible thing they could stake which would plausibly provide them an edge its perfectly acceptable for the DM to simply state that they find a pile of bones at the end of the trail. I've seen plenty of DMs do things like that too! 

This brings up, again, the things I did in hacking 4e. Not only is all conflict using challenge mechanics (or combat) but players have a built-in set of mechanics they can use to have their characters buy successes in those challenges. You can see how this would open up a lot of possibilities (and yes, you could argue that the players will simply buy success all the time, but many of these costs are permanent and fairly steep, so they'd certainly be making significant choices about how the fiction would proceed from there).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> The problem isn't GM authority. GM authority can be a perfectly valid thing in a game. The issue is some GMs don't wield it well, some players bristle at it, etc. Again, if you prefer games with less GM authority, that is totally fine. But treating it as a universal problem because you don't like it: that is where this conversation goes off the rails.




I'm not afraid of bad GMs actually. I am simply convinced that RPGs can provide improved play process and better results when the GM has certain structures to work with.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> @_*Manbearcat*_ - one moral of your posts is that there's no uniform thing _good GMing_ (and hence no uniform thing _jerk GMing_). This can be set out in terms of both _risks_ and _skills_.
> 
> An obvous risk in GMing AD&D in a non-class dungeoncrawling context (and 2nd ed AD&D really brings this risk to the fore) is railroading/"Mother may I" - because the system simply lacks a mechanical framework beyond _GM decides_ for making important decision about the fiction outside of combat. We can see this in the orc cannibilism chase situation: AD&D barely has the mechanics to determine whether or not the PCs forgoing rest lets them catch the orcs (at best their are movement rates, but nothing for determining whether eg the orcs get slowed by a flooded creek or twisted ankles), let alone for determining how frequently and how many children the orcs eat.
> 
> That particular risk simply doesn't arise in (say) Burning Wheel, which has robust mechanics for resolving an indefinitely wide range of conflicts.
> 
> A risk that arises in classic ("skilled play"/dungeoncrawling) D&D is that the GM lacks impartiality and "gets involved". And the flipside of that is that a good GM for that sort of game _need the skill_ of remaining impartial and impassive, and of judging what's the proper amount of information to communicate so as to keep the "free kriegsspiel" going but not just telegraph the solutions. As I've often posted, it's a skill I lack.
> 
> Conversely, my love of _getting involved_ - of taunting and poking the players and seeing how far and in which direction I can push them - which would be a liability if I was running a ToH tournament, is a virtue when GMing Burning Wheel, or Prince Valiant, or 4e. It let's the players know what I think is at stake in a situation, gives them something to play off and push back against, creates conversations in which they can correct misapprehensions if they think I've made them, etc.
> 
> That's not to say that there can't be multi-purpose systems. A lot of people think of Classic Traveller as a game to be GMed by an impartial referee. But I'm finding it to be eminently playable in something closer to a DW style (and even in the original, 1977 rulebooks there are passages that point in this direction, like the observation (Book 3 p 19) that "in many cases" the referee "has a responsibility" "to impose encounters to further the cause of the adventure being played").
> 
> But most systems tend to foreground one set of skills and techniques and make some other approaches a liability. A strong sense of _how things will unfold_  is pretty crucial if a GM-driven, 2nd ed AD&D type game is going to reliably produce strong story - if the GM doesn't bring that to the table, then in the absence of mechanics that will reliably deliver it, or player authority to do it, where's it going to come from? (Hence we get the typical AD&D 2nd ed era, CoC, etc module design.)
> 
> But briniging that inclination to the GMing of (say) a DW game will just cause headaches and heartaches.




Its almost like...

I don't know...

call me crazy...

but system matters!

As to the last style (we've discussed this aplenty), it is almost surely the most popular form of TTRPGing on the market presently (for a myriad of reasons).  During the playtest, I called D&D Next (which became 5e) AD&D 3e w/ some bolted on (meaning not integrated holistically) indie tech.  But its play paradigm is fundamentally centered around a heavily GM-driven, 2nd ed AD&D type ethos with an overarching metaplot (my guess is that the overwhelming majority of groups, probably 4/5 or more, play 5e in an AP fashion).  At the lowest of levels, it can try to lean toward reproducing a neutral refereed, B/X skilled play, crawl experience, but the primary machinery of B/X isn't codified and central (though you can hack it towards it and hexcrawls are reasonably facilitated).  5e's  GMing ethos, the resolution mechanics, and the intentional design around natural language and "rulings not rules" aims toward lack of a tight/focused play premise coupled with "GM as lead storyteller" (not just through the anointment in the text, but by proxy of the requirement of GM judgement, rather than system, being the primary mediator of action resolution).  Consequently, 5e has 0 chance of producing a 4e, Dungeon World, Torchbearer, or Burning Wheel experience.  

Put another way, "not taking a position on design" (as the 5e designers connoted in the midst of the playtest that 5e was supposed to be a modular toolkit where individual tables actually make their own game) is "taking a position on design."  So it should be no surprise that in the absence of clear design intent and focus (intentionally), a heavily GM-driven experience emerges organically from that primordial ooze (even if the text didn't back that notion...which it does).

And this is no big deal and perfectly fine.  But its frustrating that we can't have cleaner conversations on such things.  You can actually tease out intent and play implications of aspects of design (from the broad, such as GMing ethos, to the narrow, such as handling failure).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Max you realise given your above relationship between knowledge of character hit points and metagaming, players will inadvertently metagame. The only way to realistically (with assurety) say that your players don't meta on this issue, is if the DM was the sole bookkeeper of the characters' hit point scores.
> 
> In a similar vain, some on Enworld (myself included) in an attempt to stamp out meta play have players roll for all their Death Saves at the time of rescue or at combat end, whichever may come first.




I have, in ages long past, witnessed games of D&D in which the DM literally did just that, kept all the character sheets and only doled out purely descriptive information that the PCs 'should know' (in his opinion of course). The idea, I assume, was to create some sort of genuine RP experience which was entirely true to some kind of ideal of perfect in character play. All of these attempts rapidly imploded, though I have heard rumors of legendary games where this was pulled off successfully. 

Still, I don't recall anyone lauding this technique as actually producing great fun in practice. It was at best seen as a form of novelty play.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> No, the problem is that you HAVE to retcon things to allow for the presence at the time of the (permanent-in-the-fiction) new element being introduced out of the blue right now so as to allow for things that would, could, or might have been done differently in previous play had that element been known about at the time.
> 
> The only way to avoid the evil these retcons represent is to not allow major elements to be introduced out of nowhere...which is pretty much my whole point.  If your PC didn't have a noble background at char-gen and the run of play hasn't given it one in the meantime, then no noble background for you.  The same constraints apply equally to the GM, of course: if the town didn't even have a defensive wooden palisade two weeks ago when the PCs last were here it can't* suddenly have centuries-old feet-thick walls now.
> 
> * - barring the vagaries of wishes etc., but it would soon be obvious by the behaviour of the townsfolk that those walls came out of nowhere.
> 
> And this also sums up much of my issue with the 'no-myth' type of games where everything is made up on the fly: sure it can work great for a while when there's little-to-no established fiction, but the longer the campaign goes and as more and more fictional elements get established (and thus locked in), the more care has to be taken that things introduced now aren't invalidating things established earlier; all in the name of internal consistency.  This puts a ton of work on the GM's shoulders** to keep everything straight; and as nobody is perfect it's inevitable errors will happen.  Minor errors can usually be smoothed over.  Major errors (of which I'd count my wagon example as one) wreck the game.
> 
> ** - nothing at all says it can't be a player doing most or all of the recordkeeping; but I call out the GM specifically here as someone has to be the final arbiter should disagreements arise in the collective table memory regarding something bit of established fiction, and that would usually be the GM.
> 
> And the inevitable corollary question: if someone introduces a fictional element that might cause these sort of consistency problems, is anyone else (be it the GM or another player) allowed to veto it then and there on those grounds?




Sorry, I have to, how shall I put it?... call this as stretching for a certain type of answer. 

The fictional facts (@Pemerton's 'F') is only thinly known. All we really know any real detail about in the world is what was actually engaged in the fiction. Even if you count in all the things that GM and players assumed without them being brought out in the fiction this world is VERY VERY THIN. I have run a LOT of campaigns in a single self-authored fantasy world over the last 40+ years, and yet nobody has any idea what is down the alley to the left in the town of Lad, they just don't. Nobody knows what the other 7 of 10 buildings on the main street which aren't a bar, a bank, and a general store are either. NOBODY KNOWS. I don't know, no player knows, etc. There is very frikin little that cannot be established after the fact which imposes any undue burden on how things were narrated at the time. 

Sure, it is POSSIBLE to imagine things that could be established in fiction which would make one question the narrative, but these are usually unlikely things, such as the PC has been carrying around the scroll which solves all his problems since day one or something like that. Why would we retcon like that? Nobody is advocating creating nonsense. Going back and retconning that the fighter's brother has been following the party for the last 3 months? Make sure he's trained in Stealth and don't worry about it, there are plenty of chances he could do this. Most things are like that, or can be described in a way which works like that.

OK, the main character is a noble, so obviously he was one last week when the party visited the temple. Why didn't he say "I'm the Baron of Fubar, you must serve me!"? Make something up! There's no lack of 'white space' out there to fill in (notionally) to make room for why this was.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Anything added to the fiction has the risk of being contradictory. Do you think it’s the case that the DM is better suited to avoiding such contradictions? Or that players are more susceptible?



In most cases I'd look to the DM first, if only because the DM has to have been there for every session that campaign has been played and thus in theory knows all the info (and if a player is keeping something secret from the other players, in theory the DM knows about that too and can factor it in).



> Are you worried only about what’s been established?



Pretty much, yes.



> Or are you equally worried about potential story elements that haven’t yet been introduced being contradicted?



Nowhere near as much, as most of the time those can either be tweaked to suit or dropped entirely.  Any breadcrumbs I'd dropped earlier as foreshadowing would simply lose any relevance they might have had, is all.

The only time this would become a nuisance is if a player had something in the works that she'd discussed with me-as-DM ahead of time and then someone else - intentionally or otherwise - introduced something that nullified the first player's plans somehow.



> This is really strange. It’s making an issue where none needs to exist.
> 
> It’s the equivalent of being thirsty, and someone hands you a glass of water, and you toss it aside and grab a glass of sand instead.



Sorry, I just don't see it that way.

Perhaps instead it's the equivalent of being thirsty, someone handing me a glass of water (which I drink), and then the same someone telling me two hours later that there's beer in the fridge and has been all day; had I known this at the time I'd likely have had one of those instead.


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> No, I think you're still missing a vital bit; the signal in the scenario I described is not "we want to know this monster's weakness" it's "we don't want to pretend we don't know this monster's weakness, please don't make us".
> 
> If the DM says "too bad, you all have to pretend you don't know about their fire vulnerability until something happens that makes me think 'okay you can use fire now'" then I think that DM is being a bit of a jerk. He's ignoring what the players want, and it isn't even over something vital or essential to the story....it's a minor factor in one encounter.
> 
> Is that clearer? It's not about the players trying to get an "unfair advantage", it's about the players being able to have input in some way on where the game goes and how it's played.




I wasn't missing anything.  I was acknowledging the scenario you presented, and then applying it to a different scenario that involved player signaling.  So to make things easier, let's accept that I understand that the players in your example are signaling that they don't want to pretend.  

In my example, the players were signaling that they don't want to be surprised by monster strengths and weaknesses.  So then, if the DM says, "too bad, you can't know about the unknown strengths and weaknesses until something happens that clues you in, the DM would also be being a bit of a jerk, no?  This is also about the players being able to have input in some where on where the game goes and how it's played.

In both examples the players are signaling their desire.  So in both examples the DM ignoring the players' signals would result in the DM being a jerk, right?



> Your answers make me think that this may be more about preserving the DM as the authority to introduce elements to the game, and also to decide when they can be introduced. A player cannot decide what his character may know in the world, but the DM either has to determine it, or grant it as a boon.
> 
> I think the way that sounds seems a bit problematic for some.




That's the way D&D is played.  At least if you are following the rules and intent of the game.  Is that problematic for some?  Sure.  They can change it very easily to suit their needs, though.



> Again, I think a game can run perfectly fine with the DM having such authority.




Absolutely.  But it's not about whether it can run perfectly fine with the DM having that kind of authority.  It's about whether the players enjoy that sort of game.  If they do, then great.  If not, they either need to change the game or find a different one.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> The part where you actually manage to establish that this is knowledge that the PC doesn't have.




The DM is the one that decides these things, unless the DM changes how the game runs.  There are no rules allowing players to make up backgrounds on the fly, or to just decide the players know things about the game world.  The DM is the one that decides whether it's a yes, no or uncertain which requires a roll.  Thank you for sharing that you don't understand metagaming and the DM's role, though.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I am simply convinced that RPGs can provide improved play process and better results when the GM has certain structures to work with.




For you and those who enjoy your sort of game, sure.  It won't do those things for me or my group, though.  It would do the opposite as we enjoy different things than you do.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> 5e's  GMing ethos, the resolution mechanics, and the intentional design around natural language and "rulings not rules" aims toward lack of a tight/focused play premise coupled with "GM as lead storyteller" (not just through the anointment in the text, but by proxy of the requirement of GM judgement, rather than system, being the primary mediator of action resolution).  Consequently, 5e has 0 chance of producing a 4e, Dungeon World, Torchbearer, or Burning Wheel experience.
> 
> Put another way, "not taking a position on design" (as the 5e designers connoted in the midst of the playtest that 5e was supposed to be a modular toolkit where individual tables actually make their own game) is "taking a position on design."  So it should be no surprise that in the absence of clear design intent and focus (intentionally), a heavily GM-driven experience emerges organically from that primordial ooze (even if the text didn't back that notion...which it does).
> 
> And this is no big deal and perfectly fine.  But its frustrating that we can't have cleaner conversations on such things.  You can actually tease out intent and play implications of aspects of design (from the broad, such as GMing ethos, to the narrow, such as handling failure).



I "laughed" your post because of the first 4 lines! But this is true too.

And to satisfy some other posters, it's obvious that there are many systems which have zero chance of producing various experiences; this isn't anything unique to 5e, or AD&D. Eg you can't get BW out of MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic - it's not gonna happen no matter how you wish for it, because the system (i) makes action too orthogonal to theme (which is deliberate - this is how superhero comics work, where the X-Men can explore the same or similar themes whether fighting Magneto or Dr Doom or even Arcade; the system achieves it by allowing players to pursue their Milestones almost - not quite completely - independently of the way any particular scene is framed), and (ii) is about 1000x insufficiently brutal. Failure simply won't bite like it does in BW.

Or another case, which I've personally verified over my past six months of GMing: you won't get Prince Valiant out of Classic Traveller, nor vice versa. Prince Valiant is so light in its touch yet (in my view) capable of real moments of poignancy; while Traveller is like Dungeon World mixed with a does of lotto and really gritty accounting. It can get exciting, even tense; and I find it interesting and engaging; but I can't conceive of it generating poignancy, unless you get really moved by undischarged mortgages!

Of course there's a notion that floats around that D&D, and especially 5e, is versatile in some special or distinctive way. I don't give that much credence. A game that can run as "OD&D in space" and as "1970s 'hard' sci-fi meets PbTA" (I'm talking Classic Traveller again) looks pretty versatile to me; and likewise a game that can do both supers and heroic fantasy (MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic). Whereas 5e as written will start to creak if you try even to emulate Prince Valiant (because no magical healing in that Arthurian/pseudo-historical genre).


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, the main character is a noble, so obviously he was one last week when the party visited the temple. Why didn't he say "I'm the Baron of Fubar, you must serve me!"? Make something up! There's no lack of 'white space' out there to fill in (notionally) to make room for why this was.



This, this, this . . .

Especially _make something up!_

And so often, that _something_ itself need be nothing more than a sketch or a hint. For instance,



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Going back and retconning that the fighter's brother has been following the party for the last 3 months? Make sure he's trained in Stealth and don't worry about it, there are plenty of chances he could do this.


And did he have ninjas helping him? Was he under a curse of Coventry? (Some Rolemaster supplement had such a thing.)

In my Traveller game, we know that one of the main PCs regained consciousness in a damaged cold sleep berth stacked in a warehouse in the domed city on the backwater world of Byron (this was the PC's introduction into the campaign), when the last thing she remembered was being in the naval hospital on Shelley (which was the only easy way to fit her PC gen backstory into what had already been established about the setting). How did she get from Shelley to Byron? Presumably in a cold sleep berth, but how did she get into that? And how did it become damaged in the warehouse? Subsequent events in the game have suggested some answers to the first couple of questions, though not complete certainty (the one person who actually knows is a prisoner of the Imperium); and the answer to that last one no one knows (the NPCs who might have provided answers mostly got killed in firefights or arrested by Byron's police force).

_In real life_ no one seems to know when exactly the house I live in was built. (The planning documents I have seen don't appear to settle it, because they seem to treat what was really a build as if it was a renovation of the prior dwelling on the block; one neighbour probably knew the answer, but she had some cognitive issues when I met her and has died since.) That's effective "white space" in the real world, in respect of a house about 40 years old in one of the world's most effectively governed cities! Let alone a RPG world.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Perhaps instead it's the equivalent of being thirsty, someone handing me a glass of water (which I drink), and then the same someone telling me two hours later that there's beer in the fridge and has been all day; had I known this at the time I'd likely have had one of those instead.



But this is metagaming through and through! That is, had it been thought of earlier, then you would have authored other things differently.

I mean, even if that's true, so what?


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This brings up, again, the things I did in hacking 4e. Not only is all conflict using challenge mechanics (or combat) but players have a built-in set of mechanics they can use to have their characters buy successes in those challenges. You can see how this would open up a lot of possibilities (and yes, you could argue that the players will simply buy success all the time, but many of these costs are permanent and fairly steep, so they'd certainly be making significant choices about how the fiction would proceed from there).




I agree. I prefer though, in D&D, to be flexible than have a built-in set of mechanics (aka Skill Challenge, Soft/Hard Moves on Failure...etc) as an option to use than be tied down to a particular mechanic. So sometimes I'd prefer to run it free-form, other times it might be scripted and other times I'd use a mechanic. For me every idea presented by fellow posters in this thread is just one more creative way to adjudicate things at the table or, to use @_*Manbearcat*_'s description, to add to the 'primordial ooze'. 

And this style of adjudication might very well be specific to D&D, maybe because the RPG lends itself to home-brewing.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Aldarc said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The part where you actually manage to establish that this is knowledge that the PC doesn't have.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The DM is the one that decides these things, unless the DM changes how the game runs.  There are no rules allowing players to make up backgrounds on the fly, or to just decide the players know things about the game world.
Click to expand...


This is the bit that I regard as mere assertion. It's not stated, nor implied, in any rules of any RPG I play.

In my Moldvay Basic days, as a player I knew that swords hurt more than daggers because I read the variable weapon damage chart; and I knew that green slimes need fire because I read the Monster chapter. The rules directed me to read both bits, and drew no distinction between the two bits of knowledge I gained. And nowhere did they say that the GM could direct me to pretend I didn't know one or the other or both.

Maybe such a rule is stated in the 2nd ed AD&D DMG? I've never read that book.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Probably because that's what it said.  The admonition was to play what the character knows, and that doesn't change just because you have one single example of real world knowledge.  Especially given that the MM information is also knowledge gained in the real world, so it isn't any different in that regard than chemistry.  You learn chemistry in the real world.  You learn about the monsters in the MM in the real world.  Knowledge of both of those things can be taken into the game world and used.  Why would you think that one example of knowledge gained in the real world(chemistry) would be forbidden, but the other example of knowledge gained in the real world(MM info) isn't forbidden?



The 5e rules state the GM has yes/no/uncertain authority over _actions_, not what the PC thinks, which is called out as within the players' balliwick.  In 5e, the GM has no authority within the rules to police PC thoughts, only actions.  You've brought that idea with you and have assumed the rules agree with you.  They don't -- they're silent on the issue of GM approval of PC thoughts.  Meanwhile, they do say that players get to determine what their PC thinks, which is contrary to your claims.

Now, the path I think you're going down us the vague admonishion against metagaming, which is located in the DM's guide and not the Players'.  That doesn't fully define metagaming at all, so you've, again, brought your definition with you -- it's not defined by the text.  Further, that section is a vague admonishion only: there are no additional authorities or guides presented that provide GM authority over PC thoughts.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> The 5e rules state the GM has yes/no/uncertain authority over _actions_, not what the PC thinks, which is called out as within the players' balliwick.  In 5e, the GM has no authority within the rules to police PC thoughts, only actions.  You've brought that idea with you and have assumed the rules agree with you.  They don't -- they're silent on the issue of GM approval of PC thoughts.  Meanwhile, they do say that players get to determine what their PC thinks, which is contrary to your claims.




The 5e rules say straight out to discourage metagaming, and using your knowledge of monsters as your PC's knowledge, when your PC wouldn't or might not have it is metagaming.



> Now, the path I think you're going down us the vague admonishion against metagaming, which is located in the DM's guide and not the Players'.  That doesn't fully define metagaming at all, so you've, again, brought your definition with you -- it's not defined by the text.  Further, that section is a vague admonishion only: there are no additional authorities or guides presented that provide GM authority over PC thoughts.




It's a good enough definition to stop metagaming.

Edit:By the way, the metagaming portion specifically says to discourage metagame THINKING, so yes the rules state that the DM has authority of what the PC thinks and direct the DM to use that authority with metagaming.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not afraid of bad GMs actually. I am simply convinced that RPGs can provide improved play process and better results when the GM has certain structures to work with.




You can always improve systems. My problem is you and others are arguing this around style. Like Maxperson said, the games you want to play, are not the ones he wants to play. Design improvements around style and preferences are not objective or universal improvments. They are targeted to a particular demographic of gamers. If I am making a game meant to appeal to players and GMs like Maxperson, then the things people are identifying as bad design would actually be in my list of things to include. This gets back to my point, the analysis is skewed because the examiners are inserting their own biases into it.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is the bit that I regard as mere assertion. It's not stated, nor implied, in any rules of any RPG I play.
> 
> In my Moldvay Basic days, as a player I knew that swords hurt more than daggers because I read the variable weapon damage chart; and I knew that green slimes need fire because I read the Monster chapter. The rules directed me to read both bits, and drew no distinction between the two bits of knowledge I gained. And nowhere did they say that the GM could direct me to pretend I didn't know one or the other or both.
> 
> Maybe such a rule is stated in the 2nd ed AD&D DMG? I've never read that book.




The into section of 5e.  The players decribe to the DM what they want their characters to do.  You want your character to remember what a troll's weakness is.  The DM narrates the results after deciding yes, no or uncertain which requires a roll.

Read the exchange where the player experienced at the game doesn't just know what a gargoyle is.  He "has a feeling" that the gargoyles may not be statues, but still has to look at them and make a roll to see if they are gargoyles or not.  The DM ultimately has him make an intelligence(investigation) check.

You also have the Commune with Nature spell, which allows the player to get knowledge of some kinds of creatures.  You wouldn't need a 5th level spell for that if you could just use your player knowledge about those creatures.

The Ranger favored enemy gives you a bonus on intelligence rolls to recall information about them.  Even the Ranger has to roll to remember info about his FAVORED ENEMY.  It's not something the player can just automatically decide.


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> The 5e rules say straight out to discourage metagaming, and using your knowledge of monsters as your PC's knowledge, when your PC wouldn't or might not have it is metagaming.
> 
> It's a good enough definition to stop metagaming.
> 
> Edit:By the way, the metagaming portion specifically says to discourage metagame THINKING, so yes the rules state that the DM has authority of what the PC thinks and direct the DM to use that authority with metagaming.




I would say you're adding to the D&D 5e's definition of "metagame thinking." Taken as a whole, the DM is told to discourage "metagame thinking" because it can lead the players to getting their characters killed (by assuming the DM would not throw powerful monsters at lower-levels PCs) or wasting valuable session time (by over-exploring an otherwise normal door they thought the DM took longer than usual to describe). It has little to do with the sort of "metagaming" you and others deride. It even suggests you give the a gentle reminder "What do your _characters _think?" Well, my character thinks fire hurts trolls!

Here's how I discourage "metagame thinking" in my D&D 5e games (from my table rules document): "'Metagaming,' defined here as using player skill or knowledge that a character might not necessarily have, is _fine _as long as it's fun for everyone and helps contribute to an exciting, memorable story. Assumptions can be risky though so it's skillful play to verify your assumptions through in-game actions before making choices based on them."

So, sure, go right ahead and hit that troll with fire. You just better pray that I didn't change the stat block (which I frequently do) and I hope you were listening when I telegraphed that this troll is different. Discouraging it by explicitly or implicitly saying "You can't take that action because I've arbitrarily decided your character doesn't know about trolls' weaknesses" goes against the rules about a player deciding how his or her character thinks and acts. And anyway, if the character needs a justification for that action, the player can just apply the process that @_*pemerton*_ outlined which is exceedingly easy to do on the fly, e.g. "My dear Aunt Sally told me about fire killing trolls in nursery rhymes." (The character was raised Aunt Sally because adventurers' parents are always killed, obviously. Probably by trolls.)


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> The into section of 5e.  The players decribe to the DM what they want their characters to do.  You want your character to remember what a troll's weakness is.  The DM narrates the results after deciding yes, no or uncertain which requires a roll.




Not being able to recall a troll's weakness doesn't stop you from lighting a torch and hitting the troll with it. Or lobbing alchemist's fire.



Maxperson said:


> Read the exchange where the player experienced at the game doesn't just know what a gargoyle is.  He "has a feeling" that the gargoyles may not be statues, but still has to look at them and make a roll to see if they are gargoyles or not.  The DM ultimately has him make an intelligence(investigation) check.




That's a player stating an action to deduce based on available clues whether the statue is something more than a statue. The DM finds the action to have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure and calls for an Intelligence check to which the player would like to say Investigation applies. The DM agrees. 

That is the proper play loop and adjudication process. The player rolls and gets a 7 which he believes is a bad result. The DM does not give him anything to work with (arguably a boring result but nevermind). Still, nothing is stopping the player from having his character pull out his or her adamantine blade and striking the statue.



Maxperson said:


> You also have the Commune with Nature spell, which allows the player to get knowledge of some kinds of creatures.  You wouldn't need a 5th level spell for that if you could just use your player knowledge about those creatures.




You can just use your player knowledge. You might be wrong though - you remembered the stat block incorrectly or the DM changed it. Commune with Nature helps you verify your assumptions so you don't arrive at a bad outcome.



Maxperson said:


> The Ranger favored enemy gives you a bonus on intelligence rolls to recall information about them.  Even the Ranger has to roll to remember info about his FAVORED ENEMY.  It's not something the player can just automatically decide.




It is absolutely something the player can decide. The player might, however, be wrong as above. So it's skillful play to verify those assumptions by attempting to recall lore about the enemy in question.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I wasn't missing anything.  I was acknowledging the scenario you presented, and then applying it to a different scenario that involved player signaling.  So to make things easier, let's accept that I understand that the players in your example are signaling that they don't want to pretend.
> 
> In my example, the players were signaling that they don't want to be surprised by monster strengths and weaknesses.  So then, if the DM says, "too bad, you can't know about the unknown strengths and weaknesses until something happens that clues you in, the DM would also be being a bit of a jerk, no?  This is also about the players being able to have input in some where on where the game goes and how it's played.
> 
> In both examples the players are signaling their desire.  So in both examples the DM ignoring the players' signals would result in the DM being a jerk, right?




No because there is a meaningful difference between asking to not have to pretend to not know what you know and demanding that the DM tell you everything you don’t know.

Now, having said that, I do think that playing with all monster stats, including vulnerabilities, being known is a perfectly valid way to play. If this is what the players want to do, then they certainly should let the DM know and they should all discuss it and figure out how to proceed.

But this is an order of magnitude different from not wanting to be forced to play the guessing game RE trolls and fire.



Maxperson said:


> That's the way D&D is played.  At least if you are following the rules and intent of the game.  Is that problematic for some?  Sure.  They can change it very easily to suit their needs, though.




Yes. This is how D&D is played. Two things on that. 

First, some folks don’t like that and so they criticize it and mention other systems or methods. But you always return to D&D as the basis for your points. 

Second, changing D&D is precisely how this conversation started. A poster asked how to make some elements of the fiction require less DM authority. 

We are discussing various systems and methods, so always reverting to the default expectations (which also are sometimes vaguely defined and may vary) seems odd. 



Maxperson said:


> Absolutely.  But it's not about whether it can run perfectly fine with the DM having that kind of authority.  It's about whether the players enjoy that sort of game.  If they do, then great.  If not, they either need to change the game or find a different one.




It’s about what the system does and what the participants are hoping to get out of it. A mismatch in those is where a problem occurs. So a change to the system or even to a new game may be in order. Or else a shift in expectations by the participants might be necessary.


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]

A party has already encountered The Ranger's favored enemy (say dragons?) so many times that every Pc at the table knows every single stat, power, weakness, full stat block of dragons. 
Then They encounter a dragon that is identical to a statted one in the MM, so nothing new at all. 

Would the above Commune druid' spell and ranger's ability still be useful to overcome the dragon encounter, or are by now redundant and useless?


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> The DM is the one that decides these things, unless the DM changes how the game runs.  There are no rules allowing players to make up backgrounds on the fly, or to just decide the players know things about the game world.  The DM is the one that decides whether it's a yes, no or uncertain which requires a roll.  Thank you for sharing that you don't understand metagaming and the DM's role, though.



1) This is an assertion about your play preferences disguised as rules facts. Do I need to pull up your quote on facts and opinions again?  

2) Max, I think you need to actually demonstrate some awareness of how the game exists in a more open space than your own narrow reading of the game rules. One can also note, for example, that although you may say that there are no rules allowing players to make up backgrounds on the fly there are also no rules that prohibit it. Normally there freedom exists within the spaces where rules are silent rather than restrictions. So [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is correct that this is just your unsupportable assertion. 

3) Perhaps most damningly, your post, most especially the first sentence, is a glaring admission that you operate by Dungeon Mother-May-I when it comes to character knowledge. The DM decides = The Mother decides when it comes to giving the other participants permissions in play.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> In most cases I'd look to the DM first, if only because the DM has to have been there for every session that campaign has been played and thus in theory knows all the info (and if a player is keeping something secret from the other players, in theory the DM knows about that too and can factor it in).




That makes sense. I personally find that I forget as much as the players do, but that it tends to be different kinds of things. Sometimes I'm really surprised by what they remember, and other times I'm amazed at what they forget. 



Lanefan said:


> Pretty much, yes.




I would say that the burden of "fitting" is on the new element in just about every case. 



Lanefan said:


> Nowhere near as much, as most of the time those can either be tweaked to suit or dropped entirely.  Any breadcrumbs I'd dropped earlier as foreshadowing would simply lose any relevance they might have had, is all.
> 
> The only time this would become a nuisance is if a player had something in the works that she'd discussed with me-as-DM ahead of time and then someone else - intentionally or otherwise - introduced something that nullified the first player's plans somehow.




I could see that being a concern. I don't know if things could not be reconciled, but I suppose it would depend on the specifics of the two elements. 



Lanefan said:


> Sorry, I just don't see it that way.
> 
> Perhaps instead it's the equivalent of being thirsty, someone handing me a glass of water (which I drink), and then the same someone telling me two hours later that there's beer in the fridge and has been all day; had I known this at the time I'd likely have had one of those instead.




It's clearly the case of choosing to have a problem where none needs to be. 


One thing I'd like to revisit if you don't mind is this bit that you snipped out of your reply: 


hawkeyefan said:


> It seems like it could be a reasonable concern. Which game did you have in mind? Have you played any such games?


----------



## iserith

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]
> 
> A party has already encountered The Ranger's favored enemy (say dragons?) so many times that every Pc at the table knows every single stat, power, weakness, full stat block of dragons.
> Then They encounter a dragon that is identical to a statted one in the MM, so nothing new at all.
> 
> Would the above Commune druid' spell and ranger's ability still be useful to overcome the dragon encounter, or are by now redundant and useless?




They would be useful in verifying assumptions the player may have regarding the dragon's stat, power, weakness, etc. Presumably, the player does not know with certainty that the dragon's stat block is unchanged from the Monster Manual. If the player does know that the stat block has not changed, then it's not as useful.


----------



## iserith

Aldarc said:


> 3) Perhaps most damningly, your post, most especially the first sentence, is a glaring admission that you operate by Dungeon Mother-May-I when it comes to character knowledge. The DM decides = The Mother decides when it comes to giving the other participants permissions in play.




When I run D&D games and a player asks me, "Would I know about X?" my response is typically "I can only describe the environment and narrate the result of your actions. Do you have an action you want to take?" I discourage all questions from players in most cases, but this one in particular is a sign that the player comes from the kind of game where the DM has to sign off on what you know before you're allowed to take action (else you risk the ire of the DM and/or the rest of the group). Some retraining to undo the work of previous DMs is often required.


----------



## Numidius

Sounds a bit cold blooded, but I get the re-educational purpose. 
Of course, coming from DW experience, I'd return the question to the sender: "HOW exactly would you know about X?" and in case incorporate the new content in the fiction, if interesting. 

Sometimes it happened the contrary to me: Gm asking how would I know, implying I could not, and me: "who is asking? If the Gm, I don't feel like an answer is due, if is an Npc asking my Pc... I will give an IC answer thru action declaration" , so to not lend the side to Gm veto. 







iserith said:


> When I run D&D games and a player asks me, "Would I know about X?" my response is typically "I can only describe the environment and narrate the result of your actions. Do you have an action you want to take?" I discourage all questions from players in most cases, but this one in particular is a sign that the player comes from the kind of game where the DM has to sign off on what you know before you're allowed to take action (else you risk the ire of the DM and/or the rest of the group). Some retraining to undo the work of previous DMs is often required.


----------



## iserith

Numidius said:


> Sounds a bit cold blooded, but I get the re-educational purpose.
> Of course, coming from DW experience, I'd return the question to the sender: "HOW exactly would you know about X?" and in case incorporate the new content in the fiction, if interesting.




Yeah, without the additional context of my table rules document, it does sound cold-blooded. But here is what I tell players up front: "Describe what you want to do by stating a clear goal and approach - what you hope to achieve and how you set about doing it. A question is not a statement of goal and approach, nor is asking to make an ability check or the like." There is no need then to Ask Questions and Use the Answers in this case. (I was a playtester for Dungeon World.)



Numidius said:


> Sometimes it happened the contrary to me: Gm asking how would I know, implying I could not, and me: "who is asking? If the Gm, I don't feel like an answer is due, if is an Npc asking my Pc... I will give an IC answer thru action declaration" , so to not lend the side to Gm veto.




Typically in a statement of goal and approach for recalling lore, I'm looking for the player to say what he or she wants to recall (goal) and how he or she might know that (approach) e.g. "Having grown up in the wilds, far from civilization, I draw upon my knowledge as an Outlander to identify this strange plant with the yellow blossoms." As DM, I would not imply or state the character could not recall it before the player made the action declaration. Even if I say or the dice say the character cannot recall that information, nothing is preventing the player from having the character think and act as if the plant is a dangerous yellow musk creeper.


----------



## Maxperson

iserith said:


> Not being able to recall a troll's weakness doesn't stop you from lighting a torch and hitting the troll with it. Or lobbing alchemist's fire.




Sure, but that's metagaming.



> That's a player stating an action to deduce based on available clues whether the statue is something more than a statue. The DM finds the action to have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure and calls for an Intelligence check to which the player would like to say Investigation applies. The DM agrees.




I disagree.  It's very clearly an experienced player trying to "find out" if it's a gargoyle monster without saying that his PC knows about gargoyles.



> It is absolutely something the player can decide. The player might, however, be wrong as above. So it's skillful play to verify those assumptions by attempting to recall lore about the enemy in question.




This is just not the case.  The rule is explicitly about remembering information about them.  It is NOT about verifying what the PC already remembers.  If the player decides that his PC has the knowledge, he is breaking that rule.  If breaking rules is now "skillful play," then next session I'm going to have to let the DM know that I'm not stopping with two attacks, and instead I am going to engage in "skillful play" by attacking until the monster is dead.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> No because there is a meaningful difference between asking to not have to pretend to not know what you know and demanding that the DM tell you everything you don’t know.
> 
> Now, having said that, I do think that playing with all monster stats, including vulnerabilities, being known is a perfectly valid way to play. If this is what the players want to do, then they certainly should let the DM know and they should all discuss it and figure out how to proceed.
> 
> But this is an order of magnitude different from not wanting to be forced to play the guessing game RE trolls and fire.




I disagree that the difference is all that meaningful.  Either the players desires to affect the game through their signaling is important and should be respected, or it isn't.  Once you start deciding that this player signaling is okay, but that player signaling isn't, you seriously muddy up the subject.  You end up with Schrodinger's DM who is both a jerk and not jerk at the same time, and which he is will be decided by each individual separately.



> First, some folks don’t like that and so they criticize it and mention other systems or methods. But you always return to D&D as the basis for your points.
> 
> Second, changing D&D is precisely how this conversation started. A poster asked how to make some elements of the fiction require less DM authority.




Well, not exactly.  THIS conversation started when the poster asked for advice and used a pejorative in the process.  Whether he himself uses that pejorative personally isn't really relevant.  If someone is quoting a pejorative as a part of his questioning, he is giving it a measure of validation.  He should have chopped the pejorative out or just phrased it a different way.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]
> 
> A party has already encountered The Ranger's favored enemy (say dragons?) so many times that every Pc at the table knows every single stat, power, weakness, full stat block of dragons.
> Then They encounter a dragon that is identical to a statted one in the MM, so nothing new at all.
> 
> Would the above Commune druid' spell and ranger's ability still be useful to overcome the dragon encounter, or are by now redundant and useless?




The information portion at that point would be redundant and useless, unless it is being used in a creative way.  For example, the Ranger in question(as well as the party) would know about the strength and weaknesses, but may not know the hunting habits of each dragon type, and perhaps they want to set up a trap for the dragon.  The Ranger's ability would still be very useful for those creative uses that lie outside of the stat block.


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> Sure, but that's metagaming.




Those two actions are not necessarily dependent upon each other. 



Maxperson said:


> I disagree.  It's very clearly an experienced player trying to "find out" if it's a gargoyle monster without saying that his PC knows about gargoyles.




Whether the player is or isn't experienced doesn't matter. As above, not noticing anything peculiar about the statue and hitting it with an adamantine blade are not necessarily dependent upon one another.



Maxperson said:


> This is just not the case.  The rule is explicitly about remembering information about them.  It is NOT about verifying what the PC already remembers.  If the player decides that his PC has the knowledge, he is breaking that rule.  If breaking rules is now "skillful play," then next session I'm going to have to let the DM know that I'm not stopping with two attacks, and instead I am going to engage in "skillful play" by attacking until the monster is dead.




An attempt to recall lore can be, in effect, trying to verify an assumption you may have about trolls or gargoyles. It's smart play, so that you don't run afoul of bad assumptions. If you fail to recall that lore, you can still attack the troll with fire or the statue with adamantine. Those actions can be performed independent of needing to recall the weaknesses of trolls or gargoyles. There is no rule being broken here.

Alternatively, a player may know nothing at all about trolls or gargoyles and attempt to recall lore about them. Whether he or she succeeds or fails at recalling that lore, attacking the troll with fire or the statue with adamantine is still fine.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> One can also note, for example, that although you may say that there are no rules allowing players to make up backgrounds on the fly there are also no rules that prohibit it.




This utterly failed argument again?  Really?!  Once again, no preclusion does not mean inclusion.  There is also no rule prohibiting my PC's longsword from now detonating a nuclear blast destroying a 2 mile radius around him with each hit.  There is a rule stating that if you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack, you automatically miss, but no rule that prohibits the normal longsword from casting hold person whenever that happens.

If something is not explicitly included or precluded in the rules, it can only happen in the game if the DM agrees to allow it to happen.  Players do no get to invent rules for the game without the DM giving them that ability.



> Normally there freedom exists within the spaces where rules are silent rather than restrictions.




Quote me the rule that explicitly allows players the freedom to invent things for the game in those silent spaces. 



> 3) Perhaps most damningly, your post, most especially the first sentence, is a glaring admission that you operate by Dungeon Mother-May-I when it comes to character knowledge. The DM decides = The Mother decides when it comes to giving the other participants permissions in play.




Only if you are incapable of understanding that asking some questions and getting some answers is not "Mother May I."  If you do have a failed understanding of what "Mother May I" is, then sure you could see it as that.


----------



## Maxperson

iserith said:


> Alternatively, a player may know nothing at all about trolls or gargoyles and attempt to recall lore about them. Whether he or she succeeds or fails at recalling that lore, attacking the troll with fire or the statue with adamantine is still fine.




If it's the standard mode of attack, sure.  If a wizard uses fire spells against his enemies, I wouldn't expect him to stop using fire just because he meets a troll and the PC doesn't know its weakness.  However, if he uses cold attacks against his enemies, but then suddenly switches to fire as soon as the troll his PC knows nothing about shows up, that's pure metagaming.  The same goes for the fighter.  If he uses his adamantine sword in every combat, have at it.  But if he uses his steel longsword in every combat, but suddenly pulls out the adamantine dagger against the gargoyle, that's metagaming.

It's generally pretty clear when someone is trying to play a reasonable attack that happens upon an unknown weakness, and when the player is metagaming to get an advantage in the fight.


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> If it's the standard mode of attack, sure.  If a wizard uses fire spells against his enemies, I wouldn't expect him to stop using fire just because he meets a troll and the PC doesn't know its weakness.  However, if he uses cold attacks against his enemies, but then suddenly switches to fire as soon as the troll his PC knows nothing about shows up, that's pure metagaming.  The same goes for the fighter.  If he uses his adamantine sword in every combat, have at it.  But if he uses his steel longsword in every combat, but suddenly pulls out the adamantine dagger against the gargoyle, that's metagaming.
> 
> It's generally pretty clear when someone is trying to play a reasonable attack that happens upon an unknown weakness, and when the player is metagaming to get an advantage in the fight.




How would you know with certainty?

And more importantly, why even care? It's a manufactured problem (and mostly the DM's fault to boot).


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I disagree that the difference is all that meaningful.  Either the players desires to affect the game through their signaling is important and should be respected, or it isn't.  Once you start deciding that this player signaling is okay, but that player signaling isn't, you seriously muddy up the subject.  You end up with Schrodinger's DM who is both a jerk and not jerk at the same time, and which he is will be decided by each individual separately.




If you don’t see a meaningful difference between information the players know and information they don’t know, then I don’t really know what to tell you. 

And for the rest...I expect a GM to be able to exercise sound judgment.



Maxperson said:


> Well, not exactly.  THIS conversation started when the poster asked for advice and used a pejorative in the process.  Whether he himself uses that pejorative personally isn't really relevant.  If someone is quoting a pejorative as a part of his questioning, he is giving it a measure of validation.  He should have chopped the pejorative out or just phrased it a different way.




Why should he have? We’re talking about RPGs. How bad can a phrase be? Personally, I have no problem with the chosen phrase. 

He communicated his idea and plenty understood his intent. 

You’re certainly entitled to not like his words and to explain why. I think you’ve done so very clearly by now. But you can’t stop people from using phrases just because you don’t like them.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> If it's the standard mode of attack, sure.  If a wizard uses fire spells against his enemies, I wouldn't expect him to stop using fire just because he meets a troll and the PC doesn't know its weakness.  However, if he uses cold attacks against his enemies, but then suddenly switches to fire as soon as the troll his PC knows nothing about shows up, that's pure metagaming.  The same goes for the fighter.  If he uses his adamantine sword in every combat, have at it.  But if he uses his steel longsword in every combat, but suddenly pulls out the adamantine dagger against the gargoyle, that's metagaming.
> 
> It's generally pretty clear when someone is trying to play a reasonable attack that happens upon an unknown weakness, and when the player is metagaming to get an advantage in the fight.




So new player Bob is playing fighter Brutus.

Veteran player Joe is playing fighter Jerrin.

They encounter trolls. The trolls regenerate. Bob decides to try fire on them, and hits one with his torch. He discovers their vulnerability! 

But Joe is simply not allowed to do this. Jerrin cannot deploy fire randomly, only when some kind of knowledge trigger occurs that sayisfies the DM.

Jerrin is being limited in his actions by metagame knowledge possessed by his player.

How is this better than simply letting Joe go ahead and have Jerrin deploy fire?


----------



## Maxperson

iserith said:


> How would you know with certainty?




As I said, it's generally pretty clear.  



> And more importantly, why even care? It's a manufactured problem (and mostly the DM's fault to boot).




It's not a manufactured problem.  Just because you don't have an issue with it personally, doesn't mean that it's not an issue to others.  I feel that bringing knowledge into the game that the PC doesn't have, or that you have to create some weak justification for, in order to gain a combat advantage is cheating.  Cheating is inherently bad, not some manufactured issue.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> And for the rest...I expect a GM to be able to exercise sound judgment.




That's all we can every really expect.  The thing is, not allowing metagaming is reasonable and sound judgment for a lot of groups.  



> Why should he have? We’re talking about RPGs. How bad can a phrase be? Personally, I have no problem with the chosen phrase.




It's inherently derogatory.  That's bad.  



> You’re certainly entitled to not like his words and to explain why. I think you’ve done so very clearly by now. But you can’t stop people from using phrases just because you don’t like them.




Sure, just as he's not entitled to not have his thread derailed by people who he offends with those words and fight back against them.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> So new player Bob is playing fighter Brutus.
> 
> Veteran player Joe is playing fighter Jerrin.
> 
> They encounter trolls. The trolls regenerate. Bob decides to try fire on them, and hits one with his torch. He discovers their vulnerability!




Bob doesn't do that, though.  Bob pulls out the sword he's been using and uses that.  I have yet to see a new person do something that crazy.  Now, if the sword is on the other side of the camp for some reason and he only has the torch to fight with, then I could see him trying to use the torch.



> But Joe is simply not allowed to do this. Jerrin cannot deploy fire randomly, only when some kind of knowledge trigger occurs that sayisfies the DM.




Under the same circumstances above, Jerrin could use the torch as well.  



> Jerrin is being limited in his actions by metagame knowledge possessed by his player.
> 
> How is this better than simply letting Joe go ahead and have Jerrin deploy fire?




Joe is not being limited by metagame knowledge.  Joe is simply not allowed to use metagame knowledge, as it gives an unfair advantage and is cheating.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> This utterly failed argument again?  Really?!  Once again, no preclusion does not mean inclusion.  There is also no rule prohibiting my PC's longsword from now detonating a nuclear blast destroying a 2 mile radius around him with each hit.  There is a rule stating that if you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack, you automatically miss, but no rule that prohibits the normal longsword from casting hold person whenever that happens.



What do you like to say again? Oh, yes. False equivalence is false. 



> If something is not explicitly included or precluded in the rules, it can only happen in the game if the DM agrees to allow it to happen.  Players do no get to invent rules for the game without the DM giving them that ability.



Mother May I. Roleplaying a character and their headspace is not inventing a rule. 



> Quote me the rule that explicitly allows players the freedom to invent things for the game in those silent spaces.



I believe that it's called "roleplaying a character." You should try engaging those parts of the game some time. 



> Only if you are incapable of understanding that asking some questions and getting some answers is not "Mother May I."  If you do have a failed understanding of what "Mother May I" is, then sure you could see it as that.



LOL. You just literally described how the Mother May I children's game is played. Both here and practically earlier as well.



Maxperson said:


> It's inherently derogatory.  That's bad.



So I guess that means you will never mention "railroading" or "metagaming" (which you equate to 'cheating') in your posts ever again? Ever.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> Sure, just as he's not entitled to not have his thread derailed by people who he offends with those words and fight back against them.




At this point, I hope we all might be less concerned with attacking the troll with fire than not feeding the troll, defined by Wikipedia as one who "In Internet slang [...] starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses and normalizing tangential discussion, whether for the troll's amusement or a specific gain."


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> What do you like to say again? Oh, yes. False equivalence is false.




Let's see.  Your example was of something being included in the game just by virtue of it not being explicitly denied.  So were mine.  That is not a False Equivalence.

Here you go by the way.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy 



> Mother May I. Roleplaying a character and their headspace is not inventing a rule.




Metagaming is not roleplay. 



> I believe that it's called "roleplaying a character." You should try engaging those parts of the game some time.




You are mistaken.  It's called metagaming.



> LOL. You just literally described how the Mother May I children's game is played. Both here and practically earlier as well.
> 
> So I guess that means you will never mention "railroading" or "metagaming" (which you equate to 'cheating') in your posts ever again? Ever.




So this claim that simply asking some questions and getting some answers is "Mother May I" is so absurd, is has to be a joke.  It was very funny!


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Here you go by the way.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy



Yes, this link describes your argumentative style pretty well. 



> Metagaming is not roleplay.
> 
> You are mistaken.  It's called metagaming.



Roleplaying a character who knows things without asking for DM permission to know them is not metagaming; it's just called "roleplaying." 



> So this claim that simply asking some questions and getting some answers is "Mother May I" is so absurd, is has to be a joke.  It was very funny!



Your entire DMing approach has been advocating for players fishing for DM permission out of the wazoo. Including what the characters can know. How is that not MMI?


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Your entire DMing approach has been advocating for players fishing for DM permission out of the wazoo. Including what the characters can know. How is that not MMI?




Um, no.  My players don't have to ask my permission to have their PCs wake up in the morning.  Or get dressed.  Or make breakfast as they break camp.  Or ask me if it's okay if they set off to the north.  Or, or, or, or, or...   That's what "Mother May I" is.  It's having to ask permission for every little thing.  Had you ever played the game, you'd know that.  That's why it's a pejorative term.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> At this point, I hope we all might be less concerned with attacking the troll with fire than not feeding the troll, defined by Wikipedia as one who "In Internet slang [...] starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses and normalizing tangential discussion, whether for the troll's amusement or a specific gain."




One could make a strong case that the OP veers into trolling territory.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> One could make a strong case that the OP veers into trolling territory.




Apparently [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] thinks that people defending against the attacks that the OP(inadvertently) and supporting posters(deliberately) have engaged in is somehow trolling.


----------



## darkbard

You guys keep doing you. The posting history makes clear what's what.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> You guys keep doing you. The posting history makes clear what's what.




I am not a troll, if that is what you are suggesting. Heck this thread was started as a refutation if one of my own posts. Just because people disagree with you about something, that doesn’t make them a troll.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> By the way, the metagaming portion specifically says to discourage metagame THINKING, so yes the rules state that the DM has authority of what the PC thinks and direct the DM to use that authority with metagaming.



The _thinking_ being referred to is thinking by the players. The PCs can't have metagame thinking unless you're playing a game like Over the Edge, which has a self-referential dimension within the fiction.



Maxperson said:


> The into section of 5e.  The players decribe to the DM what they want their characters to do.  You want your character to remember what a troll's weakness is.  The DM narrates the results after deciding yes, no or uncertain which requires a roll.
> 
> Read the exchange where the player experienced at the game doesn't just know what a gargoyle is.  He "has a feeling" that the gargoyles may not be statues, but still has to look at them and make a roll to see if they are gargoyles or not.  The DM ultimately has him make an intelligence(investigation) check.
> 
> You also have the Commune with Nature spell, which allows the player to get knowledge of some kinds of creatures.  You wouldn't need a 5th level spell for that if you could just use your player knowledge about those creatures.
> 
> The Ranger favored enemy gives you a bonus on intelligence rolls to recall information about them.  Even the Ranger has to roll to remember info about his FAVORED ENEMY.  It's not something the player can just automatically decide.



I was going to post a reply to this but then saw that [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] posted exactly what I would have done.

All I would add is that it's not true that a GM gets to adjudicate every declaration of "I recall such-and-such." For instance, if during a session  of play the PCs met a shady broker at the merchant's house, and then the next session one of the players says (in character) "Remember that broker we met - let's track her down," the GM is not entitled to call for a INT check which, if it fails, prevents the player from making that suggestion.

Contrast: if the player recalls his/her PC being introduced to the broker, but has forgotten the broker's name, and says to the GM "I try and recall her name," then the GM is entitled to call for an INT check which - if it succeeds - will oblige the GM to tell the player the NPC's name.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> So new player Bob is playing fighter Brutus.
> 
> Veteran player Joe is playing fighter Jerrin.
> 
> They encounter trolls. The trolls regenerate. Bob decides to try fire on them, and hits one with his torch. He discovers their vulnerability!
> 
> But Joe is simply not allowed to do this. Jerrin cannot deploy fire randomly, only when some kind of knowledge trigger occurs that sayisfies the DM.
> 
> Jerrin is being limited in his actions by metagame knowledge possessed by his player.



Yes, I've pointed to this weirdness upthread, that the insistence on feigning ignorance precludes the experienced player from declaring actions that are open to the new player. Just another weirdness about it.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> Your entire DMing approach has been advocating for players fishing for DM permission out of the wazoo. Including what the characters can know. How is that not MMI?



For me, this pretty much cuts to the heart of it. Every action declaration (not just resolution, but _declaration_) appears to be gated by the GM, who regulates what motives and beliefs the players are allowed to draw upon in making those action declarations.



Maxperson said:


> Um, no.  My players don't have to ask my permission to have their PCs wake up in the morning.  Or get dressed.  Or make breakfast as they break camp.  Or ask me if it's okay if they set off to the north.  Or, or, or, or, or...   That's what "Mother May I" is.  It's having to ask permission for every little thing.



But you've said they need your permission to have their PCs recall something. I quoted you fewer than half-a-dozen posts upthread saying that very thing.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> All I would add is that it's not true that a GM gets to adjudicate every declaration of "I recall such-and-such." For instance, if during a session  of play the PCs met a shady broker at the merchant's house, and then the next session one of the players says (in character) "Remember that broker we met - let's track her down," the GM is not entitled to call for a INT check which, if it fails, prevents the player from making that suggestion.




You're right about the DM not having to adjudicate things recalled that involve what the PC has encountered during game play.  It's the stuff that isn't from game play that's at issue here.  So yes, if the players have encountered a broker and one of them remembers, he can freely say, "Remember that broker we met - let's track her down."  However, if they haven't encountered a broker during game play, whether or not any PC knows of one is in doubt, so an attempt to recall a broker would involve an Int check to find out.  The DM has authority to adjudicate those sorts of attempts at recall.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> For me, this pretty much cuts to the heart of it. Every action declaration (not just resolution, but _declaration_) appears to be gated by the GM, who regulates what motives and beliefs the players are allowed to draw upon in making those action declarations.




It might appear that way to someone who doesn't understand the playstyle, but it is not that way in my game.



> But you've said they need your permission to have their PCs recall something. I quoted you fewer than half-a-dozen posts upthread saying that very thing.




No.  I said when the attempt involves uncertainty about whether or not the PC knows something, the DM has the authority to adjudicate it and call for a roll.  He can say yes of course, and if there is good reason he will rarely say no.  The vast majority of the time the die roll determines whether or not the PCs recall something, not the DM.  

Below is what I said about this.

"The into section of 5e. The players decribe to the DM what they want their characters to do. You want your character to remember what a troll's weakness is. The DM narrates the results after deciding yes, no or uncertain which requires a roll.

Read the exchange where the player experienced at the game doesn't just know what a gargoyle is. He "has a feeling" that the gargoyles may not be statues, but still has to look at them and make a roll to see if they are gargoyles or not. The DM ultimately has him make an intelligence(investigation) check."

I also said, 

"Edit:By the way, the metagaming portion specifically says to discourage metagame THINKING, so yes the rules state that the DM has authority of what the PC thinks and direct the DM to use that authority with metagaming."

The above shows that the game gives the DM at least some authority over what the PC thinks, since it directs the DM to discourage metagame thinking.  I never said that the DM authority over ALL PC thoughts.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Yes, I've pointed to this weirdness upthread, that the insistence on feigning ignorance precludes the experienced player from declaring actions that are open to the new player. Just another weirdness about it.




 @_*pemerton*_, @_*hawkeyefan*_ and @_*Aldarc*_: 
 @_*Maxperson*_'s game (and he can correct me where I'm wrong) advocates for _actor stance_, not necessarily for first person dialogue but for the character behaviour/thought process. So yes at times, probably many, the player will know more than the character about the in-game fiction, as the player dives into the role of the character. 

Added to the above, at Maxperson's table the players may not create backstory fiction on the fly as that could be seen to circumvent much of the player knowledge-character knowledge divide and allows one short cuts/maybe even considered as a cheat in the roleplay (actor stance).

From Maxperson's PoV, he is not gating anything or playing a degenerate form of MMI. He, as referee, is ensuring that everyone follows the roleplay in actor stance. Hence metagaming is an abomination in his eyes as is the circumventing of any kind of actor stance by players inputting backstory fiction or any in-game fiction which could viewed as a cheat.

You and others (the collective you) may of course consider the above weird, a pc disconnect, MMI, DM-gating - but I think your efforts here are pointless in trying to convince Maxperson to agree with your definitions of his game as actor stance is his pure way of D&D and therefore cannot be weird, disconnected, or deemed some type of pejorative since from his PoV he is following the rules and adjudicating fairly according to his table.

In a rather crude sense (maybe skirting close against board rules), and meaning no disrespect to Maxperson or yourselves via this example, you guys sound like a bunch of atheists trying to convince a religious people that the way they live their life is weird, they have a disconnect from reality, have an MMI relationship with their pastor/deity and their lifestyle equates to a whole slew of pejoratives. And then you question why they don't want to see it your way and accept your definitions. 

Meanwhile according to them they're following the good book and living life correctly.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Maxperson's game (and he can correct me where I'm wrong) advocates for _actor stance_, not necessarily for first person dialogue but for the character behaviour/thought process. So yes at times, probably many, the player will know more than the character about the in-game fiction, as the player dives into the role of the character.



The only definition of _actor stance_ that I'm familiar with is Ron Edwards's:

In *Actor *stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.​
This is a particular _mode of _or _orientation towards_ action declaration. It says nothing about _who gets to decice_ what knowledge and perception the character would have.

Here are the other "stances" that Edwards identifies:

In *Author *stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called *Pawn *stance.)

In *Director *stance, a person determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.​
When the RuneQuest books say that players should have their PCs cooperate because that is necessary for the game to be fun, that's an example of advocating _author stance_ - that is, making decisions for one's character based on real-world (or, if you prefer, _metagame_) priorities (in this case, having fun playing the game). I would be absolutely gobsmacked if there is not quite a bit of this in    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game. Even    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] on these boards, who is more purist than Maxperson about the issue of "artificial" cooperation between PCs, has told anecdotes of doing stuff with one's PC because it's fun/exciting in the real world. Which is to say that even    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays in author stance from time-to-time.

Every time a player has his/her PC pick up on an "adventure hook" because it seems like it would be more fun in play than hanging out at the thermal baths, we have author stance.

It seems likely to me that players in Maxperson's game adopt director stance only during character creation - for instance, they are not allowed to introduce new backstory elements during the course of play. But deciding that my PC knows about trolls isn't an example of Director Stance. Deciding that s/he knows about them because Old Uncle Elmo told him/her is Director Stance _only if_ the existence of Uncle Elmo and his tale telling hasn't yet been established as part of the fiction.

Deciding that my PC wants to use fire to attack these trolls _because_ I want to get the encounter over and done with would be an example of author stance. If I don't offer some story to explain _why_ my PC wants to use fire, then it's pawn wtance.

If I don't _know _very much about what my PC does or would know - which is very common in D&D play (eg consider the starting set up for most classic modules) - then most action will be pawn stance for the simple reason that my PC _has_ no knowledge, perceptions and motivations outside mine as a player knowing what the game expects. Conversely, to adopt actor stance in playing my PC I need a reasonably rich sense of what my PC knows and wants. Normally that would be established before play (if it's established by the player _during_ play then we're back into author stance). No version of D&D I'm familiar with says that this is the sole prerogative of the GM: classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, Gygax's AD&D) are silent on this matter, while 4e clearly says that the player establishes background and can establish quests for his/her PC. As I already posted, perhaps the 2nd ed AD&D DMG says that this is the sole prerogative of the GM - that's not a book I've ever read.



Sadras said:


> From Maxperson's PoV, he is not gating anything or playing a degenerate form of MMI. He, as referee, is ensuring that everyone follows the roleplay in actor stance.



He, as referee, is deciding _what the PCs do or don't know_. That's not holding players to actor stance (assuming you're using that phrase in the only way I'm aware of it ever having been defined). That's _deciding what it is that the PC knows_, and treating that as the GM's exclusive prerogative.

Whether or not it's "a degenerate form of MMI" isn't something for me to judge - presumably it's flourishing at Maxperson's table. But it's clearly a very strong form of GM gating.

EDIT:


Maxperson said:


> when the attempt involves uncertainty about whether or not the PC knows something, the DM has the authority to adjudicate it and call for a roll.



But, as per the quote that follows, you appear to take the view that there is such uncertainty in respect of _anything_ that has not actually been revealed in play.



Maxperson said:


> You're right about the DM not having to adjudicate things recalled that involve what the PC has encountered during game play.  It's the stuff that isn't from game play that's at issue here.



If a player is not entitled to impute any knowledge to his/her PC other than what has actually been encountered in play, moving beyond pawn stance will be very difficult.

(Which is certainly a very traditional way to play D&D: modules like ToH, Keep on the Borderlands, the Pharoah series, Isle of Dread, all the ones being republished in Yawning Portal and by Goodman Games, etc assume pawn stance as the default: that is, that players will make certain choices because _that's how the game works_, and the question of why the PC would make that choice isn't expected to be raised, let alone answered.)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> When the RuneQuest books say that players should have their PCs cooperate because that is necessary for the game to be fun, that's an example of advocating _author stance_ - that is, making decisions for one's character based on real-world (or, if you prefer, _metagame_) priorities (in this case, having fun playing the game). I would be absolutely gobsmacked if there is not quite a bit of this in    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game. Even    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] on these boards, who is more purist than Maxperson about the issue of "artificial" cooperation between PCs, has told anecdotes of doing stuff with one's PC because it's fun/exciting in the real world. Which is to say that even    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays in author stance from time-to-time.




I want the player to play and be their PCs, acting as their characters would, even if that means PCs coming into coming into conflict with one another or going off to do their own thing.  The PCs cooperate when they should in character, and don't when they shouldn't.  And guess what!  The players still have fun, so PC cooperation is not necessary for fun.



> Every time a player has his/her PC pick up on an "adventure hook" because it seems like it would be more fun in play than hanging out at the thermal baths, we have author stance.




And yet my players will often have their PCs go to the baths, leaving the hook for later, because they just got into town after a rough time out and a bath sounds good.  

That said, games are a mix of the various styles.  Gamist, narrativist, simulationist, actor, author, etc.  They just vary in the percentages of each style in the mix, so yes, there will be a bit of author in the game as well, just not as much as you seem to be making it out to be here.



> It seems likely to me that players in Maxperson's game adopt director stance only during character creation - for instance, they are not allowed to introduce new backstory elements during the course of play.




Do you even read my posts?  I've said multiple times that they can create backstory during play, but that back story has to relate or make sense with prior backstory created at character creation.  And it can't happen in the moment when they encounter something in order to create what they need right then.



> But deciding that my PC knows about trolls isn't an example of Director Stance. Deciding that s/he knows about them because Old Uncle Elmo told him/her is Director Stance _only if_ the existence of Uncle Elmo and his tale telling hasn't yet been established as part of the fiction.




Sure it is.  You've created a backstory element that wasn't in existence prior to that moment.  Uncle Elmo existed, but the tale did not.



> If I don't _know _very much about what my PC does or would know - which is very common in D&D play (eg consider the starting set up for most classic modules) - then most action will be pawn stance for the simple reason that my PC _has_ no knowledge, perceptions and motivations outside mine as a player knowing what the game expects. Conversely, to adopt actor stance in playing my PC I need a reasonably rich sense of what my PC knows and wants.




It's sufficient to have a reasonably rich sense of what the PC might know.  Elmo MIGHT have told you about trolls and we will find that out with a roll.  



> He, as referee, is deciding _what the PCs do or don't know_.




I'm not, or more accurately, I rarely am.  Typically I am deciding that such knowledge is uncertain and requires a roll. Requiring a roll is not me deciding what the PC does or does not know.  The die is doing that.



> Whether or not it's "a degenerate form of MMI" isn't something for me to judge - presumably it's flourishing at Maxperson's table. But it's clearly a very strong form of GM gating.




Except that as all my corrections here have shown, you still don't understand or perhaps want to understand, what it is that I do, despite me telling it to you over and over and over.



> But, as per the quote that follows, you appear to take the view that there is such uncertainty in respect of _anything_ that has not actually been revealed in play.




Again, no.  While much will be uncertain, sometimes there is certainty.  Game play, backgrounds, etc. will determine when those times are.  As I have said, also multiple times here, if the PC has lived near the troll moors for his life up until he became an adventurer, I will not require a roll to know about trolls.  The yes will be automatic, even though it has not yet been revealed in play.


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> It's not a manufactured problem.  Just because you don't have an issue with it personally, doesn't mean that it's not an issue to others.  I feel that bringing knowledge into the game that the PC doesn't have, or that you have to create some weak justification for, in order to gain a combat advantage is cheating.  Cheating is inherently bad, not some manufactured issue.




It's totally a manufactured problem, a self-inflicted wound, that comes from setting a requirement that a character needs to know something to take action. I've already shown a couple of examples where these are decoupled: You don't need to know the troll is weak to fire to lob a fire bolt at it. You don't need to know that gargoyles are weak to adamantine to hit a statue with an adamantine blade. Still, you assert that these actions are only valid in certain circumstances, a requirement which is in no way supported or suggested by the rules of the game, and take it a step further and say that trying to get around this tacked-on requirement is somehow cheating.

Meanwhile, this thing you've added just creates a new game of trying to meet those requirements which sets the stage for_ more_ metagame thinking, not less. It's an approach that basically trades one form of "metagaming" for another (and sometimes you get two for the price of one).

Contrast this with how I handle "metagaming:" I don't _care_ how you make decisions for your character - that's your business, not mine or anyone else's. But, be advised that I realize that fire-weak trolls have been around for nearly half a century and that, if I want knowledge of the troll's strength and weaknesses to be an important part of the challenge, I'm going to change those weaknesses to something other than fire and acid. Or stick normal trolls in a swamp filled with explosive swamp gas. And I'll telegraph that change somehow when describing the environment. Now your knowledge as a player and the knowledge of the character have more parity. It's risky to lob that fire without first trying to suss out the troll's weaknesses. You don't have to _pretend_ you don't know something because you actually _don't _(at least, not with certainty). 

The problem, such as it is, is solved right there on the DM's side of the equation without playing the metagame of who knows what so they can take the action they want to take.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I want the player to play and be their PCs, acting as their characters would, even if that means PCs coming into coming into conflict with one another or going off to do their own thing.  The PCs cooperate when they should in character, and don't when they shouldn't.  And guess what!  The players still have fun, so PC cooperation is not necessary for fun.



And guess what else - the RuneQuest rules that I quoted upthread, which you asserted expressed the same view as you about "metagaming", assert the opposite from you.

Which simply reinforces my contention that your idiosyncratic preferences as to what "metagaming" is permitted and what is not do not tell us anything about the nature of RPGing per se as an activity.


----------



## Maxperson

iserith said:


> It's totally a manufactured problem, a self-inflicted wound, that comes from setting a requirement that a character needs to know something to take action. I've already shown a couple of examples where these are decoupled: You don't need to know the troll is weak to fire to lob a fire bolt at it. You don't need to know that gargoyles are weak to adamantine to hit a statue with an adamantine blade. Still, you assert that these actions are only valid in certain circumstances, a requirement which is in no way supported or suggested by the rules of the game, and take it a step further and say that trying to get around this tacked-on requirement is somehow cheating.




I didn't manufacture the problem.  You manufactured a solution that works for you.  



> Meanwhile, this thing you've added just creates a new game of trying to meet those requirements which sets the stage for_ more_ metagame thinking, not less. It's an approach that basically trades one form of "metagaming" for another (and sometimes you get two for the price of one).




I didn't add it.  It's just common sense that the PC isn't going to know everything the player knows and be able to act on that knowledge, even with weak justifications that people add in, like uncles.



> Contrast this with how I handle "metagaming:" I don't _care_ how you make decisions for your character - that's your business, not mine or anyone else's. But, be advised that I realize that fire-weak trolls have been around for nearly half a century and that, if I want knowledge of the troll's strength and weaknesses to be an important part of the challenge, I'm going to change those weaknesses to something other than fire and acid. Or stick normal trolls in a swamp filled with explosive swamp gas. And I'll telegraph that change somehow when describing the environment. Now your knowledge as a player and the knowledge of the character have more parity. It's risky to lob that fire without first trying to suss out the troll's weaknesses. You don't have to _pretend_ you don't know something because you actually _don't _(at least, not with certainty).




I get that this works for you, but it doesn't work for us. This is not a problem we manufactured.  Rather, it's one that already exists when you view the game from our perspective and play in the manner that we do.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> And guess what else - the RuneQuest rules that I quoted upthread, which you asserted expressed the same view as you about "metagaming", assert the opposite from you.




Yes it did, and the fact that we can play the game and have fun without cooperation being necessary proves the RuneQuest rule wrong.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I agree. I prefer though, in D&D, to be flexible than have a built-in set of mechanics (aka Skill Challenge, Soft/Hard Moves on Failure...etc) as an option to use than be tied down to a particular mechanic. So sometimes I'd prefer to run it free-form, other times it might be scripted and other times I'd use a mechanic. For me every idea presented by fellow posters in this thread is just one more creative way to adjudicate things at the table or, to use @_*Manbearcat*_'s description, to add to the 'primordial ooze'.
> 
> And this style of adjudication might very well be specific to D&D, maybe because the RPG lends itself to home-brewing.




Yeah, I want the players to be able to count on a relatively objectively evaluated mechanism to give them an answer to the question of whether or not what they have accomplished is enough to achieve the objective of the challenge. Nobody would quibble with this as an absolute baseline requirement for combat, so why would any other significant situation be different? Its odd that this dichotomy exists. I mean, in OD&D I think it was just a matter of a lack of a concept of a universal mechanic and the existence of wargaming based mechanics for combat, which seemed CLEARLY to need SOMETHING. I don't think other situations were excluded for a specific reason though.


----------



## Campbell

Maxperson said:


> Yes it did, and the fact that we can play the game and have fun without cooperation being necessary proves the RuneQuest rule wrong.




That only proves that you do not have a functioning creative relationship with your players.


----------



## Maxperson

Campbell said:


> That only proves that you do not have a functioning creative relationship with your players.




It proves that we are capable of both cooperation and playing characters separately, or even in contest with one another when appropriate.  Nothing else.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Yes it did, and the fact that we can play the game and have fun without cooperation being necessary proves the RuneQuest rule wrong.



It also proves that you definition of "metagaming as cheating" is far from universal.

Upthread, you were suggesting that nothing about the RQ instructions contradicted your own views. But now it turns out that there is such contradiction.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It also proves that you definition of "metagaming as cheating" is far from universal.




I never claimed it was universal.  I said it was the most commonly used definition(the standard definition), and it is.  There are others.


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> I didn't manufacture the problem.  You manufactured a solution that works for you.




This isn't a chicken-and-the-egg scenario. The game puts no restriction on actions based on player or character knowledge. You're adding that and your solution to the problem you've created is the social contract - getting all your players to agree this is a problem and to go to the DM for his or her blessing on what the character knows before acting. All I need to do is just play the game as is.



Maxperson said:


> I didn't add it.  It's just common sense that the PC isn't going to know everything the player knows and be able to act on that knowledge, even with weak justifications that people add in, like uncles.




Actions don't need justifications. Again, you're adding that and creating the problem. A player describes what he or she wants to do, that's it. It doesn't say the player need tell why.



Maxperson said:


> I get that this works for you, but it doesn't work for us. This is not a problem we manufactured.  Rather, it's one that already exists when you view the game from our perspective and play in the manner that we do.




Your perspective and the manner in which you play is the thing that is being added to the rules which creates the problem.

Sorry man. You're doing this to yourself. And, hey, if you like it, please continue doing it. But let's not pretend it's part of the game. It's just part of your group.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

You know, I'm tired of debating with people about what they don't like. This whole thread was supposed to be about how to make D&D do certain things better, and it INSTANTLY got sidetracked by people telling us that what we wanted was not to their taste and that they felt compelled to be insulted by the way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] drew a contrast. I'm about just talking about the subject at hand, and I thought that since I basically hacked 4e to do this stuff, here's the essential parts of what I did and why (there are plenty of other things, but they really are not very relevant to this discussion, like altering some of the math).

1. I fixed some of 'the math' so that skill/ability checks and all types of attacks actually follow the same progression in practice, and can thus be mixed together. This is probably the least important change, but it delivers on the promise of true universalism in 4e's mechanics. You can now make a skill check as an attack, it works.

2. I broke check results into graded categories, so you can have total success at a check, or limited success, or you can fail (or even fail really hard, although that distinction is less important in general and probably could be eliminated). This allows a sort of DW-esque "well, you managed to jump the chasm, but now..." 

3. Everything, except combat, is a challenge. There are no 'free checks' in my game. You are either engaging in a conflict of some sort and there are stakes, or its 'free play' (interlude) which doesn't need such rules. Checks only relate to conflict as well. I guess a GM could 'play with dice' and use that in his framing, but it isn't part of the rules. 

4. Players can buy successes. Using practices a player can acquire a way to buy successes on checks (which you will remember are always part of challenges). There is always a cost, and each practice allows a certain type of fictional element to be introduced into play (IE you might have a ritual which lets you fly, you can use this to create a success, but you still have to explain how it contributes). Players can also simply make the requisite checks and risk failures and thus complications, but avoid the big costs (many practices still have an initiation cost to avoid spamming). 

5. Is there a 5? I'm not sure.... Oh, yeah, players can use a sort of inspiration mechanic. It is binary, you can't stockpile inspiration, you have it or you don't. You can acquire it by invoking one of your character's traits in a disadvantageous way (IE I'm forgetful, I misplaced my lock picks). You can invoke it in a positive direction in much the same way, expending your inspiration and invoking a character trait. Players can describe several traits for their character, three usually being enough, and also your other attributes could count, like race, class, etc. when plausible. Generally you can invent some narrative element, achieve a success, avoid a cost, etc. in this way, but only so often. I find it is best to reset everyone to having inspiration at the start of each session, but that could be tweaked. It is a LOT better than the 5e style of this technique! 

I think that's about it in basic terms. This makes a much more explicitly narratively driven type of game out of 4e. You could eschew all of this and basically play the same way, but I find that players have a bit easier time when there are explicit guidelines.


----------



## Maxperson

iserith said:


> The game puts no restriction on actions based on player or character knowledge.




Yes it does.  That's the entire point of skills designed to let the PCs figure things out, spells to figure things out, and class abilities to figure things out.  If the player is playing a Ranger whose favored enemy is fiends, he cannot use player knowledge to just "know" the weaknesses of the fiend in front of him.  If the player does that, he is breaking the rule on favored enemies.  That rule has him roll to recall such information.  The DM can just say yes and avoid the roll, but the player cannot.  The game also lists intelligence as the ability score governing PC memory, which is a clear indicator that their memories are not infallible, and is therefore a restriction on character knowledge.



> Actions don't need justifications.




Unless you are playing a PC that is insane, and often if you are, actions have reasons for why they are done.  Those reasons are important.


----------



## iserith

Maxperson said:


> Yes it does.  That's the entire point of skills designed to let the PCs figure things out, spells to figure things out, and class abilities to figure things out.  If the player is playing a Ranger whose favored enemy is fiends, he cannot use player knowledge to just "know" the weaknesses of the fiend in front of him.  If the player does that, he is breaking the rule on favored enemies.  That rule has him roll to recall such information.  The DM can just say yes and avoid the roll, but the player cannot.  The game also lists intelligence as the ability score governing PC memory, which is a clear indicator that their memories are not infallible, and is therefore a restriction on character knowledge.




Are you referring to D&D 5e? If you are, none of that is true. At all. A player can say what the character thinks, which (to build on your example) might include what he or she thinks about the weaknesses of fiends. He or she can then have the character act accordingly. 

Here's the problem though: *The player, and thus the character, might be wrong*. The player might have gotten the weaknesses of demons mixed up with devils (oops!). Or the DM might have changed the stat block or added environmental complications that make exploiting the weaknesses risky. So the smart play is to try to recall what the character knows about fiends or deduce its weaknesses from available clues first to verify these assumptions before taking action. Or use a spell or class ability to do the same. Otherwise the player risks being wrong and all that may entail in context.

These skill proficiencies, spells, and class abilities are there for that reason, not to justify your playstyle. What's more, if you just stop adding your justification/DM blessing requirements to the game and change the odd stat block from time to time, you will achieve the same goal of reducing "metagaming" by just playing the game instead of relying on the social contract to change behavior. You'll even get rid of the "metagaming" you end up creating by the whole process of the DM and player establishing sufficient knowledge to take action.



Maxperson said:


> Unless you are playing a PC that is insane, and often if you are, actions have reasons for why they are done.  Those reasons are important.




Sure, there can be reasons. But they needn't be elucidated. The player need only describe a goal and approach to act. My ranger doesn't have to tell you why he's using his silvered dagger to kill this devil right here. He just does it.


----------



## Satyrn

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You know, I'm tired of debating with people about what they don't like.




There a real easy solution to that. Take a nap, and come back in when you're rested.




(I bet y'all thought I was gonna say "then just don't argue," didn't y'all? But then where'd I find my entertainment if yall weren't arguing?)


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It also proves that you definition of "metagaming as cheating" is far from universal.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I never claimed it was universal.  I said it was the most commonly used definition(the standard definition), and it is.  There are others.
Click to expand...


Maxperson, here's you _endorsing_ the extract I quoted from the RQ 3rd ed rulebook:



Maxperson said:


> Dude.  The first paragraph says you can't use player knowledge and have your PC's know it.  I bolded it so that you can see it.  The players working together just means that they shouldn't be jerks about  ideas on what to do.  Not that they can bring knowledge of trolls into the game when the PC doesn't have said knowledge.
> 
> As for cooperation between players and DM, well that's also the way it always has been.  The DM should consider his players, and the player should be able to discuss rules.  And the rules you quoted say that the DM's decision is final and if sticks to his guns, the players lose the debate.  He has full authority in this example.



There's nothing wrong with changing one's mind, but it makes the discussion easier to follow if one is clear about it.



Maxperson said:


> I've said multiple times that they can create backstory during play, but that back story has to relate or make sense with prior backstory created at character creation.



I don't understand how you can dispute that this is GM-gating.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The _thinking_ being referred to is thinking by the players. The PCs can't have metagame thinking unless you're playing a game like Over the Edge, which has a self-referential dimension within the fiction.
> 
> I was going to post a reply to this but then saw that @_*iserith*_ posted exactly what I would have done.
> 
> All I would add is that it's not true that a GM gets to adjudicate every declaration of "I recall such-and-such." For instance, if during a session  of play the PCs met a shady broker at the merchant's house, and then the next session one of the players says (in character) "Remember that broker we met - let's track her down," the GM is not entitled to call for a INT check which, if it fails, prevents the player from making that suggestion.
> 
> Contrast: if the player recalls his/her PC being introduced to the broker, but has forgotten the broker's name, and says to the GM "I try and recall her name," then the GM is entitled to call for an INT check which - if it succeeds - will oblige the GM to tell the player the NPC's name.




I would point out that this also falls under Max et all's definition of meta-gaming. It should anyway! Logically and consistently, if you really play out the implications of what Max is saying, then players cannot call for any action whatsoever without ascertaining first what their PCs know. And to be really consistent, they should do so even in the negative case (where the player DOES remember).


----------



## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would point out that this also falls under Max et all's definition of meta-gaming. It should anyway! Logically and consistently, if you really play out the implications of what Max is saying, then players cannot call for any action whatsoever without ascertaining first what their PCs know. And to be really consistent, they should do so even in the negative case (where the player DOES remember).



Which boils down to: Roll to Declare, then Roll to Action...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

iserith said:


> Here's the problem though: *The player, and thus the character, might be wrong*. The player might have gotten the weaknesses of demons mixed up with devils (oops!). Or the DM might have changed the stat block or added environmental complications that make exploiting the weaknesses risky. So the smart play is to try to recall what the character knows about fiends or deduce its weaknesses from available clues first to verify these assumptions before taking action. Or use a spell or class ability to do the same. Otherwise the player risks being wrong and all that may entail in context.
> 
> These skill proficiencies, spells, and class abilities are there for that reason, not to justify your playstyle. What's more, if you just stop adding your justification/DM blessing requirements to the game and change the odd stat block from time to time, you will achieve the same goal of reducing "metagaming" by just playing the game instead of relying on the social contract to change behavior. You'll even get rid of the "metagaming" you end up creating by the whole process of the DM and player establishing sufficient knowledge to take action.




These things really exist to allow players who do NOT know something to have their characters find it out, or when they can't really remember stuff they might have learned 20 years ago. They are there to make the 'gotchas' go away, or at least gate them behind a check.

Mostly they exist to support research. Particularly in classic D&D this was a big deal, skilled play meant you REALLY needed to know well ahead of time what you were going to face, so you could prep for it. Consumables in particular were a very important element. My wizard PC back in the day would do this. He'd cast spells or pay clerics to cast spells, to find out all he could about whatever big bad was on the agenda, and then 'scroll up' and get a slew of appropriate potions brewed. Why go in without every advantage? Even at a more tactical level its important to know when to pre-cast your buffs.


----------



## Numidius

Numidius said:


> Which boils down to: Roll to Declare, then Roll to Action...



Sounds like Fortune in the Beginning...


----------



## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> These things really exist to allow players who do NOT know something to have their characters find it out, or when they can't really remember stuff they might have learned 20 years ago. They are there to make the 'gotchas' go away, or at least gate them behind a check.
> 
> Mostly they exist to support research. Particularly in classic D&D this was a big deal, skilled play meant you REALLY needed to know well ahead of time what you were going to face, so you could prep for it. Consumables in particular were a very important element. My wizard PC back in the day would do this. He'd cast spells or pay clerics to cast spells, to find out all he could about whatever big bad was on the agenda, and then 'scroll up' and get a slew of appropriate potions brewed. Why go in without every advantage? Even at a more tactical level its important to know when to pre-cast your buffs.



Could they allow to have a glimpse at Dm-notes for that particular encounter, beyond common knowledge? [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said so, if I got it correctly.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Could they allow to have a glimpse at Dm-notes for that particular encounter, beyond common knowledge? [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said so, if I got it correctly.




Well, of course, the ironic part is that classic D&D cannot REALLY handle divination or other "find out stuff" types of magic very well. It works OK to 'peek at the GM's notes' in terms of where the secret doors are, or something like that, but when it comes to deeper kinds of stuff these powers invariably include some sort of GM gate. The dead might not know, the power you commune with might trick you, etc. Even the simple stuff has the outs of lead, gorgons which can stone you when you view them with scrying magic, etc. Again, contrast this with systems which provide mechanics to adjudicate this sort of success and failure in a more objective way, and treat the player's due as sacrosanct and not "if it isn't inconvenient to the DM to tell you..."


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Maxperson, here's you _endorsing_ the extract I quoted from the RQ 3rd ed rulebook:




You are conflating two different things.  You are conflating my personal opinion that there is a standard definition of metagaming that is not the only definition of metagaming, and what I said about the RuneQuest rule, which is not my opinion on the definition of metagaming.  

What I said about the RuneQuest was only to point out that it says in the rule YOU brought to the thread, is that you can't use player knowledge if the PC does not know about that knowledge.  I also pointed out how the rule was wrong about cooperation being necessary.



> There's nothing wrong with changing one's mind, but it makes the discussion easier to follow if one is clear about it.




You are too good with language and have too clear a memory for me to believe that you weren't aware of my position regarding metagaming definitions(as I've said it multiple times in this thread, or that the above conflation was accidental.  



> I don't understand how you can dispute that this is GM-gating.




Every rule is gating.  You say that as if DM-Gating is a bad thing, when it isn't.  It's just playing the game.  Every rule in the book and every DM ruling is gating.  You do it.  I do it.  Everyone else in the thread does it.  Gating is part of game play.  

I've never denied that gating happens, though I do deny "Mother May I" as you have to gate every last little move the players/PCs attempt in order to achieve that pejorative.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would point out that this also falls under Max et all's definition of meta-gaming. It should anyway! Logically and consistently, if you really play out the implications of what Max is saying, then players cannot call for any action whatsoever without ascertaining first what their PCs know. And to be really consistent, they should do so even in the negative case (where the player DOES remember).




If the player remembers something that the PC encountered in the game or we established that the PC knows, the PC also remembers.  If the player forgets something that the PC encountered in the game or we established that the PC knows, there will be a roll to remember most times, unless it's something so important to the story or PC that the PC wouldn't forget, then I will just tell the player.  

The rolling that I'm talking about in this thread is where the knowledge of the PC is uncertain, but the player knows the answer.  It's metagaming for the player to use the knowledge without knowing if the PC knows, or to do so if the PC doesn't know.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Could they allow to have a glimpse at Dm-notes for that particular encounter, beyond common knowledge? [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] said so, if I got it correctly.




Yes, in game research and divinations can reveal information that only the DM has.  In older editions, though, it was risky as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] points out.  BECMI, 1e and 2e were much more fatal than later editions.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> If the player remembers something that the PC encountered in the game or we established that the PC knows, the PC also remembers.  If the player forgets something that the PC encountered in the game or we established that the PC knows, there will be a roll to remember most times, unless it's something so important to the story or PC that the PC wouldn't forget, then I will just tell the player.



Why? Why do you play this way? I would venture to guess it is a matter of practicality.



> The rolling that I'm talking about in this thread is where the knowledge of the PC is uncertain, but the player knows the answer.  It's metagaming for the player to use the knowledge without knowing if the PC knows, or to do so if the PC doesn't know.




All PC knowledge is uncertain. You cannot say what PCs know or don't know, except in a vanishingly small set of cases. What you are doing is establishing things based on some sort of criteria. Those criteria are inevitably related to how and why you play at the table. They are, inevitably, almost completely outside of any in game considerations. 

What I'm saying is, what you CLAIM to be doing, is mostly NOT what you are doing. It may be what you have convinced yourself you are doing, but it isn't what is actually happening at the table.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Why? Why do you play this way? I would venture to guess it is a matter of practicality.




Because it makes sense to do it that way.  



> All PC knowledge is uncertain. You cannot say what PCs know or don't know, except in a vanishingly small set of cases. What you are doing is establishing things based on some sort of criteria. Those criteria are inevitably related to how and why you play at the table. They are, inevitably, almost completely outside of any in game considerations.




If the PCs find an obscure religious symbol in a ruin, make a religion check to know what it is.  If they are wanting to know about the history of a town, make a history roll to know what it is.  If they want to know what a plant does, make a nature check to know what it does.  Contrary to your statement above, in-game considerations are pretty much all that there is.  If I can't tie the information to something in game for the PC, the answer is going to be no, as there will be nothing in the PCs background, game experiences, skills, etc. that would give the PC a reasonable chance to know the information.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Every rule is gating.  You say that as if DM-Gating is a bad thing, when it isn't.  It's just playing the game.  Every rule in the book and every DM ruling is gating.  You do it.  I do it.  Everyone else in the thread does it.  Gating is part of game play.



(1) Not every rule is _GM_-gating.

(2) There is a very big difference, in the play of a game (including a RPG) between rules, and discretionary gating. To elide that difference is to elide much of what is interesting/significant in game design.



Maxperson said:


> What I said about the RuneQuest was only to point out that it says in the rule YOU brought to the thread, is that you can't use player knowledge if the PC does not know about that knowledge.  I also pointed out how the rule was wrong about cooperation being necessary.



I actually just quoted you saying, of the bit about cooperation, that "The players working together just means that they shouldn't be jerks about ideas on what to do."

But now you're (i) saying that it is something else, and (ii) saying that that something else is wrong.

Also, your description of what the book says as "you can't use player knowledge if the PC does not know about that knowledge" is not very precise, and fails to identify the actual point at issue, which is _who gets to decide what a PC knows?_ The RQ book actually says that "your first duty is to play within the limits of the characters you generate. Even though you are a chemistry major, for instance, your shepherd character cannot (without learning or training) stroll to a game world village and open an alchemy shop." This does not tell us how PC knowledge is established, although it makes it clear that PC background is relevant (eg shepherds typically don't know alchemy). Who gets to interpret and extrapolate from that background - player or GM - is left unstated, although the subsequent discussion of cooperation strongly implies that it is a mutual endeavour.

Your view that the GM has sole and overwhelming authority in this respect, which - as best I can tell - extends to vast swathes of setting information also, (i) as a matter of practice will tend to produce pawn stance play (as I suggested not far upthread in reply to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]), and (ii) is a very strong form of GM-gating.

I am currently GMing a game (Classic Traveller) in which players are expected to conform their action declarations, in part, to their PCs Intelligence and Education ratings. We have one PC with an INT of 2 (on a 1 to 15 scale, with 7 being typical). That is certainly an important factor in action declaration for that PC, but my table would regard as laughable the idea that it's a matter solely, or even primarily, for GM adjudication.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> (1) Not every rule is _GM_-gating.
> 
> (2) There is a very big difference, in the play of a game (including a RPG) between rules, and discretionary gating.




So what.  You have yet to show even a shred of evidence that all DM gating is bad.  Gating is how games run.  



> I actually just quoted you saying, of the bit about cooperation, that "The players working together just means that they shouldn't be jerks about ideas on what to do."




That rule says in a nutshell that the players shouldn't be jerks to one another.  Failing to cooperate =/= being a jerk.  It can mean that, but doesn't automatically mean that.  



> Also, your description of what the book says as "you can't use player knowledge if the PC does not know about that knowledge" is not very precise, and fails to identify the actual point at issue, which is _who gets to decide what a PC knows?_ The RQ book actually says that "your first duty is to play within the limits of the characters you generate. Even though you are a chemistry major, for instance, your shepherd character cannot (without learning or training) stroll to a game world village and open an alchemy shop." This does not tell us how PC knowledge is established, although it makes it clear that PC background is relevant (eg shepherds typically don't know alchemy). Who gets to interpret and extrapolate from that background - player or GM - is left unstated, although the subsequent discussion of cooperation strongly implies that it is a mutual endeavour.




I've never played RuneQuest, so all I know of it that passage.  That passage definitely limits PC knowledge, and disallows the player from using player knowledge for a PC that wouldn't have that knowledge.  



> Your view that the GM has sole and overwhelming authority in this respect, which - as best I can tell - extends to vast swathes of setting information also, (i) as a matter of practice will tend to produce pawn stance play (as I suggested not far upthread in reply to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]), and (ii) is a very strong form of GM-gating.




Sure, if you ignore the rest of what I say.  Just as you ignored where I said in multiple posts that my definition of metagaming is not the only one out there.  You do that a lot.  Ignoring things that prove you wrong, and then claiming in a smug tone some incorrect value judgment about how someone else runs their game.


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> If the PCs find an obscure religious symbol in a ruin, make a religion check to know what it is.  If they are wanting to know about the history of a town, make a history roll to know what it is.  If they want to know what a plant does, make a nature check to know what it does.  Contrary to your statement above, in-game considerations are pretty much all that there is.  If I can't tie the information to something in game for the PC, the answer is going to be no, as there will be nothing in the PCs background, game experiences, skills, etc. that would give the PC a reasonable chance to know the information.





Max, I am very much aware debates online sometimes seem very binary, but I imagine in your game (or any game for that matter) a player is able to petition for their character's knowledge right, in order to get a yes or at least a die roll for uncertainty? For example...

The party encounters trolls. Player turns to you and says - I know we have never encountered trolls before in this campaign, but is it not reasonable to assume that I might have heard about their vulnerability to fire/acid and/or regeneration abilities, considering my character is 5th level, has been adventuring for x period of time and having journeyed the distance from Candlekeep to Luskan and back. Perhaps I picked up a tidbit of information about these creatures in general conversation at a tavern or inn we have stayed at or heard it from a bard's tale or a book I've read?

I very much allow the above since my players are not used to injecting fiction into the game as per the Uncle Elmo example earlier.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your view that the GM has sole and overwhelming authority in this respect, which - as best I can tell - extends to vast swathes of setting information also, (i) as a matter of practice will tend to produce pawn stance play (as I suggested not far upthread in reply to @Sadras), and (ii) is a very strong form of GM-gating.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sure, if you ignore the rest of what I say.  Just as you ignored where I said in multiple posts that my definition of metagaming is not the only one out there.  You do that a lot.  Ignoring things that prove you wrong, and then claiming in a smug tone some incorrect value judgment about how someone else runs their game.
Click to expand...


What am I ignoring? And on what am I wrong? Are you asserting that you _don't_ accord overwhelming authority to the GM in ddtermining what PCs know? Are you denying that such an approach would be a very strong form of GM-gating?

Do you disagree that thin PC background produces pawn stance? If so, what's the basis for your disagreement?


----------



## pemerton

More from Over the Edge (p 196 of 20th Anniversary Edition):

Could vs Should
One creative block that often keeps GMs from winging an adventure successfully is clinging to what "should" happen instead of imagining what "could" happen.

For example, the PCs come into Sad Mary's and ask what the crowd looks like. One way to answer the question is to refer to premises and deduce the logical result. Sad Mary's is on the Plaza of Fowers, and lots of artists live in that area, so you deduce that the crowd has more than its share of artistic types. That's deduction: that's interpreting what _should_ happen.

On the other hand, you could answer that same question by deciding what would be interesting. A bunch of off-duty peace officers, guns in evidence, could be hanging around. There's nothing in the [setting] text about Sad Mary's that says that peace officers frequent the place, but it's not impossible. And it's interesting, especially if the PCs have been to Sad Mary's a gew times already and don't expect to meet Peace Officers here. Now, of course you have to come up with a good reason for their presence. Maybe a friend of theirs is performing. Maybe they just like unsettling people. If you can't figure a good reason, then maybe no one knows. The PCs ask a waiter why all the peace officers are here, and he says he doesn't know. The PC asks a peace officer, and the officer gives some lame excuse. Generally, however, you can figure some reason, and it may lead to new plot ideas. . . .

Unless your [campaign] is going out of control from sheer entropy, make things up based on what coul dhappen, not on what should.​
I think this is relevant to the discussion of sudden revelations (whether GM or player authored, like the PC who turns out to be a noble), as well as the original discussion of searching for sect members.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> Max, I am very much aware debates online sometimes seem very binary, but I imagine in your game (or any game for that matter) a player is able to petition for their character's knowledge right, in order to get a yes or at least a die roll for uncertainty? For example...
> 
> The party encounters trolls. Player turns to you and says - I know we have never encountered trolls before in this campaign, but is it not reasonable to assume that I might have heard about their vulnerability to fire/acid and/or regeneration abilities, considering my character is 5th level, has been adventuring for x period of time and having journeyed the distance from Candlekeep to Luskan and back. Perhaps I picked up a tidbit of information about these creatures in general conversation at a tavern or inn we have stayed at or heard it from a bard's tale or a book I've read?
> 
> I very much allow the above since my players are not used to injecting fiction into the game as per the Uncle Elmo example earlier.




I have allowed rolls like that, but the DC is generally significantly higher since the players almost always ask me who is in the taverns they go to, so I have a good idea of who has been around to talk and adventuring groups are uncommon.  Level also plays into it as someone who is 10th level is more likely to have overheard something like that than say a 5th level PC, since the 10th level PC has been in more taverns and has adventured longer.  Commonality of monster type also plays into it.  I would flat out say no if they asked about a celestial or fiend that way.  Unless of course the area was plagued by celestials or fiends, in which case they would have a stronger in game reason to overhear that knowledge.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Could vs Should
> One creative block that often keeps GMs from winging an adventure successfully is clinging to what "should" happen instead of imagining what "could" happen.




Speaking for myself (but I don't believe my case to be uncommon), due to RL and time constraints, I got forced into _winging it_, and the frequency of being thrust into that situation increased as my responsibilities as an adult grew. With everything else one keeps practicing, I became more adept at it.
I believe you have to find the right balance for oneself. There are still a few things that throw me off still, especially if it relates to world-building, but as for normal in-game creativity that doesn't phase me as it once did.

I imagine the noble background example though might touch on the world-building aspect and that is why some might prefer not to _wing it_. It certainly does require a little more flexibility on the part of the DM in this regard.

EDIT: Forgot to add, my thinking is the world-building decisions are more sensitive due to one's understanding of the setting and internal consistency issues, therefore perhaps requiring more time by the DM, than just making snap decisions during game play. Some do not like having to retcon.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What am I ignoring? And on what am I wrong?




Much of what I have said in this thread.



> Are you asserting that you _don't_ accord overwhelming authority to the GM in ddtermining what PCs know?



Standard book authority is not overwhelming.  And as I have said(and you ignored), I don't even engage in the full book authority.



> Are you denying that such an approach would be a very strong form of GM-gating?




Why do you think DM gating is always a bad thing?



> Do you disagree that thin PC background produces pawn stance? If so, what's the basis for your disagreement?




Probably because they aren't pawns.  They are in actor stance.  You are incorrectly attributing pawn to my style of play.  Pawn is specifically an aspect of Author stance, and one can which involve metagaming.

Relevant quote from the link, "In Author stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities,* then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. *(Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called Pawn stance.)"

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/4/

So without your weak justifications, the Author using personal knowledge to determine character decisions based on that person's priorities is making his PC a pawn.  

There is nothing about how I run the game that removes the PCs will about what he engages in during game play.  That's what Pawn stance is.  It's having the PC act without a reason in the game to act in the way that it does.  Nobody who plays my game does that, and if someone did, I would talk to them about it.  Either to explain why metagaming isn't allowed, or to help them understand how to roleplay better(for my game) for those who aren't metagaming.  The stance in my games is primarily actor.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> More from Over the Edge (p 196 of 20th Anniversary Edition):
> 
> Could vs Should
> One creative block that often keeps GMs from winging an adventure successfully is clinging to what "should" happen instead of imagining what "could" happen.
> 
> For example, the PCs come into Sad Mary's and ask what the crowd looks like. One way to answer the question is to refer to premises and deduce the logical result. Sad Mary's is on the Plaza of Fowers, and lots of artists live in that area, so you deduce that the crowd has more than its share of artistic types. That's deduction: that's interpreting what _should_ happen.
> 
> On the other hand, you could answer that same question by deciding what would be interesting. A bunch of off-duty peace officers, guns in evidence, could be hanging around. There's nothing in the [setting] text about Sad Mary's that says that peace officers frequent the place, but it's not impossible. And it's interesting, especially if the PCs have been to Sad Mary's a gew times already and don't expect to meet Peace Officers here. Now, of course you have to come up with a good reason for their presence. Maybe a friend of theirs is performing. Maybe they just like unsettling people. If you can't figure a good reason, then maybe no one knows. The PCs ask a waiter why all the peace officers are here, and he says he doesn't know. The PC asks a peace officer, and the officer gives some lame excuse. Generally, however, you can figure some reason, and it may lead to new plot ideas. . . .
> 
> Unless your [campaign] is going out of control from sheer entropy, make things up based on what coul dhappen, not on what should.​
> I think this is relevant to the discussion of sudden revelations (whether GM or player authored, like the PC who turns out to be a noble), as well as the original discussion of searching for sect members.




I prefer to mix the two.  If the PCs go to Sad Mary's on the Plaza of Flowers, they will note an over abundance of artists AND perhaps the extra off duty guards hanging around.  I see no reason why what should happen and what could happen can't coexist.


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## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> I have allowed rolls like that, but the DC is generally significantly higher since the players almost always ask me who is in the taverns they go to, so I have a good idea of who has been around to talk and adventuring groups are uncommon.




This might be a reason of some of the disconnect that occurs here between the various posters. You seem to play a highly detailed game whereas [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] primarily focuses on story-moving scenes, so that level of character engagement with the setting that your table experiences is glossed over fairly quickly by him - thereby it makes sense for Pemerton's table to use a die roll for knowledge gained to cover the RPing aspect (conversations, books read, tales listened to) that your table actually experiences as part of the roleplay.

I switch between the two styles during a session, depending on pacing. I have certainly moved towards a faster paced game of late, given that my playtime has been reduced to 6-10 hours per month if we are lucky.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> Speaking for myself (but I don't believe my case to be uncommon), due to RL and time constraints, I got forced into _winging it_, and the frequency of being thrust into that situation increased as my responsibilities as an adult grew. With everything else one keeps practicing, I became more adept at it.
> I believe you have to find the right balance for oneself. There are still a few things that throw me off still, especially if it relates to world-building, but as for normal in-game creativity that doesn't phase me as it once did.




Same here.  When I prep for a game, it's usually just an outline with a few encounters.  Most of the guts are done via improv as I just don't have the time to spend hours and hours figuring a bunch of stuff out.  Even that outline is just an idea for me about what I think the most likely direction that could happen is.  I've gamed with my players for a long time, so I can often predict what they will choose to do, but they still zig when I think they will zag fairly often.  When they do, the outline breaks and even more improv happens.



> I imagine the noble background example though might touch on the world-building aspect and that is why some might prefer not to _wing it_. It certainly does require a little more flexibility on the part of the DM in this regard.




The noble background doesn't bother me, but as it comes with such a huge advantage most of the time, it's just not something players can pick.  It's similar to how I won't just let someone pick an adult gold dragon for a PC.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> This might be a reason of some of the disconnect that occurs here between the various posters. You seem to play a highly detailed game whereas [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] primarily focuses on story-moving scenes, so that level of character engagement with the setting that your table experiences is glossed over fairly quickly by him - thereby it makes sense for Pemerton's table to use a die roll for knowledge gained to cover the RPing aspect (conversations, books read, tales listened to) that your table actually experiences as part of the roleplay.




To be honest, I'd prefer not to have to figure out who is in each tavern(and I don't bother until the players ask), but the players will usually ask me and I'll quickly figure it out with a few rolls.  It's important to them for some reason, so I will know the levels, classes, races, sexes, etc. of most of the patrons.  It just works out that way for me.  



> I switch between the two styles during a session, depending on pacing. I have certainly moved towards a faster paced game of late, given that my playtime has been reduced to 6-10 hours per month if we are lucky.




I get about 16-20 hours of game time a month as I have the Thursday evening time slot blocked off for gaming.  It's the prep time that kills me.  I work, get home and help my wife with my son's dinner.  After dinner my 5 year old son likes to play with me, or perhaps it's bath night.  Then my wife and I have dinner and an hour or so of our time to catch up on talking about the day and whatever shows are on the DVR.  Then I have about an hour to myself, which by that point is not something I generally want to spend prepping for a game as it's my only hour to just relax before the next day.  My weekends are usually busier since that's when my wife and I have time to do events with the family.  I only get about 2-4 hours a month to prep, and sometimes less than that.


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## Caliburn101

When I run a game I just have a list of very common things one would learn as a wet-behind-the-ears adventurer in your first conversation with a veteran around a tavern table as known.

The idea that troll regeneration not being front and centre of a conversation like that is counterintuitive to me.

How I do this at the table is say that anything more commonly encountered within the CR range of a first tier of play adventurer (CR up to 5) is not a secret unless it's a rare creature. So people know kobolds and cowards and trap-makers, ogres are massively stupid, trolls regenerate unless you burn them one way or the other and bears do indeed  in the woods.

The rest - gelatinous cubes and oozes, the differences between ghasts and ghouls, shadow's strength drain - well, that's a knowledge check.


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> The noble background doesn't bother me, but as it comes with such a huge advantage most of the time, it's just not something players can pick.  It's similar to how I won't just let someone pick an adult gold dragon for a PC.




I agree there is certainly more pause for thought when someone selects noble background* than say an acolyte, charlatan or mercenary background....etc 

*And I do not mean like a knight, but rather a landed knight or a title of baron/ess or higher.


----------



## Sadras

Caliburn101 said:


> The idea that troll regeneration not being front and centre of a conversation like that is counterintuitive to me.




I like your ideas overall, and much would depend on setting, but the conversation the last ten or so pages had shifted between player and character knowledge of monsters and whatnot and whether one should/does roleplay their character without such knowledge even though the player knows the creature's vulnerabilities.


----------



## Caliburn101

Sadras said:


> I like your ideas overall, and much would depend on setting, but the conversation the last ten or so pages had shifted between player and character knowledge of monsters and whatnot and whether one should/does roleplay their character without such knowledge even though the player knows the creature's vulnerabilities.




Understood - interesting, because I have a 'rule' for that too, in keeping with my trying to keep meta and gameworld reality from colliding too often at the table.

Firstly I adapt the rule about low CR creatures upwards and inform my players what they have heard about a creature - but only after they have identified it. I don't say, "You are attacked by a Bulette…" I describe it. Secondly if metagameyness (which my Session 0's always cover in terms of my expectations of it's absence...) crops up in this regard I change the vulnerability or expected abilities to the next most intuitive thing, or something interesting that provides a good twist.

For instance, the last time I pulled this I turned a Medusa into a vampire-style enemy after a PC bought antitoxins and large steel mirrors for the party without so much as a query to me on what their character knew. So I decided that the Medusa did physical & bonus necrotic with her weapons, her snake bites did the Vampire stat-block Bite attack and her gaze delivered the Vampire Charm ability - so reflecting it did nothing to her. The players LOVED that encounter - having to react on the fly to an encounter that was utterly different both terrified and delighted them. If I remember it rightly the Cleric (maybe _Paladin_...) in the party was the first to realise they were facing an undead, but only after the first two rounds of confusion and 'crap that didn't work' chaos. I think the IC expletive "Pelor's balls - she's an undead blood sucker!" or words to that effect were used. Kudos to the woman playing the character for being in-game sweary - always love it when people method act!

After the fight I then took the player to one side in a break and asked them not to do that again - all it takes is a quick knowledge roll or a bit of party research and I will always be willing to impart what is gained through success in such efforts.

They all got the picture in any case.

Assuming  get's you dead - always do you research...


----------



## hawkeyefan

I think that for me and my group, we’ve stopped looking at our game as a game, as contradictory as it sounds. It’s much more an exercise in collaborative storytelling. This is generally speaking; obviously, what game we are playing has a huge impact on how we proceed, but that mindset does inform how we proceed regardless of system. 

So even with a game that’s very challenge oriented like D&D, there’s a lot less concern about something being an “unfair” advantage because everyone’s working toward making the story more interesting, rather than worrying about trying to win. So to beat a dead horse a bit more, a player introducing the idea that his character has an Uncle Elmo who’s given 
him adventuring advice isn’t a “weak justification” to gain an “unfair advantage” (nice pejoratives, those!) so much as a clever way to introduce a fictional element that helps move the game forward and also adds to the world the PCs inhabit. Any GM would be happy to have such a connection to work with, I would think, especially since so many characters seem to always be free of such connections. 

When it comes to 5E specifically, one of the things I’ve started doing is emulating the “partial success” or “success with a complication” from more narrative games and incorporating it into D&D by having tiered DCs for most tasks. So a DC of 12 grants partial success/ success with complication, DC 16 is a full success, and DC 20 is a Critical success. The actual numbers will adjust up or down a bit depending on the actual task, but that’s the gist.

I think this works so well because partial successes are so interesting, and actually add to the fiction as you play. They also remove some of the binary “pass/fail” issues with skill checks in D&D. It still relies pretty heavily on GM judgment in establishing the DCs, but I find it really opens up play.

I’ve also started using Clocks as presented in Blades in the Dark. Just a nice little mechanism to help make skill challenges a bit clearer and meaningful. 

These two minor alterations have really worked for my game.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson, I'm going to restate some questions because you didn't answer them.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are you denying that such an approach would be a very strong form of GM-gating?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why do you think DM gating is always a bad thing?
Click to expand...


I think it's something I don't enjoy. I gather you do. But both those facts are irrelevant to my question, which I'll restate:

I assert that a game in which the GM has pre-eminent, overwhelming authority in ddtermining what PCs know is one that involves heavy GM-gating, not just of action resolution outcomes but action declaration (as has emerged in the fire vs troll discussion). Do you disagree?



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you disagree that thin PC background produces pawn stance? If so, what's the basis for your disagreement?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Probably because they aren't pawns.  They are in actor stance.
Click to expand...


This is not an answer to my question, so I'll try it again:

_Actor stance_, as defined by Ron Edwards (and that's the only definition I'm aware of), consists in "a person determin[ing] a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have." My assertion is that this is possible only if the PC has relatively richly established knowledge, motivations, etc. Hence, in the absence of those things, what will result is _pawn stance_, that is, the player will "determine[] a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities". Because those real world priorities will be the only one's ready to hand (given the thinness of the PC's knowledge and motivations).

Do you disagree with this?


----------



## pemerton

Some thoughts on what it is plausible to suppose a starting PC might know:

(1) From Gygax's DMG (p 39):

Acquisition of Magic-User Spells
Inform those players who have opted for the magic-user profession that they have just completed a course of apprenticeship with a master who was of unthinkably high level (at least 6th!). Having been a relatively apt pupil, worked diligently, and made every effort to please, master (or mistress, as the case may be) was kind enough to prepare a special present for the character before he or she goes out into the world to seek his or her fortune. At this juncture request the player to ready a piece of paper which will go into his or her records as a permanent fixture. Instruct the player to entitle the page "FIRST LEVEL SPELLS KNOWN".​
Now if we're talking _realism_, it seems inconceivable that a 6th or higher level magic-user would send his/her protege out into the world to seek his/her fortune without at least offering a few tips (such as that trolls regenerate unless burned by fire or acid). But obviously this bit of prose from Gygax is just a story-telling device (a "lampshade" as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] would say) to provide a fig-leaf of in-fiction explanation for the 1st level MUs training and spellbook.

In classic D&D (OD&D, B/X, AD&D) the player of a fighter is entitled to play as cleverly as the player of a MU. Different classes are expected to perform different functions, but not at different levels of skill - "skilled play" is possible independently of class. The player of a MU isn't privleged in this respect just because, in the backstory, s/he was taught by a high level MU.

**********************************

(2) The suggestion that PCs would acquire their information about the gameworld primarily from interactions in  _taverns_ is (to me) a sign of a very particular approach to FRPGing, which frames the PCs as "man with no name"-type wanderers (along the lines of REH's Conan) who have no roots or connections to the world in which they act.

Change the fiction to something more like RuneQuest or Chivalry & Sorcery and that suggestion makes little sense.

(It makes little sense also if one takes seriously Gygax's default MU backstory, but as I said at (1), that's just a device, not a serious part of the game.)

**********************************

(3) In games that exemplify (1) and/or (2) - which is to say, that treat PC backstory mostly as a "lampshading" device to explain character abilities, and/or that treat PCs as ungrounded individuals whose main source of socialisaiton is tavern interactions - the primary stance for play will be _pawn stance_: that is, players will declare action based on real world priorities (like "beat the dungeon" or, perhaps "rescue the children from the orcs") because there is little PC knowledge and motivation to draw upon, and hence no strong foundation for _actor stance_.

One of many reasons that drove games like C&S and RQ, in the late 70s, was to make actor stance possible, by establishing gameworlds, and PCs with groundings in those gameworlds, which would provide the requisite knowledge and motivations.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Because it makes sense to do it that way.
> 
> 
> 
> If the PCs find an obscure religious symbol in a ruin, make a religion check to know what it is.  If they are wanting to know about the history of a town, make a history roll to know what it is.  If they want to know what a plant does, make a nature check to know what it does.  Contrary to your statement above, in-game considerations are pretty much all that there is.  If I can't tie the information to something in game for the PC, the answer is going to be no, as there will be nothing in the PCs background, game experiences, skills, etc. that would give the PC a reasonable chance to know the information.




So, you're telling me you know all the experiences and all the possible things that every PC will ever have done, seen, or heard of in his or her life without any doubt? Pffft. Sorry, that is not supportable. Not even remotely.

I'm perfectly happy with notions like a player gating his ability to pull something off and staking his resources on making a knowledge check. It is no different, fundamentally, than an Athletics check used in an analogous way. I'm perfectly happy if the player and the GM agree that some information is much less likely to be known than other information (as long as the player is advised of this before something is done which hinges on it in general). There certainly CAN be information "no man knows" and that can form a dramatic need to find out. I just don't think that troll's vulnerability to fire is even close to that, or should be. This kind of thing should be reserved for purposes which require it, not sprinkled around like salt. I mean, PCs are already going to not know a lot of stuff, and the players are likely to not even know enough to ask about most of it, so it isn't like they're going to spoil every chance at discovery this way, far from it.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> So what.  You have yet to show even a shred of evidence that all DM gating is bad.  Gating is how games run.



Then how do you explain that I have literally authored an RPG in which this is not true? It is even basically using a variation of D&D rules. If your statement is true, then what, HoML doesn't exist and will implode into a black hole if someone tries to run it? Or is it not an RPG?



> I've never played RuneQuest, so all I know of it that passage.  That passage definitely limits PC knowledge, and disallows the player from using player knowledge for a PC that wouldn't have that knowledge.



But who decides which knowledge that is?


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I think it's something I don't enjoy. I gather you do. But both those facts are irrelevant to my question, which I'll restate:
> 
> I assert that a game in which the GM has pre-eminent, overwhelming authority in ddtermining what PCs know is one that involves heavy GM-gating, not just of action resolution outcomes but action declaration (as has emerged in the fire vs troll discussion). Do you disagree?




I do disagree.  Things limit what the player can declare for his PC.  That's a fact of life for every game out there.  Rules limit things, and the DM uses the rules to limit those things.  Sometimes he engages some house rules which also limit things, but which are as much rules as any game rule out there.  The gating is not the DM run amok, but rather the DM engaging the rules.  What  you call DM gating is nothing more than rules gating.  The DM is just your scapegoat since it's his job to run the game.  You may not like certain kinds of gating, but you do engage in it.  We all do.  

Within the limits provided by the rules, action declaration is affected.  And D&D by RAW, and as I run it, is not one where the DM has "overwhelming authority to determine what the PCs know."  I as DM am using the rules to determine what the PC knows via ability checks, etc.  The vast majority of the time, I am not deciding it myself.



> _Actor stance_, as defined by Ron Edwards (and that's the only definition I'm aware of), consists in "a person determin[ing] a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have." My assertion is that this is possible only if the PC has relatively richly established knowledge, motivations, etc. Hence, in the absence of those things, what will result is _pawn stance_, that is, the player will "determine[] a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities". Because those real world priorities will be the only one's ready to hand (given the thinness of the PC's knowledge and motivations).




It absolutely was an answer.  You are using Pawn stance incorrectly, and I pointed out that I agree with the Forge's position that you are using it incorrectly.  

Beyond my last answer, yes, I completely disagree with you.  I have no problem making decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that that the character would have.  Neither do my players.  Establishing via rolls and occasionally DM decisions does not alter the fact that once I know what the knowledge and perceptions are, I am using only those to make my decisions and actions.  There is nothing at all that even remotely places me into the pawn stance.

Now, will a 300 page thesis on the character's background, knowledge and more make it easier to make those decisions?  Sure.  But a half-page background, or even no background at all works just fine.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Now if we're talking _realism_, it seems inconceivable that a 6th or higher level magic-user would send his/her protege out into the world to seek his/her fortune without at least offering a few tips (such as that trolls regenerate unless burned by fire or acid). But obviously this bit of prose from Gygax is just a story-telling device (a "lampshade" as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] would say) to provide a fig-leaf of in-fiction explanation for the 1st level MUs training and spellbook.




Sure, but there is no guarantee that the 6th level master ever encountered or learned about trolls.  His advice might just as well have been, "Don't stab a skeleton with a dagger.  It won't go well for you."



> (2) The suggestion that PCs would acquire their information about the gameworld primarily from interactions in  _taverns_ is (to me) a sign of a very particular approach to FRPGing, which frames the PCs as "man with no name"-type wanderers (along the lines of REH's Conan) who have no roots or connections to the world in which they act.




Who even suggested this?  I have had one person ask me if I would use taverns as a possible source, but I haven't seen anyone suggest that they are better than libraries or universities.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, you're telling me you know all the experiences and all the possible things that every PC will ever have done, seen, or heard of in his or her life without any doubt? Pffft. Sorry, that is not supportable. Not even remotely.




No, I'm not saying that.  I don't need to know everything to have a reasonable idea based on background, play experiences and skills what the character would know(a little bit), not know(a little bit), and what would be in doubt requiring a roll(the vast majority).  I'm not going to believe that you know all of those possible things, either.  The player deciding on the spot =/= knowing.  It's just changing who makes the decision.



> I'm perfectly happy with notions like a player gating his ability to pull something off and staking his resources on making a knowledge check. It is no different, fundamentally, than an Athletics check used in an analogous way. I'm perfectly happy if the player and the GM agree that some information is much less likely to be known than other information (as long as the player is advised of this before something is done which hinges on it in general). There certainly CAN be information "no man knows" and that can form a dramatic need to find out. I just don't think that troll's vulnerability to fire is even close to that, or should be. This kind of thing should be reserved for purposes which require it, not sprinkled around like salt. I mean, PCs are already going to not know a lot of stuff, and the players are likely to not even know enough to ask about most of it, so it isn't like they're going to spoil every chance at discovery this way, far from it.




These are all fine opinions, and you can play that way no problem.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Then how do you explain that I have literally authored an RPG in which this is not true? It is even basically using a variation of D&D rules. If your statement is true, then what, HoML doesn't exist and will implode into a black hole if someone tries to run it? Or is it not an RPG?




The only way you played with no gating is there were no rules.  Rules = ways to gate the players, and if you run the game by the rules, you are gating them as the person who is running those rules.



> But who decides which knowledge that is?




Without further rule quoting from RuneQuest saying differently, it would say it has to be the DM.  The DM is the one who runs the rules, and that's a rule.


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## pemerton

Ler's go back to Dungeon World, and the Thief move Trap Expert (DW p 138):

When you *spend a moment to survey a dangerous area*, roll +DEX.

*On a 10+, hold 3.
*On a 7–9, hold 1.

Spend your hold as you walk through the area to ask these questions:

• Is there a trap here and if so, what activates it?
• What does the trap do when activated?
• What else is hidden here?​
If a player in the game is _playing a thief_ who _surveys dangerous areas_, then it becomes more likely that the fiction of that game will feature traps than otherwise would be the case. That is to say, the mechanics of the game mean that _if you bring a thief into the game_, _you bring traps into the game_.

This contrasts very markedly with Gygax's AD&D (and other versions of classic D&D). From Gygax's PHB (pp 18, 106):

The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class . . .

[C]lerics' major aims are to use their spell abilities to aid during any given encounter, fighters aim to engage in combat, magic-users aim to cast spells, thieves aim to make gain by stealth, and monks aim to use their unusual talents to come to successful ends. If characters gain treasure by pursuit of their major aims, then they are generally entitled to a full share of earned experience points awarded by the DM.​
In other words, in classic D&D _choice of class_ is _choice of function_ whereby one will succeed at the game (ie collecting treasure, and defeating monsters on the way through).

Whereas in DW, choice of class is _choice of theme/fiction_.

That's a big difference. But not a surprising one. The first time that the GM of a D&D game included a demon in the dungeon _because_ s/he thought the player of the paladin would enjoy confronting it, RPGing had headed off on the DW path.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> You are using Pawn stance incorrectly, and I pointed out that I agree with the Forge's position that you are using it incorrectly.



Nonsense. Pawn stance is a variation of author stance. Both involve a player determining a character's choice/action by reference to the player's real-world priorities. In author stance, there is a second step also, of retroactively imputing a motive to the character to explain the choice/action. 

The main example provided in this thread has been given by [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]: the player determines that the character chooses to attack the troll with fire because the player knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire (on it's own, this would be pawn stance) and attributes a motivation to the character, namely, "Uncle Elmo told me once that only fire can kill a troll!" (with that second step, we have author stance in the strict sense).

I didn't quote and reply to the following part of your earlier post, because it is wrong and hence a needless distraction:



Maxperson said:


> the Author using personal knowledge to determine character decisions based on that person's priorities is making his PC a pawn.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That's what Pawn stance is. It's having the PC act without a reason in the game to act in the way that it does.



I mean, you can define "pawn stance" however you like, but _I'm_ using it as Ron Edwards does. Edwards makes no reference to "personal knowledge". He refers to a "real person's priorities". Nor does he make any reference to "without a reason in the game". He is talking about _the method whereby a player chooses what a character does_, not _what fiction accompanies or is created by that choice_. Obviously if a PC chooses to do X rather than Y, then there exists, in the game, a reason for that (unless the PC is insane). But that fact about the fiction is irrelevant to the question that Edwards is concerned with, which is _how is a player making decisions about the play of the game_.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> _Actor stance_, as defined by Ron Edwards (and that's the only definition I'm aware of), consists in "a person determin[ing] a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have." My assertion is that this is possible only if the PC has relatively richly established knowledge, motivations, etc. Hence, in the absence of those things, what will result is _pawn stance_, that is, the player will "determine[] a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities". Because those real world priorities will be the only one's ready to hand (given the thinness of the PC's knowledge and motivations).
> 
> Do you disagree with this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I completely disagree with you.
Click to expand...


So that means that you think that it is not necessary for a PC to have relatively richly established knowledge and motivations in order to make play decisions in actor stance? So can you explain how this works? How do shallow/thin PC knowledge and motivations support actor stance?



Maxperson said:


> I have no problem making decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that that the character would have.



But that's not relevant to the question I asked, which was about _how richly established_a character's knowledge and motivations have to be.



Maxperson said:


> will a 300 page thesis on the character's background, knowledge and more make it easier to make those decisions?  Sure.  But a half-page background, or even no background at all works just fine.



If a character has no background, and the campaign is just starting so the player has no knowledge acuqired via the play of the game, how do you envisage this working?

Imagine, for instance, a group starting out a campaign with B2 keep on the Borderlands. The players generate their PCs using the rules found in Moldvay Basic or Gygax's PHB. The referee reads the players the opening text about them arriving at the Keep, etc. How does a player decide what his/her PC does?

In my personal experience, at most D&D tables the players have their PCs "look for the adventure" rather than (say) ask about trading opportunities or look for potential spouses for their PCs. And this is because they are making decisions for their PCs motivated by real-world priorities (in this case, playing a D&D module). That decision might be lampshaded by an attribution to the character of a desire to become rich through adventuring (which takes it from pawn to author stance) but I don't possibly see how it could be actor stance in the scenario I've described.

I don't know what happens in your game. But of the two actual play examples you provided, one seemed to involve making choices in actor stance (eg deciding to sacrifice the "witch" to ally with the NPCs who had kidnapped your PC's family) while another seemed mostly to involve making choices in pawn or perhaps author stance (the decision to chase the orcs who raided the village) followed by a decision which may have been actor stance or pawn stance (the decision not to rest so as to save the children: you referred to player shock, but it wasn't clear the extent to which that was in character as opposed to real world).


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The suggestion that PCs would acquire their information about the gameworld primarily from interactions in taverns is (to me) a sign of a very particular approach to FRPGing, which frames the PCs as "man with no name"-type wanderers (along the lines of REH's Conan) who have no roots or connections to the world in which they act.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Who even suggested this?  I have had one person ask me if I would use taverns as a possible source, but I haven't seen anyone suggest that they are better than libraries or universities.
Click to expand...


Perhaps you didn't understand my point. Mentioning universities and libraries doesn't change it.

My point is that, in real life, for most of human history, most people gather information not from gossip (rumours!) from strangers in taverns, nor from book research, but in virtue of being embedded in real social situations and relationships. The information that an illiterate peasant has about his/her social and natural world outstrips by any imaginable degree the information that the players are going to acquire about the gameworld from play, from being told stuff by the GM, and even by reading the setting sourcebook.



Maxperson said:


> AbdulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've never played RuneQuest, so all I know of it that passage. That passage definitely limits PC knowledge, and disallows the player from using player knowledge for a PC that wouldn't have that knowledge.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But who decides which knowledge that is?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Without further rule quoting from RuneQuest saying differently, it would say it has to be the DM.  The DM is the one who runs the rules, and that's a rule.
Click to expand...


It's not a rule in RQ. Furthermore, your assumption that, _by default_, the GM gets to decide what happens reveals certain unargued assumptions about how RPGing works.

Here is an extract that I quoted upthread, quoted again:



pemerton said:


> Here's some stuff from RuneQuest (Avalon Hill Deluxe Edition, 1993, p 8):
> 
> <snip>
> 
> *Cooperation and Competition*
> Gaming is social. . . .
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There also needs to be cooperation between players and gamemaster. Though the gamemaster creates the world and manipulates its details, it's also true that the game remains a game for him as well, and that he likes to have fun playing too. Players should pit their ingenuity against the game world, not the gamemaster.
> 
> The gamemaster should be interested in his players' opinions on game matters, and the players should debate rules questions and play opportunities with him. Gamemaster decisions are final, and players must be will to take losses if the gamemaster sticks to his ruling. All the same, strive to work out questions by discussion. Both players and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds if necessary and occasionally adjust the game to the situation at hand. . . .
> 
> Simple communication builds enjoyable and understandable worlds for adventuring. The rewards of cooperation are great . . .​



That says that the GM creates the world. It says that the players should discuss "play opportunities", that both players and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds and adjust the game to the situation at hand, and that communication builds understandable worlds for adventuring. Nothing in the passage says or implies that that communication is exclusively, or even primarily, one-way.

Simple example: a player is playing a shepherd. It's almost certainly obvious to everyone why that PC can't start an alchemist's shop. But does s/he know which plants, when eaten, cause or cure various ailments? Does s/he know the social structure of the pastoralists who travel through the area? Does s/he know who the headman is of the village two days walk away? Does s/he know the metaphysical meaning of some or all of these things (a _very_ big deal in RQ, when compared eg to most versions of D&D).

RQ answers these questions through a mixture of stipulation and skill checks. Nothing in the rules suggests that the player can't bring his/her own knowledge to bear where it would be relevant. Eg if someone is sick, no rule precludes the player conjecturing that the illness is caused by a spirit, and that perhaps a shaman is needed to drive out the spirit and cure the person. In fact it's hard for many RQ scenarios to progress if the players aren't allowed to bring that sort of knowledge to bear.

And of course, if the game is set in Glorantha than the players can read the section on Glorantha as easily as the referee can! Indeed, they will need to learn something about Glorantha if the game is going to work!


----------



## pemerton

Here's some stuff about "The Advemture" and "Successful Adventuring" (those are the headings used) from Gygax's PHB (pp 101, 109):

When you go on an _adventure_, you, and in all probability one or more other characters, will go to explore some _underground_ labyrinth or area of land _outdoors[i/]. Your Dungeon Master will have carefully prepared a map of the place you and your party are to enter, a map showing all outstanding features of the place, with numbers and/or letters to key encounter/special interest areas. Your DM will give you certain information prior to the odventure - you might have to ask questions of the local populace, or you might have heard rumors or know of legends - so your party can properly equip itself for the expedition, hire men-at-arms, and obtain mounts or whatever in order to have the best possible chance for success in dungeon or wilderness setting. Of course, going about a city or town might in itself be interesting, informative, and dangerous, so a third sort of adventure can occur at any time, the.city or town adventure. These three major types of adventures have elements in common and differences; so each will be described separately. . . .

Adventures into the underworld mazes are the most popular. The party equips itself and then sets off to enter and explore the dungeons of some castle, temple or whatever. Light sources, poles for probing, rope, spikes, and like equipment are the main tools for such activity. And, since none of the party will know the dungeon’s twists and turns, one or more of the adventurers will have to keep a record, a map, of where the party has been. . . . As your party is exploring and mapping, movement will be slow, and it is wise to have both front and rear guards. In the dungeon will be chambers and rooms - some inhabited, some empty; there will be traps to catch those unaware, tricks to fool the unwise, monsters lurking to devour the unwary. The rewards, however, are great - gold, gems, and magic items. Obtaining these will make you better able to prepare for further expeditions, more adept in your chosen profession, more powerful in all respects. . . . 

Adventuring into unknown lands or howling wilderness is extremely perilous at best . . .Travel will be at a slow rate in unknown areas, for your party will be exploring, looking for foes to overcome, and searching for new finds of lost temples, dungeons, and the like. . . .

Cities, towns, and sometimes even large villages provide the setting for highly interesting, informative, and often hazardous affairs and incidents. Even becoming an active character in a campaign typically requires interaction with the populace of the habitation, locating quarters, buying supplies and equipment, seeking information. These same activities in a completely strange town require forethought and skill. Care must be taken in a11 one says and does. Questions about rank, profession, god and alignment are perilous, and use of an alignment tongue is socially repulsive in most places. There are usually beggars, bandits, and drunks to be dealt with; greedy and grasping merchants and informants to do business with; inquiring officials or suspicious guards to be answered. The taverns house many potential helpful or useful characters, but they also contain clever and dangerous adversaries. . . .

Preparation for one of these adventures is highly important, and one can lead directly into another sort altogether. . . .

So much for the underworld adventure. Most of what was said regarding successful expeditions there also applies to outdoor and city adventures as well. Preparation and mutual aid are keys to these sorts of adventures also. It is not usually possible to return to home base in the wilderness, but a place of refuge can be found and used in order to rebuild a party's strength. The party should avoid confrontations with monsters which are obviously superior and always seek to engage monsters at an advantage. City adventures are the toughest of all, for they are more difficult to plan and prepare for. Yet with care, and a careful adherence to co-operative principles, they can be successfully handled with the guidelines stated above. Setting out with an objective in mind, having sufficient force to gain it, ond not drawing undue attention to the party in the course of accomplishing the goal should serve to bring such adventures to successful conclusion._​_

There is a clear "man with no name"-type assumption here, namely, that the PCs are essentially strangers who have no prior knowledge of the places in which they find themselves. This in turn fits with an assumption that play will involve mostly one-way transmission of setting information from GM to players.

And consistent with what was just said, the whole assumption in this text is pawn stance: choices about cooperation, preparation, etc are all based on the game playing priorities of the real people at the table. There is not an iota of suggestion of actor stance. Nor of author stance. The focus of play is on finding the dungeons so they can be looted so that PCs can gain in power. Character in the sense that underpins actor stance doesn't come into it._


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Nonsense. Pawn stance is a variation of author stance. Both involve a player determining a character's choice/action by reference to the player's real-world priorities. In author stance, there is a second step also, of retroactively imputing a motive to the character to explain the choice/action.
> 
> I mean, you can define "pawn stance" however you like, but _I'm_ using it as Ron Edwards does. Edwards makes no reference to "personal knowledge". He refers to a "real person's priorities". Nor does he make any reference to "without a reason in the game". He is talking about _the method whereby a player chooses what a character does_, not _what fiction accompanies or is created by that choice_. Obviously if a PC chooses to do X rather than Y, then there exists, in the game, a reason for that (unless the PC is insane). But that fact about the fiction is irrelevant to the question that Edwards is concerned with, which is _how is a player making decisions about the play of the game_.




I use Actor Stance, though, so you are incorrectly applying Pawn to me, as I pointed out.



> The main example provided in this thread has been given by [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]: the player determines that the character chooses to attack the troll with fire because the player knows that trolls are vulnerable to fire (on it's own, this would be pawn stance) and attributes a motivation to the character, namely, "Uncle Elmo told me once that only fire can kill a troll!" (with that second step, we have author stance in the strict sense).




Yes, but I have been arguing against that.  That's not how it's done at my table, so it's not Author at my table.  No Author at my table = no Pawn at my table.  



> So that means that you think that it is not necessary for a PC to have relatively richly established knowledge and motivations in order to make play decisions in actor stance? So can you explain how this works? How do shallow/thin PC knowledge and motivations support actor stance?




Because the richness you describe is simply not required.  All that is required is making "a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have."  Full stop.  Nothing in that sentence says you have to have what you are describing.  Playing my way, which fully allows the player to know what knowledge and perceptions the character has before making a decision is sufficient for Actor.



> But that's not relevant to the question I asked, which was about _how richly established_a character's knowledge and motivations have to be.




Yes.  My answer was not relevant to your Red Herring.  



> If a character has no background, and the campaign is just starting so the player has no knowledge acuqired via the play of the game, how do you envisage this working?




Well, if you hadn't ignored(again) the myriad of times that I described skills and ability checks as ways to determine knowledge, you wouldn't have had to ask me that question.  How about you stop ignoring what I say, and only ask me things that I haven't already answered a dozen times?



> Imagine, for instance, a group starting out a campaign with B2 keep on the Borderlands. The players generate their PCs using the rules found in Moldvay Basic or Gygax's PHB. The referee reads the players the opening text about them arriving at the Keep, etc. How does a player decide what his/her PC does?




Ability checks.  Class based knowledge(rangers and nature, fighters and strategy, etc).  Basic knowledge(trees, what food is, etc.).  Exploration.  And so on.



> In my personal experience, at most D&D tables the players have their PCs "look for the adventure" rather than (say) ask about trading opportunities or look for potential spouses for their PCs. And this is because they are making decisions for their PCs motivated by real-world priorities (in this case, playing a D&D module). That decision might be lampshaded by an attribution to the character of a desire to become rich through adventuring (which takes it from pawn to author stance) but I don't possibly see how it could be actor stance in the scenario I've described.




In my experience, it can be two or all three of those.  Adventure is a given.  I have had several PCs get married, and many more found love.  I have also had several merchant adventurers over the decades.  As for Actor, all that's required is a way to get the information, which has been possible in every edition of D&D.


----------



## Manbearcat

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]

Maybe you could detail your thoughts on this Blades mechanic:



> FLASHBACKS (p 132)
> The rules don’t distinguish between actions performed in the present moment and those performed in the past. When an operation is underway, you can invoke a flashback to roll for an action in the past that impacts your current situation. Maybe you convinced the district Watch sergeant to cancel the Bluecoat patrol tonight, so you make a Sway roll to see how that went.
> 
> The GM sets a stress cost when you activate a flashback action.
> 
> ...
> 
> LIMITS OF FLASHBACKS
> A flashback isn’t time travel. It can’t “undo” something that just occurred in the present moment. For instance, if Inspector Helker confronts you about recent thefts of occult artifacts when you’re at Lady Bowmore’s party, you can’t call for a flashback to assassinate the Inspector the night before. She’s here now, questioning you—that’s established in the fiction. You can call for a flashback to show that you intentionally tipped off the inspector so she would confront you at the party—so you could use that opportunity to impress Lady Bowmore with your aplomb and daring.




To harken back to my post upthread, the deployment of Flashbacks hooks deeply into all 3 of Discovery, Creation, and Competition; we’re finding out something new about the world, someone besides the GM has introduced compelling content, and the conception/deployment/and opportunity cost evals is a manifestation of skilled play in Blades (meanwhile it hooks directly into the play principle if “Act now, plan later”). As a mechanic, it’s a damn near perfect piece of design for a game.

My intuition is that you’ll find it seriously problematic to the play virtue you’ve espoused in this thread and other threads. However, you may not? And if you don’t, that would be extremely interesting because it would help me understand the nature and limits of the application of the virtue you hold dear.

Can you relay your thoughts in terms of Creation, Discovery, Competition (this one will be particularly interesting to me and probably contentious), and the virtue you’ve been espousing (give it whatever name you’d like)?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> My point is that, in real life, for most of human history, most people gather information not from gossip (rumours!) from strangers in taverns, nor from book research, but in virtue of being embedded in real social situations and relationships. The information that an illiterate peasant has about his/her social and natural world outstrips by any imaginable degree the information that the players are going to acquire about the gameworld from play, from being told stuff by the GM, and even by reading the setting sourcebook.




When it comes to his garden, work, and so on, sure.  Not trolls, though.  If trolls were a common part of his world, he would be dead.



> That says that the GM creates the world. It says that the players should discuss "play opportunities", that both players and gamemasters should be willing to change their minds and adjust the game to the situation at hand, and that communication builds understandable worlds for adventuring. Nothing in the passage says or implies that that communication is exclusively, or even primarily, one-way.




Nothing I have said implies it's one way, either.  The DM being in charge of what would require a roll to know or not know is not communication in general.  Nor is it a limiter on play opportunities.  The "play opportunities" and "player ingenuity" are just referring to actual game play.   The player should use ingenuity try to figure out the smart way to get into the baron's castle, not that he knows the layout of the castle because his old gardener who was never previously mentioned use to garden there.  The player should be able to create a play opportunity by being able to decide to go north to become chief of the Snow Barbarians if that's what he decided he wants to do.  Nothing there implies that the players should be able to just decide that their PCs know everything they know, and the first portion of that RuneQuest quote strongly implies that the players shouldn't, as the DM is the one who runs the rules.



> Simple example: a player is playing a shepherd. It's almost certainly obvious to everyone why that PC can't start an alchemist's shop. But does s/he know which plants, when eaten, cause or cure various ailments?




There's no reason why a shepherd would or wouldn't.  That's not shepherd based info.  Different kinds of sheep and goats, sure.  What plants make the animals sick and should be avoided, sure.  General cures and illness causing plants?  No way that it would be automatic knowledge.  That would need a roll based on something like an ability check, other piece of background info, etc.



> Does s/he know the social structure of the pastoralists who travel through the area? Does s/he know who the headman is of the village two days walk away?




Probably.  Depends on whether he travels days away very often.  Headmen change and if the PC didn't go more than a few miles from home before beginning to adventure, knowing who the headman is for sure would be in doubt.  If they traveled to that town often to sell sheep, then it would be a yes unless the headman changed very recently.



> Does s/he know the metaphysical meaning of some or all of these things (a _very_ big deal in RQ, when compared eg to most versions of D&D).




As I pointed out, I don't know RuneQuest, so I can't answer that one well.



> RQ answers these questions through a mixture of stipulation and skill checks.




Excellent.  So just like my game.



> Nothing in the rules suggests that the player can't bring his/her own knowledge to bear where it would be relevant.
> 
> Eg if someone is sick, no rule precludes the player conjecturing that the illness is caused by a spirit, and that perhaps a shaman is needed to drive out the spirit and cure the person. In fact it's hard for many RQ scenarios to progress if the players aren't allowed to bring that sort of knowledge to bear.




Repeating the incorrect claim that if it isn't precluded, it's included won't make it correct.  In an RPG, if something isn't precluded by the rules, it is NOT included in the game at all unless the DM says it is.

As for conjecture, players can assume whatever they like for their PCs about things that the players don't know about.  They just can't bring in metagame knowledge such that their "conjecture" isn't really conjecture.  It would defy credulity for the PC's "conjecture" to be just "happen" to be correct that often.


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## hawkeyefan

I don’t think it would defy credulity any more than many fictional examples I can think of whose hunches or intuitions are remarkably accurate. Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Conan....and many more. 

To me, a regular person, it seems a good way to replicate characters who are beyond the norm and who have acces to abilities greater than what’s typical.


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## Numidius

"Act now, plan later" motto of BitD is very good. Like a Time coordinate for the Spatial one "Draw maps, leave blanks" of DW, and to achieve a 3D structure of sort: "Ask questions, build on answers" regulating the flow of content intro among all players at the table. 

The use of flashbacks is an old practice to speed up things, but IME trad Gms I know don't appreciate it so much, if not at all. The linear, causal, unidirectional sequence of events must be mantained, by them, on all 3 dimensions: temporal, spatial and of information. Not a bad thing per se, but unfortunately leads me to another Numidius play report: 

Resuming recently our WFRP2ed game, the whole first session was spent on Previously recap, accountability, filling equip sheets, and a very long speech intro/description by the Gm to prepare for playing. Session ended. The next, we started already on the location, but then instead of a fast scene framing, we had to play the whole initial approach phase, meeting locals Npcs, and extracting info from them word by word, basically. 

It's always nice to interact with Npcs, the problem being that the table was by then set in Audience Mode, not really interacting anymore, or declaring anything meaningful. I improvised a situation on my own involving clueless fellow Pcs , to keep the Gm and his Npcs busy, and finally free I could go alone to the location we wanted to be in the first place... risking my character's life and forcing the party to come resque me and engage the meaty encounter after a too long downtime and bland exploration. 

Not sure if on my part was Actor or Pawn stance... probably a mix of both, given the situation.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> the richness you describe is simply not required. All that is required is making "a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have." Full stop. Nothing in that sentence says you have to have what you are describing.



Again, you may have misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about the meanings of words. I'm talking about how certain human decision-making processes work.

The decision-making process that is inovlved in _actor stance_ is the following: a real person, sitting at a game table, makes a decision/choice for a character in that game _by reference not to real world priorities_, but rather to _that character's knowledge, perceptions, motivations etc_.

This simply can't happen if there is not sufficient richness in respect of those fictional mental states.

For instance, sometimes school students are given the task of "finishing a story" which is provided to them, incomplete. Suppose the "story starter" is noting more than the following sentence: _Spot rany yapping to the front door!" And suppose the instruction to the student is Write what Spot did next."

I assert that it is impossible to complete that writing task adopting actor stance with respect to Spot. We know nothing about Spot's motivations (does Spot yap when his/her owner comes home? When s/he hears a burglar? Both?), circumstances (is Spot at home? on the loose in the veterinarian's surgery?), etc.

The student who completes that writing task will have to adopt author stance with respect to Spot - fill in details of situation and behviour as the student thinks will show of his/her writing skills, and then impute (retroactively, as it were) the appropriate motivations and beliefs to Spot.

The same applies in RPGing. Suppose that we have a character who is defined as Throngor the 1st level NG dwarven warrior, and the situation is the referee's narration at the start of B2 - which is a description of arrival at the Keep, a last outpost on the borders of civiisation. Now the GM turns to Throngor's player and asks So, what do you do next? This is the same as the writing exercise above: there is simply not sufficient fictional detail about Throngor's mental states for the player to make a decision in actor stance. Is Thronger inclined to seek hire as a man-at-arms? To forswear violence and join a monastic order? To seek to be knighted by the Czstellan? Suppose Throngor learns about the Caves of Chaos, is Throngor inclined to ignore them, on the grounds that they seem to have caused little harm so far? To try topersuade the Castellan to lead an expedition against the Caves? To persuade the local peasants to labour to build additional fortifications to provide protection aginst possible assault?

We all know that, in fact, B2 really only works as a module if Throngor's player (i) has Throngor seek out "adventure", which in classic D&D terms means a dungeon to assault, and (ii) when Throngor's player learns from the GM about the Caves of Chaos, decides to mount a persoanl assault on the Caves. But none of that can be extracted from the fiction of Throngor, 1st level NG dwarven warrior. It's all pawn stance or perhaps author stance if Throngor's player writes in some backstory motivation to do with Throngor's hatred of goblins and personal desire to seek revenge against them.

As I've mentioned a couple of times upthread, the desire to enable actor stance by enriching both PC psychological details and the external gameworld social details was one significant driver of the early "simulationist" FRPGs like RQ and C&S. (Of course they don't use Edward's terminology; it hadn't been invented yet. But designers can respond to states of affairs they don't have labels for.)

Christopher Kubasik, in his Interactive Toolkit essay, notes the tension between pre-packaged adventure design and actor stance (again, he doesn't use the "stance" terminology because it hadn't been invetned yet; but he's talking about the phenomenon nevertheless):

The basic plot form of a story is this: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition, and arrives at a win, lose or draw. All roleplaying games involve this basic plot in one form or another.

Dungeon & Dragons fulfilled this requirement brilliantly and simply. Characters wanted experience points and wanted to gain levels. Any other want they might have had – social, political or personal – was subsumed within the acquisition of levels. Did you want social recognition? A greater understanding of the ways of magic? Influence over people as a religious leader? Pretty much anything your character might have wanted was acquired by gaining levels.

Dungeon modules worked for this very reason. A D&D character who wanted to become a lord didn’t go off and court a princess. He became a lord by wandering around dungeons, killing monsters and overcoming traps. The game offered no rules for courting a princess, but did provide rules for becoming a lord at 10th level . . .

Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess. . . .

The motivation behind hitting on the princess rather than crawling through a series of traps is obvious. First, and perhaps most importantly for some, the idea of wooing a princess was more fun than hanging out in a dungeon. Second, just because the rules didn’t say anything about wooing didn’t mean you couldn’t do it. As we all know, the minute an idea pops into a player’s head, he’s going to try it. Third, the goofiness of acquiring the title of lord by looting holes grated against the sensibilities of many players. They wanted to become lords in ways that made sense. . . .

Games released since the advent of D&D have wildly opened up the narrative possibilities of adventures. The dungeon vanished, replaced by the settings of AD&D’s Forgotten Realms, Traveller’s Imperium, Star Wars’ Empire and Vampire’s World of Darkness.

Unfortunately, characters in many games still have to stick it out as a group. Since dungeon crawling no longer provides a focus for group activity, characters are often hired, as in Traveller or Shadowrun, or wait around for something bad to happen that they can put an end to, as in most super-hero games. . . .

Scene-based modules engage characters in a goal from the start (steal the money, stop Dr. Dread’s Doomsday Ray, get Mr. Johnson his data, make peace with the Prince of Chicago) and offer a set of options of where to go and with whom to speak to fulfill the goal.

The problem with scene-based modules is that characters may go anywhere and do anything. Unlike location-based adventures, where it’s understood that everything needed to succeed is geographically at hand, a story-based game suggests that the next vital Clue/person/conflict could be anywhere. This often leads characters to visit places and talk to people (or make assumptions of any kind) not explicitly covered in the module. The GM who bought the module (so she wouldn’t have to make up maps and NPCS) suddenly has to make up both on the spot. . . .

[N]o pre-generated adventure can be complete because characters have different motivations.

Remember the adventurer who left the dungeon to woo a princess? Before he did that he assumed that if he trashed enough dungeons, a princess would be his once he got to 10th level. His motivations and desires were subsumed within the group activity of exploring dungeons.

Let’s say this guy – Charise d’Amor, a lovable rake who’s trying to marry a rich princess – is your character. You arrive at the gaming table and see the GM crack open a new pre-generated adventure, “The Quest of Tallian’s Orb.”

A busy wizard hires your group of adventurers to steal back a magical orb that keeps the fair land of Tallian safe from terrible monsters. He tells you what he knows about the theft of the orb. You’re on the doorstep of a scene-based module. You know the goal, the clues and the options of what to do next.

Let’s assume the author has done a good job. The clues presented are intriguing, not obvious. The characters encountered are amusing and full of life. The scene descriptions help the GM evoke the proper mood. Every, thing is going fine.

And then the princess shows up. The module’s author just put the princess in because she was a fun character who would have some information about the orb’s location. You see, the guy who wrote the module didn’t know your character is Charise d’Amor.

Suddenly your character doesn’t care about finding the orb. The only reason he’s out searching for an orb in the first place is to pull together enough cash for a suitable set of clothes and an introduction to royalty. But now he’s got a princess right in front of him. You could play “out hours of flirting with the princess. The story suddenly fractures into tiny pieces.

Does everybody wait around for Charise to woo the princess? Do the others leave your character behind? Do you blow the princess off to stay with the group, even though your character’s motivation is right in front of him?​
The flipside of Kubasik's observation is that when B2-type adventures are working (and there are a lot of adventures of that sort), it's precisely because the players are not making decision in actor stance but rather are making decisions on the basis of real world priorities like keep the group together, don't cause badl blood with the GM by ignoring the adventure, earn XP, have an exciting rather than a boring session, etc.



Maxperson said:





			
				pemerton said:
			
		


			magine, for instance, a group starting out a campaign with B2 keep on the Borderlands. The players generate their PCs using the rules found in Moldvay Basic or Gygax's PHB. The referee reads the players the opening text about them arriving at the Keep, etc. How does a player decide what his/her PC does?
		
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Ability checks. Class based knowledge(rangers and nature, fighters and strategy, etc). Basic knowledge(trees, what food is, etc.). Exploration. And so on.

<snip>

As for Actor, all that's required is a way to get the information, which has been possible in every edition of D&D.
		
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Some of this doesn't quite make sense, For example, both ability checks and exploration require action declarations, which correpsond to choices/decisions made by the character. Players who declare such actions at the start of B2 are declaring those action in pawn stance - that is, they have real world priorities (namely, to learn what the GM's adventure set-up is) and because of thsee priorities they declare actions for their PCs (like "We hang out at the tavern to collect rumours") which will help them with those priorities.

Perhaps because of   [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]'s misunderstanding about the relevance of Edwards's account of stance to your concerns about "metagaming", you think that there is some important connection between stance and metagaming,. But there is not. Stance is about the basis on which, and method whereby, players make action declarations for their characters. And D&D adventures depend upon the players making those decisions on the basis of certain well-known real world priorities._


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## Maxperson

Manbearcat said:


> To harken back to my post upthread, the deployment of Flashbacks hooks deeply into all 3 of Discovery, Creation, and Competition; we’re finding out something new about the world, someone besides the GM has introduced compelling content, and the conception/deployment/and opportunity cost evals is a manifestation of skilled play in Blades (meanwhile it hooks directly into the play principle if “Act now, plan later”). As a mechanic, it’s a damn near perfect piece of design for a game.
> 
> My intuition is that you’ll find it seriously problematic to the play virtue you’ve espoused in this thread and other threads. However, you may not? And if you don’t, that would be extremely interesting because it would help me understand the nature and limits of the application of the virtue you hold dear.




So, yes, it would be problematic in my game.  I can see the design intent for Blades, though, and it seems like a cool mechanic for that sort of game.  I would actually like to try out that sort of game to get a good feel for those mechanics in that sort of game.  I'm also curious what a "Stress Cost" is.



> Can you relay your thoughts in terms of Creation, Discovery, Competition (this one will be particularly interesting to me and probably contentious), and the virtue you’ve been espousing (give it whatever name you’d like)?




I'm really not used to thinking in these terms, so bear with me if I seem off.  

Again, I don't mind the players creating things for the game.  I allow them to give details about towns they come from, NPCs in their backgrounds, etc., and even come up with these things after game play begins if it makes sense with their already given backgrounds.  This mechanic gives the players much greater creation ability as they can come up with just about anything they want, so long as it doesn't contradict something.  Assuming the "Stress Cost" isn't a limiter.  For my D&D game, though, such an ability would be incredibly powerful at getting around and going through things, and would be a vehicle for metagaming.  It's not the sort of thing I and my players would really enjoy for the game.

As for discovery, I'm really not sure what we are discovering with this ability.  The player is making up what he wants, so it seems that nothing is really being discovered by him.  To me discovery means finding out something you didn't know about, rather than creating something you didn't know about.  Finding a map vs. drawing one.  

The competition here seems to be player vs. DM.  The DM comes up with an problem, the player flashes back and creates something that while it doesn't undo the event, does allow the player to sidestep or defeat it.  I personally dislike player vs. DM situations.  I may set up challenges and the players are trying to overcome them, but we are doing so as a team, rather than the player making moves to counter my moves.  

Lastly, I'm not sure what you mean by "the virtue I've been espousing."


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Again, you may have misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about the meanings of words. I'm talking about how certain human decision-making processes work.
> 
> The decision-making process that is inovlved in _actor stance_ is the following: a real person, sitting at a game table, makes a decision/choice for a character in that game _by reference not to real world priorities_, but rather to _that character's knowledge, perceptions, motivations etc_.
> 
> This simply can't happen if there is not sufficient richness in respect of those fictional mental states.




I understand and I'm saying you are wrong.  If I have no background, and nothing else to go off of, and the DM says to me, "There is are light woods ahead of you," that is sufficient for me to achieve actor stance.  My character has knowledge of the woods, has perceived the woods, and I can based off those things inform the DM as to what action I take.  If I declare that I got into the woods and look for a trail through," that is an actor stance declaration.  

This "richness" you describe doesn't need to be present.



> For instance, sometimes school students are given the task of "finishing a story" which is provided to them, incomplete. Suppose the "story starter" is noting more than the following sentence: _Spot rany yapping to the front door!" And suppose the instruction to the student is Write what Spot did next."
> 
> I assert that it is impossible to complete that writing task adopting actor stance with respect to Spot. We know nothing about Spot's motivations (does Spot yap when his/her owner comes home? When s/he hears a burglar? Both?), circumstances (is Spot at home? on the loose in the veterinarian's surgery?), etc._



_

This is a bad example.  In a story who cares about stance.  Stance is irrelevant.  In an RPG, if a player is playing Spot, he will determine the motivations and such.  Most likely though, the DM is just going to describe to the players that the PCs see a Dog yapping in front of a door." and the PCs can use that knowledge and their perceptions to make an actor stance declaration about what they want to do.




			The student who completes that writing task will have to adopt author stance with respect to Spot - fill in details of situation and behviour as the student thinks will show of his/her writing skills, and then impute (retroactively, as it were) the appropriate motivations and beliefs to Spot.
		
Click to expand...



Writing a book is not roleplaying, so you are comparing apples and oranges here.




			The same applies in RPGing. Suppose that we have a character who is defined as Throngor the 1st level NG dwarven warrior, and the situation is the referee's narration at the start of B2 - which is a description of arrival at the Keep, a last outpost on the borders of civiisation. Now the GM turns to Throngor's player and asks So, what do you do next? This is the same as the writing exercise above: there is simply not sufficient fictional detail about Throngor's mental states for the player to make a decision in actor stance. Is Thronger inclined to seek hire as a man-at-arms? To forswear violence and join a monastic order? To seek to be knighted by the Czstellan? Suppose Throngor learns about the Caves of Chaos, is Throngor inclined to ignore them, on the grounds that they seem to have caused little harm so far? To try topersuade the Castellan to lead an expedition against the Caves? To persuade the local peasants to labour to build additional fortifications to provide protection aginst possible assault?
		
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We don't need to know his mental state.  We only need to know what he knows and perceives about the situation.  You are ascribing more to actor stance than is required or included in the Forge's definition.  




			We all know that, in fact, B2 really only works as a module if Throngor's player (i) has Throngor seek out "adventure", which in classic D&D terms means a dungeon to assault, and (ii) when Throngor's player learns from the GM about the Caves of Chaos, decides to mount a persoanl assault on the Caves. But none of that can be extracted from the fiction of Throngor, 1st level NG dwarven warrior. It's all pawn stance or perhaps author stance if Throngor's player writes in some backstory motivation to do with Throngor's hatred of goblins and personal desire to seek revenge against them.
		
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You don't need to extract it.  Throngor perceives that the caves exist and knows where they are.  His actor stance action declaration in response to that knowledge and perception is to mount a personal assault on the Caves.  That's all you need.  More richness like motivations and such make things smoother and more enjoyable, but they are not necessary for actor stance to occur. 




			Dungeon & Dragons fulfilled this requirement brilliantly and simply. Characters wanted experience points and wanted to gain levels. Any other want they might have had – social, political or personal – was subsumed within the acquisition of levels. Did you want social recognition? A greater understanding of the ways of magic? Influence over people as a religious leader? Pretty much anything your character might have wanted was acquired by gaining levels.

Dungeon modules worked for this very reason. A D&D character who wanted to become a lord didn’t go off and court a princess. He became a lord by wandering around dungeons, killing monsters and overcoming traps. The game offered no rules for courting a princess, but did provide rules for becoming a lord at 10th level . . .

Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess. . . .
		
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I disagree.  The adventuring prince/noble is a trope.  My PC could marry the princess and still go off and search for the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth with his buddies in his free time.  

I also never viewed the titles in the 1e PHB as something the PCs knew about, but were rather for the players' benefit.  Level is an out of character concept, and the title structure was silly in the sequence given to us.   You're a veteran before you are a swordsman.  You go from hero to swashbuckler somehow, and then back to superhero?  It made no sense as in in-character thing.




			Let’s say this guy – Charise d’Amor, a lovable rake who’s trying to marry a rich princess – is your character. You arrive at the gaming table and see the GM crack open a new pre-generated adventure, “The Quest of Tallian’s Orb.”

A busy wizard hires your group of adventurers to steal back a magical orb that keeps the fair land of Tallian safe from terrible monsters. He tells you what he knows about the theft of the orb. You’re on the doorstep of a scene-based module. You know the goal, the clues and the options of what to do next.

Let’s assume the author has done a good job. The clues presented are intriguing, not obvious. The characters encountered are amusing and full of life. The scene descriptions help the GM evoke the proper mood. Every, thing is going fine.

And then the princess shows up. The module’s author just put the princess in because she was a fun character who would have some information about the orb’s location. You see, the guy who wrote the module didn’t know your character is Charise d’Amor.

Suddenly your character doesn’t care about finding the orb. The only reason he’s out searching for an orb in the first place is to pull together enough cash for a suitable set of clothes and an introduction to royalty. But now he’s got a princess right in front of him. You could play “out hours of flirting with the princess. The story suddenly fractures into tiny pieces.
		
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Or I could recover the orb to gift to her father for her hand.   Or I could recover the orb and save the country and impress her into marrying me.  Or...  There are lots of ways that could go that don't fracture the story.




			The flipside of Kubasik's observation is that when B2-type adventures are working (and there are a lot of adventures of that sort), it's precisely because the players are not making decision in actor stance but rather are making decisions on the basis of real world priorities like keep the group together, don't cause badl blood with the GM by ignoring the adventure, earn XP, have an exciting rather than a boring session, etc.
		
Click to expand...



That's simply not true.  I can go through that module making each and every decision based on what my PC knows and perceives about the situations at hand.  That's sufficient for actor stance and the module will work just fine.  I can even mix it up with a princess or whatever like I demonstrated above.  While you can fracture a story with something like a princess, you don't have to, and in fact it's quite easy not to.




			Some of this doesn't quite make sense, For example, both ability checks and exploration require action declarations, which correpsond to choices/decisions made by the character. Players who declare such actions at the start of B2 are declaring those action in pawn stance - that is, they have real world priorities (namely, to learn what the GM's adventure set-up is) and because of thsee priorities they declare actions for their PCs (like "We hang out at the tavern to collect rumours") which will help them with those priorities.
		
Click to expand...



They are not in pawn stance.  As I pointed out, all you need is knowledge and perception of what is happening right in front of you in order to make an actor stance declaration based on character knowledge and perception.  Pawn can't happen without author stance, and you certainly aren't authoring anything in the beginning of that module.

This idea that you have to have incredible richness in order to achieve actor stance results the achievement of actor stance being a snipe hunt.  Nobody can know everything that a PC would know, or know all of his motivations, etc.  There will always be something missing, which would prevent a completely accurate(based on all knowledge, motivations, etc. of the PC) declaration.  Obviously you don't need to know 100% of everything the PC knows and desires in order to make a decision from actor stance, so we know that making decisions without full knowledge is completely acceptable.  Given that, there is no good reason to think that we need "rich" knowledge anymore than we would need 100% knowledge.  You can certainly play it that way for your game, but simple knowledge and perception of what is happening around the PC is all that is required for actor stance to be achieved._


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> So, yes, it would be problematic in my game.  I can see the design intent for Blades, though, and it seems like a cool mechanic for that sort of game.  I would actually like to try out that sort of game to get a good feel for those mechanics in that sort of game.  I'm also curious what a "Stress Cost" is.




Max, I would have to say that I think you would struggle greatly with Blades in the Dark on the basis of your approach to gaming, here.  It's a polar opposite to how you profess to play D&D and what some of you deeply held play priorities are based on your posts.  For instance, stress is a resource players have that can be used, among other things, to tell the GM "No, I don't like that outcome, make it different and nicer to me."  It can also be used to Flashback, which can entirely eliminate a challenge the GM has already proposed to the players, and to increase the effect of a successful check, or to roll more dice to get a successful check.

Oh, and the players ALWAYS get to pick what skill they use.  The GM cannot veto it.  The GM can only set the position and effect, and then only within the fiction and play guides.  The GM is very limited in Blades as far as authority, and the players have numerous abilities to outright override the GM in a number of cases.

All that said, Blades is the tightest, most well integrated ruleset that does a fantastic job of doing what's on the tin: running a game of bad people doing bad things to other bad people.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Max, I would have to say that I think you would struggle greatly with Blades in the Dark on the basis of your approach to gaming, here.  It's a polar opposite to how you profess to play D&D and what some of you deeply held play priorities are based on your posts.  For instance, stress is a resource players have that can be used, among other things, to tell the GM "No, I don't like that outcome, make it different and nicer to me."  It can also be used to Flashback, which can entirely eliminate a challenge the GM has already proposed to the players, and to increase the effect of a successful check, or to roll more dice to get a successful check.
> 
> Oh, and the players ALWAYS get to pick what skill they use.  The GM cannot veto it.  The GM can only set the position and effect, and then only within the fiction and play guides.  The GM is very limited in Blades as far as authority, and the players have numerous abilities to outright override the GM in a number of cases.
> 
> All that said, Blades is the tightest, most well integrated ruleset that does a fantastic job of doing what's on the tin: running a game of bad people doing bad things to other bad people.




Long term you might be right.  Short term, though, I can enjoy many things that I wouldn't want to do long term.  For example, I really don't enjoy games that are comedic at heart.  Not long term anyway.  I prefer a more serious type of game, but one that can and does sometimes have humor.  However, short term I do enjoy comedic games.  I once had a blast playing in a D&D game where we rolled up 1st level versions of any TV or movie character you could think of.  I went with Mr. Roarke.  I was a 1st level conjurer, since wish was conjuration, and started off with a white suit that never ripped, wrinkled or got dirty.  I also had a halfling sidekick who had +10 to his spot checks to see flying things.

Blades might not be my cup of tea for a year long campaign, but I think for a session or three I could enjoy it.  I won't know, though, unless I give it a fair shake.  And who knows, I've surprised myself before and enjoyed things I didn't think I would like, just as I've disliked things I thought I would enjoy.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Perhaps because of @_*Sadras*_'s misunderstanding about the relevance of Edwards's account of _stance_ to your concerns about "metagaming", you think that there is some important connection between stance and metagaming,. But there is not. Stance is about the basis on which, and method whereby, players make action declarations for their characters. And D&D adventures depend upon the players making those decisions on the basis of certain well-known real world priorities.




There was no misunderstanding in my use of actor stance as I described it for Maxperson's game. If there has been any misunderstanding, it has been solely on your part since you are rigid in your understanding of the term.

I chose not to reply earlier since you continue in this rather, IMO, inane debate with Maxperson which is going to go nowhere as both of you are arguing from opposite ends and heels have now been dug in by both participants. Anyways, carry on regardless.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> WIn an RPG, if something isn't precluded by the rules, it is NOT included in the game at all unless the DM says it is.



There is not a shred of a reason to think that this claim is true.



Maxperson said:


> [quote-pemerton]RQ answers these questions through a mixture of stipulation and skill checks.



Excellent.  So just like my game.[/quote]Probably just like anyone's game, given that they're the two main options. The issue of relevance to the current discussion is _stipulation by whom_. There is no assumption that that must be the GM.



Maxperson said:


> Depends on whether he travels days away very often.  Headmen change and if the PC didn't go more than a few miles from home before beginning to adventure, knowing who the headman is for sure would be in doubt.  If they traveled to that town often to sell sheep, then it would be a yes unless the headman changed very recently.



Who gets to decide all this stuff, and the stuff that follows from it? It doesn't have to be the GM.


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Resuming recently our WFRP2ed game, the whole first session was spent on Previously recap, accountability, filling equip sheets, and a very long speech intro/description by the Gm to prepare for playing. Session ended.



How long was this? Two hours? More? 



Numidius said:


> The next, we started already on the location, but then instead of a fast scene framing, we had to play the whole initial approach phase, meeting locals Npcs, and extracting info from them word by word, basically.
> 
> It's always nice to interact with Npcs, the problem being that the table was by then set in Audience Mode, not really interacting anymore, or declaring anything meaningful. I improvised a situation on my own involving clueless fellow Pcs , to keep the Gm and his Npcs busy, and finally free I could go alone to the location we wanted to be in the first place... risking my character's life and forcing the party to come resque me and engage the meaty encounter after a too long downtime and bland exploration.



Again, I wonder how this played out in real world time. 



Numidius said:


> Not sure if on my part was Actor or Pawn stance... probably a mix of both, given the situation.



The instigation bit seems like Pawn Stance, possibly Author if you wrote in a motivation for your character.

As your example shows, there's nothing pejorative or inferior about Pawn Stance. At least in some scenario designs, especially fairly traditional D&D-style ones, it's crucial for actually making the adventure happen!


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> How long was this? Two hours? More?
> 
> Again, I wonder how this played out in real world time.
> 
> The instigation bit seems like Pawn Stance, possibly Author if you wrote in a motivation for your character.
> 
> As your example shows, there's nothing pejorative or inferior about Pawn Stance. At least in some scenario designs, especially fairly traditional D&D-style ones, it's crucial for actually making the adventure happen!



Around four hours each. the first one was also clunky cause the Gm was transitioning from recapping to establishing new stuff rather freely and we  had to stop play and review his assumptions, in case roleplay a bit, then resume our Reckoner stance.  Slow, boring process. 
The second was a sort of puzzle solving using real life psicology... in the end we had to interrupt in the middle of a combat encounter cause it was very late. 
For the next time I will demand more Framing, since we're all old & experienced friends. Perhaps too old, by now


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Pawn can't happen without author stance, and you certainly aren't authoring anything in the beginning of that module.



See, this isn't correct.

To requote:

In *Author *stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called *Pawn *stance.)​
And to rephrase that: in *pawn* stance, a player determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities; in *author* stance, a player supplements what otherwise would be a pawn stance action declaration with a second step, of retroactively imputing an appropriate motivation to the character.

Why give _pawn stance_ that label? Because the character is a "piece" (or "pawn", or to use Gyagx's terminology a "figure") used by the player to succeed at the game, where _success_ of course is determined by real world priorities.

Why give _autor stance_ that label? Because the player, in moving his/her "piece" in a way that gives effect to his/her priorities, is also _authoring_ the character by establishing appropriate mental states in the fiction that, within the fiction, make sense of the character's actions. A pretty typical example: in the first session of a D&D game, a player decides that his PC approaches the other PCs in the tavern, declaring that "My guy thinks that pair of elves looks pretty interesting, and so I introduce myself to them" - the player's real world priority (of getting the party together) is what actually motivates the action declaration, but the player retroactively imputes a motivation to his/her PC ("those elves look pretty interesting").

To declare actions in _actor stance_, those motivations already need to be established, so that there is sufficient material to infer actions without needing to introduce the player's real world priorities.



Maxperson said:


> I understand and I'm saying you are wrong.  If I have no background, and nothing else to go off of, and the DM says to me, "There is are light woods ahead of you," that is sufficient for me to achieve actor stance.  My character has knowledge of the woods, has perceived the woods, and I can based off those things inform the DM as to what action I take.  If I declare that I got into the woods and look for a trail through," that is an actor stance declaration.



No it's not. Where does your PC's motivation to look for a trail come from?  



Maxperson said:


> We don't need to know his mental state. We only need to know what he knows and perceives about the situation. You are ascribing more to actor stance than is required or included in the Forge's definition.



Yes we do, and no I'm not.

Choices and decision are grounded in motivations. The player can either decide for his/her PC using real world motivations ("priorities"), in which case we have author stance. Or can decide using only the PC's mental states and extrapolating from them, in which case we have actor stance.

Here's another quote from Ron Edwards, in one of his review essays about "fantasy heartbreakers", that feeds into the point I'm making:

The key assumption throughout all these games is that if a gaming experience is to be intelligent (and all Fantasy Heartbreakers make this claim), then the most players can be relied upon to provide is kind of the "Id" of play - strategizing, killing, and conniving throughout the session. They are the raw energy, the driving "go," and the GM's role is to say, "You just scrap, strive, and kill, and I'll show ya, with this book, how it's all a brilliant evocative fantasy."

It's not Illusionism - there's no illusion at all, just movement across the landscape and the willingness to fight as the baseline player things to do. At worst, the players are apparently slathering kill-counters using simple alignment systems to set the bar for a given group . . .; sometimes, they are encouraged to give characters "personality" like "hates fish" or "likes fancy clothes"; and most of the time, they're just absent from the text, "Player who? Character who?" . . . The Explorative, imaginative pleasure experienced by a player - and most importantly, communicated among players - simply doesn't factor into play at all, even in the more Simulationist Fantasy Heartbreakers, which are universally centered on Setting.

I think this is a serious problem for fantasy role-playing design. It's very, very hard to break out of D&D Fantasy assumptions for many people, and the first step, I think, is to generate the idea that protagonism (for any GNS mode) can mean more than energy and ego.​
To build on what Edwards says here, of course one can trivially "convert" pawn stance into actor stance if one posits that one's PC has no motivations other than those of Edwards's "Id": a drive to "win" by killing and looting. But the goal of post-D&D "simulationist" FRPGs like RQ, C&S and the like is to enable actor stance in a richer sense than this, by providing sufficient context (psychological and/or social) to permit a relatively rich inhabitation of the PC and resultant actor stance action declarations.



Maxperson said:


> Throngor perceives that the caves exist and knows where they are. His actor stance action declaration in response to that knowledge and perception is to mount a personal assault on the Caves. That's all you need.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I can go through that module making each and every decision based on what my PC knows and perceives about the situations at hand.



This is precisely an example of Edwards's "Id". There's no character here, no in-fiction motivation. Just raw drive, which is indistinguishable from the player's desire to succeed at the game by beating the dungeon.



Maxperson said:


> In an RPG, if a player is playing Spot, he will determine the motivations and such.



Of course, but that tells us nothing about stance. If those motivations are determined _as part of the process of action declaration_ - which in RPGing they very commonly are - then we have _author stance_. Similarly, if your decide that your PC looks for a trail through the woods because you, the player, are thinking about what seems like a sensible thing to do in a wargaming sense, and you then impute to your PC a belief that _trails lead to safety_, that is author stance too.



Maxperson said:


> This is a bad example.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Writing a book is not roleplaying, so you are comparing apples and oranges here.



With respect, this suggest that you've either missed the point of the example, or missed the logic of "stances".

An author deciding what Spot does next, and a player deciding what his/her PC does next, are very similar (in some cases perhaps identical) decision-situations, and both can be approached in actor or author stance as defined by Ron Edwards. (You can't write a story in pawn stance, at least if your character is to have any inner life at all.)



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> <extract from Christopher Kubasik's Interactive Tookit>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree. The adventuring prince/noble is a trope. My PC could marry the princess and still go off and search for the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth with his buddies in his free time.
Click to expand...


This seems to completely miss Kubasik's point.

When Kubasik says "Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess," he is talking about _courting the princess_ being the actual substance of play. I have played Prince Valiant session in which courting noble ladies has been the principle focus of play. The system supports that. It supports romantic rivalry, whether between PCs or between PCs and NPCs. B2 doesn't: as Kubasik says, D&D "offered no rules for courting a princess". In B/X and Gygax's AD&D there are rules for fighting, for searching doors and walls, for opening doors, for encountering and evading rival armed bands, and for determining the reaction rolls of de-contexualised strangers. There are no rules for courtship or for romantic rivalry. And a game which is _The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth_ will not, cannot, have courtship and romance as its principal focus of play.



Maxperson said:


> This idea that you have to have incredible richness in order to achieve actor stance results the achievement of actor stance being a snipe hunt.



Nonsense. When I play Burning Wheel, I'm nearly always declaring actions in actor stance. Here's an excellent description of the process by Eero Tuovinen (again, he doesn't use the particular terminology but he describes the phenomenon well in the context of what he calls "the standard narrativistic model" of RPGing):

The rest of the players [ie all but the GM] each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . . .

[O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character.​
Burning Wheel has formal elements of PC build that help establish these PC motivations. For instance, my character Thurgon has the following relevant elements on his PC sheet:

Beliefs
*The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory
*I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory
*Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!
*Aramina will need my protection

Instincts
*When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle
*If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself
*When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning

Relationships
*Xanthippe (Mother, on the family estate at Auxol)
*Aramina (sorceress companion)

Reputations & Affiliations
*+1D rep (last Knight of the Iron Tower)
*+1D rep (infamous among demons - intransigent demon foe) [This one was earned in play]
*+1D aff von Pfizer family
*+1D aff Order of the Iron Tower
*+1D aff nobility​
But actor stance is eminently possible in games without these sorts of formal elements. In one RM campaign, one of the PCs was a rather powerful sorcerer who had been born a slave, bought his freedom, and climbed the social ladder. He had a nice townhouse that he leased, and had aspirations to become a magistrate of his city.  These features of the character made it easy for me, as GM, to present situations that could be responded to in actor stance.

And there are obviously other ways to approach this outside of the scene-framing method that I personally incline towards. For instance, if the setting is rich, and the PC is built by reference to that setting (see, again, RQ for an example) then - provided the player understands the setting and his/her PC's place in it - then actor stance is relatively easy to achieve.

Of course, it's always possible for a GM to frame a situation that is, from the perspective of the player adopting actor stance, a non-sequitur. If the GM doesn't describe a situation that speaks in some fashion to the motivations established by a player for his/her PC then the player will have to drop out of actor stance and adopt some other stance (see eg [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]'s post about his/her (? sorry, I'm not sure what the right pronoun is) WHFRPG game, where to make things happen it was necessary to declare actions in pawn stance). Or in a setting-based game, if the GM's situation doesn't engage the player's understanding of the setting, the result might be pawn stance, or even the degenerate case of the player asking the GM _What would my character do in response to such-and-such?_

Whether this sort of non-sequitur (assuming its not degenerate) counts as good or bad GMing will depend on the details of system, table, mood, present in-game circumstances, etc. In my RM game, the player of the would-be magistrate sorcerer sometimes declared actions in author stance rather than actor stance because he wanted to facilitate game play, maintain party cohesion, etc. And sometimes I would frame situations that were intended to engage a different PC, and then the player of _this_ PC had to retroactively decide what his character thought about those things.

But to me, the thought that _if actor stance depends on rich motivations than it's hard to do_ suggests a lack of familiarity with the relevant techniques, whether setting or scene-framing based. Most of the history of post-D&D RPGing, and even elements of D&D RPGing (eg some of the 2nd ed era approaches to setting) is an attempt to develop and give effect to these techniques which will enable actor stance!


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> The second was a sort of puzzle solving using real life psicology



Can you say a bit more about this?


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Can you say a bit more about this?



Well we know each other from a long time. The Gm wanted us to stay put roleplaying while he slowly introduced the Npc situation (he probably planned we later on had to go with them to face the "big encounter"). Other players just were in Audience mode waiting. One of them has a shadow mage pc so I "suggested" him to cast invisibility and roam in the Npc camp. Gm reacted having Npcs look for him... and I then went on my own away with an excuse. When They solved the missing mage affair, I was on the spot and started exploring, combat ensued, and then everyone else came after me, and the whole party proceeded (slowly...) towards the "meaty" stuff, stuff we were supposed to start the game with the previous session. 
I was acting as a facilitator, to speed up things in-fiction, without complaining in real life at the table, which would have been counterproductive at best, if not irritating. 
Before the next evening, I'm going to talk with the Gm about it, btw. I don't mean to skip smaller encounters, but we need to have the situations Clear rapidly and then declare actions, goals, with a steady pace, or it is going to take forever.


----------



## pemerton

Thanks [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]. When you had said "puzzle solving using real-life psychology" I at first though you had meant the GM had (deliberately) posed a puzzle to you that he expected you to solve by application of real life psychology. But now I realise that you meant that the whole at-the-table situation, _including the Gm_, confronted _you_ with a puzzle which you solved by application of real life psychology by coming up with a plan that would enable you to get things moving.

I hope you're able to have a fruitful conversation with your friends. The play that you're describing sounds really painful!


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Thanks [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]. When you had said "puzzle solving using real-life psychology" I at first though you had meant the GM had (deliberately) posed a puzzle to you that he expected you to solve by application of real life psychology. But now I realise that you meant that the whole at-the-table situation, _including the Gm_, confronted _you_ with a puzzle which you solved by application of real life psychology by coming up with a plan that would enable you to get things moving.
> 
> I hope you're able to have a fruitful conversation with your friends. The play that you're describing sounds really painful!



Seems to me that players are kinda waiting for the info dump by the Gm before even starting to think of stating goals, while this info is not gonna come and instead the Gm already is playing, slowing introducing things/Npcs... and if players don't actively declare, he goes on that way


----------



## pemerton

Numidius said:


> Seems to me that players are kinda waiting for the info dump by the Gm before even starting to think of stating goals, while this info is not gonna come and instead the Gm already is playing, slowing introducing things/Npcs... and if players don't actively declare, he goes on that way



A GM in actor stance can be a dangerous thing!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There is not a shred of a reason to think that this claim is true.




Right.  There's not a shred of reason to think that because rules don't preclude my fighter's longsword from detonating with a nuclear explosion every time he hits something, that explosion is included.  Except that there is.  Things like the above being true if your claim is correct are far more than a "shred of reason" to think that my claim is true.  You don't get to just say that this thing that isn't precluded is automatically included, but not that nuclear explosion over there.  Failure to preclude does not mean inclusion.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Why give _autor stance_ that label? Because the player, in moving his/her "piece" in a way that gives effect to his/her priorities, is also _authoring_ the character by establishing appropriate mental states in the fiction that, within the fiction, make sense of the character's actions. A pretty typical example: in the first session of a D&D game, a player decides that his PC approaches the other PCs in the tavern, declaring that "My guy thinks that pair of elves looks pretty interesting, and so I introduce myself to them" - the player's real world priority (of getting the party together) is what actually motivates the action declaration, but the player retroactively imputes a motivation to his/her PC ("those elves look pretty interesting").
> 
> To declare actions in _actor stance_, those motivations already need to be established, so that there is sufficient material to infer actions without needing to introduce the player's real world priorities.




You are inventing this need for motivations when Actor stances does not have them.  Period.  

Here it is for you again, since you keep missing it, "In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have."

See?  Not one word about motivation.  Character knowledge and perceptions are the only criteria.  Once again, you are attempting to redefine something to suit your personal argument in order to poo poo on what someone else is doing.  



> No it's not. Where does your PC's motivation to look for a trail come from?




That's not required for actor stance.




> Choices and decision are grounded in motivations. The player can either decide for his/her PC using real world motivations ("priorities"), in which case we have author stance. Or can decide using only the PC's mental states and extrapolating from them, in which case we have actor stance.




Sure, but the motivation can be as simple as, "I want to go look at those woods."   When my PC, without any background or any other knowledge was placed in front of those woods, I used his knowledge and perception that the woods existed to make an actor stance decision to go to those woods.  That decision automatically included the motivation of "I want to go look at those woods."  There is no need for this deeper "richness" you keep trying to insert into actor stance.



> The key assumption throughout all these games is that if a gaming experience is to be intelligent (and all Fantasy Heartbreakers make this claim), then the most players can be relied upon to provide is kind of the "Id" of play - strategizing, killing, and conniving throughout the session. They are the raw energy, the driving "go," and the GM's role is to say, "You just scrap, strive, and kill, and I'll show ya, with this book, how it's all a brilliant evocative fantasy."
> 
> It's not Illusionism - there's no illusion at all, just movement across the landscape and the willingness to fight as the baseline player things to do. At worst, the players are apparently slathering kill-counters using simple alignment systems to set the bar for a given group . . .; sometimes, they are encouraged to give characters "personality" like "hates fish" or "likes fancy clothes"; and most of the time, they're just absent from the text, "Player who? Character who?" . . . The Explorative, imaginative pleasure experienced by a player - and most importantly, communicated among players - simply doesn't factor into play at all, even in the more Simulationist Fantasy Heartbreakers, which are universally centered on Setting.​





Wow.  Even at the worst roleplaying I took part in, when I was in junior high and didn't know any better, we weren't engaging in that.  No wonder people dismiss Ron Edwards and the Forge so often, if that's what he's claiming happens "most of the time."  But yeah, that's not at all applicable to my game or the descriptions I gave above about actor stance.  Nor does it apply in any way to refute what I am saying about actor stance.  I will refer you to the Forge's actual definition of actor where motivation isn't a part of the definition.  Probably because motivation automatically gets inserted into every decision.



> To build on what Edwards says here, of course one can trivially "convert" pawn stance into actor stance if one posits that one's PC has no motivations other than those of Edwards's "Id": a drive to "win" by killing and looting. But the goal of post-D&D "simulationist" FRPGs like RQ, C&S and the like is to enable actor stance in a richer sense than this, by providing sufficient context (psychological and/or social) to permit a relatively rich inhabitation of the PC and resultant actor stance action declarations.
> 
> *This is precisely an example of Edwards's "Id". There's no character here, no in-fiction motivation. Just raw drive, which is indistinguishable from the player's desire to succeed at the game by beating the dungeon.*




Which simply does not apply to anything that I've said on the subject of actor stance.  You are conflating hack n' slash games with a non-hack n' slash game that simply lacks "richness."  



> Of course, but that tells us nothing about stance. If those motivations are determined _as part of the process of action declaration_ - which in RPGing they very commonly are - then we have _author stance_.




No.  In author stance the motivation is the player's, not the characters.  If the motivation is a part of the action declaration and is the PC's, it's actor stance, as 1. motivation is not required for actor stance, and 2. the motivation is the PC's.

Basically, to be author stance the motivation has to be the player's AND there is no attempt at all to act based on the PC's knowledge and perceptions.  If you are acting based on the PC's knowledge and perceptions, then it's actor stance, which automatically has an in-character motivation for the act.  



> Similarly, if your decide that your PC looks for a trail through the woods because you, the player, are thinking about what seems like a sensible thing to do in a wargaming sense, and you then impute to your PC a belief that _trails lead to safety_, that is author stance too.




Sure.  I didn't do that.  I looked to the woods, because based on m character's knowledge of the situation and perceptions, it was the what he wanted to do.  There was no "wargaming sense" sense.  It was simply an in-character motivation to 1. see the woods, and 2. find safety.  There was no attempt on my part to use a "real person's priorities" to make the decision, so no author stance could happen.

For instance, my priority could be to have encounters and gain levels, but the decision my PC made at those woods was to see the woods and find safety.  Those are two different motivations and I only made the decision based on actor stance.



> An author deciding what Spot does next, and a player deciding what his/her PC does next, are very similar (in some cases perhaps identical) decision-situations, and both can be approached in actor or author stance as defined by Ron Edwards. (You can't write a story in pawn stance, at least if your character is to have any inner life at all.)




The difference is in what motivates the declaration.  If it's the player's desire, it's author, unless you go back and motivate after the fact, then it's pawn.  If it's the PC's knowledge and perceptions, then there is no retroactive motivation going on as the motivation is included WITH the declaration and it's actor stance.



> When Kubasik says "Modules disintegrated the moment a player got the bright idea of having his character become a lord by courting a princess," he is talking about _courting the princess_ being the actual substance of play. I have played Prince Valiant session in which courting noble ladies has been the principle focus of play. The system supports that. It supports romantic rivalry, whether between PCs or between PCs and NPCs. B2 doesn't: as Kubasik says, D&D "offered no rules for courting a princess". In B/X and Gygax's AD&D there are rules for fighting, for searching doors and walls, for opening doors, for encountering and evading rival armed bands, and for determining the reaction rolls of de-contexualised strangers. There are no rules for courtship or for romantic rivalry. And a game which is _The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth_ will not, cannot, have courtship and romance as its principal focus of play.




So it was a colossal Red Herring.  You're bringing up something that doesn't apply to the discussion at hand as some sort of what, evidence?



> Nonsense. When I play Burning Wheel, I'm nearly always declaring actions in actor stance. Here's an excellent description of the process by Eero Tuovinen (again, he doesn't use the particular terminology but he describes the phenomenon well in the context of what he calls "the standard narrativistic model" of RPGing):
> The rest of the players [ie all but the GM] each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . . .
> 
> [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character.​
> Burning Wheel has formal elements of PC build that help establish these PC motivations. For instance, my character Thurgon has the following relevant elements on his PC sheet:
> Beliefs
> *The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory
> *I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory
> *Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!
> *Aramina will need my protection
> 
> Instincts
> *When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle
> *If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself
> *When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning
> 
> Relationships
> *Xanthippe (Mother, on the family estate at Auxol)
> *Aramina (sorceress companion)
> 
> Reputations & Affiliations
> *+1D rep (last Knight of the Iron Tower)
> *+1D rep (infamous among demons - intransigent demon foe) [This one was earned in play]
> *+1D aff von Pfizer family
> *+1D aff Order of the Iron Tower
> *+1D aff nobility​




That was a whole lot of effort to prove nothing about what I said.  Here again is what I said.  I'll bold the important part.

"This idea that you* have to have* incredible richness in order to achieve actor stance results the achievement of actor stance being a snipe hunt."

You do not have to have that richness to achieve actor stance.  Showing me an example where you achieved it with incredible richness does nothing to disprove what I said.  It only proves that you can also have actor stance with incredible richness.



> But actor stance is eminently possible in games without these sorts of formal elements. In one RM campaign, one of the PCs was a rather powerful sorcerer who had been born a slave, bought his freedom, and climbed the social ladder. He had a nice townhouse that he leased, and had aspirations to become a magistrate of his city.  These features of the character made it easy for me, as GM, to present situations that could be responded to in actor stance.
> 
> And there are obviously other ways to approach this outside of the scene-framing method that I personally incline towards. For instance, if the setting is rich, and the PC is built by reference to that setting (see, again, RQ for an example) then - provided the player understands the setting and his/her PC's place in it - then actor stance is relatively easy to achieve.




It's easy to achieve simply by making decisions based on character knowledge and perceptions, just as the Forge definition states. 



> Of course, it's always possible for a GM to frame a situation that is, from the perspective of the player adopting actor stance, a non-sequitur. If the GM doesn't describe a situation that speaks in some fashion to the motivations established by a player for his/her PC then the player will have to drop out of actor stance and adopt some other stance (see eg @_*Numidius*_'s post about his/her (? sorry, I'm not sure what the right pronoun is) WHFRPG game, where to make things happen it was necessary to declare actions in pawn stance). Or in a setting-based game, if the GM's situation doesn't engage the player's understanding of the setting, the result might be pawn stance, or even the degenerate case of the player asking the GM _What would my character do in response to such-and-such?_




Um, no.  Again you're attempting to redefine the term to suite your needs and poo poo on other styles.  Now we have to play the game your way in order to even be able to achieve actor stance?  We must frame scenes around PC motivations in order to achieve it?  Not even close.

I'm going to stick with what actor stance really is and leave you to your personal definition that only applies to @_*pemerton*_.​


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I'm picking up on just one aspect of your post.



Maxperson said:


> You are inventing this need for motivations when Actor stances does not have them.  Period.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The difference is in what motivates the declaration. If it's the player's desire, it's author, unless you go back and motivate after the fact, then it's pawn. If it's the PC's knowledge and perceptions, then there is no retroactive motivation going on as the motivation is included WITH the declaration and it's actor stance.



A choice requires a motivation - the standard analysis is that an _action_ is the result of a _belief_ plus a _desire_.

In the terminology of "stances", as coined by Ron Edwards, the motivation comes either from the player ("real person's priorities") or is found within the character. If the character's motivations are not established, then no motivation can be found within the character (as per my example of Spot upthread). Hence there can be no actor stance.

It's not a complicated point, and obsessing over the words that Edwards uses to state his ideas doesn't change it.

Edwards does not consider "Id"-driven play, which he expressly connects to the classic D&D paradigm, to be a paradigm of actor stance. He sees it as pawn stance pure-and-simple. 



Maxperson said:


> I looked to the woods, because based on m character's knowledge of the situation and perceptions, it was the what he wanted to do.



That makes no sense. The character can't author itself - it's a fiction. The motivation had to come from somewhere. Either it flows from the established charcter - eg one knows, given how REH establishes Conan as distrusting and despising the insipid corruption of civilisation, that Conan would ready himself against treachery when entering a town - or else it is authored on the basis of a real-world priority (eg "I think it would be cool to play a woods-y guy").

Author stance doesn't become actor stance because the player doesn't reflect on his/her priorities, or because it's done really quickly!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In an RPG, if something isn't precluded by the rules, it is NOT included in the game at all unless the DM says it is.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There is not a shred of a reason to think that this claim is true.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Right.  There's not a shred of reason to think that because rules don't preclude my fighter's longsword from detonating with a nuclear explosion every time he hits something, that explosion is included.  Except that there is.  Things like the above being true if your claim is correct are far more than a "shred of reason" to think that my claim is true.  You don't get to just say that this thing that isn't precluded is automatically included, but not that nuclear explosion over there.  Failure to preclude does not mean inclusion.
Click to expand...


First, the rules of most FRPGs _do_ preclude that a longsword can detonate a nuclear explosion every time it hits something.

Second, even if they didn't, it's not the case that the issue of whether or not that's part of the game would have to be resolved by the GM. Eg it could be done by table consenus.

I can even give an example: Classic Traveller has no rules (except in an obsucre supplement which I hadn't read at the time) for the damage suffered by a character exposed to a corrosive atmosphere. In the third session of my campaign one PC was exposed to such an atmosphere. I told the players what the rule was for damage from vacuum, and on that basis suggested a (lesser) figure for damage from the atmosphere. They agreed with my suggestion, and thus we went ahead with it.

So, as I said, there's not the a shred of a reason to think that it must be _the GM_ who decides these things. Perhaps that's how things work at your table, but it's not any sort of universal truth about RPGs and RPGing.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Long term you might be right.  Short term, though, I can enjoy many things that I wouldn't want to do long term.  For example, I really don't enjoy games that are comedic at heart.  Not long term anyway.  I prefer a more serious type of game, but one that can and does sometimes have humor.  However, short term I do enjoy comedic games.  I once had a blast playing in a D&D game where we rolled up 1st level versions of any TV or movie character you could think of.  I went with Mr. Roarke.  I was a 1st level conjurer, since wish was conjuration, and started off with a white suit that never ripped, wrinkled or got dirty.  I also had a halfling sidekick who had +10 to his spot checks to see flying things.
> 
> Blades might not be my cup of tea for a year long campaign, but I think for a session or three I could enjoy it.  I won't know, though, unless I give it a fair shake.  And who knows, I've surprised myself before and enjoyed things I didn't think I would like, just as I've disliked things I thought I would enjoy.




I think that you absolutely should give the game a try. It's a blast. I'd say to start as a player first, if possible, before trying to GM, but either way, I think it would be really eye opening. I know that it was for me. 

Some of the concepts are really odd-seeming coming to that game from a predominantly D&D playing group. My players had to kind of adjust to the player driven nature of selecting scores and to some of the other elements. Here's a few.

Stress is a resource that each PC has. They can "take Stress" to use certain abilities, or to push themselves to increase their chances for success or the results when they do succeed. They also can take Stress to avoid negative consequences of one of their actions. So if the GM decides that a poor roll on their part results in an enemy harming them, they can override that Gm decision and reduce the amount of harm they take by Resisting the Consequence, which potentially has a Stress cost. The amount of Stress you can take is finite, and when you take your 9th point of Stress, you're out of the score (knocked out, left for dead, otherwise removed from action depending on the fiction) and you also develop a Trauma, which is an ongoing mark of some kind from your ordeal. It's a really powerful way for the players to influence the fiction. I think my players found it odd at first, and kind of mistook Stress for the game's equivalent of Hit Points, which it kind of is to an extent, but once we played and they saw it in action, they grasped it pretty quickly. I mean, it's a resource to be used when needed much like many elements of D&D, so it's familiar in that sense. 

Another element is the way gear is handled. At the start of a Score, each player declares the size of the load they will be bringing: light, normal, or heavy. The size of the load you choose to carry indicates how conspicuous you are and can impact certain actions you take that may require speed or stealth. Each load size grants you a certain number of inventory slots and each character has a list of possible items they can have, and that list indicates how many inventory slots each item takes up. You don't need to select what items you have until you actually decide that you need to use the item. So if the crew is infiltrating a rival gang's base, and they find themselves needing to climb a 25 foot wall, one of the characters can mark off "Burglary Gear" which lets them have a rope. Nice and simple.  

Flashbacks took a lot more adjustment, but they work in a similar way to Load/Gear. When they were getting ready for a Score, the players would start discussing details and plans, and for the first few sessions, I let this happen. But I started giving them less time to prepare and discuss how to go about the Score, because the game wants you to get to the action, and then work out the plan as you play. Very much like how a heist movie will alternate between scenes of the crooks on the job with scenes that show how they prepared, the game allows you to Flashback to earlier and take actions in the past that help deal with how you face the challenges during the Score. The idea here is that your PCs are capable and would prepare and plan accordingly, but the game doesn't want to spend time with players staring at a map and talking about entry points, and endlessly debating variables. So this allows you to avoid that, and then focus your prep retroactively depending on what actually comes up. 

There are more elements to the game that really put things in the players' hands, but these are the big three off the top of my head. My players found each one to be different than what they're used to as players, but as they got used to them, I think they've found them really interesting. The design of the game and the theme are deftly woven, as [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] mentions above, and I think seeing how the desired experience is supported by the game's design is also really enlightening. 

I can't recommend the game enough, just for the fun of it. It's really enjoyable and my D&D players are really digging it. In addition, I think it would also add to these discussions we have online; I think one of the main reasons these talks devolve the way they do is because some folks are talking about all games, and others are talking only about one specific game. I think if you see some of these mechanics in play, you'll better appreciate some of the points others have brought up.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> As your example shows, there's nothing pejorative or inferior about Pawn Stance. At least in some scenario designs, especially fairly traditional D&D-style ones, it's crucial for actually making the adventure happen!




Right, all it means is that the scenario is fairly 'gamist' in terms of its framing. That is, the terms of the conflict or opportunity are framed in player-centered terms and not character-centered ones. As you say, this is VERY common in TSR-era D&D modules, most of which started out life as tournament scenarios. They were designed to be playable by a group of pick-up characters with very little introduction and fairly fast paced and highly directed play with an assumed goal. Some of the later ones were a bit less this way, but it was never really the 'job' of a module to spell out how things fit with PC motivations and such. If you injected one into an ongoing campaign then things could often move into 'actor' or 'author' stance. This could be problematic in ways you already described in your last post about B2.

This is all another reason why I direct players in HoML to describe a goal, a strength, and a weakness for their characters, plus some contacts (they can describe other traits instead if they want, but these are usually pretty good starting points). Since they can be leveraged, and you start with inspiration, there's a tendency for these things to push play right from the start, even though I must admit that there is often a lot of 'myth' involved in the setting I usually use which might get in the way. Usually I just start new games in a new unexplored area of the map.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I direct players in HoML to describe a goal, a strength, and a weakness for their characters, plus some contacts



When I started my 4e campaign, I told the players to come up with a _loyalty_ for each of their PCs, as well as a reason to be ready to fight goblins.

BW uses Beliefs, Instincts, Affiliations and Reputations, and Relationships for this purpose.

MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic uses character "milestone" ie thematically/character-oriented events that, if they occur in the game, give the character XP (and thus incentivate the player to engender those events in play).

Etc, etc.

_Given the relative thinness of both character mental states, and setting/situation information_, effective actor stance requires some degree of alignment between player (in PC build) and GM (in establishing situations). The most obvious contemporary form of this is some type of "scene-framed" play. But the earliest "traditional" form is setting- and/or metaplot-heavy play, in which the character's connection to/location in the setting and/or metaplot allows the player to proceed from PC mental states within the context of the GM's set-up.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]A choice requires a motivation - the standard analysis is that an _action_ is the result of a _belief_ plus a _desire_.




Such as, "I want to see if I can find a path in the forest," yes.



> In the terminology of "stances", as coined by Ron Edwards, the motivation comes either from the player ("real person's priorities") or is found within the character. If the character's motivations are not established, then no motivation can be found within the character (as per my example of Spot upthread). Hence there can be no actor stance.




I proved this false upthread.  You do not need to establish motivations in advance for you to engage in a character's motivation.  "I want to see if I can find a path in the forest." is 100% the PC's motivation.  MY motivation is to roleplaying my PC, gain exp, treasure and levels.   



> It's not a complicated point, and obsessing over the words that Edwards uses to state his ideas doesn't change it.




Nor does continually trying to add pre-established motivations and "richness" as some sort of prerequisite for actor stance.  You don't NEED either of those, even if they do help out.



> That makes no sense. The character can't author itself - it's a fiction. The motivation had to come from somewhere. Either it flows from the established charcter - eg one knows, given how REH establishes Conan as distrusting and despising the insipid corruption of civilisation, that Conan would ready himself against treachery when entering a town - or else it is authored on the basis of a real-world priority (eg "I think it would be cool to play a woods-y guy").




The motivation automatically came from the PC, because it did not come from the player.  The player decided based on the PC's knowledge and perceptions that the PC wanted to go into the forest.  That is 100% an actor stance declaration.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Right.  There's not a shred of reason to think that because rules don't preclude my fighter's longsword from detonating with a nuclear explosion every time he hits something, that explosion is included.  Except that there is.  Things like the above being true if your claim is correct are far more than a "shred of reason" to think that my claim is true.  You don't get to just say that this thing that isn't precluded is automatically included, but not that nuclear explosion over there.  Failure to preclude does not mean inclusion.




I would call this an excluded middle type of fallacy...

It is perfectly reasonable to believe that it is possible and often expected that players introduce elements into the game. Just because they may do so doesn't make them 'nuclear weapons', they can introduce any sort of thing that the GM could introduce. Both players and GM are generally bound by setting conceits and other similar conventions, such that their elements are introduced in a setting and genre appropriate way. 

Again, I think this whole series of objections and positions are basically rooted in an unexamined substrate of Gygaxian dungeon play assumptions which are probably largely irrelevant, but have simply remained in place due to inertia, familiarity, and lack of expertise with other modes of play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> _Given the relative thinness of both character mental states, and setting/situation information_, effective actor stance requires some degree of alignment between player (in PC build) and GM (in establishing situations). The most obvious contemporary form of this is some type of "scene-framed" play. But the earliest "traditional" form is setting- and/or metaplot-heavy play, in which the character's connection to/location in the setting and/or metaplot allows the player to proceed from PC mental states within the context of the GM's set-up.




Right, this was what I attempted to achieve by making an extremely detailed campaign with a large amount of action spelled out ahead of time, so that the PCs would be constantly engaged with the evolving story. Huge amount of work for what turns out to be only a limited amount of gain. It was a good campaign, but really because it just went off those rails pretty fast. The prep wasn't totally wasted, and was fun, but I would never take that option again.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Such as, "I want to see if I can find a path in the forest," yes.
> 
> 
> 
> I proved this false upthread.  You do not need to establish motivations in advance for you to engage in a character's motivation.  "I want to see if I can find a path in the forest." is 100% the PC's motivation.  MY motivation is to roleplaying my PC, gain exp, treasure and levels.
> 
> 
> 
> Nor does continually trying to add pre-established motivations and "richness" as some sort of prerequisite for actor stance.  You don't NEED either of those, even if they do help out.
> 
> 
> 
> The motivation automatically came from the PC, because it did not come from the player.  The player decided based on the PC's knowledge and perceptions that the PC wanted to go into the forest.  That is 100% an actor stance declaration.




Why?  Why does the character want to go into the forest?  What will the character acquire/confront/learn there?  You're asserting that it's the PC's motivation to go into the forest without any support for this assertion, which leads to author stance.  I was the PC to go into the forest because there will be exp, treasure, and levels there, not because the PC has a motivation to go into the forest.  To have the later, you need to know some fairly basic things about the PC that are not often part of PC builds in D&D.  In 5e, you should be able to state which Bond, Trait, Ideal, or Flaw is the motivation for the PC going into the woods.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I think that you absolutely should give the game a try. It's a blast. I'd say to start as a player first, if possible, before trying to GM, but either way, I think it would be really eye opening. I know that it was for me.
> 
> Some of the concepts are really odd-seeming coming to that game from a predominantly D&D playing group. My players had to kind of adjust to the player driven nature of selecting scores and to some of the other elements. Here's a few.
> 
> Stress is a resource that each PC has. They can "take Stress" to use certain abilities, or to push themselves to increase their chances for success or the results when they do succeed. They also can take Stress to avoid negative consequences of one of their actions. So if the GM decides that a poor roll on their part results in an enemy harming them, they can override that Gm decision and reduce the amount of harm they take by Resisting the Consequence, which potentially has a Stress cost. The amount of Stress you can take is finite, and when you take your 9th point of Stress, you're out of the score (knocked out, left for dead, otherwise removed from action depending on the fiction) and you also develop a Trauma, which is an ongoing mark of some kind from your ordeal. It's a really powerful way for the players to influence the fiction. I think my players found it odd at first, and kind of mistook Stress for the game's equivalent of Hit Points, which it kind of is to an extent, but once we played and they saw it in action, they grasped it pretty quickly. I mean, it's a resource to be used when needed much like many elements of D&D, so it's familiar in that sense.
> 
> Another element is the way gear is handled. At the start of a Score, each player declares the size of the load they will be bringing: light, normal, or heavy. The size of the load you choose to carry indicates how conspicuous you are and can impact certain actions you take that may require speed or stealth. Each load size grants you a certain number of inventory slots and each character has a list of possible items they can have, and that list indicates how many inventory slots each item takes up. You don't need to select what items you have until you actually decide that you need to use the item. So if the crew is infiltrating a rival gang's base, and they find themselves needing to climb a 25 foot wall, one of the characters can mark off "Burglary Gear" which lets them have a rope. Nice and simple.
> 
> Flashbacks took a lot more adjustment, but they work in a similar way to Load/Gear. When they were getting ready for a Score, the players would start discussing details and plans, and for the first few sessions, I let this happen. But I started giving them less time to prepare and discuss how to go about the Score, because the game wants you to get to the action, and then work out the plan as you play. Very much like how a heist movie will alternate between scenes of the crooks on the job with scenes that show how they prepared, the game allows you to Flashback to earlier and take actions in the past that help deal with how you face the challenges during the Score. The idea here is that your PCs are capable and would prepare and plan accordingly, but the game doesn't want to spend time with players staring at a map and talking about entry points, and endlessly debating variables. So this allows you to avoid that, and then focus your prep retroactively depending on what actually comes up.
> 
> There are more elements to the game that really put things in the players' hands, but these are the big three off the top of my head. My players found each one to be different than what they're used to as players, but as they got used to them, I think they've found them really interesting. The design of the game and the theme are deftly woven, as [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] mentions above, and I think seeing how the desired experience is supported by the game's design is also really enlightening.
> 
> I can't recommend the game enough, just for the fun of it. It's really enjoyable and my D&D players are really digging it. In addition, I think it would also add to these discussions we have online; I think one of the main reasons these talks devolve the way they do is because some folks are talking about all games, and others are talking only about one specific game. I think if you see some of these mechanics in play, you'll better appreciate some of the points others have brought up.




That all sounds very interesting.  The reality is, though, that I will probably not have the opportunity to try the game.  My circle of gamers is like me, so we aren't going to have the game itself, let alone someone who can run it and enough people to play.  I do go to one or two game conventions a year, but I have had very poor experiences in trying out new RPG systems at cons, so I'm leery of trying it there.  It's really a shame, since I do enjoy a broader range of experiences than sometimes comes across here.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is perfectly reasonable to believe that it is possible and often expected that players introduce elements into the game. Just because they may do so doesn't make them 'nuclear weapons', they can introduce any sort of thing that the GM could introduce. Both players and GM are generally bound by setting conceits and other similar conventions, such that their elements are introduced in a setting and genre appropriate way.



Sure, but unless the game says it's okay or the DM/group says it's okay, it's not a part of the game.  Everyone can sit down and add it in, or the DM can add it in, but it has to be added.  Things that are not specifically precluded are not automatically included.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Why?  Why does the character want to go into the forest?




It doesn't matter.  All that matters is that the decision be made fully upon the knowledge and perceptions of the PC.



> What will the character acquire/confront/learn there?




More knowledge and perceptions upon which to make more actor stance decisions.



> You're asserting that it's the PC's motivation to go into the forest without any support for this assertion, which leads to author stance.




This is flat out false.  The support for it is the existence of the forest in front of the PC.  The PC has decided based on his knowledge of the situation at hand according to his perceptions that he wants to go into the forest to look for a trail. That's purely character motivated.  Support makes things smoother and easier to understand, but the lack of it does not equate to author stance, which requires that the motivation be the player's.



> In 5e, you should be able to state which Bond, Trait, Ideal, or Flaw is the motivation for the PC going into the woods.




Or else not.  Those are hardly an exhaustive list of why a PC might do something.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> It doesn't matter.  All that matters is that the decision be made fully upon the knowledge and perceptions of the PC.
> 
> 
> 
> More knowledge and perceptions upon which to make more actor stance decisions.
> 
> 
> 
> This is flat out false.  The support for it is the existence of the forest in front of the PC.  The PC has decided based on his knowledge of the situation at hand according to his perceptions that he wants to go into the forest to look for a trail. That's purely character motivated.  Support makes things smoother and easier to understand, but the lack of it does not equate to author stance, which requires that the motivation be the player's.
> 
> 
> 
> Or else not.  Those are hardly an exhaustive list of why a PC might do something.




Yup, you've conclusively shown that you don't actually understand Actor stance.  Hint, like with most Forge terminology, what it means is not strongly coupled with it's name -- it doesn't mean you pretend to act like your character, it means that the actions of the character directly stem from the motivations of the character -- they're desires, needs, and goals.  Saying it doesn't matter why the PC went into the woods is the clearest indication you don't understand what Actor stance actually means.

Which is fine, really.  Trying to hold a conversation using Forge terminology is rife with such misunderstandings, largely due to the obscurantist methods that seem to permeate Forge thinking.  Actor stance has little to do with what I imagine you think of as 'acting like my character.'  You can do that in Author stance just as well.

To simplify, unless you're making choices for the PC based entirely on their existing motivations -- and motivations a real person might have -- then you're not doing the Actor stance.  So, unless you can actually answer "why?' from the PC's point of view before the action, you're not in Actor stance.  If you decide that your PC goes into the woods and then figure out what a good reason to do so is to your PC, that's Author stance.  It works better to just read the descriptions and ignore the labels.

To link this back into the larger discussion, using Actor stance is perfectly compatible with the player introducing fiction that fits the PC's motivations.  If the PC is motivated by wanting to follow in Uncle Elmo's adventuring footsteps, then knowledge about trolls is right there and within the stance.  It's also there in Author stance (or even Director stance). It can be not there in Author stance, and especially in the subset of Author of Pawn stance, which very closely fits determining knowledge of the PC not by ingame fiction and motivations but by game mechanics, which is probably why [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] went there.  

Personally, I think the stances are generally bogus, because they're only useful in very clear cases -- most of the time people play in multiple stances, either sequentially or even simultaneously.  You're not limited to one need at a time.  But arguing that a stance, especially Actor stance, prevents the player from introducing knowledge to the character of their own volition is completely missing the point on multiple layers.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Sure, but unless the game says it's okay or the DM/group says it's okay, it's not a part of the game.  Everyone can sit down and add it in, or the DM can add it in, but it has to be added.  Things that are not specifically precluded are not automatically included.




LOL, so games can only include things that are written down as part of them? By whom? Would you please explain this concept to Gary Gygax, who said, and I quote 

"Naturally, everything possible cannot be included in the whole of this work. As a participant in the game, I would not care to have anyone telling me exactly what must go into a campaign and how it must be handled; if so, why not play some game like chess? As the author I also realize that there are limits to my creativity and imagination. Others will think of things I didn't, and devise things beyond my capability."

(1e DMG Preface, Page 7)

Trivially, what about a new spell, poison, monster, item? A new class? A house rule? Where exactly does this "not part of the game" start? 

Clearly this is pretty much bunk. D&D is basically a framework. This is more or less true of all RPGs, they are very open ended games which lack closed structure. If we were playing Monopoly, I would agree with you, or Chess as Gygax points out. However, RPGs simply cannot be put into that sort of a 'can' since the subject matter of the game is literally human behavior, an almost infinite subject matter.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Personally, I think the stances are generally bogus, because they're only useful in very clear cases -- most of the time people play in multiple stances, either sequentially or even simultaneously.  You're not limited to one need at a time.  But arguing that a stance, especially Actor stance, prevents the player from introducing knowledge to the character of their own volition is completely missing the point on multiple layers.




Not bogus, but they aren't meant to be used to label each instant of play as belonging to one or another. Instead they are meant to provide insight into the different types of process which go on during RP. Each stance represents a certain approach or relationship between the player and the game (and thus the PC she's playing, etc.). 

I don't think that 'Forge Terminology' is really obscurantist, it is simply a formalistic and fairly academic sort of technical language who's purpose is to facilitate these kinds of discussions by avoiding excessive arguments, like the one everyone is having now with Max. Personally I find that there are a number of areas where theories advanced and popularized on The Forge don't strike me as terribly useful (the whole 'GNS' stuff), but stances are not one of those cases. Beyond that I think people mostly just do NOT actually understand what the theories there were, and thus don't have a real grasp of the terminology, so it has been bastardized and has limited utility in general conversation.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> LOL, so games can only include things that are written down as part of them? By whom? Would you please explain this concept to Gary Gygax, who said, and I quote
> 
> "Naturally, everything possible cannot be included in the whole of this work. As a participant in the game, I would not care to have anyone telling me exactly what must go into a campaign and how it must be handled; if so, why not play some game like chess? As the author I also realize that there are limits to my creativity and imagination. Others will think of things I didn't, and devise things beyond my capability."
> 
> (1e DMG Preface, Page 7)
> 
> Trivially, what about a new spell, poison, monster, item? A new class? A house rule? Where exactly does this "not part of the game" start?
> 
> Clearly this is pretty much bunk. D&D is basically a framework. This is more or less true of all RPGs, they are very open ended games which lack closed structure. If we were playing Monopoly, I would agree with you, or Chess as Gygax points out. However, RPGs simply cannot be put into that sort of a 'can' since the subject matter of the game is literally human behavior, an almost infinite subject matter.




Thanks for quoting the perfect support for what I said!  Gygax is talking about the DM adding stuff to the game.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> Thanks for quoting the perfect support for what I said!  Gygax is talking about the DM adding stuff to the game.




I had to read that three times to try to find the word dungeon master or some variant within that quote.  What kind of glasses are you wearing [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]?  Cos, my prescriptions seems to be blocking out words apparently.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I proved this false upthread.  You do not need to establish motivations in advance for you to engage in a character's motivation.  "I want to see if I can find a path in the forest." is 100% the PC's motivation.  MY motivation is to roleplaying my PC, gain exp, treasure and levels.



Yes. That's _author stance_ - the very paradigm of it. You make the choice to have your PC do something because you have real world priorities (gain XP etc), and you impute a motivation to your PC ("I want to find a path in the forest").

EDIT: Ninja'd not far upthread by  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION].


----------



## Numidius

Hussar said:


> I had to read that three times to try to find the word dungeon master or some variant within that quote.  What kind of glasses are you wearing  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]?  Cos, my prescriptions seems to be blocking out words apparently.



Well, if I was [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I would say it's an advice in the preface of DMguide, actually, but nonetheless the line of thought goes down from the author to Dm to veteran player to newbie, there's always room for improvement and ideas.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I think the stances are generally bogus, because they're only useful in very clear cases -- most of the time people play in multiple stances, either sequentially or even simultaneously.



To quote again from the same Ron Edwards essay:

Stance is very labile during play, with people shifting among the stances frequently and even without deliberation or reflection.​
The only time I recall seeing stance being fetishised is by certain posters who seem to be trying to prove something about the purity of their RPGing by showing they play in actor stance.

I think that director stance and actor stance (or author stance, for that matter) can overlap in a moment of play, and this can be seen in the way they're described: whereas actor and author stance are about two different ways of deciding what a character does, _director stance_ isn't characterised in terms of action declaration at all, but as "determin[ing] aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events". This can clearly be part of, or a consequence of, an action declaration ("the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions") but that leaves open the question of whether the action declaration itself was undertaken in actor or author stance.

The main sort of example of director + actor stance that I'm familiar with is when the player of a religous character declares an action as being undertaken in the name of or at the behest of his/her deity, and - due to the way the table understands authorial power in respect of deities - the actor stance action declaratoin also makes it true, in the fiction, that the PC is doing the deity's will. Some "Uncle Elmo" scenarios may exhibit the same sort of logical structure.

Edwards does offer some conjectures about the connection between stance and GNS priorities:

I think it's very reasonable to say that specific stances are more common in some modes/goals of play. Historically, Author stance seems the most common or at least decidedly present at certain points for Gamist and Narrativist play, and Director stance seems to be a rarer add-on in those modes. Actor stance seems the most common for Simulationist play, although a case could be made for Author and Director stance being present during character creation in this mode. . . 

Again, speaking historically rather than by definitions,

*A Gamist approach to Stances usually involves preserving the Author-power of Pawn Stance in competitive situations, such that the player is not hampered in the range of possible options.

*A Narrativist approach to Stances usually involves keeping Actor Stance confined to limited instances, such that Author and Director Stances may generate a lot of metagame impact on the storyline.

*A Simulationist approach to Stances usually involves designating when Actor Stance, the default, may be exited.​
I'm personally not sure these conjectures are true. As I expalined upthread, when using a fairly standard scene-framing approach, if the GM is doing his/her job then a player in actor stance should find that "story now" is the result. (Of course, this same approach requires the GM to adopt author stance rather than actor stance in the play of NPCs, but stance as Edwards is using it is really about non-GM participants and their "player character.)

I think pawn stance also has a range of functions outside of the gamist context Edwards suggests. [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] gave an example upthread. A different sort of example occurred in my last Traveller session, where a player with a wealthy PC opted to liquidate assets to pay for the psionic training of an impecunious PC, because the player of the wealthy PC thought it would be too harsh for the player of the poor one to miss out on the opportunity, given its importance to the player and centrality to the character concept. Maybe this will "evolve" from pawn to actor stance as the consequences of the debt are explored in play, but to date it really is pawn stance.

(In some other systems this sort of issue could probably be resolved mechanically - eg some sort of social conflict either between the PCs or between the PC and the Psionics Institute - but Traveller simply doesn't have that sort of mechanical tech.)

I'm also not persuaded that actor stance is the default in simulationist play. It can certainly be important, and as I've posted upthread and as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has responded to, one function of the move to setting/social context in games like RQ and C&S is to make it possible. But in my experience author stance is also pretty important in simulationist play for some of the same reasons as in classic D&D dungeoneering (and as are seen in the RQ text I quoted above) - for keeping the party together, for managing intraparty conflicts (I've frequently had players decide that their PCs use less force in hostility against other PCs than they would use against NPCs, precisely because of the real-world priority of not completely hosing another player's character), for not "straying" from the bits of the setting the GM has mapped out, for keeping on the module storyline, etc.

But I certainly agree with Edwards that stance is very labile in play.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Given the relative thinness of both character mental states, and setting/situation information, effective actor stance requires some degree of alignment between player (in PC build) and GM (in establishing situations). The most obvious contemporary form of this is some type of "scene-framed" play. But the earliest "traditional" form is setting- and/or metaplot-heavy play, in which the character's connection to/location in the setting and/or metaplot allows the player to proceed from PC mental states within the context of the GM's set-up.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Right, this was what I attempted to achieve by making an extremely detailed campaign with a large amount of action spelled out ahead of time, so that the PCs would be constantly engaged with the evolving story. Huge amount of work for what turns out to be only a limited amount of gain. It was a good campaign, but really because it just went off those rails pretty fast. The prep wasn't totally wasted, and was fun, but I would never take that option again.
Click to expand...


I've done the setting thing, and it took a while (as in, years!) to work out - by refelection on my actual play - that it was the use of setting elements in framing (GM responding to players' hooks) rather than the integration of PCs into the setting (players responding to GM hooks) that was really doing the work.


----------



## Numidius

Edwards "played" with the concept of Stances in his 2001, little, humorous rpg Elfs. The following quote is from an old online review:

"Rules-wise Elfs is quite simple. A character has three stats, a sort of alignment, a one-sentence description, a kill list, and an equipment list. For reference I present one of our playtest characters:

Lystria, Spunk: 3, Low Cunning: 2, Dumb Luck: 2, Oral personality, ego-tripping bimbo.

All in-game actions are resolved by first stating your intent and then rolling 3d10 versus Spunk; dice that roll Spunk or less are counted as successes. If you can narrate your stated intent as being especially sneaky or childish, you get to add your Low Cunning to your Spunk, thus increasing your chances of success.

However, Dumb Luck is what makes Elfs stand out from the crowd. To get the Dumb Luck bonus added to your Spunk, you must make two action statements; one for what your character would want to happen, and one for what you want to happen."


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> I had to read that three times to try to find the word dungeon master or some variant within that quote.  What kind of glasses are you wearing @_*Maxperson*_?  Cos, my prescriptions seems to be blocking out words apparently.




Try using your ability to understand context, and not use some inane "But he didn't spell out Dungeon Master by name.  Hur hur!" as some sort of "counter" to my argument.

What he said: I did not include everything, because other people would think of and include things of their own. (paraphrased)

What he did not say: I did not include everything and everything I didn't include is automatically included.

He said that you have to bring those things into the game deliberately.  It's right there in the bold.  You have to think of those things and deliberately devise them for your game.  And in 1e, it was the DM who did those things.

"Naturally, everything possible cannot be included in the whole of this work. As a participant in the game, I would not care to have anyone telling me exactly what must go into a campaign and how it must be handled; if so, why not play some game like chess? As the author I also realize that there are limits to my creativity and imagination. *Others will think of things I didn't, and devise things beyond my capability.*"


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes. That's _author stance_ - the very paradigm of it. You make the choice to have your PC do something because you have real world priorities (gain XP etc), and you impute a motivation to your PC ("I want to find a path in the forest").
> 
> EDIT: Ninja'd not far upthread by  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION].




So making decisions based on PC knowledge and perceptions is author stance?  Once again, The Forge's own definition of actor stance is below.  And no, I did not retroactively put a motivation onto the PC.  The PC's motivation ("I want to see what is in the forest) was first and primary.

"In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using *only knowledge and perceptions* that the character would have."

So we see, ONLY knowledge and perception matters for actor stance.  We can't even include motivation at all, since it specifies ONLY those two things.  However, as I pointed out, the motivation is entirely the PC's anyway.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Well, if I was [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I would say it's an advice in the preface of DMguide, actually, but nonetheless the line of thought goes down from the author to Dm to veteran player to newbie, there's always room for improvement and ideas.




Sure, anyone can have a new idea, but in 1e it was the DM who could put it into the game.  And those ideas were not automatically included by virtue of not being precluded.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> So making decisions based on PC knowledge and perceptions is author stance?  Once again, The Forge's own definition of actor stance is below.  And no, I did not retroactively put a motivation onto the PC.  The PC's motivation ("I want to see what is in the forest) was first and primary.
> 
> "In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using *only knowledge and perceptions* that the character would have."
> 
> *So we see, ONLY knowledge and perception matters for actor stance.  We can't even include motivation at all, since it specifies ONLY those two things.* However, as I pointed out, the motivation is entirely the PC's anyway.



Your literalist reading seems like it is breaking the contextual spirit of the statement. I know you like to twist words and play at semantics, but this seems pretty intellectually dishonest. It seems appropriate to paraphrase what you wrote to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: "Try using your ability to understand context, and not use some inane 'But he didn't spell out _PC motivation_ by name. Hur hur!' as some sort of 'counter' to my argument." Yeah, that applies here too to your reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  

Here, for example, is a blog entry from Socratic Design talking about Stance Theory: What is Stance Theory, Part 1. It elucidates a bit on Actor Stance: 


> Actor Stance: The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have. This stance does not necessarily include identifying with the character and feeling what he or she "feels," nor does it require in-character dialogue.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Last, but not least, is Actor Stance. It’s been my experience that Actor Stance is occasionally and wrongly associated with Simulationist Play. As if, Actor Stance was the only “right way” to play using the Simulationist Creative Agenda. It is also sometimes treated as the same thing as talking in-character or “Immersion.” But Actor Stance is SO much more.
> 
> First, Actor Stance does not care what Creative Agenda you are using. In fact, none of the stances do. One can use Actor stance as the situation demands. Second, Actor Stance prioritizes the character much more than Director and Author Stance do. *Decisions made using Actor Stance are made in accordance with what the character’s motivations* are AND take into consideration in-game knowledge, conditions, and events. The player is not manipulating the scenery or objects in the imaginary world, just the character from the character’s own perspective.
> 
> *It is in Actor’s Stance that motivation is brought to the forefront. Actor’s Stance pursues this motivation and tries to carry it out.*  This is where character knowledge and player knowledge are split, and meta-game considerations are disregarded. It requires the player buy into the character as a living, breathing, free-thinking individual. The character is not a game pieces or a means to an end, but it becomes the focus of attention. Actor Stance is the expression of an intimate relationship between the real life player and the imaginary person that is being portrayed by that player. GMs often play significant NPCs (for lack of a better term) this way. That’s the most common example I can think of.
> 
> Some people define Immersion by saying it’s engaging in Actor’s Stance as often and as much as possible. I don’t really have a good definition for Immersion. A lot of talk about has gone on over the years. I don’t think Actor’s Stance is a handy synonym for it, but you should be aware that some (not all) people think of it that way.



So yeah, Max, I don't think that you are doing yourself any favors in this discussion by trying to argue the letter of the statement while remaining ignorant of the wider discussion, context, and theory behind the topic. 

None of this, by the way, is incongruent with a player declaring that their PC has knowledge of troll vulnerabilities. And lest you think you have a "gotcha moment" therein, the split between character knowledge and player knowledge does not mean that the two shall never meet or that no overlap exists simply an awareness that a distinction does exist. (No one has argued otherwise.)


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Your literalist reading seems like it is breaking the contextual spirit of the statement. I know you like to twist words and play at semantics, but this seems pretty intellectually dishonest. It seems appropriate to paraphrase what you wrote to @_*Hussar*_: "Try using your ability to understand context, and not use some inane 'But he didn't spell out _PC motivation_ by name. Hur hur!' as some sort of 'counter' to my argument." Yeah, that applies here too to your reply to @_*pemerton*_.




You don't specify "only," unless you mean only.



> Here, for example, is a blog entry from Socratic Design talking about Stance Theory: What is Stance Theory, Part 1. It elucidates a bit on Actor Stance:




So you found someone else who is of the opinion that motivation is necessary.  How does that have anything to do with The Forge's definition?  And as I said, the motivation for the PC is there in the forest example.  It's not a deep motivation, but it is in fact a motivation of the PC.

Here's a tidbit you forgot to bold in your quote above.

"The player is not manipulating the scenery or objects in the imaginary world, just the character from the character’s own perspective." 

When I have my PC declare that he is going into the forest to find a trail, not only is he using his own motivation of "I want to see what is in the forest," but he is also the one who is manipulating things from his own perspective.  What I describe is in fact actor stance.  It's just not based on deep motivations and that's okay.  Deep motivations are not required for actor stance.

You also missed this part.

"This is where character knowledge and player knowledge are split, and meta-game considerations are disregarded. It requires the player buy into the character as a living, breathing, free-thinking individual. The character is not a game pieces or a means to an end, but it becomes the focus of attention."

When I make the decision based on the PC's motivation to go into the forest, I am not at all viewing or treating him as a game piece or a means to an end.  I am playing the character as a living, breathing, free-thinking individual who wants to go into the forest to find a freaking trail.

So what we have is The Forge, the place that invented the stances saying that ONLY character knowledge and perceptions are required, and you don't say "only" without meaning only, especially a place like The Forge which spends a lot of thought on wording.  And you have the blog which hold the opinion that motivation is necessary, but does not say that a multi-page thesis on character motivations is required like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is claiming.  

A very simple motivation is all that is necessary to meet that blog's position, so "I want to see what is in the forest." is sufficient.  Curiosity is a great motivator.



> None of this, by the way, is incongruent with a player declaring that their PC has knowledge of troll vulnerabilities. And lest you think you have a "gotcha moment" therein, the split between character knowledge and player knowledge does not mean that the two shall never meet or that no overlap exists simply an awareness that a distinction does exist. (No one has argued otherwise.)




What does stance have to do with trolls?  Trolls are not even a part of this particular discussion.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> In an RPG, if something isn't precluded by the rules, it is NOT included in the game at all unless the DM says it is.





Maxperson said:


> Sure, anyone can have a new idea, but in 1e it was the DM who could put it into the game.  And those ideas were not automatically included by virtue of not being precluded.



It still remains the case that there is not a shred of a reason to think the first-quoted claim is true.

Even if one accepts your claim about AD&D - and in practice there were AD&D games where PCs invented new player-side elements, like races and classes - that provides no reason to suppose the first-quoted claim is true, because that putative feature of AD&D doesn't generalise.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> You don't specify "only," unless you mean only.



I guess that I should not be surprised by more intellectually dishonest semantics from you. Assuming people aren't trying to score points in a debate and actually demonstrate a willingness to discuss the matter in good faith, most would not apply such a ridiculously restrictive, literalist reading of "only." Otherwise we find ourselves in the discussion where the dishonest argument that "Ron Edwards does not include the word 'experience' since it is 'only knowledge and perceptions,' so character experience is not part of Actor stance" is presented as a valid reading of the definition. 

So where does 'motivations' factor into the definition? I would wager that most halfway intelligent people would implicitly recognize that it is entailed in the "decisions and actions using..." part of the phrase, especially given that motivations generally inform the thought process of decisions and actions most (ir)rational agents make. 



> So you found someone else who is of the opinion that motivation is necessary.  How does that have anything to do with The Forge's definition?  And as I said, the motivation for the PC is there in the forest example.  It's not a deep motivation, but it is in fact a motivation of the PC.



Surely you recognize that the definitions provided by the Forge are fairly minimal or barebones? I don't think that they were meant to be all-comprehensive of everything that is entailed in or surrounding the understanding of the terms. This is generally how we understand how definitions work. Definitions are minimally descriptive but not comprehensively prescriptive. 



> Here's a tidbit you forgot to bold in your quote above.



The blog entry and emboldened text were meant to highlight the inclusion of "motivations" in the understanding of the Actor stance. It was not meant to highlight or discuss anything else. So your attempted "gotcha moments" kinda fall flat. But if you are making yourself feel better about yourself for feeling clever, then I'm glad you are getting something out of this conversation, but you are missing the point. 

Edit: If you want to use this blog entry to argue with pemerton about walking into a forest or whatever, then you are welcome to do so. But again, my purpose was simply to correct your error regarding the exclusion of "motivation" in the general understanding of the Actor stance. Nothing more. 



> You also missed this part.



Except for the part where I mention it towards the end. If you are going to respond, please bother to put in a modicum of effort to read what I wrote, Max. That is a courteous thing to do. Otherwise it makes you look like an inconsiderate dolt. 



> What does stance have to do with trolls?  Trolls are not even a part of this particular discussion.



Simply bringing this back 'round to an earlier point. I am permitted to do that.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It still remains the case that there is not a shred of a reason to think the first-quoted claim is true.
> 
> Even if one accepts your claim about AD&D - and in practice there were AD&D games where PCs invented new player-side elements, like races and classes - that provides no reason to suppose the first-quoted claim is true, because that putative feature of AD&D doesn't generalise.




Sure, and not one of those side elements made it into the game without the DM's okay.  Either specifically after looking it over, or in general if he told the player that they could just add things.  Without that permission, though, they didn't make it into AD&D games.

And again, your claim that failure to preclude = inclusion hasn't been supported by you at all.  It's just a claim you make.  I on the other hand have a myriad of quotes by Gygax, as well as reason(no longsword nukes being automatically included) to back me up.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> So what we have is The Forge, the place that invented the stances saying that ONLY character knowledge and perceptions are required, and you don't say "only" without meaning only, especially a place like The Forge which spends a lot of thought on wording.



Declaring an action "using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have" precludes using knowledge and perceptions that the character doesn't have - such as _the player's belief_ that adventure and XP are to be found in the wood.

In the same Ron Edwards essay, the following passage can be found:

Another common misunderstanding of Actor Stance is to confound it with "acting" in the histrionic, communicative sense - using a characteristic voice, gestures, and so on. The communicative and demonstrative aspects of "acting" are not involved in Actor Stance at all, which only means that the player is utilizing the character's *knowledge and priorities* to determine what the character does.​
I've highlighted the relevant phrase. The contrast between actor and author/pawn stance is precisely between _declaring an action based on extrapolation from the character's mental states_ and _declaring an action because that will serve some real-world purpose_.

Ron Edwards is, in fact, not terribly careful about how he provides canonical statements of his key concepts. Which is not uncommon even in academic social science, let alone work being done in this sort of context. You can see this also in his discussion of "story now", where he provides a canonical definition of _narrativism_ as _engaging with a premise in the literary sense_, but then provides as an examplea of a narrativist-inclined games The Dying Earth RPG, which doesn't really engage with a premise but rather aims at producing ironic humour that will entertain the real-life participants.

But if one reads the whole essay, the analysis usually becomes clear. On this occaion you appear not to have done that, though, as you seem to be resolutely asserting that an action declaration can be driven by real-world priorities and yet be _actor stance_.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I guess that I should not be surprised by more intellectually dishonest semantics from you. Assuming people aren't trying to score points in a debate and actually demonstrate a willingness to discuss the matter in good faith, most would not apply such a ridiculously restrictive, literalist reading of "only." Otherwise we find ourselves in the discussion where the dishonest argument that "Ron Edwards does not include the word 'experience' since it is 'only knowledge and perceptions,' so character experience is not part of Actor stance" is presented as a valid reading of the definition.




Trying to write of the specific use of "only" as something that they threw in for the hell of it and didn't really mean is just more of your disingenuous arguing style.  And character experience is only a part of actor stance insofar as it gives the PC more knowledge and perceptions to base its actions on.



> Surely you recognize that the definitions provided by the Forge are fairly minimal or barebones? I don't think that they were meant to be all-comprehensive of everything that is entailed in or surrounding the understanding of the terms. This is generally how we understand how definitions work. Definitions are minimally descriptive but not comprehensively prescriptive.




Sure, which is why I'm willing to accept the simple motivations(or better) as being a part of it, since they are automatically included with declarations. 



> The blog entry and emboldened text were meant to highlight the inclusion of "motivations" in the understanding of the Actor stance. It was not meant to highlight or discuss anything else. So your attempted "gotcha moments" kinda fall flat. But if you are making yourself feel better about yourself for feeling clever, then I'm glad you are getting something out of this conversation, but you are missing the point.




Pointing out that it only requires motivations and not a multi-page theses on motivations is not a "gotcha" and to accuse me of that is just more disingenuousness on your part.  A simple motivation fits the blog's requirements.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> So making decisions based on PC knowledge and perceptions is author stance?  Once again, The Forge's own definition of actor stance is below.  And no, I did not retroactively put a motivation onto the PC.  The PC's motivation ("I want to see what is in the forest) was first and primary.
> 
> "In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using *only knowledge and perceptions* that the character would have."
> 
> So we see, ONLY knowledge and perception matters for actor stance.  We can't even include motivation at all, since it specifies ONLY those two things.  However, as I pointed out, the motivation is entirely the PC's anyway.



You bolded too late.  The stances are about _where_ decisions are made, not just what thry are made with.  If you're in Actor stance, you can explain why you went into the forest at that time because the decision was made solely within the character's frame -- ie, his knowledge, motivations, and needs.  

If you can't explain why at the time if the decision, but can backfill that reason using only knowledge the character has, that Author stance, because the decision is made and then the character's knowledge is considered.

You can easily do Author stance within your personal limitations on character knowledge.  In fact, the player knowing trolls are harmed by fire but choosing to have his PC act without this knowledge because the player considers that cheating _requires_ Author stance -- the decision is based on player motivations, not PC motivations.

Once again, you've chosen to focus on one part of a definition and ignore the rest, much like you did with arbitrary.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> A very simple motivation is all that is necessary to meet that blog's position, so "I want to see what is in the forest." is sufficient.  Curiosity is a great motivator.



Sure. Is it established that your character is curious? Then the decision to explore the forest might be taken in actor stance.

Are _you, the player_ curious, so you decide to have your PC explore the forest and impute that motivation to your PC? Then the decision to explore the forest has been taken in author stance. (If the imputation doesn't occur, we have an instance of pawn stance.)

None of this is rocket science.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> your claim that failure to preclude = inclusion hasn't been supported by you at all



I don't even understand what this means. I certainly haven't claimed it.

I'm not making any sort of claim about the structure or inner logic of RPG rules. I'm saying that your claim that _the GM_ is the authority for determining whether something new (a new rule, a new story element) is incorporated into a RPG is without foundation. That authority can be allocated to non-GM participants.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Trying to write of the specific use of "only" as something that they threw in for the hell of it and didn't really mean is just more of *your disingenuous arguing style.*  And character experience is only a part of actor stance insofar as it gives the PC more knowledge and perceptions to base its actions on.



You are making a Strawman argument, Max. _That_ is most definitely disingenuous. 



> Pointing out that it only requires motivations and not a multi-page theses on motivations is not a "gotcha" and to accuse me of that is just *more disingenuousness* on your part.  A simple motivation fits the blog's requirements.



I am arguing genuinely, Max. I am skeptical, however, that you are, particularly given the earlier strawman. The "gotcha moments" I mention are your whole "you forgot this part" spiel. I am inclined to believe that they are meant to be gotcha moments due to your tone and repetition of the phrase, with me "forgetting" implying that you are uncovering a fault. At least that is how I genuinely read it. Either way, they do not speak to the contextual purpose or argumentative thrust of my post, which I clarify in my edit that I have since added to the post you quote. 



pemerton said:


> I'm not making any sort of claim about the structure or inner logic of RPG rules. I'm saying that your claim that _the GM_ is the authority for determining whether something new (a new rule, a new story element) is incorporated into a RPG is without foundation. That authority can be allocated to non-GM participants.



At the very least, this assumption of authority varies throughout RPGs.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> Not to be a dink, but as a critical theorist, Ron Edwards was a heckuva biologist.
> 
> Or, more generally, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. There is certainly nothing wrong with academic critiques of RPGs (and the accompanying jargon), but it's a bit much to use obscurantist* terms that are certainly not generally accepted, and to continue to refer to those definitions and to an essay that is hardly universally accepted in order to make your points.
> 
> Or, put another way, I can quotes Barthes to the cows come home, but it doesn't mean that someone can't enjoy J. K. Rowling, and while RPGs are just as much of a subject of academic interest as anything else, one rarely convinces people by defining terms.



This is fair, excepting that other posters took up the terminology and definitions to make their own arguments.  I think, at that point, calling someone out for referring to the shared source of argument is a little weird.




> *Yep, I read what you wrote Ovinomancer.



Yay?


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Numidius

Numidius said:


> Edwards "played" with the concept of Stances in his 2001, little, humorous rpg Elfs. The following quote is from an old online review:
> 
> "Rules-wise Elfs is quite simple. A character has three stats, a sort of alignment, a one-sentence description, a kill list, and an equipment list. For reference I present one of our playtest characters:
> 
> Lystria, Spunk: 3, Low Cunning: 2, Dumb Luck: 2, Oral personality, ego-tripping bimbo.
> 
> All in-game actions are resolved by first stating your intent and then rolling 3d10 versus Spunk; dice that roll Spunk or less are counted as successes. If you can narrate your stated intent as being especially sneaky or childish, you get to add your Low Cunning to your Spunk, thus increasing your chances of success.
> 
> However, Dumb Luck is what makes Elfs stand out from the crowd. To get the Dumb Luck bonus added to your Spunk, you must make two action statements; one for what your character would want to happen, and one for what you want to happen."



The actual resolution bit was missing in my previous quote:

" If you get three successes, your character's action succeeds. If you get one or two successes, your action succeeds. And if you fail, you fail. This novel mechanic is the source of much of the silliness of Elfs, as using Dumb Luck is an excellent way to hose your buddies."

In the example of the Pc entering the forest looking for trail, applying stances as per that above, I guess: 
Pc intent: looks for a tavern, a hot soup, and asks if forest is dangerous. Player intent: Pc enters the forest clueless. Rolls... 

Then maybe, Pc intent: find a trail and get out safe; Player: gets lost and captured by creatures. Rolls... 

Sounds funny, but also provides a framework to show that realism, bad outcomes, complications, adversity, can come from the Player POV; the Gm (or other Players) then might elaborate on what kind of creatures dwell in that forest, and so on. It requires a "double-think" process  from participants not dissimilar to that of immersive, no-metagame, play. 

Edwards' Trollbabe rpg, has a more rigid framework: the Player faces: Pc normal declarations (Actor stance?); call for conflicts (Director st?); after roll, failures are narrated by Player, incorporating bits from scene/Npcs, in Author stance (?) cause retroactively (after the roll) gives an in fiction reason for failing. [Edit. Maybe Director's, since uses 'the world' to narrate, also]
Also after failures, Player may choose, from a list of situations, one in order to reroll (Pawn / Director stance). 
Successful Pc rolls are narrated by Gm (Actor/Author/Director stance, depending on what is narrated) 
Relationships of the Pc are listed on the sheet and their usage is under Player control (Pawn stance), while their feelings are under Gm's control (Actor stance). 
Death of the Trollbabe can occur only if: Player attempts a reroll when already Wounded; fails; the Gm, in this case only, describes how she is KOed plus a very bad outcome; if Player does not like it (Pawn stance), describes how the Pc dies (Author stance).


----------



## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> Not to be a dink, but as a critical theorist, Ron Edwards was a heckuva biologist.
> 
> Or, more generally, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. There is certainly nothing wrong with academic critiques of RPGs (and the accompanying jargon), but it's a bit much to use obscurantist* terms that are certainly not generally accepted, and to continue to refer to those definitions and to an essay that is hardly universally accepted in order to make your points.



I'm not the one who introduced Forge terminology into this thread.

 [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] introduced discussion of "stance", and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] embraced it.

I think [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] may have been the first poster to use GNS/GDS terminology, but my memory on that is hazier.

But if other posters want to use that termnology, I'm happy to engage with it.


----------



## pemerton

One source of frustration in playing a character in a RPG can be when player priorites and character priorities very obviously come inrto conflict. I'm thinking of the sort of situation in which the player has to choose to be faithful to the PC, but get hosed in the game play; or can make a choice that will avoid being hosed, but seems like a distortion of the character.

Iin my own experience of long-term group play using relatively traditional systems, part of the required player skill-set is anticipating and managing these possible conflicts. One example I have in mind, which I think I already mentioned upthread, has to do with intraparty conflict: a player who declares hostile actions against another PC, but who ameliorates the degree of hostility compared to what s/he might do against a NPC, is trying to remain true to the character (along the line of actor stance) but has "massaged" the character's motivations/deciions by having regard to the practical demands of group play at the table (author stance).

Another example which is frequently mentioned by posters on these boards is building a PC who has a reason/motivation to go "adventuring" with the other PCs. This reduces the likelihood that the plaeyr will find him-/herself torn between chosing something that would make sense for the character, and choosing something that works for the game at the table.

The troll example - in which the player knows what is required, but has to pretend that the player does not - is an instance (in my view) of the frustration I mentioned very much coming to the surface. A quite different way to ameliorate the frustration from the one mentioned by [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] (that is, of coming up with a clever way of bringing the non-hosing action declaration back into consistency with the PC's mental states) is to use ad hoc adjduciation by the GM, or systematic system changes, to render the staeks of the encounter less of a hosing for the player (eg think about how in The Empire Strikes Back the "troll" captures Luke rather than killing him). I woudn't expect a game in which [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s approach counts as "cheating", by giving the player an "unfair advantage" in the encounter, to consider this alternative pathway. But it's one that eg RQ suggests, by having combat outcomes that are less binary than D&D's, and by making capture and ransom a more significant part of the game.

Another frequent oddity (and perhaps more oddity than frustration) of the sort I'm talking about is the contrast between the shock/fear that many characters might be expected to feel when confronted by horrible monsters, and the lack of such feelings at the table as the players plan how their PCs will tackle this most recent encounter. I like how 4e handles this for (at least some) monsters, like the Deathlock Wight which has a "Horrific Visgae" that inflicts psychic damage and causes the characters to recoil in horror; or the Tyrant Fang Drake (? 4e's version of a T-Rex), which has a roar that stuns those who hear it, freezing them with terror. Prince Valiant and Cortex+ Heroic use similar devices within their own mechanical frameworks. In all these cases, the upshot is that the _player_ doesn't need to deliberately choose the "in character' but "losing rather than winning" option of RPing his/her PC's fear - the game mechanics take care of it instead.

As a player, my ideal state is one of "inhabitation" - that is, the emtions and choice situation I experience as a player closely correspond to those confronting my character. BW produces a fair bit of this eg my character has an instinct to interpose himself between innocents and danger, and so do I (because if I act on my instnct to the detriment of my character I earn a fate point); blind declaration in combat means that I experience the same "fog of war" as my PC; etc.

As a GM, one of the best "inhabiation"-inducing mechanics I've seen in play is the 4e Chained Cambion's psychic chains ability, which (in the fiction) binds two characters with the same torment and frustration that the cambion itself experiences, and at the table binds two players together in a way that (given the dyamic nature of the typical 4e combat) produces increasing frustration and recrimination (eg because even when one player saves against the efffect, s/he is still subject to it until tthe other player also saves).

That one has always stood out for me becauase of the way in produced "inhabitation" in respect of intra-party adversity and hostility rather than the more straightforward cases such as cooperation, gratitude and the like.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Declaring an action "using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have" precludes using knowledge and perceptions that the character doesn't have - such as _the player's belief_ that adventure and XP are to be found in the wood.




Right, which is why I'm not doing that.



> Another common misunderstanding of Actor Stance is to confound it with "acting" in the histrionic, communicative sense - using a characteristic voice, gestures, and so on. The communicative and demonstrative aspects of "acting" are not involved in Actor Stance at all, which only means that the player is utilizing the character's *knowledge and priorities* to determine what the character does.




Sure.  I'm not doing that, either.



> Ron Edwards is, in fact, not terribly careful about how he provides canonical statements of his key concepts. Which is not uncommon even in academic social science, let alone work being done in this sort of context. You can see this also in his discussion of "story now", where he provides a canonical definition of _narrativism_ as _engaging with a premise in the literary sense_, but then provides as an examplea of a narrativist-inclined games The Dying Earth RPG, which doesn't really engage with a premise but rather aims at producing ironic humour that will entertain the real-life participants.




Not being careful with something like "only" seems very reckless to me.  Even so, my declaration regarding the forest involves only knowledge and perceptions that the PC has, and has a motivation of the PC.



> But if one reads the whole essay, the analysis usually becomes clear. On this occaion you appear not to have done that, though, as you seem to be resolutely asserting that an action declaration can be driven by real-world priorities and yet be _actor stance_.




If by "you seem to be resolutely asserting..." you mean "has never asserted," you would be correct.  I have asserted, and ONLY(the real use of "only") that I am working with PC knowledge, perceptions and motivations.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> So making decisions based on PC knowledge and perceptions is author stance?  Once again, The Forge's own definition of actor stance is below.  And no, I did not retroactively put a motivation onto the PC.  The PC's motivation ("I want to see what is in the forest) was first and primary.
> 
> "In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using *only knowledge and perceptions* that the character would have."
> 
> So we see, ONLY knowledge and perception matters for actor stance.  We can't even include motivation at all, since it specifies ONLY those two things.  However, as I pointed out, the motivation is entirely the PC's anyway.




Ok, fair enough.  Let's work with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s definition here and see where it leads us.

So, we have "forest" and ... "not forest (?)" as our two options.

Now, since motivation is not necessary for actor stance, "I want to see what is in the forest" should be discounted.  That's a motivation.  It's irrelevant.

So, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], justify your choice of going to the forest as opposed to the "not forest" without referencing motives.  You have easy to travel open fields and a forest (apparently without a trail since that's been specified earlier).  So, why are you going to the forest?  What reason would the character have for going there?  The character is curious?  Why?  The character has no background, thus, no personality, thus, no curiosity.  That was also established earlier.  

The character could just as easily travel to the "not forest".  There's no real reason for the character to enter the forest.  And, certainly, if we're traveling, not going into the trackless forest is a more plausible choice.  There is no actual in-character justification for traveling into the forest. 

Thus, it's not actor stance.  For actor stance to have any meaning, you MUST HAVE an actor in the first place, which means establishing motivations for that character outside of the player's motivations.  Since you haven't established an actor, there's no actor stance to be taken.

But, yeah, I think [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] has the right of it.  I'll go back to lurking for another couple of hundred posts.  It's fun watching people try to bang their heads on the wall of Max, but,  my own morbid curiosity has been satisfied, so, it's back to lurking.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> You bolded too late.  The stances are about _where_ decisions are made, not just what thry are made with.  If you're in Actor stance, you can explain why you went into the forest at that time because the decision was made solely within the character's frame -- ie, his knowledge, motivations, and needs.




So it doesn't matter if I have a 30 page list of my PC's motivations or no set list, I'm not going to step out of character to explain why I am declaring something for my PC.  The motivation is there through, from the declaration above regarding the forest, to the in depth background.  It doesn't cease to be actor stance just because I haven't explained the motivation to the DM.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I'm not the one who introduced Forge terminology into this thread.
> 
> [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] introduced discussion of "stance", and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] embraced it.
> 
> I think [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] may have been the first poster to use GNS/GDS terminology, but my memory on that is hazier.
> 
> But if other posters want to use that termnology, I'm happy to engage with it.




I'm just using it, because I've seen you use it a lot.  It's not something I usually talk about as I don't think it's all that helpful.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> So, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], justify your choice of going to the forest as opposed to the "not forest" without referencing motives.  You have easy to travel open fields and a forest (apparently without a trail since that's been specified earlier).  So, why are you going to the forest?  What reason would the character have for going there?  The character is curious?  Why?  The character has no background, thus, no personality, thus, no curiosity.  That was also established earlier.




I already answered this.  To look for a trail to follow.  That decision was made entirely with character knowledge and perceptions.



> And, certainly, if we're traveling, not going into the trackless forest is a more plausible choice.




We don't know that it's trackless.  I'm going in to find out.  When I get in, my PC will have more knowledge and perceptions upon which to base further declarations.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> I already answered this.  To look for a trail to follow.  That decision was made entirely with character knowledge and perceptions.
> 
> 
> 
> We don't know that it's trackless.  I'm going in to find out.  When I get in, my PC will have more knowledge and perceptions upon which to base further declarations.




How does your character know or even think to know that there might be trails that he cannot see and has no knowledge of?  Why are you going to find out?  Nothing you can see and no knowledge your character has can even lead to the question.  The fact that you, the player, think there might be trails in there means that you are no longer in actor stance.  

You are no different than the player who uses fire on the troll.  You are acting on your genre knowledge and your understanding of the game.  NOTHING about your decision is based on character knowledge or perceptions.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Thanks for quoting the perfect support for what I said!  Gygax is talking about the DM adding stuff to the game.




I disagree, and there are other paragraphs in the same preface, and the forward which precedes it, which talk about the participants and people bringing things to the game, etc. In fact, Gygax makes quite clear in the following paragraph that his aim isn't to restrict people in what they can do so much as to create a platform where the experience of play can follow a familiar process in each campaign. 

"When you build your campaign you will tailor it to suit your personal tastes. In the heat of play i t will slowly evolve into a
compound of your personality and those of your better participants, a superior alloy." --EGG DMG 1e preface

That doesn't sound like it is all on the DM to create everything!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Try using your ability to understand context, and not use some inane "But he didn't spell out Dungeon Master by name.  Hur hur!" as some sort of "counter" to my argument.
> 
> What he said: I did not include everything, because other people would think of and include things of their own. (paraphrased)
> 
> What he did not say: I did not include everything and everything I didn't include is automatically included.
> 
> He said that you have to bring those things into the game deliberately.  It's right there in the bold.  You have to think of those things and deliberately devise them for your game.  And in 1e, it was the DM who did those things.
> 
> "Naturally, everything possible cannot be included in the whole of this work. As a participant in the game, I would not care to have anyone telling me exactly what must go into a campaign and how it must be handled; if so, why not play some game like chess? As the author I also realize that there are limits to my creativity and imagination. *Others will think of things I didn't, and devise things beyond my capability.*"




Again, I don't think Gygax is necessarily limiting himself here to DMs. He probably DID have them primarily in mind (this is the preface to a DMG after all, and one which explicitly states that players should 'keep out'). However, there's plenty of material and discussion where he talks about what players do, how they relate to DMs, etc. If you were to read the PHB you will also see that there's a good bit about how the players input to the game works. D&D clearly does envisage a DM with overall authority and authorial/editorial control, but the point is nobody, not even Gary, ever thought players were simply supposed to passively accept whatever the DM did. This same preface hints at reasons a campaign might 'die', such as DMs who are too strict!


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> How does your character know or even think to know that there might be trails that he cannot see and has no knowledge of?  Why are you going to find out?  Nothing you can see and no knowledge your character has can even lead to the question.  The fact that you, the player, think there might be trails in there means that you are no longer in actor stance.




People growing up in the game world have a working knowledge of trees, forests, plains, flowers, the sky, etc.   



> You are no different than the player who uses fire on the troll.  You are acting on your genre knowledge and your understanding of the game.  NOTHING about your decision is based on character knowledge or perceptions.




Unlike basic terrain, trolls are not basic.

Sometimes you make it really hard to take you seriously.  I almost laughed at that post as a joke, but I THINK(not entirely sure) you were serious.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

lowkey13 said:


> Maybe. I mean, I try to check in every 200 comments* or so .... and maybe I'm wrong, but IIRC, it seems to me that one poster introduced those terms, and then continues to use them and further add details to them.
> 
> I mean, sure, you could criticize other people for debating over playstyles given the use of obscurantist terms that they aren't perfectly familiar with, but there are no winners, here. It would be like if I began to introduce specialized terms from my profession into a regular argument over something else, and then someone else argued with me over those terms, and I kept dredging up examples of why they're wrong using the specialized definitions.
> 
> It's not that I'm wrong, but it's also not helpful. To quote myself- "one rarely convinces people by defining terms." Or, as I try to think of it- jargon is helpful when it is a shortcut to talking to people who are familiar with it for getting across shared concepts, but it is decidedly unhelpful when you are arguing (or convincing) people who don't necessarily agree with you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's the exact mix of resignation and disgust I strive for in all my relationships.
> 
> 
> *Masochism.




And one NEVER successfully communicates with others without a common language and agreed upon ontology. Never, this is a basic tenet of communications theory. I don't think anyone is misusing language or abusing terminology here. It was introduced in order to clarify, not to obscure.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I disagree, and there are other paragraphs in the same preface, and the forward which precedes it, which talk about the participants and people bringing things to the game, etc. In fact, Gygax makes quite clear in the following paragraph that his aim isn't to restrict people in what they can do so much as to create a platform where the experience of play can follow a familiar process in each campaign.
> 
> "When you build your campaign you will tailor it to suit your personal tastes. In the heat of play i t will slowly evolve into a
> compound of your personality and those of your better participants, a superior alloy." --EGG DMG 1e preface
> 
> That doesn't sound like it is all on the DM to create everything!




Classic play is the DM creating the world, encounters, adventures, etc., and the players interacting with it.  So it becomes a joint session in that the DM doesn't control what the players will have their PCs do with what he plans out.  That's how 1e and 2e played out if you went by things as written and intended.



> Again, I don't think Gygax is necessarily limiting himself here to DMs. He probably DID have them primarily in mind (this is the preface to a DMG after all, and one which explicitly states that players should 'keep out'). However, there's plenty of material and discussion where he talks about what players do, how they relate to DMs, etc. If you were to read the PHB you will also see that there's a good bit about how the players input to the game works. D&D clearly does envisage a DM with overall authority and authorial/editorial control, but the point is nobody, not even Gary, ever thought players were simply supposed to passively accept whatever the DM did. This same preface hints at reasons a campaign might 'die', such as DMs who are too strict!




As you point out there, the recourse for players who don't like what the DM is creating is to quit(or try to convince the DM to change), not to create things of their own for the DM's game.  The players don't have any innate ability to create for the game world in 1e/2e.  At least not beyond the initial character creation.  What impact they have after play begins is done through PC interaction with the game world.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I already answered this.  To look for a trail to follow.  That decision was made entirely with character knowledge and perceptions.
> 
> 
> 
> We don't know that it's trackless.  I'm going in to find out.  When I get in, my PC will have more knowledge and perceptions upon which to base further declarations.




But why do you want to follow a trail? I mean, think about you yourself in real life. You are standing at the edge of a forest. You don't just go in without ANY motivation. Using the information and knowledge at your disposal goes without saying, that's not really needing to be spelled out (in the game using ONLY that knowledge and information does, which is why that word was there, not to exclude motivation). So, if real life Max goes into a forest, he has a reason. Now, explain what the reason is that your PC did that. You can't, because you have no idea what might motivate the PC. It has no value system, no goals, no fears, needs, nothing. At best you could say "in order to have an adventure", but given that you have no articulated 'adventuring spirit' in your character, you could only impute even that motive after the fact (author stance). In fact what you have here is pawn or director mode play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Classic play is the DM creating the world, encounters, adventures, etc., and the players interacting with it.  So it becomes a joint session in that the DM doesn't control what the players will have their PCs do with what he plans out.  That's how 1e and 2e played out if you went by things as written and intended.
> 
> 
> 
> As you point out there, the recourse for players who don't like what the DM is creating is to quit(or try to convince the DM to change), not to create things of their own for the DM's game.  The players don't have any innate ability to create for the game world in 1e/2e.  At least not beyond the initial character creation.  What impact they have after play begins is done through PC interaction with the game world.




The players certainly have authority. They can impute any sort of attitude or motivation onto their characters, they can decide what actions they take, and they can decide what their characters know, at least within genre conventions and such. I see NOTHING in AD&D which contradicts any of that. 

I believe that, even in AD&D, players also have some authority in terms of the resolution of actions. If a fighter swings at an orc and gets a hit against the orc's AC, the DM isn't normally empowered to negate that (it could happen that there is some hidden factor, D&D doesn't have transparency here). The same goes for things like spells, saving throws, and even things like reaction rolls and loyalty checks (which have spelled-out rules). 

I'd also point out that a DM taking actions which would contravene any of the things I've mentioned above is OFTEN, maybe even typically, described as engaging in poor DMing practice, at best. So it is widely acknowledged that DM authority is not at all absolute.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But why do you want to follow a trail? I mean, think about you yourself in real life. You are standing at the edge of a forest. You don't just go in without ANY motivation. Using the information and knowledge at your disposal goes without saying, that's not really needing to be spelled out (in the game using ONLY that knowledge and information does, which is why that word was there, not to exclude motivation). So, if real life Max goes into a forest, he has a reason. Now, explain what the reason is that your PC did that. You can't, because you have no idea what might motivate the PC. It has no value system, no goals, no fears, needs, nothing. At best you could say "in order to have an adventure", but given that you have no articulated 'adventuring spirit' in your character, you could only impute even that motive after the fact (author stance). In fact what you have here is pawn or director mode play.




Sure.  Presumably there was prior play that got me to the forest, so I would have more to go on than the bare bones I'm describing.  I'm only limiting myself to the bare bones in this instance to show that I can still make decisions in actor stance, even in a highly limited situation than that.  I have also been in similar positions more than once.  Some DMs I have played with occasionally started the campaign off with us in the middle of nowhere and said, "What do you do?"  I was still able to step into my character and make decisions as him.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The players certainly have authority. They can impute any sort of attitude or motivation onto their characters, they can decide what actions they take, and they can decide what their characters know, at least within genre conventions and such. I see NOTHING in AD&D which contradicts any of that.
> 
> I believe that, even in AD&D, players also have some authority in terms of the resolution of actions. If a fighter swings at an orc and gets a hit against the orc's AC, the DM isn't normally empowered to negate that (it could happen that there is some hidden factor, D&D doesn't have transparency here). The same goes for things like spells, saving throws, and even things like reaction rolls and loyalty checks (which have spelled-out rules).
> 
> I'd also point out that a DM taking actions which would contravene any of the things I've mentioned above is OFTEN, maybe even typically, described as engaging in poor DMing practice, at best. So it is widely acknowledged that DM authority is not at all absolute.




From the 1e DMG.

"Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself *the ultimate power.* *To become the final arbiter*, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot.* By the same token, they are playing the game the way you, their DM, imagines and creates it.*"

The game is pretty clearly the DMs.  Gygax does often caution against abusing the power or altering things too much, but he has in fact given that ultimate power to the DM.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> People growing up in the game world have a working knowledge of trees, forests, plains, flowers, the sky, etc.
> 
> 
> 
> Unlike basic terrain, trolls are not basic.
> 
> Sometimes you make it really hard to take you seriously.  I almost laughed at that post as a joke, but I THINK(not entirely sure) you were serious.




ROTFLMAO.

Really.

So, that city kid whose closest experience with a forest is the last salad he ate is going to have a working knowledge of forests?  That dwarf whose spent his entire life underground understands forests?  That acolyte who grew up in a temple in Waterdeep has a working knowledge of forests?  

Sure.  You're not inserting yourself as the Author at all.  Nope, not a little bit.


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> So, that city kid whose closest experience with a forest is the last salad he ate is going to have a working knowledge of forests?  That dwarf whose spent his entire life underground understands forests?  That acolyte who grew up in a temple in Waterdeep has a working knowledge of forests?



Right. This is a version of a point that someone (  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]?  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) made upthread - that the reason why knowledge of trolls is out because it's "metagame" knowledge, yet knowledge of how to find traps, secret doors and the like is in (together with the knowledge that they are likely enough to exist that they are worth searching for), because it's in-character knowledge, is quite obscure.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - now that I've drawn your attention to the fact that, _in the same essay that includes the word "only" that you are rather fodcused upon_, Ron Edwards _also _describes "actor stance" as _utilizing the character's knowledge and priorities to determine what the character does_, do you remain adamant that you can play in actor stance although your PC has no established priorities?



Maxperson said:


> Even so, my declaration regarding the forest involves only knowledge and perceptions that the PC has, and has a motivation of the PC.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I am working with PC knowledge, perceptions and motivations.



But where does that motivation come from? If you're just authoring it ("my PC is curious about trees!") because you want your PC to go into the forest, that's the paradigm of _author stance_ - choosing based on player priorities and retrofitting an appropriate motivation onto the PC.

Which is my point about B2. If a player builds a PC using the process set out in Moldvay Basic, or Gygax's PHB, actor stance will not be possible because nothing in either book suggests that part of building a PC is (i) establishing motivations which (ii) will engage in some fashion with the situations the GM will present you with.

The same is true of Classic Traveller, but it does have an example of PC generation which shows how a backstory and motivations can be established as part of the lifepath PC gen system, and we took that approach to PC building in my current Traveller campaign.

But in games which don't have those motivations, and don't care about them, it's pawn stance all the way! I can't pretnd to be across the full gamut of TSR D&D modules, but the first one I can think of that doesn't rest on a premise of pawn stance is Dragonlance. The G, D, A, C, S and I (Pharoah) modules, B1, B2, X1, X2 and the X (Desert Nomad) modules all assume pawn stance. Even some later modules that present themselves as more "story heavy", like the OA modules, need a fair bit of work to be usable from a non-pawn stance perspective. (I've done that work for OA3 and OA7.) The two 3E-era modules I've used - Speaker in Dreams and Bastion of Broken Souls - also assume pawn stance. (And I've done work on them, to use elements of them in games that place more emphasis on PC motivations.)

Of course this relates back to Christopher Kubasik's point, that unless you are prepared to shoehorn in PC motivations (av Dragonlance) it is very hard to write a commercially viable module that aims to support actor stance.


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## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> Sure.  Presumably there was prior play that got me to the forest, so I would have more to go on than the bare bones I'm describing.  I'm only limiting myself to the bare bones in this instance to show that I can still make decisions in actor stance, even in a highly limited situation than that.




THIS is the heart of it. Engaging with the tree example is just stepping into a minefield of reductio ad absurdum.

EDIT (addressed to everyone): To be clear, according to Maxperson, rpgers at his table engage in actor stance. Metagaming is seen antithetical to the spirit of actor stance so metagaming is expressly forbidden at his table. But we  know things are usually never that binary.

Maxperson has mentioned that despite best efforts metagaming can/will creep in as in the hit point conversation from upthread. That is just human nature.

In the same sense, it is my belief, that sometimes (and again this is due to human nature), players at Maxperson's table might subconsciously engage in some author stance. That does not mean that the table suddenly and forever switches away from actor stance due to these author instances. No, his table's primary method of roleplaying engagement is actor stance, at least this is what they strive for, this is their ideal.


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> "When you build your campaign you will tailor it to suit your personal tastes. In the heat of play i t will slowly evolve into a compound of your personality and those of your better participants, a superior alloy." --EGG DMG 1e preface
> 
> That doesn't sound like it is all on the DM to create everything!





Maxperson said:


> From the 1e DMG.
> 
> "Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself *the ultimate power.* *To become the final arbiter*, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot.* By the same token, they are playing the game the way you, their DM, imagines and creates it.*"
> 
> The game is pretty clearly the DMs.  Gygax does often caution against abusing the power or altering things too much, but he has in fact given that ultimate power to the DM.



So I've had a look at my copy of Gygax's DMG.

AbdulAlhazred's quote is found on p 7. It's the first sentence of the second paragraph of the preface. The second sentence of the fourth paragraph appears to reinforce the point that AbdulAlhazred has taken from it (namely, that participants other than the GM have a singificant role to play in shaping the campaign):

As a participant in the game, I would not care to have anyone telling me exactly what must go into a campaign and how it must be handled; if so, why not play some game like chess?​
(And now that I type it out, I remember that someone - AbdulAlhazred again? - already quoted this upthread.)

The passage that Maxperson quotes is found on p 9, as the first quarter or so of the final paragraph of the introduction.

Here are a few interpretive possibilities:

* Gygax (and his book) is just flat-out contradictory;

* Gygax changed his mind between writing the introduction and writing the preface (I'm assuming here that, as is normal with a book, the preface was written towards the end of the process);

* The two passages can be reconciled.​
I think that the last option seems the most plausible in this case. Here is the entirety of the paragraph from which Maxperson's quote comes:

Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. To become the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot. By the same token, they are playing the game the way you, their DM, imagines and creates it. Remembering that the game is greater than its parts, and knowing all of the parts, you will have overcome the greater part of the challenge of being a referee. Being a true DM requires cleverness and imagination which no set of rules books can bestow. Seeing that you were clever enough to buy this volume, and you have enough imagination to desire to become the maker of a fantasy world, you are almost there already! Read and become familiar with the contents of this work and the one written for players, learn your monsters,
and spice things up with some pantheons of super-powerful beings. Then put your judging and refereeing ability into the creation of your own personal milieu, and you have donned the mantle of Dungeon Master. Welcome to the exalted ranks of the overworked and harrassed, whose cleverness and imagination are all too often unappreciated by cloddish characters whose only thought in life is to loot, pillage, slay, and who fail to appreciate the hours of preparation which went into the creation of what they aim to destroy as cheaply and quickly as possible. As a DM you must live by the immortal words of the sage who said: “Never give a sucker an even break.” Also, don‘t be a sucker for your players, for you‘d better be sure they follow sage advice too. As the DM, you have to prove in every game that you are still the best. This book is dedicated to helping to assure that you are.​
Clearly the adversarial tone of this paragraph is intended in humour. But the message of the last part of the paragraph seems clear enough: in adjudicating the game, and especially setting up and adjudicating the fiction, the GM should be impartial rather than easily swayed by self-interested players. (Rembering, as the references to looting etc make clear, that the whole assumption that informs this paragraph is that the GM is designing a world which provides opportunities for the players to acquire XP by looting and, to some extent, killing.)

The earlier part of the paragraph, which includes what Maxperson quoted, stresses that the players want to play _this_ game (ie AD&D) but also that the GM must arbitrate and not simply interpret the rules. What does Gygax have in mind here? To me, at least, a key idea - reinforced by what the paragraph goes on to discuss - seems to be that the GM has to establish and adjudicate the fiction. Eg deciding what happens when a player delcares that his/her PC pokes the 10' pole into the green demon mouth isn't primarily a matter of rules interpretation (the rules for spheres of annihilation simply aren't that rich) but of adjudication of the fiction.

My view is that it's very clear, not just in this paragraph but throughout classic D&D rulebooks, both in word and in tenor, that the GM is the one who must adjudicate the fiction. (Which takes us back to the discussion of "free kriegsspiel" way upthread.) But that doesn't mean that the GM has sole authority over the entirety of the campaign. Which is where the "superior alloy" idea comes in. The players don't _adjudicate_ the fiction, but I think they are expected to _contribute_ to it - or, at least, the "better" players are. This may involve anything from inventing new dungeon tactics, to trying new combinations of spells and items, to conceiving of madcap schemes to take over rulership of the 20th level of the Greyahwk dungeon, or whatever it might be. Why does the DMG have rules for two-weapon fighting? Almost certainly because a player asked what happens if his/her PC wields two weapons! The idea that the limits of the players' imaginations should be set by the limits of the GM's imagination is not something that I find at all in these classic D&D books. Quite the opposite - it's expected that the GM will be having to respond, all the time, to players who push the envelope! Hence the importance of the GM "prov[ing] in every game that [s/he is] still the best." S/he has to be able to keep up with the players, and handle whatever adjudicative challenges they throw his/her way.

I personally think there is a marked contrast in tone between these classic texts, and this particular version of the player/GM dynamic that they put forward, and the 2nd ed PHB (pp 9, 18, 47, 49):

An adventure usually has a goal of some sort: protect the villagers from the monsters; rescue the lost princess; explore the ancient ruins. . . .

Remember, the point of an adventure is not to win but to have fun while working toward a common goal. . . .

_t is possible to turn . . ."disappointing" stats into a character who is both interesting and fun to play. Too often players become obsessed with "good" stats. These players immediately give up on a character if he doesn't have a majority of above-average scores. There are even those who feel a character is hopeless if he does not have at least one ability of 17 or higher! Needless to say, these players would never consider playing a character with an ability score of 6 or 7.

In truth, [a PC]'s survivability has a lot less to do with his ability scores than with your desire to role-play him. If you give up on him, of course he won't survive! But if you take an interest in the character and role-play him well, then even a character with the lowest possible scores can present a fun, challenging, and all-around exciting time. Does he have a Charisma of 5? Why? Maybe he's got an ugly scar. His table manners could be atrocious. He might mean well but always manage to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. He could be bluntly honest to the point of rudeness, something not likely to endear him to most people. His Dexterity is a 3? Why? Is he naturally clumsy or blind as a bat?

Don't give up on a character just because he has a low score. Instead, view it as an opportunity to role-play, to create a unique and entertaining personality in the game. Not only will you have fun creating that personality, but other players and the DM will have fun reacting to him. . . .

[A]lignment is an aid to role-playing and should be used that way. Don't choose an alignment that will be hard to role play or that won't be fun. A player who chooses an unappealing alignment probably will wind up playing a different alignment anyway. In that case, he might as well have chosen the second alignment to begin with. A player who thinks that lawful good characters are boring goody-two-shoes who don't get to have any fun should play a chaotic good character instead. On the other hand, a player who thinks that properly role-playing a heroic, lawful good fighter would be an interesting challenge is encouraged to try it. . . .

[T]he game revolves around cooperation among everyone in the group. The character who tries to go it alone or gets everyone angry at him is likely to have a short career. Always consider the alignments of other characters in the group. Certain combinations, particularly lawful good and any sort of evil, are explosive. Sooner or later the group will find itself spending more time arguing than adventuring. Some of this is unavoidable (and occasionally amusing), but too much is ultimately destructive. . . .

Ultimately, the player is advised to pick an alignment he can play comfortably, one that fits in with those of the rest of the group, and he should stay with that alignment for the course of the character's career. There will be times when the DM, especially if he is clever, creates situations to test the character's resolve and ethics. But finding the right course of action within the character's alignment is part of the fun and challenge of roleplaying._​_

To me, at least, these passages suggest a much more passive role for the players than Gygax seems to envisage. There is no suggestion that they will test the GM! Rather, they will enjoy the experience of "roleplaying" their characters, which seems to mean manifesting their PCs' personalities without too much regard to whether or not this will lead to success at goals, but not to such an extent as might disrupt group cohesion.

When players approach the game in that spirit, it seems a natural consequence that the role of the GM in shaping the fiction will be quite predominant if not exclusive._


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## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> THIS is the heart of it. Engaging with the tree example is just stepping into a minefield of reductio ad absurdum.
> 
> EDIT (addressed to everyone): To be clear, according to Maxperson, rpgers at his table engage in actor stance. Metagaming is seen antithetical to the spirit of actor stance so metagaming is expressly forbidden at his table. But we  know things are usually never that binary.
> 
> Maxperson has mentioned that despite best efforts metagaming can/will creep in as in the hit point conversation from upthread. That is just human nature.
> 
> In the same sense, it is my belief, that sometimes (and again this is due to human nature), players at Maxperson's table might subconsciously engage in some author stance. That does not mean that the table suddenly and forever switches away from actor stance due to these author instances. No, his table's primary method of roleplaying engagement is actor stance, at least this is what they strive for, this is their ideal.



Players at [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s table may enjoy acting, but that's not Actor stance.  You can use Author, Director, and even Pawn stance and _still do acting._  Actor stance really has little to do with acting or what's usually called "being in character" in RPGs.

The vast majority of my D&D play has been Author stance play, yet I mostly use "I" statements and talk in funny voices.  I'm making decisions from my player point of view and then coming up with PC motivations.  Any time I decide not to murder that elf after being caught in another fireball because that elf is a PC, I'm in Author stance even if I play my character as grumbling about that damn elf and making theeats.  It's my player motivations that decide, not the PC's.

And, metagaming as defined by Max is orthogonal to stances.  By that I mean no stance, as defined, cares about that form of metagaming.  You can decide that your character knows about trolls in Actor stance quite easily, because if the character knows it, it's part of the character's knowledge.  However, as I said above, if you have your character act like they don't know when the player knows because of the player's desire to not engage in the player concept of metagaming, you're in Author stance by definition.  No amount of silly voices and acting changes this.

Stances are about which frame decisions are made and whose priorities they serve.  The names of the stances are only obscurely connected to the meaning of the words and are easy to mistake for the more generally used meaning.  Hence, acting is often confused with Actor stance, even though acting isn't a required part of it.  Think more like a movie being shot.  If you're the actor, and you ad lib in the scene only according to your inhabitation of the character's motivations and views, that's Actor stance.  If you act your character because that's what the script says, even if you act it really well, that's akin to Author or Director stance -- the actions come from outside the character. This is a bad analogy, like all analogies, but does highlight that acting isn't required of any stance and can be in all of them, even Pawn.  When I play Gloomhaven, a boardgame, I'm never in Actor stance, even though I often use a funny voice and make up reasons for my character to make decisions I then portray in character.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> Players at @_*Maxperson*_'s table may enjoy acting, but that's not Actor stance.  You can use Author, Director, and even Pawn stance and _still do acting._  Actor stance really has little to do with acting or what's usually called "being in character" in RPGs.
> 
> The vast majority of my D&D play has been Author stance play, yet I mostly use "I" statements and talk in funny voices.  I'm making decisions from my player point of view and then coming up with PC motivations.  Any time I decide not to murder that elf after being caught in another fireball because that elf is a PC, I'm in Author stance even if I play my character as grumbling about that damn elf and making theeats.  It's my player motivations that decide, not the PC's.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> Stances are about which frame decisions are made and whose priorities they serve.  The names of the stances are only obscurely connected to the meaning of the words and are easy to mistake for the more generally used meaning.  Hence, acting is often confused with Actor stance, even though acting isn't a required part of it.  Think more like a movie being shot.  If you're the actor, and you ad lib in the scene only according to your inhabitation of the character's motivations and views, that's Actor stance.  If you act your character because that's what the script says, even if you act it really well, that's akin to Author or Director stance -- the actions come from outside the character. This is a bad analogy, like all analogies, but does highlight that acting isn't required of any stance and can be in all of them, even Pawn.  When I play Gloomhaven, a boardgame, I'm never in Actor stance, even though I often use a funny voice and make up reasons for my character to make decisions I then portray in character.




To be clear when I mean actor stance I'm referring to thinking in character not acting in character or rehearsing a script. I'm unsure why you thought I was referring to actual acting in character. 

EDIT: Metagaming is about not thinking in character as your decisions in game are being influenced by external factors (game mechanics for instance, or RL-time constraints/pacing...etc)


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> it is my belief, that sometimes (and again this is due to human nature), players at Maxperson's table might subconsciously engage in some author stance. That does not mean that the table suddenly and forever switches away from actor stance due to these author instances. No, his table's primary method of roleplaying engagement is actor stance, at least this is what they strive for, this is their ideal.



The thing is, as I've already posted, as a player I enjoy actor stance and associated "inhabitation" of the character. That is my ideal. But that has next-to-no bearing on how one decides what the PC knows.

I think analysis by reference to stance is not all that illuminating, precisely for the reason that (as Ron Edward says) it is so labile in play.



Sadras said:


> Metagaming is about not thinking in character as your decisions in game are being influenced by external factors (game mechanics for instance, or RL-time constraints/pacing...etc)



No doubt [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] will correct me if I'm wrong - but I took the point to be that if a player _decides that his/her PC doesn't know about trolls because of compliance with a table rule forbidding "metagaming"_, then the action has been taken to give effect to a player priority, and hence is author stance.

Actor stance would be based on what one's character knows and wants. _If the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls_, then actor stance in a troll encounter won't be possible.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The thing is, as I've already posted, as a player I enjoy actor stance and associated "inhabitation" of the character. That is my ideal. But that has next-to-no bearing on how one decides what the PC knows.




I think so.

EDIT: It took me a while to muddle through this.


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## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> So, that city kid whose closest experience with a forest is the last salad he ate is going to have a working knowledge of forests?  That dwarf whose spent his entire life underground understands forests?  That acolyte who grew up in a temple in Waterdeep has a working knowledge of forests?




That city kid and acolyte who used to find paths through the trees in the park when he was young?  Who used to have stories of children wandering wooded paths told to him by his grandmother? Before you start saying, "But uncle Ernie!!"  It's not the same thing as trees are basic aspects of the world and trolls are not.  One is all over the place, unless you are in a setting like Athas.  One is never going to be seen by 90%+ of the population of the planet.

 And a dwarf who never went out onto the mountain and its trees/forests would have sunlight sensitivity like drow have, having spent his entire life in the darkness.   So sure, if you want to voluntarily give your dwarf sunlight sensitivity and let me know in your background that you stayed underground your entire life, I'd accept that you wouldn't know about paths in the forests.  Of course, you also wouldn't make that declaration to me, knowing that your PC didn't know about paths.

You are aware that if you have to create corner case scenarios like dwarves who have never left the darkness in order to "disprove" basic world knowledge, you've just proven my point, right?  Going out of your way to find exceptions to the rule, proves the rule.



> Sure.  You're not inserting yourself as the Author at all.  Nope, not a little bit.




Not at all.  I've been arguing this entire thread that things that make sense via background provide knowledge.  Pay attention.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - now that I've drawn your attention to the fact that, _in the same essay that includes the word "only" that you are rather fodcused upon_, Ron Edwards _also _describes "actor stance" as _utilizing the character's knowledge and priorities to determine what the character does_, do you remain adamant that you can play in actor stance although your PC has no established priorities?




Priorities =/= established priorities.



> But where does that motivation come from? If you're just authoring it ("my PC is curious about trees!") because you want your PC to go into the forest, that's the paradigm of _author stance_ - choosing based on player priorities and retrofitting an appropriate motivation onto the PC.




If authoring priorities for the PC(not for the player) = a failure to be able to go into actor stance, then actor stance does not exist.  All priorities for the PC are authored by the player.  You can author the priority a year in advance of the game, and "your just authoring it."  

It does not matter whether you author them in advance or on the spot.  So long as they are PC motivations and not the player's motivations, it is not author stance.



> But in games which don't have those motivations, and don't care about them, it's pawn stance all the way! I can't pretnd to be across the full gamut of TSR D&D modules, but the first one I can think of that doesn't rest on a premise of pawn stance is Dragonlance. The G, D, A, C, S and I (Pharoah) modules, B1, B2, X1, X2 and the X (Desert Nomad) modules all assume pawn stance. Even some later modules that present themselves as more "story heavy", like the OA modules, need a fair bit of work to be usable from a non-pawn stance perspective. (I've done that work for OA3 and OA7.) The two 3E-era modules I've used - Speaker in Dreams and Bastion of Broken Souls - also assume pawn stance. (And I've done work on them, to use elements of them in games that place more emphasis on PC motivations.)




Modules are irrelevant to stance.  Only the PC and/or player matter.  I had a DM take a PC of mine who I created a strong background for and had played from 1st level to the level required for the Pharaoh modules, and then ran us through them.  Are you really arguing that I could not make decisions in actor stance for a PC who I knew intimately, because module?


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> And how’s that been working for you? Wait ... don’t answer. I’ll check in another 500 comments.



I would assess that with most people in this thread, the terminology is working swimmingly well. Just because at least one obstinate individual is failing miserably with it does not mean that the terminology fails. I believe it is useful to recognize the difference between the failures of terminology and the failures of human agents. 



Maxperson said:


> That city kid and acolyte who used to find paths through the trees in the park when he was young?  Who used to have stories of children wandering wooded paths told to him by his grandmother? Before you start saying, "But uncle Ernie!!"  It's not the same thing as trees are basic aspects of the world and trolls are not.  One is all over the place, unless you are in a setting like Athas.  One is never going to be seen by 90%+ of the population of the planet.
> 
> And a dwarf who never went out onto the mountain and its trees/forests would have sunlight sensitivity like drow have, having spent his entire life in the darkness.   So sure, if you want to voluntarily give your dwarf sunlight sensitivity and let me know in your background that you stayed underground your entire life, I'd accept that you wouldn't know about paths in the forests.  Of course, you also wouldn't make that declaration to me, knowing that your PC didn't know about paths.
> 
> You are aware that if you have to create corner case scenarios like dwarves who have never left the darkness in order to "disprove" basic world knowledge, you've just proven my point, right?  Going out of your way to find exceptions to the rule, proves the rule.



LOL. So basically what you are saying here is that you are applying arbitrary standards about what is common and what is uncommon? Understood.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> No doubt [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] will correct me if I'm wrong - but I took the point to be that if a player _decides that his/her PC doesn't know about trolls because of compliance with a table rule forbidding "metagaming"_, then the action has been taken to give effect to a player priority, and hence is author stance.
> 
> Actor stance would be based on what one's character knows and wants. _If the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls_, then actor stance in a troll encounter won't be possible.




I don't agree with the above assessment.
If the fiction doesn't inform you if your character knows about trolls, and the mechanics were also negative in this regard (say no, or failure on die roll), then that informs you that that your character does not know about trolls and in true actor stance you have to roleplay not knowing. Mechanics or limited fiction does not automatically translate to author stance. I mean Maxperson got so much grief for his _realism_ definition for it being all encompassing, and yet here we want to attribute author stance to anything where mechanics need to be called upon for PC knowledge. That doesn't sit well with me.


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## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> To be clear when I mean actor stance I'm referring to thinking in character not acting in character or rehearsing a script. I'm unsure why you thought I was referring to actual acting in character.
> 
> EDIT: Metagaming is about not thinking in character as your decisions in game are being influenced by external factors (game mechanics for instance, or RL-time constraints/pacing...etc)




I thought that because Max has strongly linked acting and Actor stance and you were referring to his position.

And, yes, that's a functional definition of metagaming that I disagree with, but it can still be used.  With the definition of metagaming, metagaming is unavoidable at all in a situation where tge player knows about trolls but it's not establisged if tge character does.  Even making a knowledge check to establish PC knowledge would be engaging in metagaming, as you're using mechanics because of player knowledge that there's something to know.  Regardless, it would all be Author stance.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Players at [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s table may enjoy acting, but that's not Actor stance.  You can use Author, Director, and even Pawn stance and _still do acting._  Actor stance really has little to do with acting or what's usually called "being in character" in RPGs.




As actors, only one of them would be any good.  They use actor stance.



> The vast majority of my D&D play has been Author stance play, yet I mostly use "I" statements and talk in funny voices.  I'm making decisions from my player point of view and then coming up with PC motivations.  Any time I decide not to murder that elf after being caught in another fireball because that elf is a PC, I'm in Author stance even if I play my character as grumbling about that damn elf and making theeats.  It's my player motivations that decide, not the PC's.




Yeeeeaaaah, this isn't what they do.  When we had a player whose PC caught us with a fireball for the third time, our PCs told his PC that the next time it happened we would kill him, and we would have.  It didn't happen again.

We play the PC's desire, not the desires of the player.



> By that I mean no stance, as defined, cares about that form of metagaming.  You can decide that your character knows about trolls in Actor stance quite easily, because if the character knows it, it's part of the character's knowledge.




Nobody has argued that, though.  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] tried to bring that into this discussion, too.  It wasn't relevant, then, either.



> However, as I said above, if you have your character act like they don't know when the player knows because of the player's desire to not engage in the player concept of metagaming, you're in Author stance by definition.




Nobody has argued that, either.  We are not acting like the character doesn't know, because of the player's desire not to engage in metagaming.  We are saying that the PC knows or doesn't know based on things like pre-established background, skills, etc., and if the PC doesn't know, then having the PC use that player knowledge anyway would be metagaming.  Thanks for playing, Let's Bring in the Strawman, though.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Actor stance would be based on what one's character knows and wants. _If the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls_, then actor stance in a troll encounter won't be possible.




That's a False Dichotomy.  The choices aren't established fiction or no actor stance.  The choices also include not knowing if the PC knows about trolls and having to make a roll to see if the PC possesses the knowledge.  It's very possible to engage actor stance if there is no knowledge established by the fiction prior to the encounter.  A simple knowledge check will suffice, and then the player can proceed to make the decision based on what his character knows about trolls.


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> LOL. So basically what you are saying here is that you are applying arbitrary standards about what is common and what is uncommon? Understood.




Game world facts are arbitrary now?


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## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> And, yes, that's a functional definition of metagaming that I disagree with, but it can still be used.  With the definition of metagaming, metagaming is unavoidable at all in a situation where tge player knows about trolls but it's not establisged if tge character does.  Even making a knowledge check to establish PC knowledge would be engaging in metagaming, as you're using mechanics because of player knowledge that there's something to know.  Regardless, it would all be Author stance.




I dunno, IMO there is a significant difference between using the mechanics to determine if one's character knows about trolls, and another in which the player uses their knowledge about falling damage and their current hit point total to inform themselves if their character can survive jumping off a 40 foot height before their action declaration. The latter I would classify as metagaming, not the former. Furthermore in 5e at least, the DM needs to permit your roll, so it is an instruction by the DM. 
If my definition of metagaming is falling short to differentiate between the two, which it probably is, then that is on me - but I'm speaking clearly enough for all to understand. 

I really do not want to get caught up in a Hussar/Maxperson definition debacle*. Humourous as they are to witness (and they really are) I don't have the energy to be involved in one. 

EDIT: *The street urchin one is the conversation to top.


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Game world facts are arbitrary now?



Max. Max. Max. Really? Confusing your "game world opinions" for objective "game worlds facts"? Given your prior statement on the error of confusing facts with opinions, I'm quite disappointed in you. Will you ever learn?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls, then actor stance in a troll encounter won't be possible.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the fiction doesn't inform you if your character knows about trolls, and the mechanics were also negative in this regard (say no, or failure on die roll), then that informs you that that your character does not know about trolls
Click to expand...


If the rules of a game support your account, then the established fiction tells me that my character does not know about trolls. Or to put it another way, you're suggesting a game which makes the conditional I stated - _the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls_ - impossible; because you're positing that if the established fiction (including check results) doesn't establish that my PC knows, then my PC doesn't know.

EDIT:


Maxperson said:


> That's a False Dichotomy.  The choices aren't established fiction or no actor stance.  The choices also include not knowing if the PC knows about trolls and having to make a roll to see if the PC possesses the knowledge.  It's very possible to engage actor stance if there is no knowledge established by the fiction prior to the encounter.  A simple knowledge check will suffice, and then the player can proceed to make the decision based on what his character knows about trolls.



Who declares the knowledge check? If the player, then the knowledge check itself is clearly an instance of author stance - a player priority means that the character tries to recollect everything s/he ever heard about trolls.

If the GM, then the check does not involve any stance on the player's part, as the player hasn't made _any_ decision for the character.

Either way, the check might establish some further fiction (eg that the character knows about trolls) that can then inform a downstream action declaration.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I thought that because Max has strongly linked acting and Actor stance and you were referring to his position.




I've never linked them.  That's a Strawman argument you have engaged in.  Hell, I've never even mentioned acting and "acting" as you describe it here isn't at all what I am talking about or going on in my game.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If authoring priorities for the PC(not for the player) = a failure to be able to go into actor stance, then actor stance does not exist.  All priorities for the PC are authored by the player.



Let's go back to Ron Edwards:

* In *Actor *stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.

* In *Author *stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions based on the real person's priorities, then retroactively "motivates" the character to perform them. (Without that second, retroactive step, this is fairly called *Pawn *stance.)

. . .

The communicative and demonstrative aspects of "acting" are not involved in Actor Stance at all, which only means that the player is utilizing the character's knowledge and priorities to determine what the character does.​
The contrast between actor and author stance is the contrast between two methods of _deciding what a character does._

The player can decide based on his/her priorities: this is author stance (assuming that an appropriate motivation is also imputed to the chracter), or otherwise pawn stance.

Or the player can decide based on his/her reasoning from the character's established mental states: this is actor stance.

The _timing_ of the establishment of character mental states is quite central to stance. Author stance means _establishing a mental state as part of the process of action declaration_ - that's what _retroactively motivating_ refers to.

Actor stance doesn't depend on motivations _never being authored_ (as you say, that would be impossible). It depends on motivations being established _prior to_ action declarations, so that they can inform those action declarations. That's why - to repeat a point I've made several times upthread - many of the RPGs published in the immediate post-D&D era (I've pointed to RQ and C&S as two prominent examples) included setting frameworks, and the integration of PC generation into the setting, which would establish the character motivations necessary for actor stance.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> I dunno, IMO there is a significant difference between using the mechanics to determine if one's character knows about trolls, and another in which the player uses their knowledge about falling damage and their current hit point total to inform themselves if their character can survive jumping off a 40 foot height before their action declaration. The latter I would classify as metagaming, not the former. Furthermore in 5e at least, the DM needs to permit your roll, so it is an instruction by the DM.
> If my definition of metagaming is falling short to differentiate between the two, which it probably is, then that is on me - but I'm speaking clearly enough for all to understand.




I don't see any problem in having the Pc well aware of his Hp. I mean, it's like having an 18 in charisma, or strenght: a pro boxer IRL is conscious of his own strenght, endurance, and overall technique ability, before jumping on a ring to fight, actually even before organizing the match itself. 
The problem lies in how the Falling Damage rules apply, rather. I'd say for the casual jump of a cliff in the wilderland, with trees, rocks protruding and water below, it's easy to explain how the Pc managed to survive. If the case is a straight freefall on a floor of concrete, and the table wants it to be a deadly affair, use a saving throw, or flip a coin: head survived but crippled, tail dead. 
Otherwise embrace the fact that Hp as they stand are a (meta)game resource to do stuff out of the ordinary.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> If the rules of a game support your account, then the established fiction tells me that my character does not know about trolls. Or to put it another way, you're suggesting a game which makes the conditional I stated - _the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls_ - impossible; because you're positing that if the established fiction (including check results) doesn't establish that my PC knows, then my PC doesn't know.




Yes, if I understood you correctly.
It becomes interesting in games/tables where part of the rules of the game, allows for players to inject an uncle Elmo.


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## Numidius

If my Pc survives a freefall, how could he be not aware that he can easily survive freefalls? 
It's established fiction by then. 

Same after managing to win a fight against six orcs. The Pc can go into the tavern and say: "I can handle six orcs by myself using this!" (Drops loudly his sword on the thick wooden table in front of a dozen drinking dwarves)


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## Sadras

Numidius said:


> I don't see any problem in having the Pc well aware of his Hp. I mean, it's like having an 18 in charisma, or strenght: a pro boxer IRL is conscious of his own strenght, endurance, and overall technique ability, before jumping on a ring to fight, actually even before organizing the match itself.
> The problem lies in how the Falling Damage rules apply*,* rather. I'd say for the casual jump of a cliff in the wilderland, with trees, rocks protruding and water below, it's easy to explain how the Pc managed to survive. If the case is a straight freefall on a floor of concrete, and the table wants it to be a deadly affair, use a saving throw, or flip a coin: head survived but crippled, tail dead.
> Otherwise embrace the fact that Hp as they stand are a (meta)game resource to do stuff out of the ordinary.




My post reflected on the relevance of _falling damage and hit points_ and how they might be used in a metagame scenario and how this differentiates from engaging in a mechanic which determines what a character knows.

Your post seems to encourage some house rules to mitigate some metagame thinking. 

EDIT: I do like the coin toss.


----------



## Numidius

Sadras said:


> My post reflected on the relevance of _falling damage and hit points_ and how they might be used in a metagame scenario and how this differentiates from engaging in a mechanic which determines what a character knows.
> 
> Your post seems to encourage some house rules to mitigate some metagame thinking.



Yeah, but after the unaware Pc survives the freefall, the Pc now is aware he can do it. Or not?


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## Sadras

Numidius said:


> Yeah, but after the unaware Pc survives the freefall, the Pc now is aware he can do it. Or not?




Yes sure, if the conditions are similar enough.


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Game world facts are arbitrary now?



Completely.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> IMO there is a significant difference between using the mechanics to determine if one's character knows about trolls, and another in which the player uses their knowledge about falling damage and their current hit point total to inform themselves if their character can survive jumping off a 40 foot height before their action declaration. The latter I would classify as metagaming, not the former.



To repeat what I just posted: what form does the _use of mechanics to determine if the character knows about trolls_ take?

Is it an action declared by the player for the PC (eg "I rack my brains to recall everything I ever heard about trolls!")? Then it is author stance: the _player_ wants to be able to beat the trolls, apprehends that some in-fiction knowledge must be established, and declares an appropriate action. (And easily retrofits a PC motivation - _I don't want to be eaten by trolls!_)

Is it a check called for by the GM? Then it involves no stance on the player's part, as it's not an action declaration.

Either way, it might establish some fiction - eg that the player knows about trolls, or is ignorant of them - which can then support further actor stance action declarations. But it, itself, is never going to be actor stance as far as I can see.

(Btw, my understanding of orthodox 5e D&D is that the GM doesn't call for knowledge checks in the absence of a player action declaration, so that only the author stance version of a knowledge check can occur. If that's a correct account of 5e, it clearly marks a difference between 5e and some earlier editions, such as AD&D, B/X and 4e.)

What about_using knowledge about falling damage and current hit point total to inform a character's decision to jump off a 40 foot clilff_? If that mechanical knowledge corresponds to some character mental state then this can easily be done in actor stance. (I assume most D&D players assume that the player knowledge that a sword does d8 damage and a dagger does d4 damage corresponds to character knowledge that swords are more dangerous than daggers. Presumably, then, at some tables the falling damage rules are taken to work the same way.)

If the player's mechanical knowledge does not correspond to anything that is in the character's mind, then this can't be done in actor stance.

I would add: because the relationship between hit points, damage and the fiction is quite flexible in D&D, there are a range of possible character mental states that are in play here. For instance, in 4e I wouldn't assume that the character in this scenario _knows_ s/he will survive. Rather, I would assume that the character _reasonably hopes_ that s/he will survive, and jumps of the cliff in part motivated by that hope. Thus I would say that a player decision that his/her PC jumps could easily occur in actor stance: the action declaration issues from a combination of the character's knowlege/beliefs (_there's a 40' cliff_; _at the bottom of the cliff there are orcs attacking the villagers_; _I can only help the villagers by getting to the base of the cliff_), expectations/hopes (_Bahamut's got my back_) and desires/commitments (_I need to helpf those villagers_).

If a table uses D&D-ish hit points, but doesn't allow for character mental states like _Pelor's got my back_ that correlate to having a good hp total, then actor stance in this sort of case becomes much harder. In B/X, for instance, and in Gygax's DMG, hp seem to underlie a pawn stance approach. (This is another instance, in my personal opinion, of 4e taking these classic D&D-isms but really running with them in ways that classic D&D didn't envisage.)


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Actor stance doesn't depend on motivations _never being authored_ (as you say, that would be impossible). It depends on motivations being established _prior to_ action declarations, so that they can inform those action declarations. That's why - to repeat a point I've made several times upthread - many of the RPGs published in the immediate post-D&D era (I've pointed to RQ and C&S as two prominent examples) included setting frameworks, and the integration of PC generation into the setting, which would establish the character motivations necessary for actor stance.




In the same way many published D&D modules and AP's have character hooks and preset character motivations.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I dunno, IMO there is a significant difference between using the mechanics to determine if one's character knows about trolls, and another in which the player uses their knowledge about falling damage and their current hit point total to inform themselves if their character can survive jumping off a 40 foot height before their action declaration. The latter I would classify as metagaming, not the former. Furthermore in 5e at least, the DM needs to permit your roll, so it is an instruction by the DM.
> If my definition of metagaming is falling short to differentiate between the two, which it probably is, then that is on me - but I'm speaking clearly enough for all to understand.
> 
> I really do not want to get caught up in a Hussar/Maxperson definition debacle*. Humourous as they are to witness (and they really are) I don't have the energy to be involved in one.
> 
> EDIT: *The street urchin one is the conversation to top.



I'd argue that knowing a fall is survivable is part and parcel of the world, not metagaming.  The mechanics in this case say how the world operates, it's only when you bring your player knowledge into it that it goes wonky and gets labeled metagaming.  I'd argue that NOT thinking you could survive the fall is the metagaming, here.  Something, maybe, to chew on?  The baggage we bring shouldn't be attributed to the game.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> In the same way many published D&D modules and AP's have character hooks and preset character motivations.



As I posted not too far upthread, DL is - as far as I'm aware - the first TSR module series to do this.

It is later than RQ and C&S, though, by several years.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> To repeat what I just posted: what form does the _use of mechanics to determine if the character knows about trolls_ take?
> 
> Is it an action declared by the player for the PC (eg "I rack my brains to recall everything I ever heard about trolls!")? Then it is author stance: the _player_ wants to be able to beat the trolls, apprehends that some in-fiction knowledge must be established, and declares an appropriate action. (And easily retrofits a PC motivation - _I don't want to be eaten by trolls!_)
> 
> Is it a check called for by the GM? Then it involves no stance on the player's part, as it's not an action declaration.




What if the player is unsure about how to roleplay the situation since nothing has been established in his/her backstory or during roleplay? What if the player just turns to the DM and says "Would my character know about trolls? Do I just make a roll or wouldn't I know?" 

This is not an action declaration, this is a honest reaction from a player seeking to know how to roleplay his character. And this has happened at my table numerous times. It has nothing to do about a player wanting to beat trolls, this is about _roleplay purity_.

EDIT: In all other respects, I agree with your assessments, but the above is murky for the player is the one asking for the roll but not for the reasons you have stated. I would classify that as a check called for by the GM as the player is not pushing for his/her own desires to influence character action/s.


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## Michael Silverbane

Sadras said:


> What if the player is unsure about how to roleplay the situation since nothing has been established in his backstory or during roleplay? What if the player just turns to the DM and says "Would my character know about trolls?"
> 
> This is not an action declaration, this is a honest reaction. And this has happened at my table numerous times. It has nothing to do about a player wanting to beat trolls, this is about _roleplay purity_.




To me, the player asking a question like this *is* an action declaration. Reworded, it is exactly (to me), the same as saying "[My character] remembers pertinent facts about trolls, as related to him by his uncle Rusty."

Since it was stated in the form of a question, clearly it is in doubt (though, at some tables it might not be in doubt), so the DM should call for a check. This might be Dungeoneering, or Monsterwise, or whatever check seems most appropriate for the specific game you're playing. With success, you recall right information, with failure, your character recalls no useful information or wrong information.


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## Sadras

Michael Silverbane said:


> To me, the player asking a question like this *is* an action declaration. Reworded, it is exactly (to me), the same as saying "[My character] remembers pertinent facts about trolls, as related to him by his uncle Rusty."




Disagree. Player motive for uncle Rusty injection is completely different to the one I stated. 



> Since it was stated in the form of a question, clearly it is in doubt (though, at some tables it might not be in doubt), so the DM should call for a check. This might be Dungeoneering, or Monsterwise, or whatever check seems most appropriate for the specific game you're playing. With success, you recall right information, with failure, your character recalls no useful information or wrong information.




We are discussing actor and author stances and whether the player temporarily moves from one stance to another in this specific situation (character knowledge).


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> I don’t suppose that it occurred to you that “most people” that might disagree with either your positions or your terminology long ago abandoned the thread, and that spending countless posts quoting an essay at each other that would not be accepted by many people is, perhaps, simply engaging in an echo chamber as opposed to usefully communicating?



How many that have abandoned the thread does not really matter when looking to the point where discussion of the stance terminology entered the conversation. (I don't reckon we lost many.) Before that the reasons why those people left the thread may vary but we can't conclude that it has much to do with the terminology discussion. 



> I dunno man; this slightly slow golden retriever assumed that one of the purposes of communication was to get your argument (in the classic sense) across to your audience; to the extent that you’re communicating to the converted, why bother, and to the extent you’re attemting to convince someone of a point, it is better to use accepted terms than jargon which obfuscates (see also the difference between “actor stance” and “acting”).
> 
> But what do I know; LOOK A BALL!!!!



You know who's a good boy? You're a good boy, [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]. What you say about communication is certainly the ideal if there is good faith from both parties. But if one party communicates the argument well but the other nevertheless refuses to listen, understand, or reexamine their position, then the conversation is mostly dead regardless. I would say that these are the accepted terms, and I would suggest that is the case given the absence of alternatives. If you reject terms but fail to supply your own, then the given terms will prevail.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Michael Silverbane

Sadras said:


> Disagree. Player motive for uncle Rusty injection is completely different to the one I stated.




Player motive is completely irrelevant to the adjudication of the action declaration. If we're ruling out degenerate play (i.e. someone cheating or being a jerk), then the resolution is the same, regardless of motive. There is (to me) no functional difference.



Sadras said:


> We are discussing actor and author stances and whether the player temporarily moves from one stance to another in this specific situation (character knowledge).




I don't find that distinction either necessary or useful. More important (again, to me) is the question of whether the game covers the actions and its resolution.

In some versions of D&D, there _are_ rules covering if and how much useful knowledge of a creature a character might posses, so it is appropriate to consult those rules when such an action declaration is made.

In some other games, there are no such rules, so some sort of ruling about such questions should be reached. 
 Maybe it is determined that such knowledge is in no way important or useful (i.e. Trolls and other monsters are not specifically vulnerable to any particular attack, nor are they particularly _invulnerable_ to any form of attack). Maybe it is determined that any such knowledge is widely known and automatically recalled. Maybe it is determined that characters know what the players know. Any which way, the table will have to figure it out for themselves.


----------



## Sadras

Michael Silverbane said:


> I don't find that distinction either necessary or useful.




We (myself and yourself) do not appear to be in any disagreement with your left-field conversation point regarding action declarations, adjudication, character knowledge and editions rules. 

However, your self-proclaimed lack of interest in the stance issue has indeed been noted. I bid you a good weekend sir.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> I don't see any problem in having the Pc well aware of his Hp. I mean, it's like having an 18 in charisma, or strenght: a pro boxer IRL is conscious of his own strenght, endurance, and overall technique ability, before jumping on a ring to fight, actually even before organizing the match itself.




A pro boxer knows that one mistake can spell a knockout, and those mistakes do happen.  A PC will know he is strong, but not that he has an 18.  He will know people like him and it's not difficult to persuade people of things, but not that he has an 18.  He will know that his is skilled at avoiding hits, but that one hit can kill him if he makes a mistake, and so he is not aware of hit points.

You can play with the PC aware of those things, but the game does not assume such knowledge as it's purely metagame information.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> A pro boxes knows that one mistake can spell a knockout, and those mistakes do happen.  A PC will know he is strong, but not that he has an 18.  He will know people like him and it's not difficult to persuade people of things, but not that he has an 18.  He will know that his is skilled at avoiding hits, but that one hit can kill him if he makes a mistake, and so he is not aware of hit points.
> 
> You can play with the PC aware of those things, but the game does not assume such knowledge as it's purely metagame information.




Don't get me wrong, certainly not the actual numbers, like 18... 

But One hit can kill them? Of course this is not true, and a Pc is aware of that, because it actually happens in the fiction. Happens every combat, as soon as levels go up. 
Or are you saying that what happens during a combat is not what a Pc sees in his mind?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Sure.  Presumably there was prior play that got me to the forest, so I would have more to go on than the bare bones I'm describing.  I'm only limiting myself to the bare bones in this instance to show that I can still make decisions in actor stance, even in a highly limited situation than that.  I have also been in similar positions more than once.  Some DMs I have played with occasionally started the campaign off with us in the middle of nowhere and said, "What do you do?"  I was still able to step into my character and make decisions as him.




Can you see our point though? You can't be an 'actor' without some sort of characterization to act on. If your character is in a bigger context and has history or backstory then you start to have options, but you cannot call it actor stance with nothing BECAUSE without character motivations, that is needs and wants the character is aiming to fulfill, the only source of motivations is meta-game, which is author/pawn stance or maybe director stance. 

There simply is no 'him' to inhabit. What you are doing is 'being yourself', and YOU have an agenda, which is outside the game. If you truly start asking 'why'? and don't stop until you get to the bottom of it, you'll eventually reach meta-game. IMHO what you are doing is confusing author and actor. You say to yourself "well, here I am in this RPG and I need to do something, and it is supposed to be adventurous. I'll go into the woods!" (note that as R.E. or one of them stated, you are in first person here, but that isn't the same as actor stance). Now you begin to impute motive by creating characterization after the fact, maybe even a split second after, when you say "oh, I'm a curious fellow, that's why I go into the woods." That's being an author and building a character by imputing motives post-hoc. 

Later on you go back in your mind and you think, "well, I invented this new character and he was curious and he went into the woods" but is that what happened? If you, the player, thought the adventure was in the plains, then you'd be motivated to go into the plains. I mean, at best you have NO actual knowledge, you could roll the dice! Who's to say that one action or the other is "out of character" because you have no character to be out of!


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> But One hit can kill them? Of course this is not true, and a Pc is aware of that, because it actually happens in the fiction. Happens every combat, as soon as levels go up.
> Or are you saying that what happens during a combat is not what a Pc sees in his mind?




It is true in the fiction, at least if you play by hit point RAW it is.  "Hits" are not usually hits.  They are near misses, scratches, etc. The only real hit is the one that takes you down to 0 and can kill you.

"Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. *An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious*."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> From the 1e DMG.
> 
> "Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself *the ultimate power.* *To become the final arbiter*, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot.* By the same token, they are playing the game the way you, their DM, imagines and creates it.*"
> 
> The game is pretty clearly the DMs.  Gygax does often caution against abusing the power or altering things too much, but he has in fact given that ultimate power to the DM.




Actually, this passage is rather key in terms of understanding the evolution of RPGs. "for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot." 

Why is this? Because if the game is the one the DM 'makes up on the spot' then it is under the arbitrary control of the DM!!!! Players want, and always wanted, to have the assurance that their authority would not be compromised. Nobody is arguing that Gygax was really BIG on player authority, but he well knew that the instant the DM started screwing with things that the players believed they were entitled to (hitting the orc on a 15 for example) then the gig was up! 

As far as the last sentence in that quote goes, I think this was Gary's undoing as a game designer. He went a long ways, but he failed to get beyond his own creative agenda, at least in a formal sense. It is telling that this is the last significant piece of writing which he did for a game system, it is 1977 and he never authors another game book, except 1e UA which really is nothing significant. OTOH I would point out that anyone familiar with the original GH campaign, as described in various Dragon articles and other places, will know that players like Rob Kuntz and others had a huge amount of autonomy in his actual campaign, to the degree of creating entire nations, making up major world events, creating NPCs, cities, organizations, and many other things. Gygax might have started the thing, and maintained some level of control, but it was NOT a work of personal authorship. Certainly not in all the ways you seem to imply.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Can you see our point though? You can't be an 'actor' without some sort of characterization to act on. If your character is in a bigger context and has history or backstory then you start to have options, but you cannot call it actor stance with nothing BECAUSE without character motivations, that is needs and wants the character is aiming to fulfill, the only source of motivations is meta-game, which is author/pawn stance or maybe director stance.




There are certainly more motivations with a bigger context, history and/or backstory, but there is at least some small motivation involved with each declaration you make based purely on character knowledge and perception.



> There simply is no 'him' to inhabit. What you are doing is 'being yourself', and YOU have an agenda, which is outside the game. If you truly start asking 'why'? and don't stop until you get to the bottom of it, you'll eventually reach meta-game. IMHO what you are doing is confusing author and actor. You say to yourself "well, here I am in this RPG and I need to do something, and it is supposed to be adventurous. I'll go into the woods!" (note that as R.E. or one of them stated, you are in first person here, but that isn't the same as actor stance). Now you begin to impute motive by creating characterization after the fact, maybe even a split second after, when you say "oh, I'm a curious fellow, that's why I go into the woods." That's being an author and building a character by imputing motives post-hoc.




The "him" starts to be developed with even a single action based on character knowledge and perception.  It's not a lot, but it's sufficient for actor stance.  We have motivation, PC knowledge, and PC perception as the entirety of the reason for the PC to take the action.  That establishes both actor stance, and the beginning of the history and context of the PC.  Nothing of it is based on my personal agenda as a player.



> Later on you go back in your mind and you think, "well, I invented this new character and he was curious and he went into the woods" but is that what happened?




No.  This is 100%, factually false.  I am not going back in my mind and thinking those things after the action is taken.  I am thinking those things as the PC as I take the action.  They are his motives, not mine.


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## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> It is true in the fiction, at least if you play by hit point RAW it is.  "Hits" are not usually hits.  They are near misses, scratches, etc. The only real hit is the one that takes you down to 0 and can kill you.
> 
> "Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways. When your current hit point total is half or more of your hit point maximum, you typically show no signs of injury. When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises. *An attack that reduces you to 0 hit points strikes you directly, leaving a bleeding injury or other trauma, or it simply knocks you unconscious*."



Sure. Not usually hits, I know that... nonetheless a veteran Pc knows he can stand a lot of rounds, enemies, fights, before receiving harm. Or do the players pretend their Pc to be afraid as if they could die instantly?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Actually, this passage is rather key in terms of understanding the evolution of RPGs. "for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot."
> 
> Why is this? Because if the game is the one the DM 'makes up on the spot' then it is under the arbitrary control of the DM!!!! Players want, and always wanted, to have the assurance that their authority would not be compromised. Nobody is arguing that Gygax was really BIG on player authority, but he well knew that the instant the DM started screwing with things that the players believed they were entitled to (hitting the orc on a 15 for example) then the gig was up!
> 
> As far as the last sentence in that quote goes, I think this was Gary's undoing as a game designer. He went a long ways, but he failed to get beyond his own creative agenda, at least in a formal sense. It is telling that this is the last significant piece of writing which he did for a game system, it is 1977 and he never authors another game book, except 1e UA which really is nothing significant. OTOH I would point out that anyone familiar with the original GH campaign, as described in various Dragon articles and other places, will know that players like Rob Kuntz and others had a huge amount of autonomy in his actual campaign, to the degree of creating entire nations, making up major world events, creating NPCs, cities, organizations, and many other things. Gygax might have started the thing, and maintained some level of control, but it was NOT a work of personal authorship. Certainly not in all the ways you seem to imply.




He did author more books, just not for D&D.  He created Mythus Dangerous Journeys in 1992.  It bought it and it was interesting, but very complex.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> Sure. Not usually hits, I know that... nonetheless a veteran Pc knows he can stand a lot of rounds, enemies, fights, before receiving harm. Or do the players pretend their Pc to be afraid as if they could die instantly?




Just because he has done so in the past, does not mean he will always do so in the future.  Let me ask you this.  If you described an NPC as going to stab a PC with 100 hit points and the player announced he was just going to stand still and let the NPC stab him in the throat with a longsword, would you just do a d8 damage or a 2d8 crit?  Or would you knock the PC to 0 as described above for a direct hit?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Actor stance would be based on what one's character knows and wants. _If the established fiction doesn't tell me whether or not my character knows about trolls_, then actor stance in a troll encounter won't be possible.




Well, as a player, you could conjecture what your PC would do in the face of an almost unstoppable humanoid opponent of this type. Sure, you are not referencing information which you, the player, possess, but you could still at least try to imagine what the PC would do.

Not that I disagree with you, but maybe there are some shades here. I would refer that back to your statement about the limited utility of stance-based analysis. Surely there is something going on which is indistinguishable in one sense with meta-gaming, yet in another sense it might also be compliant with what the player would choose the character to do even if he didn't know about trolls. The problem is, we can never know. Its like a quantum superposition of stances! We can only point out that the player is perforce considering his own knowledge in that case, but we can conclude little about the impact of this fact on the game.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> Just because he has done so in the past, does not mean he will always do so in the future.  Let me ask you this.  If you described an NPC as going to stab a PC with 100 hit points and the player announced he was just going to stand still and let the NPC stab him in the throat with a longsword, would you just do a d8 damage or a 2d8 crit?  Or would you knock the PC to 0 as described above for a direct hit?



I don't know... if an Npc wants to kill a Pc, and the latter is ok... Pc dies. 

You didn't answer, btw. You really mean veteran Pc are not aware of their increased and increasing capability of sustain more and more heavy combats? I don't think you mean that.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> I don't know... if an Npc wants to kill a Pc, and the latter is ok... Pc dies.
> 
> You didn't answer, btw. You really mean veteran Pc are not aware of their increased and increasing capability of sustain more and more heavy combats? I don't think you mean that.




They know they are getting better in a fight, but have no way to translate that into "hits" or even rounds.  Consider that 1 enemy might do 1d8 damage and another 5d8 and attack twice.  The PC isn't going to know if a miss was a miss doing 0 damage or a hit.  He might last 1 round in the first fight if he gets unlucky, 10 rounds the next fight, and 5 round in the third fight.  He is going to have to worry about going down in the first few second of every fight if he makes a mistake or gets unlucky, and that holds true from 1st level to 20th, though it is less frequent the higher in level he goes.


----------



## Numidius

Maxperson said:


> They know they are getting better in a fight, but have no way to translate that into "hits" or even rounds.  Consider that 1 enemy might do 1d8 damage and another 5d8 and attack twice.  The PC isn't going to know if a miss was a miss doing 0 damage or a hit.  He might last 1 round in the first fight if he gets unlucky, 10 rounds the next fight, and 5 round in the third fight.  He is going to have to worry about going down in the first few second of every fight if he makes a mistake or gets unlucky, and that holds true from 1st level to 20th, though it is less frequent the higher in level he goes.



Got it. Thanks for the explanation


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> He did author more books, just not for D&D.  He created Mythus Dangerous Journeys in 1992.  It bought it and it was interesting, but very complex.




It had no impact in the gaming world and was apparently purchased by a small number of people, probably mostly out of curiosity to see what THE EGG might do next. I never met anyone who has read it or owned, except yourself now. From what I understand of that game it was basically a reprise of D&D, without really moving on into new ground in an overall game design sense (but I could be wrong, I only know what a few reviews said). 

Gygax established many foundational aspects of RPGs. He certainly took the amorphous concept and loose practice of Dave Arneson and turned it into a workable game system. Beyond that, I think AD&D pretty much represents the limit of where he was able to go. Every pioneer has his territory he explores, and narrativistic RPG design was outside that for Gary, IMHO.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It had no impact in the gaming world and was apparently purchased by a small number of people, probably mostly out of curiosity to see what THE EGG might do next. I never met anyone who has read it or owned, except yourself now. From what I understand of that game it was basically a reprise of D&D, without really moving on into new ground in an overall game design sense (but I could be wrong, I only know what a few reviews said).
> 
> Gygax established many foundational aspects of RPGs. He certainly took the amorphous concept and loose practice of Dave Arneson and turned it into a workable game system. Beyond that, I think AD&D pretty much represents the limit of where he was able to go. Every pioneer has his territory he explores, and narrativistic RPG design was outside that for Gary, IMHO.




It wasn't just D&D all over again.  It was more complicated and there wasn't really a class structure.  Magic happened if you had high enough stats(not 3-18 system) and you made a lucky roll.  Even then it was minor magic unless you got like a 5% or 3% or lower on the die roll(or maybe it was 95% or higher.  I can't remember exactly).  If you did that, you were not only a mercenary, rogue or whatever with your skills, but you were also basically Merlin or Gandalf.  You were insanely powerful.  Holy magic was similarly hard to get.  

You're right that it wasn't very popular, though.  I think the terms Gygax made up had something to do with it.  Instead of mana, power or something normal, magical power was called Heka or something like that.  I found it hard to get behind the silly made up names for some of his ideas.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Just because he has done so in the past, does not mean he will always do so in the future.  Let me ask you this.  If you described an NPC as going to stab a PC with 100 hit points and the player announced he was just going to stand still and let the NPC stab him in the throat with a longsword, would you just do a d8 damage or a 2d8 crit?  Or would you knock the PC to 0 as described above for a direct hit?




Let me ask you this. Why is Cure Light Wounds not titled Cure Near Misses?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Let me ask you this. Why is Cure Light Wounds not titled Cure Near Misses?




It sounds better.  Plain and simple.


----------



## Sadras

Posters should just use [insert metagame example you're comfortable with] otherwise the conversation changes to challenging possible metagame scenarios.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> What if the player is unsure about how to roleplay the situation since nothing has been established in his/her backstory or during roleplay? What if the player just turns to the DM and says "Would my character know about trolls? Do I just make a roll or wouldn't I know?"
> 
> This is not an action declaration, this is a honest reaction from a player seeking to know how to roleplay his character. And this has happened at my table numerous times. It has nothing to do about a player wanting to beat trolls, this is about _roleplay purity_.



I agree with [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION] to the extent that, at some tables and in some contexts, it clearly _could_ be an action declaration.

If it's not an action declaration, then it looks like a request to the GM to be told the rules. The GM might reply _In this game, all starting characters are ignorant_, or _Is your character trying to remember stuff about trolls?_

I guess another alternative is that the player is asking the GM _What action should I declare for my character in this situation_. I've personally seen that sort of thing, but I'm not a big fan personally.

Neither of these latter two possibilities involves any stance, as neither of them is making a decision/choice for the character.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I agree with @_*Michael Silverbane*_ to the extent that, at some tables and in some contexts, it clearly _could_ be an action declaration.
> 
> If it's not an action declaration, then it looks like a request to the GM to be told the rules. The GM might reply _In this game, all starting characters are ignorant_, or _Is your character trying to remember stuff about trolls?_
> 
> I guess another alternative is that the player is asking the GM _What action should I declare for my character in this situation_. I've personally seen that sort of thing, but I'm not a big fan personally.
> 
> Neither of these latter two possibilities involves any stance, as neither of them is making a decision/choice for the character.




Yeah my thought process was along the middle option - it is similar in vein to the example we discussed some weeks ago regarding setting parameters in that the player really does not know what their character may or may not know so is looking towards the DM for guidance in this regard in order to roleplay their character correctly (and this could be viewed as evidence of some DM-gating at the table).

But yeah based on your response then I think we agree on this issue.

EDIT: My interest was not in the first option at all, as that correctly would fall under action declaration and you had already covered it in your previous post.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, as a player, you could conjecture what your PC would do in the face of an almost unstoppable humanoid opponent of this type. Sure, you are not referencing information which you, the player, possess, but you could still at least try to imagine what the PC would do.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Surely there is something going on which is indistinguishable in one sense with meta-gaming, yet in another sense it might also be compliant with what the player would choose the character to do even if he didn't know about trolls.



This is all true.

What's going on with Ron Edwards and The Forge in respect of stance? Well, they're not really trying to analyse the nuances of constructing a character while playing B2 - from their point of view, that's been covered under Pawn Stance with maybe a bit of Author Stance. There's an ongoing discussion on the various RPG forums/newsgroups which has coined this idea of stance, and Edwards is trying to develop the idea and use it coherently to analyse the play that he is interested in.

At that time - ie 2001 - as far as "mainstream" games are concerned they're trying to work out what's going on in, and what are the variations occurring in, such systems as Champions, RuneQuest, WW/storyteller, and the AD&D 2nd ed settings. A game like Over the Edge is obviously big on their radar, but if you read OtE the GM advice and overall tenor is a strange mix of player-driven characters being shoehorned into GM-driven setting with no very coherent account of how this is meant to work. (That's not to say that Jonathan Tweet was running OtE as a railroad; but there was no established way of expressing these techniques in a RPG rulebook.)

I would say that, at the heart of what they're trying to distinguish _being true to the character_ in action declaration (actor stance) and _using the character to drive play in a certain direction_ by way of action declaration (author stance). This is why there's the attempt to clear away underbrush that crops up so often in discussions about player-side RPGing (like 1st person/3rd person, or IC/OOC, which is still the first thing that will come up on a thread on these boards about player-side roleplaying techniques).

In a game in which story doesn't even matter except perhaps as a byproduct, and in which the idea is to win - and B2 would be a paradigm of that - then I think it's easy enough to say that most action declaration will be directed at winning, which is clearly a player priority, hence pawn stance and we're done. The odd bit of actor stance (eg the elf playing pranks on the dwarf when nothing else is at stake) is simply not that significant to the overall analysis.

And once we get to "story"-focusd D&D play of the post-DL, 2nd ed era variety, then I think the assumption is that the GM will establish the key player motivations (by setting backstory, policing alignment, all the standard techniques) and players are expected to adopt actor stance within that context. I think this is borne out by the AD&D 2nd ed text that I quoted a little bit upthread.

For the troll example to fit neatly into this conception, either the GM tells the players that their PCs know about trolls, or tells them that the PCs are ignorant. Then the player plays his/her PC as appropriate (perhaps with a significant degree of awkwardness or frustration if s/he knows the answer but has to pretend not to). There is no expectation that this sort of play will produce what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] called "discovery" - as opposed to fidelity to the motivational scheme established by the GM.


----------



## Numidius

Very good examination [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

The last bit: Fidelity seems the key word. I was looking for a counter catch-phrase to Story Now, when talking with friends, because usual terms like Narr, Trad, immersion, simulation, are not immediately understood from casual gamers... and The Right to Dream (while I love it) seems a bit off for the purpose of identify easily a type of play. 

"Story Now" and "Fidelity Always" sound  very appropriate 

Semper fidelis!


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> It sounds better.  Plain and simple.




Sure. And describing loss of hit points as an actual hit sounds better as well.

I mentioned this mostly as a joke, but also to show how the assumptions the game makes aren’t consistent.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. And describing loss of hit points as an actual hit sounds better as well.




And you can do that, but since 1e(with the exception of 3e for some reason) hit points have been a mixture of physical, skill, luck, divine protection, etc., and due to how 1e and 2e treated them, every 3e DM I played with kept it the same.  If you want to make them all physical, though, that's your prerogative as DM,



> I mentioned this mostly as a joke, but also to show how the assumptions the game makes aren’t consistent.




I don't think that the name of the spell indicates a game assumption, though.  Cure Light Wounds just sounds better than Cure Light Something, Cure Light Abstract or Cure Light Hit Point Loss.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Just because he has done so in the past, does not mean he will always do so in the future.  Let me ask you this.  If you described an NPC as going to stab a PC with 100 hit points and the player announced he was just going to stand still and let the NPC stab him in the throat with a longsword, would you just do a d8 damage or a 2d8 crit?  Or would you knock the PC to 0 as described above for a direct hit?




I'd have to really dig around to find some examples, but there were a number of times when Gygax addressed this. I don't think its directly stated anywhere in 1e, but he appeared to hold the opinion that hit points were a mechanism which was largely intended to regulate armed combat between active opponents. In other types of situations, such as the one you suggest, I think his answer would have been "the character dies of a horrible throat wound." 

Even within 1e instant death is certainly possible in rules terms. An assassin can simply kill a target, no hit points are involved whatsoever (though you can argue about whether or not NPC assassins exist and if they can use this mechanic against a PC). There are a few places in modules and discussion where Gary, or at least TSR, used or advised use of a death save as well. This could be a good way to adjudicate jumping off a 400' cliff for example.

OTOH AD&D doesn't specifically state any of this consistently and hit points are certainly thought of as the default damage mechanism. So a player would probably be expecting, and would have good reason to expect, that this mechanism would prevail in your example. I can almost guarantee dismay at the table in any case, and this is a weakness of the Gygax model of D&D. One which others sought to overcome in various ways. Modern RPGs with their models of intent, action, and consequence often avoid these issues.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> It wasn't just D&D all over again.  It was more complicated and there wasn't really a class structure.  Magic happened if you had high enough stats(not 3-18 system) and you made a lucky roll.  Even then it was minor magic unless you got like a 5% or 3% or lower on the die roll(or maybe it was 95% or higher.  I can't remember exactly).  If you did that, you were not only a mercenary, rogue or whatever with your skills, but you were also basically Merlin or Gandalf.  You were insanely powerful.  Holy magic was similarly hard to get.
> 
> You're right that it wasn't very popular, though.  I think the terms Gygax made up had something to do with it.  Instead of mana, power or something normal, magical power was called Heka or something like that.  I found it hard to get behind the silly made up names for some of his ideas.




Right, I understand that the mechanical details were significantly different, it wasn't a 'D&D like' in that sense. However, it sat a DM square at the center of the system with total narrative authority and surrounded that DM with players who's role was secondary, to make action declarations which the DM had absolute power to accept, deny, or use some mechanical resolution with, and then total authority over what results were achieved, what the costs were, and how the narrative 'framing' of the fiction evolved in response (which was normally assumed to be related to a keyed map, but where it is understood that the DM might be 'winging it' and certainly has to 'fill in' details during play). 

In this sense, AFAIK, Dangerous Journeys was effectively occupying the same overall design space as D&D. This was at a time when systems were beginning to appear like Ars Magica, Everway, and even TSR's Alternity, which were playing with the basic conceptual design in new ways. (I'm sure there were even more interesting ones out there, I am not much of an expert on 90's RPGs TBH).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Posters should just use [insert metagame example you're comfortable with] otherwise the conversation changes to challenging possible metagame scenarios.




With that being said, then the questions revolve back around to how you can use "out of character thinking and processes" in a constructive way in RPGs. I'm not even sure how much more there is to add to that discussion here at this point. We have touched on a wide variety of concepts and ideas, in amongst the endless attempts to explain them to people who don't want an explanation. 

We have seen that going outside the character's frame of knowledge can resolve issues of differences between the knowledge, skill, and understanding of the player vs that of the character. It can allow us to use (and is necessary for the use of, technically at least) 'author stance' in order to add elements to our characters when needed to explain actions taken from a player perspective.

We have seen how mechanical subsystems can be used (or informal procedures) to allow extension of the fiction OUTSIDE the boundaries of the character itself by players (IE director stance things like BitD's flashback mechanism) . These can be resource-gated, or have certain 'gates' which control them (IE FATE lets you engage character traits but only when fictionally appropriate, and some games only allow this type of thing when certain specific 'distinctions' exist in the current scene, which if I understand it, is how Cortex+ Heroic does it).


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'd have to really dig around to find some examples, but there were a number of times when Gygax addressed this. I don't think its directly stated anywhere in 1e, but he appeared to hold the opinion that hit points were a mechanism which was largely intended to regulate armed combat between active opponents. In other types of situations, such as the one you suggest, I think his answer would have been "the character dies of a horrible throat wound."
> 
> Even within 1e instant death is certainly possible in rules terms. An assassin can simply kill a target, no hit points are involved whatsoever (though you can argue about whether or not NPC assassins exist and if they can use this mechanic against a PC). There are a few places in modules and discussion where Gary, or at least TSR, used or advised use of a death save as well. This could be a good way to adjudicate jumping off a 400' cliff for example.
> 
> OTOH AD&D doesn't specifically state any of this consistently and hit points are certainly thought of as the default damage mechanism. So a player would probably be expecting, and would have good reason to expect, that this mechanism would prevail in your example. I can almost guarantee dismay at the table in any case, and this is a weakness of the Gygax model of D&D. One which others sought to overcome in various ways. Modern RPGs with their models of intent, action, and consequence often avoid these issues.




1e was a different beast than 5e, and the 5e definition is what I was discussing with [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION].  Personally, if you do something in my game that gives up hit points, like deliberately stepping off of a cliff or standing still for a sword strike, the PC is going to die or at least be down and dying.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> 1e was a different beast than 5e, and the 5e definition is what I was discussing with [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION].  Personally, if you do something in my game that gives up hit points, like deliberately stepping off of a cliff or standing still for a sword strike, the PC is going to die or at least be down and dying.




I have played 5e, and read through a good chunk of it, but I am not really intimately familiar with all of the nuances of how it describes things. The one 5e campaign I played in was run basically as a system update to a setting that was mostly developed under 2e and then 3e, and the players were basically just using 5e as a 'better 3e' from what I could see. We experimented with the 'story based' background/traits/inspiration system a little bit, but I wouldn't even be able to tell you how it envisages hit points. I would expect that the concept is pretty similar in spirit to what was prevalent in 1e, hit points are a blend of toughness, luck, skill, and 'plot armor' which is meant to express your character's 'plot significance' and thus resistance to being taken out, more than anything else. Personally I think this is the best way to envisage hit points in all 'classic' D&D editions, and 3.x as well, and really isn't all that challenged in 4e and 5e either. In 4e there's more of an explicit acknowledgement of this fact baked into the rules, but it really has always been there. This is why many, maybe most, tables in all forms of D&D will simply allocate damage to the character in all situations, because it comports with the idea of hit points as a measure of plot significance of the character.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> 1e was a different beast than 5e, and the 5e definition is what I was discussing with [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION].  Personally, if you do something in my game that gives up hit points, like deliberately stepping off of a cliff or standing still for a sword strike, the PC is going to die or at least be down and dying.



So, a character _thrown_ off a 50 ft cliff likely survives, but a character that considers it and then willingly jumps off the same cliff automatically dies (or is dying)? 

Huh, and this _avoids_ metagaming?


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> So, a character _thrown_ off a 50 ft cliff likely survives, but a character that considers it and then willingly jumps off the same cliff automatically dies (or is dying)?




Not likely survives.  Luckily survives.  PCs don't fall off cliffs often.  It's rare, really.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I have played 5e, and read through a good chunk of it, but I am not really intimately familiar with all of the nuances of how it describes things. The one 5e campaign I played in was run basically as a system update to a setting that was mostly developed under 2e and then 3e, and the players were basically just using 5e as a 'better 3e' from what I could see. We experimented with the 'story based' background/traits/inspiration system a little bit, but I wouldn't even be able to tell you how it envisages hit points. I would expect that the concept is pretty similar in spirit to what was prevalent in 1e, hit points are a blend of toughness, luck, skill, and 'plot armor' which is meant to express your character's 'plot significance' and thus resistance to being taken out, more than anything else. Personally I think this is the best way to envisage hit points in all 'classic' D&D editions, and 3.x as well, and really isn't all that challenged in 4e and 5e either. In 4e there's more of an explicit acknowledgement of this fact baked into the rules, but it really has always been there. This is why many, maybe most, tables in all forms of D&D will simply allocate damage to the character in all situations, because it comports with the idea of hit points as a measure of plot significance of the character.




In 5e a PC with 200 hit points won't even suffer a scratch until he takes his 101st point of damage in the fight, and he won't take more than scratches or bruises until the one hit that lands solidly and puts him down.  At least per RAW.  And there are some specific beats general exceptions, like if you are fighting a giant spider or something that has to break the skin to poison you and bites you while you are at max hit points.


----------



## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> I don’t suppose that it occurred to you that “most people” that might disagree with either your positions or your terminology long ago abandoned the thread, and that spending countless posts quoting an essay at each other that would not be accepted by many people is, perhaps, simply engaging in an echo chamber as opposed to usefully communicating?
> 
> I dunno man; this slightly slow golden retriever assumed that one of the purposes of communication was to get your argument (in the classic sense) across to your audience; to the extent that you’re communicating to the converted, why bother, and to the extent you’re attemting to convince someone of a point, it is better to use accepted terms than jargon which obfuscates (see also the difference between “actor stance” and “acting”).
> 
> But what do I know; LOOK A BALL!!!!




I'm boggling at why Max has spent sooooo much effort trying to get through to people who aren't even listening to him-

A BALL!


Edit- oh. I see he's found someone who's actually listening. That took a long time.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Not likely survives.  Luckily survives.  PCs don't fall off cliffs often.  It's rare, really.




Heh, true, but I remember Cargorn (14th? level ranger lord in 1e) doing exactly that, leaping off a 200' cliff in order to engage his enemies. At that level the damage was relatively inconsequential (well, he did have vampiric regeneration, so the demons at the bottom of the cliff were just more 'juice'). I think the consequences of absorbing a few 1000 hit points from demons was far more significant than the fall... 

So, yeah, its rare. I think that's why the abstraction survives. Within the paradigm of the original D&D game hit points were not really that problematic, and realism wasn't high on the agenda, beyond a sort of basic correspondence with reality that let players reason. In more modern games this is not so, and most post-D&D games with a story focus either use some kind of system which doesn't produce these odd results, or moves the focus entirely away from whether or not you live or die.

You can see this in 4e, where hit points are clearly separated to a larger degree from the narrative than in previous editions (at least explicitly). You basically have some hit points, then you have an injury state (bloodied) and then some more hit points, and then you become incapacitated (but that simply involves a mechanical set of game states, how it is narrated is really up to the participants, the game simply provides some adjectives which establish a baseline default approach). The "non-lethal attack" rule makes this even more clear, as there is no distinction of 'stun points' or something like that vs 'real' damage. Only the intent of the final 'killing' blow matters. Note how even a fireball can be 'non-lethal'. 

This is part of the general movement of 4e away from strictly traditional play structure and concepts. Healing Surges add another layer such that hit points really are more of a plot device than anything else. Once the fight finishes up everyone gets patched up and is good to go again, much like the way a Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone gets a bandage slapped on that gunshot or whatever and then theatrically winces a bit now and then but isn't really disabled in any plot-significant sense (so, you could skin something like being dazed or slowed in a future combat as something like "the enemy grabs hold of your wounded arm and your vision goes red as you scream in agony" if you wanted, though few players are really interested in that level of detail). 

HoML gives you extra options, you can trade out some of those points for extra power uses, or pay them to gain successes via use of practices in a challenge, etc. You could even spin this kind of thing as wounds reopening or something like that in some situations.


----------



## Aldarc

Satyrn said:


> I'm boggling at why Max has spent sooooo much effort trying to get through to people who aren't even listening to him-
> 
> A BALL!



I'm boggling why you are rudely insinuating here like a bad dog that we aren't listening to him.


----------



## Numidius

Ovinomancer said:


> So, a character _thrown_ off a 50 ft cliff likely survives, but a character that considers it and then willingly jumps off the same cliff automatically dies (or is dying)?
> 
> Huh, and this _avoids_ metagaming?



the roads to hell are paved with good intentions


----------



## Satyrn

Aldarc said:


> I'm boggling why you are rudely insinuating here like a bad dog that we aren't listening to him.




I'm trying to encourage him to leave this thread and spend his time in more friendly _conversation_, instead of wasting his time defending the way he plays.

The 5e forum has been slow lately. I miss Max.


----------



## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> HoML gives you extra options, you can trade out some of those points for extra power uses, or pay them to gain successes via use of practices in a challenge, etc. You could even spin this kind of thing as wounds reopening or something like that in some situations.




Mad arab, HoTL is acronym for? Did you post a document of your 4e hack game? I'd like to read it.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Heh, true, but I remember Cargorn (14th? level ranger lord in 1e) doing exactly that, leaping off a 200' cliff in order to engage his enemies. At that level the damage was relatively inconsequential (well, he did have vampiric regeneration, so the demons at the bottom of the cliff were just more 'juice'). I think the consequences of absorbing a few 1000 hit points from demons was far more significant than the fall...
> 
> So, yeah, its rare. I think that's why the abstraction survives. Within the paradigm of the original D&D game hit points were not really that problematic, and realism wasn't high on the agenda, beyond a sort of basic correspondence with reality that let players reason. In more modern games this is not so, and most post-D&D games with a story focus either use some kind of system which doesn't produce these odd results, or moves the focus entirely away from whether or not you live or die.




Right.  Realism isn't all that high on the agenda.  It's prevalent, but as prevalent as it easily could be if D&D tried.  That's why some of us make changes to make D&D a bit more realistic.



> You can see this in 4e, where hit points are clearly separated to a larger degree from the narrative than in previous editions (at least explicitly). You basically have some hit points, then you have an injury state (bloodied) and then some more hit points, and then you become incapacitated (but that simply involves a mechanical set of game states, how it is narrated is really up to the participants, the game simply provides some adjectives which establish a baseline default approach). The "non-lethal attack" rule makes this even more clear, as there is no distinction of 'stun points' or something like that vs 'real' damage. Only the intent of the final 'killing' blow matters. Note how even a fireball can be 'non-lethal'.




It's things like this that kept me from playing 4e.  If you want to try and swing a sword so as to not kill someone, that's fine by me.  That fireball explosion, though, that's not under the control of the PC, so there's no way they could keep that from being lethal damage.



> This is part of the general movement of 4e away from strictly traditional play structure and concepts. Healing Surges add another layer such that hit points really are more of a plot device than anything else. Once the fight finishes up everyone gets patched up and is good to go again, much like the way a Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone gets a bandage slapped on that gunshot or whatever and then theatrically winces a bit now and then but isn't really disabled in any plot-significant sense (so, you could skin something like being dazed or slowed in a future combat as something like "the enemy grabs hold of your wounded arm and your vision goes red as you scream in agony" if you wanted, though few players are really interested in that level of detail).




There was a game that came out in 1989 called It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show.  You played B actors in a B movie that the DM(Director) was running.  You had stats and a bunch of skills from Climbing to Tactical Weapons, and you just played.  Since you were playing B actors, you got bonus points for being "appropriately stupid."  i.e. "I heard something.  You guys wait here and I'll go check it out."  You also had a fame rating from 1-100 that went up as you played, and if things got too hard you could stalk off the set.  If you rolled percentile under your fame, the Director had to cave into your demands.  The last mechanic that I remember was that in-between every scene you got make-up which gave you back hit points, so that after a few scenes that bullet wound or broken leg wasn't bothering you all that much.  It was a fun game.


----------



## Maxperson

Satyrn said:


> I'm boggling at why Max has spent sooooo much effort trying to get through to people who aren't even listening to him-
> 
> A BALL!
> 
> 
> Edit- oh. I see he's found someone who's actually listening. That took a long time.




Some are.  They may not agree with me, but I'm having a nice discussion with some of them.  Others have no desire to discuss in good faith, and it shows in their responses to me.


----------



## Maxperson

Satyrn said:


> I'm trying to encourage him to leave this thread and spend his time in more friendly _conversation_, instead of wasting his time defending the way he plays.
> 
> The 5e forum has been slow lately. I miss Max.




If you have a thread you want me to look at, link it.  I'll take a gander.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> PCs don't fall off cliffs often.  It's rare, really.



Maxperson, yoiu keep making claims like this, tossing them off casually as if they're self-evident. But they're not. In my 4e game, characters falling off cliffs is really quite frequent. One character picked up a pair of winged boots to help deal with the problem.


----------



## Hussar

pemerton said:


> Maxperson, yoiu keep making claims like this, tossing them off casually as if they're self-evident. But they're not. In my 4e game, characters falling off cliffs is really quite frequent. One character picked up a pair of winged boots to help deal with the problem.




But, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], would you say that this is a regular occurrence in every D&D game you play/run or just idiosyncratic of that one campaign, among the dozens (if not more) that you've run/played over the years?  Because if it's the latter, and I suspect it is, then, yeah, saying falling off cliffs if fairly rare in games is among one of the few points that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has made in this thread that I actually agree with.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It's things like this that kept me from playing 4e.  If you want to try and swing a sword so as to not kill someone, that's fine by me.  That fireball explosion, though, that's not under the control of the PC, so there's no way they could keep that from being lethal damage.



(1) How do you know the fireball is not under the control of the character?

(2) Suppose that the fireball is not under the control of the character - why is that a reason that the _player_ can't determine some of the consequences of an effect that was brought into the fiction as a result of his/her decision (ie to have his/her PC cast a fireball)?


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> But, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], would you say that this is a regular occurrence in every D&D game you play/run or just idiosyncratic of that one campaign, among the dozens (if not more) that you've run/played over the years?  Because if it's the latter, and I suspect it is, then, yeah, saying falling off cliffs if fairly rare in games is among one of the few points that  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has made in this thread that I actually agree with.



I haven't done a survey, but 4e is clearly designed around the idea that vertical movement (both up and down) will be a meaningful aspect of play: it has climibing rules, flying rules, prominent advice on what height of cliff is a good fit for what level of PCs, etc.

An analogue to falling, in this context, is the proverbial character chained to a cliff while a dragon breathes fire on him/her, and that is one of the examples (the other is suffering a poison bite/sting) that Gygax uses (in his DMG) to explain how saving throws should be thought of in the fiction.

One of the most classic of D&D modules is G2, and vertical movement (in the Rift) is a big element in the first half of that adventure (at least as I experienced, both in AD&D and in my 4e adaptation).

I guess my point is that I don't think these are corner cases that the hp rules somehow have trouble coping with. The game system treats them as core, and that fits with my own play experience.

EDIT:

To put it another way, here are two different contentions:

(1) At my table, PCs falling down cliffs is a pretty rare corner case, and so the contrast between _being pushed_ and _jumping_ doesn't really come into play, and so we're able to treat _a player deciding that his/her PC jumps_ as metagame rather than "in character"/actor stance.

(2) In D&D, PCs falling down cliffs is a pretty rare corner case, and so the contrast between _being pushed_ and _jumping_ isn't really a part of D&D play, and so _a player deciding that his/her PC jumps_ is metagaming rather than playing "in character"/actor stance.​
If someone asserts (1) I've got no reason to doubt their sincerity. And I've played games in which "gentlemen's agreements" keep some rule or odd consequence off the table although it's implicit in the system itself.

But [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] appears to be arguing (2). Just as he argues (for instance) that it is common sense that a 1st level dwarf PC should know all about forest trails, but it would be metagaming for the player of a 1st level desert nomad to impute to his/her PC knowledge of trolls. Presenting these claims as universal, or as obvious truths about _the game, and the way it is meant to be played_, is (in my view) ridiculous.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Satyrn said:


> I'm trying to encourage him to leave this thread and spend his time in more friendly _conversation_, instead of wasting his time defending the way he plays.
> 
> The 5e forum has been slow lately. I miss Max.




hehe, Max has been, IMHO, obstinate for a LONG time. IIRC he was posting back on the WotC forums back in the 4e days too, am I right [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]? I seem to remember a lot of similar discussions. He's very consistent though, and I certainly think its good that he knows how he wants to play. I do suspect, often, he might be a LITTLE stuck in his ways, but I'd be the last person to call that a fault, or else I'd be in deep trouble myself! 

So, yeah, I kind of feel like we've beat the 'Max doesn't see it that way' horse to death here. I've kind of poked people about taking it in other directions, but it can be hard. I'd also say that sometimes you build your strength by pounding on brick walls! 

And don't worry Max, I don't take myself too seriously...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Mad arab, HoTL is acronym for? Did you post a document of your 4e hack game? I'd like to read it.




HoML, yes "Heroes of Myth and Legend" though I haven't really expounded much on the myths and legends aspect in the rules (beyond some nomenclature and the fairly fantastical levels of power which Mythic characters should presumably achieve). Anyway there is a PDF here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hDqxN9WDlPUruYUIuDZo1YJcMcEqMSLm/view?usp=sharing which you are welcome to peruse and since I put an OGL on it, you can even steal whatever you want from it


----------



## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> HoML, yes "Heroes of Myth and Legend" though I haven't really expounded much on the myths and legends aspect in the rules (beyond some nomenclature and the fairly fantastical levels of power which Mythic characters should presumably achieve). Anyway there is a PDF here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hDqxN9WDlPUruYUIuDZo1YJcMcEqMSLm/view?usp=sharing which you are welcome to peruse and since I put an OGL on it, you can even steal whatever you want from it



Thanks. Wow, almost 400 pages!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> (1) How do you know the fireball is not under the control of the character?




Once the spell has been cast, the fireball goes and explodes.  Nothing in the fireball daily says or even implies that the caster can make non-lethal fire.  What is non-lethal fire anyway?  It's absurd to even think that non-lethal fire exists.  The DM can add non-lethal fire into the game, but I would never do so.  I like a more realistic game than you do.



> (2) Suppose that the fireball is not under the control of the character - why is that a reason that the _player_ can't determine some of the consequences of an effect that was brought into the fiction as a result of his/her decision (ie to have his/her PC cast a fireball)?




Because fire is lethal and impartial.  There is no control over what it does.  If it's non-lethal, then it's not fire.  If it's fire, then it's lethal.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] appears to be arguing (2). Just as he argues (for instance) that it is common sense that a 1st level dwarf PC should know all about forest trails, but it would be metagaming for the player of a 1st level desert nomad to impute to his/her PC knowledge of trolls.




I never said "know all about forest trails."  I said know about the existence of forest trails.  I'd be okay with a desert nomad knowing of the existence of trolls.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> hehe, Max has been, IMHO, obstinate for a LONG time. IIRC he was posting back on the WotC forums back in the 4e days too, am I right [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]? I seem to remember a lot of similar discussions. He's very consistent though, and I certainly think its good that he knows how he wants to play. I do suspect, often, he might be a LITTLE stuck in his ways, but I'd be the last person to call that a fault, or else I'd be in deep trouble myself!




I'm fairly consistent, yes. 

I do tinker with new things due to discussions here, though.  A few campaigns ago I had the PCs all be children of various gods of the Forgotten Realms.  Part of that campaign was that each child had innate power to "do things" related to the portfolios of the parent god.  I let the players know that they could try anything they could think of that relates, and to be creative.  The power grew with them as they gained levels and could do things of their level or lower fairly easily, but could be pushed to things more powerful than would normally be possible due to level alone, and I even didn't give them hard rules on what the limits were so they wouldn't feel constrained.  I was basically setting it up so that they could create for the game within those limits, to see how the players would react to being able to do things like that.  They tried surprisingly few things.  I figured they would use it more and more as they got used to the idea, which they did, but still tended to go with their class related abilities far more often.



> So, yeah, I kind of feel like we've beat the 'Max doesn't see it that way' horse to death here. I've kind of poked people about taking it in other directions, but it can be hard. I'd also say that sometimes you build your strength by pounding on brick walls!




I enjoy the debate, and more than once after beating my head against the brick wall for a while, someone says something new and different, or in a different way which gets me thinking about the subject in a way I hadn't yet.  Occasionally, I will even change my mind about something, like I did in the Shield Master discussion.



> And don't worry Max, I don't take myself too seriously...




Same here!!  And I do enjoy our discussions.  I wish some others here would engage in good faith discussions the way you do.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> fire is lethal and impartial.  There is no control over what it does.



In the real world, some people who are exposed to fires survive. In adventure fiction this is relatively common - eg I just saw Quantum of Solace on TV and James Bond and friend escape a burning building surrounded by flames. And many a D&D character has been caught in a fireball, red dragon's breath, etc and yet survived.

And there can certainly be authorial control over fiction involving fire - as that movie illustrates!

Which is what my question asked: suppose that the fireball is not under the control of the _character _- why is that a reason that the _player _can't determine some of the consequences of an effect that was brought into the fiction as a result of his/her decision (ie to have his/her PC cast a fireball)?

Or, to put it another way, what is wrong with _director stance_ in relation to the consequences of fireballs?

Once the spell has been cast, the fireball goes and explodes.  Nothing in the fireball daily says or even implies that the caster can make non-lethal fire.  What is non-lethal fire anyway?  It's absurd to even think that non-lethal fire exists.  The DM can add non-lethal fire into the game, but I would never do so.  I like a more realistic game than you do.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How do you know the fireball is not under the control of the character?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Once the spell has been cast, the fireball goes and explodes. Nothing in the fireball daily says or even implies that the caster can make non-lethal fire.
Click to expand...


But what in the spell says or implies that the caster can't control its effect on those who are caught in the flames, like Pyro in the X-Men?



Maxperson said:


> What is non-lethal fire anyway? It's absurd to even think that non-lethal fire exists.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I like a more realistic game than you do.



So does that mean that, in your D&D game, fireball and red dragon breath 
kill everyone in the AoE?

If not, then that means your game has non-lethal fire too! Let's call the thing that happens in your game's fiction when a fireball fails to kill someone caught in its AoE _X_. Now, let's suppose that, in 4e, when a fireball doesn't kill someone, _X_ is what happens to them.

Why can't it be the character controlling the fire so that _X_ occurs? Or, if it's not, what's objecitonable about the _player_ specifying that the consequence of this fireball, for such-and-such a target creature, is _X_?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In the real world, some people who are exposed to fires survive.




You can survive lethal damage.  Many people who get shot or stabbed survive, too.  That doesn't make those lethal types of attacks.  Fireball is no different.  You could die or survive, but it's up to providence to decide that.



> And there can certainly be authorial control over fiction involving fire - as that movie illustrates!




You could get lucky and survive a fireball, sure.  That's what hit points and saving throws are for.  If you have enough hit points to survive, you live like that character.  If you don't, you hit 0 and could die as fireball is a lethal attack type as was the fire in that building.



> suppose that the fireball is not under the control of the _character _- why is that a reason that the _player _can't determine some of the consequences of an effect that was brought into the fiction as a result of his/her decision (ie to have his/her PC cast a fireball)?




Fire is impartial and uncontrolled in the fiction.  A player making that decision is asserting control over an uncontrolled event in the fiction.



> Or, to put it another way, what is wrong with _director stance_ in relation to the consequences of fireballs?




Nothing if you want to play that way.



> But what in the spell says or implies that the caster can't control its effect on those who are caught in the flames, like Pyro in the X-Men?




The same thing that says or implies that the caster can't have a secondary nuclear explosion happen.

We've been over this before.  Not specifically precluding something does not include it.  Unless the DM includes such caster control, it doesn't exist.



> So does that mean that, in your D&D game, fireball and red dragon breath
> kill everyone in the AoE?




If their hit points dropped to -10 or lower, yes.  



> If not, then that means your game has non-lethal fire too! Let's call the thing that happens in your game's fiction when a fireball fails to kill someone caught in its AoE _X_. Now, let's suppose that, in 4e, when a fireball doesn't kill someone, _X_ is what happens to them.




My game does not include fire as a non-lethal attack type.  Stop the sophistry dude.  You know that in D&D there are two types of attacks, depending on the edition.  Lethal and non-lethal/subdual.  The former can kill, but doesn't always.  The latter cannot possibly kill.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> My game does not include fire as a non-lethal attack type.  Stop the sophistry dude.  You know that in D&D there are two types of attacks, depending on the edition.  Lethal and non-lethal/subdual.  The former can kill, but doesn't always.  The latter cannot possibly kill.



I don't understand this. 4e doensn't have any such things as non-lethal/subdual attacks - that's an ad hoc feature of AD&D, and a systematic feature of 3E.

4e has a rule about what happens if an attack reduces a target to zero hp. 5e has the same rule, but confines it to melee attacks.



Maxperson said:


> You can survive lethal damage.  Many people who get shot or stabbed survive, too.  That doesn't make those lethal types of attacks.  Fireball is no different.  You could die or survive, but it's up to providence to decide that.



It may be up to providence in the fiction. But at the table, what's the objection to the player making the call? How is "providence" unrealistic when it's chosen by a player rather than dictated by a die roll?



Maxperson said:


> Fire is impartial and uncontrolled in the fiction.



How do you know? Where do the 4e rules say this? If anything, the fact that a player can declare the result of a fireball attack to be unconsciousness rather than death tends to suggest the opposite!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't understand this. 4e doensn't have any such things as non-lethal/subdual attacks - that's an ad hoc feature of AD&D, and a systematic feature of 3E.




And as I said, this is one of the things that kept me from playing it.  Fire is a lethal attack form.  A game that doesn't have it as a lethal attack form is highly unrealistic.  You like games that are less realistic than I do, so you played 4e.  

It's no big deal that it was part of the deal breakers for me with that edition.



> 4e has a rule about what happens if an attack reduces a target to zero hp. 5e has the same rule, but confines it to melee attacks.




Yes.  5e is a bit more realistic, though still unrealistic with that rule.  The first thing my players did when they read that rule was unanimously decide that it was dumb(their term, though I agreed with it) to be able go back in time after your lethal attack drops the creature to 0 and decide that you were really knocking the creature out.  It took all of 30 seconds to figure out that we didn't like that rule and ditch it.



> It may be up to providence in the fiction. But at the table, what's the objection to the player making the call? How is "providence" unrealistic when it's chosen by a player rather than dictated by a die roll?




One is providence(the die roll), and the other is not(the player choosing).  Choice is not providence.



> How do you know? Where do the 4e rules say this? If anything, the fact that a player can declare the result of a fireball attack to be unconsciousness rather than death tends to suggest the opposite!




The fireball spell does not say that they do, so they don't unless the DM puts it into the game.  It's really simple.  In D&D, outside of what is explicitly allowed or forbidden, nothing is allowed unless the DM allows it.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> One is providence(the die roll), and the other is not(the player choosing).  Choice is not providence.



Huh? In most RPGs, including D&D, the GM can _choose_ for an event to occur which is, in the fiction, sheer chance or providence - eg that members of the sect are in this teahouse rather than that teahouse.

Gygax in his DMG canvasses the same option for a fatal monster attack against a PC, where the player has played with skill and hence PC death would be particularly unfair.

What is the objection to a player making an analogous choice in relation to the effect that a fireball spell has on a target?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Huh? In most RPGs, including D&D, the GM can _choose_ for an event to occur which is, in the fiction, sheer chance or providence - eg that members of the sect are in this teahouse rather than that teahouse.
> 
> Gygax in his DMG canvasses the same option for a fatal monster attack against a PC, where the player has played with skill and hence PC death would be particularly unfair.




DM decisions on whether something does or does not happen are not providence.  The results on a roll he has you make will be.  This is also a Red Herring as we are discussing players, not the DM who uses different rules.



> What is the objection to a player making an analogous choice in relation to the effect that a fireball spell has on a target?




The player is not the DM.  In D&D, the DM is the only one who can make decisions about the world in that way, unless the player's PC has a special ability or spell that allows him to do so.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> we are discussing players, not the DM who uses different rules.
> 
> The player is not the DM.  In D&D, the DM is the only one who can make decisions about the world in that way, unless the player's PC has a special ability or spell that allows him to do so.



But the rule in 4e is clear: it is the _player_ whose characer made the attack who can make these decisions.

Perhaps you prefer not to use such a rule, but it doesn't make the game _unrealistic_ that authority for making this decision is allocated to the player rather than the GM.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But the rule in 4e is clear: it is the _player_ whose characer made the attack who can make these decisions.
> 
> Perhaps you prefer not to use such a rule, but it doesn't make the game _unrealistic_ that authority for making this decision is allocated to the player rather than the GM.




It makes the game *MORE*(you misrepresented again) unrealistic that the authority to alter damage types exists for the players at all.  Fire is not non-lethal.  If a player can just make it and other lethal damage types non-lethal on a whim, the game's realism drops significantly.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It makes the game *MORE*(you misrepresented again) unrealistic that the authority to alter damage types exists for the players at all.  Fire is not non-lethal.  If a player can just make it and other lethal damage types non-lethal on a whim, the game's realism drops significantly.



Presumably if a player shared your view that too much of this was unrealistic, they wouldn't make such _whimsical_ decisions!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Presumably if a player shared your view that too much of this was unrealistic, they wouldn't make such _whimsical_ decisions!




They did share my views on 4e.  Due to things like this, not one of them ever suggested we make the switch from 3e to 4e.  The same can't be said about 3e to 5e.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], the fact that you and your group didn't play 4e doesn't respond to what I posted:

(1) It can't be true that, in D&D, it is _unrealistc_ or (_more_ unrealistic) for someone to survive a fireball, as that has been part of the game from the beginning;

(2) You've not articulated any reason _why_ it the way the survival is determined at the table (by roll or by stipulation) should affect the degree of realism of the fiction;

(3) It can'be be true that, in D&D, _only the GM _can make decisions such as that a fireball doesn't kill someone - because in 4e a _player_ can make that decision;

(4) If a player or GM, on any given occasion when they can make such a decision, thinks that survival would be unrealistic then they can make that call - which has happened on occasion in my 4e game.​
This isn't abour preferences. This is about whether or not a particular mechanic affects _realism_. You've given no reason why it should. And you make assertions about your game being more realistic than my game, but with no evidence - eg you have no idea what proportion of characters have survived fireballs in my game compared to in your game.

Which really goes back to the proposition at the heart of this thread: if _realism_ is about the properties of the fiction, there is no reason to think that GM-driven play increases that realism; and if _realism_ is about the process of producing the fiction, no reason has been given to suggest that _GM-decides_ is more realistic than any other method of authorship.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], the fact that you and your group didn't play 4e doesn't respond to what I posted:
> 
> (1) It can't be true that, in D&D, it is _unrealistc_ or (_more_ unrealistic) for someone to survive a fireball, as that has been part of the game from the beginning;
> 
> (2) You've not articulated any reason _why_ it the way the survival is determined at the table (by roll or by stipulation) should affect the degree of realism of the fiction;
> 
> (3) It can'be be true that, in D&D, _only the GM _can make decisions such as that a fireball doesn't kill someone - because in 4e a _player_ can make that decision;
> 
> (4) If a player or GM, on any given occasion when they can make such a decision, thinks that survival would be unrealistic then they can make that call - which has happened on occasion in my 4e game.​
> This isn't abour preferences. This is about whether or not a particular mechanic affects _realism_. You've given no reason why it should. And you make assertions about your game being more realistic than my game, but with no evidence - eg you have no idea what proportion of characters have survived fireballs in my game compared to in your game.
> 
> Which really goes back to the proposition at the heart of this thread: if _realism_ is about the properties of the fiction, there is no reason to think that GM-driven play increases that realism; and if _realism_ is about the process of producing the fiction, no reason has been given to suggest that _GM-decides_ is more realistic than any other method of authorship.




Are you even capable of not misrepresenting what people say to you during a discussion?  I never said it was unrealistic for someone to survive a fireball.  That's your Strawman.  I said it's more unrealistic to make fire from a fireball non-lethal damage.  It doesn't matter whether the DM does it.  The player does it.  Or Santa Claus does it. 

And yes, I have given reasons why it affects realism.  To say that I haven't is yet another misrepresentation on your part.

Are you afraid that you will be ineffective in a discussion if you don't misrepresent the other side?


----------



## Hussar

I always find it funny to see things like this.

4e - This is so unrealistic we won't play it.

5e - This is the same rule as 4e.  It's so unrealistic, but, we'll just ignore that rule and make the game our own.

Somehow that makes 5e more realistic than 4e?  I honestly love how folks that hate things 4e just make room for it in their 5e games.  It's so deliciously inconsistent.  

Sorry, either both are realistic or unrealistic because they are the exact same rule.  Having a problem with one and not the other is really, really funny and a testament to how well WotC has written 5e so as not to trip people's Belief O' Meters.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> I always find it funny to see things like this.
> 
> 4e - This is so unrealistic we won't play it.
> 
> 5e - This is the same rule as 4e.  It's so unrealistic, but, we'll just ignore that rule and make the game our own.




So first, Strawman.  We did not say that the one rule was the only reason we didn't play 4e.  I specifically said on multiple occasions here that it was just one reason.  Second, it's not even close to being the same rule.  Not only does it not work with spells in 5e, it doesn't even work with all weapons.  Only melee weapons.



> Somehow that makes 5e more realistic than 4e?




Yes.  The 5e rule is more realistic than the 4e rule.



> I honestly love how folks that hate things 4e just make room for it in their 5e games.  It's so deliciously inconsistent.




Are you "honestly" incorrectly equating the two rules, or was it deliberate?



> ...because they are the exact same rule.




You might want to read the 5e rules, because if you think that's true, then it's pretty clear that you haven't.


----------



## Hussar

Sigh.  Yup, you're right [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION].  There are differences, which, by dictionary definition, makes them different.  Congratulations, you are technically right, and that's the best kind of right.

Now, let's look at it though.  You're issue was that you could go back in time and change the effect of an attack, changing the damage from lethal to non lethal retroactively.

Which edition am I talking about?  

Sure, 5e limits it to melee attacks.  So what?  The impact is exactly the same - retroactively changing the results after the fact.  5e also allows an Evoker Wizard to exclude targets from area effect spells - IOW- he or she can control a fireball, which was one of your issues as well.

At this point, you're just two smurfs arguing over who is more blue.  If it is unrealistic to retroactively change results, then it's unrealistic.  OH!  4e was more unrealistic.  Ok, who cares?  It's the same rule, just slightly differently applied.

Which, like I said, makes me giggle because you simply ignore the rule in 5e, but, apparently couldn't come to the same conclusion in 4e.  It's truly very funny to see how relatively minor changes in writing has such an enormous impact on how things are received.  

But, this is all edition warring crap anyway, so, it's not really important.  Just an observation.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> Now, let's look at it though.  You're issue was that you could go back in time and change the effect of an attack, changing the damage from lethal to non lethal retroactively.
> 
> Which edition am I talking about?




It really doesn't matter.  If you are being deceptively vague like that in order to win points on the internetz, then sure, they sound the same.



> Sure, 5e limits it to melee attacks.  So what?  The impact is exactly the same - retroactively changing the results after the fact.




The impact is not exactly the same.  There are major differences in the 4e version.



> 5e also allows an Evoker Wizard to exclude targets from area effect spells - IOW- he or she can control a fireball, which was one of your issues as well.




In game shaping of spells was never one of my issues.  It helps if you understand what the issues are before you post.



> If it is unrealistic to retroactively change results, then it's unrealistic.  OH!  4e was more unrealistic.  Ok, who cares?  It's the same rule, just slightly differently applied.




So first, I and my players care, as do others I'm sure.  If you don't care, great, but don't try to minimize things for other people.  Second, it's a major difference between the 4e rule and the 5e rule.  Leaving out everything but melee weapons is much less than including every form of damage the PC can come up with.  Third, that was a False Dichotomy.  Things aren't just unrealistic or not, realism exists on a spectrum, so one unrealistic thing can and usually is more or less realistic than some other thing.



> Which, like I said, makes me giggle because you simply ignore the rule in 5e, but, apparently couldn't come to the same conclusion in 4e.




Again, it's a pretty good idea to know what you are talking about before you post.  I said just a few posts ago that my group found the 5e rule to be dumb and changed it in about 30 seconds.  If you're going to respond to someone, read first.



> But, this is all edition warring crap anyway, so, it's not really important.  Just an observation.




Finding fault in the rule of an edition is not edition warring, but thanks for trying to get me into the "Let's Play Edition Wars" game.  Sorry, but I'm not interested in playing that.  And for something to be an observation, you actually have to observe first.  Since it's pretty clear that you didn't bother to fully read my posts, you haven't observed any such thing.  Because if you had fully read my posts, you'd know that I also found the fault in the lesser 5e version rule and changed it.


----------



## Hussar

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - there's a difference between not reading your posts and not really caring.    I believe I walk that line every time I post with you.

But, in any case, I'd point out that I did, indeed, read your posts, and even showed that you had, in fact, changed the 5e rules, so, claims that I didn't read your posts don't really work do they?  I was just finding it funny that you would look at 5e, and think, "Hrm, I don't like this rule, I'll just change it" but, read 4e, with virtually the exact same rule and think, "Wow, I don't like this game  so much I won't play it."

I stand in awe of how WotC has managed to win over folks with 5e.  It's a testament to how important voice is in writing.  Six years ago, WotC was the evil corporation trying to force a garbage game on fans.  Now, it can do no wrong, even though the new version of the game is so very close to the other version.  

I guess the devil is in the details.  For me, it's not.  I look at these two rules and think, yup, these are pretty much the same thing.  Sure, there's superficial differences, but, in play?  Yeah, a whole lot more things die to melee attacks than anything else.  Shifting the rules to say, "Yeah, only melee attacks can be retroactively converted" probably only applies to a very small fraction of actual deaths at the table in play.  In both editions, the majority of NPC deaths will be from melee attacks.  The minority that come from magic attacks?  Meh.

To be fair though, with the Dragon Heist AP taking place in Waterdeep, the archer ranger has had a bit of a tough time with the rule change since killing any citizen for any reason carries legal penalities.  So, yeah, there are some differences.  Not really major, but, some.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - there's a difference between not reading your posts and not really caring.    I believe I walk that line every time I post with you.




Then don't respond.  I won't miss your Strawmen, believe me.



> But, in any case, I'd point out that I did, indeed, read your posts, and even showed that you had, in fact, changed the 5e rules, so, claims that I didn't read your posts don't really work do they?  I was just finding it funny that you would look at 5e, and think, "*Hrm, I don't like this rule, I'll just change it" but, read 4e, with virtually the exact same rule and think, "Wow, I don't like this game  so much I won't play it*."




I never said that, and even corrected in the last post, proving that you really don't read what I say.  Or if you do, then you intentionally misrepresent me which is even worse.  Had that rule been the only thing I didn't like with 4e, I'd have done the same thing I did with 5e which is change it and move on.  However, there were so many different things that I personally didn't like about 4e that I would have had to basically re-write the game it it just wasn't worth that hassle when I had all my 3e books still around and working well.



> I stand in awe of how WotC has managed to win over folks with 5e.  It's a testament to how important voice is in writing.  Six years ago, WotC was the evil corporation trying to force a garbage game on fans.  Now, it can do no wrong, even though the new version of the game is so very close to the other version.




WotC can do no wrong?!  I stand in awe of how you can be so oblivious to all the complaints about 5e from skills, to hit points, to the rule we are discussing, to rulings, to backgrounds and on and on.  



> I guess the devil is in the details.  For me, it's not.  I look at these two rules and think, yup, these are pretty much the same thing.  Sure, there's superficial differences, but, in play?  Yeah, a whole lot more things die to melee attacks than anything else.




Spells and ranged weapons kill a great deal.  I don't know if they kill more than melee, but if not, they are certainly in the same ballpark.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Are you even capable of not misrepresenting what people say to you during a discussion?  I never said it was unrealistic for someone to survive a fireball.  That's your Strawman.  I said it's more unrealistic to make fire from a fireball non-lethal damage.



How is that last sentence relevant to a discussion of 4e, which has no concept of "non-lethal damage". The rule in 4e is this (I'm quoting from the Rules Compendium p 261; but the PHB includes the same rule with identical or near-identical wording):

When an adventurer reduces a monster or a DM-controlled character to 0 hit points, he or she can choose to knock the creature unconscious rather than kill it.​
If a player makes this choice, then the creature survived the fireball. Which you've said is not unrealistic. So where is the lack of realism in this rule?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> How is that last sentence relevant to a discussion of 4e, which has no concept of "non-lethal damage". The rule in 4e is this (I'm quoting from the Rules Compendium p 261; but the PHB includes the same rule with identical or near-identical wording):
> When an adventurer reduces a monster or a DM-controlled character to 0 hit points, he or she can choose to knock the creature unconscious rather than kill it.​
> If a player makes this choice, then the creature survived the fireball. Which you've said is not unrealistic. So where is the lack of realism in this rule?




You can't tell me that there is no concept of non-lethal damage in 4e and then quote me the rule that says that there is.  The very fact that you can choose to knock a creature out rather than kill means that there are two types of damage.  Lethal and non-lethal.  If there weren't, you wouldn't have that choice.

The lack of realism is in the fact that fire is always lethal damage, unless some sort of magic alters it.  There is no such magical ability built into a 4e fireball, so it doesn't exist unless the DM adds it to the game.  The rule about damage is a general one that involves both time travel and a highly unrealistic ability to alter damage types.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Thanks. Wow, almost 400 pages!




I can be long-winded. Who'd have thought?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Once the spell has been cast, the fireball goes and explodes.  Nothing in the fireball daily says or even implies that the caster can make non-lethal fire.  What is non-lethal fire anyway?  It's absurd to even think that non-lethal fire exists.  The DM can add non-lethal fire into the game, but I would never do so.  I like a more realistic game than you do.
> 
> 
> 
> Because fire is lethal and impartial.  There is no control over what it does.  If it's non-lethal, then it's not fire.  If it's fire, then it's lethal.




Agreed, but that doesn't mean the PLAYER shouldn't have some say in how things go! Think about it this way, there's some plot point that is going to hinge on some particular NPC being disabled instead of dead. Why can't players invoke that? Its a very common thing in any sort of action genre, that one bad guy that still has enough life in him to interrogate, etc. Although 4e doesn't really SAY the DM can also do this, presumably she can also decree non-lethality for whatever reasons.

It is certainly 'gamist', there's no general in-world explanation, and particular instances will probably be explained largely post-hoc.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I'm fairly consistent, yes.
> 
> I do tinker with new things due to discussions here, though.  A few campaigns ago I had the PCs all be children of various gods of the Forgotten Realms.  Part of that campaign was that each child had innate power to "do things" related to the portfolios of the parent god.  I let the players know that they could try anything they could think of that relates, and to be creative.  The power grew with them as they gained levels and could do things of their level or lower fairly easily, but could be pushed to things more powerful than would normally be possible due to level alone, and I even didn't give them hard rules on what the limits were so they wouldn't feel constrained.  I was basically setting it up so that they could create for the game within those limits, to see how the players would react to being able to do things like that.  They tried surprisingly few things.  I figured they would use it more and more as they got used to the idea, which they did, but still tended to go with their class related abilities far more often.
> 
> 
> 
> I enjoy the debate, and more than once after beating my head against the brick wall for a while, someone says something new and different, or in a different way which gets me thinking about the subject in a way I hadn't yet.  Occasionally, I will even change my mind about something, like I did in the Shield Master discussion.
> 
> 
> 
> Same here!!  And I do enjoy our discussions.  I wish some others here would engage in good faith discussions the way you do.




That sounds like an interesting campaign! I had one once that was supposed to be basically the first people, and they of course BECOME the first gods, but it never really worked out exactly. Maybe I'll try your idea sometime. It might be a good one to use with HoML.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Huh? In most RPGs, including D&D, the GM can _choose_ for an event to occur which is, in the fiction, sheer chance or providence - eg that members of the sect are in this teahouse rather than that teahouse.
> 
> Gygax in his DMG canvasses the same option for a fatal monster attack against a PC, where the player has played with skill and hence PC death would be particularly unfair.
> 
> What is the objection to a player making an analogous choice in relation to the effect that a fireball spell has on a target?




Again, this is a vestige of the whole original Gygaxian mindset of skilled play dungeon crawling. If a player wants a monster disabled in this paradigm, then he's got to actually construct, ahead of time or maybe on the spur of the moment, a convincing mechanism which will win the DM's favor and then the DM gets to produce the reward. Players rewarding themselves is ANATHEMA in this paradigm! Again, inertia, people keep these tenets of play even when they have long abandoned the core paradigm itself, de facto if not de jur. Realism, or some close analog, is brought in as a replacement reason when one is required, though "why be realistic" can only be answered as "I like it that way." Obviously we can only accept that at face value.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Agreed, but that doesn't mean the PLAYER shouldn't have some say in how things go! Think about it this way, there's some plot point that is going to hinge on some particular NPC being disabled instead of dead. Why can't players invoke that? Its a very common thing in any sort of action genre, that one bad guy that still has enough life in him to interrogate, etc. Although 4e doesn't really SAY the DM can also do this, presumably she can also decree non-lethality for whatever reasons.




I think they should be able to knock out an NPC instead of killing him.  I just think that they should be working towards that goal in advance with all the limitations that goes with it.  Instead of using a fireball, use hold person or some other spell that will incapacitate.  Let me know that if you connect with your blow(remember that in 5e RAW, only the blow that takes you to 0 really hits), you will be pulling it so as not to kill the NPC.  It's not hard to alter the party tactics to try to capture the enemy.  Using those tactics IS the player having say in how things go.



> It is certainly 'gamist', there's no general in-world explanation, and particular instances will probably be explained largely post-hoc.




Which of course is an issue.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> It makes the game *MORE*(you misrepresented again) unrealistic that the authority to alter damage types exists for the players at all.  Fire is not non-lethal.  If a player can just make it and other lethal damage types non-lethal on a whim, the game's realism drops significantly.




But really it isn't necessary to explain the 'non-lethality' as some mutant form of fire. Just assume that the force of the fireball knocked the guy unconscious but didn't quite kill him. PCs, in 4e, AUTOMATICALLY are unconscious at 0 (unless they reach negative bloodied, which is unusual in a single attack). All that this rule is doing is allowing this to apply to monsters, now and then. I'd assume the reason it doesn't always apply is simple convenience in play. We could assume that MANY 'dead' monsters actually could have been saved, and thus the non-lethality is just the PCs bothering to save one. There are other possible explanations too. 

I feel like the repugnance for this mechanic has less to do with any really deep issue with its creating impossible or implausible situations and more to do with its tampering with traditions of play.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> That sounds like an interesting campaign! I had one once that was supposed to be basically the first people, and they of course BECOME the first gods, but it never really worked out exactly.




That's an interesting idea, too.



> Maybe I'll try your idea sometime. It might be a good one to use with HoML.




The idea behind the campaign was that the Imaskari remnant located one of their old mega artifacts designed to keep the gods from connecting to mortals on Toril with divine magic and activated it.  Clerics, paladins, etc. lost their power.  However, through a fluke(yeah, right) the PCs via their divine heritage still had a connection to their parent and could draw upon that connection if a divine class, so the cleric in the party was literally the only cleric on the planet who could still use clerical spells.  The parents communicated via dreams to their children that they couldn't connect to their followers and asked for help.

At the end of the campaign after the PCs were successful, they were offered the status of Demigods in the pantheon if they so wished, retiring the character, or they could continue on as PCs.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> @_*Maxperson*_, the fact that you and your group didn't play 4e doesn't respond to what I posted:
> (1) It can't be true that, in D&D, it is _unrealistc_ or (_more_ unrealistic) for someone to survive a fireball, as that has been part of the game from the beginning;
> 
> (2) You've not articulated any reason _why_ it the way the survival is determined at the table (by roll or by stipulation) should affect the degree of realism of the fiction;
> 
> (3) It can'be be true that, in D&D, _only the GM _can make decisions such as that a fireball doesn't kill someone - because in 4e a _player_ can make that decision;
> 
> (4) If a player or GM, on any given occasion when they can make such a decision, thinks that survival would be unrealistic then they can make that call - which has happened on occasion in my 4e game.​
> This isn't abour preferences. This is about whether or not a particular mechanic affects _realism_. You've given no reason why it should. And you make assertions about your game being more realistic than my game, but with no evidence - eg you have no idea what proportion of characters have survived fireballs in my game compared to in your game.
> 
> Which really goes back to the proposition at the heart of this thread: if _realism_ is about the properties of the fiction, there is no reason to think that GM-driven play increases that realism; and if _realism_ is about the process of producing the fiction, no reason has been given to suggest that _GM-decides_ is more realistic than any other method of authorship.




Yes, this is the central point of the whole discussion. Why is it held, by anyone, that somehow DMs (at least in D&D if not other systems) are somehow blessed with a 'realism gene' that all the other participants in the game lack? Why are dice more realistic than people? As with you, I am mystified by this. I have asserted it is a holdover of early D&D paradigms that have formed a tradition, which is a theory at least, but its hard to see why it persists so stubbornly.


----------



## Hussar

I'd also point out in 5e, if you play by RAW anyway, it's almost impossible to flat out kill anyone.  You need to drill them to negative max HP in a single hit, or force 3 death saves (and, as such, impossible to do in a single hit with anything).  

Sure, you can knock them out, but, you can then stabilize anyone with a simple check.

Is it different than straight up stating that fireballs can just knock someone out?  Sure, maybe, but, again, in play, there's no practical difference.  It's virtually impossible to outright kill anyone with more than about 15 HP or so with a fireball.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> You can't tell me that there is no concept of non-lethal damage in 4e and then quote me the rule that says that there is. The very fact that you can choose to knock a creature out rather than kill means that there are two types of damage. Lethal and non-lethal. If there weren't, you wouldn't have that choice.



This is not a good argument. From the fact that fireballs sometimes kill people, but sometimes just knock them out, it doesn't follow that there are two types of damage.

You've already stated that, in your game, some people caught in a fireball, or in red dragon's breath, survive while others do not. That doesn't mean there are two types of fire damage in uyour game - _lethal_ and _non-lethal_. It just means that some fireball attacks are not fatal.

4e is the same. Some fireball attacks knock their targets unconscious but do not kill them. That's always been a feature of any version of D&D that does not use _zero hp = death_. It doesn't mean that there are two types of fire damage.



Maxperson said:


> The rule about damage is a general one that involves both time travel and a highly unrealistic ability to alter damage types.



Huh? There's no time travel.

The target is hit by the fireball. Depending on a combination of damage rolls and/or player decisions, the target either remains concsious, falls unconscious or dies. That actually seems quite realistic to me. A game in which people hit by fireballs either remained concsious, or died, but never fell unconscious, would seem somewhat unrealistic.

And there's nothing _unreleastic_ about a player making decisions about the effect of an attack made by his/her PC.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> I'd also point out in 5e, if you play by RAW anyway, it's almost impossible to flat out kill anyone.  You need to drill them to negative max HP in a single hit, or force 3 death saves (and, as such, impossible to do in a single hit with anything).
> 
> Sure, you can knock them out, but, you can then stabilize anyone with a simple check.
> 
> Is it different than straight up stating that fireballs can just knock someone out?  Sure, maybe, but, again, in play, there's no practical difference.  It's virtually impossible to outright kill anyone with more than about 15 HP or so with a fireball.




This is just another Strawman of the argument being made, which you would know if you bothered to read the posts you respond to.  The argument being made has never been that a fireball instakills.  It has been that a fireball uses a lethal damage type, not a non-lethal damage type.  When your PC is reduced to 0 by a fireball, he is down and *DYING,* not down and comfortably resting.  The reason he is down and *DYING* is that fire is a lethal damage type.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is not a good argument. From the fact that fireballs sometimes kill people, but sometimes just knock them out, it doesn't follow that there are two types of damage.
> 
> You've already stated that, in your game, some people caught in a fireball, or in red dragon's breath, survive while others do not. That doesn't mean there are two types of fire damage in uyour game - _lethal_ and _non-lethal_. It just means that some fireball attacks are not fatal.




Ahh, a veritable Strawarmy has attacked overnight.  See my response to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], which you also knew before you posted that.



> Huh? There's no time travel.




The player doesn't make the decision until after the target hits 0 with the lethal damage type.  If the player makes the decision to make the fire soft and cuddly in order not to potentially kill the target, he has to rewind time to retroactively make that change to the fireball BEFORE it hits the target.



> And there's nothing _unreleastic_ about a player making decisions about the effect of an attack made by his/her PC.




The effect has already happened before the decision is made.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This is just another Strawman of the argument being made, which you would know if you bothered to read the posts you respond to.  The argument being made has never been that a fireball instakills.  It has been that a fireball uses a lethal damage type, not a non-lethal damage type.  When your PC is reduced to 0 by a fireball, he is down and *DYING,* not down and comfortably resting.  The reason he is down and *DYING* is that fire is a lethal damage type.




He may be comfortably resting, we won't know until after all the death saves.  Speaking of time travel....

The crux here is that fireballs do not inflict lethal damage prior to zero hitpoints, and everyone agrees with this.  You have 45 hp and a fireball dies 36?  Doesn't kill you.  The question then becomes what happens when you're reduced to zero.  Max contends that fire is always trying to kill you, so when it gets the chance at zero hitpoints, it's gonna try to kill you.  The other camp contends that it's all just damage, and, as such, fungible in the game rules because the fiction can accommodate.  This is just another facet of the fiction as an input vs fiction as an output divide.  

For Max, the fictional danger of fire must be set prior to adjudicating any resolution.  He's consistent in this with how he handles other damage -- it must be established prior to the resolution.  The other side figures it's just damage, so we can resolve and then figure out what matches the resolution.  This is fine, both ways work.

The issue I have with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s assessment here is where he asserts that determining the fiction prior to resolution is more "realistic" than not.  It's not more realistic, it just matches your sensibilities better.  Being knocked out from a fireball isn't less realistic than being killed by one.  That should be obvious.  The problem Max has is that he doesn't like to resolve then create fiction, he wants to create fiction so that there are limited, usually binary, outcomes that the resolution picks from.  In this case, fire will always kill is an input to the resolution, so if resolution results in 0 hitpoints, fire kills, if not, fire damages.  Again, this works fine, it's just not more realistic in the way [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] defines it -- this isn't more like the real world where fire can cause unconsciousness (especially in cases where it's relatively easy to revive the victim) .  Oddly, it could be in the way I've defined it but that Max flatly rejects, ie that realism means coherent, internally consistent, and believable.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> He may be comfortably resting, we won't know until after all the death saves.




This is wrong.  We know after the very first death save, because if he was resting comfortably no death saves would be made at all.  Even a single death save means that the person is dying.



> The crux here is that fireballs do not inflict lethal damage prior to zero hitpoints, and everyone agrees with this.  You have 45 hp and a fireball dies 36?  Doesn't kill you.  The question then becomes what happens when you're reduced to zero.




They are inflicting a lethal damage type regardless.  That you get lucky, skillfully dodge, hide behind a pillar, etc., leaving you with 9 hit points out of 45, does not mean that the fire is not a lethal damage type.  



> The issue I have with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s assessment here is where he asserts that determining the fiction prior to resolution is more "realistic" than not.  It's not more realistic, it just matches your sensibilities better.  Being knocked out from a fireball isn't less realistic than being killed by one.  That should be obvious.  The problem Max has is that he doesn't like to resolve then create fiction, he wants to create fiction so that there are limited, usually binary, outcomes that the resolution picks from.  In this case, fire will always kill is an input to the resolution, so if resolution results in 0 hitpoints, fire kills, if not, fire damages.  Again, this works fine, it's just not more realistic in the way [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] defines it -- this isn't more like the real world where fire can cause unconsciousness (especially in cases where it's relatively easy to revive the victim) .  Oddly, it could be in the way I've defined it but that Max flatly rejects, ie that realism means coherent, internally consistent, and believable.




Fire being a lethal damage type is more realistic than fire that wants to tuck you in at night and make you comfy.  It might also be consistent, coherent and believable, but it is also more realistic.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The player doesn't make the decision until after the target hits 0 with the lethal damage type.  If the player makes the decision to make the fire soft and cuddly in order not to potentially kill the target, he has to rewind time to retroactively make that change to the fireball BEFORE it hits the target.



But I've seen this rule in play, and I've never travelled in time. Nor have any of the PCs in my game travelled in time when this sort of thing happens. So I know from experience you're wrong.

(And it's weird to describe damage as "soft and cuddly" when it knocks someone unconcsious. To me that actually seems rather brutal. When I used to play AD&D it was not uncommon for PCs to be knocked unconscious. No one thought that this meant that the damage being dealt was "non lethal" or "soft and cuddly". I think 3E has a similar mechanic. And you purport to be familiar with AD&D and 3E.)

What you seem to be confused about is the resolution system in question. In 4e it goes like this:

(1) Apply damage to target;

(2) If damage leaves target at >0 hp, target remains conscious'

(3) If damage drops target to 0 or fewer hp, player makes choice - either target is unconscious, or target is dead.​
There's no time travel. The player's choice about whether the damage is fatal or merely debilitating is part of the resolution process.

In terms of raw mechanics, this is actually no different from what Gygax proposes in his DMG (p 110), except that in 4e the mechanic is player-side whereas Gygax is envisaging a GM-side mechanic:

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player-character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!​
In 4e, the player has the right to "adjudicate the situation" when a foe is reduced to zero hp. This isn't "time travel", just making a choice about the fiction that results from a particular category of successful check.

You may not like the rule, just as - perhaps - you don't like Gygax's suggested rule and don't use it. But neither is hard to make sense of, neither involves "time travel", neither requires any concept of "non-lethal damage" (just the banal notion of "not-fatal attack"), and neither produces unrealistic outcomes in the fiction.



Maxperson said:


> Fire being a lethal damage type is more realistic than fire that wants to tuck you in at night and make you comfy.



"Lethal damage type" isn't a technical term in 4e. So I can only assume it means _is able to kill you_. Fire can kill things in 4e. My game has seen numerous beings hurt and killed by fire.

That doesn't mean its unreaslistic that sometimes, people who are attacked by fire fall unconscious but don't die.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> When I used to play AD&D it was not uncommon for PCs to be knocked unconscious.




Really?  When I played AD&D a fireball knocking someone exactly to 0 was rare.  If it happened more than 1 time in 20, I would be shocked.  Typically, if they dropped below 1 hit point, it was into the negatives somewhere and they were dying, not merely knocked out.



> I think 3E has a similar mechanic. And you purport to be familiar with AD&D and 3E.)




Yep.  3e had you down and dying as well.



> (3) If damage drops target to 0 or fewer hp, player makes choice - either target is unconscious, or target is dead.




Fire should not allow that choice.  Prior to the fireball hitting the target, the fire damage was lethal damage.  After hitting the target and the player discovering that the target is now down, it's now non-lethal damage.  Retroactively applying the change to fire is time travel.



> In terms of raw mechanics, this is actually no different from what Gygax proposes in his DMG (p 110), except that in 4e the mechanic is player-side whereas Gygax is envisaging a GM-side mechanic:




No.  In his description there the fire is still doing lethal damage.  It has just failed to kill the PC outright.  He is also saying to only do it when super bad luck is going to kill the PC(not NPC of any type) outright, not whenever the DM feels like it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This is wrong.  We know after the very first death save, because if he was resting comfortably no death saves would be made at all.  Even a single death save means that the person is dying.



Dying in a game term sense, but not dying in the fiction.  As shown by the rurst death save coming up a 20 -- back to 1 hp, only knocjed a bit loopy by the blow for just a brief moment.  Dying means death occurs if no intervention happens, and we don't know this until 3 failures.  Death saves don't, by RAW, have any meaning after 3 successes or failures have accrued -- they disappear and are tracked anew if needed.

Dearh saves are just an extended abstract resolution mechanic -- they have no assigned fiction.  A failed death save has mo assigned fiction, only 3 do.


[Quite]
They are inflicting a lethal damage type regardless.  That you get lucky, skillfully dodge, hide behind a pillar, etc., leaving you with 9 hit points out of 45, does not mean that the fire is not a lethal damage type.  
[/quote]
"Lethal" is baggage you're bringing.  It doesn't exist in the rules, and doesn't need to.  As such, it's as I said above: fiction you establish to limit the scope of resolutions to preferred outcomes.  And that's fine and good -- no insult or demeanment should attach, here.  But, it is very much something you bring in that you like, not realism.  Fire is often nonlethal in the real world, else firemen would be in trouble.



> Fire being a lethal damage type is more realistic than fire that wants to tuck you in at night and make you comfy.  It might also be consistent, coherent and believable, but it is also more realistic.




Any damage in the real world is lethal under this concept Max.  Name a real world type of damage that isn't lethal.  It's just a matter of degree.  You've chosen to state that the degree of fire in your game is always lethal at 0 hitpoints.  I can't even translate that to the real world, so how can that be more realistic?  Others say that fire damage is variably lethal.  This, at least, tracks better into the real wotld.  Under your assumption, anyone that fails unconscious while taking any fire damage would automatically be dying or dead (I guess it depends on theur PC/NPC status?).

That's not even getting to the point that the game treats any heat damage as fire damage. Steam? Fire damage.  Heat Metal? Fire damage.  Hug a remorhaz?  Fire damage.


----------



## Satyrn

Maxperson said:


> I think they should be able to knock out an NPC instead of killing him.  I just think that they should be working towards that goal in advance with all the limitations that goes with it.  Instead of using a fireball, use hold person or some other spell that will incapacitate.  Let me know that if you connect with your blow(remember that in 5e RAW, only the blow that takes you to 0 really hits), you will be pulling it so as not to kill the NPC.  It's not hard to alter the party tactics to try to capture the enemy.  Using those tactics IS the player having say in how things go.



I have found this method to be more satisfying, too.

My players have taken a quest (very much in the sense of taking a quest in a video game) to retrieve live specimens of various dungeon critters. Their corpses are acceptable, but of much lesser value, both gold and XP wise.

If I was using 4e's rule that a player m could make his fireball knock a skag unconcious instead of killing it, this quest's risk of accidentally killing the prize wouldn't exist. Indeed, one of my very few house rules is axing 5e's rule about choosing to knock out an enemy instead of killing it with a melee weapon. And since I'm using 5e's default assumption that monsters don't get death saves, they need to use nets, lassos, sleep spells and the like.

Like you said, if the players want to knock out something out someone instead of killing him "they should be working towards that goal in advance with all the limitations that goes with it." In my game, it creates a fun moment every time the player dares to swing a sword (softening it up for a sleep spell, say) at a monster they're trying to snag.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> In his description there the fire is still doing lethal damage.  It has just failed to kill the PC outright.



And in 4e, the fire is still doing "lethal damage" (which as far as I can see is just a synonym for _damage_). But it fails to kill the NPC outright. Just as Gygax suggests, the NPC is instead knocked unconscious.

The two scenarios are identical in this respect.



Maxperson said:


> Fire should not allow that choice.  Prior to the fireball hitting the target, the fire damage was lethal damage.  After hitting the target and the player discovering that the target is now down, it's now non-lethal damage.  Retroactively applying the change to fire is time travel.



I encourage you to re-read the rules, as you're not stating them correctly. For example, it's not true that _prior to the fireball hitting the target, the fire damage was lethal damage_. In 4e, prior to the fireball hitting the target, no damage (lethal or otherwise) has been dealt.

Here is the rule:

Prior to the fireball hitting the target, the target had taken no damage from the fireball. (Self-evidently.) When the fireball hit the target, the target suffered damage. When that damage dropped the target to zero hp, the player whose PC cast the fireball had a choice to make: death, or unconsciousness?

I don't think it's a very complicated rule. And it does not involve time travel at any point.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Dying in a game term sense, but not dying in the fiction.  As shown by the rurst death save coming up a 20 -- back to 1 hp, only knocjed a bit loopy by the blow for just a brief moment.  Dying means death occurs if no intervention happens, and we don't know this until 3 failures.  Death saves don't, by RAW, have any meaning after 3 successes or failures have accrued -- they disappear and are tracked anew if needed.




Player 1: I'm down to 0 after that last hit.

DM: You are down and dying, but not really, you'll have to make a death save next turn.

Player 1: Player 2, would you please heal me right away?

Player 2: Why?  Nothing is wrong with you in the fiction, so there's no reason to subject myself to more danger by healing you instead of taking out the enemy.  

Player 1: But if I miss my death saves or get hit while I am down, I will be dead.

Player 2: Once you are dead something will be wrong with you, but until your PC dies nothing is wrong with you at all and you're just sleeping.  Enjoy the nap.  I hope it's not forever, but we won't have any idea that your PC is dying until he dies.

Player 1: ...


Sorry, but the dying is also happening in the fiction.  That the PC can get lucky and regain consciousness does not stop that the hit was causing him to bleed out and death was a very real possibility.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> And in 4e, the fire is still doing "lethal damage" (which as far as I can see is just a synonym for _damage_). But it fails to kill the NPC outright. Just as Gygax suggests, the NPC is instead knocked unconscious.
> 
> The two scenarios are identical in this respect.
> 
> I encourage you to re-read the rules, as you're not stating them correctly. For example, it's not true that _prior to the fireball hitting the target, the fire damage was lethal damage_. In 4e, prior to the fireball hitting the target, no damage (lethal or otherwise) has been dealt.
> 
> Here is the rule:
> 
> Prior to the fireball hitting the target, the target had taken no damage from the fireball. (Self-evidently.) When the fireball hit the target, the target suffered damage. When that damage dropped the target to zero hp, the player whose PC cast the fireball had a choice to make: death, or unconsciousness?
> 
> I don't think it's a very complicated rule. And it does not involve time travel at any point.




You aren't understanding the order.

Step 1:  The wizard casts fireball.  In doing so a ball of lethal fire is projected towards the enemy or a pea that will explode, depending on the edition.

Step 2: The lethal fireball impacts the enemy dealing a lethal damage type to the victim.  The first 37 points of damage consist of this lethal fire damage type since the victim isn't at 0 yet.

Step 3: The last 1 hit point goes away and the player has to decide AFTER the enemy hits 0, whether to keep the fire damage lethal and let it potentially kill the enemy, or mystically turn it into fluff bunny sauce and just knock out the enemy.  If he does, he has to go back in time and turn the lethal fire non-lethal so that none of the damage is lethal now.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> You aren't understanding the order.
> 
> Step 1:  The wizard casts fireball.  In doing so a ball of lethal fire is projected towards the enemy or a pea that will explode, depending on the edition.
> 
> Step 2: The lethal fireball impacts the enemy dealing a lethal damage type to the victim.  The first 37 points of damage consist of this lethal fire damage type since the victim isn't at 0 yet.
> 
> Step 3: The last 1 hit point goes away and the player has to decide AFTER the enemy hits 0, whether to keep the fire damage lethal and let it potentially kill the enemy, or mystically turn it into fluff bunny sauce and just knock out the enemy.  If he does, he has to go back in time and turn the lethal fire non-lethal so that none of the damage is lethal now.




You realize that that order is not actually mandated by anything.  That until you have completed the entire action, you cannot actually narrate anything, same as anything else in combat.  So, this process sim approach to gaming, while perfectly valid, is not the only approach.

Additionally, you missed my point.  It's not that there isn't a difference between knocking unconcious and knocking someone below zero, sure, there is potentially a differences.  Only thing is, in practice, there really isn't much difference.  What does a failed death save mean in the game fiction?  Until there is that third failed death save, you cannot have taken lethal damage, since it's entirely possible to stand you on your feet without magic.  There are feats which allow healing after all.  

So, you could take your HP:-1 into negative damage, failed two death saves and still not have a single actual lethal wound upon you.  And, until you fail that third death save, any description of lethal wounds is actually not supported by the mechanics.  So, the fireball knocks you to negative HP-1, you fail two death saves and then stabilize, you actually were never in any threat of death since that's the only narrative that makes sense of the mechanics.  It's not like your severed artery suddenly stopped bleeding for no reason.  It's, your artery was never severed in the first place.  That fire damage, while it looked bad, was never actually life threatening because, 24 hours later, you are entirely healed.

Like I said, it's endlessly fascinating to me to watch folks that disliked 4e suddenly approve of 5e, despite 5e having exactly the same problems that 4e did.  If you didn't like how HP and damage worked in 4e, then there is really no reason to give 5e a pass, but, because of how the mechanics are presented, suddenly people sing the praises of 5e.  It's an incredible feat that WotC has pulled off.  Really mind blowing.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> You realize that that order is not actually mandated by anything.  That until you have completed the entire action, you cannot actually narrate anything, same as anything else in combat.  So, this process sim approach to gaming, while perfectly valid, is not the only approach.




I narrate parts of actions all the time.  I've literally said, "The fireball streaks from your hands and explodes around your enemies.  Roll damage."  The order I set forth is the order things happen in the fiction, and how things happen mechanically outside of the fiction.



> It's not that there isn't a difference between knocking unconcious and knocking someone below zero, sure, there is potentially a differences.  Only thing is, in practice, there really isn't much difference.  What does a failed death save mean in the game fiction?  Until there is that third failed death save, you cannot have taken lethal damage, since it's entirely possible to stand you on your feet without magic.  There are feats which allow healing after all.




Again with the Strawman?  Or is it that you didn't read what I said again?  Damage can be of a lethal type without resulting in death.    



> So, you could take your HP:-1 into negative damage, failed two death saves and still not have a single actual lethal wound upon you.




But you got to that point by being attacked by a lethal damage type.  Otherwise there would have been no death saves.



> And, until you fail that third death save, any description of lethal wounds is actually not supported by the mechanics.  So, the fireball knocks you to negative HP-1, you fail two death saves and then *stabilize*, you actually were never in any threat of death since that's the only narrative that makes sense of the mechanics.




This is objectively false.  There was the threat of death from the very first death save, regardless of its outcome.  You are missing the key word up there, so I bolded it for you.  Stabilizing someone via skill or magic does not mean that the wound wasn't one that could have resulted in death.  It just means that someone stopped death from happening by stabilizing you somehow, or you got lucky and rolled a natural 20.



> Like I said, it's endlessly fascinating to me to watch folks that disliked 4e suddenly approve of 5e, despite 5e having exactly the same problems that 4e did.




Another objectively false statement.  While it might have a few similar problems, it does not have exactly the same ones, since the class structure and class ability structure is not the same, and many had problems with those things in 4e.  There are more differences than just those two.

You are really confused over why people disliked 4e and like 5e, and vice versa.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hussar said:


> I'd also point out in 5e, if you play by RAW anyway, it's almost impossible to flat out kill anyone.  You need to drill them to negative max HP in a single hit, or force 3 death saves (and, as such, impossible to do in a single hit with anything).
> 
> Sure, you can knock them out, but, you can then stabilize anyone with a simple check.
> 
> Is it different than straight up stating that fireballs can just knock someone out?  Sure, maybe, but, again, in play, there's no practical difference.  It's virtually impossible to outright kill anyone with more than about 15 HP or so with a fireball.




Does that count for NPCs too? In 4e monsters don't get this benefit (and it is smaller, only negative bloodied, but that is still a lot, PCs are rarely killed outright).


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> /snip
> 
> But you got to that point by being attacked by a lethal damage type.  Otherwise there would have been no death saves.




Sorry, which edition are we speaking about?  Because, in 5e, there is no such thing as "lethal damage type".  There is just damage.  Full stop.



> This is objectively false.  There was the threat of death from the very first death save, regardless of its outcome.  You are missing the key word up there, so I bolded it for you.  Stabilizing someone via skill or magic does not mean that the wound wasn't one that could have resulted in death.  It just means that someone stopped death from happening by stabilizing you somehow, or you got lucky and rolled a natural 20.




Couple of points.  Yup, I agree, there was a threat of death, which I mentioned as potential differences.  But, since you didn't actually die, unless you are retroactively changing the wounds, (thus the whole Schrodinger's wound thing), then that wound couldn't have been lethal because, well, you didn't die.  Note, you do not need a 20 to not die.  Three successful checks and you are stabilized  (oh, look another 4e rule).  It's entirely possible to stabilize 100% on your own, and you can 100% heal from that in 24 hours.  There is no possible way that any wound that doesn't actually kill you to be serious.  Not in 5e.  Not when all wounds heal within 24 hours.  Shockingly, just like 4e.  



> Another objectively false statement.  While it might have a few similar problems, it does not have exactly the same ones, since the class structure and class ability structure is not the same, and many had problems with those things in 4e.  There are more differences than just those two.
> 
> You are really confused over why people disliked 4e and like 5e, and vice versa.




LOL.  You can translate 5e characters into 4e Essentials characters almost verbatim.  Requires virtually no changes at all.  But, of course, 5e fans don't want to hear that.  Like I said, I'm not confused at all.  I stand in awe of WotC's ability to change people's minds with just a few well placed phrases.  There are far, far more similarities between 4e and 5e than differences, yet, folks will swear up and down that they are totally different games.  It's amazing really.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> They are inflicting a lethal damage type regardless.  That you get lucky, skillfully dodge, hide behind a pillar, etc., leaving you with 9 hit points out of 45, does not mean that the fire is not a lethal damage type.




OK, 'realistic', if it means anything, must reasonably mean that something is 'closer to the way it works in reality'. Is there such a thing as a 'lethal damage type' in reality? Is there any such thing as 'non-lethal damage' in reality? I think not! I think any sort of damage to the human body is some increment of the way to destroying that body, and thus potentially lethal. It might require 10,000 slaps from a toddler to kill you, but I'm betting after the first few thousand you'd start to feel it (I guess it might depend on the time frame of administration). Obviously sometimes things do kill you and sometimes they don't, and things which are more damaging are probably more likely to exceed that threshold, but pretty much anything that does any damage at all can kill you, eventually.

So, I can't find an argument for any 'realism' in your position Max. It seems no more or less realistic than when some game participant (any one, which doesn't matter) can decree a specific attack to produce lethal or sub-lethal results. So, what is really being objected to?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, 'realistic', if it means anything, must reasonably mean that something is 'closer to the way it works in reality'. Is there such a thing as a 'lethal damage type' in reality? Is there any such thing as 'non-lethal damage' in reality? I think not! I think any sort of damage to the human body is some increment of the way to destroying that body, and thus potentially lethal. It might require 10,000 slaps from a toddler to kill you, but I'm betting after the first few thousand you'd start to feel it (I guess it might depend on the time frame of administration). Obviously sometimes things do kill you and sometimes they don't, and things which are more damaging are probably more likely to exceed that threshold, but pretty much anything that does any damage at all can kill you, eventually.
> 
> So, I can't find an argument for any 'realism' in your position Max. It seems no more or less realistic than when some game participant (any one, which doesn't matter) can decree a specific attack to produce lethal or sub-lethal results. So, what is really being objected to?




Reasonableness is the key.  If I hit someone with a pillow, even if some fluke happens and they die, I'm not going to be charged with Assault With a Deadly Weapon.  If I stab someone with a knife I will.  If something can reasonably be expected to cause death, it would be lethal force.  Just look at police use of force.  Shooting someone with beanbags is not considered to be lethal force, despite them occasionally killing someone.  Shooting them with a gun is lethal force, despite the fact that many people survive.  I'm applying the similar standards to the game, which makes it more realistic.


----------



## Hussar

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Does that count for NPCs too? In 4e monsters don't get this benefit (and it is smaller, only negative bloodied, but that is still a lot, PCs are rarely killed outright).




By the rules, yes, this applies to NPC's.  Although, I think that most DM's, like myself, ignore that rule and simply rule that anything that goes to 0 dies.  However, by the rules, no, everything is supposed to get death saves.

------

Umm, if you killed someone with a pillow or a knife [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], you'd be charged with manslaughter, not assault, and, certainly if you attempted to smother someone with a pillow, they certainly could charge you with assault with intent.  

But, arguing from a position of legalities, isn't really going to get anywhere.

You're trying to apply a specific definition of "lethal" as in the legal definition, to the argument, and I think that's where we're getting tripped up, because, to me, lethal means, "something that kills you".  A lethal dose of a drug is enough of a drug to kill you.  If it didn't kill you, then it wasn't a lethal dose.

Being shot with a gun may be lethal, if you die.  If you didn't die, then it wasn't a lethal wound.

But, all that being said, you're still ignoring the fact that you cannot narrate any wound until after everything is done.  Say you fireball the target and drop it below 0 HP.  What wounds has it actually taken?  You cannot narrate it as a lethal wound, because it hasn't died yet.  In fact, until that 3rd death save is failed, you cannot narrate any wound as being life threatening.  Because, otherwise, it doesn't make much sense that your arterial spray is healed 100% by the next day.   

Now, lots of DM's ignore this and fair enough, but, by the mechanics of the game, you cannot actually narrate any wound until combat is completely finished or the target is truly dead.  Because, frankly, you cannot know what any of those wounds are until either of those two conditions are met.  Either they are minor wounds that are easily ignored (healed in 24 hours) or they are mortal wounds.

Y'know, that might be a better word to use - mortal rather than lethal.  A fireball can, potentially, inflict mortal wounds, but, by all odds, unless it outright kills that target, it's extremely unlikely.  All "knocking out the target" really does is save you a Medicine check to stabilize a target.  Which, odds are, will survive on their own anyway.  

In my current Dragon Heist game, because Waterdeep has very serious penalties for killing, regardless of reason, I've ruled that NPC's die automatically to anything other than melee attacks.  But, that's my house rule.  It's certainly not how 5e is presented.

Complaining about retconning the fiction in 5e is a pretty big hole to dig.  THere's a TON of retroactive mechanics in 5e.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> Umm, if you killed someone with a pillow or a knife @_*Maxperson*_, you'd be charged with manslaughter, not assault, and, certainly if you attempted to smother someone with a pillow, they certainly could charge you with assault with intent.




Strawmen are Straw.  I said stabbed with a knife, not killed.  Thanks for playing the Straw game, though. You've demonstrated yet again that you just can't post without playing it.



> You're trying to apply a specific definition of "lethal" as in the legal definition, to the argument, and I think that's where we're getting tripped up, because, to me, lethal means, "something that kills you".  A lethal dose of a drug is enough of a drug to kill you.  If it didn't kill you, then it wasn't a lethal dose.




Words.  They often have more than one definition.



> Being shot with a gun may be lethal, if you die.  If you didn't die, then it wasn't a lethal wound.




And yet it never stops being lethal force.  



> But, all that being said, you're still ignoring the fact that you cannot narrate any wound until after everything is done.  Say you fireball the target and drop it below 0 HP.  What wounds has it actually taken?  You cannot narrate it as a lethal wound, because it hasn't died yet.  In fact, until that 3rd death save is failed, you cannot narrate any wound as being life threatening.  Because, otherwise, it doesn't make much sense that your arterial spray is healed 100% by the next day.




Overnight healing is another issue I have with 5e that I will eventually fix.  Even a wound that knocks you out wouldn't be healed by the end of a long rest.



> Now, lots of DM's ignore this and fair enough, but, by the mechanics of the game, you cannot actually narrate any wound until combat is completely finished or the target is truly dead.  Because, frankly, you cannot know what any of those wounds are until either of those two conditions are met.  Either they are minor wounds that are easily ignored (healed in 24 hours) or they are mortal wounds.




That's a False Dichotomy.  Those are not the only two choices.  You can in fact have a wound that is not minor or mortal, yet allow the PC to ignore it, because game.



> In my current Dragon Heist game, because Waterdeep has very serious penalties for killing, regardless of reason, I've ruled that NPC's die automatically to anything other than melee attacks.  But, that's my house rule.  It's certainly not how 5e is presented.




Automatically die is in there is no damage roll, they just die?  Or automatically die when they hit 0, which is how 5e does do it?

"Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws. *Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters*."

So BBEG's and special NPCs might use PC rules, but the rest just die at 0.


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> "Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws. *Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters*."
> 
> So BBEG's and special NPCs might use PC rules, but the rest just die at 0.



This reads like a suggestion and not a rule


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> Overnight healing is another issue I have with 5e that I will eventually fix.  Even a wound that knocks you out wouldn't be healed by the end of a long rest.




You can house rule whatever fits your group style, but then we start talking about a customized edition, and that’s an entirely different beast


----------



## Maxperson

Kurviak said:


> This reads like a suggestion and not a rule




All rules are suggestions.  In any case, it's not a house rule to play the game the way they suggest.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Reasonableness is the key.  If I hit someone with a pillow, even if some fluke happens and they die, I'm not going to be charged with Assault With a Deadly Weapon.  If I stab someone with a knife I will.  If something can reasonably be expected to cause death, it would be lethal force.  Just look at police use of force.  Shooting someone with beanbags is not considered to be lethal force, despite them occasionally killing someone.  Shooting them with a gun is lethal force, despite the fact that many people survive.  I'm applying the similar standards to the game, which makes it more realistic.




But its not that the beanbags do some 'other type of damage', they just don't do MUCH damage. Shoot someone point blank with a beanbag, its bad news, or shoot them 10 times with them, still bad news. I mean, D&D's hit points are obviously simplistic in some sense, as is the concept of 'damage' purely an abstraction, but the point still stands. There's no real divide between what is and isn't potentially lethal. You can construct a perfectly plausible narrative that leads to either the target being dead or being disabled for ANY attack, right? 

Beyond that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] et al are right that 4e certainly lacks such a division. Its simply not MECHANICALLY correct talk about lethal and non-lethal types of damage in either that game, or as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] points out, in 5e either. Classic D&D also lacked such a distinction (there was a sidebar in 2e IIRC with some optional rules, and 1e had a rule that only applied to dragons).


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But its not that the beanbags do some 'other type of damage', they just don't do MUCH damage. Shoot someone point blank with a beanbag, its bad news, or shoot them 10 times with them, still bad news. I mean, D&D's hit points are obviously simplistic in some sense, as is the concept of 'damage' purely an abstraction, but the point still stands. There's no real divide between what is and isn't potentially lethal. You can construct a perfectly plausible narrative that leads to either the target being dead or being disabled for ANY attack, right?




Poke someone a billion times with a feather and they will probably be dead.  That's not the point, though.  The divide in the real world and in the game world in prior editions is a reasonable likelihood to cause death.  Poking someone with a feather isn't going to reasonably result in death, so it will be considered non-lethal damage.  The same with a punch.  That shifts when you look at master martial artists who know where and how to strike to kill with a punch.  A normal person doesn't have a reasonable expectation of causing death if he punches someone.  

It's like the difference between a penny and a $100 bill.  Sure they are both money, but you can only reasonably expect to be able to buy things with the $100 bill.  That penny isn't likely to be able to purchase things on its own.  



> Beyond that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] et al are right that 4e certainly lacks such a division. Its simply not MECHANICALLY correct talk about lethal and non-lethal types of damage in either that game, or as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] points out, in 5e either.




If they didn't have that division, you couldn't knock anyone out.  There must be both lethal and non-lethal damage types in order for you to both strike to kill and strike to knock out.



> Classic D&D also lacked such a distinction (there was a sidebar in 2e IIRC with some optional rules, and 1e had a rule that only applied to dragons).




This is from the 1e DMG.

"Striking To Subdue: This is effective against some monsters (and other creatures of humanoid size and type) OS indicated in the MONSTER MANUAL (under DRAGONS) or herein. Such attacks use the flat, butt, haft, pommel, or *otherwise non-lethal parts* of the weapons concerned but are otherwise the same as other attacks. Note that unless expressly stated otherwise, all subduing damage is 75% temporary, but 25% of such damage is actually damaging to the creature being subdued. This means that if 40 hit points of subduing damage has been inflicted upon an opponent, the creature has actually suffered 10 hit points of real damage. The above, of course, does not apply to player characters."

Then there was the two page combat section in the 1e DMG entitled, Non-lethal and Weaponless Combat Procedures.

So yes, lethal and non-lethal damage was in classic D&D against creatures other than dragons, and not as an optional rule(though all rules are technically optional).


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:
			
		

> "Most DMs have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 hit points, rather than having it fall unconscious and make death saving throws. Mighty villains and special nonplayer characters are common exceptions; the DM might have them fall unconscious and follow the same rules as player characters."




Wow, you quote the point and then cannot read the first word.  Note, if you actually read that sentence, it proves that the standard rule is that things fall unconscious and then make death saving throws, however, most DM's have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 HP.   They wouldn't have to spell it out this way otherwise.

Arrggh, I've gotten sucked into yet another pedantic wank with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION].  I need to stop.  It's a disease.  Sigh.


----------



## Sadras

This is interesting, I need to check the books when I get home, I didn't realise I had been house-ruling monsters die at zero hp? I'm pretty sure DMs out there like Mercer, Colville and even Perkins have their monsters fobbed off at 0hp. 

Ofcourse you also don't generally see goblins rushing to their fallen mates and whipping out a medi-kit or drawing on their medicine skill training, so there is that. Although now that I think about it, I'm planning to throw that into my next session for novelty purposes.


----------



## Hussar

Where it gets REALLY nasty is if you play with the monsters having Death Saves and then start adding healers to your mobs.  Watch your players lose their collective minds as you start using whackamole tactics back at them.  It's really, really nasty.  And lots of fun.  Easy, easy way to increase the challenge of an encounter without having to do much work.  The baddies get to stand back up once or twice - kinda like zombie encounters.  Fun stuff.

But, yeah, I think it's pretty fair to say that most DM's don't worry about it.  I certainly don't.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I narrate parts of actions all the time.  I've literally said, "The fireball streaks from your hands and explodes around your enemies.  Roll damage."



So do I. That narration doesn't tell us anything about the effect the fireball will have on targets - it leaves it open that some may remain conscious, some may die, and yet others may be knocked out.



Maxperson said:


> Step 1:  The wizard casts fireball.  In doing so a ball of lethal fire is projected towards the enemy or a pea that will explode, depending on the edition.



This is not an accurate description of _fireball_ in any edition of D&D. (It may be accurate for Chainmail - I'll defer to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] on that.) In any edition of D&D, _fireball_ is a _ball of fire_, but we don't know whether or not it's lethal until we determine what effect it has on those who are caught within it. And that requires (although, in 4e, is not exhausted) comparing the damage it inflicts to the hit points of those affected.

Perhaps by _lethal_ you mean _dangerous_ or even _really dangerous_. In which case a 4e fireball is as dangerous as any other fireball in any other version of D&D. It can incinerate those caught within it! (A fireball does _fire _damage, and as we are told in the PHB (p 55),  the _fire_ keyword signifies _[e]xplosive bursts, fiery rays, or simple ignition._)



Maxperson said:


> The lethal fireball impacts the enemy dealing a lethal damage type to the victim.  The first 37 points of damage consist of this lethal fire damage type since the victim isn't at 0 yet.



To reiterate, whether or not the fireball is lethal can't be known until we know whether or not it kills someone.

If a fireball does 37 hp of damage to a target who has 38 hp remaining, then clearly it is _not_ - in respect of that person, at least - a lethal ball of fire, as it didn't kill them! The best we can say is that the fireball _may_ have been lethal, in that under some not-too-improbable circumstances it may have killed them. Which, as I already said, is true in 4e as much as in any other edition of D&D.



Maxperson said:


> If something can reasonably be expected to cause death, it would be lethal force.



And? A fireball in 4e can be reasonably expected to cause death. The fact that, on some occasions, it doesn't doesn't meant that it _wasn't/I] something that could be reasonably expected to cause death. I mean, you've already indicated that in your D&D games sometimes some characters find themselves caught in fireballs, or red dragon breath, and yet don't die.



Maxperson said:



			Step 3: The last 1 hit point goes away and the player has to decide AFTER the enemy hits 0, whether to keep the fire damage lethal and let it potentially kill the enemy, or mystically turn it into fluff bunny sauce and just knock out the enemy.  If he does, he has to go back in time and turn the lethal fire non-lethal so that none of the damage is lethal now.
		
Click to expand...


This makes no sense. The rule is: when the person burned by the fireball is reduced to zero hp, the player whose PC cast the fireball decides what happens to the victim. So the player gets to decide whether or not the fireball is lethal in its effects. This doesn't require "time travel". It isn't a decision about the nature of the fire. It's a decision about the nature of its effects on this affected person.

You accept the proposition that not every caught in the area of a fireball must die. The player has the authority (under the rules of the game) to decide whether or not this target of the fireball who was reduced to zero hp is such a being. It's not time travel. It's not even necessarily director stance, although that's how we tend to treat it at my table: nothing precludes a particular table taking the view that the caster can control the flames as they explode and lick at the target, modulating their intensity so as to cause unconsciousness but not death.

Also, I'm not sure how much "fluff bunny sauce" you've interacted with, but to me it doesn't sound like something that would knock someone unconscious. You seem to have this odd conception of knocking someone out as a gent;le act rather than the violent act that it is.



Hussar said:



			You realize that that order is not actually mandated by anything.  That until you have completed the entire action, you cannot actually narrate anything, same as anything else in combat.  So, this process sim approach to gaming, while perfectly valid, is not the only approach.
		
Click to expand...


Furthremore to this, even following Maxperson's order doesn't have the implication he thinks it does, because his "steps" make assumptions about the lethality of a fireball which aren't supported by an edition of D&D, each of which allows that some people caught in fireballs may not die.

And this has nothing to do with the "fortune in the middle" aspect of death saves - which, I agree with you, mean that you can't confidently narrate lethal wounds until that whole process is sorted out.

What I mean is that the 4e approach to determining whether or not a fireball kills someone or knocks them out could be applied in Moldvay Basic, which has no death save mechanic. Because the only difference between this 4e rule and the Moldvay one is that, in Moldvay, zero hp = death whereas the 4e mechanic says zero hp = death or unconsciousness (attacking player's choice).



Maxperson said:





AbdulAlhazred said:



			Beyond that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] et al are right that 4e certainly lacks such a division. Its simply not MECHANICALLY correct talk about lethal and non-lethal types of damage in either that game, or as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] points out, in 5e either. Classic D&D also lacked such a distinction (there was a sidebar in 2e IIRC with some optional rules, and 1e had a rule that only applied to dragons).
		
Click to expand...


if they didn't have that division, you couldn't knock anyone out.  There must be both lethal and non-lethal damage types in order for you to both strike to kill and strike to knock out.
		
Click to expand...


Absolute hogwash!

In my Rolemaster games, the PCs would knock out foes regularly: sometimes because attacks would reduce their concussion hits below the "conscious" threshold without reducing them below the "dying" threshold; sometimes in virtue of an appropriate result on a crit table. 

In my 4e game, the PCs knock out foes in virtue of their players' entitlement to choose the result which occurs at zero hp. This doesn't depend on any notio of "lethal" vs "non-lethal" damage. It just requires a rule which says when your PC drops a foe to zero hp, choose whether the result is unconsciousness or death. It's a very simple rule which does not require any notion of "non-lethal damage", "non-lethal attacks", "fluffy bunny sauce", "time travel", or any of the other spurious notions you are introducing into its analysis._


----------



## pemerton

When compared to 5e, the 4e rules for zero hp are more expressly different for GM-controlled and player-controlled characters.

In the PHB (p 295), the rules for death saves and death at negative bloodied (which in 4e is an issue of _cumulation_, not a single strike) are expressly said to apply to _you_ - ie the player. In the Rules Compendium (pp 260-61) they are said to apply to _adventurers_. Here is the passage that governs NPCs/monsters (PH p 295, RC p 296 - the rules text is almost identical in both sources):

Monsters and characters controlled by the Dungeon Master usually die when they reach 0 hit points, unless you choose to knock them out (see “Knocking Creatures Unconscious”). You generally don’t need to stalk around the battlefield after a fight, making sure all your foes are dead.

Monsters and characters controlled by the Dungeon Master usually die when their hit points drop to 0, unless an adventurer chooses to knock them unconscious. Adventurers generally don’t need to stalk around the battlefield after a fight, making sure all their foes are dead.​
As best I recall there's no discussion in any 4e rulebooks of when a GM might depart from what is "usual", but maybe there's something I'm forgetting.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> Wow, you quote the point and then cannot read the first word.  Note, if you actually read that sentence, it proves that the standard rule is that things fall unconscious and then make death saving throws, however, most DM's have a monster die the instant it drops to 0 HP.   They wouldn't have to spell it out this way otherwise.




If most people do something a certain way, that is by definition the standard way to do something.  That's what standard means.  So the standard is to have monsters die at 0.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Perhaps by _lethal_ you mean _dangerous_ or even _really dangerous_. In which case a 4e fireball is as dangerous as any other fireball in any other version of D&D. It can incinerate those caught within it! (A fireball does _fire _damage, and as we are told in the PHB (p 55),  the _fire_ keyword signifies _[e]xplosive bursts, fiery rays, or simple ignition._)




Perhaps by lethal I mean what I've told you I mean a half dozen times.



> To reiterate, whether or not the fireball is lethal can't be known until we know whether or not it kills someone.
> 
> If a fireball does 37 hp of damage to a target who has 38 hp remaining, then clearly it is _not_ - in respect of that person, at least - a lethal ball of fire, as it didn't kill them! The best we can say is that the fireball _may_ have been lethal, in that under some not-too-improbable circumstances it may have killed them. Which, as I already said, is true in 4e as much as in any other edition of D&D.




Your pedantry and sophistry are tiring and have forced this.

le·thal
/ˈlēTHəl/

adjective
sufficient to cause death.
"a lethal cocktail of alcohol and pills"

*harmful or destructive.*
"the Krakatoa eruption was the most lethal on record"


Let me know if you actually want to engage in discussion, rather than misstate my position time and time again.


----------



## Aldarc

Max posts this about Hussar: 







Maxperson said:


> Your pedantry and sophistry are tiring and have forced this.



And then once again appeals to dictionary definitons. LOL.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Max posts this about Hussar: And then once again appeals to dictionary definitons. LOL.




When people refuse to understand simple English and continually misstate positions(a tactic you are familiar with), it forces them.

And rejecting Dictionary definitions as a matter of course like that just proves that you have no real argument.  Definitions are how we understand each other.  Without them words wouldn't be words.  Go troll someone else.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> When people refuse to understand simple English and *continually misstate positions(a tactic you are familiar with)*, it forces them.



Yes, I am familiar with how you do that to me and others.  



> And rejecting Dictionary definitions as a matter of course like that just proves that you have no real argument.



Conversely, relying on them does not prove that you have a real argument either. I even pointed this out to you earlier. 



> Definitions are how we understand each other.  Without them words wouldn't be words.  Go troll someone else.



I think that you will find that contemporary cognitive science and linguistics would disagree with this assertion or at least provide a far more nuanced perspective, especially given how lexical definitions are artificial. 

I think that you are a bit stuck in your ways, Max. I would only recommend that you provide a bit more awareness and textual savvy to allow for and be mindful of the ambiguity that exists in the interpretation of rules and texts. I suspect it would be of great benefit to reducing how abrasive, eisegetical, and Manichaean some of your interpretations can be. Like with the dictionary example above, there is far more complexity, nuance, and ambiguity than you appear to give credit for existing.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Perhaps by _lethal_ you mean _dangerous_ or even _really dangerous_. In which case a 4e fireball is as dangerous as any other fireball in any other version of D&D. It can incinerate those caught within it! (A fireball does _fire _damage, and as we are told in the PHB (p 55),  the _fire_ keyword signifies _[e]xplosive bursts, fiery rays, or simple ignition._)
> 
> To reiterate, whether or not the fireball is lethal can't be known until we know whether or not it kills someone.
> .




That is a ridiculous argument. This is like arguing that a gun isn't lethal because it can't kill a bear in one shot. Or like arguing a knife's lethality can't be known until after the stabbing (and again making an argument that it wasn't really lethal because it took two or three stabs to kill the person). I don't even know what you guys are disputing but this is up there with hairsplitting word play arguments. Aldarc makes a valid point about definitions. But there are still broadly accepted meanings of words. When people say lethal it is pretty obvious they mean "this has potential to kill someone", not "this 100% absolutely will kill every person in every single circumstance." The only time your use of the word makes sense is in an after the fact statement like "The fireball proved lethal for Harry". Clearly if he wasn't killed by it, then the word is not applicable in that case.


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> All rules are suggestions.  In any case, it's not a house rule to play the game the way they suggest.




I think you need to improve your reading skills, the paragraph starts with “most”


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps by lethal I mean what I've told you I mean a half dozen times.
> 
> 
> 
> Your pedantry and sophistry are tiring and have forced this.
> 
> le·thal
> /ˈlēTHəl/
> 
> adjective
> sufficient to cause death.
> "a lethal cocktail of alcohol and pills"
> 
> *harmful or destructive.*
> "the Krakatoa eruption was the most lethal on record"
> 
> 
> Let me know if you actually want to engage in discussion, rather than misstate my position time and time again.




Do you realize that with that definition you’re not changing anything about the discussion. The 4th edition fireball has the same potential of bean lethal as any other edition fireball but adds narrative control to the players on what happens on zero hp. That doesn’t have anything to do with the lethality of the fireball but the fictional results of it.


----------



## Numidius

Satyrn said:


> I have found this method to be more satisfying, too.
> 
> My players have taken a quest (very much in the sense of taking a quest in a video game) to retrieve live specimens of various dungeon critters. Their corpses are acceptable, but of much lesser value, both gold and XP wise.
> 
> If I was using 4e's rule that a player m could make his fireball knock a skag unconcious instead of killing it, this quest's risk of accidentally killing the prize wouldn't exist. Indeed, one of my very few house rules is axing 5e's rule about choosing to knock out an enemy instead of killing it with a melee weapon. And since I'm using 5e's default assumption that monsters don't get death saves, they need to use nets, lassos, sleep spells and the like.
> 
> Like you said, if the players want to knock out something out someone instead of killing him "they should be working towards that goal in advance with all the limitations that goes with it." In my game, it creates a fun moment every time the player dares to swing a sword (softening it up for a sleep spell, say) at a monster they're trying to snag.



So preventing use of fireballs as a solution to exploration/social challenges. Also making an exploration something that takes time and effort. 
Were you using 4e SC, or 5e? If the latter, how does it adjudicate success or failure in that Live Critters scenario?


----------



## Numidius

How does a Fireball work: it pops up around the target, or flies from caster to target?


----------



## Satyrn

Numidius said:


> So preventing use of fireballs as a solution to exploration/social challenges. Also making an exploration something that takes time and effort.
> Were you using 4e SC, or 5e? If the latter, how does it adjudicate success or failure in that Live Critters scenario?




I'm playing 5e.

I can't answer the other question. I don't understand what you're asking.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> So preventing use of fireballs as a solution to exploration/social challenges.




Correction. Some exploration/social challenges. 
5e also has a Gritty Realism* option for rests (5e, page 267 DMG), so @_*Satyrn*_'s style of play doesn't seem so peculiar as it seems to match up with a possible _hardcore mode_ of the game which the designers made possible.

*I wonder if the designers got as much flack as @_*Maxperson*_ in this thread for the use of that word.  



> Also making an exploration something that takes time and effort.




Your point here being?


----------



## Satyrn

Sadras said:


> Correction. Some exploration/social challenges.
> 5e also has a Gritty Realism* option for rests (5e, page 267 DMG), so @_*Satyrn*_'s style of play doesn't seem so peculiar as it seems to match up with a possible _hardcore mode_ of the game which the designers made possible.
> 
> *I wonder if the designers got as much flack as @_*Maxperson*_ for the use of that word.




*My own asterisking: Not that anyone should mistake a game where goblins toss exploding turtles as grenades for realistic.

But you're essentially right, I'm going for a version of hardcore. I'm also running a sandbox, so if the players aren't interested in trying to capture a skag alive, they can just choose one of the numerous other quests, make up their own, or even just wander in aimless exploration of the megadungeon if they want.

They're engaged and having a blast with trying to wrangle a beast alive to the surface, though.


----------



## Satyrn

I'm gonna quote this a second time (the first half, anyway) since I didn't address it:







Numidius said:


> So preventing use of fireballs as a solution to exploration/social challenges. Also making an exploration something that takes time and effort.




The players may find an excellent use for fireball in this scenario*, but if fireball and longswords could simply knock out a monster by dropping it to zero hit points then capturing a live specimen works pretty much the same as killing it. I probably wouldn't bother making this a quest if that was the case.

And yeah, I told my players when pitching the game that Exploration would be the primary focus of the game.


*It will quickly kill off the rest of the pack so the players can focus on one survivor, for example, or they might just use to terrify the skag into running away into a lobster trap. Whatever. Those ideas are for the players to figure out.


----------



## DMZ2112

pemerton said:


> That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. *The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.*
> 
> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.




I realize this has been going on for more than 100 pages, and I hope I can be forgiven for weighing in with an oblique viewpoint more or less cold, but I'm in the middle of reading _The Science of Discworld II_, having recently finished _The Science of Discworld_, and these two books have a lot to say on this topic.

I'll try to keep my summary brief: the gist of the discussion is that things happen on Discworld because they are what people expect.  Causality is driven by the universe's high 'narrativium' content, which (in short) converts assumptions into reality.  It's why there's always a good story; everything is subjective.  For example: the sun is a comparatively small fireball that goes around the disc, because it appears to be a comparatively small fireball that goes around the disc, or, put another way, "because of course it does."

Our universe is presented as a counterpoint to this reality, where there is no narrativium.  Things happen here because they have been following an arc guided by ultimate physical laws.  Causality is therefore objective, even though we may often attribute subjectivity to it, that being human nature.

But the books are quick to point out that humans are a sort of fly in this ointment -- that we are very good at generating our own narrativium.  When stories are demonstrably not true, we can and do change that.  An obvious example of this is that man clearly can't stand on the moon, according to the established physical laws of this universe.  It is hundreds of thousands of kilometers up the gravity well, and we can't breathe there, among other obstacles.  And yet, men have stood on the moon.  We made the story real.

This is true in a lot of smaller ways, too, but I'm not going to try to rewrite the books here.  They are great reads; you should pick them up.  My point is that sometimes, even in the real world, whether or not you meet sect members at the teahouse (metaphorically speaking) absolutely does depend on someone taking up a suggestion of an interesting idea.

The books also make some fascinating observations about how causality always appears linear in our universe at first, but uncomfortable questions start to arise when you really start looking hard at its relationship to thought.  That's only tangentially relevant here, but still an interesting side point.


----------



## Numidius

Satyrn said:


> I'm gonna quote this a second time (the first half, anyway) since I didn't address it:
> 
> The players may find an excellent use for fireball in this scenario*, but if fireball and longswords could simply knock out a monster by dropping it to zero hit points then capturing a live specimen works pretty much the same as killing it. I probably wouldn't bother making this a quest if that was the case.
> 
> And yeah, I told my players when pitching the game that Exploration would be the primary focus of the game.
> 
> 
> *It will quickly kill off the rest of the pack so the players can focus on one survivor, for example, or they might just use to terrify the skag into running away into a lobster trap. Whatever. Those ideas are for the players to figure out.



Thanks for the answer. I agree, btw, otherwise, paradoxically, one could solve social situation with fireballs. Which actually happened, in DW I run, by a new player. It took some time to reach a point in the story when he would not, being at risk the life of a Pc... 
Anyway it just picked my interest the shift to Exploration pillar, and I'm curious about the way it is managed in 5e.


----------



## Kurviak

Satyrn said:


> I'm gonna quote this a second time (the first half, anyway) since I didn't address it:
> 
> The players may find an excellent use for fireball in this scenario*, but if fireball and longswords could simply knock out a monster by dropping it to zero hit points then capturing a live specimen works pretty much the same as killing it. I probably wouldn't bother making this a quest if that was the case.
> 
> And yeah, I told my players when pitching the game that Exploration would be the primary focus of the game.
> 
> 
> *It will quickly kill off the rest of the pack so the players can focus on one survivor, for example, or they might just use to terrify the skag into running away into a lobster trap. Whatever. Those ideas are for the players to figure out.




RAW 5th edition with mele and 4th in general don’t support this, but you can house rule both very easily. So what’s your point? I don’t get it


----------



## Satyrn

Kurviak said:


> RAW 5th edition with mele and 4th in general don’t support this, but you can house rule both very easily. So what’s your point? I don’t get it



The point of the post you quoted was to answer Numidius's question.

You have to go back to my first post (where I quote Max) of this little exchange in order to see my original point: When the players are trying to snag a living skag, I find it more satisfying (and my players seem to, too) if they have to use nets, sleep spells or some solution other than knocking the critter to 0 hp and declaring "I knock it out instead of killing it."


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> That is a ridiculous argument. This is like arguing that a gun isn't lethal because it can't kill a bear in one shot. Or like arguing a knife's lethality can't be known until after the stabbing (and again making an argument that it wasn't really lethal because it took two or three stabs to kill the person). I don't even know what you guys are disputing but this is up there with hairsplitting word play arguments. Aldarc makes a valid point about definitions. But there are still broadly accepted meanings of words. When people say lethal it is pretty obvious they mean "this has potential to kill someone", not "this 100% absolutely will kill every person in every single circumstance." The only time your use of the word makes sense is in an after the fact statement like "The fireball proved lethal for Harry". Clearly if he wasn't killed by it, then the word is not applicable in that case.



lThe discussion is about whether or not it is unrelasitic for someone to survive a fireball, albeit unconscious. In that context, the use of the word "lethal" is question-begging, because to describe the fireball as lethal is to imply that it will kill those caught within it (if I read a news report about "a lethal blaze" or "a lethal explosion", I know that there were deaths).

Whereas everyone knows that, in D&D, fireballs and red dragon breath frequently are _not_ lethal for those characters caught inside them. That's been the case since OD&D. Gygax uses survival of a dragon's breath as his case study for the saving throw rules in his DMG.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> lThe discussion is about whether or not it is unrelasitic for someone to survive a fireball, albeit unconscious. In that context, the use of the word "lethal" is question-begging, because to describe the fireball as lethal is to imply that it will kill those caught within it (if I read a news report about "a lethal blaze" or "a lethal explosion", I know that there were deaths).
> 
> Whereas everyone knows that, in D&D, fireballs and red dragon breath frequently are _not_ lethal for those characters caught inside them. That's been the case since OD&D. Gygax uses survival of a dragon's breath as his case study for the saving throw rules in his DMG.




You mixing different kinds of examples though. A lethal blaze is a specific event. Same as the specific instance of fireball I mentioned. But you wouldn't ever argue "house fires are not lethal". Atomic bombs are lethal, even though specific detonations may have zero fatalities. Guns are lethal, even though people survive shootings all the time. Again, I am just talking about this bit of argumentation. It just doesnt make sense.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Poke someone a billion times with a feather and they will probably be dead.  That's not the point, though.  The divide in the real world and in the game world in prior editions is a reasonable likelihood to cause death.  Poking someone with a feather isn't going to reasonably result in death, so it will be considered non-lethal damage.  The same with a punch.  That shifts when you look at master martial artists who know where and how to strike to kill with a punch.  A normal person doesn't have a reasonable expectation of causing death if he punches someone.




Feathers run into the 'granularity problem' of hit point abstraction, but of course you can expect to be damaged/killed by enough feathers. Again, no such distinction as 'non-lethal' damage exists. As for punching, I beg to differ! A punch to the head is quite dangerous and MANY people have died from them. Usually the puncher claims lack of homicidal intent, but that is either ignorance or self-serving. I knew a kid in grade school that died from a punch. Ain't even that hard to accomplish. Beyond that, the 10th punch to the head? Yeah, tell me that isn't lethal damage. 



> It's like the difference between a penny and a $100 bill.  Sure they are both money, but you can only reasonably expect to be able to buy things with the $100 bill.  That penny isn't likely to be able to purchase things on its own.



It is still money. Anyway, what is this analogy accomplishing? The penny is an analogy for what? A sword? And the $100 bill is an analogy for a fireball? Both of them are serious weapons in a D&D game both can absolutely kill. Generally it is probably more likely in 'classic' D&D that the later would accomplish killing someone, all other things being equal, but that doesn't mean fighters don't expect their sword blows to kill.



> If they didn't have that division, you couldn't knock anyone out.  There must be both lethal and non-lethal damage types in order for you to both strike to kill and strike to knock out.



No, there need only be a provision for damage to knock people out instead of killing them. Your statement here is literally counterfactual. It bears no resemblance to the actual game it purports to describe.



> This is from the 1e DMG.
> 
> "Striking To Subdue: This is effective against some monsters (and other creatures of humanoid size and type) OS indicated in the MONSTER MANUAL (under DRAGONS) or herein. Such attacks use the flat, butt, haft, pommel, or *otherwise non-lethal parts* of the weapons concerned but are otherwise the same as other attacks. Note that unless expressly stated otherwise, all subduing damage is 75% temporary, but 25% of such damage is actually damaging to the creature being subdued. This means that if 40 hit points of subduing damage has been inflicted upon an opponent, the creature has actually suffered 10 hit points of real damage. The above, of course, does not apply to player characters."
> 
> Then there was the two page combat section in the 1e DMG entitled, Non-lethal and Weaponless Combat Procedures.



It is a very wooly and almost never used thing, that doesn't even hold water when you start trying to use it. First of all it claims to describe some subset of monsters (why a subset?) which can be subdued. That tells me immediately there isn't a 'special kind of damage' but that there is a special kind of MONSTER! Note how PCs are explicitly excluded from this rule! So, while Gygax uses a phrase 'subduing damage' that IMHO doesn't (and we never played as if it did) suggest that the damage itself was of a different type, only that the intent was different.



> So yes, lethal and non-lethal damage was in classic D&D against creatures other than dragons, and not as an optional rule(though all rules are technically optional).




And calling it a 'rule' is pretty dubious. I mean, technically maybe, but that whole system, which is mainly drawn from The Dragon #11 IIRC, is completely bonkers and should NEVER be used in play (it clearly wasn't playtested for even 5 minutes). It is basically throwaway filler, one of the few such things in 1e core books. Attacking to subdue clearly is a function of some sort of 'morale' (though oddly disjointed from the normal morale rules, great thing about Gary and rules...) because it works differently on different targets, etc. I just don't buy that there is anything besides 'real damage', even in AD&D. The very fact that it describes pulling blows and such, and the actual damage is 25% says it all to me. You can still kill with these attacks! Some monsters are just bound to surrender when they are used long before that happens.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps by lethal I mean what I've told you I mean a half dozen times.
> 
> Your pedantry and sophistry are tiring and have forced this.
> 
> le·thal
> /ˈlēTHəl/
> 
> adjective
> sufficient to cause death.
> "a lethal cocktail of alcohol and pills"
> 
> *harmful or destructive.*
> "the Krakatoa eruption was the most lethal on record"
> 
> Let me know if you actually want to engage in discussion, rather than misstate my position time and time again.




Nobody is arguing with your definition Max. We are just pointing out that all damage is potentially lethal. Its reasonable, in a working sense, to label minor amounts of damage as being 'non-lethal' in the sense that they rarely kill, but D&D doesn't really do that. 

I'd also argue, and I think anyone with medical knowledge will agree, that any blow or force strong enough to render a human being unconscious or insensible is bordering on deadly, and thus certainly treads into the land of "sufficient to cause death" in a generalized sense. Again, AD&D's unarmed combat rule acknowledges this, as some of the hit points assessed are described as being 'normal damage'.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> That is a ridiculous argument. This is like arguing that a gun isn't lethal because it can't kill a bear in one shot. Or like arguing a knife's lethality can't be known until after the stabbing (and again making an argument that it wasn't really lethal because it took two or three stabs to kill the person). I don't even know what you guys are disputing but this is up there with hairsplitting word play arguments. Aldarc makes a valid point about definitions. But there are still broadly accepted meanings of words. When people say lethal it is pretty obvious they mean "this has potential to kill someone", not "this 100% absolutely will kill every person in every single circumstance." The only time your use of the word makes sense is in an after the fact statement like "The fireball proved lethal for Harry". Clearly if he wasn't killed by it, then the word is not applicable in that case.




But this doesn't work either, as now ANY attack whatsoever, surely any sort of kick, punch, etc. must be labeled as lethal, as all of them do have potential to kill and have actually done so. Nor is the term 'lethal' normally used in a formal legal context. Instead the term 'deadly' is used, and most often, as in 'deadly force' to mean something which actually killed someone. I don't disagree that we are being precise where and we can find lots of imprecise uses of English, but the point [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was making is not some sort of hair-splitting, it is the key point! In 4e and 5e (and maybe others) you can't say an attack was 'lethal' or 'deadly' until the situation has been fully resolved, and it is allowed for players to decide if a killing blow has ACTUALLY been struck. This doesn't require any sort of 'time travel' or cause the game to become any more unrealistic than it would otherwise be, AFAICT.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Feathers run into the 'granularity problem' of hit point abstraction, but of course you can expect to be damaged/killed by enough feathers. Again, no such distinction as 'non-lethal' damage exists. As for punching, I beg to differ! A punch to the head is quite dangerous and MANY people have died from them. Usually the puncher claims lack of homicidal intent, but that is either ignorance or self-serving. I knew a kid in grade school that died from a punch. Ain't even that hard to accomplish. Beyond that, the 10th punch to the head? Yeah, tell me that isn't lethal damage.




A punch almost never kills.  When you read about someone dying from a punch, the vast majority of the time it wasn't the punch that killed the person.  It was the falling over backwards and hitting the head on something hard.  Also, for every punch that kills, there are a bazillion that don't.  Kids around the country are probably involved with hundreds, if not thousands of fights every day.  Bar fights.  Boxing matches.  And more.  You hear about these things, but they are exceedingly rare in comparison to the number of punches that don't kill.  There can be no reasonable expectation that a punch will kill you.  You probably have a better chance of winning a good sized lottery win. 



> It is still money. Anyway, what is this analogy accomplishing? The penny is an analogy for what? A sword? And the $100 bill is an analogy for a fireball? Both of them are serious weapons in a D&D game both can absolutely kill. Generally it is probably more likely in 'classic' D&D that the later would accomplish killing someone, all other things being equal, but that doesn't mean fighters don't expect their sword blows to kill.




The penny is non-lethal damage and the $100 is lethal damage.  



> It is a very wooly and almost never used thing, that doesn't even hold water when you start trying to use it. First of all it claims to describe some subset of monsters (why a subset?) which can be subdued. That tells me immediately there isn't a 'special kind of damage' but that there is a special kind of MONSTER! Note how PCs are explicitly excluded from this rule! So, while Gygax uses a phrase 'subduing damage' that IMHO doesn't (and we never played as if it did) suggest that the damage itself was of a different type, only that the intent was different.




We used it on humanoids all the time.  There were lots of NPCs we didn't want to kill, either to capture, question or for some other reason.  



> And calling it a 'rule' is pretty dubious. I mean, technically maybe, but that whole system, which is mainly drawn from The Dragon #11 IIRC, is completely bonkers and should NEVER be used in play (it clearly wasn't playtested for even 5 minutes). It is basically throwaway filler, one of the few such things in 1e core books. Attacking to subdue clearly is a function of some sort of 'morale' (though oddly disjointed from the normal morale rules, great thing about Gary and rules...) because it works differently on different targets, etc. I just don't buy that there is anything besides 'real damage', even in AD&D. The very fact that it describes pulling blows and such, and the actual damage is 25% says it all to me. You can still kill with these attacks! Some monsters are just bound to surrender when they are used long before that happens.




A lot of 1e was bonkers!  That's part of what made it fun.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Nobody is arguing with your definition Max. We are just pointing out that all damage is potentially lethal.




It takes more than some extremely remote potential to elevate damage to being considered lethal.  There has to be a reasonable expectation that death can happen as an immediate or fairly immediate result.



> Its reasonable, in a working sense, to label minor amounts of damage as being 'non-lethal' in the sense that they rarely kill, but D&D doesn't really do that.




It has been doing that since 1e.   



> I'd also argue, and I think anyone with medical knowledge will agree, that any blow or force strong enough to render a human being unconscious or insensible is bordering on deadly, and thus certainly treads into the land of "sufficient to cause death" in a generalized sense. Again, AD&D's unarmed combat rule acknowledges this, as some of the hit points assessed are described as being 'normal damage'.




But as a result of what was it, 75% of the damage not being lethal?  No knockout can kill in AD&D.  You have to keep doing more damage after unconsciousness.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> A punch almost never kills.  When you read about someone dying from a punch, the vast majority of the time it wasn't the punch that killed the person.  It was the falling over backwards and hitting the head on something hard.  Also, for every punch that kills, there are a bazillion that don't.  Kids around the country are probably involved with hundreds, if not thousands of fights every day.  Bar fights.  Boxing matches.  And more.  You hear about these things, but they are exceedingly rare in comparison to the number of punches that don't kill.  There can be no reasonable expectation that a punch will kill you.  You probably have a better chance of winning a good sized lottery win.



No, this is a fallacy promulgated by Hollywood. While I agree that punches don't OFTEN kill people, they can and do cause severe damage in a LOT of cases. Why else is punching so severely frowned upon? If it was barely worse than a tickle then nobody would care much, but it isn't. You can VERY EASILY suffer brain damage from being punched. Heck, all football players largely do is bang their helmeted heads together. Guess what? Turns out even just that is turning their brains to custard. There is NO clear dividing line between some damage you might take and whether it is possible it could kill you. A basic sewing needle can kill too, though it is quite a poor weapon in general (probably less deadly than a fist).



> The penny is non-lethal damage and the $100 is lethal damage.



I think we already disposed of this argument...



> We used it on humanoids all the time.  There were lots of NPCs we didn't want to kill, either to capture, question or for some other reason.
> 
> A lot of 1e was bonkers!  That's part of what made it fun.




Well, you should HOPE that no DM is mean enough to have the monsters start using subdual damage on the PCs, or the punch/kick/grapple table. It is FAR more deadly than weapon combat! It is also VASTLY more likely to result in the weaker opponent winning than the normal D&D combat system. To the degree that a dozen orcs using that system would have a VERY high probability of taking down several name-level AD&D fighters. It just doesn't work! Period! I mean, like a bunch of such mechanics, if its employed in a certain controlled circumstance once or twice in a campaign, then it won't wreck the game, obviously. But simply allow it as a general rule and it will upend the entire basic premise.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, this is a fallacy promulgated by Hollywood. While I agree that punches don't OFTEN kill people, they can and do cause severe damage in a LOT of cases. Why else is punching so severely frowned upon? If it was barely worse than a tickle then nobody would care much, but it isn't.




It's frowned upon because violence is anathema these days.  Even spitting on someone will get your in tons of trouble, and you can't really say spitting is lethal.



> You can VERY EASILY suffer brain damage from being punched.   Heck, all football players largely do is bang their helmeted heads together. Guess what? Turns out even just that is turning their brains to custard. There is NO clear dividing line between some damage you might take and whether it is possible it could kill you. A basic sewing needle can kill too, though it is quite a poor weapon in general (probably less deadly than a fist).




No you can't.  If you could, a huge portion of human race would be brain damaged.  Fights happen a lot.  It can happen, but it's not easy.  More common than death, certainly, but not easy.  Even the Football brain damage(blanking on the name) is from repeated blows day after day, year after year.



> Well, you should HOPE that no DM is mean enough to have the monsters start using subdual damage on the PCs, or the punch/kick/grapple table. It is FAR more deadly than weapon combat! It is also VASTLY more likely to result in the weaker opponent winning than the normal D&D combat system. To the degree that a dozen orcs using that system would have a VERY high probability of taking down several name-level AD&D fighters. It just doesn't work! Period! I mean, like a bunch of such mechanics, if its employed in a certain controlled circumstance once or twice in a campaign, then it won't wreck the game, obviously. But simply allow it as a general rule and it will upend the entire basic premise.




I never encountered a DM who tried to subdue Pcs.


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## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But this doesn't work either, as now ANY attack whatsoever, surely any sort of kick, punch, etc. must be labeled as lethal, as all of them do have potential to kill and have actually done so. Nor is the term 'lethal' normally used in a formal legal context. Instead the term 'deadly' is used, and most often, as in 'deadly force' to mean something which actually killed someone. I don't disagree that we are being precise where and we can find lots of imprecise uses of English, but the point [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was making is not some sort of hair-splitting, it is the key point! In 4e and 5e (and maybe others) you can't say an attack was 'lethal' or 'deadly' until the situation has been fully resolved, and it is allowed for players to decide if a killing blow has ACTUALLY been struck. This doesn't require any sort of 'time travel' or cause the game to become any more unrealistic than it would otherwise be, AFAICT.




It absolutely works. And we are not speaking legalize. Look a punch or kick CAN kill you. But it is not an easy thing to kill a person with a punch or kick. Which isn't to minimize the danger of doing so. It can certainly kill a person. I myself was almost killed by a kick to the neck. But I still wouldn't characterize kicks in general as lethal because the chances of killing someone with a kick is a bit low. Whereas I would absolutely call an atom bomb, a gun or a knife, lethal. The distinction between these things is pretty obvious.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> It absolutely works. And we are not speaking legalize. Look a punch or kick CAN kill you. But it is not an easy thing to kill a person with a punch or kick. Which isn't to minimize the danger of doing so. It can certainly kill a person. I myself was almost killed by a kick to the neck. But I still wouldn't characterize kicks in general as lethal because the chances of killing someone with a kick is a bit low. Whereas I would absolutely call an atom bomb, a gun or a knife, lethal. The distinction between these things is pretty obvious.




I'm just saying, the difference is more in degree than in character. There aren't 'types' of damage, not in that sense.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I never encountered a DM who tried to subdue Pcs.




Exactly, because using the kick/punch/grapple system is so unfair to PCs that it is just crazy. Honestly my guess is most DMs have just never bothered, but try it sometime, you will find out it is a completely unusable system.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Exactly, because using the kick/punch/grapple system is so unfair to PCs that it is just crazy. Honestly my guess is most DMs have just never bothered, but try it sometime, you will find out it is a completely unusable system.




Well, no.  It's because it's intended for use against monsters and NPCs, not PCs.  Just read the section.  That's all it talks about.  Monsters and creatures.  Nobody used it against PCs, because it wasn't for use against PCs.  Fairness never even played into it.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Well, no.  It's because it's intended for use against monsters and NPCs, not PCs.  Just read the section.  That's all it talks about.  Monsters and creatures.  Nobody used it against PCs, because it wasn't for use against PCs.  Fairness never even played into it.




That is true of the subdual damage because it is a type of morale, and PCs are not subject to morale. Another aspect of Gygaxian play, PCs, as the players 'pawns' are not subject to outside control, and deciding they surrender because of a mechanic like that would be outside control. Skilled play, if you are smart, maybe you know when to surrender, otherwise you die. It has nothing to do with 'fairness'.

The non-lethal combat system is found on page 72. Try it sometime, its amusing but silly.


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## Sepulchrave II

Bedrockgames said:


> Look a punch or kick CAN kill you...But I still wouldn't characterize kicks in general as lethal because the chances of killing someone with a kick is a bit low. Whereas I would absolutely call an atom bomb, a gun or a knife, lethal. The distinction between these things is pretty obvious.




Most fatalities from punches being thrown are the result of people being knocked unconscious and hitting their skulls on concrete afterwards.

Oregon ruled against regarding fists as deadly weapons in 1975, but the debate has come around again recently. Some jurisdictions consider hands and feet differently. E.g.:



> § 500.080. Definitions for Kentucky Penal Code.
> Kentucky Revised Statutes
> 
> Title 50. KENTUCKY PENAL CODE
> 
> Chapter 500. GENERAL PROVISIONS
> 
> Current through 2011 Legislative Session
> § 500.080. Definitions for Kentucky Penal Code
> As used in the Kentucky Penal Code, unless the context otherwise requires:
> 
> (1) "Actor" means any natural person and, where relevant, a corporation or an unincorporated association;
> 
> (2) "Crime" means a misdemeanor or a felony;
> 
> (3) "Dangerous instrument" means any instrument, *including parts of the human body when a serious physical injury is a direct result of the use of that part of the human body*, article, or substance which, under the circumstances in which it is used, attempted to be used, or threatened to be used, *is readily capable of causing death or serious physical injury*




Emphasis mine.


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## Hussar

Bedrockgames said:


> That is a ridiculous argument. This is like arguing that a gun isn't lethal because it can't kill a bear in one shot. Or like arguing a knife's lethality can't be known until after the stabbing (and again making an argument that it wasn't really lethal because it took two or three stabs to kill the person). I don't even know what you guys are disputing but this is up there with hairsplitting word play arguments. Aldarc makes a valid point about definitions. But there are still broadly accepted meanings of words. When people say lethal it is pretty obvious they mean "this has potential to kill someone", not "this 100% absolutely will kill every person in every single circumstance." The only time your use of the word makes sense is in an after the fact statement like "The fireball proved lethal for Harry". Clearly if he wasn't killed by it, then the word is not applicable in that case.




Swimming upthread a bit.

I'd point out that a knife certainly isn't lethal to an elephant.  A .22 isn't lethal to a bear (or at least it's really, really unlikely to be).  And, I'd point out that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s own dictionary definition "sufficient to cause death." requires death to be caused for something to be described as lethal.

So, a fireball can be lethal, but, it might not be as well.  Unless someone dies, it's not lethal.  And, 5e does not actually distinguish between lethal and non-lethal damage.  It's just damage.  Anything that didn't kill you isn't lethal.  The only sticking point here is that you cannot simply knock someone unconscious in 5e without a melee attack.  But, that doesn't mean that there's any actual difference here in the "kinds of damage".  Just that there is an additional option when it comes to melee damage.


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## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> You mixing different kinds of examples though.



No I'm not. I'm talking about the actual game situation that is under discussion.

Contra [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], there is no rule in 4e that says, or permits the result, that fireballs do "non-lethal damage" ie that fireballs are incapable of killing. In 4e there is only _damage_, and all damage is capable of killing, and fireballs do damage.

Maxperson is arguing that _because someone can survive a fireball_ even though, mechanically, that character's hp have dropped to zero, therefore the fireball must be non-lethal. That argument makes no sense and is without foundation, for two reasons. First, things that are "lethal" in the sense of having the potential to kill don't always kill, and Maxperson has already acknowledged that this is the case for fireballs every version of D&D. Second, because zero hp in 4e doesn't mean _dead/dying in the absence of "non-lethal" damage_. That (or some variant of that) is a 3E rule. In 4e, for NPCs and creatures under the GM's control, zero hp means _the player of the character whose attack reduced the being to zero hp gets to decide whether the being dies or is knocked unconscious_. 

And because it's already accepted by everyone in this thread that some "lethal" attacks - in the sense of being dangerous and having the potential to kill -don't _actually_ kill, there is nothing unrealistic or at all remarkable that, in 4e, some people hit by fireballs lose consciousness but do not die.


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is basically throwaway filler, one of the few such things in 1e core books.



By "few" did you mean "many"? I think there are quite a few such things.

OA tried to make the subdual system a systematic part of the game, but unlike the MM rules for dragons requires dropping the target to zero hp (3/4 of which is subdual damage that comes back after X minutes) rather than generating the percentage chance to subdue that is at the core of the MM system.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, you should HOPE that no DM is mean enough to have the monsters start using subdual damage on the PCs, or the punch/kick/grapple table. It is FAR more deadly than weapon combat! It is also VASTLY more likely to result in the weaker opponent winning than the normal D&D combat system. To the degree that a dozen orcs using that system would have a VERY high probability of taking down several name-level AD&D fighters. It just doesn't work! Period! I mean, like a bunch of such mechanics, if its employed in a certain controlled circumstance once or twice in a campaign, then it won't wreck the game, obviously. But simply allow it as a general rule and it will upend the entire basic premise.



The DMG unarmed attack system verges on unusable. And has all the flaws you describe. I would include it in the list of "throwaway filler".

The system in UA (Appendix Q?) is better, though it still makes a dozen orcs very strong for grappling.


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## Hussar

See, the term "lethal" is a bit fuzzy.

I mean, a single stab wound from a knife is rarely lethal.  It can be and certainly it potentially can kill you more often than a single punch or kick, but, by comparison, is far less lethal than, say, being hit by a bus.  

My point being lethality is a range from, really not likely to kill you to Stage 5 pancreatic cancer.  Claiming that spell damage is "always lethal" doesn't really match up with the mechanics of 5e or, really, any version of D&D.  3e had the separation of lethal vs non-lethal damage, but, that's something of an outlier and, frankly, didn't work very well either.

4e and 5e have no such distinction.  Damage is damage.  End of story.  What results from that damage may vary slightly, but, in practice, hardly at all.


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## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> It absolutely works. And we are not speaking legalize. Look a punch or kick CAN kill you. But it is not an easy thing to kill a person with a punch or kick. Which isn't to minimize the danger of doing so. It can certainly kill a person. I myself was almost killed by a kick to the neck. But I still wouldn't characterize kicks in general as lethal because the chances of killing someone with a kick is a bit low. Whereas I would absolutely call an atom bomb, a gun or a knife, lethal. The distinction between these things is pretty obvious.



Suppose all this is true? What does it have to do with 4e and fireballs?

4e has no concept of "lethal" or "non-lethal" damage. It just has damage. Fireballs do damage (a modest amount). Red dragon breath does damage (potentially quite a big amount). Punches do damage (generally quite a modest amount unless we're talking a monk or a brawler fighter). If that damage drops a PC to zero hp than s/he has to make death saving throws (it's different from 5e but not wildly different). If that damage drops a GM-controlled NPC/creature to zero hp then the player of the character who delivered the damage gets to decide whether the result is death or unconsciousness.

The rule is clear. It's easy to use. In my experience, if players think that one particular choice would be silly or make no sense, then they will refrain from making that choice.

The rule doesn't produce "unrealistic" or even atypical-by-the-standards-of-D&D results, because we all agree that not everyone who gets caught in a fireball must die. And it has nothing to do with time travel.


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## pemerton

Hussar said:


> I'd point out that a knife certainly isn't lethal to an elephant.  A .22 isn't lethal to a bear (or at least it's really, really unlikely to be).  And, I'd point out that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s own dictionary definition "sufficient to cause death." requires death to be caused for something to be described as lethal.





Hussar said:


> See, the term "lethal" is a bit fuzzy.
> 
> I mean, a single stab wound from a knife is rarely lethal.  It can be and certainly it potentially can kill you more often than a single punch or kick, but, by comparison, is far less lethal than, say, being hit by a bus.
> 
> My point being lethality is a range from, really not likely to kill you to Stage 5 pancreatic cancer.  Claiming that spell damage is "always lethal" doesn't really match up with the mechanics of 5e or, really, any version of D&D.  3e had the separation of lethal vs non-lethal damage, but, that's something of an outlier and, frankly, didn't work very well either.
> 
> 4e and 5e have no such distinction.  Damage is damage.  End of story.



Well, something might be _sufficient to cause death_ and not cause death because (eg) no one was exposed to it.

And something might even by reasonably described as _sufficient to cause death_ and yet not cause death to someone exposed to it because some atypical countervailing factor came into play (eg the poison is lethal but the victim had taken a prophylactic/antidote; the atomic bomb is lethal, but the target was Superman; etc).

But for the reasons you give this is all completely tangential to the 4e (and 5e) rules. If by _lethal_ we mean _literally causing death_ then a fireball that doesn't kill its target was not lethal, end of story, with no need to distinguish lethal and non-lethal damage and no time travel involved. And if by _lethal_ we mean _sufficient to cause death under typical circumstances_ then it should be no surprise that some people survive - there circumstances obviously weren't typical! We still don't need a distinction between lethal/non-lethal damage and still no time travel is involved.

It baffles me that there's any debate here. The rule is completely straightforward: _zero hp for a GM-side creature/character triggers a choice of result by the player of the successfully attacking character_. That's one of the clearest rules ever found in a D&D rulebook!


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## Hussar

But, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], you have to remember, all things 4e have cooties.  It cannot possibly be that anything 5e has any even remote resemblance to anything 4e otherwise, that would contaminate the game and we cannot possibly have that.  So, we see folks who will move heaven and earth to display the "obvious" differences between the games so as to justify years of widdling upon a system and then turning around and liking what is, for most parts, the same system.

If folks didn't then they'd have to admit that 4e was actually a quite good game, and that's impossible.  It couldn't possibly be true because that would mean that folks may have been mistaken in their ardent dislike and repeated attacks on a game and its fans.  Since that can't be true, then, it's obvious that 4e and 5e are totally different.


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## Aldarc

I would definitely be curious to see how a retroclone of 4e written with more natural language would be received by critics of 4e. 

A good chunk of the problem that some vocal critics of 4e had may have been less about content and more about the delivery of the content. :shrug:


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## Hussar

Aldarc said:


> I would definitely be curious to see how a retroclone of 4e written with more natural language would be received by critics of 4e.
> 
> A good chunk of the problem that some vocal critics of 4e had may have been less about content and more about the delivery of the content. :shrug:




Frankly, I look at 5e as mostly that.  Mechanically, 5e is a pretty natural extension of 4e.  Granted, there's some changes - not as many encounter level powers for example.  But, since 5e isn't focused on the encounter as the base unit of play, but, rather, the day, it makes sense to strip out encounter level mechanics to a large degree.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Sepulchrave II said:


> Most fatalities from punches being thrown are the result of people being knocked unconscious and hitting their skulls on concrete afterwards.
> 
> Oregon ruled against regarding fists as deadly weapons in 1975, but the debate has come around again recently. Some jurisdictions consider hands and feet differently. E.g.:
> 
> 
> 
> Emphasis mine.




I am aware of this. I used to box. It is very dangerous to go around punching people for this reason. Again, wasn't minimizing the effect of punching and kicking someone. Still it is rare, which is why we tend not to regard unarmed attacks as lethal, but would regard a knife or gun as lethal.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Suppose all this is true? What does it have to do with 4e and fireballs?
> 
> 4e has no concept of "lethal" or "non-lethal" damage. It just has damage. Fireballs do damage (a modest amount). Red dragon breath does damage (potentially quite a big amount). Punches do damage (generally quite a modest amount unless we're talking a monk or a brawler fighter). If that damage drops a PC to zero hp than s/he has to make death saving throws (it's different from 5e but not wildly different). If that damage drops a GM-controlled NPC/creature to zero hp then the player of the character who delivered the damage gets to decide whether the result is death or unconsciousness.
> 
> The rule is clear. It's easy to use. In my experience, if players think that one particular choice would be silly or make no sense, then they will refrain from making that choice.
> 
> The rule doesn't produce "unrealistic" or even atypical-by-the-standards-of-D&D results, because we all agree that not everyone who gets caught in a fireball must die. And it has nothing to do with time travel.




Like I said, I was just responding to the argument that came up around the word lethal. I wasn't weighing in on the gaming contention it arose from. I just found it to be a strange linguistic argument.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> Swimming upthread a bit.
> 
> I'd point out that a knife certainly isn't lethal to an elephant.  A .22 isn't lethal to a bear (or at least it's really, really unlikely to be).  And, I'd point out that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s own dictionary definition "sufficient to cause death." requires death to be caused for something to be described as lethal.
> 
> So, a fireball can be lethal, but, it might not be as well.  Unless someone dies, it's not lethal.  And, 5e does not actually distinguish between lethal and non-lethal damage.  It's just damage.  Anything that didn't kill you isn't lethal.  The only sticking point here is that you cannot simply knock someone unconscious in 5e without a melee attack.  But, that doesn't mean that there's any actual difference here in the "kinds of damage".  Just that there is an additional option when it comes to melee damage.




Unless of course you use the dictionary definition of lethal I provided which shows very clearly, but apparently you don't read definitions you respond about either, that you don't need to die for something to be lethal.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The system in UA (Appendix Q?) is better, though it still makes a dozen orcs very strong for grappling.




Shouldn't a dozen orcs be very strong for grappling?


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> Unless of course you use the dictionary definition of lethal I provided which shows very clearly, but apparently you don't read definitions you respond about either, that you don't need to die for something to be lethal.




Funny how you are apparently the only person reading your own definition to come to that interpretation.  If something isn't lethal, it cannot kill you.  If something is lethal, it will kill you.  That's what lethal means.  A gun is lethal because, by and large, it will kill people.  That's commonly what is meant.  However, it isn't necessarily true that all guns are lethal to all targets.  A .22 caliber pistol is unlikely to be lethal to a healthy adult human.  Possible, but, unlikely.  

I would also point out that, depending on the country and your level of training, you certainly can be charged with assault with a deadly weapon when punching someone.  Please don't confuse American laws with the rest of the world.  Here in Japan, anyone with a black belt automatically gets charged with assault with a deadly weapon instead of common assault, for example.

But, in any case, the rest of us have moved on from your attempt to force your own idiosyncratic definitions on the discussion.  Perhaps you could come and join us in our conversation, rather than trying to rehash what's already been discussed?


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> Funny how you are apparently the only person reading your own definition to come to that interpretation.  If something isn't lethal, it cannot kill you.  If something is lethal, it will kill you.  That's what lethal means.




Unless of course you use the proper dictionary definition that says it doesn't have to kill.  Words, they have multiple meanings.  The sooner you learn that, the sooner you will stop making these errors.



> A gun is lethal because, by and large, it will kill people.  That's commonly what is meant.  However, it isn't necessarily true that all guns are lethal to all targets.  A .22 caliber pistol is unlikely to be lethal to a healthy adult human.  Possible, but, unlikely.




A .22 will kill people often enough to be considered lethal force if used against a human. 



> I would also point out that, depending on the country and your level of training, you certainly can be charged with assault with a deadly weapon when punching someone.  Please don't confuse American laws with the rest of the world.  Here in Japan, anyone with a black belt automatically gets charged with assault with a deadly weapon instead of common assault, for example.




You mean like I said in a post that you didn't read all the way?


----------



## Numidius

Hussar said:


> Frankly, I look at 5e as mostly that.  Mechanically, 5e is a pretty natural extension of 4e.  Granted, there's some changes - not as many encounter level powers for example.  But, since 5e isn't focused on the encounter as the base unit of play, but, rather, the day, it makes sense to strip out encounter level mechanics to a large degree.




This is interesting. So which mechanics are in 5e supporting/enforcing "the day" as base unit of play?  
(I barely know of the short/long rest economy)


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Maxperson said:


> Shouldn't a dozen orcs be very strong for grappling?




I seem to recall a 1e module where it is suggested that a group of mooks try to grapple the PCs if things go badly for them in regular combat, but I'm not sure where it is.

I'm reminded of Húrin in the Silmarillion after he kills 70 trolls:



> Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive, by the command of Morgoth, for the Orcs grappled him with their hands, which clung to him still though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, until at last he fell buried beneath them. Then Gothmog bound him and dragged him to Angband with mockery.




I think the idea of characters being overborne (and possibly captured rather than killed) has a place if used sparingly.


----------



## Hussar

Numidius said:


> This is interesting. So which mechanics are in 5e supporting/enforcing "the day" as base unit of play?
> (I barely know of the short/long rest economy)




Now, I'm more than willing to be shown to be wrong here, but, it seems like "the day" is the base unit.  6-8 encounters per day is the presumed pacing, with small resource recovery bumps in the short rests.  But, a long rest in 5e pretty much  restores virtually everything (other than, maybe hit dice?  Is there anything else that doesn't fully reset on a long rest?).

So, pretty much the entire game is geared around "the day" that's subdivided into 1-3 chunks split by short rests.  Anything longer than a day generally falls under the rubric of downtime activity.  I mean, if you want to do pretty much anything that isn't directly "adventuring", it's a downtime activity that generally takes a week at a time.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hussar said:


> Funny how you are apparently the only person reading your own definition to come to that interpretation.  If something isn't lethal, it cannot kill you.  If something is lethal, it will kill you.  That's what lethal means.  A gun is lethal because, by and large, it will kill people.  That's commonly what is meant.  However, it isn't necessarily true that all guns are lethal to all targets.  A .22 caliber pistol is unlikely to be lethal to a healthy adult human.  Possible, but, unlikely.
> 
> I would also point out that, depending on the country and your level of training, you certainly can be charged with assault with a deadly weapon when punching someone.  Please don't confuse American laws with the rest of the world.  Here in Japan, anyone with a black belt automatically gets charged with assault with a deadly weapon instead of common assault, for example.
> 
> But, in any case, the rest of us have moved on from your attempt to force your own idiosyncratic definitions on the discussion.  Perhaps you could come and join us in our conversation, rather than trying to rehash what's already been discussed?




Conversations around definitions of words are almost always the worst roleplaying discussions in my view. Even well meaning people engage in equivocation and other rhetorical tricks to win. Honestly, you guys should all put aside disputes over meanings of the word and try to get at the underlying substance of what everyone is trying to say (not singling you out Hussar, or suggesting you are doing any of this, just picking this moment to comment).


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Like I said, I was just responding to the argument that came up around the word lethal. I wasn't weighing in on the gaming contention it arose from. I just found it to be a strange linguistic argument.





Bedrockgames said:


> Conversations around definitions of words are almost always the worst roleplaying discussions in my view. Even well meaning people engage in equivocation and other rhetorical tricks to win. Honestly, you guys should all put aside disputes over meanings of the word and try to get at the underlying substance of what everyone is trying to say (not singling you out Hussar, or suggesting you are doing any of this, just picking this moment to comment).



I'd encourage you to take your own advice, then!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Shouldn't a dozen orcs be very strong for grappling?



I dunno. I think it's somewhat counter-intuitive that they're more dangerous when grappling then when eg throwing rocks or shooting arrows or stabbing with spears.


----------



## pemerton

Hussar said:


> 5e isn't focused on the encounter as the base unit of play, but, rather, the day





Hussar said:


> Now, I'm more than willing to be shown to be wrong here, but, it seems like "the day" is the base unit.  6-8 encounters per day is the presumed pacing, with small resource recovery bumps in the short rests.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> pretty much the entire game is geared around "the day" that's subdivided into 1-3 chunks split by short rests.



This is, for me, the most fundamental difference between 4e and 5e. 4e is based on the encounter, and hence supports a scene-framing approach. Whereas 5e is based on "the day", and therefore - it seems to me - favours pre-plotting and GM control over encounter sequences.

There are other differences - eg 5e doesn't have skill challenges or DCs-by-level; and 4e combat seems to me to make positioning more important and interesting than 5e combat - but the pacing aspect I think is the most fundamental.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sepulchrave II said:


> I'm reminded of Húrin in the Silmarillion after he kills 70 trolls:




Aure Entuluva!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hussar said:


> Now, I'm more than willing to be shown to be wrong here, but, it seems like "the day" is the base unit.  6-8 encounters per day is the presumed pacing, with small resource recovery bumps in the short rests.  But, a long rest in 5e pretty much  restores virtually everything (other than, maybe hit dice?  Is there anything else that doesn't fully reset on a long rest?).
> 
> So, pretty much the entire game is geared around "the day" that's subdivided into 1-3 chunks split by short rests.  Anything longer than a day generally falls under the rubric of downtime activity.  I mean, if you want to do pretty much anything that isn't directly "adventuring", it's a downtime activity that generally takes a week at a time.




Well, mainly, almost ALL spells are daily resources. Class features and other similar stuff often have a daily resource usage mechanic of some sort as well. Its not far off from 2e or earlier systems in that respect, though cantrips and rituals are mitigating factors. 

I don't think that 5e is actually that much like 4e in terms of play process however. It is a much different game. The mechanical subsystems are pretty similar in a general way, but employed to different ends. I couldn't, for instance, adapt 5e to play in my preferred 4e style.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I dunno. I think it's somewhat counter-intuitive that they're more dangerous when grappling then when eg throwing rocks or shooting arrows or stabbing with spears.




This is exactly the problem. 1e has a lot of these problems though. Basically every time they attempted to make rules for adjudicating something new they created an entirely new subsystem. At best these subsystems are not coherent, they produce results which are all over the map. 

1e has actually got quite a few 'combat systems'. 

1. The core melee/missile combat system.
2. Spells (at least integrated fairly thoroughly with the rest, but still the rules for when a spell goes off and if it is interrupted by an attack are pretty wonky).
3. Psionic combat - works on a completely different system of segments, has radically different power levels than melee/spells. Very problematic, at best. Basically won't integrate with the rest of 1e without causing huge changes in how the game works.
4. non-lethal combat (DMG style)
5. Unarmed combat, DMG style (pummel/grapple/overbear).
6. non-lethal combat vs dragons (MM)
7. non-lethal combat (UA Appendix R)
8. Unarmed combat Style 1 (UA Appendix Q)
9. Unarmed combat Style 2 (UA Appendix Q)
10. OA Unarmed combat
11. OA Martial Arts
12. Dragon Martial Arts (3 versions, build on the OA ones)

There are probably MORE than this, but none of them really works well except when used by both opponents. Some of them can sort of mix, OA martial arts are about 2-4x more deadly than normal melee (depends on exactly what styles exist and how the rules are interpreted since they are quite badly written). 

Anyway, the safest assumption is they should all be dropped except basic DMG combat, and maybe some judicious use of OA MA if you need, but probably best to limit it to OA games with only OA classes (IE the Samurai is tough enough to fight in this environment, although other OA classes aren't really).


----------



## Hussar

pemerton said:


> This is, for me, the most fundamental difference between 4e and 5e. 4e is based on the encounter, and hence supports a scene-framing approach. Whereas 5e is based on "the day", and therefore - it seems to me - favours pre-plotting and GM control over encounter sequences.
> 
> There are other differences - eg 5e doesn't have skill challenges or DCs-by-level; and 4e combat seems to me to make positioning more important and interesting than 5e combat - but the pacing aspect I think is the most fundamental.




I'd say that's fair.

Although, the "DC's by level" really aren't, in practice, terribly different than "limited DC's with limited bonuses".  By and large, the end result is the same - about a 66% success rate is expected for most skill checks.

And, yup, the removal of encounter powers tends to reduce the impact of positioning, plus the fact that encounters rarely last as long as 4e encounters - at a gut guess I'd say 5e encounters end up around 4 rounds (give or take) while 4e generally take about twice that.  5e is a much, much faster paced game.

Add to that the removal of the "reaction" actions, many of which were encounter level, where you had a bajillion triggered actions in a given round, plus the removal of most "effect conditions" and you do have a significantly simplified combat system.  

However, those tend to be pretty specific things.  At a somewhat higher altitude, I find that both games frequently play out similarly.  There are a few things I miss though.  I think that 5e could seriously benefit from a Page 42 mechanic.  Then again, I think pretty much all games could benefit from that.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I dunno. I think it's somewhat counter-intuitive that they're more dangerous when grappling then when eg throwing rocks or shooting arrows or stabbing with spears.




When I was 19 or 20, my buddies and I went to the local middle school and were playing football.  While we were there, a group of 6-8(can't remember exactly) middle school kids came out and challenged us to tackle football.  We thought it was the funniest thing and agreed, but we said it was touch for us, and they could tackle.  One of my buddies was 6'2" or 6"3, 245 pounds and played offensive line in high school.  He could bench press as much as someone with an 18/00 strength in 1e, which he reminded us of fairly often.  All we did when we had the ball was hand it to him and let him run.  Those kids were tenacious.  First one would grab him and hold on, then two, then four, and soon all 6 or so were on him.  At first he would just keep walking like goliath with a bunch of hobbits clinging to him, but by the time 6 grabbed a hold, he went down.  In a fight he would have destroyed all of them and barely worked up a sweat.  Grappling as a group, though, they took him down every time.

Orcs being much closer in size to the high level fighter, and nearly as strong, would have a much easier time taking the fighter down with a group grapple.  If they kept their distance, though, and let him use his weapons, they'd be toast.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, mainly, almost ALL spells are daily resources. Class features and other similar stuff often have a daily resource usage mechanic of some sort as well. Its not far off from 2e or earlier systems in that respect, though cantrips and rituals are mitigating factors.
> 
> I don't think that 5e is actually that much like 4e in terms of play process however. It is a much different game. The mechanical subsystems are pretty similar in a general way, but employed to different ends. I couldn't, for instance, adapt 5e to play in my preferred 4e style.




Shhh!!  Don't clue him in.  He's busy mocking me with his superior knowledge.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> When I was 19 or 20, my buddies and I went to the local middle school and were playing football.  While we were there, a group of 6-8(can't remember exactly) middle school kids came out and challenged us to tackle football.  We thought it was the funniest thing and agreed, but we said it was touch for us, and they could tackle.  One of my buddies was 6'2" or 6"3, 245 pounds and played offensive line in high school.  He could bench press as much as someone with an 18/00 strength in 1e, which he reminded us of fairly often.  All we did when we had the ball was hand it to him and let him run.  Those kids were tenacious.  First one would grab him and hold on, then two, then four, and soon all 6 or so were on him.  At first he would just keep walking like goliath with a bunch of hobbits clinging to him, but by the time 6 grabbed a hold, he went down.  In a fight he would have destroyed all of them and barely worked up a sweat.  Grappling as a group, though, they took him down every time.
> 
> Orcs being much closer in size to the high level fighter, and nearly as strong, would have a much easier time taking the fighter down with a group grapple.  If they kept their distance, though, and let him use his weapons, they'd be toast.



Wut.  Your example of how grappling is just better than melee is a bunch of kids clinging to your friend who isn't trying to stop them at all.  And, somehow, this is obviously more effective at stopping your friend than if they all just threw rocks or came at him with spears?


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> Shhh!!  Don't clue him in.  He's busy mocking me with his superior knowledge.




Sorry to burst your bubble [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], but, this is in response to earlier questions from [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION].   And, heck, my 4e and 5e games aren't all that different.  Maybe other folks are.  Mine?  Not so much.  I find 5e to be mostly an update of 4e, particularly from the Essentials stuff.  Certainly closer to 4e than 2e with which it shares virtually no mechanics.  I mean, there's almost no 2e dna in 5e - the spell system is completely different, whether it's daily casters using Sorcerer mechanics or short rest casters like the Warlock which have no equivalent at all in 2e.  The skill system is 4e's skill system without the level adjustments.  The combat system is straight up d20.

Me, I look at it pretty simply.  Could a 4e player, with no experience in 5e, read a 5e character sheet?  Pretty much.  A 2e player?  Wouldn't even recognize the character sheet as being a D&d character.  The only thing that 5e shares with earlier editions is some milksop advice on letting the DM be in charge (which is really easy to ignore) and a sliver of monster lore.

Does anyone really think a 2e fighter looks anything like a 5e fighter?


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], would you elaborate on how aren't so different your 4e and 5e games? 

On 4e combat, from what I understand, it looks similar to the crunch heavy Swords&Sorcery boardgame I played last year. 

Also curious about 2e vs 5e fighters


----------



## Hussar

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], would you elaborate on how aren't so different your 4e and 5e games?
> 
> On 4e combat, from what I understand, it looks similar to the crunch heavy Swords&Sorcery boardgame I played last year.
> 
> Also curious about 2e vs 5e fighters




It's a little difficult to describe things in negative terms like that.  But, yeah, we do pretty much the same things in our 5e games that we did in our 4e games and, honestly, not that differently from our 3e games.  I mean, heck, I updated both 4e and 3e modules for play in 5e, so, it's not really that hard.  I played Primeval Thule, a setting designed for 3e and 4e and then updated to 5e without too much difficulty.  

To be honest, I don't see a whole lot of differences.  I look at the 4e Dungeon adventures that I have and realize that these would work pretty much as is in a 5e game.  If I wanted to run Chaos Scar, for example, in 5e, what changes do I really have to make?

To me though, there's no point of similarity between a 2e and 5e fighter.  Umm, weapons and armor I suppose.  Hit Dice is the same.  But, that's about it.  Number of attacks, stats, ability to self heal, completely different skill system, the ability of 5e fighters to leverage short rest recharges.  Heck the fact that 5e fighters have abilities that actually recharge.  There's just nothing similar there.  Those are two completely different characters who happen to share a name.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Wut.  Your example of how grappling is just better than melee is a bunch of kids clinging to your friend who isn't trying to stop them at all.  And, somehow, this is obviously more effective at stopping your friend than if they all just threw rocks or came at him with spears?




If he was in armor and armed with the appropriate skill with his weapon, it would be equal to the unarmed skill difference during that football game.  6 armed orcs are nothing to a high level fighter.  6 grappling orcs can take the fighter down.  That was the point.


----------



## Maxperson

Hussar said:


> To be honest, I don't see a whole lot of differences.  I look at the 4e Dungeon adventures that I have and realize that these would work pretty much as is in a 5e game.  If I wanted to run Chaos Scar, for example, in 5e, what changes do I really have to make?




Modules are a really poor example, as you generally don't have to make much in the way of changes regardless of edition.  I routinely ran 1e and 2e modules for my 3e game.  Modules are mostly just story.  Swapping monsters out for the current edition is simple.  The same with traps.  NPCs are the most work, but it's not hard to redo them with the current rules set.



> To me though, there's no point of similarity between a 2e and 5e fighter.  Umm, weapons and armor I suppose.  Hit Dice is the same.  But, that's about it.  Number of attacks, stats, ability to self heal, completely different skill system, the ability of 5e fighters to leverage short rest recharges.  Heck the fact that 5e fighters have abilities that actually recharge.  There's just nothing similar there.  Those are two completely different characters who happen to share a name.




Stats are more same than different.  Dex still gives bonuses to AC and initiative.  Con gives bonuses to hit points.  Strength to hit, damage and determines what you can carry.  They are the same six stats.  Further, I note you didn't try to compare wizards or clerics, who are closer to their 2e versions with memorizing spells.  

It doesn't matter, though.  5e is not 4e.  Most of the issues I had with 4e are gone, though I am struggling with the adventuring day problem.  I don't like it one bit.  Right now I've switched to making a long rest a week so that I don't have to provide a ridiculous number of encounters in a single day in order to challenge the PCs, but I'm not sure this will work, either, and if it doesn't I don't know what to do as the "adventuring day" is so ingrained.


----------



## Sadras

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], would you elaborate on how aren't so different your 4e and 5e games?




I'm not Hussar, but he is right - mechanically there are many similarities between 3e and 4e with 5e.
You have your feats, your skills, and healing (surges became HD mechanic), class abilities, ability score improvements, rituals, ability-based saving throws, no THACO, rest and _power_ refresh rates, monster design...etc

5e though does though feel to draw from 2e with it elevating the DM, and the general old-school spirit of the game.

I think your roleplaying history might determine how you view 5e and where the primary influence of the game originates from. I'm very much a 2e/BECMI player so 5e resonates that feeling, although I can completely see where Hussar is coming from regarding the mechanics.

Ignore the 2e DMing-guidance and insert 4e's page 42, SC and residuum and you're playing 4e, more or less.


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> Modules are a really poor example, as you generally don't have to make much in the way of changes regardless of edition.




I agree with this sentiment. 



> It doesn't matter, though.  5e is not 4e.  Most of the issues I had with 4e are gone,




Yes, arguably because the lego mechanics in 5e are easier to move about, twist and even remove altogether without _ruining_ the core system.



> though I am struggling with the adventuring day problem.  I don't like it one bit.  Right now I've switched to making a long rest a week so that I don't have to provide a ridiculous number of encounters in a single day in order to challenge the PCs, but I'm not sure this will work, either, and if it doesn't I don't know what to do as the "adventuring day" is so ingrained.




Yes, this is issue no 1 with 5e, IMO. You need a refresh system that is tailored to your adventures, that caters for faster/slower pacing, works in the various environments (city, wilderness* and dungeon), aligns with the level of magic in your setting and doesn't conflict with your internal consistency. 
Once you find something that works for your table, life it good.

*Particularly doesn't undermine travel and environmental factors.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> Yes, arguably because the lego mechanics in 5e are easier to move about, twist and even remove altogether without _ruining_ the core system.




Which is huge.  When I realized that I would basically have to re-write 4e to make it playable for me and my group, I gave up on it.  With 5e I can just change what I don't like and move on.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> Modules are a really poor example, as you generally don't have to make much in the way of changes regardless of edition.  I routinely ran 1e and 2e modules for my 3e game.  Modules are mostly just story.  Swapping monsters out for the current edition is simple.  The same with traps.  NPCs are the most work, but it's not hard to redo them with the current rules set.
> 
> 
> 
> Stats are more same than different.  Dex still gives bonuses to AC and initiative.  Con gives bonuses to hit points.  Strength to hit, damage and determines what you can carry.  They are the same six stats.  Further, I note you didn't try to compare wizards or clerics, who are closer to their 2e versions with memorizing spells.
> 
> It doesn't matter, though.  5e is not 4e.  Most of the issues I had with 4e are gone, though I am struggling with the adventuring day problem.  I don't like it one bit.  Right now I've switched to making a long rest a week so that I don't have to provide a ridiculous number of encounters in a single day in order to challenge the PCs, but I'm not sure this will work, either, and if it doesn't I don't know what to do as the "adventuring day" is so ingrained.




Err what?  While they might give bonuses, the point where they grant bonuses and the amount of bonuses are entirely different.  

ANd, no, clerics and wizards are nothing like a 2e cleric or wizard.  Not even a little.  No more Vancian casting, both clerics and wizards are now sorcerers.  No more random spell book.  No more spheres.  Completely different spell list and the way spells work is completely different.  No more scaling spells with character level, for one.  No more bonus daily slots for wisdom for a cleric.  Oh, and wisdom no longer grants a bonus saving throw vs magic.  And Int doesn't grant multiple languages/non-weapon proficiencies.

Good grief, did you even play 2e?


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], now what are page 42 and residuum??  

(Becmi, a bit of Ad&d and 3e, here, long time ago)


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], why do you think the weekly long rests won't be enough to solve the adv day problem?


----------



## Satyrn

Numidius said:


> @_*Sadras*_, now what are page 42 and residuum??
> 
> (Becmi, a bit of Ad&d and 3e, here, long time ago)




Page 42 of the 4e DMG contained concise advice on how to improv a threat, suggesting how much damage a trap/environment effect/etc ought to do, how to assign a saving they're and the like, based on the party's level and how dangerous you want it to be. Something like that, anyway.

Residuum is a magical material, the primary component of magical items. The players could break down a magic item they didn't want, collect the residuum from it and then craft a new item they did want. It essentially filled the same role as buying and selling items in 3e.


----------



## Satyrn

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], why do you think the weekly long rests won't be enough to solve the adv day problem?




Also, Max, if it doesn't quite work, but comes close, you might consider my change: Unlike the standard rules, the players have to spend hit dice to heal during a long rest, too. I let them do this after they gain back the hit dice from the long rest.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> If he was in armor and armed with the appropriate skill with his weapon, it would be equal to the unarmed skill difference during that football game.  6 armed orcs are nothing to a high level fighter.  6 grappling orcs can take the fighter down.  That was the point.



So, your friend doing nothing to fight off the kids and just trying to run is the same as an armed and armored warrior fighting fir their life because you just can't stop thise pesky kids/orcs if they decide to grapple?

This is actually meant as a serious argument? I suppose that it's a more "realistic" rule because you knew a guy when you were 20 who got tackled by 5 3ir 6 kids that one time in a friendly football game?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Shhh!!  Don't clue him in.  He's busy mocking me with his superior knowledge.




Its funny, because WotC/Mearls is right in some sense when they say that 5e isn't "that much different from 4e" and "borrows heavily from 4e." In some sense this really is true. Yet at the same time its a totally different game. The same could have been said of 3e and 4e, they really are not much more different than 5e is from 4e (maybe a bit, but not vastly different). Again, they are entirely different games with different agendas.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Wut.  Your example of how grappling is just better than melee is a bunch of kids clinging to your friend who isn't trying to stop them at all.  And, somehow, this is obviously more effective at stopping your friend than if they all just threw rocks or came at him with spears?




It actually isn't all that relevant whether mass tackling or armed attacks would be more effective IN REALITY. All that is germane is that D&D is a game of epic fantasy in which armed warriors fight monsters with swords, etc. and wizards wield magic. You can have some unarmed combat, it might even be a pretty significant part of something like OA, but when packs of orcs can drag down 9th level fighters and pummel them senseless while they're prone, that sort of doesn't work to the tone of the game very well!

I seriously doubt that was Gary's intention, he just seems to have been constitutionally incapable of creating a set of general rules within a framework. Doing so would have made unarmed combat relatively trivial. It works fine in 4e for instance, and implementing martial arts in that system didn't even stretch the original paradigm really. Monks and Brawlers both work fine. It could be done in 1e as well, though not quite as easily since its combat system is more brittle.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Which is huge.  When I realized that I would basically have to re-write 4e to make it playable for me and my group, I gave up on it.  With 5e I can just change what I don't like and move on.




4e is no less modular and extensible than 5e is, actually. You would simply ignore basic tenets of 4e design and work from there. For instance you could implement all the 5e classes on top of 4e's core mechanics, there was virtually no point to changing any of that, except as a PR exercise. 

I mean, sure, you would lose basic features of 4e like the focus on encounters, the equalized power levels between classes, and maybe a few other things depending on what you changed, but it would still be 95% mechanically like 5e is now.

This is a lot of what irked me about 5e to begin with, most of the changes were pointless and just apparently seem to have been made to obsolete existing material. The tone and process of the game is quite different, but mechanically the changes were too small and too lateral to be worthwhile, so I stuck with 4e and built off it.


----------



## Maxperson

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], why do you think the weekly long rests won't be enough to solve the adv day problem?




The main issue is that it still puts me on the day, but longer.  I'm unable to really have 1 or 2 encounters in a week, because the balance gets thrown way off.  I suppose I could just downgrade the exp for the easier fights, but that's not that satisfying, either.  The week is much better than a day, though.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> So, your friend doing nothing to fight off the kids and just trying to run is the same as an armed and armored warrior fighting fir their life because you just can't stop thise pesky kids/orcs if they decide to grapple?
> 
> This is actually meant as a serious argument? I suppose that it's a more "realistic" rule because you knew a guy when you were 20 who got tackled by 5 3ir 6 kids that one time in a friendly football game?




:: When you try to actually understand the point instead of trying to make points, we can discuss.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 4e is no less modular and extensible than 5e is, actually. You would simply ignore basic tenets of 4e design and work from there. For instance you could implement all the 5e classes on top of 4e's core mechanics, there was virtually no point to changing any of that, except as a PR exercise.




4e was unworkable for me.  5e isn't.  In order for 4e to work for me, I would have had to literally rebuild the every class, race and ability from the ground up, and then try to balance that with the monsters the game provides.  That's not even counting the healing rules and such that I didn't like, but could have been reworked.  That's an insane amount of work just to play a game when I had 3e right in front of me and working well enough for me and my group to enjoy.



> This is a lot of what irked me about 5e to begin with, most of the changes were pointless and just apparently seem to have been made to obsolete existing material. The tone and process of the game is quite different, but mechanically the changes were too small and too lateral to be worthwhile, so I stuck with 4e and built off it.




I don't think they were intended to obsolete material, but rather to provide an older feel to the game.  More people wanted a game that felt old school, than new school.


----------



## Hussar

Maxperson said:


> /snip
> 
> 
> I don't think they were intended to obsolete material, but rather to provide an older feel to the game.  More people wanted a game that felt old school, than new school.




Now that I agree with.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 4e is no less modular and extensible than 5e is, actually. You would simply ignore basic tenets of 4e design and work from there. For instance you could implement all the 5e classes on top of 4e's core mechanics, there was virtually no point to changing any of that, except as a PR exercise.
> 
> I mean, sure, you would lose basic features of 4e like the focus on encounters, the equalized power levels between classes, and maybe a few other things depending on what you changed, but it would still be 95% mechanically like 5e is now.




Focus on encounters and equalized power levels between classes WAS 4e.



> This is a lot of what irked me about 5e to begin with, most of the changes were pointless and just apparently seem to have been made to obsolete existing material. The tone and process of the game is quite different, *but mechanically the changes were too small and too lateral to be worthwhile*, so I stuck with 4e and built off it.




Bold emphasis mine.

You may have a point here and that is because the largest issue with 5e is the Rest mechanic which refreshes the class abilities and which appears to be, even thought slightly different, inherited from 4e's encounter model. IMO, 5e should have tied the refresh rate to the exhaustion mechanic instead of having the short/long rest power cooldowns - but the designers were going for something simple so...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Focus on encounters and equalized power levels between classes WAS 4e.
> 
> 
> 
> Bold emphasis mine.
> 
> You may have a point here and that is because the largest issue with 5e is the Rest mechanic which refreshes the class abilities and which appears to be, even thought slightly different, inherited from 4e's encounter model. IMO, 5e should have tied the refresh rate to the exhaustion mechanic instead of having the short/long rest power cooldowns - but the designers were going for something simple so...




Well, the model that HoML uses is simply "when you become exhausted, you refresh." This is, after all, what people effectively WANT. The text couches it as a 'long rest' (probably should abolish that terminology) but it has no connection with any specific narrative. The normal procedure is that the players decide they want a refresh, and they accept whatever the consequence for doing that is, which just means that the GM frames a new scene. He could choose to frame it 5 minutes after the last scene, or 5 years, but the PCs are guaranteed to be at full strength. They could pay a terrible price of course, but its up to the players to decide what they want to do.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, the model that HoML uses is simply "when you become exhausted, you refresh." This is, after all, what people effectively WANT. The text couches it as a 'long rest' (probably should abolish that terminology) but it has no connection with any specific narrative. The normal procedure is that the players decide they want a refresh, and they accept whatever the consequence for doing that is, which just means that the GM frames a new scene. He could choose to frame it 5 minutes after the last scene, or 5 years, but the PCs are guaranteed to be at full strength. They could pay a terrible price of course, but its up to the players to decide what they want to do.




Is HoML your improved 4e project you were working on? 
What terrible price do you speak of, can you give me an example?

In my version of 5e, each character decides whether to refresh their short rest abilities or long rest abilities with incremental increases in the DC depending on the number of times they have attempted it that day AND the number of days since their previous long rest (full 24 hours). Failures still guarantee a refresh on their abilities but stack levels of exhaustion which could be detrimental and eventually lethal. The positive about the system is that each player decides for their character when to exert themselves (you are not tied to the group mentality), it works for the pacing of city, wilderness and dungeon settings and satisfies my internal logic on how powers/abilities should work. It can make extensive travelling dangerous/tricky which is how I imagine it.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, the model that HoML uses is simply "when you become exhausted, you refresh." This is, after all, what people effectively WANT. The text couches it as a 'long rest' (probably should abolish that terminology) but it has no connection with any specific narrative. The normal procedure is that the players decide they want a refresh, and they accept whatever the consequence for doing that is, which just means that the GM frames a new scene. He could choose to frame it 5 minutes after the last scene, or 5 years, but the PCs are guaranteed to be at full strength. They could pay a terrible price of course, but its up to the players to decide what they want to do.





Sadras said:


> What terrible price do you speak of, can you give me an example?



Obvisoulsy I'm not AbdulAlhazred, but my take on the notion of "terrible price" would be influenced by 13th Age and Burning Wheel.

*13th Age* rules for fleeing and for refreshing (pp 166, 171, 187):

At any point, on any PC’s turn, any player can propose that the fight is going so badly that the characters have to flee. If all of the other players agree, the heroes beat a hasty and successful retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. In exchange for this extraordinarily generous retreating rule, the party suffers a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix. . . .

If the party is short of a heal-up but is too beat up to press on, they can retreat, tails between their legs. Provided they can find some sort of safe place, they can get the heal-up that they haven’t earned in battle. But taking the heal-up entails a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, the party fails to achieve one of their goals, and they fail in some way that simply defeating the bad guys the next time around with your healed-up party won’t fix. Don’t worry; occasional setbacks make for a more engaging campaign. . . .

Normally, the party gets to take a full heal-up after about four battles. The point of the four-battle heal-up rule is to make players want to press on instead of holing up, which is what the traditional rules reward you for.

So what happens when the party has been weakened so badly that it would be madness and suicide to press on? If the party
decides to heal-up ahead of time, assuming they are able to rest, they suffer a “campaign loss” (per page 166 in Chapter 5). What does that mean? At your discretion, the situation in the campaign gets noticeably worse for the party. Ideally, the campaign loss can be traced to the decision to take the heal-up. . . . The campaign-loss rule is key to making combat meaningful. We all know most GMs probably won’t kill the PCs permanently, but if the PCs can’t fight their way through four battles, the game world suffers.​
*Burning Wheel Adventure Burner* (pp 186, 242, 244):

It's important to keep the action moving, to keep the players interest and engaged. . . .

You do not want to rest up the characters before every dramatic situation. The whole point of being wounded or sufferng similar penalties is that these modifications make the next action more danagerous, more challenging. If the players are allowed to gather their strength before every encounter, then the penalties lose their value . . .

You must push the plaeyrs and threaten their characters. You must harry them, work them. But once they have accomplished that great goal in their Beliefs, you must back off. Once the situation has been resolved or substantially changed, you must give the reins to the players. You must frame the action so they can rest and consider their actions.

Even so, unless you're ending a campaign, you must constrain their choices. GIve them a set amount of time or resources to use. . . . At the end of the rest period, something happens. An event transpires that challenges their Beliefs in an unexpected way. . . .

The adventure-rest-practice-reequip-adventure cycle is the natural pace of the game. However, it'sthe GM's job to keep up the pressure for as long as he can without breaking the players. Don't give them a moment of peace. Throw challenges at them. When they stop for rest, move your pieces in the Big Picture. Make them say, "Uh oh. . ." Force the players to create their piece by accomplishing their goals or by spending themselves utterly. When they're wounded, broke and ragged, let them go to ground but let them know that their enemies will not rest. . . .

The practice rules are meant to allow for the passage of long stretches of time in your game. Let five years pass! . . . Let the players practicea and beef up their abilities. And let the setting and situation evolve and change meanwhile!​
In 13th Age it's mechanised and is about player choices to risk PC death or concede campaign losses; in BW it's GM control over the pacing of events, with the injunction to maintain pressure on the PCs (and thereby their players) and to use moments of rest/recovery/practices as opportunities to develop the situation so as to generate new challenges.  Either way, the players recognise that resting isn't "free" - it's connected to the GM's entitlement to escalate the fiction in adverse ways.

For me, at least, this is an aspect of the "story now" way of achieving the "living, breathing world".


----------



## Numidius

"Let five years pass" ... this is something that scares trad Gms IME. 

When resuming warhammer 2e last year, I proposed to let some time pass: new careers for older Pcs, new Npcs and situations to start with, even if continuing the same overall storyline-big plot behind the scenes... instead the game resumed exactly were we left, in the very same moment. 
No scene framing, so it took two whole sessions to get to the place we all agreed we had to start play with... as per past clues (an old elven ship wrecked on the coast and hidden by debris)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Obvisoulsy I'm not AbdulAlhazred, but my take on the notion of "terrible price" would be influenced by 13th Age and Burning Wheel.
> 
> *13th Age* rules for fleeing and for refreshing (pp 166, 171, 187):
> At any point, on any PC’s turn, any player can propose that the fight is going so badly that the characters have to flee. If all of the other players agree, the heroes beat a hasty and successful retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. In exchange for this extraordinarily generous retreating rule, the party suffers a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix. . . .
> 
> If the party is short of a heal-up but is too beat up to press on, they can retreat, tails between their legs. Provided they can find some sort of safe place, they can get the heal-up that they haven’t earned in battle. But taking the heal-up entails a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, the party fails to achieve one of their goals, and they fail in some way that simply defeating the bad guys the next time around with your healed-up party won’t fix. Don’t worry; occasional setbacks make for a more engaging campaign. . . .
> 
> Normally, the party gets to take a full heal-up after about four battles. The point of the four-battle heal-up rule is to make players want to press on instead of holing up, which is what the traditional rules reward you for.
> 
> So what happens when the party has been weakened so badly that it would be madness and suicide to press on? If the party
> decides to heal-up ahead of time, assuming they are able to rest, they suffer a “campaign loss” (per page 166 in Chapter 5). What does that mean? At your discretion, the situation in the campaign gets noticeably worse for the party. Ideally, the campaign loss can be traced to the decision to take the heal-up. . . . The campaign-loss rule is key to making combat meaningful. We all know most GMs probably won’t kill the PCs permanently, but if the PCs can’t fight their way through four battles, the game world suffers.​
> *Burning Wheel Adventure Burner* (pp 186, 242, 244):
> It's important to keep the action moving, to keep the players interest and engaged. . . .
> 
> You do not want to rest up the characters before every dramatic situation. The whole point of being wounded or sufferng similar penalties is that these modifications make the next action more danagerous, more challenging. If the players are allowed to gather their strength before every encounter, then the penalties lose their value . . .
> 
> You must push the plaeyrs and threaten their characters. You must harry them, work them. But once they have accomplished that great goal in their Beliefs, you must back off. Once the situation has been resolved or substantially changed, you must give the reins to the players. You must frame the action so they can rest and consider their actions.
> 
> Even so, unless you're ending a campaign, you must constrain their choices. GIve them a set amount of time or resources to use. . . . At the end of the rest period, something happens. An event transpires that challenges their Beliefs in an unexpected way. . . .
> 
> The adventure-rest-practice-reequip-adventure cycle is the natural pace of the game. However, it'sthe GM's job to keep up the pressure for as long as he can without breaking the players. Don't give them a moment of peace. Throw challenges at them. When they stop for rest, move your pieces in the Big Picture. Make them say, "Uh oh. . ." Force the players to create their piece by accomplishing their goals or by spending themselves utterly. When they're wounded, broke and ragged, let them go to ground but let them know that their enemies will not rest. . . .
> 
> The practice rules are meant to allow for the passage of long stretches of time in your game. Let five years pass! . . . Let the players practicea and beef up their abilities. And let the setting and situation evolve and change meanwhile!​
> In 13th Age it's mechanised and is about player choices to risk PC death or concede campaign losses; in BW it's GM control over the pacing of events, with the injunction to maintain pressure on the PCs (and thereby their players) and to use moments of rest/recovery/practices as opportunities to develop the situation so as to generate new challenges.  Either way, the players recognise that resting isn't "free" - it's connected to the GM's entitlement to escalate the fiction in adverse ways.
> 
> For me, at least, this is an aspect of the "story now" way of achieving the "living, breathing world".




So nothing listed there is a terrible price.  The 13th Age rule suggests that you provide a temporary goal failure that can't be solved just by killing the bad guys, but that you can just fix it another way.  

A terrible price would be the permanent death of one or more PCs, or the unfixable failure of a major campaign goal.  Those are terrible prices.  What is described above is just a moderate price.

On a side note, if there's no such thing as permanent failure and "We all know most GMs probably won’t kill the PCs permanently...," where's the challenge in 13th Age?  Success may take longer, but at least from the rules you just quotes, you are guaranteed to get there.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Obvisoulsy I'm not AbdulAlhazred, but my take on the notion of "terrible price" would be influenced by 13th Age and Burning Wheel.
> 
> *13th Age* rules for fleeing and for refreshing (pp 166, 171, 187):
> 
> At any point, on any PC’s turn, any player can propose that the fight is going so badly that the characters have to flee. If all of the other players agree, the heroes beat a hasty and successful retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. In exchange for this extraordinarily generous retreating rule, the party suffers a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix. . . .
> 
> If the party is short of a heal-up but is too beat up to press on, they can retreat, tails between their legs. Provided they can find some sort of safe place, they can get the heal-up that they haven’t earned in battle. But taking the heal-up entails a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, the party fails to achieve one of their goals, and they fail in some way that simply defeating the bad guys the next time around with your healed-up party won’t fix. Don’t worry; occasional setbacks make for a more engaging campaign. . . .
> 
> Normally, the party gets to take a full heal-up after about four battles. The point of the four-battle heal-up rule is to make players want to press on instead of holing up, which is what the traditional rules reward you for.
> 
> So what happens when the party has been weakened so badly that it would be madness and suicide to press on? If the party
> decides to heal-up ahead of time, assuming they are able to rest, they suffer a “campaign loss” (per page 166 in Chapter 5). What does that mean? At your discretion, the situation in the campaign gets noticeably worse for the party. Ideally, the campaign loss can be traced to the decision to take the heal-up. . . . The campaign-loss rule is key to making combat meaningful. We all know most GMs probably won’t kill the PCs permanently, but if the PCs can’t fight their way through four battles, the game world suffers.​
> *Burning Wheel Adventure Burner* (pp 186, 242, 244):
> 
> It's important to keep the action moving, to keep the players interest and engaged. . . .
> 
> You do not want to rest up the characters before every dramatic situation. The whole point of being wounded or sufferng similar penalties is that these modifications make the next action more danagerous, more challenging. If the players are allowed to gather their strength before every encounter, then the penalties lose their value . . .
> 
> You must push the plaeyrs and threaten their characters. You must harry them, work them. But once they have accomplished that great goal in their Beliefs, you must back off. Once the situation has been resolved or substantially changed, you must give the reins to the players. You must frame the action so they can rest and consider their actions.
> 
> Even so, unless you're ending a campaign, you must constrain their choices. GIve them a set amount of time or resources to use. . . . At the end of the rest period, something happens. An event transpires that challenges their Beliefs in an unexpected way. . . .
> 
> The adventure-rest-practice-reequip-adventure cycle is the natural pace of the game. However, it'sthe GM's job to keep up the pressure for as long as he can without breaking the players. Don't give them a moment of peace. Throw challenges at them. When they stop for rest, move your pieces in the Big Picture. Make them say, "Uh oh. . ." Force the players to create their piece by accomplishing their goals or by spending themselves utterly. When they're wounded, broke and ragged, let them go to ground but let them know that their enemies will not rest. . . .
> 
> The practice rules are meant to allow for the passage of long stretches of time in your game. Let five years pass! . . . Let the players practicea and beef up their abilities. And let the setting and situation evolve and change meanwhile!​
> In 13th Age it's mechanised and is about player choices to risk PC death or concede campaign losses; in BW it's GM control over the pacing of events, with the injunction to maintain pressure on the PCs (and thereby their players) and to use moments of rest/recovery/practices as opportunities to develop the situation so as to generate new challenges.  Either way, the players recognise that resting isn't "free" - it's connected to the GM's entitlement to escalate the fiction in adverse ways.
> 
> For me, at least, this is an aspect of the "story now" way of achieving the "living, breathing world".




Right. I haven't been exposed to BW, and I can't say that I consciously had 13a in mind, but I was part of the 13a playtests, so I have certainly seen most of what you've quoted there. It is common practice in 4e to at least put narrative gates on the use of long rest as well, but much like the way 13a does, I simply updated that logic to form an explicitly 'story now' kind of a construct. I agree with the logic both authors put forward, setbacks and expenditure of resources should be meaningful (IE HoML does have a type of resource game) and it makes sense to give the players another decision point: do we push forward now with what we have, or do we gather new resources and potentially suffer narrative losses? The GM should be seen as honoring this choice point by imposing such consequences and making the campaign interesting.



Sadras said:


> Is HoML your improved 4e project you were working on?
> What terrible price do you speak of, can you give me an example?




Yes, HoML is a sort of refactoring and rewriting of 4e to produce a game with a more explicit narrative/story now focus. Instead of casting things in terms of in-world explanations, it explains them in terms of how to structure a narrative and bring the game to focus on the PC's story. So in 4e you can have a long rest once every day. This is fundamentally a gamist rule that is meant to discourage the PCs from taking a long rest after each encounter by mandating that a day has to pass. I would presume that the GM is then supposed to consider what else happens during that day, though this is unspoken in 4e's rule. HoML simply goes directly to the underlying gamist/narrativist motivation, keeping pressure on the PCs and making resource management meaningful and challenging. Thus the "in world logic" one rest per day rule becomes the HoML "take a rest now and suffer a terrible price" rule.

To Be Honest that isn't a very nuanced version of things either. There are times when the consequences of resting are negligible or nothing at all (IE after you achieve victory in a story). The price may not be 'terrible' per se, it might be more just a ratcheting up of the overall difficulty of achieving that victory. However, it is quite possible that the PCs can be on the horn of a real dilemma; let the villagers be sacrificed, or go into the orc camp with half our resources expended. Players get to decide what it means to be a 'Legendary Hero' for themselves. 



> In my version of 5e, each character decides whether to refresh their short rest abilities or long rest abilities with incremental increases in the DC depending on the number of times they have attempted it that day AND the number of days since their previous long rest (full 24 hours). Failures still guarantee a refresh on their abilities but stack levels of exhaustion which could be detrimental and eventually lethal. The positive about the system is that each player decides for their character when to exert themselves (you are not tied to the group mentality), it works for the pacing of city, wilderness and dungeon settings and satisfies my internal logic on how powers/abilities should work. It can make extensive travelling dangerous/tricky which is how I imagine it.




It seems like an interesting choice. I would say it is still fundamentally containing a conceit that 'in game logic' is the rule's motivation, so it is 'simulating' a person going to extremes of exertion. The reduction of the party-wide aspect is good, although I'm not sure in an overall sense how much different that is from 4e's use of per-character HS to achieve basically the same thing (HoML also has Vitality Points which serve mostly the same purpose). In any case the tying of game system process to in-game-world factors is a straightforward concept which satisfies a lot of player's in terms of roleplaying 'day to day life' of a character.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> In my version of 5e, each character decides whether to refresh their short rest abilities or long rest abilities with incremental increases in the DC depending on the number of times they have attempted it that day AND the number of days since their previous long rest (full 24 hours). Failures still guarantee a refresh on their abilities but stack levels of exhaustion which could be detrimental and eventually lethal. The positive about the system is that each player decides for their character when to exert themselves (you are not tied to the group mentality), it works for the pacing of city, wilderness and dungeon settings and satisfies my internal logic on how powers/abilities should work. It can make extensive travelling dangerous/tricky which is how I imagine it.




Would you PM me the detailed version of this?  I'd like to see if it will work for the issues that I'm having with the resting system.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> So nothing listed there is a terrible price.  The 13th Age rule suggests that you provide a temporary goal failure that can't be solved just by killing the bad guys, but that you can just fix it another way.
> 
> A terrible price would be the permanent death of one or more PCs, or the unfixable failure of a major campaign goal.  Those are terrible prices.  What is described above is just a moderate price.
> 
> On a side note, if there's no such thing as permanent failure and "We all know most GMs probably won’t kill the PCs permanently...," where's the challenge in 13th Age?  Success may take longer, but at least from the rules you just quotes, you are guaranteed to get there.




I would say that, at least speaking for my practice, that success is not guaranteed. Drama is guaranteed. If you fail you do so expending your uttermost last breath going down to defeat. There was a reference to Simarillion, the description of the battle which lead to the final inevitable defeat of the Noldor by Morgoth. This is not a bad story. In fact the entire tale is predicated on the inevitability of this defeat, it is never in any doubt. The substance of all the stories which make it up is the character of those who will not suffer injustice, who will not yield even in the face of certain annihilation. It is also a story of hubris and the toxic nature of a quest for revenge and how the very greatness of Feanor is also his undoing. Nobody is successful in gaining their ends in this tale, the Noldor are defeated, Morgoth is defeated, the Silmarilli are lost to the Valar and light of the two trees irredeemably lost. Nobody wins, but great feats of character are achieved which are never forgotten. This is a concept for an RPG. Defeat need not be inevitable, far from it, but victory is not the point of the game.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would say that, at least speaking for my practice, that success is not guaranteed. Drama is guaranteed. If you fail you do so expending your uttermost last breath going down to defeat. There was a reference to Simarillion, the description of the battle which lead to the final inevitable defeat of the Noldor by Morgoth. This is not a bad story. In fact the entire tale is predicated on the inevitability of this defeat, it is never in any doubt. The substance of all the stories which make it up is the character of those who will not suffer injustice, who will not yield even in the face of certain annihilation. It is also a story of hubris and the toxic nature of a quest for revenge and how the very greatness of Feanor is also his undoing. Nobody is successful in gaining their ends in this tale, the Noldor are defeated, Morgoth is defeated, the Silmarilli are lost to the Valar and light of the two trees irredeemably lost. Nobody wins, but great feats of character are achieved which are never forgotten. This is a concept for an RPG. Defeat need not be inevitable, far from it, but victory is not the point of the game.




Wouldn't this be up to the players, though? The rule as I understand it from those posts, is push to possible death, or retreat and have to do something else to succeed.  What's to stop the players from always retreating when they have to, and just working through other successes until they succeed?  There's no risk of death that way.  It just takes longer to succeed.  Any risk of death would come from the players deciding that that it's okay if their PCs die and pushing forward when low on resources.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Wouldn't this be up to the players, though? The rule as I understand it from those posts, is push to possible death, or retreat and have to do something else to succeed.  What's to stop the players from always retreating when they have to, and just working through other successes until they succeed?  There's no risk of death that way.  It just takes longer to succeed.  Any risk of death would come from the players deciding that that it's okay if their PCs die and pushing forward when low on resources.




What do you mean by 'success'? Let me pose an example: The PCs are the defenders of the town. Beyond the town in all directions is The Wilderness. Generations ago the wilderness was far away and there were other towns. Now it is close, monsters wander near, only great heroes can turn the tide and prevent the extinction of civilization (this is basically a somewhat grimdark version of 4e's PoL concept). 

Who says the PCs will succeed? In order to do that they don't just need to rescue a few prisoners or track down a few threatening monsters. Those tasks are likely ones they will face, and success in every one of a graded series of tasks with ever greater stakes and consequence is required to reignite the fires of civilization and create a new Age of Light. It is absolutely quite possible that the PCs can succeed in some of the immediate tasks, but by accepting/being forced to accept failure in others they might in the end reach a point where the darkness tightens its grip on the town and then the light goes out. For all their work only crumbling ruins and perhaps a few furtive survivors who have accepted the necessity of making peace with the forces of darkness are left. This is a viable campaign outcome. 

I would note that it is necessary, in order for this to work, that the GM communicate carefully what the consequences of each choice are to the players. Simply telling them 3 years later that the time they didn't save the prisoners from being sacrificed was the tipping point and they doomed everyone by taking a long rest without knowing that won't cut it. This is a game of hard choices. Instead you can play 'inevitable victory and the game is about the details' and then maybe the choices won't be quite so hard. Its up to you.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is common practice in 4e to at least put narrative gates on the use of long rest as well



Yes. My first wilderness trek skill challenge - run in 2009 - put gates on long resting (connecting fiction and mechanical outcomes). Reading the Adventure Burner helped me improve in this respect, focusing on linking long rests to pacing and GM licence to extrapolate the "big picture" in adverse ways.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> The GM should be seen as honoring this choice point by imposing such consequences and making the campaign interesting.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There are times when the consequences of resting are negligible or nothing at all (IE after you achieve victory in a story). The price may not be 'terrible' per se, it might be more just a ratcheting up of the overall difficulty of achieving that victory.



I think "honouring the choice point" is a key notion. It's very contextual, too - I think it's unfair for a GM to hose the PCs when the players have pushed them to the point of being "wounded, broke and ragged" (to quote Luke Crane); but if the players are resting very liberally then I think it's fair game for the GM (i) to frame them into very hard situations, and (ii) to make a lot of plot weight be carried by success or failure in those situations.



Maxperson said:


> So nothing listed there is a terrible price.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A terrible price would be the permanent death of one or more PCs, or the unfixable failure of a major campaign goal.  Those are terrible prices.  What is described above is just a moderate price.
> 
> On a side note, if there's no such thing as permanent failure and "We all know most GMs probably won’t kill the PCs permanently...," where's the challenge in 13th Age?  Success may take longer, but at least from the rules you just quotes, you are guaranteed to get there.





Maxperson said:


> Wouldn't this be up to the players, though? The rule as I understand it from those posts, is push to possible death, or retreat and have to do something else to succeed.  What's to stop the players from always retreating when they have to, and just working through other successes until they succeed?  There's no risk of death that way.  It just takes longer to succeed.  Any risk of death would come from the players deciding that that it's okay if their PCs die and pushing forward when low on resources.



Your question answers itself: if the players have their PCs retreat when they have to _every time_, then they will _never_ succeed, will they?

As to "what's the challenge?", in this sort of RPGing the challenge has two dimensions: the immediate challenge of game play, which has a strong mechanical element; and the challenges of the fiction. Playing one's PCs until they are "wounded, broke and ragged" involves skill; and if the GM is pushing the fiction hard, will require hard decision in story terms also.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would note that it is necessary, in order for this to work, that the GM communicate carefully what the consequences of each choice are to the players. Simply telling them 3 years later that the time they didn't save the prisoners from being sacrificed was the tipping point and they doomed everyone by taking a long rest without knowing that won't cut it.



Absolutely! In threads over the past several years I've expressed a related notion, "No failure offscreen."


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Who says the PCs will succeed? In order to do that they don't just need to rescue a few prisoners or track down a few threatening monsters. Those tasks are likely ones they will face, and success in every one of a graded series of tasks with ever greater stakes and consequence is required to reignite the fires of civilization and create a new Age of Light. It is absolutely quite possible that the PCs can succeed in some of the immediate tasks, but by accepting/being forced to accept failure in others *they might in the end reach a point where the darkness tightens its grip on the town and then the light goes out.* For all their work only crumbling ruins and perhaps a few furtive survivors who have accepted the necessity of making peace with the forces of darkness are left. This is a viable campaign outcome.




If the bold is possible, then THAT'S a terrible price.  However, the rules [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] showed said for the consequence to be one that the PCs can't overcome by beating the monsters that made them run, which means that the PCs can fix it another way.  It doesn't say that the failure should be unfixable.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Your question answers itself:




No it doesn't or I wouldn't have asked it.



> if the players have their PCs retreat when they have to _every time_, then they will _never_ succeed, will they?




Who said anything about retreating every time?  Not me.  I gave the example of them retreating only sometimes, which causes delays.  It's ridiculous to think that they would have to retreat every time, so I didn't bother to go there.



> As to "what's the challenge?", in this sort of RPGing the challenge has two dimensions: the immediate challenge of game play, which has a strong mechanical element; and the challenges of the fiction. Playing one's PCs until they are "wounded, broke and ragged" involves skill; and if the GM is pushing the fiction hard, will require hard decision in story terms also.




Here's the thing.  The rules you quoted said to push the players and threaten the PCs, but if I can just choose to retreat on those occasions where we can't win, and then deal with the "terrible price" later on in a different manner, I'm never going to feel those things.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> AbdulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> hey might in the end reach a point where the darkness tightens its grip on the town and then the light goes out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the bold is possible, then THAT'S a terrible price.  However, the rules [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] showed said for the consequence to be one that the PCs can't overcome by beating the monsters that made them run, which means that the PCs can fix it another way.  It doesn't say that the failure should be unfixable.
Click to expand...


Maxperson, what you're saying seems confused. You quote AbdulAlhazred saying that the PCs _might_ reach a bad point. Which is exactly what the 13th Age rules provide for: if the PCs retreat, and suffer a campaign loss, then the players can try to come up with new ways to tackle this and regain momentum and even victory. But they _might_ fail. That they _might_ fail doesn't entail that they _will_ fail. Just as that they _can_ fix things doesn't entail that they _will_ fix things. How do we learn whether or not the lost is "unfixable"? By playing the game. In this sort of RPGing, _that's the whole point of play_ - to find out what can or can't be done.



Maxperson said:


> The rules you quoted said to push the players and threaten the PCs, but if I can just choose to retreat on those occasions where we can't win, and then deal with the "terrible price" later on in a different manner, I'm never going to feel those things.



Look at your own example of the orcs eating the children. Suppose the "terrible price" of retreat is that all the children get eaten. You now seem to be saying that you wouldn't feel any pressure from that. Yet eaerlier on in this thread you were putting that forward as one of your most memorable moments of dramatic pressure in play.

This is another way in which your posts seem confused. And seem also to betray a lack of actual experience with play that follows the techniques described in the 13th Age and BW rulebooks.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Maxperson, what you're saying seems confused. You quote AbdulAlhazred saying that the PCs _might_ reach a bad point. Which is exactly what the 13th Age rules provide for: if the PCs retreat, and suffer a campaign loss, then the players can try to come up with new ways to tackle this and regain momentum and even victory. But they _might_ fail. That they _might_ fail doesn't entail that they _will_ fail. Just as that they _can_ fix things doesn't entail that they _will_ fix things. How do we learn whether or not the lost is "unfixable"? By playing the game. In this sort of RPGing, _that's the whole point of play_ - to find out what can or can't be done.




I'm not confused.  I'm simply going by the rule you posted.  How do you know via game play if things are unfixable?  By getting to other failure points.  Except that rule you posted says that if they run away from failure points, they can fix it another way.  Where's the 13th Age rule that says that things eventually become unfixable?



> Look at your own example of the orcs eating the children. Suppose the "terrible price" of retreat is that all the children get eaten. You now seem to be saying that you wouldn't feel any pressure from that. Yet eaerlier on in this thread you were putting that forward as one of your most memorable moments of dramatic pressure in play.




This is a False Equivalence.  I know that in my game things are often unfixable if you fail.  That's the point.  In my game the pressure is real, because the failures are real.  They don't just result in "fail, but that's okay, you can just fix it a different way."  Often things in my game can be fixed another way, but they often can't.

Had I in my example stopped having the orcs eat the children just so that the PCs now have another way to fix things, say by infiltrating the orc village, it would be an example like those in the 13th Age rule you posted.



> And seem also to betray a lack of actual experience with play that follows the techniques described in the 13th Age and BW rulebooks.




I can only go by the rules that you post.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> How do you know via game play if things are unfixable?  By getting to other failure points.  Except that rule you posted says that if they run away from failure points, they can fix it another way.  Where's the 13th Age rule that says that things eventually become unfixable?



You don't need a _rule_ for this. If you have rule for action resolution - which 13th Age (mostly) has - then you can find out whether or not the PCs succeed.

If things get to the point where the players can't think of things their PCs might do to try and achieve their goals - perhaps because it's obvious that there aren't any such things (eg the world has been conquered by demons and the players have no abilities useful for defeating armies of demons) - then the campaign is probably over with an unfixable loss!



Maxperson said:


> I know that in my game things are often unfixable if you fail.  That's the point.  In my game the pressure is real, because the failures are real.  They don't just result in "fail, but that's okay, you can just fix it a different way."  Often things in my game can be fixed another way, but they often can't.



But with the children example, can they be restored to life? Or not? That may depend on whether or not the PCs have, or can obtain, access to a Rod of Resurrection. Which (presumably) can't be known outside the actual context of play.



Maxperson said:


> Had I in my example stopped having the orcs eat the children just so that the PCs now have another way to fix things, say by infiltrating the orc village, it would be an example like those in the 13th Age rule you posted.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I can only go by the rules that you post.



I think you need to re-read those rules if you believe that having the orcs _stop_ eating children is an example of a campaign loss!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But with the children example, can they be restored to life? Or not? That may depend on whether or not the PCs have, or can obtain, access to a Rod of Resurrection. Which (presumably) can't be known outside the actual context of play.




No they can't.  95% of PCs in my games never get restored to life.  Death means something in my games.  It doesn't happen often, but when it does the PC is gone.  If PCs don't come back, and they're the fated, special ones, then some kids don't have a chance in hell of making it back.



> I think you need to re-read those rules if you believe that having the orcs _stop_ eating children is an example of a campaign loss!




You brought it up as an example of a terrible price for a campaign loss, so I went with it.  If it isn't an example of a terrible price, not only was it a False Equivalence to bring it up, but it was a Red Herring as well.

Which leads me to this question again.  Are you able to have a valid discussion with people?  Because it seems like every one of your responses, or nearly every one, contains a Strawman, False Equivalence, or Red Herring.


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> I'm not confused.  I'm simply going by the rule you posted.  How do you know via game play if things are unfixable?  By getting to other failure points.  Except that rule you posted says that if they run away from failure points, they can fix it another way.  Where's the 13th Age rule that says that things eventually become unfixable?



Where in 13th Age’s quoted rules says the situation can be solved in another way? I think you misinterpreted the text.


----------



## Maxperson

Kurviak said:


> Where in 13th Age’s quoted rules says the situation can be solved in another way? I think you misinterpreted the text.




"Cannot be solved by just killing the creatures they ran from", means that they can solve it another way.  The just cannot solve it by killing that one group.  Had they meant that it cannot ever be solved if they run, they would have said that.  There is no misinterpretation on my part.  There may be another rule that says that it can't ever be solved, but if there is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] won't share it.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Had I in my example stopped having the orcs eat the children just so that the PCs now have another way to fix things, say by infiltrating the orc village, it would be an example like those in the 13th Age rule you posted.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think you need to re-read those rules if you believe that having the orcs stop eating children is an example of a campaign loss!
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You brought it up as an example of a terrible price for a campaign loss, so I went with it.
Click to expand...


_I_ gave, as an example of a 13th Age campaign loss, the orcs eating children. _You_ then said that you would have to have the orcs _stop_ eating children. And I said that if you think the orcs _stopping_ eating children is an example of a campaign loss then you are wrong and should re-read the rules that I posted.



Maxperson said:


> "Cannot be solved by just killing the creatures they ran from", means that they can solve it another way.  The just cannot solve it by killing that one group.  Had they meant that it cannot ever be solved if they run, they would have said that.  There is no misinterpretation on my part.  There may be another rule that says that it can't ever be solved, but if there is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] won't share it.



Your quote is wrong. The word "just" appears nowhere in the rules I quoted. And you have misinterpreted:



pemerton said:


> *13th Age* rules for fleeing and for refreshing (pp 166, 171, 187):
> 
> a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix. . . .
> 
> <snip>
> 
> a campaign loss. At the GM’s discretion, the party fails to achieve one of their goals, and they fail in some way that simply defeating the bad guys the next time around with your healed-up party won’t fix.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the situation in the campaign gets noticeably worse for the party. Ideally, the campaign loss can be traced to the decision to take the heal-up​


A campaign loss is something that _can't_ be fixed by going back and beating the enemies who were retreated from. That _can't_ be fixed simply by defeating the bad guys next time. It is _the situation getting noticeably worse for the party_. Children being eaten by orcs would be a clear example of such a thing.

Whether the children being eaten can be fixed some other way - via a Rod of Resurrection, or a Wish spell, or doing a deal with the gods of death, or any other of the indefinitely many ways that players might decide to have their PCs pursue, should they be so inclined - is something that only play would reveal. Perhaps it can, perhaps it can't. 13th Age, like  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s HoML, is oriented towards "fail forward" and "play to find out", so does not need any sort of rule for _prior determination_ of whether or not some loss is or isn't reversible.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> _I_ gave, as an example of a 13th Age campaign loss, the orcs eating children. _You_ then said that you would have to have the orcs _stop_ eating children. And I said that if you think the orcs _stopping_ eating children is an example of a campaign loss then you are wrong and should re-read the rules that I posted.




They could not continue to eat them without the campaign loss being unfixable.



> Your quote is wrong. The word "just" appears nowhere in the rules I quoted. And you have misinterpreted:




Take the word out and it remains the same meaning.  It cannot be fixed by killing the creatures, still means that it can be fixed some other way.



> A campaign loss is something that _can't_ be fixed by going back and beating the enemies who were retreated from. That _can't_ be fixed simply by defeating the bad guys next time. It is _the situation getting noticeably worse for the party_. Children being eaten by orcs would be a clear example of such a thing.




The children being eaten would be something that in my game can't be fixed, period.  The limiter in that rule is beating the orcs, not making it completely unfixable.  



> Whether the children being eaten can be fixed some other way - via a Rod of Resurrection, or a Wish spell, or doing a deal with the gods of death, or any other of the indefinitely many ways that players might decide to have their PCs pursue, should they be so inclined - is something that only play would reveal. Perhaps it can, perhaps it can't. 13th Age, like  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s HoML, is oriented towards "fail forward" and "play to find out", so does not need any sort of rule for _prior determination_ of whether or not some loss is or isn't reversible.




There could be no play to determine.  Both I and the the players would know it's an unfixable situation as soon as it happens.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Take the word out and it remains the same meaning.  It cannot be fixed by killing the creatures, still means that it can be fixed some other way.



I disagree. I don't necessarily think that this is true. If something cannot be fixed by killing the creatures, it does not mean that other solutions are available; it only suggests that it cannot be fixed by killing the creatures. The toaster cannot be fixed by killing the creatures who broke it, and moreover the toaster can be damaged beyond repair and incapable of being fixed through other ways.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I disagree. I don't necessarily think that this is true. If something cannot be fixed by killing the creatures, it does not mean that other solutions are available; it only suggests that it cannot be fixed by killing the creatures. The toaster cannot be fixed by killing the creatures who broke it, and moreover the toaster can be damaged beyond repair and incapable of being fixed through other ways.




A toaster would have to be run over by a semi or something to be damaged beyond repair, and even then it could probably still be fixed.  It just wouldn't be worth the effort or price to do so.  The same applies to almost everything we build.

Had they meant that the failure was to be unfixable, they would not have limited that statement to the creatures.  They would just have said that retreating causes an unfixable campaign loss. They didn't do that, because there are other means to fix the loss.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> A toaster would have to be run over by a semi or something to be damaged beyond repair, and even then it could probably still be fixed.  It just wouldn't be worth the effort or price to do so.  The same applies to almost everything we build.



The point being is that other solutions are not inherently implied in saying that one method will not work.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I don't really know what your point is. I quoted the 13th Age rules to provide an example (as I understand them) of what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] had in mind (as I understood him) in referring to a "terrible price". AbdulAlahzred agreed that I was providing such an example.

The fact that _you_ interpret those passages differently from everyone else posting in this thread, including AbdulAlhazred who was a 13th Age playtester, is of no significance to _my_ reason for posting them to explain to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] had in mind.

You might consider, as a reason speaking against your interpretation, that (1) it makes the rule silly rather than sensible, and (2) produces a contradiction with the suggestion that "[t]he campaign-loss rule is key to making combat meaningful." And you might consider, as the basis for revising your interpretation, the following description of a "campaign loss": _something that the party was trying to do fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t fix_. This doesn't imply that the loss can, as such, be fixed in some other way; it's making the point that the loss has an element _in addition_ to not beating the enemies, and hence that going back and subsequently beating the enemies who forced the initial retreat won't, per se, fix the loss.

As I've said, whether the loss can be fixed some other way is something for play to discover. 13th Age is not designed around an approach to play where the GM has already decided what can or can't be done in the game. (This can be seen, for instance, in the text and sidebar for its Resurrection spell.)


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> A toaster would have to be run over by a semi or something to be damaged beyond repair, and even then it could probably still be fixed.  It just wouldn't be worth the effort or price to do so.  The same applies to almost everything we build.
> 
> Had they meant that the failure was to be unfixable, they would not have limited that statement to the creatures.  They would just have said that retreating causes an unfixable campaign loss. They didn't do that, because there are other means to fix the loss.




This makes no sense at all, the failure can be fixable or not depending on the context.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I don't really know what your point is. I quoted the 13th Age rules to provide an example (as I understand them) of what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] had in mind (as I understood him) in referring to a "terrible price". AbdulAlahzred agreed that I was providing such an example.




The point was crystal clear in my first response.  If you can fix it another way through play, it's not a "terrible priice."  It's not even a price at all.  So we don't solve it by killing the monsters that we ran from.  So what.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I think "honouring the choice point" is a key notion. It's very contextual, too - I think it's unfair for a GM to hose the PCs when the players have pushed them to the point of being "wounded, broke and ragged" (to quote Luke Crane); but if the players are resting very liberally then I think it's fair game for the GM (i) to frame them into very hard situations, and (ii) to make a lot of plot weight be carried by success or failure in those situations.



Well, the GM has, even in a fairly liberally story now sort of scene framed approach, the ability to effectively keep success out of the hands of the PCs forever. There needs to be some agreement or mechanism which thus 'creates success' to a degree. This, for me, is still somewhat of an area of exploration in that I would be happy if it was regulated. You can use SC mechanics in this way, but it could become a lot of accounting and whatnot if you take it too far (IE having something like an overarching SC that governs success/failure at the story arc and campaign levels). 



> Your question answers itself: if the players have their PCs retreat when they have to _every time_, then they will _never_ succeed, will they?
> 
> As to "what's the challenge?", in this sort of RPGing the challenge has two dimensions: the immediate challenge of game play, which has a strong mechanical element; and the challenges of the fiction. Playing one's PCs until they are "wounded, broke and ragged" involves skill; and if the GM is pushing the fiction hard, will require hard decision in story terms also.



One of the aspects of the 'boon' system in HoML has to do with this whole issue of the players holding back and trying to 'nibble the problem to death', which can also be basically a sort of '5 minute workday' kind of affair. 

In HoML the GM awards boons as outcomes of character action, generally the players may do something like declare a quest, and at the end of it, when it is successful, they acquire the boon(s) associated with it. If they simply dawdle around taking long rests every other time they turn around, then they're never going to get there! The key point being, you go up a level when you acquire a major boon. Its perfectly feasible for the players to simply diddle around and dip their toes in, but they will remain small fry. This is really perfectly acceptable and they could enjoy some modest success over time and play nothing but heroic characters. Its not quite the intended mode of play for this game, but there is a sort of self-regulating aspect to the dynamics there. If the players are ambitious, then they WILL need to take risks.

This is actually pretty analogous to the 'level divider' rule in classic D&D where if you're level 1 you might get 10xp for an orc, but if you're level 5 you get 2xp for the same orc (and his treasure is relatively much less worthwhile). In AD&D you can never get to name level without plunging down into the deeper dungeon levels and risking it all, its just mathematically impossible.



> Absolutely! In threads over the past several years I've expressed a related notion, "No failure offscreen."




That is a good way of putting it, and it is really just a manifestation of the story teller's mantra "show, don't tell."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> "Cannot be solved by just killing the creatures they ran from", means that they can solve it another way.  The just cannot solve it by killing that one group.  Had they meant that it cannot ever be solved if they run, they would have said that.  There is no misinterpretation on my part.  There may be another rule that says that it can't ever be solved, but if there is @_*pemerton*_ won't share it.




English is reasonably maleable, so I would say that what you are quoting there COULD mean that it can be solved another way, that is certainly left open as a possibility; however, the literal meaning of a sentence of the form "[you] cannot solve this by just doing X" simply states that X won't work, not that some other thing will. The 'just' implies that some MORE DIFFICULT OR COSTLY method may be feasible, but since that other method isn't spelled out, and its a general statement applicable to a class of situations, it isn't really guaranteed to be feasible in all cases.

Frankly, this whole discussion is bringing me back more and more to my previous statement, which is that it would be quite desirable to have some sort of mechanism to regulate the ebb and flow of opportunities for success. Something like an overarching SC tally, or a 'doom pool' or some sort of 'clock'. These are all practical possibilities, but I don't think there are many systems out there which have instituted things like that at the more 'strategic' campaign or story arc level. 

The two which I know of that do come to mind are BitDW's 'stress' mechanism, which IIRC (I am not overly familiar with this game) eventually leads to PC death/retirement; and the sanity mechanic of CoC. CoC SAN loss is somewhat reversible, but practically speaking it is mostly a one-way street leading to Arkham Asylum in the end. Of course these are both notable as being systems in which there is no concept of victory, merely at best a staving off of ultimate loss.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Frankly, this whole discussion is bringing me back more and more to my previous statement, which is that it would be quite desirable to have some sort of mechanism to regulate the ebb and flow of opportunities for success. Something like an overarching SC tally, or a 'doom pool' or some sort of 'clock'. These are all practical possibilities, but I don't think there are many systems out there which have instituted things like that at the more 'strategic' campaign or story arc level.




You could track failures and after three of them relating to a specific goal, that goal is unattainable.  That doesn't have to mean PC death, but it can.  Going back to the orcs and kids example...

For the first failure to beat the orcs and save the kids, after the party retreats the remaining orcs run into a slave caravan whose guards wipe them out.  The masters then take the kids as slaves.  The second failure to recover the kids from the slavers results in the kids being sold.  The third failure to locate and recover the kids, means that the kids are gone.  There are no more chances to succeed on this goal.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The point was crystal clear in my first response.  If you can fix it another way through play, it's not a "terrible priice."  It's not even a price at all.  So we don't solve it by killing the monsters that we ran from.  So what.




Suppose you can fix it by giving up the life of one of the party members, permanently. Say the God of Death says "Sure, your life for theirs, I'll bring them back and you get to come with me." Is that terrible enough? It sure would be a perfectly valid kind of way to test a PC's beliefs to the breaking point, and perhaps beyond... 

I look at it as its always a matter of escalation. If you want to push the situation in an escalating direction, to more cost, more danger, bigger sacrifice, then something can be accomplished. When, instead you want to ratchet down the pressure, when the water is too hot and you decide to get out, then you walk away and leave your wager on the table. Sure, you can come back later, but there's no guarantee that you can just sit back down at the table with a whole new hand and jump right back in again. Chances are you take your losses and go on to the next thing.

I mean, practically speaking, we don't want to LOOSE, we want to PLAY. RPGs are not about 'winning'. I don't really recall big wins as some fantastic thing. Sure, I can recall battles that were fought and won, or lost, but its the characters that remain. Even when I can barely remember any one thing some character did that I played 40 years ago, I can remember what motivated them, what they tried to do, why. All this talk of success and failure isn't really the point, it is just the medium through which story is driven and character built.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> You could track failures and after three of them relating to a specific goal, that goal is unattainable.  That doesn't have to mean PC death, but it can.  Going back to the orcs and kids example...
> 
> For the first failure to beat the orcs and save the kids, after the party retreats the remaining orcs run into a slave caravan whose guards wipe them out.  The masters then take the kids as slaves.  The second failure to recover the kids from the slavers results in the kids being sold.  The third failure to locate and recover the kids, means that the kids are gone.  There are no more chances to succeed on this goal.




Right, and I think that would be a pretty usable kind of a gauge, particularly in a scene framed game where the GM is basically going to present a new situation based on narrative, the goals of the particular game, and the players signaled interests. So if the children COULD still be saved (maybe we're at 2 failures) then clearly the next scene is going to describe some possibility of gaining a success, and even that might not be the end of the road, several more might be needed, and even final victory won't magically bring back whomever was eaten, its a bit lesser victory than it might have been. OTOH not taking that rest might have meant TPK, you never know...


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## pemerton

Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic has a Doom Pool that extends over Scenes and resets at the beginning of each Act. What countws as an Act is flexible: the system is odd in its core presenation (MHRP) because it's obviously "story now" but assumes a pre-estalished story arc (an Event, in the terminology of the game, like Civil War or Fall of the Mutants).

In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game I've relied on the internal logic of play to determine breaks between Acts. The first Act ended when one of the PCs escaped the dungeon with the dark elves' gold while the other PCs were still trapped in the bottom levels. The next Act began with those trapped PCs having made their way to the surface and trudged back to civilisation, while the other PC was once again traipsing north having spent down his bag of gold. The second Act evolved into an attempt to rescue villagers from reavers and giants, and when that had been achieved I decided that that Act was finished. The third Act began with the PCs heading up into the high places of the north to try and stop the Ragnarok. It's still ongoing, but will be the final Act of the campaign.

The idea that a GM would, or would noeed to, stipoulate that a particular goal is unattainable seems on its face a bit railroad-y. In the orcs-eating-children example, if the PCs are defeatd by the orcs but subsequently end up finding a Ring of Wishes, what (in the standard fiction of a typical D&D game) precludes them wishing that the children had never been captured and eaten? Or there is [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s example of a bargain with Death itself.

This is why I tend to think of the idea of an outcome or goal that _is/isn't possible_ having no meaning outside the context of actual play.


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## Michael Silverbane

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, the GM has, even in a fairly liberally story now sort of scene framed approach, the ability to effectively keep success out of the hands of the PCs forever. There needs to be some agreement or mechanism which thus 'creates success' to a degree. This, for me, is still somewhat of an area of exploration in that I would be happy if it was regulated. You can use SC mechanics in this way, but it could become a lot of accounting and whatnot if you take it too far (IE having something like an overarching SC that governs success/failure at the story arc and campaign levels).




So, it does not seem entirely unreasonable that you could measure the success of an "adventure" like a SC, but using the success or failure of Challenges, and the success of a campaign using the success or failure of "adventures", just sort of abstractly scaling up from one level to the next.

The question then being what does a failed adventure look like? How do you significantly change the fiction on the campaign scale without leading to a campaign level death spiral? Further, how does this affect the framing of scenes in a more player driven game style, and how does it affect the development of backstory in a more DM drive game style?


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## Numidius

Michael Silverbane said:


> So, it does not seem entirely unreasonable that you could measure the success of an "adventure" like a SC, but using the success or failure of Challenges, and the success of a campaign using the success or failure of "adventures", just sort of abstractly scaling up from one level to the next.
> 
> The question then being what does a failed adventure look like? How do you significantly change the fiction on the campaign scale without leading to a campaign level death spiral? Further, how does this affect the framing of scenes in a more player driven game style, and how does it affect the development of backstory in a more DM drive game style?



Re: Adventure, I see Stakes, something that is wanted by the Party and a couple of Factions/Npcs: a situation that fosters a series of small Conflicts having an immediate Goal, albeit small, that gets Players closer to control the Stake, and, in the process, producing fiction regulated by rules on the Right to describe outcomes. 

(Sounds like Edward's Trollbabe, again, I know, that's my filter of analisys) 

Re: Gm producing Backstory: I mean, why not, but I would focus on the introduction of new Content by the Gm*: s/he also has to have some Stats to roll if Players do not agree: like Dungeon, Town, Wilderness, for general arenas of play, 
or about the Use of Force: enforced in-fiction by Npcs or bigger Factions or anything: stats would be like Use of Violence, Mind Control, Environmental Obstacles, when directly against the Party to limit their freedom of movement, or to generate players driven scene framing. 

(It's been a while that I'm thinking on these lines......)


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## pemerton

Numidius said:


> "Let five years pass" ... this is something that scares trad Gms IME.
> 
> When resuming warhammer 2e last year, I proposed to let some time pass: new careers for older Pcs, new Npcs and situations to start with, even if continuing the same overall storyline-big plot behind the scenes... instead the game resumed exactly were we left, in the very same moment.
> No scene framing, so it took two whole sessions to get to the place we all agreed we had to start play with... as per past clues (an old elven ship wrecked on the coast and hidden by debris)



Numidius, you seem to have some frustrating play experiences!

One thing I'm curious about is whether (i) you're an outlier, or (ii) others do this too but enjoy it, or (iii) others have similar frustrations.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic has a Doom Pool that extends over Scenes and resets at the beginning of each Act. What countws as an Act is flexible: the system is odd in its core presenation (MHRP) because it's obviously "story now" but assumes a pre-estalished story arc (an Event, in the terminology of the game, like Civil War or Fall of the Mutants).
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game I've relied on the internal logic of play to determine breaks between Acts. The first Act ended when one of the PCs escaped the dungeon with the dark elves' gold while the other PCs were still trapped in the bottom levels. The next Act began with those trapped PCs having made their way to the surface and trudged back to civilisation, while the other PC was once again traipsing north having spent down his bag of gold. The second Act evolved into an attempt to rescue villagers from reavers and giants, and when that had been achieved I decided that that Act was finished. The third Act began with the PCs heading up into the high places of the north to try and stop the Ragnarok. It's still ongoing, but will be the final Act of the campaign.
> 
> The idea that a GM would, or would noeed to, stipoulate that a particular goal is unattainable seems on its face a bit railroad-y. In the orcs-eating-children example, if the PCs are defeatd by the orcs but subsequently end up finding a Ring of Wishes, what (in the standard fiction of a typical D&D game) precludes them wishing that the children had never been captured and eaten? Or there is @_*AbdulAlhazred*_'s example of a bargain with Death itself.
> 
> This is why I tend to think of the idea of an outcome or goal that _is/isn't possible_ having no meaning outside the context of actual play.




In terms of the 'reversibility' of things, the players have more power here than the GM in most games. While the PCs could, in principle, achieve some kind of 'wish' or something which would 'uneat' the children, the GM is pretty much constrained to not eat them later if they were once rescued (I guess you could imagine a game with a tone of hopeless inevitability in which the children are simply eaten by wolves a week later, but that aside). 

Of course, later, the players could once again bring the children's fate into play and change their fate, perhaps giving them back to the God of the Dead because of some other consideration, etc. That would be only an OFFER by the GM however, and probably should be calculated to be not too forced (though again, tone matters here).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Michael Silverbane said:


> So, it does not seem entirely unreasonable that you could measure the success of an "adventure" like a SC, but using the success or failure of Challenges, and the success of a campaign using the success or failure of "adventures", just sort of abstractly scaling up from one level to the next.
> 
> The question then being what does a failed adventure look like? How do you significantly change the fiction on the campaign scale without leading to a campaign level death spiral? Further, how does this affect the framing of scenes in a more player driven game style, and how does it affect the development of backstory in a more DM drive game style?




Right, this kind of procedure was discussed early on in 4e's life. I recall doing a few experiments with it, but never was entirely satisfied with the results. Now, with HoML, which has ONLY challenge-like mechanics, you could create a hierarchy, each encounter builds a success/failure at the 'adventure' level, and success/failure at that level could feed into 'story arc' or 'campaign' level success/failure tallies. 

All the questions you ask are quite germane. The other question is how this works in regards to things like changes of direction in the campaign, contrary or conflicting goals between different players (IE there may not be a party-wide definition of success at all levels). 4e SCs have trouble with changes in direction too. Sometimes it is best to simply decide that the SC has ended in an indeterminate way (IE the players abandoned it, or the conditions changed so much that the win/loss tally no longer makes any narrative sense, etc.). 

Maybe a more robust concept would be to structure these things as 'quests' instead of 'challenges'. They could still use the tally mechanism, but they could be more personal and flexible, with many ongoing at one time, potentially, and perhaps failures and successes are more conditional. This might look a bit more like a 'clock' than an SC? I'm not sure...


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## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Numidius, you seem to have some frustrating play experiences!
> 
> One thing I'm curious about is whether (i) you're an outlier, or (ii) others do this too but enjoy it, or (iii) others have similar frustrations.



Funny thing is, we tried some videogames recently and we had the same problem! The latest version of Fist of the Northstar: after the combat tutorial we stuck at the very beginning of game, outside the walls of a town, we could not find a way in. Lots of npc repeating the same lines when talked to, no clue how to unlock the first scene.
Latest Conan: in the first scene, ruins in a desert: our pc literally died by thirst after an hour of going around looking for anything to interact... "My kingdom for a thermal bath!" I screamed in despair


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## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Re: Adventure, I see Stakes, something that is wanted by the Party and a couple of Factions/Npcs: a situation that fosters a series of small Conflicts having an immediate Goal, albeit small, that gets Players closer to control the Stake, and, in the process, producing fiction regulated by rules on the Right to describe outcomes.
> 
> (Sounds like Edward's Trollbabe, again, I know, that's my filter of analisys)
> 
> Re: Gm producing Backstory: I mean, why not, but I would focus on the introduction of new Content by the Gm*: s/he also has to have some Stats to roll if Players do not agree: like Dungeon, Town, Wilderness, for general arenas of play,
> or about the Use of Force: enforced in-fiction by Npcs or bigger Factions or anything: stats would be like Use of Violence, Mind Control, Environmental Obstacles, when directly against the Party to limit their freedom of movement, or to generate players driven scene framing.
> 
> (It's been a while that I'm thinking on these lines......)




OK, so at the 'story arc' level then the players would describe something they want. The GM would then be obliged to describe a path to acquiring the thing which would have some 'cost' associated with it. The players could either wager those stakes, or not. Maybe there's a sort of 'refusal cost', you have to ante up even to hear what is on offer. That would create pressure, do I take this quest or wait for the next one?


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## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, so at the 'story arc' level then the players would describe something they want. The GM would then be obliged to describe a path to acquiring the thing which would have some 'cost' associated with it. The players could either wager those stakes, or not. Maybe there's a sort of 'refusal cost', you have to ante up even to hear what is on offer. That would create pressure, do I take this quest or wait for the next one?



Story arc: either the Players are proactive with their Goals, or the Gm is ready to go. 
As Gm I don't like to waste prep, but as a Player I like to have a say in the direction the Story goes. 
Also IME at the Table negotiations before play are very difficult with most players/Gms  so I'd have them regulated in some way and moreover played as actual game, producing fiction on a larger scale. 

Table/Gm: chooses Setting, and then everyone highlights specific locations of interest in it. 
Players make Pcs and write down Relations, Factions, Gods, related to their race and class(es) and declare base location(s). 
Gm: introduces content: "The quiescent tribes of orcs are reunited under a powerful shaman. They invade the countryside e put your town under siege". 
Players may Agree and start playing from there, or ask the Gm to Roll and see what happens, or Negate the declaration/outcomes:
Pc half-orc ranger: "Not so fast. My duty is to patrol borders 'tween orcs mountains and humanity's cultivated plains. I should be able to prevent it, or at least know in advance rumours about it". 
Gm can agree and start playing from there,  or Negate by the Use of Force on Player, using an Environmental Obstacle (a drought forced humans to bring herds uphill in orcish territory, You were too busy), or Violence (Trolls are fleeing from fires in the forest, causing havoc in farms), or Mind Control (the shaman has cursed your orc half, filling your dreams with fear, you spent your days in town, recently). 
Pc Agrees, Negates, or asks Gm to Roll on his Wilderness Stat. Pc decides to Negate the bad outcome (he can't outright negate the use of force by Gm but can find a way out), putting forward the Relationship with an orc sister (that actually occupies a Slot on the char sheet) who informs the Pc about the evil shaman. 
And so on... Note that in this phase of Confrontation, the Pc does not roll dice, in case is the Gm who rolls. 

The point is: every time one Negates a declaration/outcome, Pc "spends a resource" marking that precise feature used to Negate which occupies a Slot on the Sheet: as per above the Pc has already marked the Class Slot (Ranger), and one Relationship slot. 

When Confrontation is over, usual play starts from there: now the Pc rolls dice when Conflicts arise. 

Hope it makes sense


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## Numidius

The point of having only one side rolling, is that they can re-roll failures by spending more resources, in order to win the stakes/reach their goal. 
In the above example, would be the Town under Siege by the Gm.


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## Numidius

Trying to give it a bit of sistematization:
The usual background fluff on the Pc sheet is organized in Slots. These slots are used by Players to counter the framing of quests, situations, new content introduction, general adversity, imposed by the Gm, which compels, puts pressure on, involves, the above background fluff with stuff available in the setting. 
In this phase of Negotiation, of play on a larger scale than usual, the Gm uses Force to avoid rolling, countered by Players background slots. 
Gm stats I think of something like the areas of the main Three Pillars, if we talk D&D, so Dungeon, Town, Wilderness. 
While Pcs will have the proper pillars stats: Combat, Social, Exploration. 
Gm stats focusing on types of setting, Pc ones on types of activities.


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## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, so at the 'story arc' level then the players would describe something they want. The GM would then be obliged to describe a path to acquiring the thing which would have some 'cost' associated with it. The players could either wager those stakes, or not. Maybe there's a sort of 'refusal cost', you have to ante up even to hear what is on offer. That would create pressure, do I take this quest or wait for the next one?



Let's focus on what you propose: a Player driven story arc. 
Say: the Pc half-elf fighter/bard wants to marry the daughter of the high elves' King.  The Gm could say: "Agreed, let's move on", or "Not so fast. First you have to phisically get to the elven kingdom, and I remind you that the mountains are infested by warring orcs lead by an evil shaman. (Sounds like Exploration stuff). Then you will discover that she is promised to a noble cousin, (and that is Social). Finally the King himself will probably ask you to prove your might and clear up an annoying megadungeon situated just under his realm (Combat)." 
In any of those points, the Player may use his slots to move further (or those of someone else's in the party, if they participate), and Gm may use Force to stop him.  When the negotiation phase is over, the normal play begins, and the Pc will use his own ability, feat, skill, Slots (at-will, encounter, daily, whatever).


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## pemerton

[MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]: in your proto-system, what resource does the GM spend to use Force?


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## Numidius

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]: in your proto-system, what resource does the GM spend to use Force?



Before  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] quoted my post I was not thinking in a 'story arc mode', so it is evolving as we speak. 

But I did the same question to myself. Basically the Gm uses Setting's local resources, so in the first negotiation, once the Trolls are used, cannot be put forward again in the same confrontation. 
(Later on, during 'normal play', Trolls would be roaming the lands as per fiction established in the Negot. Phase)
But... resources in setting are virtually infinite... so... anyway, the more stuff the Gm brings in, the more fiction and situation is established before 'normal play'. 
The Gm could also have finite Slots to be filed once spent... 
But anyway when a Player is done with the Neg. Phase, can ask the Gm to stop where they are and Roll dice. In the following description of outcomes both Player and Gm use whatever fiction has been established to that point: places, factions, npcs etc


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## Numidius

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION]: in your proto-system, what resource does the GM spend to use Force?



And in your opinion, what resource the Gm should use?


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## pemerton

Numidius said:


> And in your opinion, what resource the Gm should use?



Dunno, I've never thought of establishing setting and "big picture" (to use Luke Crane's terminology) in this way before.

Fate has something a bit like this in it's setup phase, but I've never played Fate. Does it have anything useful to offer?

MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic allows the GM to set up to three Scene Distinctions for free in each action scene, and the rest have to be paid for from the Doom Pool. Maybe the GM gets three uses of Force for free, and then every further move allows the players to introduce some favourable element into the fiction also (eg the GM has trolls, but the PCs have a bolt hole among the fairy folk of the forest).


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## darkbard

Numidius said:


> Let's focus on what you propose: a Player driven story arc.
> Say: the Pc half-elf fighter/bard wants to marry the daughter of the high elves' King.  The Gm could say: "Agreed, let's move on", or "Not so fast. First you have to phisically get to the elven kingdom, and I remind you that the mountains are infested by warring orcs lead by an evil shaman. (Sounds like Exploration stuff). Then you will discover that she is promised to a noble cousin, (and that is Social). Finally the King himself will probably ask you to prove your might and clear up an annoying megadungeon situated just under his realm (Combat)."
> In any of those points, the Player may use his slots to move further (or those of someone else's in the party, if they participate), and Gm may use Force to stop him.  When the negotiation phase is over, the normal play begins, and the Pc will use his own ability, feat, skill, Slots (at-will, encounter, daily, whatever).




Do you see this setting creation as fundamentally different than the _Dungeon World_ method of shared creation at the game's outset, particularly as that outlined in _The Perilous Wilds_?

In any event, cool stuff to be thinking about!


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## Numidius

darkbard said:


> Do you see this setting creation as fundamentally different than the _Dungeon World_ method of shared creation at the game's outset, particularly as that outlined in _The Perilous Wilds_?
> 
> In any event, cool stuff to be thinking about!



I have not read PW. Would elaborate on that? 

The difference I perceive from DW, is that I'd put in place a procedural frame to be followed as RAW. In which Gm and Players are not pulling their punches, since in any moment one can mandate the other to roll, and then another Frame dictates who narrates Success and who Failures (who rolls narrates Failures... the other Player the Success: so in the above Bard & Princess story arc Negotiation, the Gm would roll for the social stuff regarding the Princess and her promised Cousin: Gm fails and narrates that Yes The Princess now loves the Bard, but he captures her and flee into the dungeon helped by his noble house relatives --- note that The Dungeon was already in the fiction, so who narrates may incorporate anything that has been established, and of course pertinent: this can be clarified before the roll, btw, to have fair play/all on the same page)


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## Numidius

darkbard said:


> In any event, cool stuff to be thinking about!




Thanks


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## Numidius

pemerton said:


> Dunno, I've never thought of establishing setting and "big picture" (to use Luke Crane's terminology) in this way before.
> 
> Fate has something a bit like this in it's setup phase, but I've never played Fate. Does it have anything useful to offer?
> 
> MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic allows the GM to set up to three Scene Distinctions for free in each action scene, and the rest have to be paid for from the Doom Pool. Maybe the GM gets three uses of Force for free, and then every further move allows the players to introduce some favourable element into the fiction also (eg the GM has trolls, but the PCs have a bolt hole among the fairy folk of the forest).




Not so familiar with Fate, myself. I've read bits of old editions. Marvel Heroic instead yes, the Doom Pool mechanic is cool, a tool mechanically regulated for the Gm to use, preventing abuse. 

Good point. Starting from what you say about the three  uses of Force allowed to the Gm, I now think these might be represented by the three "Rerolls" for the Gm-facing conflicts during Neg. Phase. 

So the flow of play during negotiation phase would be like the following: 

Gm simply puts forward resources/stuff/npc/monster/factions (from the setting the table is playing in) to establish a starting point in play. 
Pcs spend their Background Slots to Negate the effects of what the Gm wants to establish. 
This back and forth goes on until the Gm is cool with the last declaration from Players, or the Players stop it, declaring a conflict: Gm has to Roll. Everything already established before the roll is canon. 
Gm rolls. 
If successful, Player describes the outcome (the Player, in this way, has authority on describing how his/her Pc 'loses' the conflict, and also to add positive elements of canon fiction to mitigate the loss ) 
If fails, Gm describes how the Goal is more far than before, and, if feels so,  Uses Force to reroll: describes what happens (eg: an Environmental Obstacle in the form of.......) and rolls again. 
Repeat. 
In the above example, the overall story arc Stake is "Town Under Siege by Orcs", the specific Goal of the rolled conflict is "The ranger is NOT warned by his orc sister while busy with trolls & bonfires" 

Now Gm has spent one Use of Force (Env. Obs.) and the Ranger some BG Slots. 

The negotiaton continues if there are other players, or the game zooms in to Scene framing in a new situation: Town is under siege. 
Now: does another negotiation on Scene Fr. begins? If so, resources spent are refreshed?


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## Numidius

Also, procedurally, if Gm started the Story arc framing, the Players should then start the Scene framing (?)


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## darkbard

Numidius said:


> I have not read PW. Would elaborate on that?
> 
> The difference I perceive from DW, is that I'd put in place a procedural frame to be followed as RAW. In which Gm and Players are not pulling their punches, since in any moment one can mandate the other to roll, and then another Frame dictates who narrates Success and who Failures (who rolls narrates Failures... the other Player the Success: so in the above Bard & Princess story arc Negotiation, the Gm would roll for the social stuff regarding the Princess and her promised Cousin: Gm fails and narrates that Yes The Princess now loves the Bard, but he captures her and flee into the dungeon helped by his noble house relatives --- note that The Dungeon was already in the fiction, so who narrates may incorporate anything that has been established, and of course pertinent: this can be clarified before the roll, btw, to have fair play/all on the same page)




Ah, I see: this is formalized through rolls rather than freeform narrative building. That is quite different than DW's collaborative campaign building.


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## Numidius

darkbard said:


> Ah, I see: this is formalized through rolls rather than freeform narrative building. That is quite different than DW's collaborative campaign building.



Formalized thru rolls only when the two sides at the table do not agree anymore on what is established via narrative. Narrative enforced by slots spent/marked on the char sheet (by players; the Gm uses fiat until asked to roll, but Gm resources are limited to the actual setting, and once spent them cannot be used again to force the fiction. Eg: since the trolls have already been used by Gm and dealt with by the ranger, now they cannot be present in the siege as troops of the invading army)


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## AbdulAlhazred

Numidius said:


> Let's focus on what you propose: a Player driven story arc.
> Say: the Pc half-elf fighter/bard wants to marry the daughter of the high elves' King.  The Gm could say: "Agreed, let's move on", or "Not so fast. First you have to phisically get to the elven kingdom, and I remind you that the mountains are infested by warring orcs lead by an evil shaman. (Sounds like Exploration stuff). Then you will discover that she is promised to a noble cousin, (and that is Social). Finally the King himself will probably ask you to prove your might and clear up an annoying megadungeon situated just under his realm (Combat)."
> In any of those points, the Player may use his slots to move further (or those of someone else's in the party, if they participate), and Gm may use Force to stop him.  When the negotiation phase is over, the normal play begins, and the Pc will use his own ability, feat, skill, Slots (at-will, encounter, daily, whatever).




Who or what regulates when that transition happens? Is it just "keep generating the story arc until everyone has taken a pass"?


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## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Who or what regulates when that transition happens? Is it just "keep generating the story arc until everyone has taken a pass"?



Kind of. The point is you don't generate freely, but competitively try to arrive to the point of transition with the story in your favor, Pc spending background resources, Gm using backstory/setting and spending uses of Force.  
A point is reached where resources are depleted, or Gm/Pc is asked to roll: description follows and that is actually the transition.


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## Numidius

Not dissimilar to a Skill challenge to determine the ante of the adventure.  Backstory challenge? But if it is Gm driven, like in my first example of Town under siege, the Pc spend background slots and Gm rolls. So the inverse of an usual SC.

Edit: Background Challenge sounds better?


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## AbdulAlhazred

OK, so how about this:

1. The GM is allotted a fixed number of 'resources', say one per PC (could be 2, or maybe he can buy more, etc.).
2. The GM proposes a narrative element, using a resource (IE "a tribe of orcs is on the warpath"). 
3. The players can either propose their own narrative element which is at stake (IE "our home town of Dinford is in the path of the orcs") or 
4. The players can dispute the GMs narrative element, staking one in opposition (IE "Fort Durant, my family's holding, stands in the path of the orcs."). The GM rolls to see if the orcs overcome it, with the players describing failure and the GM describing the consequences of success.
5. Either side can accept failure/success, or stake another resource (IE the GM succeeds, Fort Durant cannot hold back the orcs. Another player says "I ask my relatives, the Black Iron Dwarf Clan to march to the castle's aid.") This could be accepted by the GM, or he could make a check, expending another resource to put a spy in place, etc.
6. At any point, once both sides have accepted, then play can proceed from that point.

Any further elaboration required?


----------



## Numidius

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, so how about this:
> 
> 1. The GM is allotted a fixed number of 'resources', say one per PC (could be 2, or maybe he can buy more, etc.).
> 2. The GM proposes a narrative element, using a resource (IE "a tribe of orcs is on the warpath").
> 3. The players can either propose their own narrative element which is at stake (IE "our home town of Dinford is in the path of the orcs") or
> 4. The players can dispute the GMs narrative element, staking one in opposition (IE "Fort Durant, my family's holding, stands in the path of the orcs."). The GM rolls to see if the orcs overcome it, with the players describing failure and the GM describing the consequences of success.
> 5. Either side can accept failure/success, or stake another resource (IE the GM succeeds, Fort Durant cannot hold back the orcs. Another player says "I ask my relatives, the Black Iron Dwarf Clan to march to the castle's aid.") This could be accepted by the GM, or he could make a check, expending another resource to put a spy in place, etc.
> 6. At any point, once both sides have accepted, then play can proceed from that point.
> 
> Any further elaboration required?




Yes, that's basically it.
 If you say just Elements, sounds more like worldbuilding, which is also cool. With Stakes in play tho, sounds more like a proper story arc framing (IMO of course, feel free to correct me). 
So, given an established setting with some Elements (under Gm control, like orcs army, trolls, evil gods, warring kingdoms etc) and given Pc with other elements (background stuff, relationships, affiliations like thieves/wizards guilds, base town, family holdings , patrons or gods), the Gm puts at risk something that the players cherish, instilling new direction in the events, to the detriment of the characters. 

If players like that framing, ok, that's the  starting point; if they don't, and want to mitigate, or to completely prevent it, then the negotiation/confrontation phase begins. 
So we have something (big) at Stake, like the siege for example, and individual/collective attempts by Pcs to not let that happen by stating Goals (like in Conflict resolution). Once someone rolls than the goal either succeds or fail. Like you say, if some other PC wants to state another and subsequent goal, the confrontation continues. 
Sorry if I am verbose and repeat myself  

One more thing: say the Party is a bunch of selfish characters, They could say ok to the siege and state goals about themselves fleeing away from town and go adventuring on their own.     at this point if, I was the Gm, I'd tell'em to frame a scene or story arc for me to run for them, and then I would start another Negotiating phase, putting obstacles on their path. 

Tomorrow I'll post something on the mechanical bits I have in mind for this. I'm still clarifying it in my mind.


----------



## pemerton

This is just a brief interruption to note that this thread is now #2 on hottest threads, behind Q&A with Gary Gygax.

Well done all, and carry on!


----------



## Numidius

"Pillars & Plots" 

Story arc Negotiation method
(Sort of add-on for D&D, inspired by Trollbabe rpg) 

Gm stats are geographical: Dungeon, Town, Wilderness.
Pc/Party stats are situational: Combat, Social, Exploration. 

General rule: Who rolled dice narrates failures; the other side narrates successes.
Specific rule: Gm has a number of advantage dice/reroll attempts, equal to the number of Pcs at the table.

Gm-driven story arc:

 Gm introduces a new plot twist that puts at stake, in danger, changes drastically, a fictional assett of the Pc/Party, a valuable one, something they will probably fight for. 
Players can accept the twist and start playing from there,  or start the negotiation phase using their Pc roles in the setting (race/class/fictional influence) to explain how they could have prevented the twist from happening, or at least to mitigate its effects. 
Gm can accept that, or, using force, introduce an anavoidable obstacle for the Pc/Party in the form of an element/npc/faction/monster of the setting, that impeded them from having a say. 
Pc/Party are now told how they have been too busy to see the plot twist coming, but can spend a background resource, normally a relationship, or an affiliation, to act instead of them and in their favour, towards the (as above stated) goal of mitigating the plot twist. 
Now the Gm has to roll dice if s/he wants to negate the Pc/Party helping Ally goal (and move forward to win the overall plot twist stakes). A brief clarification of the Npcs involved ensues, then 

Gm rolls related stat: if Successful, Player narrates how the relation/faction/ally failed in the attempt and how the Gm-opposotion "wins" the conflict (thus preventing the allied Npc to die, for example). If Failure, Gm narrates how own opposition is overcome. Then Gm can use one advantage die/reroll to try again, after describing a new element of setting like a use of force***... Re-rolls... Repeat. 

***Use of force: Violence, Mind control, Environmental obstacle, Natural disaster, Unexpected enemy, Evil gods, and so on. 

(To be continued... Player-driven story arc following, plus how to generate stats for the negotiation)


----------



## Numidius

"P&P"  part II

Notes on Gm-driven 'plot negotium': 
every Player is entitled to ask verification thru Pc role, and, if 'forced' by Gm opposition, to use his/her background slot in order to demand Gm to roll. 
That's why the Gm has a number of rerolls equal to number of Pcs at the table. A Player may waive this opportunity and just help another Pc in an ongoing conflict vs Gm, declaring how her pc or BG relation intervene, so giving a Dis-advantage die to the Gm roll. 
When a Gm wins a conflict, gains an advantage die for the next one. 
Note that neither side can actually negate, or veto,  declarations of the other; the outcomes are at stake, and conflicts are resolved to see which side has the last word on where and when actual normal roleplay begins in the new 'plot twist' storyline. 
Another point of the Plot Negotium is in gaining information, backstory, displayed  in advance by the Gm as clarifications firstly and as real opposition secondly , if the Players feel like that and push to conflict rolls. 
At first level a Pc has: Role (race, class, fluff) to ask/propose clarification to the Gm, and one Background 'slot' (fluff, previous job, a current affiliation or npc relationship) to use as conflct leverage against Gm's opposition and go to rolling dice. 

Next: Stats and die rolls 

Edit: further notes: the opposition that Gm puts in place as opponents in conflict rolls, is at risk: first failed roll means it is simply being overcome; second means wounded, being depleted, socially circumvented (depending on context); third failure means it KOed AND narration of KO is made by the other side (in this case the opposing Player). If Gm does not like the latter  narration by player, may simply declare that the opposition is dead, or else as final, as appropried.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> Fate has something a bit like this in it's setup phase, but I've never played Fate. Does it have anything useful to offer?



I'm honestly surprised that you haven't by this point. I think that there is a lot about the system and gameplay that you would like considering some of your game preferences.


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## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I'm honestly surprised that you haven't by this point. I think that there is a lot about the system and gameplay that you would like considering some of your game preferences.



I own and have read a copy of Fate Core. But it's not at the front of the queue! It's sitting behind HeroQuest revised and DungeonWorld, and also DitV - but I'd like to adapt the latter to something more fantastical than western.


----------



## Numidius

pemerton said:


> I own and have read a copy of Fate Core. But it's not at the front of the queue! It's sitting behind HeroQuest revised and DungeonWorld, and also DitV - but I'd like to adapt the latter to something more fantastical than western.



I found playing in a western setting really relaxing, refreshing, at home in a way, after  watching so many movies in my youth. Then you can pump up the supernatural dial  of DitV to have some strange stuff happening


----------



## FrogReaver

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

The game world both is and is not like real life.  There are similarities and differences.  Pointing out the differences doesn't negate all the similarities.  From a players perspective that is roleplaying a character the game world often feels and functions like the real world because he is viewing the game world through the characters perspective.  From that perspective going to a tea-house is no different than going to a tea-house in real life.  You see neither the real life person or the in game character have any awareness about the processes external to them that cause anyone to be at the tea-house when they visit.  They only know if someone is or if someone isn't there when they visit the tea house  That's what we mean when we say the game world is like real life.  From these first person perspectives there's uncertainty about who you will find in the real world tea house and who the character will find in the game-world teahouse.

Now, obviously the processes that determine whether you will meet someone at a real life tea house are not the same processes that determine whether a character in the game world will meet someone at the game world tea house but that's not a meaningful insight to make as your conflating internal first person perspectives with external information that neither a real life person nor an in game character actually possess.


----------



## pemerton

FrogReaver said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]
> 
> The game world both is and is not like real life.  There are similarities and differences.  Pointing out the differences doesn't negate all the similarities.  From a players perspective that is roleplaying a character the game world often feels and functions like the real world because he is viewing the game world through the characters perspective.  From that perspective going to a tea-house is no different than going to a tea-house in real life.  You see neither the real life person or the in game character have any awareness about the processes external to them that cause anyone to be at the tea-house when they visit.  They only know if someone is or if someone isn't there when they visit the tea house  That's what we mean when we say the game world is like real life.  From these first person perspectives there's uncertainty about who you will find in the real world tea house and who the character will find in the game-world teahouse.
> 
> Now, obviously the processes that determine whether you will meet someone at a real life tea house are not the same processes that determine whether a character in the game world will meet someone at the game world tea house but that's not a meaningful insight to make as your conflating internal first person perspectives with external information that neither a real life person nor an in game character actually possess.



There are many ways to replicate the first-person uncertainty you describe. One is to make a Streetwise check, or Circles check, or . . .  check (depending on system and precise context); another is to wait to find out what the GM has decided. The second of these doesn't make the game more like real life.


----------



## FrogReaver

pemerton said:


> There are many ways to replicate the first-person uncertainty you describe. One is to make a Streetwise check, or Circles check, or . . .  check (depending on system and precise context); another is to wait to find out what the GM has decided. The second of these doesn't make the game more like real life.




From the character perspective both of those methods emulate real life. 

From a God perspective neither of those methods emulate real life. However the dm just deciding gets much closer to real life than rolling dice. The dm can make informed decisions and include much more into the decision making process than dice ever dreamed of.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

FrogReaver said:


> From the character perspective both of those methods emulate real life.
> 
> From a God perspective neither of those methods emulate real life. However the dm just deciding gets much closer to real life than rolling dice. The dm can make informed decisions and include much more into the decision making process than dice ever dreamed of.




See, this is what I, generally speaking, dispute. My assertion is that even the most enriched of game world settings are so 'thin' in terms of detailed understanding of the processes and implications of the established facts, that any decisions made about what "is or isn't likely" are indistinguishable from pure opinion. The DM can indeed "make up stuff" and call it realistic, that doesn't make it so in any meaningful sense except that it adheres to his preferences. If he makes up some 'explanation' for something, that too is made up ultimately.

Real life OTOH is governed, objectively, by principles best understood using a framework like the Buddhist concept of 'dependent origination'. That is to say, everything is interrelated at nearly infinite levels and no distinct processes can be described at the level of human observation. Even our 'explanations' of what happens in the real world are thus largely a constructed narrative. If this is true of reality, what does it say about our ability to construct artificial realities with substantial similarity to the real world? Essentially it is an impossibility. Instead we base our constructs on principles of what works when we play, largely.


----------



## pemerton

FrogReaver said:


> However the dm just deciding gets much closer to real life than rolling dice. The dm can make informed decisions and include much more into the decision making process than dice ever dreamed of.



This is where I disagree. My reasoning is similar to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s - that there is more in the heaven and earth of the gameworld than is dreamed of in any GM's philosophy. GM decision-making isn't "informed decision-making", it's just one person's preferences for the fiction trumping another's. Which is exactly what makes it not like real life!


----------



## Numidius

Last Sunday the Motogp grand prix has been held at COTA in Austin, Texas. The reigning world champion and Honda rider was supposed to win for the seventh time in a row. 
Instead his and all other factory Honda bikes racing on Sunday suffered a mechanical failure and did not finish the race. 
Likely? Sure no. Unlikely? Not even. An event more unique than rare. 
Like a totally unexpected critical failure on a routine roll.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is where I disagree. My reasoning is similar to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s - that there is more in the heaven and earth of the gameworld than is dreamed of in any GM's philosophy. GM decision-making isn't "informed decision-making", it's just one person's preferences for the fiction trumping another's. Which is exactly what makes it not like real life!




This is still a Strawman, as well as a Red Herring.  Nobody is saying that it's "like real life."  That's you twisting the argument and distracting from the point.  We're saying that it's MORE realistic or in the case of Frogreaver, that it's "closer to real life." We are not saying that it is mirroring the real world.  How about you respond without twisting arguments and attempting to move the point away from what people are talking about?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> This is still a Strawman, as well as a Red Herring.  Nobody is saying that it's "like real life."  That's you twisting the argument and distracting from the point.  We're saying that it's MORE realistic or in the case of Frogreaver, that it's "closer to real life." We are not saying that it is mirroring the real world.  How about you respond without twisting arguments and attempting to move the point away from what people are talking about?




Not to speak for pemerton, but I think that's what he disagrees with. The idea that a GM making a decision yields a more realistic result than other methods. 

While you could likely provide examples of a GM making a decision that seemed to result in a more "realistic" (by which I think we mean something like "mathematically likely") outcome, others can just as easily provide examples where a player makes a decision that results in a more "realistic" outcome. 

It's a preference that some folks in this thread have, and it's something that makes more sense to them, and that's fine....but it is in no way objectively more realistic than most other methods used in an RPG. 

To illustrate, let's look at a basic example. The party is making their way along a path. They come to a fork in the path. Which branch shows more signs of traffic? 

In a game like D&D, where the DM knows the surrounding area and its inhabitants and their goals and so on, he may declare the left branch as the more traveled because he has the map and knows that way leads to more populated areas, so common sense indicates that would be the answer. This is "realistic" in the sense that some form of logic is applied to the answer. 

But what about a game where the surrounding area and inhabitants are not known by the GM ahead of time, but are instead determined through play? Why would the GM picking the left branch be more "realistic" than the right branch? Perhaps the game calls for a roll from the players, and then based on the results of the roll, the GM narrates things accordingly. The player rolls well, so the GM decides that the character is capable of accurately determining that the left branch sees more traffic. 

The "realism" of the result is no different in either example. The "realistic" method used in the first example simply doesn't work for the second. So ultimately, what is being discussed is a preference in game mechanics and how they're applied.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> Not to speak for pemerton, but I think that's what he disagrees with. The idea that a GM making a decision yields a more realistic result than other methods.
> 
> While you could likely provide examples of a GM making a decision that seemed to result in a more "realistic" (by which I think we mean something like "mathematically likely") outcome, others can just as easily provide examples where a player makes a decision that results in a more "realistic" outcome.
> 
> It's a preference that some folks in this thread have, and it's something that makes more sense to them, and that's fine....but it is in no way objectively more realistic than most other methods used in an RPG.
> 
> To illustrate, let's look at a basic example. The party is making their way along a path. They come to a fork in the path. Which branch shows more signs of traffic?
> 
> In a game like D&D, where the DM knows the surrounding area and its inhabitants and their goals and so on, he may declare the left branch as the more traveled because he has the map and knows that way leads to more populated areas, so common sense indicates that would be the answer. This is "realistic" in the sense that some form of logic is applied to the answer.
> 
> But what about a game where the surrounding area and inhabitants are not known by the GM ahead of time, but are instead determined through play? Why would the GM picking the left branch be more "realistic" than the right branch? Perhaps the game calls for a roll from the players, and then based on the results of the roll, the GM narrates things accordingly. The player rolls well, so the GM decides that the character is capable of accurately determining that the left branch sees more traffic.
> 
> The "realism" of the result is no different in either example. The "realistic" method used in the first example simply doesn't work for the second. So ultimately, what is being discussed is a preference in game mechanics and how they're applied.



I think I've said this a few times, already.  I wish you more luck than I had with it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I think I've said this a few times, already.  I wish you more luck than I had with it.




I'm hoping that perhaps a new and rather stripped down example may help. 

I hope this in the same way I hope great big wads of cash fall from the sky and land in my yard.


----------



## Satyrn

hawkeyefan said:


> I'm hoping that perhaps a new and rather stripped down example may help.
> 
> I hope this in the same way I hope great big wads of cash fall from the sky and land in my yard.




I admire your optimism.

*Furiously googles hawkeyefan's address* I mean it's Hawkeye, how many fans can there be?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Oh snap! 

Unfair! We number in the dozens!


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Not to speak for pemerton, but I think that's what he disagrees with. The idea that a GM making a decision yields a more realistic result than other methods.




It doesn't matter whether he agrees with it or not.  If that's his position he is wrong.



> While you could likely provide examples of a GM making a decision that seemed to result in a more "realistic" (by which I think we mean something like "mathematically likely") outcome, others can just as easily provide examples where a player makes a decision that results in a more "realistic" outcome.




If I say that something in the game happens because I saw a pink bunny in my dreams, that's completely unrealistic.  If I say the same things happens in the game because of a random die roll, that's less unrealistic, chance plays into events even though the odds will be weighted in the real world far differently than a die roll.  If I know in a general way how things usually go in the real world and decide  to approximate various chances of the same event happening, and then roll, that's even more realistic.  I don't need to know the exact math for these things in order for the above to be true.

There's no way a DM can come up with the real world math for the odds of things happening in the game, but fortunately we don't need to know the math.  An approximation is more than enough to provide more realism.  It's like gauging crowds.  I don't need to know the exact numbers to see that a crowd of hundreds is smaller than a crowd of thousands.  Similarly, I don't need to know the exact math to know what is more realistic or less realistic than how things are currently done in the game.



> It's a preference that some folks in this thread have, and it's something that makes more sense to them, and that's fine....but it is in no way objectively more realistic than most other methods used in an RPG.




It's not a matter of what makes more sense.  It's a matter of what is more realistic.  That things that are more realistic also often make more sense is just happy circumstance.



> To illustrate, let's look at a basic example. The party is making their way along a path. They come to a fork in the path. Which branch shows more signs of traffic?
> 
> In a game like D&D, where the DM knows the surrounding area and its inhabitants and their goals and so on, he may declare the left branch as the more traveled because he has the map and knows that way leads to more populated areas, so common sense indicates that would be the answer. This is "realistic" in the sense that some form of logic is applied to the answer.




Right. The decision was based on what is more realistic, which also happens to make more sense.



> But what about a game where the surrounding area and inhabitants are not known by the GM ahead of time, but are instead determined through play? Why would the GM picking the left branch be more "realistic" than the right branch? Perhaps the game calls for a roll from the players, and then based on the results of the roll, the GM narrates things accordingly. The player rolls well, so the GM decides that the character is capable of accurately determining that the left branch sees more traffic.




This is one reason why I tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he doesn't play a game that's as realistic as mine.  This style of play doesn't lend itself well to decisions based on realism.  This style of play is also irrelevant to how I run my games and whether or not I am making decisions that intended to be more realistic.  In my style of play, I have the additional knowledge to make the informed decision, so when I say I do something to make the situation more realistic, this is a fact.  I am in fact making the situation more realistic, which does not mean that I am mirroring the real world.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] looks at how I do things, twists what I am saying into some variation of, "But you can't possibly mirror the real world exactly," and then argues his Strawman.  

That's what I am calling him out on.  He's not looking at myself or Frogreaver and just giving us how he does things.  He is actively twisting our arguments to suit his needs and deflect from the point.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This is still a Strawman, as well as a Red Herring.  Nobody is saying that it's "like real life."  That's you twisting the argument and distracting from the point.  We're saying that it's MORE realistic or in the case of Frogreaver, that it's "closer to real life." We are not saying that it is mirroring the real world.  How about you respond without twisting arguments and attempting to move the point away from what people are talking about?




No, Max, it is NOT a 'strawman'. It is a perfectly good solid reasonable argument. In order for your case to hold, 'more realistic' has to be an actual measurable defensible objective thing. So you would need to show how and why, and by what metrics, the GM coming up with a decision is 'closer to real life'. This is what we mean when we (or at least when I) talk about things being 'realistic'. I don't think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] intended the phrase 'not like real life' to be taken in an absolute way, as in "it is different from real life in some arbitrarily small way." Instead I feel reasonably confident (given that he was commenting on my post in which I held that is wasn't AT ALL like real life) that Pemerton meant something similar, that real life and 'the GM deciding' are simply nothing like each other.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think that any other way of deciding is MORE realistic than the GM deciding. I don't even think that realistic is an option and THAT IN AND OF ITSELF is the 'strawman', the argument that one way has some realism advantage. Nothing in FRPG play is at all realistic. Some of it has logical cogency with reality on some basic suppositions (gravity works, though even there you can't explain dragons without an exception). 

So, fine, you aren't 'mirroring the real world', but this is a red herring, as nobody claimed you said you were. What you said is you're more realistic. I say that this is like saying you're closer to finding the secret of immortality. Nobody is there, nobody has even made measurable progress, we're all light years from the goal and saying you're a few inches ahead or behind someone else is meaningless in that kind of context.

Nothing about RPGs is ever realistic. It isn't even really part of the equation.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, Max, it is NOT a 'strawman'.  It is a perfectly good solid reasonable argument.




Frogreavers argument was that it was more realstic, not that it mirrors reality.  To attribute "mirrors reality" to him and then argue against it is a classic Strawman, not a solid argument.



> In order for your case to hold, 'more realistic' has to be an actual measurable defensible objective thing.




No it doesn't.  It just has to be recognizably more realistic.  This idea you have that there must be some measurable number for it is just plain false.  I'm sure most people would agree that cold blooded premeditated murder is more evil than theft.  What are the measurable numbers for how evil those two things are?  If you can come up with them and then prove those numbers to be factually true, I'll start working on numbers for realism.  Until then...



> So you would need to show how and why, and by what metrics, the GM coming up with a decision is 'closer to real life'. This is what we mean when we (or at least when I) talk about things being 'realistic'. I don't think  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] intended the phrase 'not like real life' to be taken in an absolute way, as in "it is different from real life in some arbitrarily small way." Instead I feel reasonably confident (given that he was commenting on my post in which I held that is wasn't AT ALL like real life) that Pemerton meant something similar, that real life and 'the GM deciding' are simply nothing like each other.




He has been twisting arguments about the realism scale into "mirroring reality" for years and in multiple threads.  There is no mistake on my part about this.  



> To be perfectly honest, I don't think that any other way of deciding is MORE realistic than the GM deciding. I don't even think that realistic is an option and THAT IN AND OF ITSELF is the 'strawman', the argument that one way has some realism advantage. Nothing in FRPG play is at all realistic. Some of it has logical cogency with reality on some basic suppositions (gravity works, though even there you can't explain dragons without an exception).




Almost everything in FRPG play is realistic to some degree.  Swords are typically made of steel, have an edged blade, a hilt, do damage, etc.  There are trees, bushes, fish, air, etc.  All of these things are connected in some way and in varying degrees to reality. That is realism.



> So, fine, you aren't 'mirroring the real world', but this is a red herring, as nobody claimed you said you were.




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has repeatedly made this Strawman argument to me and others.  It's not a Red Herring to call him out on it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> It doesn't matter whether he agrees with it or not.  If that's his position he is wrong.




So you’re saying that realism as it applies to Action Resolution mechanics in RPGs is not a matter of opinion? Interesting.



Maxperson said:


> There's no way a DM can come up with the real world math for the odds of things happening in the game, but fortunately we don't need to know the math.  An approximation is more than enough to provide more realism.  It's like gauging crowds.  I don't need to know the exact numbers to see that a crowd of hundreds is smaller than a crowd of thousands.  Similarly, I don't need to know the exact math to know what is more realistic or less realistic than how things are currently done in the game.




You’re right that you don’t need exact numbers to know which crowd is bigger. But you do need to understand what numbers are and how they work. You can pick out the bigger crowd because you can tell that there are more people. But even though you don’t need to count, if you did, you know you’d be right because of math.

So....when it comes to realism in RPGs, what’s the math? What’s the metric? If we decide to “count the crowds”, so to speak, how do we do so?



Maxperson said:


> This is one reason why I tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he doesn't play a game that's as realistic as mine.  This style of play doesn't lend itself well to decisions based on realism.  This style of play is also irrelevant to how I run my games and whether or not I am making decisions that intended to be more realistic.  In my style of play, I have the additional knowledge to make the informed decision, so when I say I do something to make the situation more realistic, this is a fact.




No, it’s not a fact. You simply prefer for fictional rationalization of in game events to be determined before hand. This allows you to apply logic and some kind of loose probability to the resolution mechanics. You can determine a DC because you know what the weather is and other relevant factors. 

But there’s no reason that such factors cannot be applied afterward. It’s really no different because it’s all just creating fiction.

You have a preferred method for gaming. But it’s no more or less realistic compared to other RPG methods than writing a novel by hand is compared to typing it out.


----------



## Darth Solo

pemerton said:


> This thread is a spin-off of this thread. Its immediate trigger is the following post:
> 
> 
> In real life, people move through a physcially-structured environment where events happen in accordance with causal processes. Notions of _request_, _permission_, _decision_ etc have no explanatory work to do in relation to real-life causal processes (except for a rather narrow range of phenomena involving interactions between human beings).
> 
> At a RPG table, in the situation being described in the posts above, the players give rise to an idea - _our PCs find some sect members at the teahouse_ - and they suggest that that idea should be an element of the fiction that is being collectively created at the table. The GM then decides whether or not that idea actually does become part of the shared fiction, and communicates that decision to the players by telling them what it is that their PCs find at the teahouse.
> 
> That causal process has very little in common with the causal processes that bring it about that, if I go to a teahouse looking for members of a particular sect, I find any of them there. The most obvious difference is that whether or not, in real life, I meet any sect members doesn't depend upon whether anyone takes up a suggestion I make about an interesting idea.
> 
> Whether or not the GM making decisions about the gameworld, and then conveying that to the players, makes for good RPGing seems a matter of taste. But whether or not such a process is like real life seems a straightforward matter of fact. It's not.




Running D&D is NOT "like real life". It is like "running D&D". You need to accept that distinction. Comparing reality to D&D is like comparing reality to superheroes.

It Is a GAME.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I'm hoping that perhaps a new and rather stripped down example may help.
> 
> I hope this in the same way I hope great big wads of cash fall from the sky and land in my yard.




Yeah, judging from the posts between your's and this one, I think your kitten has died (to completely change analogies in mid-stream, but at this point who cares).

Anyway, here's hoping [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] will come back and continue with the fun ideas about bootstrapping story now with mechanics. I am not going to talk about whatever it is that killed the kitty, no more no more!


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> So you’re saying that realism as it applies to Action Resolution mechanics in RPGs is not a matter of opinion? Interesting.




It's either more realistic or it's not.  An opinion doesn't change that.



> You’re right that you don’t need exact numbers to know which crowd is bigger. But you do need to understand what numbers are and how they work. You can pick out the bigger crowd because you can tell that there are more people. But even though you don’t need to count, if you did, you know you’d be right because of math.




Math plays no part of it at all.  I can take a young child who knows no math and ask him which is the bigger crowd and he would be able to answer.  Math can help you estimate hundreds vs. thousands, but it's not necessary to know which is the bigger crowd.

The same goes for longswords.  Right know in D&D longswords have edges, hilts, are made of metal, deal damage, etc.  That's a level of realism.  If I say that in my game you have to sharpen them periodically, because they get dull with use and/or nicks in the blade, that would be more realistic.  If I further say that they rust and need to be oiled and cared for to keep them from rusting, that would be even more realism.  No math was harmed(or used) in the making of those facts.


----------



## Sadras

What I find curious is that everyone understands the plain words of "more realism" and accept it on D&D material, whether it be stuff from the DMs Guild or the monthly D&D booklet (forget its name now) that Enworld produces for 5e - and yet when Max uses it ppl lose their minds and need all sorts of measures and what not.

EDIT: Latest En5isder.
Really wonder if a thread needs to opened up to discuss Mike Myler's definition of the words "more realistic"


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> We're saying that it's MORE realistic or in the case of Frogreaver, that it's "closer to real life."



Reread my post - I know you're saying this, and exactly what I deny. To retierate: there is more in the heaven and earth of the gameworld than is dreamed of in any GM's philosophy. GM decision-making isn't "informed decision-making", it's just one person's preferences for the fiction trumping another's.

It's not more realistic that the inhabitants of the teahouse be decided by the GM rather than determined by (say) a Streetwise check.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> It's either more realistic or it's not.  An opinion doesn't change that.




This is my point. “More realistic” may vary from person to person, no? Or is it universally the same for all? In which case, show me the metric that proves more realism just as we could count crowds to prove which was larger.

It’s all opinion. 



Maxperson said:


> Math plays no part of it at all.  I can take a young child who knows no math and ask him which is the bigger crowd and he would be able to answer.  Math can help you estimate hundreds vs. thousands, but it's not necessary to know which is the bigger crowd.
> 
> The same goes for longswords.  Right know in D&D longswords have edges, hilts, are made of metal, deal damage, etc.  That's a level of realism.  If I say that in my game you have to sharpen them periodically, because they get dull with use and/or nicks in the blade, that would be more realistic.  If I further say that they rust and need to be oiled and cared for to keep them from rusting, that would be even more realism.  No math was harmed(or used) in the making of those facts.




Okay let’s take your sword sharpening example. One game requires a skill check periodically to maintain the sword. Another game just assumes this kind of mundane activity happens. So in both games, the fictional sword is being fictionally maintained. 

Neither method is more realistic. They are different, sure, but carry the same level of realism. 

As for the crowds and the math...I’d disagree about a child who doesn’t yet understand numbers being able to pick which crowd was bigger. But beside that, you missed the point. Yes, something like that could indeed be gauged, but it can also be proven. 

So how do you prove realism in how we pretend to resolve an action? How is pretending to sharpen a sword one way more realistic than the other? 

It simply isn’t.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> This is my point. “More realistic” may vary from person to person, no? Or is it universally the same for all? In which case, show me the metric that proves more realism just as we could count crowds to prove which was larger.
> 
> It’s all opinion.
> 
> 
> 
> Okay let’s take your sword sharpening example. One game requires a skill check periodically to maintain the sword. Another game just assumes this kind of mundane activity happens. So in both games, the fictional sword is being fictionally maintained.
> 
> Neither method is more realistic. They are different, sure, but carry the same level of realism.
> 
> As for the crowds and the math...I’d disagree about a child who doesn’t yet understand numbers being able to pick which crowd was bigger. But beside that, you missed the point. Yes, something like that could indeed be gauged, but it can also be proven.
> 
> So how do you prove realism in how we pretend to resolve an action? How is pretending to sharpen a sword one way more realistic than the other?
> 
> It simply isn’t.



It's turtles all the way down for Max.  It's terribly important to him to be able to say he runs more realistically.  You won't budge him; it's a matter of faith, not reason.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Almost everything in FRPG play is realistic to some degree.  Swords are typically made of steel, have an edged blade, a hilt, do damage, etc.  There are trees, bushes, fish, air, etc.  All of these things are connected in some way and in varying degrees to reality. That is realism.





Maxperson said:


> Right know in D&D longswords have edges, hilts, are made of metal, deal damage, etc.  That's a level of realism.  If I say that in my game you have to sharpen them periodically, because they get dull with use and/or nicks in the blade, that would be more realistic.  If I further say that they rust and need to be oiled and cared for to keep them from rusting, that would be even more realism.





Maxperson said:


> This is one reason why I tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he doesn't play a game that's as realistic as mine.



Guess what: my games have as much of this realism you describe as yours. In fact, probably more of it, because at least some of the systems I run have rules and options for degrading armour, sharpening weapons, etc.

In my Traveller game a wild animal crawled on board the PCs' shuttle. A faceplate was shattered by a sword blow. A NPC was caught coming out of the shower while a PC stole her powered armour. Those are all things that might happen in real life. (If real life included powered armour.)



Maxperson said:


> If I say that something in the game happens because I saw a pink bunny in my dreams, that's completely unrealistic.  If I say the same things happens in the game because of a random die roll, that's less unrealistic, chance plays into events even though the odds will be weighted in the real world far differently than a die roll.  If I know in a general way how things usually go in the real world and decide  to approximate various chances of the same event happening, and then roll, that's even more realistic.  I don't need to know the exact math for these things in order for the above to be true.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's not a matter of what makes more sense.  It's a matter of what is more realistic.  That things that are more realistic also often make more sense is just happy circumstance.



This is all nonsense.

Suppose that the GM has to deicde what the PCs find in the evil overlord's zoo. The GM had a dream the previous night of a pink bunny, and so decides that that's what's in the zoo. That's no less realistic than rolling the result on the Random Zoo Enclosure Table; nor than deciding based on the GM's theory of what's more or less likely to be found ina a zoo.

Which is my whole point. Decision-making based on what the GM thinks is realistic does _not_ produce outcomes that are more realistic, or true to life, than decisions made using other processes. The fiction doesn't become less realistic because it includes cultists in the teahouse on the basis of a Streetwise roll rather than a GM decision.

And as per my post about there being more in heaven and earth - I think GM decision-making as the sole or primary system actually makes the fiction _less_ realistic because more predicatable (unsurprisingly, given that _GM decides_ makes it all prediction!).



Maxperson said:


> hawkeyefan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Why would the GM picking the left branch be more "realistic" than the right branch? Perhaps the game calls for a roll from the players, and then based on the results of the roll, the GM narrates things accordingly. The player rolls well, so the GM decides that the character is capable of accurately determining that the left branch sees more traffic
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This style of play doesn't lend itself well to decisions based on realism.
Click to expand...


This is mere assertion. You have no evidence for it from your own play. There's no evidence for it in the play of others. And it's obvious just from the example that your claim is wrong. A style of play in which the GM decides the more trodden road on the basis of a check rather than prior decision-making _doesn't produce a result that is any less realistic_. There's nothing more realistic about any particular track being more travelled than any other.


----------



## pemerton

double post deleted.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> To retierate: there is more in the heaven and earth of the gameworld than is dreamed of in any GM's philosophy.




This is irrelevant to whether or not something is more or less realistic.

The game uses these aspects of real life with longswords.  1. they have an edge.  2. they are made of metal(primarily).  3. they have hilts.  4. they do damage.  There may be others we could come up with, but those 4 will do.  

Longswords have that level of realism in D&D.  Are you really arguing that if I add becoming nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not cared for properly, that my addition does not more closely match how longswords work in the real world?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> This is my point. “More realistic” may vary from person to person, no? Or is it universally the same for all? In which case, show me the metric that proves more realism just as we could count crowds to prove which was larger.
> 
> It’s all opinion.




It's not all opinion.  It's an absolute fact that if I add in becoming nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not cared for properly to longswords, that longswords in my game more closely match how they work in the real world than they normally do in D&D.  That makes it a fact that my longswords would have more realism than D&D longswords.



> Okay let’s take your sword sharpening example. One game requires a skill check periodically to maintain the sword. Another game just assumes this kind of mundane activity happens. So in both games, the fictional sword is being fictionally maintained.
> 
> Neither method is more realistic. They are different, sure, but carry the same level of realism.




Sure, but in D&D there is no such dulling or assumed care.  Longswords simply never nick or get dull in D&D.   You've moved the goalposts of this discussion with that statement.

Me: I have apples and D&D has oranges, and apples are more realistic as they more closely match reality.

You: Well, if I change D&D so that it assumes oranges instead of apples you can't tell the difference between oranges and oranges, so realism is all subjective.

You can't see how this new argument is bunk?



> So how do you prove realism in how we pretend to resolve an action? How is pretending to sharpen a sword one way more realistic than the other?




Because the other doesn't happen in D&D, so my way is in fact more realistic than D&D.  Now, if you state to players at the outset that swords get dull and nicked in combat, but you are going to assume care, you've made longswords in your game more realistic.  Assumed care and roleplayed care would be the same level of realism, as the damage to swords is being done and being repaired.

So I'll make it more difficult for you.  Swords break in real life.  If I now add breakage to combat in my game, it's more realistic than the game that doesn't have it, but does have assumed care of minor damage.  Sword breakage in combat is NOT something that can just be assumed and glossed over the way you did to the damage.  You either have it as a possibility in combat and have to deal with the consequences when your sword breaks or you don't.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Suppose that the GM has to deicde what the PCs find in the evil overlord's zoo. The GM had a dream the previous night of a pink bunny, and so decides that that's what's in the zoo. That's no less realistic than rolling the result on the Random Zoo Enclosure Table; nor than deciding based on the GM's theory of what's more or less likely to be found ina a zoo.
> 
> Which is my whole point. Decision-making based on what the GM thinks is realistic does _not_ produce outcomes that are more realistic, or true to life, than decisions made using other processes. The fiction doesn't become less realistic because it includes cultists in the teahouse on the basis of a Streetwise roll rather than a GM decision.




Really?  You're seriously arguing that weapon degradation happening due to a pink bunny dream is as realistic as a DM coming up with probabilities based on real world weapon degradation and going with a roll based on those odds?


----------



## Numidius

"Pillars & Plots" part III 
How to generate Stats!!

Gm's: Dungeon, Town, Wilderness
Pc/Party: Combat, Social, Exploration

Take a D20 and choose A NUMBER between 3 and 18 (eg: 10). 
The range from 1 to the number BEFORE it (eg: 1 to 9) is Dungeon/Combat.
The range 'tween AFTER that number and 20 (eg: 11 to 20) is Wilderness/Exploration.
The range from THAT number (eg: 10) to either 1, or 20, whichever is shorter (eg: 1 to 10) is Town/Social. 

Examples: 
Gm chooses 15. D 1-14, T 15-20, W 16-20
Pc chooses 7. C 1-6, S 1-7, E 8-20. 

As you noted, Dungeon/Combat and Wild./Expl. can reach extremes in the D20 range. Town/Social at best will be middle ranged (50%). 

Every Pc can have own stats, or the Party as whole, if they prefer. In the latter case just calculate the average Number from Pcs D20, or make it up starting from 11 and every Player adds, or subtracts 2. 

Next: Player driven story arc!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> What I find curious is that everyone understands the plain words of "more realism" and accept it on D&D material, whether it be stuff from the DMs Guild or the monthly D&D booklet (forget its name now) that Enworld produces for 5e - and yet when Max uses it ppl lose their minds and need all sorts of measures and what not.
> 
> EDIT: Latest En5isder.
> Really wonder if a thread needs to opened up to discuss Mike Myler's definition of the words "more realistic"




Careful how you sling around that 'everyone'. I think if you were to go back through my posting history on this forum or on rpg.net, or the old WotC D&D Community forums, if they still existed, you'd find I've never spoken in this fashion. I don't consider 'realism' to be a substantial axis on which to analyze most aspects of game play.

In any case, the uses of this term, or analogous terms, is very loose. I don't think that the question of whether or not one or another mechanisms of determining things like who is in the tea room is more 'realistic' is even a sensible question which can be asked. A question like "what are the realistic outcomes of a 100' fall onto a hard surface?" OTOH has some more and less realistic answers. Even the later question however isn't utterly clear cut, as we can undoubtedly find an example in the real world of almost any outcome of such a fall (somewhere someone stood up and walked away from it, or at least survived). So even there its a fuzzy question of 'likelihood', not absolutes. 

If the game is Traveler, where the universe ostensibly obeys the same natural laws as our real world, we might remark "it sure was pretty unrealistic when that guy survived 100' fall onto concrete." That seems like a sensible remark. Arguing about the realism of the scene generation process which lead to the existence of a 100' drop, not really a question in which realism is germane. Now play D&D and we have a world where dragons fly, how can we even approach a discussion of how realistic it is to survive a 100' drop? Doesn't it depend on factors which aren't even explicit in the game (IE the luck, skill, and connections with fate which Gygax assigns to hit points?). Even this relatively straightforward question is no longer cut-and-dried and doesn't have any objective realistic character anymore.

Again, all that is left is 'coherency'. D&D games frame scenes in which something akin to the laws of nature are narratively consistent. You can EXPECT to fall and be hurt if you step off a 100' drop. This isn't about 'realism' per se. It is about being able to reason about the fictional consequences of actions so that consensus can exist at the table as to the appropriateness of the resulting narrative and mechanical process.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now play D&D and we have a world where dragons fly, how can we even approach a discussion of how realistic it is to survive a 100' drop?




Because dragons flying has nothing whatsoever to do with falling 100 feet.  They are completely different aspects of the game and each aspect has a different spot on the realism spectrum.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Not to speak for pemerton, but I think that's what he disagrees with. The idea that a GM making a decision yields a more realistic result than other methods.
> 
> While you could likely provide examples of a GM making a decision that seemed to result in a more "realistic" (by which I think we mean something like "mathematically likely") outcome, others can just as easily provide examples where a player makes a decision that results in a more "realistic" outcome.
> 
> It's a preference that some folks in this thread have, and it's something that makes more sense to them, and that's fine....but it is in no way objectively more realistic than most other methods used in an RPG.
> 
> To illustrate, let's look at a basic example. The party is making their way along a path. They come to a fork in the path. Which branch shows more signs of traffic?
> 
> In a game like D&D, where the DM knows the surrounding area and its inhabitants and their goals and so on, he may declare the left branch as the more traveled because he has the map and knows that way leads to more populated areas, so common sense indicates that would be the answer. This is "realistic" in the sense that some form of logic is applied to the answer.
> 
> But what about a game where the surrounding area and inhabitants are not known by the GM ahead of time, but are instead determined through play? Why would the GM picking the left branch be more "realistic" than the right branch? Perhaps the game calls for a roll from the players, and then based on the results of the roll, the GM narrates things accordingly. The player rolls well, so the GM decides that the character is capable of accurately determining that the left branch sees more traffic.



Hesitant to dive back in to this mess, but the second example (where the player rolls) still reads as if the GM already knows left has more traffic - the only difference is the use of dice rather than the GM just narrating it.



> The "realism" of the result is no different in either example. The "realistic" method used in the first example simply doesn't work for the second. So ultimately, what is being discussed is a preference in game mechanics and how they're applied.



To some extent.

The (or an) other factor - and you in fact hit it above - is internal logic.

Where the GM has things mapped out ahead of time then - even if only based on the GM's opinion - there's going to be an inherent baked-in internal logic, variants to which will over the long run become apparent.  But where nothing is predetermined there's a much higher risk of illogical results e.g. by roll the left path is accurately determined to have more traffic at the junction but subsequent roll results indicate that path goes nowhere and-or has been abandoned.  This either a) breaks logic or b) invalidates the result obtained at the junction.

And if the "vanishing" traffic is then explained by a hidden complex or whatever then what other evidence of that complex might have been seen before had its existence been known by the GM all along?

These are the sort of questions I keep asking, though I have yet to get an answer beyond what amounts to a somewhat patronizing "Don't fret about that sort of stuff".  Well, dammit, I am going to fret about that sort of stuff and won't be alone in doing so.  The setting has to have an internal logic (and by this I mean an internal logic other than "there is no logic", which would be a waste of everyone's time), if only so players and characters can tell the difference when the characters find themselves in a different setting with different logic e.g. an outer plane or a dreamworld.

And the only person at the table who can give the setting that internal logic, and then maintain it, is the GM.  And even then it won't be perfect as no GM can stay on top of absolutely everything, but the odds of consistency will be much greater, which is all we can ask for.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> See, this is what I, generally speaking, dispute. My assertion is that even the most enriched of game world settings are so 'thin' in terms of detailed understanding of the processes and implications of the established facts, that any decisions made about what "is or isn't likely" are indistinguishable from pure opinion.



So what?  Even if it's only pure opinion, as long as that opinion is vaguely consistent then it naturally follows that the setting as defined by that GM and informed by her opinions will also be vaguely consistent and through that either have or develop its own internal logic.  That logic then defines what is "realistic" within that setting - a "realistic" that may or may not have anything to do with our own real-life reality - and gives the characters and players a base foundation on which to function.



> Real life OTOH is governed, objectively, by principles best understood using a framework like the Buddhist concept of 'dependent origination'. That is to say, everything is interrelated at nearly infinite levels and no distinct processes can be described at the level of human observation. Even our 'explanations' of what happens in the real world are thus largely a constructed narrative. If this is true of reality, what does it say about our ability to construct artificial realities with substantial similarity to the real world? Essentially it is an impossibility. Instead we base our constructs on principles of what works when we play, largely.



To argue with this will quickly move us into the realms of belief, science-v-religion, and spirituality - I'm going to hazard a guess the mods might not be in favour and so give this no more than this brief wave as I pass by...


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> It's not all opinion.  It's an absolute fact that if I add in becoming nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not cared for properly to longswords, that longswords in my game more closely match how they work in the real world than they normally do in D&D.  That makes it a fact that my longswords would have more realism than D&D longswords.




I don’t agree with that, really....ask a metal worker which method seems more realistic and he’ll likely laugh. 

But it’s beside the point. We’re comparing methods that RPGs may employ in their game. That’s why the example I gave offered two methods. 

Comparing a game with one method to another with no method doesn’t really address what we’re discussing.



Maxperson said:


> Sure, but in D&D there is no such dulling or assumed care.  Longswords simply never nick or get dull in D&D.   You've moved the goalposts of this discussion with that statement.
> 
> Me: I have apples and D&D has oranges, and apples are more realistic as they more closely match reality.
> 
> You: Well, if I change D&D so that it assumes oranges instead of apples you can't tell the difference between oranges and oranges, so realism is all subjective.
> 
> You can't see how this new argument is bunk?




No....because I never said I was talking about D&D. 

I described two systems, one that included a mechanic for sword maintenance in the form of a skill check, and the other which assumed this task was happening “off screen”. 

Of those two, which is more realistic? 



Maxperson said:


> Assumed care and roleplayed care would be the same level of realism, as the damage to swords is being done and being repaired.




Thank you.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, judging from the posts between your's and this one, I think your kitten has died (to completely change analogies in mid-stream, but at this point who cares).



Your kitten died because a wad of cash fell from the sky and landed on it - the classic good news bad news situation?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t agree with that, really....ask a metal worker which method seems more realistic and he’ll likely laugh.




Highly unlikely.  He may tell me that it doesn't work exactly that way, but he will agree that one way is closer to reality than the other.



> But it’s beside the point. We’re comparing methods that RPGs may employ in their game. That’s why the example I gave offered two methods.




You offered up two methods for the same exact thing, not two methods for doing one thing two different ways, which is what I am talking about.  You moved the goal posts from, "Example 1 is less realistic than example 2," to "Example one and example two are functionally identical."  You don't get to move the goal posts like that.

In D&D fighters do not care for arms and armor, because arms and armor never wear down in any way.  If you are playing some other system where it states explicitly that arms and armor wear down, but care is assumed, then my example does not apply to THAT system.  THAT system does not in any way refute my claim, though.



> Comparing a game with one method to another with no method doesn’t really address what we’re discussing.




It's exactly what we are discussing.  This discussion is about changing rules to make that rule more realistic.  You can't do that if there is already said method there.



> No....because I never said I was talking about D&D.




I was, though.  If you are going to alter the game we are discussing in some effort to prove me wrong, it's auto fail. You can't change D&D to some other system and then claim that I am wrong when talking about D&D which does not have such a system.  In D&D, there is no such system of assumed repair, so my alterations does in fact make longswords more realistic than D&D has them.



> I described two systems, one that included a mechanic for sword maintenance in the form of a skill check, and the other which assumed this task was happening “off screen”.
> 
> Of those two, which is more realistic?




They're roughly the same, which is irrelevant to my point.  Coming up with an example of two ways to make something roughly as realistic doesn't change the fact that you can still alter games in ways to make those game MORE realistic.


----------



## Numidius

"P&P" part IV 
Player driven story arc 

While the Gm driven part applies mostly to new content, plot twists, big changes, about Setting, presumably something important or immediately related to the Pcs being at stake, usually larger than  Characters, which, in turn, use also their Background Relationships & Affiliations to subvert Gm's initial declarations and force him/her to roll on Conflicts having smaller Goals within Pc's reach in different arenas of play (town, wilderness etc)....
....in Players driven stuff the opposite takes place: Players now declare something the Pc wants to achieve, that is at stake, and Pcs  roll their Stats to overcome obstacles, opposing Npcs, factions, put by Gm on their way to reach the main goal; be it a single conflict, or more, one after another, or simultaneously confronted by different Pcs. The Gm can use imagination freely, improvising or following his prep, to describe a non-linear scenario (think about a town based situation with many prominent personalities involved, with different agendas, or a savage land with various monstrous factions, or a typical dungeon enshrining a powerful magic item guarded by an ancient evil while a group of zealot good paladins swore to not let anyone lay their hands on it,  and how these react to the Pcs pursuing their goals: friendly, hostile, better if interested in the same goal for themselves). 

Flow of play: Player(s) declare something or someone or somewhere, they want to achieve, get hold of, influence in a radical manner, reach with a purpose. Players might want to go together, or even interfere with one another. Conversation goes around the table as usual. When Gm or Player, or even PvP, don't agree anymore on what is being declared: Conflict ensues. 
The active Player decides in which manner prefers to act; usually is evident which stat is going to be rolled, but, anyway, 
if one wants to overcome an Npc with violence, and death is a possible and accepted outcome: Combat is the stat.
 If s/he wants to change the 'active behaviour' of the Npc by words, or non-violent physical means, magic, convincing, persuading, showing off, impressing: Social is the stat. 
If, lastly, one does not want to interact directly with the above Npc, and finds a way to bypass, circumvent, the obstacle interacting with the environment, willing to spend more game-time than a direct confrontation: the stat is Exploration. Exploration is also used if you want to take time to change, transform, survive the environment, from crossing a desert to building a fortification, to picking a magic lock, gaining info, research, hunt, scale sheer surfaces, infiltrate unseen, swim underwater tunnels, find your way out of a maze etc. 

(To be continued...)


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This is irrelevant to whether or not something is more or less realistic.
> 
> The game uses these aspects of real life with longswords.  1. they have an edge.  2. they are made of metal(primarily).  3. they have hilts.  4. they do damage.  There may be others we could come up with, but those 4 will do.
> 
> Longswords have that level of realism in D&D.  Are you really arguing that if I add becoming nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not cared for properly, that my addition does not more closely match how longswords work in the real world?




There isn't any real way to know based on what you've said so far. It also depends on what we MEAN by 'realistic'. The following points spring to mind:

First: you haven't specified what "become nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not care for properly" actually means. How fast does this happen? What are the effects of nicked, dull, and rusty swords. How much time and energy is required for maintenance, what skills are required, what tools are required, etc.? To be perfectly blunt, I doubt you know the answers to these questions in real-life terms (and how would you quantify them in any case) with any certainty. Thus any attempt you might make to translate them into D&D mechanics are simply your opinions of what is realistic. 

Second: Is realistic implying that this tracking of 'nicks and dulling' explains something within the narrative? Is it more realistic to say have the GM simply describe a blow as missing because the sword was too dull once in a great while? Or must there be a 0.415% per day probability of such a miss which has to be mathematically factored into play? What if the end results are basically narratively indistinguishable? Does the impression of realism created in the player's minds count as 'realism' or is some sort of quantifiable mathematical veracity the standard? 

Third: How can you assert that the result is, in any of the above senses, actually more realistic? Maybe just ignoring the whole issue, as Gygax clearly did, is overall the most realistic option available, for at least some definition(s) of realistic. I certainly think that could be the case.

Finally: Is all this book keeping and insistence on tracking of grinding, honing, whatever the heck it is that has to happen, actually going to make a game that feels more like you're actually inhabiting your character? Is that even the goal?

Certainly all these absolute claims you make about what is and isn't realistic, etc. is all basically balderdash, isn't it? It is a statement of your preferences to do things in certain ways. I don't understand what is wrong with simply accepting this obvious fact.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Because dragons flying has nothing whatsoever to do with falling 100 feet.  They are completely different aspects of the game and each aspect has a different spot on the realism spectrum.




I utterly disagree with you, dragons would never be able to fly if gravity worked as it does in the real world (certainly if things fell like they do in reality). So, clearly, there's a difference. How do you know that difference doesn't impact the deadliness of a 100' fall? You don't. I don't. Nobody does (at least I have yet to see a fantasy setting where actual physics, or whatever replaces it in a magical world, has been worked out). 

All you can do is STATE that you prefer that the two things are unrelated and then you label that 'realistic'. This is no argument at all. It holds not one dram of water in a rainstorm.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> So what?  Even if it's only pure opinion, as long as that opinion is vaguely consistent then it naturally follows that the setting as defined by that GM and informed by her opinions will also be vaguely consistent and through that either have or develop its own internal logic.  That logic then defines what is "realistic" within that setting - a "realistic" that may or may not have anything to do with our own real-life reality - and gives the characters and players a base foundation on which to function.



I don't really comprehend why the word 'realistic' is a good choice for this. I would choose possibly 'self-consistent' as one adjective, but there could be others. Anyway, I don't have any specific reason to dispute that a GM could be consistent, or even that they could have a well-developed 'internal logic'. I think these would be reasonable possibilities and you could then say "this is what I want in my game" (which I think you have). I don't have an issue with any of that. I just can't see Max's insistence on 'realism' being supportable.



> To argue with this will quickly move us into the realms of belief, science-v-religion, and spirituality - I'm going to hazard a guess the mods might not be in favour and so give this no more than this brief wave as I pass by...




Eh, I don't think it bothers me, but that's OK. I would say that such a position is well-supported by science, really.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There isn't any real way to know based on what you've said so far. It also depends on what we MEAN by 'realistic'. The following points spring to mind:
> 
> First: you haven't specified what "become nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not care for properly" actually means. How fast does this happen? What are the effects of nicked, dull, and rusty swords. How much time and energy is required for maintenance, what skills are required, what tools are required, etc.? To be perfectly blunt, I doubt you know the answers to these questions in real-life terms (and how would you quantify them in any case) with any certainty. Thus any attempt you might make to translate them into D&D mechanics are simply your opinions of what is realistic.




I haven't specified, because it doesn't matter.  None of those questions make the least bit of difference to whether or not the inclusion of becoming dull, becoming nicked, etc. increases realism.  That it exists at all over the D&D version increases the realism all by itself.  Answering those questions can increase the realism further, but they don't need to be answered in order for my example of increased realism to hold true.



> Second: Is realistic implying that this tracking of 'nicks and dulling' explains something within the narrative? Is it more realistic to say have the GM simply describe a blow as missing because the sword was too dull once in a great while? Or must there be a 0.415% per day probability of such a miss which has to be mathematically factored into play? What if the end results are basically narratively indistinguishable? Does the impression of realism created in the player's minds count as 'realism' or is some sort of quantifiable mathematical veracity the standard?




Again, it really doesn't matter.  Becoming dull and gaining nicks in and of itself increases realism.  Causing misses due to dullness increases it further.  Doing the research to find out a very close approximation to how often it such a miss happens would increase it further.  



> Third: How can you assert that the result is, in any of the above senses, actually more realistic?




Because reality includes blades becoming dull and getting nicked.  A system without those things is less realistic than one that is exactly the same with the exception of including them.  The inclusion automatically moves it down the realism spectrum towards the reality side of things.



> Maybe just ignoring the whole issue, as Gygax clearly did, is overall the most realistic option available, for at least some definition(s) of realistic. I certainly think that could be the case.




There's nothing wrong with ignoring realism if you don't care about it.  The game will still work fine.  Realism only matters to those to whom it matters.  I care about it, as do my players, so we make changes to the game with realism in mind.



> Finally: Is all this book keeping and insistence on tracking of grinding, honing, whatever the heck it is that has to happen, actually going to make a game that feels more like you're actually inhabiting your character? Is that even the goal?




To much realism bogs the game down and makes it boring.  Not enough realism makes the game unenjoyable.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I utterly disagree with you, dragons would never be able to fly if gravity worked as it does in the real world (certainly if things fell like they do in reality).




Sure they would.  At least one edition used their inherent magic as an explanation and I still use that.  Gravity works just find and dragon magic allows them to fly.



> So, clearly, there's a difference. How do you know that difference doesn't impact the deadliness of a 100' fall? You don't. I don't. Nobody does (at least I have yet to see a fantasy setting where actual physics, or whatever replaces it in a magical world, has been worked out).




Or maybe the difference is outside of gravity and allows large creatures with wings to interact in a way our world doesn't.  Gravity can still work fine and you can have dragons and other creatures flying around.  There are many ways other than altering how gravity works to explain things.  The more wild you get, though, the less realism you are going to have.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Sure they would.  At least one edition used their inherent magic as an explanation and I still use that.  Gravity works just find and dragon magic allows them to fly.
> 
> 
> 
> Or maybe the difference is outside of gravity and allows large creatures with wings to interact in a way our world doesn't.  Gravity can still work fine and you can have dragons and other creatures flying around.  There are many ways other than altering how gravity works to explain things.  The more wild you get, though, the less realism you are going to have.




Could, can, might, all just your preference. 



> I haven't specified, because it doesn't matter. None of those questions make the least bit of difference to whether or not the inclusion of becoming dull, becoming nicked, etc. increases realism. That it exists at all over the D&D version increases the realism all by itself. Answering those questions can increase the realism further, but they don't need to be answered in order for my example of increased realism to hold true.



So, you are asserting that literally any implementation of this in some form, unspecified, is 'more realistic' than ignoring it? This is an absolute statement, eh? I won't even bother to address the absurdity of all this, its readily apparent to all. Max, your positions simply make no sense at this point. There isn't even a point in discussing it, as there is nothing here to discuss.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Could, can, might, all just your preference.




Yep.  My preference is for increased realism over the baseline that D&D is at. 




> So, you are asserting that literally any implementation of this in some form, unspecified, is 'more realistic' than ignoring it? This is an absolute statement, eh? I won't even bother to address the absurdity of all this, its readily apparent to all. Max, your positions simply make no sense at this point. There isn't even a point in discussing it, as there is nothing here to discuss.




If you can't or won't see that making additions to an item of the game, and that addition increases the number of attributes that directly link to the real life version, that you are increasing realism, then I agree that there's really no point in discussing further.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To retierate: there is more in the heaven and earth of the gameworld than is dreamed of in any GM's philosophy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is irrelevant to whether or not something is more or less realistic.
Click to expand...


No it's not. Reality is characterised by unpredictable and unanticipated events. GM decision - more-or-less by definition - can't produce those. That's one reason it produces outcomes in the fiction that are not particularly like real life.

Generalising the point: GM decisions are, more-or-less by definition, made for reasons. Thus they create a fiction that reflects one person's priorities for a shared fiction. This is not a characteristic of real life!



Maxperson said:


> Are you really arguing that if I add becoming nicked and dull in combat with the need to sharpen the edge and work out the nicks, and rusting if not cared for properly, that my addition does not more closely match how longswords work in the real world?



What do you mean by _adding becoming nicked and dulled in combat_? Do you mean adding that as a mechanical state? As a way of narrating why an attack roll fails? As background colour in the manner that  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] describe upthread?

And what does this example have to do with _GM decides_ as a method of resolution? In Prince Valiant, I can narrate a dulled weapon (reducing its adds in combat) as an outcome of a loss in combat. In BW, there are various rules for equipment degradation as well as the possibility of narrating this as a consequence of failure. In Cortex+ Heroic I could impose a Dulled Blade complication on a PC as a consequence of a successful reaction by a NPC.

There are any number of methods that can produce such outcomes in a RPG which allows for it. You've given no reason to think that _GM decides_ is the one that will produce the most realistic distribution/occurrence of such events.



Maxperson said:


> in D&D there is no such dulling or assumed care.  Longswords simply never nick or get dull in D&D.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Swords break in real life.  If I now add breakage to combat in my game, it's more realistic than the game that doesn't have it, but does have assumed care of minor damage.  Sword breakage in combat is NOT something that can just be assumed and glossed over the way you did to the damage.  You either have it as a possibility in combat and have to deal with the consequences when your sword breaks or you don't.



If  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s D&D game includes player's narrating their PCs' care for their weapons, then we have at least one counterexample to your claim that _in D&D there is no such dulling or assumed care_. You _seem_ to have in mind the dulling of weapons as a mechanical state of affairs, but your argument would become clearer if you spelled some of these assumptions out, _and_ related them to the thread topic of _processes whereby the shared fiction is established_.

As far as weapon's breaking is concerned, there obviously are versions of D&D where this happens - eg 4e Dark Sun. They could easily be generalised. Would they make the game more realistic? Well, there are some swords that have been used in combat yet never broken. So it's not unrealistic that the gameworld should contain such swords, nor that they happen to be in the possession of the PCs. A GM who cares for such things could narrate awauy with broken swords that aren't part of the PCs' immediate situations.



Maxperson said:


> Really?  You're seriously arguing that weapon degradation happening due to a pink bunny dream is as realistic as a DM coming up with probabilities based on real world weapon degradation and going with a roll based on those odds?



There are so many assumptions built into your rhetorical question that it's hard to unpack them all. But just to focus on one: What are the odds of any given warrrio's sword breaking in any given fight? What are the odds of a GM dreaming of a pink buddy? What is the variation, across time and place and circumstance, in rates of broken swords and in rates of pink bunny dreams?

If the GM decides, on the basis of his/her dream, that today is the day when s/he will narrate a NPC's sword breaking at the dramatic moment, what makes the resuting fiction less realistic than any other decision-making process?



Maxperson said:


> Because dragons flying has nothing whatsoever to do with falling 100 feet.  They are completely different aspects of the game and each aspect has a different spot on the realism spectrum.



How can they be compltely different? They both involve the question of how massive bodies do or don't fall to earth. That's why [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has connected them to one another.

The fact that the game treats the differently _in mechanical terms_ is neither here nor there. _Realism_, to the extent that it's germane at all, is a property of fiction, not game mechanics.

This is ultimately another example of you making many many assumptions in your posts about how RPGing works, what an RPG system looks like, how it produces outcomes in the fiction, etc. I can unpack most of these, but the presence of the assumptions is making it very hard for you to engage in a conversation that isn't taking those assumptions for granted.

Consider, for instance, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s remarks about whether or not it is "realistic" to frame a scene with a 100' drop: whereas D&D leaves that sort of thing entirely in the discretion of the GM, Classic Traveller (as AbdulAlhazred knows) has rules for world generation, which in turn yield details about world atmosphere and hydography and average temperature, which actually create a starting point for answering questions about the "realism" of any particular posited topography.

These world features also feed into the creature generation system, so that flying "dragons" become more likely on low-grav, dense-atmosphere worlds while they are impossible on worlds like earth.

That's not to say that he's wrong to think that there is no "realistic" inferential pathway from those world-level details to any particular drop that the PCs might find themselves adjacent to. My point is that you don't seem to have a very well-developed sense of the range of RPG mechanics out there, and also the range of mechanical and non-mechanical decision-making processs.

Let's go back, for instance, to your claim that deciding which is the more-travelled path in the way [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] suggested upthread - ie on the basis of a player check - is less realistic than [something-or-other]. Such a system can be used to introduce weapon degradation and weapon breakage - 4e Dark Sun uses a version of it, as does Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic. You've said that these systems are not apt to produce realism, yet they have more prospect of yielding instancs of weapon degradation and weapon breakage than does D&D as you would pkay it out of the box, which is - you've said - a mark of realism. What's your response to this apparent contradiction? I've got no idea, because you don't seem to have anticipated it because of the assumptions you make about how RPGing works.

For my part, I take it as amply sufficient evidence that there is no valid inference from _method of establishing the fiction_ to _degree of realism of the fiction that is establsihed_.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The (or an) other factor - and you in fact hit it above - is internal logic.
> 
> Where the GM has things mapped out ahead of time then - even if only based on the GM's opinion - there's going to be an inherent baked-in internal logic, variants to which will over the long run become apparent.  But where nothing is predetermined there's a much higher risk of illogical results e.g. by roll the left path is accurately determined to have more traffic at the junction but subsequent roll results indicate that path goes nowhere and-or has been abandoned.  This either a) breaks logic or b) invalidates the result obtained at the junction.
> 
> And if the "vanishing" traffic is then explained by a hidden complex or whatever then what other evidence of that complex might have been seen before had its existence been known by the GM all along?
> 
> These are the sort of questions I keep asking, though I have yet to get an answer beyond what amounts to a somewhat patronizing "Don't fret about that sort of stuff".



No. The answer you get is _your worries are misplaced_. Managing inherent logic is simply _not as hard_ as you appear to assume.

By all accounts you've never GMed in a "no myth" style. But you seem to refuse to belief the reports of those who have. I don't know why.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, you are asserting that literally any implementation of this in some form, unspecified, is 'more realistic' than ignoring it? This is an absolute statement, eh? I won't even bother to address the absurdity of all this, its readily apparent to all. Max, your positions simply make no sense at this point. There isn't even a point in discussing it, as there is nothing here to discuss.



This is where I think  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has some assumption in mind as to what an implementation would look like, but isn't articulating it because it hasn't occurred to him that there are other implementations possible in different modes of RPGing.

I'm assuming he's thinking of some form of "critical failure" which imposes a penalty to hit and/or damage. How it would work in a non-D&D system I assume simply hasn't been thought about.

That it could be introduced into the fiction without any mechancial change (as  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] suggested; and as you and I have both suggested by narrating a "miss" as the result of a dulled edge) seems not to have been thought about either.

That there is a difference between _introducing a new mechancial subsystem_ and _making something a part of the fiction_ also doesn't seem to have been thought about. I attribute this to the making of assumptions about how RPG systems must be.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Hesitant to dive back in to this mess, but the second example (where the player rolls) still reads as if the GM already knows left has more traffic - the only difference is the use of dice rather than the GM just narrating it.




Sorry it read that way. The results were not really important for the example so much as the methods. 

In a procedural game that has a more traditional approach, like D&D, the GM typically has all this information at his disposal prior to the PC asking the question. So he looks at his notes and knows the answer. He may then share that info or call for a roll if he thinks it appropriate (if there is a chance of failure, essentially).

In a more narrative based game, the GM probably doesn’t know which path is more traveled. He asks the player to make the appropriate roll, and then decides what information to provide to the player based on the result of the roll. In this case, let’s say the roll is successful and the GM says the righthand path is more traveled.

Neither of these approaches is more realistic than the other. 



Lanefan said:


> And the only person at the table who can give the setting that internal logic, and then maintain it, is the GM.  And even then it won't be perfect as no GM can stay on top of absolutely everything, but the odds of consistency will be much greater, which is all we can ask for.




Why do you say this? Why can’t the group collectively maintain internal logic? Have you played in games where such responsibility was not solely the GM’s?

This concern of yours about internal logic falling apart if the GM isn’t the one calling all the shots just seems misplaced. That doesn’t really happen.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> You offered up two methods for the same exact thing, not two methods for doing one thing two different ways, which is what I am talking about.




I’ve read this sentence about a dozen times now, and I’m really struggling to understand it.

You’ve claimed that the GM making decisions for action resolution or for establishing elements in the fiction is inherently more realistic than other methods.

I provided an example (fork in the path) and then explained how a GM might decide the answer (method 1) and how another game may have a player make a roll and the GM narrates based on the results of the roll (method 2).

You seemed to agree that these two methods are equally realistic.

Therefore, GM deciding by consulting notes is not inherently more realistic.




Maxperson said:


> You moved the goal posts from, "Example 1 is less realistic than example 2," to "Example one and example two are functionally identical."  You don't get to move the goal posts like that.




I didn’t move goal posts. I compared two methods. 



Maxperson said:


> In D&D fighters do not care for arms and armor, because arms and armor never wear down in any way.  If you are playing some other system where it states explicitly that arms and armor wear down, but care is assumed, then my example does not apply to THAT system.  THAT system does not in any way refute my claim, though.




I’ve never liked how fighters in my game always seem to be free of intestinal concerns. They live on rations and ale and the occasional hank of mutton, but never miss a battle due to stomach issues.

So I came up with a mechanic whereby we can determine if a fighter has to skip adventuring to spend a day in the privy!

Would you agree that this mechanic makes my game more realistic than baseline D&D?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No it's not. Reality is characterised by unpredictable and unanticipated events. GM decision - more-or-less by definition - can't produce those. That's one reason it produces outcomes in the fiction that are not particularly like real life.




This is more of your twisting.  Nobody is saying that we are producing exactly real life.  All we have to do is edge closer to it in order to increase realism.



> Generalising the point: GM decisions are, more-or-less by definition, made for reasons. Thus they create a fiction that reflects one person's priorities for a shared fiction. This is not a characteristic of real life!




Reasons are a characteristic of real life.  I don't know why you think that they aren't. 



> What do you mean by _adding becoming nicked and dulled in combat_? Do you mean adding that as a mechanical state? As a way of narrating why an attack roll fails? As background colour in the manner that  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] describe upthread?




It doesn't matter.  All the answers to those questions do is establish how much of an increase in realism there was, not whether there was an increase or not.



> And what does this example have to do with _GM decides_ as a method of resolution? In Prince Valiant, I can narrate a dulled weapon (reducing its adds in combat) as an outcome of a loss in combat. In BW, there are various rules for equipment degradation as well as the possibility of narrating this as a consequence of failure. In Cortex+ Heroic I could impose a Dulled Blade complication on a PC as a consequence of a successful reaction by a NPC.




Awesome.  That does nothing to change the fact that if weapons don't get dull, as they do not in D&D, adding in the ability to get dull is an increase in realism.  It doesn't matter if Prince Valiant already has it.



> There are any number of methods that can produce such outcomes in a RPG which allows for it. You've given no reason to think that _GM decides_ is the one that will produce the most realistic distribution/occurrence of such events.




This is yet another of your Straw Army.  I've claimed anything about "the most realistic" of anything.  That's just more of your twisting that some others here want to excuse you on.



> If  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s D&D game includes player's narrating their PCs' care for their weapons, then we have at least one counterexample to your claim that _in D&D there is no such dulling or assumed care_. You _seem_ to have in mind the dulling of weapons as a mechanical state of affairs, but your argument would become clearer if you spelled some of these assumptions out, _and_ related them to the thread topic of _processes whereby the shared fiction is established_.




No.  No that would not be a counter example.  For you to show a counter example, you would have to show in the D&D rules where care of weapons is a listed part of the game.  Someone adding it to their D&D game does not do that.



> That's not to say that he's wrong to think that there is no "realistic" inferential pathway from those world-level details to any particular drop that the PCs might find themselves adjacent to. My point is that you don't seem to have a very well-developed sense of the range of RPG mechanics out there, and also the range of mechanical and non-mechanical decision-making processs.




I don't need to have a well developed sense of the range of RPG mechanics.  If an RPG has through it's mechanics, better realism than D&D, then I would have less(or nothing) that I need to do in order to get that game to where I want it to be.  



> Let's go back, for instance, to your claim that deciding which is the more-travelled path in the way [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] suggested upthread - ie on the basis of a player check - is less realistic than [something-or-other]. Such a system can be used to introduce weapon degradation and weapon breakage - 4e Dark Sun uses a version of it, as does Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic. You've said that these systems are not apt to produce realism, yet they have more prospect of yielding instancs of weapon degradation and weapon breakage than does D&D as you would pkay it out of the box, which is - you've said - a mark of realism. What's your response to this apparent contradiction? I've got no idea, because you don't seem to have anticipated it because of the assumptions you make about how RPGing works.




Another Strawman.  I've never said that those systems are unlikely to produce realism.  I said your style of play is less realistic than mine, and based on your various examples of your game play, I stand by that.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> You’ve claimed that the GM making decisions for action resolution or for establishing elements in the fiction is inherently more realistic than other methods.
> 
> I provided an example (fork in the path) and then explained how a GM might decide the answer (method 1) and how another game may have a player make a roll and the GM narrates based on the results of the roll (method 2).
> 
> You seemed to agree that these two methods are equally realistic.
> 
> Therefore, GM deciding by consulting notes is not inherently more realistic.




I didn't make a general claim that making decisions is more realistic than other methods.  I said the DM making a reasonable decision about something weapon breakage, is more realistic than pink bunny dreams resulting in a weapon breaking.



> I didn’t move goal posts. I compared two methods.




Two methods that were both about orange juice(equal realism).  I was talking about making Tang(less realistic) more like orange juice(more realistic).  Your comparison shifted the conversation away from what it was about.



> I’ve never liked how fighters in my game always seem to be free of intestinal concerns. They live on rations and ale and the occasional hank of mutton, but never miss a battle due to stomach issues.
> 
> So I came up with a mechanic whereby we can determine if a fighter has to skip adventuring to spend a day in the privy!
> 
> Would you agree that this mechanic makes my game more realistic than baseline D&D?




Baseline D&D already has mechanics for this. Page 256 of the 5e DMG might help you.  Or you could use the 1e rules for disease.  They're much better and more realistic than the 5e version.  Also, you should probably have these illnesses affect all of the classes.  If you limit them to only fighters for some reason, you are losing realism in other areas.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I didn't make a general claim that making decisions is more realistic than other methods.  I said the DM making a reasonable decision about something weapon breakage, is more realistic than pink bunny dreams resulting in a weapon breaking.



Yes, you asserted this. But you gave no reason for it.



Maxperson said:


> Or you could use the 1e rules for disease.  They're much better and more realistic than the 5e version.  Also, you should probably have these illnesses affect all of the classes.  If you limit them to only fighters for some reason, you are losing realism in other areas.



What is your evidence that the AD&D DMG rules for disease are realistic?

EDIT: Before you start going on again about "twisting" etc - as per [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] upthread, I assume you accept that an _unrealistic_ incidence of disease doesn't increase realism any more than an "unrealistic" absence of disease (which needn't be that unrealistic - not _everyone _in pre-modern times contracted serius diseases).


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Sorry it read that way. The results were not really important for the example so much as the methods.
> 
> In a procedural game that has a more traditional approach, like D&D, the GM typically has all this information at his disposal prior to the PC asking the question. So he looks at his notes and knows the answer. He may then share that info or call for a roll if he thinks it appropriate (if there is a chance of failure, essentially).
> 
> In a more narrative based game, the GM probably doesn’t know which path is more traveled. He asks the player to make the appropriate roll, and then decides what information to provide to the player based on the result of the roll. In this case, let’s say the roll is successful and the GM says the righthand path is more traveled.
> 
> Neither of these approaches is more realistic than the other.



In and of that particular instant and looking at nothing else, both are equally realistic and consistent and valid.

But there's a bigger picture to consider: first the easy one, whether the right-hand path being more travelled makes sense with what has been determined in the fiction leading up to this point; and second the harder one, whether that determination now is going to risk leading to things appearing later that should have (or could have) been known or telegraphed sooner.

In a pre-mapped situation the GM [and maybe everyone, depending whether a) the map is already known or b) someone in the party has flight capabilities and went up to scout] will in theory know what both paths lead to before the party get to the junction, and that knowledge will then inform the tracking results.  Internal logic is maintained.



> Why do you say this? Why can’t the group collectively maintain internal logic?



Because unless the entire idea of setting exploration is denied to the group, the players don't know what's out there that they haven't seen yet.  If for example the GM already knows that the left path leads to an orcish village while the right path leads to a rarely-used dock on a lake then the GM could have in various ways telegraphed or breadcrumbed these things earlier had the opportunity arisen.  But if the GM doesn't know these things then she can't telegraph anything; she can't describe elements of the scene that might very logically be there (e.g. that the traffic on the left path is probably all orc) because she has no way of knowing yet that they would exist.



> Have you played in games where such responsibility was not solely the GM’s?



I don't have to have in this case, if a dumb bozo like me can see how easily it'd fall apart.



> This concern of yours about internal logic falling apart if the GM isn’t the one calling all the shots just seems misplaced. That doesn’t really happen.



The only way it wouldn't happen is if the players were extremely forgiving of inconsistency (which IMO is close to unforgivable if it happens all the time) or simply didn't care enough.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes, you asserted this. But you gave no reason for it.
> 
> What is your evidence that the AD&D DMG rules for disease are realistic?
> 
> EDIT: Before you start going on again about "twisting" etc - as per [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] upthread, I assume you accept that an _unrealistic_ incidence of disease doesn't increase realism any more than an "unrealistic" absence of disease (which needn't be that unrealistic - not _everyone _in pre-modern times contracted serius diseases).




I didn't say they were realistic.  I said they were more realistic than the 5e rules.  Please rephrase your question to take what I said into account.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I don't have to have in this case, if a dumb bozo like me can see how easily it'd fall apart.
> 
> The only way it wouldn't happen is if the players were extremely forgiving of inconsistency (which IMO is close to unforgivable if it happens all the time) or simply didn't care enough.



Ths tells us something about the limits of your imagination. And of your willingness to believe others, given that everyone posting in this thread who has actually used the technique you're talking about is saying, on the basis of their actual experience, that your concern is not warranted.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Ths tells us something about the limits of your imagination. And of your willingness to believe others, given that everyone posting in this thread who has actually used the technique you're talking about is saying, on the basis of their actual experience, that your concern is not warranted.




So first, his imagination seems stronger, not weaker.  He is able to imagine all of those other things that your style doesn't take into account.  Second, those who have used the playstyle have demonstrated that they don't care about the inconsistency he is talking about.  It's not their place to tell him that his concern isn't warranted, when the reason they don't see it is that they don't care about the consistency he cares about.  

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is correct in his concerns.  If he played your playstyle those unforgivable(to him) inconsistencies would rear their ugly heads.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> So first, his imagination seems stronger, not weaker.  He is able to imagine all of those other things that your style doesn't take into account.



What things?

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays an AD&D variant. The elements in his game are ones that I'm very familiar with. The mechanics are also ones that I'm very familiar with (AD&D plus a hp/wound variant, a spell memorisation variant similar to 5e, and I think some critical hit/fumble variants). What are you suggesting his game contains that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s or mine or any other poster on this thread's lacks?



Maxperson said:


> Second, those who have used the playstyle have demonstrated that they don't care about the inconsistency he is talking about.  It's not their place to tell him that his concern isn't warranted, when the reason they don't see it is that they don't care about the consistency he cares about.



What are you talking about?

My actual play posts on these boards count in the dozens. Where are the inconsistencies in the fiction?

This is the bottom line, for me: if you want to make it a competition, I'll put the depth and richness of my gameworlds up against your or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] any day of the week.

If you're not interested in that competition, then instead of making false claims about other people's fictions - eg in that case that it must be riddled with inconsistency - start thinking, instead, about the reasons why they're making their claims.

For instance, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has made it clear that he thinks it is an inconsistency if a surprise emerges in play that has not been previously foreshadowed. But, in fact, in real life surprises occur all the time. People discovered dinosaur fossils around 200 years ago and were surprised. The first time I visited London - a city of millions of people, of whom I knew about half-a-dozen - I bumped into the sister of a friend of mine, whom I'd not seen since my friend's wedding nearly 8 years earlier, walking down the street. There was no foreshadowing beyond my having heard, sometime in the intervening 8 years, that she'd moved to Britain.

This is part of why I dispute that _GM decides for <reasons>_ makes the gameworld more like real life. By making the gameworld more predictable and subjecting it to one person's vision, it actually makes it _less_ like real life.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What things?




Did you read his post?  He stated some examples pretty clearly.



> If you're not interested in that competition, then instead of making false claims about other people's fictions - eg in that case that it must be riddled with inconsistency - start thinking, instead, about the reasons why they're making their claims.




The richness of your game does not invalidate his examples or prevent those sorts of things from occurring in your game.  There are many different areas of game play and a game can be very rich in some areas, and deficient in others.  I'm sure [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that you find important, just like yours is weak in areas that he finds important.  That doesn't mean that your game is less rich than his.  It's just lacking in areas that he prefers.



> For instance,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has made it clear that he thinks it is an inconsistency if a surprise emerges in play that has not been previously foreshadowed. But, in fact, in real life surprises occur all the time. People discovered dinosaur fossils around 200 years ago and were surprised. The first time I visited London - a city of millions of people, of whom I knew about half-a-dozen - I bumped into the sister of a friend of mine, whom I'd not seen since my friend's wedding nearly 8 years earlier, walking down the street. There was no foreshadowing beyond my having heard, sometime in the intervening 8 years, that she'd moved to Britain.




Go back and re-read his last post.  He states clear examples of what he is talking about.



> This is part of why I dispute that _GM decides for <reasons>_ makes the gameworld more like real life. By making the gameworld more predictable and subjecting it to one person's vision, it actually makes it _less_ like real life.




If there were only one quality to realism, that might be true, but there isn't just one quality.  The reasons a DM uses to increase realism can increase it in some areas, even if it decreases it in another, and still result in a net gain to the realism of the situation.  When I come up with reasons that make a situation more realistic, I'm making net gains.  Sure, it doesn't have the same variety of possibilities that real life has, but then it never has had that and never will, no matter what system I might use.  That means that by coming up with my reasons, I'm not losing ground on the possibilities you mention, but I am gaining in the areas that matter to me and my group.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> This is where I think  @_*Maxperson*_ has some assumption in mind as to what an implementation would look like, but isn't articulating it because it hasn't occurred to him that there are other implementations possible in different modes of RPGing.
> 
> I'm assuming he's thinking of some form of "critical failure" which imposes a penalty to hit and/or damage. How it would work in a non-D&D system I assume simply hasn't been thought about.
> 
> That it could be introduced into the fiction without any mechancial change (as  @_*hawkeyefan*_ suggested; and as you and I have both suggested by narrating a "miss" as the result of a dulled edge) seems not to have been thought about either.
> 
> That there is a difference between _introducing a new mechancial subsystem_ and _making something a part of the fiction_ also doesn't seem to have been thought about. I attribute this to the making of assumptions about how RPG systems must be.




I certainly have come (LONG before this thread TBH) that Max only focuses on and really has only internalized one very specific methodology of play. All discussion seems to be filtered through the lens of this one way of playing, and every commentary on play seems to be predicated on this specific game being some sort of universal baseline which need not even be referenced and is just understood to be the only relevant method of play, and one which everyone is automatically completely familiar with and which they are inherently referencing unless some explicit statement conflicts with it (at which point said statement and anything inferred from it must be 'wrong'). 

I find amusing, and then sometimes mildly irritating. Always I am puzzled. It is almost as if one stumbled upon someone living in the middle of Manhattan who has no idea what lies more than 2 blocks in any direction and refers to his surroundings as if they were the whole of the Earth!


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Max only focuses on and really has only internalized one very specific methodology of play. All discussion seems to be filtered through the lens of this one way of playing, and every commentary on play seems to be predicated on this specific game being some sort of universal baseline which need not even be referenced and is just understood to be the only relevant method of play, and one which everyone is automatically completely familiar with and which they are inherently referencing unless some explicit statement conflicts with it



Yes, this is exactly what I mean by referring to unarticulated assumptions about how RPGing "must" be. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is almost as if one stumbled upon someone living in the middle of Manhattan who has no idea what lies more than 2 blocks in any direction and refers to his surroundings as if they were the whole of the Earth!



Well, presumably there are some Manhattan-ites who have the privilege of living their lives in that very fashion! (I live in a country which is rather peripheral in world terms, but am conscious that there are peripheries of the periphery whose inhabitants have to engage with my situation in a way that I don't have to engage with theirs.)

But one wouldn't expect to encounter those particular Manhattan-ites posting in a "rest of the world" forum. Just stick to the I-heart-NYC ones, and maybe even particular subforums.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> What things?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> So first, his imagination seems stronger, not weaker.  He is able to imagine all of those other things that your style doesn't take into account.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What things?
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Did you read his post?  He stated some examples pretty clearly.
Click to expand...


I did read his post. He didn't mention "things" that "my style" doesn't take into account.

Here is a recap of the things that were mentioned:



Lanefan said:


> But there's a bigger picture to consider: first the easy one, whether the right-hand path being more travelled makes sense with what has been determined in the fiction leading up to this point; and second the harder one, whether that determination now is going to risk leading to things appearing later that should have (or could have) been known or telegraphed sooner.
> 
> In a pre-mapped situation the GM [and maybe everyone, depending whether a) the map is already known or b) someone in the party has flight capabilities and went up to scout] will in theory know what both paths lead to before the party get to the junction, and that knowledge will then inform the tracking results.  Internal logic is maintained.
> 
> Because unless the entire idea of setting exploration is denied to the group, the players don't know what's out there that they haven't seen yet.  If for example the GM already knows that the left path leads to an orcish village while the right path leads to a rarely-used dock on a lake then the GM could have in various ways telegraphed or breadcrumbed these things earlier had the opportunity arisen.  But if the GM doesn't know these things then she can't telegraph anything; she can't describe elements of the scene that might very logically be there (e.g. that the traffic on the left path is probably all orc) because she has no way of knowing yet that they would exist.



Which of these do you think I haven't thought of? The fictional elements, like orc villages and little-used docks? The storytelling techniques, such as that narration should build on what has already occurred?

I've thought of these things. The first sort are pretty common tropes in FRPGing. The idea of building on established fiction, and certainly not contradicting it, is very commonplace. Keeping it in mind is in fact one of the ways to avoid the inconsistencies that yoiu and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seem to think are inevitable in "no myth" RPGing.



Maxperson said:


> The richness of your game does not invalidate his examples or prevent those sorts of things from occurring in your game.  There are many different areas of game play and a game can be very rich in some areas, and deficient in others.  I'm sure  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that you find important, just like yours is weak in areas that he finds important.  That doesn't mean that your game is less rich than his.  It's just lacking in areas that he prefers.



I know that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that I find important, because he has said as much. For instance, he has made it clear that he authors scenarios and adventures without regard to evinced player interests and PC builds.

But you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] are making a very concrete assertion about a particular alleged weakness in my game - namely, that my gameplay does (because it _must_) contain inconsistencies in the fiction that result from "no myth" narration. I'm denying this, and inviting you - by reference to my very extensive posting of actual play reports - to indicate the examples you have in mind.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The reasons a DM uses to increase realism can increase it in some areas, even if it decreases it in another, and still result in a net gain to the realism of the situation.  When I come up with reasons that make a situation more realistic, I'm making net gains.



I don't understand what point you are trying to make here.

Are you simply saying that one game can be more realistic than another? (Eg compare Heroic tier to Epic tier 4e D&D - only the latter involves heroes who can fall hundreds of feet and walk away largely unscathed.)

That is not what the OP of this thread is concerned with. The OP maks a particular claim: that the GM deciding what the gameworld contains by "logical extrapolation", and hence deciding what the PCs encounter in the gameworld, does not make the game _like_, or _more _like, real life. Other ways of doing this - the most obvious being some sort of chance-to-meet-NPCs mechanic (be that Streetwise, or Circles, or a variant of Commune with Nature, or whatever) - are just as, or even more, life-like in the results they produce, and no less like real life in respect of the process.

As for your current focus on weapon degradation rules and disease rules: whether or not introducing these into a RPG makes it more or less realistic seems to depend almost entirely on the details of the relevant subsystem. You mentioned the AD&D disease subsystem: I'm not persuaded that that increase the realism of the game at all, in part because I'm doubtful about the incidence of serious disease that it posits, but more because it produces discordance with other game systems (eg disease make people physically weaker by degrading their stats, but being beaten up to the point of unconsciousness doesn't).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I did read his post. He didn't mention "things" that "my style" doesn't take into account.




It's right here...



> But there's a bigger picture to consider: first the easy one, whether the right-hand path being more travelled makes sense with what has been determined in the fiction leading up to this point; and second the harder one, whether that determination now is going to risk leading to things appearing later that should have (or could have) been known or telegraphed sooner.
> 
> In a pre-mapped situation the GM [and maybe everyone, depending whether a) the map is already known or b) someone in the party has flight capabilities and went up to scout] will in theory know what both paths lead to before the party get to the junction, *and that knowledge will then inform the tracking results*. Internal logic is maintained.




You don't pre-author, so your style has that inherent weakness.  If there are a tribe of orcs down the trail of both your game and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, only in his game will I be able to find orc tracks down the right path if the tribe has not been authored yet in yours.  Once you author the tribe, the lack of tracks is a glaring inconsistency to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].  These sorts of inconsistencies will grow and grow as your game goes on and more and more is authored.

It's a weakness of your playstyle and a strength of his, just as your playstyle has strengths that his doesn't and his has weaknesses that yours doesn't.  It's not some slight against you that your style is weak in areas.  All styles have strengths and weaknesses.  This is just one of yours.



> I know that  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game is weak in areas that I find important, because he has said as much. For instance, he has made it clear that he authors scenarios and adventures without regard to evinced player interests and PC builds.




Just as he knows that yours is weak in areas that he finds important.  For my part, I'm more forgiving than he is.  My game falls in-between both of yours, though probably closer to his.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't understand what point you are trying to make here.




I'm saying that if I want to add in a bunch of diseases that exist in the real world to my game, that increases the realism.  Can I think of all diseases?  Of course not.  There are more of them in this world than modern science has discovered.  That I can't come up with all diseases does not detract from the increase in realism, though.  Why?  Because prior to that the game also did not have all of them.  

No game can cover everything the real world might offer up as a possibility, so my failure to include all possibilities does not make the game more unrealistic in any way.  The game was already unrealistic in that manner before I added more realism to it. 



> As for your current focus on weapon degradation rules and disease rules: whether or not introducing these into a RPG makes it more or less realistic seems to depend almost entirely on the details of the relevant subsystem. You mentioned the AD&D disease subsystem: I'm not persuaded that that increase the realism of the game at all, in part because I'm doubtful about the incidence of serious disease that it posits, but more because it produces discordance with other game systems (eg disease make people physically weaker by degrading their stats, but being beaten up to the point of unconsciousness doesn't).




As I pointed out to you, you don't have to make things mirror real life to increase realism.  Nor do you have to account for every possible interaction.  To your point above.  The 1e disease rules would in fact add more realism to the game as they stand.  Would it add MORE realism to the game to make PCs physically weaker if they get beat to the point of unconsciousness?  Yes.  I don't have to make that change in order for the disease rules to increase the realism of the game, though.  Increasing realism is not about mirroring reality, no matter how often you repeat that.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The 1e disease rules would in fact add more realism to the game as they stand.  Would it add MORE realism to the game to make PCs physically weaker if they get beat to the point of unconsciousness?  Yes.  I don't have to make that change in order for the disease rules to increase the realism of the game, though.  Increasing realism is not about mirroring reality, no matter how often you repeat that.



One reason you are drawing sceptical responses (at least from me, and I'm pretty sure [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] also has this in mind) is that taken on it's own this claim seems to make no sense.

For instance, declaring that every NPC the PCs meet has smallpox would be _introducing a real world element_ into the fiction, but clearly would not make the game more realistic.

When we look at the AD&D DMG disease rules, there are a number of questions that come up: is the incidence of serious and fatal diseases realistic in the pseudo-mediaeval context? is it realistic when we include the existence of clerical magic which makes it easy to purify water and not too hard to cure diseases?

And then, when we compare how the disease rules work to how the generic injury rules work, we get the further question: is it realistic that any debilitated person suffered the debility from a disease rather than (say) a weapon blow?

Your apparent insistence that all these questions are irrelevant, and that _any_ reference in the fiction of a game to some element derived from the real world makes the game more realistic, is very odd.



Maxperson said:


> I'm saying that if I want to add in a bunch of diseases that exist in the real world to my game, that increases the realism.



What does "add in" mean?

My Traveller game includes chronic diseases as elements in the fiction: for instance, we have a high-STR/low-END PC whose backstory includes (in order to explain this apparent disparity) chronic heart disease. But there is no _mechanical subystem_ for dealing with this. It's just fiction introduced retroactively to explain a mechanical outcome.

And as I already posted, not any old "adding in" will increase the realism of the game. If every NPC has smallpox, that's not realistic. If every sword breaks every time it is swung, that's not realistic. Etc. Realism isn't just about the presence of certain phenomena: it's intimately connected to their incidence, their imagined genesis, etc.



Maxperson said:


> You don't pre-author, so your style has that inherent weakness.



The only "weakness" you've pointed to (by way of bolding [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s post) is that because I don't pre-author I won't have pre-authored material to establish which path is the more travelled. That's self-evident. (Tautological, even.) But you were defending Lanefan's claim that this will lead to inconsistent fiction. _That_ is what [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] and I are denying.



Maxperson said:


> If there are a tribe of orcs down the trail of both your game and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, only in his game will I be able to find orc tracks down the right path if the tribe has not been authored yet in yours.



This makes no sense. If you go down the right path and observe no tracks, then either (i) there's no village, or (ii) for some reason there are no tracks to find. (Eg it's a village of ghosts.)



Maxperson said:


> Once you author the tribe, the lack of tracks is a glaring inconsistency to  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].



But why would anyone author inconsistent fiction?

I mean, yes, inconsistent fiction is inconsistent. That's a tautology too. But why would someone author such a thing?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> One reason you are drawing sceptical responses (at least from me, and I'm pretty sure [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] also has this in mind) is that taken on it's own this claim seems to make no sense.
> 
> For instance, declaring that every NPC the PCs meet has smallpox would be _introducing a real world element_ into the fiction, but clearly would not make the game more realistic.
> 
> When we look at the AD&D DMG disease rules, there are a number of questions that come up: is the incidence of serious and fatal diseases realistic in the pseudo-mediaeval context? is it realistic when we include the existence of clerical magic which makes it easy to purify water and not too hard to cure diseases?
> 
> And then, when we compare how the disease rules work to how the generic injury rules work, we get the further question: is it realistic that any debilitated person suffered the debility from a disease rather than (say) a weapon blow?
> 
> Your apparent insistence that all these questions are irrelevant, and that _any_ reference in the fiction of a game to some element derived from the real world makes the game more realistic, is very odd.
> 
> What does "add in" mean?
> 
> My Traveller game includes chronic diseases as elements in the fiction: for instance, we have a high-STR/low-END PC whose backstory includes (in order to explain this apparent disparity) chronic heart disease. But there is no _mechanical subystem_ for dealing with this. It's just fiction introduced retroactively to explain a mechanical outcome.
> 
> And as I already posted, not any old "adding in" will increase the realism of the game. If every NPC has smallpox, that's not realistic. If every sword breaks every time it is swung, that's not realistic. Etc. Realism isn't just about the presence of certain phenomena: it's intimately connected to their incidence, their imagined genesis, etc.




Coming up with a corner case scenario that DMs aren't going to use doesn't disprove what I'm saying.



> The only "weakness" you've pointed to (by way of bolding [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s post) is that because I don't pre-author I won't have pre-authored material to establish which path is the more travelled. That's self-evident. (Tautological, even.) But you were defending Lanefan's claim that this will lead to inconsistent fiction. _That_ is what [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] and I are denying.
> 
> This makes no sense. If you go down the right path and observe no tracks, then either (i) there's no village, or (ii) for some reason there are no tracks to find. (Eg it's a village of ghosts.)
> 
> But why would anyone author inconsistent fiction?
> 
> I mean, yes, inconsistent fiction is inconsistent. That's a tautology too. But why would someone author such a thing?




Such inconsistent authoring is unavoidable with the style of play you engage in.  Or do you really expect me to believe that before any player authors anything in the fiction, you guys stop and go over ever single thing ever authored in that campaign to see if it results in any type of inconsistency and cease that specific case of authoring if it does?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Coming up with a corner case scenario that DMs aren't going to use doesn't disprove what I'm saying.



Well, it does disprove that _any_ addition of real-world elements into the fiction will increase the realism.

But the actual point of my example isn't to disprove your claim: it's to show that your claim is underdeveloped, and indeed so underdeveloped as to not be up for evaluation, or even really understanding, by others. Until you explain _what you mean_ by "adding in" real world elements, only you know what you are thinking of.

I mean, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I already gave the example of a D&D GM narrating a miss as due to a dulled blade, which is perfectly possible under the existing D&D rules. And I gaven the parallel Traveller example of explaining a PC's stats as the result of a heart condition. But by "adding in" you seem to have in mind the introduction of some sort of mechanical subsystem (like the AD&D system for disease); which then invites points of the sort that the two of us have made, such as that such systems don't increase realism if they yield unrealistic results in the fiction.

Until you try and explain what you mean by "adding in" real world elements, and why some forms of "adding in" count differently from others, you're not going to get much traction for your assertion. And you're certainly not going to persuade me that my campaigns are "less realistic" than yours or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, given that you're both running D&D variants whereas I'm running systems (Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller, heck even Prince Valiant in some respects) that are far more gritty than D&D is capable of being given it's core mechanics of class, level and hit points. And even the non-gritty systems I'm running (Prince Valiant in some of its respects; 4e D&D; Cortex+ Heroic) establish a fiction at least as verisimilitudinous and rich in descriptive details (including dropped weapons, various sorts of injuries, locations and the people who inhabit them) as anything either of you has pointed to in your own games.



Maxperson said:


> Such inconsistent authoring is unavoidable with the style of play you engage in.  Or do you really expect me to believe that before any player authors anything in the fiction, you guys stop and go over ever single thing ever authored in that campaign to see if it results in any type of inconsistency and cease that specific case of authoring if it does?



Hang on - are you telling me that _before you say anything as GM_ you check it against a written record of _every bit of fiction ever produced in your campaign_? Or do you rely on memory when doing your prep and when making decisions in the course of play (such as whether or not any sect members are in the teahouse)?

At my tabel we rely primarily on memory but secondarily on notes. (I suspect that this is what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and you also rely on.)

I believe that much of what you and Lanefan call _inconsistency_ is really _ambiguity_ or _uncertainty_. For instance, in my 4e campaign there is uncertainty about how old the world is; and about the precise sequence in which certain events occurred before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the Dawn War. But given that only one PC (the deva invoker/wizard, who having become a Sage of Ages has access to all the memories of his previous incarnations) has the possibility of access to such knowledge, and he hasn't attempted to ascertain and document it all, the uncertainty makes sense. And gives the campaign a trueness to life that encyclopedia-style campaign timelines undermine!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Well, it does disprove that _any_ addition of real-world elements into the fiction will increase the realism.
> 
> But the actual point of my example isn't to disprove your claim: it's to show that your claim is underdeveloped, and indeed so underdeveloped as to not be up for evaluation, or even really understanding, by others. Until you explain _what you mean_ by "adding in" real world elements, only you know what you are thinking of.




It's self-evident, though.  The real world elements are the diseases and other rules in the 1e DMG.  I said so.  Those don't exist in the 5e rules, so you have to add them in.



> I mean,  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I already gave the example of a D&D GM narrating a miss as due to a dulled blade, which is perfectly possible under the existing D&D rules. And I gaven the parallel Traveller example of explaining a PC's stats as the result of a heart condition. But by "adding in" you seem to have in mind the introduction of some sort of mechanical subsystem (like the AD&D system for disease); which then invites points of the sort that the two of us have made, such as that such systems don't increase realism if they yield unrealistic results in the fiction.




It's possible in D&D if the blade was dull when the players found it, the DM let the players know, and incorporated a mechanical penalty which could cause a miss.  But if the blade wasn't dull to begin with, such as being a blade owned by a PC, then it's not a possibility as there are no rules for dulling weapons, requirements to maintain weapons, or mechanical penalties to a dull blade that would cause a miss.  Making such a ruling in D&D absent those circumstances creates one of those inconsistencies we are discussing.  You now have a sharp blade that missed due to being dull.  That's fairly inconsistent.

 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was talking in general with his statement, not coming up with a D&D specific example.  His example fails when talking about D&D, but is something that could work under another system.



> Hang on - are you telling me that _before you say anything as GM_ you check it against a written record of _every bit of fiction ever produced in your campaign_? Or do you rely on memory when doing your prep and when making decisions in the course of play (such as whether or not any sect members are in the teahouse)?




When I used to prep everything, I already had all the consistent information available at my fingertips.  Now, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, I'm more forgiving about things like minor inconsistencies.  I have to be since I don't have time to prep everything and do a lot of on the spot improvisation.  Due to that improvisation, those inconsistencies crop up, though not as often as if I used a system where I did no advance prep.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I didn't make a general claim that making decisions is more realistic than other methods.  I said the DM making a reasonable decision about something weapon breakage, is more realistic than pink bunny dreams resulting in a weapon breaking.




My apologies....if I'd realized that this was your point, I would not have replied at all. 



Maxperson said:


> Two methods that were both about orange juice(equal realism).  I was talking about making Tang(less realistic) more like orange juice(more realistic).  Your comparison shifted the conversation away from what it was about.




I'm struggling to understand this analogy. 

Aren't we discussing comparative methods? Method A compared to Method B? 

If you're point is that Method A is better than no method at all, I suppose you may be on to something. I just don't know if it's all that meaningful. I also think it does nothing to comment on Method B or Method C, which seems to be what you're trying to do. 



Maxperson said:


> Baseline D&D already has mechanics for this. Page 256 of the 5e DMG might help you.  Or you could use the 1e rules for disease.  They're much better and more realistic than the 5e version.  Also, you should probably have these illnesses affect all of the classes.  If you limit them to only fighters for some reason, you are losing realism in other areas.




Well, only the fighter in my campaign has a diet where I worry about incontinence! The wizard lets at least the occasional vegetable pass his lips, and the Cleric worships a nature deity, so he's practically a vegetarian. The diseases listed in the DMG seem much more impactful than the minor thing I'm talking about.....they're self-described plot devices more than anything else. I prefer to keep my game realistic...and certainly most people will face minor illnesses more often than major diseases....so I'll add a mechanic to handle this!

That's more realistic, right?


----------



## Satyrn

hawkeyefan said:


> . . . the Cleric worships a nature deity, so he's practically a vegetarian.




Correlation does not imply causation!

Or: 

The nature deity wouldn't have made cows so delicious if we weren't supposed to eat them.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> In and of that particular instant and looking at nothing else, both are equally realistic and consistent and valid.
> 
> But there's a bigger picture to consider: first the easy one, whether the right-hand path being more travelled makes sense with what has been determined in the fiction leading up to this point; and second the harder one, whether that determination now is going to risk leading to things appearing later that should have (or could have) been known or telegraphed sooner.




On the first point, I would say that predetermining things actually creates more risk of inconsistency. Certainly a new element that is introduced can't contradict what hasn't been established, right? So this seems a pretty pointless concern. 

On the second, I would say that this is a more valid concern, but that I think it's far less of a big deal than you seem to think. There's nothing that says new elements introduced in a more narrative game must come from absolutely nowhere. You can build to things just as you can in a traditional RPG. 




Lanefan said:


> In a pre-mapped situation the GM [and maybe everyone, depending whether a) the map is already known or b) someone in the party has flight capabilities and went up to scout] will in theory know what both paths lead to before the party get to the junction, and that knowledge will then inform the tracking results.  Internal logic is maintained.




If they already know the areas beyond the branching paths, then there's no real need to focus on the amount of traffic at the fork. Certainly the traffic at the fork might be the trigger for such exploration....which can then be narrated accordingly in either method. The GM can read the boxed text or paraphrase from his notes, or the GM can call for dice rolls, and then construct what is found there based on the results. 

I think that in this case, the predetermination may be helpful for some GMs. I myself find that kind of stuff very helpful, depending on what it is. But I also love determining things on the fly. Or a combination of the two things, which is I think what most narrative games really are; the GM has ideas about what may come up, often very informed by what would be challenging or meaningful to the characters, and then lets the dice roll to determine how those things come into play. 




Lanefan said:


> Because unless the entire idea of setting exploration is denied to the group, the players don't know what's out there that they haven't seen yet.  If for example the GM already knows that the left path leads to an orcish village while the right path leads to a rarely-used dock on a lake then the GM could have in various ways telegraphed or breadcrumbed these things earlier had the opportunity arisen.  But if the GM doesn't know these things then she can't telegraph anything; she can't describe elements of the scene that might very logically be there (e.g. that the traffic on the left path is probably all orc) because she has no way of knowing yet that they would exist.




I think this is likely one area where the misconception of narrative games comes up.....it's not all being determined on the fly by improv. Certainly the PCs are heading in a certain way for some reason. Very likely they have an idea of what challenges may lay ahead. The GM'll have an idea about all this regardless of the game type, and likely have discussed this with the players in one way or another. 




Lanefan said:


> I don't have to have in this case, if a dumb bozo like me can see how easily it'd fall apart.




Actually, you do. I mean, if you want to have an informed opinion. You can certainly put forth any assumptions you want about anything. But without actual knowledge to back them up, that's all they are.....assumptions. Even the ones that may turn out to be correct, they are mere assumptions. 



Lanefan said:


> The only way it wouldn't happen is if the players were extremely forgiving of inconsistency (which IMO is close to unforgivable if it happens all the time) or simply didn't care enough.




I can imagine that it may seem this way without having firsthand experience. But you are incorrect. There's nothing about such games that makes them more prone to inconsistency than any other game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I don't have to have in this case, if a dumb bozo like me can see how easily it'd fall apart.
> 
> The only way it wouldn't happen is if the players were extremely forgiving of inconsistency (which IMO is close to unforgivable if it happens all the time) or simply didn't care enough.




I don't think it would be especially prone to falling apart. First of all, there's no guarantee whatsoever that any indication is needed. In your example there's no reason to believe that the orcs left especially recognizable signs, nor that anyone in fact made an attempt to look for them.

Beyond that, in HoML for example, there are ample ways in which a player could determine that orcs are on the right hand path. He could simply utilize some kind of ability which would let him determine this, or he could expend inspiration and decide that his 'raised by orcs' background should be leveraged so he can visit an orc village. The GM might well respond to this with "it appears that many orcs have traveled to the right."

I would be exceedingly surprised if players noticed or complained of 'inconsistency'. Even in classic D&D games I have both run and played in I almost never heard such a complaint, unless the GM sprung some total gotcha on the players.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Yes, this is exactly what I mean by referring to unarticulated assumptions about how RPGing "must" be.
> 
> Well, presumably there are some Manhattan-ites who have the privilege of living their lives in that very fashion! (I live in a country which is rather peripheral in world terms, but am conscious that there are peripheries of the periphery whose inhabitants have to engage with my situation in a way that I don't have to engage with theirs.)
> 
> But one wouldn't expect to encounter those particular Manhattan-ites posting in a "rest of the world" forum. Just stick to the I-heart-NYC ones, and maybe even particular subforums.




It is the posting on the 'rest of the world forum' to inform the guy who got lost in the backwoods of Maine that finding your way is a simple procedure of going down to the next cross street and turning right or left as needed. 

TBH, I just find the objections that are made to narrative play to be essentially 'spherical cows'. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] complains that 'inconsistencies will arise', yet in 1000's of sessions of actual play I have seen little sign of any of these inconsistencies. Nor has classical play convinced me that GMs are particular apt at attending to every possible inconsistency. I can't say I believe that there is any greater likelihood that any given GM running a game in 'classic' style is more likely to do so than that the players and GM in a scene framing exercise will produce narrative which seems consistent. Thus these sorts of objections and observations, particularly as they aren't based on comparing styles of play both of which the commentator has experience with, are really just sort of 'sphere world' kind of objections. You can invent them, hypothetically they might arise, but in terms of actually playing actual RPGs they simply don't become concerns.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The only "weakness" you've pointed to (by way of bolding @_*Lanefan*_'s post) is that because I don't pre-author I won't have pre-authored material to establish which path is the more travelled. That's self-evident. (Tautological, even.) But you were defending Lanefan's claim that this will lead to inconsistent fiction. _That_ is what @_*Hawkeye*_ and I are denying.
> 
> This makes no sense. If you go down the right path and observe no tracks, then either (i) there's no village, or (ii) for some reason there are no tracks to find. (Eg it's a village of ghosts.)




I don't even see any real need to go this far. When did it last rain in this spot in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game? I would be fairly surprised if a ready answer exists to this question in most cases. How hard or soft is the soil? What exact sorts of undergrowth and conditions prevail on and around this trail? Without knowing these things there isn't any way to assign some sort of probability to the question of whether or not orc tracks are likely to be spotted. In fact it is merely a supposition, one designed to support a particular opinion about different types of game play, which leads to this 'orc track objection'. 

In fact, this is basically exactly the same sort of blindness which leads to the whole set of assertions about GM-directed classic 'high myth' play WRT a more dynamic 'story now' zero myth style of play. The GM/commentator in both cases simply makes assumptions and draws conclusions on these assumptions and then labels them 'facts' or 'logical deductions' when in fact they're not, they're just making stuff up! This is a fine way to play, but elevating it to some higher plane where it is 'more realistic' or 'more consistent' seems like just plain blindness to me.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Such inconsistent authoring is unavoidable with the style of play you engage in.  Or do you really expect me to believe that before any player authors anything in the fiction, you guys stop and go over ever single thing ever authored in that campaign to see if it results in any type of inconsistency and cease that specific case of authoring if it does?




Yup! Just as likely that we will do that in my game as that you will carefully note down every single offhand assumption and bit of reasoning you went through to come up with every little detail in your game, and then manage to index and crosscheck them all and maintain this sort of database across years of play.

And lest you believe I am not fully cognizant of all the issues with doing this. I have 10 three-ring binders, and several boxes full of other papers and notes on my D&D campaign(s). I also have a very extensive wiki which I use to keep track of everything I can. It is absolutely a monstrous task, and I am utterly certain (because I've many times discovered it myself) that there are inconsistencies, forgotten and overlooked material, etc. all over the place in that mass. 

Even in shorter and more restricted campaigns I've run it is unlikely that, using your sort of techniques, I would be able to attain full consistency. I wouldn't expect the game to be any more consistent in fact than one I would author on the fly using 'Pemertonian' techniques today.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> When I used to prep everything, I already had all the consistent information available at my fingertips.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> When did it last rain in this spot in   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game? I would be fairly surprised if a ready answer exists to this question in most cases. How hard or soft is the soil? What exact sorts of undergrowth and conditions prevail on and around this trail? Without knowing these things there isn't any way to assign some sort of probability to the question of whether or not orc tracks are likely to be spotted. In fact it is merely a supposition, one designed to support a particular opinion about different types of game play, which leads to this 'orc track objection'.



A variation on  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s objection would seem to be the following:

* The players ask about the colour of the ceiling in the dungeon room;

* The GM, who has no notes on this (in my experience it's rare for module descriptions to note ceiling colours), narrates that it's red;

* The players note the following inconsistency and/or lack of telegraphing - no spots of red paint on the floor or walls were mentioned, and yet there are no drop sheets in the dungeon inventory!​
Or even this old standby:

* The GM's account of the details of the orc village includes the weaponsmith, and a forge, but doesn't itemise any carpentry tools - and yet the orcs are narrated as living in timber dwellings not all of which are in total disrepair!​
I think the Keep in B2 suffers from this "inconsistency", actually; I'm not sure about the village in T1.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is a fine way to play, but elevating it to some higher plane where it is 'more realistic' or 'more consistent' seems like just plain blindness to me.




I believe the idea is that these additional elements (attempting to mirror instances within real life), are to provide a more immersive experience and/or to provide a hardcore form of gaming. At some point these additional elements slow the game down and a balance needs to be struck.

The idea that these additional elements are fixed within the mechanics (daily weather, weapon/armour depreciation...etc) might have some proclaim that their game is 'more realistic' than others whose game does not have such mechanics. Do these systems emulate everything within RL, of course not.

EDIT: I think the argument that everything needs to be as in real life or otherwise nothing is, is a fairly weak one. It does not further conversation or understanding between parties to only speak in absolutes. The use of the word _more_ in "more realism" is indicative that the conversation is not about absolutes.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Ths tells us something about the limits of your imagination.



How, dare I ask?


> And of your willingness to believe others, given that everyone posting in this thread who has actually used the technique you're talking about is saying, on the basis of their actual experience, that your concern is not warranted.



Actually, it's possible my concerns are coming from the fact that I *do* believe you guys - or at least what shows up in your game logs and posts - and from that can quickly realize that were I in one of those games the following sequence would very likely happen before long:

 - I'd notice inconsistencies and would call them out
 - I'd want to *know what was being skipped* between the "scenes" and whether any of it might have been (or been made to be) relevant had we been told of it (I'd often be saying "Wait a minute", "back it up here", "stop jumping ahead", and the like; and be constantly asking for more detail and-or description of things beyond just the scene being framed)
 - after a while of this I'd get frustrated, probably followed by a brief period of angry
 - after this I'd eventually come to realize that the only answer is to view that game/campaign as something considerably less than serious, and proceed on that basis.

And before you jump in with your inevitable reply to the bolded bit above: "know what was being skipped" does NOT mean role-playing making breakfast every morning or other such trivialities, it means that instead of jumping straight from one encounter to the next you allow us to explore the potential options and decide what we'll do next.  

We're in the bazaar looking for a clue to help sort out my brother and we've decided we won't leave until we find one?  Then let us explore the whole bazaar and maybe spend the time to role-play chatting with ten or fifteen merchants if that's what it takes (even if it takes all session or maybe longer!) rather than framing us straight to the feather merchant that turns out to have the clue we seek.  Why?  Because maybe after the first six merchants we change our minds and decide hey, maybe the clue isn't to be found here after all, let's go look somewhere else.  And because maybe while we're doing all this our party thief is busy robbing these same merchants blind while we distract them... 

EDIT TO ADD: In short, it's a question of pacing: I'd probably want a much slower and more detailed pace of play than this type of game (as evidenced by the various logs I've read) would tend to give.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> What things?
> 
> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays an AD&D variant. The elements in his game are ones that I'm very familiar with. The mechanics are also ones that I'm very familiar with (AD&D plus a hp/wound variant, a spell memorisation variant similar to 5e, and I think some critical hit/fumble variants). What are you suggesting his game contains that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s or mine or any other poster on this thread's lacks?



There's a bit more - and a bit less - to my game than that; if you want to see the basic player side rules look here:

http://www.friendsofgravity.com/games/commons_room/blue_books/decast-blue-book-in-html/index.html

Spell write-ups, pantheons, and setting info all have their own pages.  Sorry, though, but most of the DM-side stuff isn't online (yet).



> What are you talking about?
> 
> My actual play posts on these boards count in the dozens. Where are the inconsistencies in the fiction?
> 
> This is the bottom line, for me: if you want to make it a competition, I'll put the depth and richness of my gameworlds up against your or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] any day of the week.



And, were it a competition, I've no doubt that we'd both have our good and bad moments.

However, the question is more one of how much of that depth and richness do your players ever get to see or hear about - should they so desire - beyond that which is in the framed scenes?



> For instance, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has made it clear that he thinks it is an inconsistency if a surprise emerges in play that has not been previously foreshadowed.



Er, not quite.

I think it's an inconsistency if something - doesn't have to be a surprise at all - emerges in play the existence of which would have (or easily could have) made a difference to previous play had said "something" been known of or thought of at the time said previous play occurred.  For an example, look no further than my own sad tale of the missing wagon tracks from way upthread.



> But, in fact, in real life surprises occur all the time. People discovered dinosaur fossils around 200 years ago and were surprised. The first time I visited London - a city of millions of people, of whom I knew about half-a-dozen - I bumped into the sister of a friend of mine, whom I'd not seen since my friend's wedding nearly 8 years earlier, walking down the street. There was no foreshadowing beyond my having heard, sometime in the intervening 8 years, that she'd moved to Britain.



Surprises do occur all the time...but even then sometimes you can think back and realize that some previous things you maybe thought irrelevant at the time were in fact related and-or leading up to this surprise event. 

Dinosaur fossils were noticed long before 200 years ago but were either ignored, not followed up on, or fell victim to wild and inaccurate speculation (here be dragons!); what happened 200 years ago was that some people suddenly realized what they really were and were then able to tie a bunch of previous observations etc. (i.e. years if not centuries of "foreshadowing") together.

The consistency was, in hindsight, always present.  And that's what I'm after in the game.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Hang on - are you telling me that _before you say anything as GM_ you check it against a written record of _every bit of fiction ever produced in your campaign_? Or do you rely on memory when doing your prep and when making decisions in the course of play (such as whether or not any sect members are in the teahouse)?
> 
> At my tabel we rely primarily on memory but secondarily on notes. (I suspect that this is what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and you also rely on.)



I rely on memory when I can but my memory only goes so far.  My current campaign has been going for over ten years now and believe me, if I didn't have fairly detailed (if often only in point form) game logs to fall back on I'd be screwed.  Even then I make mistakes, but I try my best to keep them to a dull roar. 



> I believe that much of what you and Lanefan call _inconsistency_ is really _ambiguity_ or _uncertainty_. For instance, in my 4e campaign there is uncertainty about how old the world is; and about the precise sequence in which certain events occurred before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the Dawn War. But given that only one PC (the deva invoker/wizard, who having become a Sage of Ages has access to all the memories of his previous incarnations) has the possibility of access to such knowledge, and he hasn't attempted to ascertain and document it all, the uncertainty makes sense. And gives the campaign a trueness to life that encyclopedia-style campaign timelines undermine!



Uncertainty and-or ambiguity can be great!

And even relatively detailed campaign-history timelines can leave lots of holes and gaps to be filled in later.  Hell, those gaps are what I've been mining for stories and plots for most of this campaign! 

If nothing else, a timeline tells what happened when - but it doesn't always say why it happened or what caused it to happen...


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> A variation on  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s objection would seem to be the following:
> 
> * The players ask about the colour of the ceiling in the dungeon room;
> 
> * The GM, who has no notes on this (in my experience it's rare for module descriptions to note ceiling colours), narrates that it's red;
> 
> * The players note the following inconsistency and/or lack of telegraphing - no spots of red paint on the floor or walls were mentioned, and yet there are no drop sheets in the dungeon inventory!​



No, the players wonder why we weren't told the light coming from the room had a somewhat redder hue than usual when we saw it from down the hall. (such an observation would inform us that there's maybe something odd here which might lead us to take more time and-or spend more resources than usual, e.g. spells, in our approach to this room - even though it turns out to be completely mundane in the end)

This is the sort of thing that gets missed.



> Or even this old standby:
> 
> * The GM's account of the details of the orc village includes the weaponsmith, and a forge, but doesn't itemise any carpentry tools - and yet the orcs are narrated as living in timber dwellings not all of which are in total disrepair!​
> I think the Keep in B2 suffers from this "inconsistency", actually; I'm not sure about the village in T1.



This is in fact exactly the sort of thing I get annoyed with; particularly if my character has any interest in carpentry.   And sure, there's ways to explain away almost everything but it gets to be a bit much if this has to be done all the time.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> What I find curious is that everyone understands the plain words of "more realism" and accept it on D&D material, whether it be stuff from the DMs Guild or the monthly D&D booklet (forget its name now) that Enworld produces for 5e - and yet when Max uses it ppl lose their minds and need all sorts of measures and what not.
> 
> EDIT: Latest En5isder.
> Really wonder if a thread needs to opened up to discuss Mike Myler's definition of the words "more realistic"



I disagree. Everyone brings their own notions about what "more realism" means, but that does not mean that a singular understanding is equally shared. It just means that everyone has their own set of expectations. This brings us back to one of my first posts in this thread that started this mess with Max: 


Aldarc said:


> Even ignoring the fantastical elements within the most popular genre of TTRPG play, I'm not sure if I would call it 'realism' by any reasonable metric. Often that appeal to realism is selectively applied, if not prejudiciously, by both the game system and the participants, typically with some other goal or value in mind. 'Realism' is likely a smokescreen for some other issue(s). This is to say, I don't necessarily think that 'realism' is the genuine goal of people who claim they desire 'realism' in their TTRPG, especially D&D.



Emphasizing here my earlier point that appeals to "realism" typically masks other play preferences (e.g., immersion, genre aesthetic, etc.) rather than representing an actual concern for "realism" itself. When I see a game or supplement offering "more realism," then that usually raises a red flag or two for me. I don't know what "more realism" means in a RPG because everyone has wildly different ideas about what "more realism" entails mechanically that it is fairly meaningless. We do not so much "accept it" as much as our eyes glaze past it as a meaningless buzz phrase that generally prefaces the revelation of particular play preferences and mechanics. 



Sadras said:


> I believe the idea is that these additional elements (attempting to mirror instances within real life), are to provide a more immersive experience and/or to provide a hardcore form of gaming. At some point these additional elements slow the game down and a balance needs to be struck.
> 
> The idea that these additional elements are fixed within the mechanics (daily weather, weapon/armour depreciation...etc) might have some proclaim that their game is 'more realistic' than others whose game does not have such mechanics. Do these systems emulate everything within RL, of course not.



I would suggest that your post supports my point above that "realism" in this debate is a smokescreen about other play preferences (e.g., internal coherence of fiction, play procedures, immersion, etc.) rather than what constitutes "more realism."


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I disagree.




Are you saying En5sider's use of the term "more realistic" in the link I provided is unfamiliar or ambiguous to you?



> Emphasizing here my earlier point that appeals to "realism" typically masks other *play preferences* (e.g., immersion, genre aesthetic, etc.) rather than representing an actual concern for "realism" itself. When I see a game or supplement offering "more realism," then that usually raises a red flag or two for me. I don't know what "more realism" means in a RPG because everyone has wildly different ideas about what "more realism" entails mechanically that it is fairly meaningless. We do not so much "accept it" as much as our eyes glaze past it as a meaningless buzz phrase that generally prefaces the revelation of particular play preferences and mechanics.
> 
> I would suggest that your post supports my point above that "realism" in this debate is a smokescreen about other play preferences (e.g., internal coherence of fiction, play procedures, immersion, etc.) rather than what constitutes "more realism."




Bold emphasis mine. Ignore play preferences / motives for mechanic.

Armour in RL depreciates due to wear and tear for whatever reasons.
A system that includes a mechanic (abstract as it is) for accounting for the depreciation of armour is attempting to mirror RL more so than a game that does not account for the depreciation of armour, for that specific category. Do you agree or not? If not, why?


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Are you saying En5sider's use of the term "more realistic" in the link I provided is unfamiliar or ambiguous to you?



I am familiar with the use of the buzz phrase "more realistic," but I often don't find it exists as a particularly meaningful phrase. En5sider's use seems more like marketing jargon preying upon popular naivety than being indicative of actual substance, and I don't fault them for that. 

Edit: I would clarfiy that "more realistic" is mostly vacuous; however, the link saying that they will provide a mechanic for item degredation for 5E is more meaningful. 



> Ignore play preferences / motives for mechanic.



I don't think that you can. Contextual analysis abhors a vacuum. 



> Armour in RL depreciates due to wear and tear for whatever reasons.
> A system that includes a mechanic (abstract as it is) for accounting for the depreciation of armour is attempting to mirror RL more so than a game that does not account for the depreciation of armour, for that specific category. Do you agree or not? If not, why?



Except that is not necessarily true. For example, the above link that you had provided had also suggested that you may want this mechanic to "bring a little destructive excitement to the table," which does not require realism to be an intent for adopting it as a mechanic. Therefore illustrating how "realism" can be incidental to the inclusion or preclusion of mechanics or game design.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I am familiar with the use of the buzz phrase "more realistic," but I often don't find it exists as a particularly meaningful phrase.




You keep changing the conversation. You understand the buzzword of how/why it is used in relation to the the mechanics - whether it is meaningful or even appropriate word was not part of the question.



> I don't think that you can. Contextual analysis abhors a vacuum.
> 
> Except that is not necessarily true. For example, the above link that you had provided had also suggested that you may want this mechanic to "bring a little destructive excitement to the table," which does not require realism to be an intent for adopting it as a mechanic. Therefore illustrating how "realism" can be incidental to the inclusion or preclusion of mechanics or game design.




I find this logic very uncharitable and nonsensical.
The marrying of _a little destructive excitement to the table_ is a result of what might happen with weapons in the midst of combat in RL. You would not marry _a little destructive excitement to the table_ with the realities of encumbrance for instance.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> You keep changing the conversation.



I have remained consistent in my position regarding this realism debate throughout this entire thread, which is what I have been consistently arguing, and I even linked my initial post in this thread. Don't get frustrated with me just because I want to remain on topic. 



> You understand the buzzword of how/why it is used in relation to the the mechanics - whether it is meaningful or even appropriate word was not part of the question.



No, I said that I understand how/why the buzzword is used for the purposes of marketing the mechanics. I think that it is ambiguous what it means but I don't have the same reaction to that as I do with Max because I engage in conversations with people and not with marketing materials. 



> I find this logic very uncharitable and nonsensical.
> The marrying of _a little destructive excitement to the table_ is a result of what might happen with weapons in the midst of combat in RL. You would not marry _a little destructive excitement to the table_ with the realities of encumbrance for instance.



I find your lack of good faith disturbing. You asked my reading, and I provided it in good faith. You disagree with my reading. That's fine. But accusing me of being uncharitable and nonsensical in my reading poisons the well, and that will certainly not endear your perspective to me. The link you provided uses the language "whether... or" which suggests to me a distinction of elements in the introductory clause as opposed to the causal link you make here. The buzz language is meant to suggest that if you belong in either camp (or both), then the contents of this article will appeal to you (so subscribe/purchase/whatever today).


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]

I think that when it comes to the phrase "more realistic" I generally don't mind people using it to try and convey an idea. And I think that generally speaking, I'm likely to know what they mean when they use it. The EN5ider article, in that sense, is clear to me what it is trying to convey. 

So the rules for weapon degradation being an attempt to add "more realism" to the game.....I get what is meant, even if I don't really think it's technically accurate. But sometimes for the sake of conversation and for conveying ideas, that kind of phrase can work fine. I do think a lot of the conversation has been wasted by devoting time to this angle. To me, someone saying "I added weapon degradation to my D&D game to make it more realistic" is perfectly fine. 

What I don't think is fine is something more like "My D&D game has weapon degradation mechanics, and therefore is more realistic than a game that lacks such mechanics" because I don't think that's true at all and for a myriad of reasons. 

So I think the semantic debate has remained relevant to the discussion because some folks will mistake acceptance of the general use of the phrase for acceptance that the phrase is technically accurate. Others want to make sure that distinction is clear.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> @_*Sadras*_
> 
> I think that when it comes to the phrase "more realistic" I generally don't mind people using it to try and convey an idea. And I think that generally speaking, I'm likely to know what they mean when they use it. The EN5ider article, in that sense, is clear to me what it is trying to convey.
> 
> So the rules for weapon degradation being an attempt to add "more realism" to the game.....I get what is meant, even if I don't really think it's technically accurate. But sometimes for the sake of conversation and for conveying ideas, that kind of phrase can work fine. I do think a lot of the conversation has been wasted by devoting time to this angle. To me, someone saying "I added weapon degradation to my D&D game to make it more realistic" is perfectly fine.




Thank you! At least someone is willing to accept the plain word, without requiring people to jump through hoops and thereby allowing the conversation to reach the next plateau.



> So I think the semantic debate has remained relevant to the discussion because some folks will mistake acceptance of the general use of the phrase for acceptance that the phrase is technically accurate. Others want to make sure that distinction is clear.




Yeah, I don't find that style of conversation helpful or sincere. 



> What I don't think is fine is something more like "My D&D game has weapon degradation mechanics, and therefore is more realistic than a game that lacks such mechanics" because I don't think that's true at all and for a myriad of reasons.




Apologies, I haven't been following your entire post run with Max, could you please provide me some reasons or an example why you think said statement is untrue.

EDIT: I believe I have thought of one - if the mechanic was badly designed, then sure it might prove that exclusion of such mechanic would make more sense (be _more real_), given its terrible design. For instance the old _fumbles on a 1, _which means a fighter with more attacks in a round is prone to more fumbles than one with fewer. Is this what you had in mind?


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## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I have remained consistent in my position regarding this realism debate throughout this entire thread, which is what I have been consistently arguing, and I even linked my initial post in this thread. Don't get frustrated with me just because I want to remain on topic.
> 
> No, I said that I understand how/why the buzzword is used for the purposes of marketing the mechanics. I think that it is ambiguous what it means but I don't have the same reaction to that as I do with Max because I engage in conversations with people and not with marketing materials.




But it is not just marketing materials, many gamers use the term _more realistic_. And we have established that your interest lies in intent/play preferences which had nothing to do with my post and your defense is that your position in the thread has remained constant/unchanged. Honestly, your position in this thread, is inconsequential to my post.



> I find your lack of good faith disturbing. You asked my reading, and I provided it in good faith. You disagree with my reading. That's fine. But accusing me of being uncharitable and nonsensical in my reading poisons the well, and that will certainly not endear your perspective to me.




Aldarc if you want to base your agreement or disagreement with me on feelings rather than sensible points, that is your prerogative. You replied to my post. 



> The link you provided uses the language "whether... or" which suggests to me a distinction of elements in the introductory clause as opposed to the causal link you make here. The buzz language is meant to suggest that if you belong in either camp (or both), then the contents of this article will appeal to you (so subscribe/purchase/whatever today).




All you seem to be doing though with this line of thought is making me jump over unnecessary hurdles to get to the heart of the conversation.

You have said you understand the term _more realistic_ but do not like it. 
If I ask you what term do you prefer - you jump to intent/play preferences.
That is not at all helpful given that I'm not discussing intent/play preferences which I deem as something that may be related, but separate.
I'm referring to something that attempts, however abstract and via a mechanic, to echo a RL instance within a game.
You want to know why I'm attempting to create said mechanic. 
For me those are separate issues.
You expect me to believe that you sincerely cannot see these two things as separate issues. I'm really struggling to take you earnestly here.
And I'm not concerned how an _exciting_ rule might be incidental in providing _realism_ by a mechanic's inclusion or exclusion. 
How in the 9 Hells is that discussing my post or the question I posed to you?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I believe the idea is that these additional elements (attempting to mirror instances within real life), are to provide a more immersive experience and/or to provide a hardcore form of gaming. At some point these additional elements slow the game down and a balance needs to be struck.
> 
> The idea that these additional elements are fixed within the mechanics (daily weather, weapon/armour depreciation...etc) might have some proclaim that their game is 'more realistic' than others whose game does not have such mechanics. Do these systems emulate everything within RL, of course not.
> 
> EDIT: I think the argument that everything needs to be as in real life or otherwise nothing is, is a fairly weak one. It does not further conversation or understanding between parties to only speak in absolutes. The use of the word _more_ in "more realism" is indicative that the conversation is not about absolutes.




I've never hinted that there cannot be a scale, I don't think it would make sense to say that a scale isn't possible, in some sense. However it is very difficult, past a very very general point to really state that one is achieving 'greater realism', and to do so must require some fairly tight description of exactly what is being discussed. When [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] simply makes some general statement about weapon breakage making a game 'more realistic', this is simply not automatically true, at all. This is also [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point, at least to an extent. I can pass some level of judgement on a specific implementation of weapon breakage, or disease, for a specific game, but even then chances are its going to be highly subjective, at best.

For example: is the 1e DMG disease system going to 'increase realism' if you use it? I am not at all certain it will. I don't really know how to approach quantifying the realism it is claimed it will add. Is a highly unrealistic model of disease 'more realistic' than no model at all? Is a model of disease which undermines and distorts a number of already established concepts related to injury and death making the game, overall, more realistic or not? Anyone who claims it does and then insists this is self-evident is pretty much off the reservation IMHO. I can't even really critique that, it is like trying to grade a paper that is in an unknown language, at best.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> This is in fact exactly the sort of thing I get annoyed with; particularly if my character has any interest in carpentry.   And sure, there's ways to explain away almost everything but it gets to be a bit much if this has to be done all the time.




Now, see, I am a very completist kind of person and can easily imagine 100's, or even 1000's of similar details which could be, but never are, filled in about a community in a D&D game. Where do people's barrels come from? What are they made of? Who and where is the cooper? Does the blacksmith burn charcoal, and where does he get it from? How many animals does the village have, and what kinds? Where are they housed? Who cares for them? Do they get diseases? If a horse dies is there a knackerman and who does he sell to? Is there a tanner? Miller? What sort of mill is it? 

I mean, I could literally go on for HOURS. None of these questions are likely to be answered and most of them are not even answerable, as it would require a vast array of questions about exactly what technology is available in this place and time, open up questions about how magical spell availability would change some of these professions, etc. etc. etc. These become very complex questions very fast and cannot really be answered except in a very cursory fashion which instantly makes me think that someone 'just made up some stuff.' Obviously that IS what happened, so what's really interesting about it? Anything a GM describes is "just explaining it away" because there's no way they wrote out millions of lines of explanations, generated economic and social models, and did the 1000 man-lifetimes of work it would take to truly explicate and analyze everything in that village down to brass tacks. Even if you did, all the inputs to those calculations and explications would still have to be invented largely from whole cloth, since magic and etc. don't actually exist and have such a huge impact on things.

Heck, read some really in-depth material about everyday life in Europe ca. 950 AD. Even for the real world when you go back 1000 years we know so very little about most of the details that our ideas of how things were is mostly guesswork. We are proven radically wrong constantly too, as perusal of any archeology/history journals will very quickly show. That's for the real world, but your fantasy world is 1000's of times less detailed. Just make stuff up! Its the best we can do.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I've never hinted that there cannot be a scale, I don't think it would make sense to say that a scale isn't possible, in some sense. However it is very difficult, past a very very general point to really state that one is achieving 'greater realism', and to do so must require some fairly tight description of exactly what is being discussed. When [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] simply makes some general statement about weapon breakage making a game 'more realistic', this is simply not automatically true, at all. This is also [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point, at least to an extent. I can pass some level of judgement on a specific implementation of weapon breakage, or disease, for a specific game, but even then chances are its going to be highly subjective, at best.




Sure, if you come up with ridiculous methods to add in things, the realism drops.  However, is you assume that the DM as at least halfway competent and is attempting to model reality to some degree, then realism must increase to some degree.  An implementation of weapon breakage whenever someone farts would reduce realism.  An implementation of breakage when weapons clash with other weapons or other hard objects would model reality to some degree, and therefore must increase realism as it incorporates a degree of reality.



> For example: is the 1e DMG disease system going to 'increase realism' if you use it?




It models reality to some degree, so it must increase realism over a system that makes no such attempt.



> I don't really know how to approach quantifying the realism it is claimed it will add.




You don't need to know how to quantify it.  It's an increase, so even if you can't quantify it, you can still know that it has increased.



> Is a highly unrealistic model of disease 'more realistic' than no model at all?




It may not mirror reality, but that isn't necessary for realism to be present.  An system that doesn't mirror reality will also be unrealistic to a degree.  Here's the thing, though.  No system at all = 100% unrealistic.  Any system that attempts to model reality in any way is less than 100% unrealistic, and therefore increases realism.  So yes, even a highly unrealistic model is more realistic than no model at all.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> @_*Sadras*_
> 
> I think that when it comes to the phrase "more realistic" I generally don't mind people using it to try and convey an idea. And I think that generally speaking, I'm likely to know what they mean when they use it. The EN5ider article, in that sense, is clear to me what it is trying to convey.
> 
> So the rules for weapon degradation being an attempt to add "more realism" to the game.....I get what is meant, even if I don't really think it's technically accurate. But sometimes for the sake of conversation and for conveying ideas, that kind of phrase can work fine. I do think a lot of the conversation has been wasted by devoting time to this angle. To me, someone saying "I added weapon degradation to my D&D game to make it more realistic" is perfectly fine.
> 
> What I don't think is fine is something more like "My D&D game has weapon degradation mechanics, and therefore is more realistic than a game that lacks such mechanics" because I don't think that's true at all and for a myriad of reasons.
> 
> So I think the semantic debate has remained relevant to the discussion because some folks will mistake acceptance of the general use of the phrase for acceptance that the phrase is technically accurate. Others want to make sure that distinction is clear.




I think it is one of those issues where people think "I know it when I see it" but then often they haven't actually thought through what all the questions are. As you say, we can sort of guestimate that maybe some sort of weapon breakage/damage/wearing out COULD produce some added realism, but in general it doesn't.

This actually happens in a kind of profound way too. See, WAY back in the earliest days of RPG development, we had this concept. That concept was that our frustrations with the inability to reproduce the kinds of adventures we could read about, or sorts of stories which happened in real life, or were 'true to life' in some sense was caused by an inadequacy of the rules to produce an emulation of real life. The theory went something like realism in role play is produced by a 'true to life' set of incentives and motivations being applied to the character, and that could only be produced by a set of rules which emulated all the features of real life such that the forces acting on the character would be realistic.

The problem of course was twofold. First of all it rapidly became apparent that it is impossible to even get meaningfully more realistic than some highly unrealistic games like D&D, which produce results which are nothing like real life, not at all true to life, in terms of incentives and forces acting on the character. Even much more realistic, in some senses, games like 'Boot Hill' (which really has some reasonably realistic gunfight rules, albeit the game lacks equal detail in other areas) didn't produce results which were in any meaningful way more realistic than D&D. You just cannot model real life well enough with playable rules.

Secondly, and far more important, you cannot really emulate the internal life and mind state of a character. Fundamentally the player is a person sitting at a table somewhere engaging in a form of entertainment. Even if they genuinely endeavor to inhabit their character they can only do so with very limited fidelity. The player is not a product of the character's society, lacks most of the information and background the character would have, and is fundamentally subject to entirely different motivations (just to note the most obvious example, she's not subject to death if she does something dangerous in game). 

Thus it was quite quickly realized by game designers and those of us who were seriously interested in the nuances of game play and design, that this very notion, that play could be 'true to life' if only certain degrees of realism could be introduced was clearly an erroneous proposition, or at best utterly unobtainable. RQ and one might say also Tekumel arose as experiments in creating worlds with elaborately detailed aspects in which characters could be rooted in ways that would allow for deeper characterization and creation of more dramatic story arcs (IE better than just 'loot the dungeon' or 'shoot the Earps'). 

Since then things have moved on several more generations and now we have games like BitD, for example, who's mechanical structure, content, tone, and play procedures are tightly focused on producing a specific sort of RP experience. They are largely shorn of the various impedimentia of rule systems aimed at producing realism via some sort of numerical simulationist mechanics. Instead they employ game design techniques, providing 'currencies', 'bidding processes', mechanical embodiment of elements of drama (IE aspects), etc. These have proven vastly more successful than the earlier approaches, for the most part. 

That being said, a very deeply detailed game world, played intensely over a long period of time, can produce fine results. There are plenty of long-running D&D games, for example, where characters have acquired personality and motivation through episodes of play over time. I'm not sure that realism is exceptionally important here though. My experience has been that the most immersive of this type of game I have played in was also the most starkly fantastic and paid very little attention to the sorts of details some posters are insisting are key. So much so that this particular game was almost utterly fantastical and dreamlike in quality at times, so that even writing down accounts of play would be hard (it was also 30 years ago, so my recollection is spotty on many details).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> T
> EDIT: I believe I have thought of one - if the mechanic was badly designed, then sure it might prove that exclusion of such mechanic would make more sense (be _more real_), given its terrible design. For instance the old _fumbles on a 1, _which means a fighter with more attacks in a round is prone to more fumbles than one with fewer. Is this what you had in mind?




I would say this is a primary consideration. I have almost never seen a subsystem added to a D&D game which IMHO was actually true enough to life that it added realism to a game. It might have added some degree of authenticity to the experience of play, but not realism. For example the 1e DMG disease system. This system is utterly, wildly, unrealistic. A fact which can be ascertained in minutes by simply calculating how long the average person would survive walking around in a town before dying of a disease. Yet, that system can create a certain degree of authenticity in the sense that a player may feel as though he's experienced the vicitudes of life in a medieval town by contracting a nice case of dysentery and spending three weeks near death (well, OK, 24 hours until someone came around with Cure Disease, but...). 

So, what I think needs to be discussed isn't realism, its whether or not a given example of play produced some sort of feeling of authenticity due to some mechanical or narrative feature. Of course, I would argue that, mostly, looking for realistic things to do that is barking up the wrong tree. Mostly I would look for dramatically appropriate things. Things that engage the players, that reflect the character of the genre being played in, etc.


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## Sadras

Is D&D _more realistic_ for attempting, however abstract the system is, to include AC as opposed to having every attack be an automatic hit? 
I realise hit points are a mixed bag but I'm not discussing damage.

EDIT: We cross-posted [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. You may have answered your thoughts on this in the post above


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Sure, if you come up with ridiculous methods to add in things, the realism drops.  However, is you assume that the DM as at least halfway competent and is attempting to model reality to some degree, then realism must increase to some degree.  An implementation of weapon breakage whenever someone farts would reduce realism.  An implementation of breakage when weapons clash with other weapons or other hard objects would model reality to some degree, and therefore must increase realism as it incorporates a degree of reality.




I disagree profoundly. As a mathematician and computer scientist I can tell you that this sort of area is exactly where I am currently engaged. 

Back when I was a kid, and (as outlined in another post) I believe in the idea of verisimilitude and 'true to life play' arising out of accurate simulation, I thought "gosh, its impossible to do this with paper and pencil. How about a computer?" So I, and many others, thought things like that we would take D&D's simplistic combat system and simply add 500 more variables to it and code it all as some complicated computer algorithm and produce realistic results. Ha! What fools we were!

You see, that can't be done. Not by some simple process of a human being sitting down and creating a model and simply adding more elaboration to it until they think they've accounted for every variable and coupled them all right. If that was true children would have programmed self-driving cars in about 1987. Marvin Minsky would have produced general purpose AI in plenty of time for HAL 9000 to be booted up in the late 90's, as the movie so optimistically imagined.

Instead what we discovered is that reality is exceedingly intractable, and you can't even get close to analyzing it by any sort of 'mechanics'. Instead, only in the last 10 years, we have made progress via massive application of brute force pattern matching with reinforcement, and high order multivariate analyses. 

So, nowadays, I can generate actionable predictions about complex business processes by running clusters of 1000's of servers for weeks at a time performing 500 dimensional correlation analyses against petabyte data sets to produce models which can predict things like who's likely to win a given basketball game on a given day, or which stock to buy, etc. 

Imagining that we can make a realistic model of wear and tear on weapons, and the likelihood of them failing at any given time using a few charts is simply not realistic at all. I can tell you that we made a model that predicts when a specific tire on a specific wheel is going to fail, and its pretty darn good, but it has to rely on an analysis that was done of 100's of thousands of full tire lifetimes of other tires, and its inputs include 1000's of data points related to each and every usage of said tire. It is still only maybe accurate to plus or minus 10%. That's good enough to make a business use case. It might well be good enough for an RPG too, but clearly games are far too abstract to support this.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Is D&D _more realistic_ for attempting, however abstract the system is, to include AC as opposed to having every attack be an automatic hit?
> I realise hit points are a mixed bag but I'm not discussing damage.
> 
> EDIT: We cross-posted @_*AbdulAlhazred*_. You may have answered your thoughts on this in the post above




I think it is a case of authenticity, and also a case of genre expectations. Armor should work. However, 4e is interesting in being much less clear about this. Most characters, regardless of the actual armor they wear, fall within a fairly narrow range of 'toughness'. Defenses in 4e are more a matter of dramatic requirements vs simulation, yet it feels authentic to the sort of play being envisaged.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yet, that system can create a certain degree of authenticity in the sense that a player may feel as...
> 
> /snip
> 
> So, what I think needs to be discussed isn't realism, its whether or not a given example of play produced some sort of feeling of authenticity due to some mechanical or narrative feature.




Isn't the shorthand for this _realism_. Will you be happy with more authentic? more immersive? more RL illusionary? more dramatic? I mean looking for a better description/buzz-word is just playing silly buggers...



> Of course, I would argue that, mostly, looking for realistic things to do that is barking up the wrong tree. Mostly I would look for dramatically appropriate things. Things that engage the players, that reflect the character of the genre being played in, etc.




Different conversation and I'm not saying I do not agree with you but that is a separate issue.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I disagree profoundly. As a mathematician and computer scientist I can tell you that this sort of area is exactly where I am currently engaged.
> 
> Back when I was a kid, and (as outlined in another post) I believe in the idea of verisimilitude and 'true to life play' arising out of accurate simulation, I thought "gosh, its impossible to do this with paper and pencil. How about a computer?" So I, and many others, thought things like that we would take D&D's simplistic combat system and simply add 500 more variables to it and code it all as some complicated computer algorithm and produce realistic results. Ha! What fools we were!
> 
> You see, that can't be done. Not by some simple process of a human being sitting down and creating a model and simply adding more elaboration to it until they think they've accounted for every variable and coupled them all right. If that was true children would have programmed self-driving cars in about 1987. Marvin Minsky would have produced general purpose AI in plenty of time for HAL 9000 to be booted up in the late 90's, as the movie so optimistically imagined.
> 
> Instead what we discovered is that reality is exceedingly intractable, and you can't even get close to analyzing it by any sort of 'mechanics'. Instead, only in the last 10 years, we have made progress via massive application of brute force pattern matching with reinforcement, and high order multivariate analyses.
> 
> So, nowadays, I can generate actionable predictions about complex business processes by running clusters of 1000's of servers for weeks at a time performing 500 dimensional correlation analyses against petabyte data sets to produce models which can predict things like who's likely to win a given basketball game on a given day, or which stock to buy, etc.




Cool.  I'm not trying to mirror reality, so this does not apply to me.  To improve realism you don't have to hit exactly like reality.  That's a False Dichotomy.  Realism is a scale, not all or nothing.  You may not have mirrored reality with those 500 variables, but it was closer to reality to some degree than no program at all.  Even it was only closer by .00001%.



> Imagining that we can make a realistic model of wear and tear on weapons, and the likelihood of them failing at any given time using a few charts is simply not realistic at all.




It doesn't have to be. It only has to be more realistic than no system at all, which it is.



> I can tell you that we made a model that predicts when a specific tire on a specific wheel is going to fail, and its pretty darn good, but it has to rely on an analysis that was done of 100's of thousands of full tire lifetimes of other tires, and its inputs include 1000's of data points related to each and every usage of said tire. It is still only maybe accurate to plus or minus 10%. That's good enough to make a business use case. It might well be good enough for an RPG too, but clearly games are far too abstract to support this.




That's awesome, but I don't need things to be that accurate for my game.


----------



## chaochou

Sadras said:


> Isn't the shorthand for this _realism_. Will you be happy with more authentic? more immersive? more RL illusionary? more dramatic? I mean looking for a better description/buzz-word is just playing silly buggers...




So you think the claim 'My game is more realistic than yours' is the same as 'My game is more immersive than yours'.

The latter is clearly the self-righteous claim of a pompous tool.

The former is as well, but pretends to be a claim of objective fact.


----------



## Sadras

chaochou said:


> So you think the claim 'My game is more realistic than yours' is the same as 'My game is more immersive than yours'.
> 
> The latter is clearly the self-righteous claim of a pompous tool.
> 
> The former is as well, but pretends to be a claim of objective fact.




Pompous tools aside, your stance comes from semantics, when I'm only using the shorthand version of attempting to describe something, which I believe we all understand which term is even used by designers. I do not believe designers are attempting to be pompous tools with claims of objective facts when they use the term to market a mechanic that your game does not possess.

 @_*Maxperson*_, you have said that no mechanic yields 100% unrealistic, whereas some mechanic yields a step towards realism however minute the step. I believe you also mentioned the mechanic needs to be designed with some competency and honesty (integrity). 
Out of interest how do you view the _fumble on a 1_? Is this a step towards realism?


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> But it is not just marketing materials, many gamers use the term _more realistic_. And we have established that your interest lies in intent/play preferences which had nothing to do with my post and your defense is that your position in the thread has remained constant/unchanged. Honestly, your position in this thread, is inconsequential to my post.



And without further clarification, I think that their use is ambiguous. 



> Aldarc if you want to base your agreement or disagreement with me on feelings rather than sensible points, that is your prerogative. You replied to my post.



Feelings are not the basis of disagreement. They only 



> All you seem to be doing though with this line of thought is making me jump over unnecessary hurdles to get to the heart of the conversation.



You are the one who first put me through hurdles by asking initial questions regarding EnSider rather than jump to the heart of your inquiry. 



> You have said you understand the term _more realistic_ but do not like it.



I said that I was familiar with it. Let's be clear: familiarity does not equate to understanding. And understanding of general use does not mean that I should thereby accept (or understand) Max's specific use as per your original point. As I said, everyone generally brings their own sense about what "more realistic" means rather than existing as some form of concrete terminology. It is relative and contextual, and it can be a smokescreen for other issues. 



> If I ask you what term do you prefer - you jump to intent/play preferences.



I looked through our recent conversation again. You haven't yet asked me this.  



> That is not at all helpful given that I'm not discussing intent/play preferences which I deem as something that may be related, but separate.
> I'm referring to something that attempts, however abstract and via a mechanic, to echo a RL instance within a game.
> You want to know why I'm attempting to create said mechanic.
> For me those are separate issues.
> You expect me to believe that you sincerely cannot see these two things as separate issues. I'm really struggling to take you earnestly here.
> And I'm not concerned how an _exciting_ rule might be incidental in providing _realism_ by a mechanic's inclusion or exclusion.
> How in the 9 Hells is that discussing my post or the question I posed to you?



Because in the post to which I initially replied, you chose not to make this solely about how "more realistic" is understood in mechanics or play materials, but also about how Max's use of the expression (and how others react to it). That inherently links the conversation back to its contextual use in this thread, which is a discussion rooted in intent/play preferences. To paraphrase Max (many moons ago), "Context, Sadras. Context." 



Sadras said:


> Thank you! At least someone is willing to accept the plain word, without requiring people to jump through hoops and thereby allowing the conversation to reach the next plateau.



I am not making you jump through hoops any more than you are making me jump through hoops. You keep asking me leading questions, as if trying to make me jump through hoop on demand. 



> Yeah, I don't find that style of conversation helpful or sincere.



Just because you don't like my answers, it does not mean that I have not been sincere with you, and I would appreciate it going forward into our conversation if you would accept that fact instead of repeatedly accusing me falsely.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I am not making you jump through hoops any more than you are making me jump through hoops. You keep asking me leading questions, as if trying to make me jump through hoop on demand.




Okay let's start again.

My intention is to find a common thread of understanding between us at base level.
I view the AC mechanic, where better Dex and Armour, improve one's ability to deflect, avoid and defend from attacks. 
It is an attempt to input RL complexities of the above into a game.
I call this plainly, without heavy thinking, realism - despite however simple and abstract, and possibly flawed, the system is. 
Without said mechanic, each hit would be an automatic success within the game.
I view a game with an AC mechanic _more realistic_ than a game without said mechanic.

Do you agree? If not, why?


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, see, I am a very completist kind of person and can easily imagine 100's, or even 1000's of similar details which could be, but never are, filled in about a community in a D&D game. Where do people's barrels come from? What are they made of? Who and where is the cooper? Does the blacksmith burn charcoal, and where does he get it from? How many animals does the village have, and what kinds? Where are they housed? Who cares for them? Do they get diseases? If a horse dies is there a knackerman and who does he sell to? Is there a tanner? Miller? What sort of mill is it?
> 
> I mean, I could literally go on for HOURS. None of these questions are likely to be answered and most of them are not even answerable, as it would require a vast array of questions about exactly what technology is available in this place and time, open up questions about how magical spell availability would change some of these professions, etc. etc. etc. These become very complex questions very fast and cannot really be answered except in a very cursory fashion which instantly makes me think that someone 'just made up some stuff.' Obviously that IS what happened, so what's really interesting about it? Anything a GM describes is "just explaining it away" because there's no way they wrote out millions of lines of explanations, generated economic and social models, and did the 1000 man-lifetimes of work it would take to truly explicate and analyze everything in that village down to brass tacks. Even if you did, all the inputs to those calculations and explications would still have to be invented largely from whole cloth, since magic and etc. don't actually exist and have such a huge impact on things.
> 
> Heck, read some really in-depth material about everyday life in Europe ca. 950 AD. Even for the real world when you go back 1000 years we know so very little about most of the details that our ideas of how things were is mostly guesswork. We are proven radically wrong constantly too, as perusal of any archeology/history journals will very quickly show. That's for the real world, but your fantasy world is 1000's of times less detailed. Just make stuff up! Its the best we can do.



Agreed: almost nobody's ever going to hard-prep all this, and "just make stuff up" works fine.

But within what we make up we have to be consistent or the whole house of cards comes down.  If the party hear of a village that's known for its fine sword-making then logic would strongly suggest there's going to be one or two (or more!) top-notch smithies there or thereabouts when the party visit.  Conversely, if the party arrive there and find these top-notch smithies they might be justified in asking why they hadn't heard of this place before when previously inquiring where good weaponry may be found.

If the party visit a town ruled by Baron Farengard logic would strongly suggest that the locals will at least know of said Baron when the party six months later return there seeking him, even if he's died in the meantime.  Conversely, if the party have previously asked for the names of which nobles rule which areas/regions/towns and been told this town doesn't have a noble ruler they'd be justified in asking wtf on arriving at the town and being expected to present themselves before long-time local ruler Baron Farengard.

And so on.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> Okay let's start again.
> 
> My intention is to find a common thread of understanding between us at base level.
> I view the AC mechanic, where better Dex and Armour, improve one's ability to deflect, avoid and defend from attacks.
> It is an attempt to input RL complexities of the above into a game.
> I call this plainly, without heavy thinking, realism - despite however simple and abstract, and possibly flawed, the system is.
> Without said mechanic, each hit would be an automatic success within the game.
> I view a game with an AC mechanic _more realistic_ than a game without said mechanic.
> 
> Do you agree? If not, why?



I do not.  

Blades in the Dark, fir example, has no AC mechanic at all, much less any specific mechanics for combat that are in any way different from sneaking past a guard.  Yet, you can have broken or damaged weapons, sucking chest wounds, minor scratches, and many other interesting and "realistic" outcomes of a fight with deadly weapons. 5e, for example, has detailed, combat specific rules, yet generates none of these things.  Which is the more "realistic"?

You seem to be focused on game processes being the way to introduce "realism".  I disagree this is appropriate.

I also disagree "realism" as defined as more like the real world (graded on a scale or not) to be meaningless in terms of a fantasy RPG.  "Realism" defined as more internally consistent, more coherent, and more believable makes sense, though.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Okay let's start again.
> 
> My intention is to find a common thread of understanding between us at base level.
> I view the AC mechanic, where better Dex and Armour, improve one's ability to deflect, avoid and defend from attacks.
> 
> It is an attempt to input RL complexities of the above into a game.
> I call this plainly, without heavy thinking, realism - despite however simple and abstract, and possibly flawed, the system is.
> 
> Without said mechanic, each hit would be an automatic success within the game.
> I view a game with an AC mechanic _more realistic_ than a game without said mechanic.
> 
> Do you agree? If not, why?



I don't agree because this seems like a binary viewpoint of combat defense that evaluates realism in terms of whether a system has an AC mechanic or not. It's overly simplistic, lacking scope of how other games perform a similar function with different mechanics. Some games use counter combat rolls. The DM rolls (defense/combat) and the player rolls (defense/combat), and the success of the attack is in the difference. Is that more or less realistic than AC? Other games have the player roll defense, whether using dice polls or defeating a static difficulty number. Is that more realistic than AC? Many systems use armor as damage absorption/reduction. Is that more or less realistic than AC? I can't say for certain, because this does not fundamentally strike me as a debate on realism, but, rather, a debate on gaming preferences and aesthetics rather than some silly, vacuous notion of realism being on a scale, which unsurprisingly seems to having moving goalposts and arbitrary standards. The "realism scale" has as much "meat" as talking about the invisible hand of the market, the leviathan of the state, the state of nature, or the social contract of governance. 

IMHO, "Realism" has more to do with the game fiction than the mechanics, though the mechanics may attempt to support and reinforce that fiction. I think that cultural tradition has largely given the AC mechanic a post hoc justification with fiction. It's "normal" because it's what most are used to experiencing in D&D. D&D often gets a free pass when it comes to how its mechanics and fiction are conjoined (e.g., hit points, saving throws, ability scores, etc.). Moreover, I don't think that it's necessarily about more or less realism. In fact, I have heard many YouTube personalities (who argue about historical combat and the like) get in a heated huff about how D&D does combat and AC, perceiving it to be unrealistic. 

This is why I don't necessarily find the "realistic" vs. "unrealistic" debate particularly useful. Generally the more helpful debate pertains to those other gaming preferences/intent, particularly when evaluating, designing, or selecting an RPG for play. What genre are you trying to simulate? How would you like your combat to feel? What choices do you want your players to make? Etc.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> I do not.
> 
> Blades in the Dark, fir example, has no AC mechanic at all, much less any specific mechanics for combat that are in any way different from sneaking past a guard.  Yet, you can have broken or damaged weapons, sucking chest wounds, minor scratches, and many other interesting and "realistic" outcomes of a fight with deadly weapons. 5e, for example, has detailed, combat specific rules, yet generates none of these things.  Which is the more "realistic"?




For me the system doesn't really matter in the conversation of _more realism_. I'm not here advocating for a particular system.
Perhaps overall, given what you have said about the game, BitD is more realistic than D&D.
Do you agree or not agree? If still not why?



> You seem to be focused on game processes being the way to introduce "realism".  I disagree this is appropriate.




How else? Unless I'm misunderstanding your _game processes_.



> I also disagree "realism" as defined as more like the real world (graded on a scale or not) to be meaningless in terms of a fantasy RPG.  "Realism" defined as more internally consistent, more coherent, and more believable makes sense, though.




I have no issue with this understanding of it. I'm using the term _more realism_ as a shorthand for all of that like the En5sider article. I'm not interested in the semantics debate.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> For me the system doesn't really matter in the conversation of _more realism_. I'm not here advocating for a particular system.
> Perhaps overall, given what you have said about the game, BitD is more realistic than D&D.
> Do you agree or not agree? If still not why?



Agree BitD is more realistic?  Nope.  It doesn't have to do any of the above -- it's just possible to do without adding any new mechanics.



> How else? Unless I'm misunderstanding your _game processes_.



There's a dufference between process and resultant fictions.  "Realism," to me, can only be judged at the fiction, not the process.  However, all of your arguments so far about adding "realism" have been about adding additional processes.  I'm pointing out that process is not required for "realism."




> I have no issue with this understanding of it. I'm using the term _more realism_ as a shorthand for all of that like the En5sider article. I'm not interested in the semantics debate.



I don't know what "realism" means in En5ider ad copy, because, as this thread shows, it's highly situational.  En5ider also seems to favor 'new processes' to increase randomly applied negative consequences (in the specific case weapon and armor damage?).  I do not agree this necessarily fits my definition of "realism" although it appears to fit yours.  Hence the argument.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> Agree BitD is more realistic?  Nope.  It doesn't have to do any of the above -- it's just possible to do without adding any new mechanics.
> 
> There's a dufference between process and resultant fictions.  "Realism," to me, can only be judged at the fiction, not the process.  However, all of your arguments so far about adding "realism" have been about adding additional processes.  I'm pointing out that process is not required for "realism."




Okay then there is something I'm not understanding about BitD. How does one arrive at results of broken or damaged weapons, sucking chest wounds, minor scratches, and many other interesting and "realistic" outcomes of a fight with deadly weapons?



> I don't know what "realism" means in En5ider ad copy, because, as this thread shows, it's highly situational.  En5ider also seems to favor 'new processes' to increase randomly applied negative consequences (in the specific case weapon and armor damage?).  I do not agree this necessarily fits my definition of "realism" although it appears to fit yours.  Hence the argument.




Is it not more internally consistent, more coherent, more believable that negative consequences can/may arise in weapons and armour damage particularly when in use?


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> @_*Maxperson*_, you have said that no mechanic yields 100% unrealistic, whereas some mechanic yields a step towards realism however minute the step. I believe you also mentioned the mechanic needs to be designed with some competency and honesty (integrity).
> Out of interest how do you view the _fumble on a 1_? Is this a step towards realism?




Yep.  In combats, people slip, swords break or get dropped, etc.  So fumbles are a step forward, even if they happen too often at 5%.  At 5% though, the chances to fumble are still too unrealistic, so at my table we have instituted a system where as you level, the chances to fumble go down.  Even at low levels, a simple dex check at DC 10 stops the fumble and it becomes just a miss, so starting at level one fumbles are much lower than 5%.  At level 6 they become even lower as the dex check drops to 5.  At level 11 you only miss on a fumble, not fall down or anything else.  At level 16 you can no longer even fumble as your skill has just become so great that the odds cannot be handled by d20 rolls. 

I'm not concerned with any math behind the realism increases, because it's not about trying to mirror reality.  Only make things a bit more realistic.  Too much realism just isn't fun, so as long as the new rule increases realism and is fun, we keep it.  Otherwise we ditch it or don't engage it all.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I don't agree because this seems like a binary viewpoint of combat defense that evaluates realism in terms of whether a system has an AC mechanic or not. It's overly simplistic, lacking scope of how other games perform a similar function with different mechanics. Some games use counter combat rolls. The DM rolls (defense/combat) and the player rolls (defense/combat), and the success of the attack is in the difference. Is that more or less realistic than AC? Other games have the player roll defense, whether using dice polls or defeating a static difficulty number. Is that more realistic than AC? Many systems use armor as damage absorption/reduction. Is that more or less realistic than AC? I can't say for certain, because this does not fundamentally strike me as a debate on realism, but, rather, a debate on gaming preferences and aesthetics rather than some silly, vacuous notion of realism being on a scale, which unsurprisingly seems to having moving goalposts and arbitrary standards. The "realism scale" has as much "meat" as talking about the invisible hand of the market, the leviathan of the state, the state of nature, or the social contract of governance.




This and the response from [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] are Red Herrings.

It's irrelevant which one is more realistic.  You can't point to a different system that adds realism to combat and ask "Which is more realistic?" as a reason to answer that 5e's system is not realistic.  It's just a deflection.  Even though Blades in the Dark has a different system that adds realism to its game, 5e's combat system still adds realism to the game.  Which system is more realistic is irrelevant. 



> IMHO, "Realism" has more to do with the game fiction than the mechanics, though the mechanics may attempt to support and reinforce that fiction.




Realism has to do with both the game fiction AND the mechanics.  Where there are mechanics and those mechanics interact with the game fiction, those mechanics must match the game fiction or you get nonsense.  If you have a bow in the game fiction and use it, the mechanics must allow for ranged attacks and shooting.  



> I think that cultural tradition has largely given the AC mechanic a post hoc justification with fiction. It's "normal" because it's what most are used to experiencing in D&D. D&D often gets a free pass when it comes to how its mechanics and fiction are conjoined (e.g., hit points, saving throws, ability scores, etc.). Moreover, I don't think that it's necessarily about more or less realism. In fact, I have heard many YouTube personalities (who argue about historical combat and the like) get in a heated huff about how D&D does combat and AC, perceiving it to be unrealistic.
> 
> This is why I don't necessarily find the "realistic" vs. "unrealistic" debate particularly useful. Generally the more helpful debate pertains to those other gaming preferences/intent, particularly when evaluating, designing, or selecting an RPG for play. What genre are you trying to simulate? How would you like your combat to feel? What choices do you want your players to make? Etc.




Unrealistic, though, does not mean that there is no realism there at all.  When people get into a huff about how combat is unrealistic, they are just saying, "Combat in D&D doesn't have as much realism as I like."


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Notions of realism are inapplicable in TTRPGs, the modi of which pertain to shared imaginary spaces. I’m not prepared to casually absolve someone of using the term _realism_ just because “we understand what they mean by it.” It’s still an inappropriate word.

Whether something possesses _verismilitude_ or even _plausibility_ is subjective and arbitrary. Verisimilitude does not require adding mechanics for weapon degradation, tracking PTSD or taking a sh*t in the morning. Yet, for all the talk of “realism” I’ve still to see any suggestions for implementation, beside adding more mechanical subsystens to track and consider.

And I’ve yet to see any suggestions of _how_ this “realism” is measured. What is the metric by which we gauge whether something is more “real” or not?

Who determines whether a “weapon degradation” mechanic is more important than a “taking a sh*t in the morning” mechanic? Why? What criteria do they use to judge whether a given mechanic sufficiently increases “realism” or is overly burdensome for the small increase in “realism” which it affords? How do they make this determination?

Finally: this exchange is nonsense. All talk of “realism” in D&D is risible in the face of core action, AC, hit point, recovery and spell mechanics.  They are so fundamentally gamist that any efforts to improve “realism” outside of them is doomed to appear contrived, subjective and arbitrary. Which it is. If you try to  French polish a cracked, rustic table it remains a cracked, rustic table. Plus, it now looks absurd.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> This and the response from [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] are Red Herrings.



It isn't a red herring in the context of Sadras's inquiry, Max, which is what both Ovinomancer and I are specifically replying to. We were asked whether we agreed with their position and then asked a follow-up question to explain ourselves if we disagreed. Please stop trying to argue from informal logic buzzwords. 



> Realism has to do with both the game fiction AND the mechanics.  Where there are mechanics and those mechanics interact with the game fiction, those mechanics must match the game fiction or you get nonsense.  If you have a bow in the game fiction and use it, the mechanics must allow for ranged attacks and shooting.



Please note Max that I said that "'Realism' has more to do with the game fiction than the mechanics" and not "'Realism only has to do with the game fiction and nothing to do with the mechanics." I am aware that both are involved.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This and the response from [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] are Red Herrings.
> 
> It's irrelevant which one is more realistic.  You can't point to a different system that adds realism to combat and ask "Which is more realistic?" as a reason to answer that 5e's system is not realistic.  It's just a deflection.  Even though Blades in the Dark has a different system that adds realism to its game, 5e's combat system still adds realism to the game.  Which system is more realistic is irrelevant.
> 
> 
> 
> Realism has to do with both the game fiction AND the mechanics.  Where there are mechanics and those mechanics interact with the game fiction, those mechanics must match the game fiction or you get nonsense.  If you have a bow in the game fiction and use it, the mechanics must allow for ranged attacks and shooting.
> 
> 
> 
> Unrealistic, though, does not mean that there is no realism there at all.  When people get into a huff about how combat is unrealistic, they are just saying, "Combat in D&D doesn't have as much realism as I like."



Apparently, Max's term for an argument he doesn't understand is "Red Herring."

Max, my BitD example showcases that there are things you've defined as more "realistic" that can occur with no mechanical system added to do so.  The point is that these  "realistic" things come to be in the game fiction, not that there's more or less realism than in other systems.  I mean, my argument all along is that "realism" is really just a cover for arbitrary preference, so why would I ever argue some system has more arbitrary preference than others?  That would be entirely up to specific participants if it did or not.

Nope, instead my point was to showcase a game that adds these "realistic" outcomes solely based on a "GM decides" model.  You fail a desperate Wreck attempt on a trio of higher tier cutthroats and I'm well wirhin my GM rights to assign a level 3 Harm described as a 'sucking chest wound.'  Future efforts will require that this fiction be acknowledged (you'll have to burn Stress just to act, for instance, and anything you do that would ve affected by a sucking chest wound would have additional complications).  I could also assign this as a result of a failed check to make a long leap between buildings over a spiked fence, with the added bit of maybe you're also impaled on the fence.  The mechanics involved are the same.  Just as they would be for armor damage or weapon damage.

Your focus has been on adding new mechanical systems or modifying existing ones to achieve "realism".  That's not the only way, which goes toward "realism" being more of a subjective preference rather than an objective state.  And, to rehome in on the OP, GM decides is no more realistic a method than using a mechanical subsystem.  I've just flipped it from the OP so that now you're arguing using a nechanic and I'm arguing using GM decides.  Funny, that.


----------



## estar

Numidius said:


> My search for the right party, to run or to play with, continues...




A little late to the party 

At this point I refereed campaigns in a variety of circumstances, with friend fact to face and online. At game store where anybody can drop in from week to week, at conventions with total strangers. One off sessions like the one described by BrendanBedrock and so on.

To make what I do apply across all these groups equally well, I roleplaying and ask my player to roleplay in first person. if somebody says "I have Rurik the fighter go and talk to the shopkeeper and buy a sword." I would look the player in the eye (or with VOIP) say in first person "How can I help you?" And cox the player into responding in first person. 

Now to be crystal clear this is not the same as acting or doing the funny voice. It sufficient to be just yourself with the abilities and knowledge of the character.

This is a first crucial step because what it does for most is engage their natural social instinct as people. A point that crystallized for me in observing how people play in LARPS. In a LARP with its emphasis on live action everything is first person. 

Once the player's social instincts are engaged, it adds clarity for the players over what to do in whatever situation they find themselves.

Second, is that I am only human as a referee. I only have so much bandwidth physically and verbally. Out of all the myriad possibilities inherent to the entire world of a setting, I can only focus on a few things at a time. But what things? Well the things that a) players are interested in focusing on. b) things that could impact the players positively or negatively and finally c) things that are of potential interest.

The problem is that the experience as a referee and as a person has an outsized impact on doing the above. Because you have to pay attention to players, understand what they like, and what things you could come up that would work with that yet remain consistent with the setting.

And the it often naunced. For example you can't just always tailor things all the time. Most players pick up on that and as a result the the world of the setting starts to feel artificial. But you can't just use random tables and random ideas all the time as most will feel they are in a funhouse all the time and their choices have little meaning as nothing makes sense.

The path lies in balancing all these elements and juggling ideas which can only be learned through repeated trial and error with a variety of individuals.

Back in the early 80s when I started doing all this, I certainly didn't get right. But what got me to where i am now, is the willingness to do go with whatever the players wanted to do as long as it made sense in terms of the setting and character (which is pretty broad). And recognizing that I had to try different things with different people. 

So my first campaigns could have been better but still a fun time was had by all. 

Earlier in the thread there was discussion about the how real thing actually are. I can tell you that it varies from player to player. What immersive for one players is not always the same as the next players. It not a huge range but enough that you need to learn a variety of technique so it works with your group.


*Wrapping it up*

To recap it about having everybody roleplay in first person, paying attention to what they like, and having a toolkit of experience and technique to rely on to figure out what works. While keeping an open mind as to what the players want to do as their characters but also willing to mix things up to make it feel more organic.

Finally a example.

Let take the worse case people often paint for sandbox campaigns or campaigns with a rich background. We have a group that has not interested in character backgrounds. Their roleplaying can be summing as "themselves with the abilities of their character." Primarily they are focused on being THE badasses and they optimize a lot. 

So for this group, I will insist on first person roleplaying even when it themselves with the abilities of the character. I will do it passively through example and coaching but if it doesn't sink, explicitly. Otherwise I am not interested in continue to referee this campaign.

I rarely have an issue with this except for very shy players. In which case I will accommodate. 

So the group starts the campaign with no history and no past. Which is fine as prior to the start I would have developed a sense of what they are interested in. Which is often NOT being murder hobos which is the typical stereotype. The last group that was like this, liked how I detailed the magic item economy so their first adventures were about working for magic item collectors and finding magic items.  All the while acting like badassess about it. 

The problem that most have with this how would this work in a setting. Luckily for me, I played enough LARPS, and MMORPGs to see how this plays out with groups interacting with other groups. It not unlike the interaction of urban or biker gangs. Or going back into history how warbands and nomadic clans dealt with one another.

So despite the lack of a prior history, the group will become enmeshed in their own slice of the setting with rivals, and allies, with complications born of the hooks and leads they do or don't follow. With consequences born of the choices they made or not made. Because I interacted with these type of players more than a few times, I know what they find fun and what they don't. Thus make sure for every complications I introduce, that there something else that is of interest.

And done right it doesn't feel artificial. Because in life we deal with the unexpected and seek out  and focus on that which interest us. Sometime our live is dominated by what we focus on. Other time it feels like it all about the unexpected. 

So that my couple of cents on the subject.

Rob Conley
Bat in the Attic Games
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/


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## Numidius

[MENTION=5636]estar[/MENTION] Man, I do love walls of text  gonna take some time to read, digest it and reply, though.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## estar

Numidius said:


> [MENTION=5636]estar[/MENTION] Man, I do love walls of text  gonna take some time to read, digest it and reply, though.




One additional thing, I am the Rob Conley that Brendan mentioned. I just realized my handle on Enworld doesn't make that connection clear.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> Thank you! At least someone is willing to accept the plain word, without requiring people to jump through hoops and thereby allowing the conversation to reach the next plateau.
> 
> 
> Yeah, I don't find that style of conversation helpful or sincere.




Yeah, I'm all for trying to understand and discuss intent rather than get caught up in semantics, but there are times when precise language can certainly matter. 

I think that when it comes to people describing mechanics they've added to their games as being added in order to be "more realistic", that's fine....I get what they mean. When they make such a comment, I'm not going to correct their use of the word realistic. 

But when they try to compare their system to another and claim "more realism" because of said mechanic, I don't think that's at all accurate. 



Sadras said:


> Apologies, I haven't been following your entire post run with Max, could you please provide me some reasons or an example why you think said statement is untrue.
> 
> EDIT: I believe I have thought of one - if the mechanic was badly designed, then sure it might prove that exclusion of such mechanic would make more sense (be _more real_), given its terrible design. For instance the old _fumbles on a 1, _which means a fighter with more attacks in a round is prone to more fumbles than one with fewer. Is this what you had in mind?




Not really what I had in mind, but it can serve as an example. 

I don't think that adding a base 5% chance for anyone at all to have some kind of critical fumble to really be all that realistic. A master swordsman and an untrained child have the same chance of simply dropping their sword? Now, if there's no other way to replicate such a mishap in the chosen game, then sure, go for it if that's what you want to do, and it makes things "more realistic" for the GM and players. 

But compared to something like difficult terrain requiring a skill check to avoid falling and similar game mechanics that can be used to replicate a mishap, I don't see the fumble on a 1 approach as being any more realistic. Especially when we can say that all the rolls that go into abdicating combat in D&D (or any game, really) are an abstraction of combat, and that such abstraction would probably allow for the occasional dropped weapon and the like. Now, I would imagine that most DM's don't tend to narrate combat in that way, but that doesn't change the fact that they could. It's all abstract, right? So we can allow for all manner of things if we like. 

So really, adding a specific mechanic to me is more of a preference on how to have combat play out. If a group wants to have their characters dropping their weapons with such frequency, then have at it. To me, it makes folks who are supposed to be trained combatants look inept, which doesn't seem all that realistic. 

************

So another example, which I think I mentioned upthread but maybe not....is how gear is tracked in D&D versus Blades in the Dark. I think having two specific systems and methods to compare will help demonstrate the issue.

In most versions of D&D you have some kind of carrying capacity, and then you pre-select your gear before leaving town to go on an adventure, and you can carry gear that weighs a certain total. This pre-selection seems to very important to many, and they claim it is realistic because that's how things work in real life; you have to pack your bag before you leave. 

Blades in the Dark, by contrast, requires that a PC select a load size before going on a score (light, normal, or heavy) and that choice indicates how many inventory slots they have available to them for the score. Each playbook (class) has a list of available gear and each item takes up 1 or 2 inventory slots.

These items need not be pre-selected before the score, though.....they can be selected as the PC needs them during the score. The character runs into a wall that needs to be scaled? He marks off his climbing gear, which uses 1 inventory slot, and then the character uses the climbing gear. He's left with 4 more inventory slots to which he can assign more gear as needed during the score. 

Some would argue that this is less realistic because it's decided during play. Obviously, it doesn't mirror how such things work in real life. But the flexibility is designed to replicate the PC's ability to accurately predict the kind of items that he'll need on a score. 

Isn't it more realistic to expect a hardened criminal who exists in a shadowy fantasy world to better be able to predict the items he'll need on a job than it would be for Average Joe from the 21st century Earth to predict that? 

I can see the argument either way. They are each appealing to different sensibilities. This is what makes it a matter of opinion, and therefore a matter of preference. Neither game has a "more realistic" method of dealing with character gear. 

I hope that helps clarify things a bit.


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## Numidius

[MENTION=5636]estar[/MENTION] 
Thanks for your advice, here's my thoughts in case you're interested. 
Lately I've been trying to go the opposite way, regarding RP in first person, so fostering a third person approach by players. The purpose is to take a step back from focusing on the Pc as Self, and broadening the horizon of play. As Gm I don't want to have to understand the interests and intimate feelings of players at the table, or being in charge of bringing the fun, so to speak, nonetheless I have by nature that kind of sensibility and I want to have fun playing, so I use all I have in my arsenal to convey an intense gaming experience: the goal is to let all the players convey that, to the collective enjoyment. 

As player I've been in many immersive style groups, but I have found too many Gms that don't share your concerns and attention to the game that you show in your post. As you say it's ok to start a game without background or starting connections for the Pc, but, again as you point out, the Gm should provide stuff to do and interact with in a way to develop the game and characters "as you go"; instead quite the opposite is the playstyle of these Gms I played with: in two words, loose clueless sandboxy game on one side, or constrictive/closed environment situations enforced by super Npcs, on the other. 

Anyway, I complained well enough about it in previous posts, I say that only for clarification in response to you. 

Cheers, Alex


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Isn't the shorthand for this _realism_. Will you be happy with more authentic? more immersive? more RL illusionary? more dramatic? I mean looking for a better description/buzz-word is just playing silly buggers...



It may seem like that if you are sure what you mean when you say something, but I'm not at all sure what is meant when I read something. Max in particular seems to just assume that there is this default set of assumptions that everyone knows to be true, and we have no idea what those actually ARE. So he says something is 'more realistic', but then refuses to define that and acts like we are daft when we don't understand.

In other words I introduced the term 'authenticity' to represent my understanding of something which, in the terms I have been describing, is different from 'realism'. Since the other side merely seemed to define realism as something like "you know it when you see it" or something, I can't really know if it actually corresponds to my definition of 'authenticity'. 

I do consider the two things different. Realism in my mind is a measure of how close outcomes and processes are to modeling real things in the real world. A necessary component of that is that the results are analogous to the results of 'similar experiments' in the real world. That is, the range of outcomes of sword fights between human opponents in a realistic combat system would correlate with those which would be produced by real world sword fights. 'More Realistic' in this terminology means "this correlation is better." I did also consider some other aspects of realism, which had to do with the effects of outcomes, as well as the general 'structure' of the game world, though I found those to be much more speculative, since they cannot easily be measured.

Authenticity, in my mind, is more a measure of how things 'feel' within the game experience. Does a particular outcome have an appearance of being logically, dramatically, and physically appropriate, given genre conventions and other assumptions about the game world which differentiates it from the real world. There probably isn't a very good objective measure for this, it is a subjective quality of an episode of game play, and probably won't even be identical for all participants in that episode.



> Different conversation and I'm not saying I do not agree with you but that is a separate issue.




Sure, there are plenty of different aspects of play which can be looked at.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Cool.  I'm not trying to mirror reality, so this does not apply to me.  To improve realism you don't have to hit exactly like reality.  That's a False Dichotomy.  Realism is a scale, not all or nothing.  You may not have mirrored reality with those 500 variables, but it was closer to reality to some degree than no program at all.  Even it was only closer by .00001%.



Then your use of the word 'realism' seems to have no purpose. Of course you are trying to MORE CLOSELY 'mirror' or 'emulate' reality. So there is no 'false dichotomy' or whatever you are trying to say. Nobody ever claimed, in fact I have stated it directly in either the post you quote or one written in the same hour, that a 'scale' is the only logical possibility. The problem is trying to actually put specific things on that scale. What I am trying to convey with my example is not something about the scale, except that any sort of simplistic attempt to model anything is so far down on any reasonable scale as to be indistinguishable from zero.

I have to question most such gains. As I've said in my last few posts, I think 'authenticity', which is a more subjective kind of goal and isn't IMHO the same as realism is more interesting and useful.




> It doesn't have to be. It only has to be more realistic than no system at all, which it is.



I don't agree. I think it is quite likely LESS realistic than no system at all!



> That's awesome, but I don't need things to be that accurate for my game.




My point is more that the existing default AD&D system for weapon wear/tear/breakage may well be the most realistic, that is it never happens at all. I'm sure it isn't the most authentic in some sense, and in theory it probably IS possible to get more realistic as well, but then you're into high order math, and big data, to achieve anything meaningful at all there. Mostly you won't even ever know. You can slap some ad-hoc system in place, but since you are pretty unlikely to survey a large number of actual sword fights to see what happens to real weapons under realistic conditions, whatever you implement is pure speculation.

As a fundamentally scientifically-minded person I pretty much dismiss the validity of sheer speculation almost out of hand.


----------



## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> A bunch of good stuff in a post.




Man!  It's times like this that I wish I could give multiple XP awards for a post.  That was very, very well said.  Hmm.  I CAN give multiple XP awards.  If you should happen to get some XP for your votes in the other thread, they are NOT because I agree with your voting. 



> while others just write down "water skin, two weeks iron rations" when they first create a character* and that's it until the character dies.*




In about 4 weeks if they can get water.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I have to question most such gains. As I've said in my last few posts, I think 'authenticity', which is a more subjective kind of goal and isn't IMHO the same as realism is more interesting and useful.




For you perhaps.  For me it's realism all the way.



> I don't agree. I think it is quite likely LESS realistic than no system at all!




That's quite literally impossible.  No system = 0 realism and you can't go below 0 realism.  If you include ANY system of breakage at all, even cow farts cause breakage, you are adding some realism as breakage exists in reality and now it exists in the game.  It may be a very, very, VERY amount of realism, but it's there.  Some realism is greater than no realism.



> My point is more that the existing default AD&D system for weapon wear/tear/breakage may well be the most realistic, that is it never happens at all.




Everything wears down and eventually breaks in real life.  Even mountains.  Never having a weapon wear down = 0 realism, which is less realistic than some realism, which any system of breakage will have.



> but then you're into high order math, and big data, to achieve anything meaningful at all there.




This is not true.  Many of us find meaning in the realism that we add to the game.  Just because YOU can't find any meaning without incredible amounts of math, doesn't make that a requirement for realism to have meaning.  It just doesn't satisfy you, which is fine.  You don't have to add additional realism to your game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Agreed: almost nobody's ever going to hard-prep all this, and "just make stuff up" works fine.
> 
> But within what we make up we have to be consistent or the whole house of cards comes down.  If the party hear of a village that's known for its fine sword-making then logic would strongly suggest there's going to be one or two (or more!) top-notch smithies there or thereabouts when the party visit.  Conversely, if the party arrive there and find these top-notch smithies they might be justified in asking why they hadn't heard of this place before when previously inquiring where good weaponry may be found.



Right, so in my scene framing type of process I reveal some information which says "Boyleston has a reputation for fine swordsmiths" then of course if the PCs end up in Boyleston, guess what they will find? This is hardly difficult. Likewise if the party is in Trenton and nobody has ever suggested that Trenton has top-notch smithies, then probably when the desire to find one comes up, the answer will be "gosh, you should have gone to Boyleston!" This doesn't seem harder in my game than in others. 

I would also observe that it is quite possible to happen to show up in Boyleston without knowing much about the town and then learn from observation that it is a swordsmithing center. Depending on the characters and circumstances that might be more or less plausible. If it seems implausible then 'zero myth' certainly makes it trivial to remove that implausibility by simply not making it so. In that case it might later be established that the swordsmiths are all in Trenton.



> If the party visit a town ruled by Baron Farengard logic would strongly suggest that the locals will at least know of said Baron when the party six months later return there seeking him, even if he's died in the meantime.  Conversely, if the party have previously asked for the names of which nobles rule which areas/regions/towns and been told this town doesn't have a noble ruler they'd be justified in asking wtf on arriving at the town and being expected to present themselves before long-time local ruler Baron Farengard.
> 
> And so on.




Sure, these are all simply matters of basic consistency. Of course the locals will know of the baron if he did/does rule them. Likewise if it has been established that no one rules the town, then said fact will (or should) remain consistently true, or else some justification should exist for why it changed or why the PCs were deceived. 

My earlier point was merely that since most things aren't really established in either technique, that the variance in plausibility caused by some sort of 'missing foreshadowing' is pretty likely to be minimal. GMs, in either technique, normally only establish facts that are going to be actually salient in play, unless perhaps the setting has been heavily developed in past games. In that case either GM would have that information available, presumably, regardless of how or why it came into being established.


----------



## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> Wow! Okay, you must be fun at parties. What, do you normally expect that people crave your absolution?
> 
> Look, there is a desire to have some needed room for discussion, and this ain't it. It's roughly akin to someone quoting Drax from Avengers:IW ("I've mastered the ability of standing so incredibly still, that I become invisible to the eye") then someone else immediately goes into a long diatribe about how they aren't still, and can't be, because they are actually moving because they are on the Earth, which is moving, and in the solar system, which is moving, and in the Galaxy, which is moving, and there is no such thing as ever being still AND I WILL NOT ABSOLVE YOU OF USING AN INAPPROPRIATE WORD.
> 
> Yeah, don't ever be that guy.
> 
> On this realism thing, it's not like this is a new debate, it's just the same old tired discussion with new language; no one is re-inventing the wheel, here. I mean, c'mon- the 1e DMG, in the very opening, discusses "realism-simulation school" v. "game school" (and D&D falls in the latter camp). To quote EGG: "For fun, excitement, and captivating fantasy, AD&D is unsurpassed. As a realistic simulation of things from the
> realm of make-believe, or even as a reflection of medieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure."  DM's Guide, p. 9.
> 
> That said, the amount of effort and energy spent fighting over generally-recognized terms is beyond bizarre; there are few, if any, people who can misunderstand what @_*Maxperson*_ and @_*Sadras*_ are discussing, unless they only wish to argue about arguing and are fighting definitions that are commonly understood (YOU CAN NEVER STAND STILL!). Sure, we can go all Gusdorf or Wittgenstein on this, but why?
> 
> I mean, I think I know why; because somehow, the idea of "realism" is one that people naturally fight against; it is not enough to simply say, as was written forty (40!) years ago- yeah, I know what realism is, and I'm just not doing it. Now people have to turn themselves into pretzels by arguing against commonly-understood words. "Yes, I know you said that the fire engine is 'red,' but communication is imperfect. My mental image of red and your can never be exactly the same, and red itself is a concept that covers all sorts of colors, from mahogany to crimson, and since language is imprecise, you cannot possibly call the fire engine red."
> 
> But yes, most people understand the following when someone says, within the context of a typical TTRPG, that something is "more realistic" :
> 
> That it allows for {something} that more closely mirrors {real life or the period in which the TTRPG is occurring}. And that the absence of this allowance (rule, subsystem, etc.) would mean that this TTRPG less closely mirrors {real life or the period in which the TTRPG is occurring}.
> 
> So, for example, in AD&D (1e), the inclusion of item saving throws (p. 80) makes the game slightly more realistic, as it would make the game more closely mirror something that happens in real life (the possible destruction of items from effects).
> 
> This shouldn't be a difficult concept. Most people who aren't fighting it understand it instinctively. That said, there are a number of common issues with realism in TTRPGs which mean that realism is not a "good thing" in and of itself*:
> 
> 1. Realism isn't perfection. Let's look at that saving thrown table on p. 80 again; is it accurate? No. Of course not. It is an approximation of effects, that (TBH) are numbers that are completely pulled out of EGG's posterior. However, and this is the key factor, does it make the game _more closely mirror reality_ than the absence would? Yes, it does. I think this example was raised by @_*Aldarc*_ with the Disease axample (DMG, pp. 13-14). Do the disease chances and tables mimic real life spread of diseases? No. Of course not. But do they make the game slight more "realistic" (in terms of having some provision for disease that is otherwise absent) than without them? Yes. The idea that perfect is the enemy of more realistic is a bizarre one, as the only perfectly realistic system is the one you are in right now- and AFAIK, it's not a game (although people debate that, maybe this is just a really good simulation).
> 
> 2. Realism isn't always good. So, this should go without saying (although, again, this has been said and repeated for more than 40 years), but it here it goes. When I go and see Star Wars (for example), do you know what I like? PEW PEW PEW battles in space. Is that realistic? NO. Of course not (and I hope I don't need to explain why on this website). But it's fun and awesome, and I don't Neil DeGrasse Tyson telling harshing on it. It's the same with games- you know that disease table I mentioned above? More realistic? Sure, why not. Have I ever used in in decades of playing? No, of course not. It's stupid and unnecessarily complicated, without adding much to the game experience (IMO). To use a common example- no one cares about tracking the bowel movements of the PCs (I hope?). Could you make the game more realistic by accounting for that? Sure. But why? Different games, and different levels of "realism" within a game, appeal to different people; to use D&D as an example, some people enjoy resource management, tracking water and food and encumbrance, while others just write down "water skin, two weeks iron rations" when they first create a character and that's it until the character dies.
> 
> 3. Realism is context-dependent. Most TTRPGs (but not all) do not take place in our world. Some are fantasy (magic), some are science fiction (Arthur C. Clarke, sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from magic), and so on. Which is why the issues of realism are necessarily going to be dependent on the context of that particular TTRPG. And this is where it gets the most tricky, because once you move past the issues that are relatable (those issues in which the game world and our world are similar) it gets tricky. I mean, how realistic are the Vampires, or the Faster-than-light drive? What does it mean to even ask that question? That's where issues of internal consistency within the gameworld itself are usually a substitute for normal questions of realism.
> 
> Anyway, I'm just throwing this out there because I was reading through these conversations (most not quite as dismissive as the one I replied to) and I tend to be baffled when people can't agree on terms; arguing about arguing tend to detract from substantive discussions.
> 
> After all, I think that most people here can grok when something is more or less realistic; the interesting discussion is whether or not that is a good thing. (FWIW, I tend to fall on the "more realism tends to detract from the TTRPG experience", but that's me.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Which is where I think the issue arises; in other words, people believe that if they acknowledge that there can be a generally shared understanding of what realism is, then someone would say, "HA. REALISM IS ALWAYS BETTER. I WIN." Which is not the case.




That's a lot of words without an actual definition of realism, or how to measure it, what with it being so easily and commonly understood.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> That's quite literally impossible.  No system = 0 realism and you can't go below 0 realism.  If you include ANY system of breakage at all, even cow farts cause breakage, you are adding some realism as breakage exists in reality and now it exists in the game.  It may be a very, very, VERY amount of realism, but it's there.  Some realism is greater than no realism.




I think you need to stop and give it some thought, Max.

You just said that having cow farts break swords is more realistic than swords not breaking. 

You know some swords don’t break, right? 



Maxperson said:


> Everything wears down and eventually breaks in real life.  Even mountains.  Never having a weapon wear down = 0 realism, which is less realistic than some realism, which any system of breakage will have.




Sure, everything wears down eventually. But most RPG campaigns have a beginning and an end. So within the scope of an RPG campaign, it’s perfectly reasonable to not have any swords break. 

Is it more or less reasonable than some kind of weapon degradation system? It’s impossible to say.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Armour in RL depreciates due to wear and tear for whatever reasons.
> A system that includes a mechanic (abstract as it is) for accounting for the depreciation of armour is attempting to mirror RL more so than a game that does not account for the depreciation of armour, for that specific category. Do you agree or not? If not, why?



In the abstract I can't tell. See this post from AbdulAlhazred about disease rules:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> For example: is the 1e DMG disease system going to 'increase realism' if you use it? I am not at all certain it will. I don't really know how to approach quantifying the realism it is claimed it will add. Is a highly unrealistic model of disease 'more realistic' than no model at all? Is a model of disease which undermines and distorts a number of already established concepts related to injury and death making the game, overall, more realistic or not? Anyone who claims it does and then insists this is self-evident is pretty much off the reservation IMHO. I can't even really critique that, it is like trying to grade a paper that is in an unknown language, at best.



Is the model of armour degradation realistic?

Does it integrate with the way other items of equipement are treated in the system, or does it make armour strangely ad hoc?

Without knowing these things, I can't say whether or not a system of the sort you posit would in any serious way mirror real life.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Is D&D _more realistic_ for attempting, however abstract the system is, to include AC as opposed to having every attack be an automatic hit?



No. A combat resolution system which works by stipulated attrition rather than randomised attrition would not be more unrealistic.

(Such a system could of course factor armour into the determination of what is stipulated. I assume that many wargames of this sort have actually been published and played.)


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I think you need to stop and give it some thought, Max.
> 
> You just said that having cow farts break swords is more realistic than swords not breaking.
> 
> You know some swords don’t break, right?




In 5e ALL swords don't break.   You see the difference, right?



> Sure, everything wears down eventually. But most RPG campaigns have a beginning and an end. So within the scope of an RPG campaign, it’s perfectly reasonable to not have any swords break.




Most campaigns last longer than weeks, and involve fights.  Even one fight against something with hard scales, metal armor, weapons, etc. will cause nicks that need to be fixed.  If your campaign only lasts a very, very, VERY short time and has no fights with anything other than oozes and other super soft things, then sure.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Blades in the Dark, fir example, has no AC mechanic at all, much less any specific mechanics for combat that are in any way different from sneaking past a guard.  Yet, you can have broken or damaged weapons, sucking chest wounds, minor scratches, and many other interesting and "realistic" outcomes of a fight with deadly weapons. 5e, for example, has detailed, combat specific rules, yet generates none of these things.  Which is the more "realistic"?
> 
> You seem to be focused on game processes being the way to introduce "realism".  I disagree this is appropriate.





Ovinomancer said:


> There's a dufference between process and resultant fictions.  "Realism," to me, can only be judged at the fiction, not the process.  However, all of your arguments so far about adding "realism" have been about adding additional processes.  I'm pointing out that process is not required for "realism."



  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], Ovinomancer here is saying to you much the same things as I said to   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] upthread.

I didn't mention BitD, as I don't play that game - I mentioned Prince Valiant, Cortex+ Heroic and BW as games that permit these various things through a mixture of _processes_ (especially important in BW) and _GM narration of consequences_ - which is my guess as to how it is handled in BitD. (If that guess is wrong then   [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] or   [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] can correct me.)



Sadras said:


> Isn't the shorthand for this _realism_. Will you be happy with more authentic? more immersive? more RL illusionary? more dramatic? I mean looking for a better description/buzz-word is just playing silly buggers...



It's not just playing silly buggers - the fact that you think it is means that maybe you've missed   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point.

That point was the following: one effect of the AD&D DMG disease system may be that a PC, on some occasion of play, suffers a disease which debilitates him/her for a little while. And that may increase the player's sense of the authenticity of the fiction, the setting, the play experience.

But that doesn't mean that _the system_ is a remotely realistic one, nor even that _this episode_ of disease contraction was realistic.

Good RPG design, I think, has to be concscious of the fact that it's systems are not _world models_ but rather _devices for producing particular experiences among participants in a game_. If you want that experience to include _contracting a disease_ then you may need a quite unrealistic model of disease contraction in order to ensure this has a chance of coming into play.

I think some early systems, like classic D&D, RQ and Traveller, are a bit confused about this aspect of design. A fairly obvious D&D example is the City/Town encounter matrix in the AD&D DMG Appendix C. If we treated that table as a _model_ of the prevalence of powerful fighters, undead, demons etc in typical AD&D urban settlements the result would be ridiculous - how would anyone ever survive? If we treat it as a tool for ensuring that the players, via their PCs, will have urban encounter experiences that emulate (say) REH's stories about Conan's urban exploits, then the logic of the table becomes much clearer.

You can also see various sorts of workarounds. Eg the Moldvay Basic rules and even AD&D rules tend to ensure that 1st level fighters will have better armour and hence better ACs than the orcs and kobolds they might have to fight - so the combat system can approximate to "world simulation", but we use game logic in another place (here, allocation of equipment) to help ensure that the play experience comes out correctly. Likewise, D&D PC generation rules tend to ensure that the players, especially at low levels, will have access to more and more potent magic than their adversaries.

Would it be "more realistic" for 1st level D&D fighters to have the same sort of armour as the orcish warriors and town militia that make up their world? Maybe, but I've rarely seen that particular brand of realism advocated for.



Maxperson said:


> In 5e ALL swords don't break.   You see the difference, right?



This isn't true, though. Nothing in the 5e rules precludes a GM narrating a scene in which NPC A fights NPC B and NPC A's sword breaks.

In some circumstances, a GM is probably also entitled to narrate that a PC's sword breaks.

It's true that the combat resolution procedures don't produce broken swords, but it's clear in the 5e rules that those are not the only method the game permits to generate fiction about swords.


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> For you perhaps.  For me it's realism all the way.
> 
> 
> 
> That's quite literally impossible.  No system = 0 realism and you can't go below 0 realism.  If you include ANY system of breakage at all, even cow farts cause breakage, you are adding some realism as breakage exists in reality and now it exists in the game.  It may be a very, very, VERY amount of realism, but it's there.  Some realism is greater than no realism.
> 
> 
> 
> Everything wears down and eventually breaks in real life.  Even mountains.  Never having a weapon wear down = 0 realism, which is less realistic than some realism, which any system of breakage will have.
> 
> 
> 
> This is not true.  Many of us find meaning in the realism that we add to the game.  Just because YOU can't find any meaning without incredible amounts of math, doesn't make that a requirement for realism to have meaning.  It just doesn't satisfy you, which is fine.  You don't have to add additional realism to your game.




This makes no sense. If weapon breakage happens in reality once in ten millions then a rule of not breaking at all is more accurate and realistic than a rule of 0.01%


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> But within what we make up we have to be consistent or the whole house of cards comes down.  If the party hear of a village that's known for its fine sword-making then logic would strongly suggest there's going to be one or two (or more!) top-notch smithies there or thereabouts when the party visit.  Conversely, if the party arrive there and find these top-notch smithies they might be justified in asking why they hadn't heard of this place before when previously inquiring where good weaponry may be found.
> 
> If the party visit a town ruled by Baron Farengard logic would strongly suggest that the locals will at least know of said Baron when the party six months later return there seeking him, even if he's died in the meantime.  Conversely, if the party have previously asked for the names of which nobles rule which areas/regions/towns and been told this town doesn't have a noble ruler they'd be justified in asking wtf on arriving at the town and being expected to present themselves before long-time local ruler Baron Farengard.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, so in my scene framing type of process I reveal some information which says "Boyleston has a reputation for fine swordsmiths" then of course if the PCs end up in Boyleston, guess what they will find? This is hardly difficult. Likewise if the party is in Trenton and nobody has ever suggested that Trenton has top-notch smithies, then probably when the desire to find one comes up, the answer will be "gosh, you should have gone to Boyleston!" This doesn't seem harder in my game than in others.
> 
> I would also observe that it is quite possible to happen to show up in Boyleston without knowing much about the town and then learn from observation that it is a swordsmithing center. Depending on the characters and circumstances that might be more or less plausible. If it seems implausible then 'zero myth' certainly makes it trivial to remove that implausibility by simply not making it so. In that case it might later be established that the swordsmiths are all in Trenton.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> these are all simply matters of basic consistency. Of course the locals will know of the baron if he did/does rule them. Likewise if it has been established that no one rules the town, then said fact will (or should) remain consistently true, or else some justification should exist for why it changed or why the PCs were deceived.



Just to add to what AbdulAlhazred has said - this all seems like very basic stuff. How does it support an argument that "no myth" RPGing _must_ generate inconsistencies in the fiction?



Lanefan said:


> the question is more one of how much of that depth and richness do your players ever get to see or hear about - should they so desire - beyond that which is in the framed scenes?



I don't quite understand.

Are you asking - what do I do if my players want to read Appendix B (ie a Tolkien-esuqe timeline)? In that case, I tell them that there is no Appendix B. They can imagine it to be whatever they want! This is not unlike eg REH's Conan stories. If I'm wondering what was in the other rooms of the tower in Tower of the Elephant, there's no wikipedia page or diary entry - I just have to use my imagination.

If you're asking - what do I do if I want to include campaign elements in play nut not as part of the context of presenting the fiction to the players? Then I think this is contradictory.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This isn't true, though. Nothing in the 5e rules precludes a GM narrating a scene in which NPC A fights NPC B and NPC A's sword breaks.
> 
> In some circumstances, a GM is probably also entitled to narrate that a PC's sword breaks.
> 
> It's true that the combat resolution procedures don't produce broken swords, but it's clear in the 5e rules that those are not the only method the game permits to generate fiction about swords.




If the DM adds in breakage like that, he's adding some realism to the game.  As it stands, 5e doesn't have breakage unless the DM adds it in in some way.


----------



## Maxperson

Kurviak said:


> This makes no sense. If weapon breakage happens in reality once in ten millions then a rule of not breaking at all is more accurate and realistic than a rule of 0.01%




It happens in reality quite a bit more often than that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meln41VHxqs


----------



## Kurviak

Maxperson said:


> It happens in reality quite a bit more often than that.




Do you have statistics to backup that claim? 

BTW I was making up those numbers to make a point about not any rule been more realistic than no rule, and not to give any approximation to real numbers.


----------



## Maxperson

Kurviak said:


> Do you have statistics to backup that claim?
> 
> BTW I was making up those numbers to make a point about not any rule been more realistic than no rule, and not to give any approximation to real numbers.




It still fails.  



> If weapon breakage happens in reality once in ten millions then a rule of not breaking at all is more accurate and realistic than a rule of 0.01%




The numbers can be off.  What's more important is that the system moves towards an aspect of real life, in the case of your example, breaking.  Breaking(system) is like breaking(real life).  Not breaking(no system) is not like breaking(real life).  Sure, having a .00001 is more realistic than .01, but that doesn't stop .01 from being more realistic than 0, because 0 removes all chance at breaking, where in "real life" weapons break.  

Like [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], you are too focused on the math, and not focused enough on realism.  The math is irrelevant, except to add greater realism if you want to go there.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> @_*Sadras*_, Ovinomancer here is saying to you much the same things as I said to   @_*Maxperson*_ upthread.
> 
> I didn't mention BitD, as I don't play that game - I mentioned Prince Valiant, Cortex+ Heroic and BW as games that permit these various things through a mixture of _processes_ (especially important in BW) and _GM narration of consequences_ - which is my guess as to how it is handled in BitD. (If that guess is wrong then   @_*hawkeyefan*_ or   @_*Ovinomancer*_ can correct me.)
> 
> It's not just playing silly buggers - the fact that you think it is means that maybe you've missed   @_*AbdulAlhazred*_'s point.
> 
> That point was the following: one effect of the AD&D DMG disease system may be that a PC, on some occasion of play, suffers a disease which debilitates him/her for a little while. And that may increase the player's sense of the authenticity of the fiction, the setting, the play experience.
> 
> But that doesn't mean that _the system_ is a remotely realistic one, nor even that _this episode_ of disease contraction was realistic.
> 
> Good RPG design, I think, has to be concscious of the fact that it's systems are not _world models_ but rather _devices for producing particular experiences among participants in a game_. If you want that experience to include _contracting a disease_ then you may need a quite unrealistic model of disease contraction in order to ensure this has a chance of coming into play.
> 
> I think some early systems, like classic D&D, RQ and Traveller, are a bit confused about this aspect of design. A fairly obvious D&D example is the City/Town encounter matrix in the AD&D DMG Appendix C. If we treated that table as a _model_ of the prevalence of powerful fighters, undead, demons etc in typical AD&D urban settlements the result would be ridiculous - how would anyone ever survive? If we treat it as a tool for ensuring that the players, via their PCs, will have urban encounter experiences that emulate (say) REH's stories about Conan's urban exploits, then the logic of the table becomes much clearer.
> 
> You can also see various sorts of workarounds. Eg the Moldvay Basic rules and even AD&D rules tend to ensure that 1st level fighters will have better armour and hence better ACs than the orcs and kobolds they might have to fight - so the combat system can approximate to "world simulation", but we use game logic in another place (here, allocation of equipment) to help ensure that the play experience comes out correctly. Likewise, D&D PC generation rules tend to ensure that the players, especially at low levels, will have access to more and more potent magic than their adversaries.
> 
> Would it be "more realistic" for 1st level D&D fighters to have the same sort of armour as the orcish warriors and town militia that make up their world? Maybe, but I've rarely seen that particular brand of realism advocated for.
> 
> This isn't true, though. Nothing in the 5e rules precludes a GM narrating a scene in which NPC A fights NPC B and NPC A's sword breaks.
> 
> In some circumstances, a GM is probably also entitled to narrate that a PC's sword breaks.
> 
> It's true that the combat resolution procedures don't produce broken swords, but it's clear in the 5e rules that those are not the only method the game permits to generate fiction about swords.




Right, these are key points. Systems like the 1e Disease system, or encounter tables and such, are not meant to produce realism. Gygax flat out says (as [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] IIRC stated a couple pages back) that D&D isn't trying to be realistic. Its trying to be a fun game. The disease table may create what I called a more authentic experience. Likewise the city encounter table can produce a more genre-appropriate, and thus I would label 'authentic' experience. Neither of these is realistic in any sense I'm aware of, and probably the disease system is less realistic, by the measure of "close to what might happen in a real life situation similar to that found in the game" in terms of disease.

RPGs produce game experiences, fun and entertaining activities for the players in which they can imagine things happening to them which are largely, to be perfectly blunt, utterly unrealistic. Clearly this is very well understood, as there's a famous cartoon in the 1e DMG, 






The joke was obviously that nobody would ever want to play normal people in the real world. It is amusing because D&D is making fun of itself by pointing out that it is NOT serious about being realistic, because realism would be like playing 'papers and paychecks', the most boring and silliest game imaginable!

The quest for some sort of realism, or even excessive levels of authenticity in some ways, is really quite quixotic.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Kurviak said:


> Do you have statistics to backup that claim?
> 
> BTW I was making up those numbers to make a point about not any rule been more realistic than no rule, and not to give any approximation to real numbers.




Right, there are plenty of attestations in the historical record of warriors discussing the breaking of swords and at least anecdotes about wanting or acquiring types of weapons which were thought to be more reliable. Clearly there was a progression from stone to copper to bronze to iron/steel swords over time, which we would expect to be a result of attempts to increase durability and reliability. Ancient Japanese warriors wrote about adopting curved swords (which became a traditional design over time) as a way to prevent weapon breakage (but also perhaps more importantly this corresponded with the adoption of mounted combat). 

So, we can certainly conclude that durability and reliability of weapons was a significant concern in the real world. From that we can conclude that breakage was a pretty realistic possibility that most warriors would have to feel concerned about. That STILL doesn't tell us what would be a realistic rate. One blow in 1000, 1 in 100, 1 in 10? For which type of material? As you say, it may well be more realistic to say 'no breakage' depending on what those numbers are. IIRC various D&D products have actually discussed weapons breaking (I know DS does) but only usually in respect of cruder materials, such as bronze swords. Realistic? We don't know. Authentic to the idea of them being less durable? Certainly!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If the DM adds in breakage like that, he's adding some realism to the game.  As it stands, 5e doesn't have breakage unless the DM adds it in in some way.



Well, 5e doesn't have thatch, either, does it, unless the GM adds it in? Nor does it have pork, as best I recall from the equipment list. I don't think that means 5e is unrealistic in relation to the roofing of buildings or the variety of meats made from domestic animals. It just means that, as a RPG, it takes it for granted that the GM will narrate some fiction as part of the process of play.



Maxperson said:


> Breaking(system) is like breaking(real life).  Not breaking(no system) is not like breaking(real life).  Sure, having a .00001 is more realistic than .01, but that doesn't stop .01 from being more realistic than 0, because 0 removes all chance at breaking, where in "real life" weapons break.



This claim is absurd. A gameworld in which every person is haemophiliac is not more realistic than one in which no one is.

Likewise if one in every 20 perople is haemophiliac.

A gameworld in which every day sees a tornado or hurrican strike the village isn't more realistic than one in which extreme weather never occurs, just because those sorts of weather events sometimes occur in real life.

Introducing real world elements in acontextual ways, or at a frequency that completely belies reality, doesn't increase realism. _Realism_ means something like "resembles real life", not "contains arbitrary distributions of elements that might occur in real life".


----------



## Aldarc

hawkeyefan said:


> I think you need to stop and give it some thought, Max.
> 
> You just said that having cow farts break swords is more realistic than swords not breaking.
> 
> You know some swords don’t break, right?
> 
> Sure, everything wears down eventually. But most RPG campaigns have a beginning and an end. So within the scope of an RPG campaign, it’s perfectly reasonable to not have any swords break.
> 
> Is it more or less reasonable than some kind of weapon degradation system? It’s impossible to say.



Right. I don't think that having rules for weapon breaking or maintenance is necessarily about "realism," but, instead, it's about how we choose to frame the fiction. We generally trust that there are things - like the warrior maintaining the quality of their gear - that the fiction does not focus on but nevertheless likely happen. Or more profanely, we never hear about the fact that the adventurers are likely having to take craps in the corner of the dungeon room they are camping in while their fellow adventurers are present. We don't focus on these things because it's not about realism but, rather, fictional framing. What do we want to spend our (limited) gaming time, attention, and effort experiencing?


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I don't think that having rules for weapon breaking or maintenance is necessarily about "realism," but, instead, it's about how we choose to frame the fiction. We generally trust that there are things - like the warrior maintaining the quality of their gear - that the fiction does not focus on but nevertheless likely happen.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> We don't focus on these things because it's not about realism but, rather, fictional framing. What do we want to spend our (limited) gaming time, attention, and effort experiencing?



To me, this goes to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s notion of "authenticity" - what will make the experience an authentic one?


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, so in my scene framing type of process I reveal some information which says "Boyleston has a reputation for fine swordsmiths" then of course if the PCs end up in Boyleston, guess what they will find? This is hardly difficult.



You'd think so, right?

But in the end it all depends on how good the DM's notes are, whether prepared before the game or written down during it; because seven real-world years later (which might well only be two or three in-game years for the PCs) when the party go back to that area there's no way in hell I'm otherwise going to remember which town had the good swordsmiths or even if there were any here at all.



> Likewise if the party is in Trenton and nobody has ever suggested that Trenton has top-notch smithies, then probably when the desire to find one comes up, the answer will be "gosh, you should have gone to Boyleston!" This doesn't seem harder in my game than in others.
> 
> I would also observe that it is quite possible to happen to show up in Boyleston without knowing much about the town and then learn from observation that it is a swordsmithing center. Depending on the characters and circumstances that might be more or less plausible. If it seems implausible then 'zero myth' certainly makes it trivial to remove that implausibility by simply not making it so. In that case it might later be established that the swordsmiths are all in Trenton.



However it's established, the point is that is then has to remain established.



> Sure, these are all simply matters of basic consistency. Of course the locals will know of the baron if he did/does rule them. Likewise if it has been established that no one rules the town, then said fact will (or should) remain consistently true, or else some justification should exist for why it changed or why the PCs were deceived.
> 
> My earlier point was merely that since most things aren't really established in either technique, that the variance in plausibility caused by some sort of 'missing foreshadowing' is pretty likely to be minimal.



Most of the time, yes.  It's the instances that don't fall under the 'most of the time' banner that cause headaches.



> GMs, in either technique, normally only establish facts that are going to be actually salient in play, unless perhaps the setting has been heavily developed in past games. In that case either GM would have that information available, presumably, regardless of how or why it came into being established.



So why not just have the setting somewhat heavily developed even if it's the first game there? This would allow for that same ready availability of information and also allow a chance to check it all over ahead of time and fix or remove any inconsistencies or errors before they affect anything.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I think some early systems, like classic D&D, RQ and Traveller, are a bit confused about this aspect of design. A fairly obvious D&D example is the City/Town encounter matrix in the AD&D DMG Appendix C. If we treated that table as a _model_ of the prevalence of powerful fighters, undead, demons etc in typical AD&D urban settlements the result would be ridiculous - how would anyone ever survive?



I think that table is supposed to work kind of like how 1e combat works.  Your to-hit roll in 1e combat represents your best swing out of many in that one-minute round.  Your encounter roll represents the most interesting/dangerous/exciting encounter out of many encounters within that hour or half-watch or whatever time frame the DM is using.

When thought of that way, it's still a bit crazy but nowhere near AS crazy.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Just to add to what AbdulAlhazred has said - this all seems like very basic stuff. How does it support an argument that "no myth" RPGing _must_ generate inconsistencies in the fiction?



Because even very basic stuff will at some point trip people up.



> I don't quite understand.
> 
> Are you asking - what do I do if my players want to read Appendix B (ie a Tolkien-esuqe timeline)? In that case, I tell them that there is no Appendix B. They can imagine it to be whatever they want!



So each player can come up with their own imagined timeline for the setting you're using? That sounds like a recipe for madness.   And yes, I'd be one who would want to not only read such a timeline but also know it was the same as all the other players had access to.



> This is not unlike eg REH's Conan stories. If I'm wondering what was in the other rooms of the tower in Tower of the Elephant, there's no wikipedia page or diary entry - I just have to use my imagination.



The difference being, of course, that in the game your PCs can wander over to those rooms and see for themselves what's in there if the Tower of the Elephant is where they happen to be.



> If you're asking - what do I do if I want to include campaign elements in play nut not as part of the context of presenting the fiction to the players? Then I think this is contradictory.



Why?  Even something as simple as an overview map of the continent is bound to include all sorts of campaign (by which I assume you mean setting) elements that the players/PCs might never encounter during play, yet the game-world - and, thus, the game itself - is made richer and deeper by the map's existence.  A player can pick the map up, look at it, and let her imagination take over.  Another player can pick the map up, look at it, and say "Hey, it's blank there - so that's where we're going!"  A third player can pick the map up, look at it, and calculate how long a particular journey might take.  And so forth.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> A gameworld in which every day sees a tornado or hurrican strike the village isn't more realistic than one in which extreme weather never occurs, just because those sorts of weather events sometimes occur in real life.



This exact issue is what did in the original version of my weather table: too many extremes kept coming up. 



> Introducing real world elements in acontextual ways, or at a frequency that completely belies reality, doesn't increase realism. _Realism_ means something like "resembles real life", not "contains arbitrary distributions of elements that might occur in real life".



True, though I find I'm beginning to prefer the term 'authenticity' (thanks, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] ) over 'realism'.

Realism, in the strictest sense, does base itself on our own real world/universe.

Authenticity, on the other hand, bases itself on the reality present in the game world/universe - whatever that may be - and asks it only to be consistent with itself.

How closely the game-world reality matches real-world reality is the next issue.  My simple rule of thumb there is that it matches as closely as possible until and unless something says it doesn't; where "something" can be anything from magic and its effects to inaccurate combat simulations to hit points to alternate planes to fantastic creatures to whatever.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> However it's established, the point is that is then has to remain established.



Who thinks that's controversial?



Lanefan said:


> it all depends on how good the DM's notes are, whether prepared before the game or written down during it; because seven real-world years later (which might well only be two or three in-game years for the PCs) when the party go back to that area there's no way in hell I'm otherwise going to remember which town had the good swordsmiths or even if there were any here at all.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's the instances that don't fall under the 'most of the time' banner that cause headaches.



Well, if _no one_ remembers then it's not going to come up, is it? So there won't be any headaches.

But if someone remembers (whether literally, or by reference to notes) then there are no headaches.



Lanefan said:


> So each player can come up with their own imagined timeline for the setting you're using? That sounds like a recipe for madness.



You're missing my point.

For exactly how many days was Watson stationed in Afghanistan? I'm pretty sure A Study in Scarlet doesn't answer that question. So if the reader is curious, she has to just make it up. Suppose that you imagine it to be some days or weeks more or less than I do - why is that going to cause madness?

In the context of my 4e game, was it summer or winter when the gnoll army killed the king of Nerath around 100 years ago? And was that _exactly_ 100 years ago, or approximately? And for how long did the empire linger on after the king's death? Nothing in my campaign has answered these question, so each player can envisage it as s/he wants to. What does it matter?

Supppose that an answer were established, it might turn out that one or more of the PCs had made a false assumption. How would that be unrealistic! 



Lanefan said:


> The difference being, of course, that in the game your PCs can wander over to those rooms and see for themselves what's in there if the Tower of the Elephant is where they happen to be.



And if they do it can be narrated in the appropriate amount of detail. But there'll always be _something_ that could have been, but wasn't, investigated. And some detail that could have been, but wasn't, narrated. That's my point. What colour is the timber of the table? Do the chairs have carved or flat saddles? Are the door jams timber or arched stone? Etc.



Lanefan said:


> Even something as simple as an overview map of the continent is bound to include all sorts of campaign (by which I assume you mean setting) elements that the players/PCs might never encounter during play, yet the game-world - and, thus, the game itself - is made richer and deeper by the map's existence.  A player can pick the map up, look at it, and let her imagination take over.



I thought you were objecting to the use of imagination in respect of unspecified fiction?

But the map I use in my 4e or BW campaign (I don't have a map for my other games) is not an existing fiction to be explored - it's a list of prompts, or placeholders for possibilities. Which the players know.



Lanefan said:


> So why not just have the setting somewhat heavily developed even if it's the first game there?



My answer would be: there's a big difference between a setting that we've created through play and one that's been invented by one person outside the context of play.


----------



## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> I am  truly shocked that you missed it, along with the entire point.
> 
> But not as shocked as I am by the people who gave XP for a sentence of willful obtuseness.
> 
> I tell ya, bubbles are awesome.



You think that was a measurable definition?  It fails in your immediate example, as items being destroyed by random chance is a subjective opinion as to more closely resembling real life vice items not being destroyed by random chance.  Or, more bluntly, your proposed definition is not an improvement over defining "realism" as "matches my arbitrary preferences."  No one has a problem with matching preferences (see "authenticity" or my proposed definitions), just that "realism" as a term implies there's some objective measure to what is just subjective preference.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Well, 5e doesn't have thatch, either, does it, unless the GM adds it in? Nor does it have pork, as best I recall from the equipment list. I don't think that means 5e is unrealistic in relation to the roofing of buildings or the variety of meats made from domestic animals. It just means that, as a RPG, it takes it for granted that the GM will narrate some fiction as part of the process of play.




It has pork. You can find boar in the MM.  Thatch can be added in by the DM if he wants it in his world.  Yes, the DM can narrate in all kinds of things that the game doesn't automatically include.  If he doesn't narrate them in, they don't exist until he does, unless the DM grants creation powers to the players under certain playstyles.  If he does, they don't exist until the DM or a player adds them in.



> This claim is absurd. A gameworld in which every person is haemophiliac is not more realistic than one in which no one is.




You keep trying this as if it proves something.  It is more realistic, but only marginally so.  It's existence more closely matches reality than if it didn't exist at all.  

Your example is also a situation that no DM above an IQ of 25 is ever going to use.  Engaging in hyperbole doesn't add anything here.  As I've already said, what I'm talking about is adding in hemophilia or whatever to the game in a reasonable manner, not making all people hemophiliacs.  Adding hemophilia to the game in a reasonable manner, like normal people would do, adds more realism than keeping its existence at 0.  



> Likewise if one in every 20 perople is haemophiliac.




That adds more realism than everyone being a hemophiliac, yes.  No reasonable DM is going to that, either, though.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Right. I don't think that having rules for weapon breaking or maintenance is necessarily about "realism," but, instead, it's about how we choose to frame the fiction. We generally trust that there are things - like the warrior maintaining the quality of their gear - that the fiction does not focus on but nevertheless likely happen. Or more profanely, we never hear about the fact that the adventurers are likely having to take craps in the corner of the dungeon room they are camping in while their fellow adventurers are present. We don't focus on these things because it's not about realism but, rather, fictional framing. What do we want to spend our (limited) gaming time, attention, and effort experiencing?




We don't hear about those things, because too much realism isn't fun.  Not because it's not about realism.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> I think that table is supposed to work kind of like how 1e combat works.  Your to-hit roll in 1e combat represents your best swing out of many in that one-minute round.  Your encounter roll represents the most interesting/dangerous/exciting encounter out of many encounters within that hour or half-watch or whatever time frame the DM is using.
> 
> When thought of that way, it's still a bit crazy but nowhere near AS crazy.




The same goes for any system in which the PCs encounter lots of monsters/deadly encounters, which is a good many of them, probably most, and maybe even all of them.  It helps to think of the PCs as fated in some way.  THEY encounter deadly things with this kind of frequency, but the world at large generally does not.  The tables are built for them.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> I am  truly shocked that you missed it, along with the entire point.
> 
> But not as shocked as I am by the people who gave XP for a sentence of willful obtuseness.
> 
> I tell ya, bubbles are awesome.



Your veiled insults do not seem particularly civil.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A gameworld in which every person is haemophiliac is not more realistic than one in which no one is.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is more realistic, but only marginally so.  It's existence more closely matches reality than if it didn't exist at all.
Click to expand...


This is not a very plausible claim.

If you match objects to objects, the matching does not get closer: because in the gameworld with no haemophilia, the only mismatches are the few real-world haemophiliacs who get matched to non-haemophiliacs in the gameworld; whereas in the gameworld in which the incidence of haemophilia is unrealistically high, the number of mismatches obviously is greater.



Maxperson said:


> Your example is also a situation that no DM above an IQ of 25 is ever going to use.



I've seen GMs with IQs much higher than 25 make extremely implausible calls in the name of "realism". One which was particularly frustrating, because it cost my group a convention game, was about the time it takes for the oxygen in a room to be used up. (It was a sci-fi game. The PCs were trapped in a room without external oxygen supplies. The call the GM made was for unrealistically rapid oxygen consumption - even I noticed it, let alone the engineers in our group.)

_Running out of oxygen_ is a real thing in the world, but that GM's implementation of that trope made the game less realistic than if he had just ignored it!

Which really goes back to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point: _matching reality_ (which is as he said a notion of scale, which you also seem to agree with given your use of the phrase "more closely matching reality") can be hard, because reality can often be quite hard to pin down. You don't increaes your match with reality just be scattering in phenomena that happen also to occur in reality. That's not _matching_ anything.


----------



## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> I apologize if you think my references were veiled. I didn't think they were particularly unclear. Here- was this better?



So that you can clarify that your uncalled for hostility was uncalled for? Yes.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> In 5e ALL swords don't break.   You see the difference, right?




Sure. But most campaigns don't deal with ALL swords, do they? They deal with the swords of the protagonists and their enemies. 

It's pretty clear that there are many other swords out in the fictional world (even if the DM hasn't introduced them). So, really, we're looking at the career of PCs and their exploits, and in that case, perhaps they go their entire career without having a weapon break. 

Or, and here's where in an almost paradoxical way, a system that has less hard-coded rules can actually replicate this better; perhaps it's assumed that the PCs repair and/or replace their gear regularly when they go to town. In classic D&D where you track GP and other treasure and belongings, this isn't the way it's handled, but there's no reason that another game can't eschew the tracking of GP, and therefore allow such gear maintenance to be accounted for in a narrative sense. 

Again, this is where "no system" is probably better than having a system. The tracking of every GP and its use actively gets in the way of the "realism" you're striving for. 



Maxperson said:


> Most campaigns last longer than weeks, and involve fights.  Even one fight against something with hard scales, metal armor, weapons, etc. will cause nicks that need to be fixed.  If your campaign only lasts a very, very, VERY short time and has no fights with anything other than oozes and other super soft things, then sure.




Again, this is all assumed to happen in the same way that other forms of maintenance happen....bandaging wounds and eating meals and all other forms of mundane activity that it's not fun to focus on. If you prefer to handle it in a more mechanical way, then you can certainly introduce such a rule.  

If your happy with these rules, that's great. If the game feels more realistic to you with them included, that's also great. 

Just don't tell people that your game is more realistic than theirs because you use these rules. Because that's not so great.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> Yeah, that you see yourself in the references isn't hostility. That would be akin to someone saying, "You know what is terrible, bullies that suck, and the people that support them."
> 
> And someone replying, "Hey, stop being mean to me. That's uncalled-for hostility."
> 
> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Take care!



Except no one is bullying Max while you are insulting people.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> Dude, it's just an analogy.
> 
> Right?
> 
> If you keep seeing yourself, that's on you.



An analogy where you compare us to bullies. So save your "dude" for someone else. There is no "keep seeing yourself" here, [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]. You insinuate that the people who liked Ovinomancer's post (i.e., me included) are living in bubbles and then accusing everyone in this thread of lining up to dunk on Max which is not necessarily true for those involved.


----------



## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> Ahem.
> 
> First, your one-sentence snark about my lengthy post stated the following-
> 
> "That's a lot of words without an actual definition of realism[.]"
> 
> I appreciate that you now realize that I provided a definition, you just don't like it. In the future, please do that instead of providing an obnoxious and incorrect response.



Being charitable about both your eliding my full sentence and the urinic complaint of snark...

You didn't actually offer a definition, though, you just moved the pea.  The complaint was that "realism" was too vague to be useful; it was ambiguous.  You're responded by defining realism in ambiguous terms and then declaring the problem solved because "realism" was now defined.  You just moved the pea:  your definition does nothing for the duscussion but provide a cover for dismissing it.


> Second, the main point of the post is that you (and certain others) are so busy arguing and complaining about definitions (HOW CAN WE EVER KNOW WHAT RED MEANS)



 Strawmen aren't useful.  There's no argument on that front, but instead that "realism" is too subjective a term to discuss in objective ways.  Multiple refinements have been offered and rejected in favor of retaining the "realism" term.  At this point, saying that we're arguing semantics just underlines that your grasp of our argument is shallow, not tgat our argument is shallow.


> that you fail to engage on the substantive point; you may think you are making a brilliant point, but this was already tired when EGG wrote about it in 1979. Yes, language can be imprecise, but it's very easy to say that you don't like increased realism in your TTRPGs for multiple reasons without engaging in a pointless argument about semantics that makes you look foolish.*



I don't think my point is either brilliant or inventive -- this is well trod ground which is why it's so confusing that your still fighting over it.  Again, the argument isn't a semantic one.  "Realism," as defined by you, is entirely subjective, meaning that what's "realistic" to one is not to another.  And we've seen this exact thing multiple times in this thread.  Yet, here you are declaring it's an obvious thing and that those that disagree are full of themselves and just engaging in semantics.  I submit you have the wrong target.


> Other than than, batting 1.000. IOW, while you all might think you are lined up to dunk on Max, and while I personally agree that realism, as a goal, is not a good one for TTRPGs, the majority of people looking at this thread will just see a circular firing squad of people high-fiving each other without cause.



There's actually been some quite goid things in this thread.  Your occasional jump and yell posts notwithstanding.

And, I'm not here to dunk on Max at all.  I find his unwillingness to peel back the layers and engage in actual discussion of game goals and methods, rather than reflexive defense, to be disappointing.  It seems like there's a feeling that admitting that you do something just because you prefer it is bad, which I do not understand.  All of my gaming is because I prefer it, but I'm willing to examine those preferences separately from the mechanics to see if they align.  Max seems to have welded these things together so a discussion on what a mechanic does is inseparable from an attack on his preferences.  This is his hangup, though.





> *It's one thing to quote Justice Stewart. It's another thing to say that there is not, and can never be, p**nagraphy on the internet because of that. Understood? One thing makes you look well-read, the other makes you look like an argumentative putz.




Weird, as I haven't quoted Stewart nor do I have this misconception.  However, knowing the quote and accepting its broad point as being as good as we can do is utterly useless in a duscussion of whether this soecific thing is or is not pornography.  I am being needlessly obvious here, because one as well-read and non-argumentative as you would immediately grasp this point.


All of this being said, you did make the claim that item destruction is "more realistic" even as applied to 1e item saving throws.  To that, I present the following scenarios for your opinion:

Case 1:  

A PC is caught in a fireball that does not kill him.  His cloak burns up.

Case 2:  

A PC is caught in a fireball that does not kill him.  No items are damaged.

Case 3:

A PC is caught in a fireball that does not kill him.  All of his items are destroyed: his armor, weapons, clothing, and other gear.

Which of these cases are more or less realistic?  They are all using the 2e rules because the 1e rules are ambiguous on when to use item saving throws and 2e us mot.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Numidius

lowkey13 said:


> Here is the exact and full history, from my point of view-
> 
> 1. I write a very lengthy post in response to what can best be described as the not-nicest post in the world.
> 
> 2. Instead of engaging with anything I wrote, you write a one-sentence response that says I didn't provide a definition of realism. This is not only incorrect, but ignored the entirety of what I was discussing. Kind of annoying, from my POV.
> 
> 3. I state that you missed it, along with the entire point of my post.
> 
> 4. You then chose to say, oh, that definition? Well, whatever. It's bad. Here- let me quote this, because I think it's pretty funny:
> 
> 
> 
> Woah!
> 
> So at this point, I have to go a little meta, since it has become increasingly clear that you're not actually reading what I write, but just trying to find things to argue with. How do I know this? Because I already addressed it in my very long post. Wait, what?
> 
> 
> 
> So it's almost as if I had already addressed this before you wrote about it! _But that wasn't even the main thrust of my post._ I mean, you're welcome to disagree with what I write (many people do), but at least pretend to read it first.
> 
> Anyway, that's my POV, and *I am done with this conversation.* Because I do not enjoy arguing about arguing, and, as I have often stated, the best thing about banging your head against a wall is when you stop. To the extent you want to declare yourself a winner, you're a winner. If you want my opinion, read my original post.
> 
> Take care!



Is meta-posting permitted, or is it considered like cheating?


----------



## hawkeyefan

It's ALWAYS cheating!!!


----------



## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> Other than than, batting 1.000. IOW, while you all might think you are lined up to dunk on Max, and while I personally agree that realism, as a goal, is not a good one for TTRPGs, the majority of people looking at this thread will just see a circular firing squad of people high-fiving each other without cause.



Danggit! I'm in the majority. 

This feels so wrong; my whole schtick involves being apart from the crowd.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> Now I just want go get sushi and not pay.




Life hack: Make friends with someone who makes sushi, and invite yourself to dinner. Often.

Pro tip: If you want more realism in your sushi, the friend should be Japanese.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn

Oh! Let's go get sushi and not pay.

Maybe that will draw out the Bone Breaking Sect looking to collect.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. But most campaigns don't deal with ALL swords, do they? They deal with the swords of the protagonists and their enemies.
> 
> It's pretty clear that there are many other swords out in the fictional world (even if the DM hasn't introduced them). So, really, we're looking at the career of PCs and their exploits, and in that case, perhaps they go their entire career without having a weapon break.
> 
> Or, and here's where in an almost paradoxical way, a system that has less hard-coded rules can actually replicate this better; perhaps it's assumed that the PCs repair and/or replace their gear regularly when they go to town. In classic D&D where you track GP and other treasure and belongings, this isn't the way it's handled, but there's no reason that another game can't eschew the tracking of GP, and therefore allow such gear maintenance to be accounted for in a narrative sense.
> 
> Again, this is where "no system" is probably better than having a system. The tracking of every GP and its use actively gets in the way of the "realism" you're striving for.



To some extent I'll disagree with this, not so much from the system-v-realism point of view but from the system-v-immersion point of view.

Part of the goal of having one's game world be authentic and-or realistic is, I think, to help the players immerse themselves in the world and in the characters they play within it.  Given that, having the players track their gear and expenses adds to the immersion factor in that the players are doing what the characters would be doing.  Realistically, a character - particularly a poor one - is going to know how much money it has at any given time; and any adventuring character worth its salt is going to know what's in its backpack and what amount of remaining supplies it has on hand.  Player knowledge matching character knowledge where it can is highly beneficial for immersion, and thus just as the character knows what's in its pack at any given time, so should the player.

Hand-waving all this makes the game easier and more efficient to play, to be sure, but note there's this trade-off to consider.  Some might think the ease-efficiency is worth it, others might not.

Where realism (and other less pleasant considerations that at their extreme go all the way to cheating) comes into it is if a player can determine a character's gear-on-hand on the fly, is it realistic/authentic/believable for that PC to always just happen to have some particular piece of exotic gear available just at the moment it happens to be needed?  Again, some might not care; but I sure do. 



> Again, this is all assumed to happen in the same way that other forms of maintenance happen....bandaging wounds and eating meals and all other forms of mundane activity that it's not fun to focus on. If you prefer to handle it in a more mechanical way, then you can certainly introduce such a rule.
> 
> If your happy with these rules, that's great. If the game feels more realistic to you with them included, that's also great.
> 
> Just don't tell people that your game is more realistic than theirs because you use these rules. Because that's not so great.



Maybe or maybe not more realistic, but I'd argue that on the whole these mechanics* push the game towards being more immersive.

* - and note this doesn't necessarily have to be done using hard-wired mechanics; the point is that it's paid close attention to at all rather than just hand-waved.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> the urinic complaint of snark



_ironic_? Or are you just taking the p*ss?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Part of the goal of having one's game world be authentic and-or realistic is, I think, to help the players immerse themselves in the world and in the characters they play within it.  Given that, having the players track their gear and expenses adds to the immersion factor in that the players are doing what the characters would be doing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'd argue that on the whole these mechanics* push the game towards being more immersive.



I think this is very much a matter of opinion. I've never had a player suggest anything of this sort.

The only comment concerning tracking of money and gear I can remember in the past couple of years was a complaint from one player in Traveller - the owner of the starship - that he had to do too much accounting.

I don't think it made him feel immersed.

Suppose that he spent 15 minutes of 3 hours doing his sums: that would be 1/12th of the session. Whereas I'm not sure that, in the fiction, his character spent 1/12th of his time doing this maths. The time required in the fiction would be not much different from that required at the table, and the time that passed in the fiction in those 3 hours of play was over two weeks.

This is the same player who, in our Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, had his PC steal the gold from the dark elves at the bottom of the dungeon, which mechanically figured as a Bag of Gold asset. This boosted his dice pool when money would help solve a problem. The player never suggested that the Traveller approach made him feel more immersed in character or fiction than the Cortex+ approach.


----------



## Ovinomancer

lowkey13 said:


> Here is the exact and full history, from my point of view-
> 
> 1. I write a very lengthy post in response to what can best be described as the not-nicest post in the world.



This is weird.  I didn't mention anything at all about your little tussle with Sep, so I'm not really clear why you feel the need to be defensive about it (or mention it more).  Since you do seem to be keen to bring it up, I can only say that it took two to tango, there, and you didn't cover yourself in laurels, either.



> 2. Instead of engaging with anything I wrote, you write a one-sentence response that says I didn't provide a definition of realism. This is not only incorrect, but ignored the entirety of what I was discussing. Kind of annoying, from my POV.



Again, weird, as I did engage with what you wrote, twice now.  Did I engage with everything you wrote, or, as evidenced below, what you seem to want me to engage?  Nope, but that's not my duty, either.

I posted what I thought.


> 3. I state that you missed it, along with the entire point of my post.



I was unclear that I felt your attempted definition was lacking -- not that I disagree with it, which I also do, but that it was entirely lacking as a definition.  I made this clear in my second response -- you just moved the pea, you didn't successfully define "realism" as a useful term.  And, again, I'm under no duty to engage with what you think is the point of your post, especially when I was engaging with it's premise.  I had an issue that needed discussion before we even get to what you say is your main point -- ie, the definition of "realism" that you use in your main point.



> 4. You then chose to say, oh, that definition? Well, whatever. It's bad. Here- let me quote this, because I think it's pretty funny:




You say this, though.  Explicitly.  Right afterwards.  Here's the quote:


> So, for example, in AD&D (1e), the inclusion of item saving throws (p. 80) makes the game slightly more realistic, as it would make the game more closely mirror something that happens in real life (the possible destruction of items from effects).



This is exactly what I paraphrased.  I mean, come on, [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], we can all scroll up to older posts.



> Woah!
> 
> So at this point, I have to go a little meta, since it has become increasingly clear that you're not actually reading what I write, but just trying to find things to argue with. How do I know this? Because I already addressed it in my very long post. Wait, what?




Yes, I didn't go there because it's premised on your definition of "realism," a definition, you'll recall, is just punting the essential ambiguity down the line and replacing it with an empty wrapper.  Discussion of "realism" not being perfect is rather empty when the definition is still ambiguous.  

And, for what it's worth, complete realism would be a 100% mirroring of the real world according to your given definition, so then moving to "but realism isn't perfection" is rather scattered and contradictory of yourself.  I didn't go there because I was more interested in resolving the premise issue rather than hash out reasons for self-contradiction further down the line.  You do you, though.




> So it's almost as if I had already addressed this before you wrote about it! _But that wasn't even the main thrust of my post._ I mean, you're welcome to disagree with what I write (many people do), but at least pretend to read it first.



No, this even fails at the simplistic level you're dealing with. You explicitly said that adding 1e item saving throws provided more "realism" than not, and no part of this is predicated on perfection of "realism."  Similarly, no part of my statement actually gets to your bolded bits here -- in other words, what you've bolded is irrelevant to my point.  

But, let's take your definition, ambiguous as it is, as given.  Using your entire post, you are claiming that so long as the intent of a system is to more closely mirror the real world, presumably by adding a complication that might happen in the real world that is current absent in the rules, that this increases realism.  This fails at a first pass as I could introduce a rule in 5e that all items are automatically destroyed on a failed saving throw against a fireball.  This would, according to your definition, be a net increase in realism because items can be destroyed by fire, and the rule introduces items being destroyed by fire where it was previously absent.  But, this rule is nonesense and does not, in any way, actually increase "realism" because I'm still just as far away from mirroring the real world by destroying all items as I was destroying none.  Both events happen in the real world on exposure to fire, so both are "realistic".  

As this nonesense outcome is surely not what you mean (and I do not believe you agree even a little bit with the above), that means that your definition is actually lacking some other guidelines necessary to enact what you believe to be "realism".  And, those guidelines will be arbitrary and based on your preferences.  I would have a different set of guidelines than yours, so, clearly, we can't just punt the essential ambiguity of "realism" by accepting your definition -- it has the same ambiguity and is actually lacking critical components in how you would actually use it (as shown with your further arguments, which you've helpfully bolded above).


> Anyway, that's my POV, and *I am done with this conversation.* Because I do not enjoy arguing about arguing, and, as I have often stated, the best thing about banging your head against a wall is when you stop. To the extent you want to declare yourself a winner, you're a winner. If you want my opinion, read my original post.
> 
> Take care!



Yes, this is a common statement from you in the face of disagreement.  You accuse the other posters of just being argumentative and then declare you've had the last word.  Again, you do not cover yourself in laurels.  And, as in the last time we were here, I'm not prepared to accede.

Although, on a side note, it is funny that you'll end a post with a unilateral declaration that you will not stand for a thing when you started that post with a recap of how you righteously condemned another poster's unilateral declaration that they will not stand for a thing.  The irony is positively overflowing.  Or negatively?  Eh, just overflowing.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> _ironic_? Or are you just taking the p*ss?




Heh.  Ironic was intended.  Pee jokes are still funny, though.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Heh.  Ironic was intended.  Pee jokes are still funny, though.



Thanks for taking that in good humour!


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. But most campaigns don't deal with ALL swords, do they? They deal with the swords of the protagonists and their enemies.
> 
> It's pretty clear that there are many other swords out in the fictional world (even if the DM hasn't introduced them). So, really, we're looking at the career of PCs and their exploits, and in that case, perhaps they go their entire career without having a weapon break.
> 
> Or, and here's where in an almost paradoxical way, a system that has less hard-coded rules can actually replicate this better; perhaps it's assumed that the PCs repair and/or replace their gear regularly when they go to town. In classic D&D where you track GP and other treasure and belongings, this isn't the way it's handled, but there's no reason that another game can't eschew the tracking of GP, and therefore allow such gear maintenance to be accounted for in a narrative sense.




The thing is, even fresh weapons broke fairly often when put to hard use, which adventurers do.



> Again, this is where "no system" is probably better than having a system. The tracking of every GP and its use actively gets in the way of the "realism" you're striving for.




So for the record, I agree that no system is probably better than having a system.  I've never introduced weapons breaking, outside of sunder and such, because it's just not that much fun. It's a perfect example of a realism increase that I wouldn't use because it would bring down enjoyment of the game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> You'd think so, right?
> 
> But in the end it all depends on how good the DM's notes are, whether prepared before the game or written down during it; because seven real-world years later (which might well only be two or three in-game years for the PCs) when the party go back to that area there's no way in hell I'm otherwise going to remember which town had the good swordsmiths or even if there were any here at all.
> 
> However it's established, the point is that is then has to remain established.
> 
> Most of the time, yes.  It's the instances that don't fall under the 'most of the time' banner that cause headaches.



Eh, does it have to remain established? I created the original fundamental maps of the campaign world on some big sheets of graph paper in around 1976. Later I re-drew them on some hex paper (maybe a couple times actually, I'm not sure). I pretty much consider the hex grid version 'canonical', but it does differ in some ways from the 1970's version. Nobody would ever really care. Some of the same people have played in this world as recently as 2-3 years ago who were players back then in the same world. Some of the old PCs even made cameo appearances.

Nobody was really concerned that every detail established back almost 40 years ago was precisely known today or even if it was known that it was exactly held to be perfectly canonical. In fact I introduced a couple of elements in the new game which directly contradicted and put a new spin on a couple of old elements. The players discussed this and happily agreed that those 'old tales' could well be a bit inaccurate! I thought this was interesting. Nobody complained that somehow the play we undertook back then was 'invalidated' or compromised in any sense. 



> So why not just have the setting somewhat heavily developed even if it's the first game there? This would allow for that same ready availability of information and also allow a chance to check it all over ahead of time and fix or remove any inconsistencies or errors before they affect anything.




Well, you can. I think if you play in any sort of established setting, say a superhero genre game, or even CoC or just D&D in World of Greyhawk, then of course a lot of things are established at some level. I don't think that is usually considered to be a way to remove inconsistencies. In fact I am told often that FR is a nightmare this way, with players often knowing all sorts of obscure facts that are easily contradicted in play! Is the GM supposed to acquire all these products from decades past and read them all? I don't think that's feasible. So maybe a middle ground could exist where some background is helpful, but OTOH a blank slate is hard to run into problems with!


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Ovinomancer said:


> This is weird.  I didn't mention anything at all about your little tussle with Sep, so I'm not really clear why you feel the need to be defensive about it (or mention it more).




No tussling here. I just walked away from that one. Perhaps I should have more clearly *declared my desire for no further conversation.*

At this point, after 2400 posts, I have learned only that Maxperson believes his subjective aesthetic preferences map perfectly onto some kind of objective reality which he cannot actually define.

The word for that is _faith_.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, this is a common statement from you in the face of disagreement.  You accuse the other posters of just being argumentative and then declare you've had the last word.  Again, you do not cover yourself in laurels.  And, as in the last time we were here, I'm not prepared to accede.




Nah. He just doesn't have the same perseverance in the face of walls that I have.  I don't mind denting them repeatedly.  He does.  Having followed the exchanges since he posted that awesome post that you completely ignored for some strange reason(I know the reason), he is right in his assessment.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Thanks for taking that in good humour!




Better than taking it in the face.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Nah. He just doesn't have the same perseverance in the face of walls that I have.  I don't mind denting them repeatedly.  He does.  Having followed the exchanges since he posted that awesome post that you completely ignored for some strange reason(I know the reason), he is right in his assessment.




I find if of little surprise that a fervently argued position that happens to support your preferences was warmly welcomed by you.  And, he's not at all right, although that would conflict with your assumed worldview, so I have as little hope that this opinion would ever change, either.

You should realize that no one in this thread is attacking your play, nor are they even close to saying your play is bad, or there's is better.  It's all an attempt to get you to look past the shallow assumptions you've reflexively defended and actually look at what the mechanics, play goals, and play styles you prefer actually do and consider there are other ways to do those things as well.  This doesn't reduce your choices on how to do them, just like acknowledging that people like a different flavor of ice cream does not affect your favorite flavor.  

To touch on the actual topic for a moment, "realism" however defined, cannot be a trait of game mechanics.  These do not exist in the fiction and are, in fact, means of establishing fiction.  It's the fiction that's "realistic" or not, not the mechanic.  There's zero "realism" in rolling a die to determine a cause or effect.  As such, any discussion of "realism" that starts with a mechanic is already fundamentally misplaced.  Mechanics can be judged at how well they create "realism", but "realism" is never a function of the mechanic -- it's the outcome.  So, when comparing mechanics as to how they produce "realism" in fiction, the end results are the only means of doing do, and, then, any method that produces a "realistic" outcome is as good as any other.  "GM decides" is not more, or less, capable of producing "realistic" fiction than the player introducing the fiction or the dice or a chart.  This is the fundamental argument.  It really doesn't matter how you define "realism", it's always going to be subjective and evaluated according to your preference rather than anything objective.  But, it does matter where "realism" exists, and there are NO "more realistic" mechanics, just outcomes.  Once you grasp this, you can see that there are myriad methods to generate "realism" that achieve the goal.  If you insist on a process, then it's not really "realism" that you're adding, but instead just more process, and it's just fine to like process.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I find if of little surprise that a fervently argued position that happens to support your preferences was warmly welcomed by you.  And, he's not at all right, although that would conflict with your assumed worldview, so I have as little hope that this opinion would ever change, either.
> 
> You should realize that no one in this thread is attacking your play, nor are they even close to saying your play is bad, or there's is better.  It's all an attempt to get you to look past the shallow assumptions you've reflexively defended and actually look at what the mechanics, play goals, and play styles you prefer actually do and consider there are other ways to do those things as well.  This doesn't reduce your choices on how to do them, just like acknowledging that people like a different flavor of ice cream does not affect your favorite flavor.




I was unclear I guess.  I don't think you guys are bullying me or attacking me, though some of you are being rude with your posts.  I do think you ignored his post and then argued just to argue, though.  He's right in his assessment of his post and in characterizing your responses to them is what I am saying.



> To touch on the actual topic for a moment, "realism" however defined, cannot be a trait of game mechanics.  These do not exist in the fiction and are, in fact, means of establishing fiction.  It's the fiction that's "realistic" or not, not the mechanic.  There's zero "realism" in rolling a die to determine a cause or effect.




It really doesn't matter, since many things you are adding to the fiction need associated mechanics.  Talking about mechanics is the same as talking about the fiction, since the mechanic as you note will result in the fiction being more realistic.  Your argument here is semantics.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> We don't hear about those things, because too much realism isn't fun.  Not because it's not about realism.




Well, I would argue that it is a game, and thus it is about nothing but fun! Realism could sometimes add to the fun, though I think IMHO that it would do so by way of what I am calling authenticity rather than in some more direct way. 

That is to say, a game might be more fun if weapons break on a 1 (or something). We know this isn't particularly realistic, and is probably less realistic than not handling breakage at all. However, it might feel more authentic, or at least more dramatic or otherwise appeal to players, making their experience more fun. It is also a simple enough system to implement, it isn't likely to get too much in the way of play or bog down the game a huge amount. OTOH a detailed system MIGHT be more realistic, but you probably cannot prove if it is or not, its a gray area. It might also add some fun and authenticity, but if it takes a lot of effort to do it, then chances are its too costly and will reduce the fun more than it adds.

Thus, I don't see the question being about realism at all, per se. Beyond that, a game which is wildly unrealistic can be quite fun. Toon was a real blast and we used to play it fairly often for a few years. Likewise we played Paranoia, which is a very unrealistic (surrealistic I would say) game. Nobody ever desired to make these games more realistic, that would have defeated their whole purpose.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The same goes for any system in which the PCs encounter lots of monsters/deadly encounters, which is a good many of them, probably most, and maybe even all of them.  It helps to think of the PCs as fated in some way.  THEY encounter deadly things with this kind of frequency, but the world at large generally does not.  The tables are built for them.




Interesting... Don't you guys (I mean you, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and there have been a couple others) often discuss things in terms of playing a game in which the PCs are NOT picked out by fate. Where in fact they are simply nobody special, unless perhaps they actual manage to forcefully inject themselves into the wheels of fate (and I would assume this to be a difficult process which rarely succeeds). So, I wouldn't think you would advocate for the use of encounter tables which would require such an interpretation.

I mean, even in a 'you are nobody' type of game maybe PCs draw a little attention, make a few enemies, etc. and see more action than Joe Farmer, and I doubt you'd find that objectionable to a certain degree. Still, I am just curious what your take is on this Gygaxian/Anesian design element which was particularly prominent in AD&D.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I was unclear I guess.  I don't think you guys are bullying me or attacking me, though some of you are being rude with your posts.  I do think you ignored his post and then argued just to argue, though.  He's right in his assessment of his post and in characterizing your responses to them is what I am saying.



Again, nope.  I disagree with his fundamental premise, in that I do not think he successfully defined "realism" except to hide the existing ambiguity behind another layer.  His definition does nothing to improve the discussion because the same problems with it exists as before his definition.  That I didn't go on to address the points he rests on this premise doesn't mean I ignored his post -- I could not, in good faith, address arguments made on a premise I was directly challenging; this would have been both pointless and exactly as argumentative as you're accusing me of being.  I actually was avoiding being argumentative by focuses on the source of the problem rather than dealing with arguments where my best response would be to go back to the faulty premise.




> It really doesn't matter, since many things you are adding to the fiction need associated mechanics.  Talking about mechanics is the same as talking about the fiction, since the mechanic as you note will result in the fiction being more realistic.  Your argument here is semantics.



Max, where in your fiction is "and then the player failed a item saving throw so that the character's cloak burned up."  Mechanics don't exist in the fiction at all -- there's no die rolls or charts in the created fiction.  Since this assertion is nonsense, and obvious nonsense, from my point of view, I have to believe there's yet another failure of agreement on what terms mean.  I'll go first -- mechanics are the processes at the game table used to resolve uncertainties in the game fiction.  A skill check is a mechanic.  As tools to resolve uncertainties in the fiction, they do not actually exist in the fiction any more than the player exists in the fiction of the character.  If you disagree with this, please point out where.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> To some extent I'll disagree with this, not so much from the system-v-realism point of view but from the system-v-immersion point of view.
> 
> Part of the goal of having one's game world be authentic and-or realistic is, I think, to help the players immerse themselves in the world and in the characters they play within it.  Given that, having the players track their gear and expenses adds to the immersion factor in that the players are doing what the characters would be doing.  Realistically, a character - particularly a poor one - is going to know how much money it has at any given time; and any adventuring character worth its salt is going to know what's in its backpack and what amount of remaining supplies it has on hand.  Player knowledge matching character knowledge where it can is highly beneficial for immersion, and thus just as the character knows what's in its pack at any given time, so should the player.
> 
> Hand-waving all this makes the game easier and more efficient to play, to be sure, but note there's this trade-off to consider.  Some might think the ease-efficiency is worth it, others might not.
> 
> Where realism (and other less pleasant considerations that at their extreme go all the way to cheating) comes into it is if a player can determine a character's gear-on-hand on the fly, is it realistic/authentic/believable for that PC to always just happen to have some particular piece of exotic gear available just at the moment it happens to be needed?  Again, some might not care; but I sure do.
> 
> Maybe or maybe not more realistic, but I'd argue that on the whole these mechanics* push the game towards being more immersive.
> 
> * - and note this doesn't necessarily have to be done using hard-wired mechanics; the point is that it's paid close attention to at all rather than just hand-waved.




I would be the last to argue that you're wrong, in the sense that what is immersive for different players is likely different, and you've always been quite consistent and articulated your position on this kind of thing in a way that feels genuine.

For me, it is a bit different. See, we were playing AD&D, and we were playing it for a LONG time, like 10 years at least, and what we discovered was that you'd create a new PC (the 493rd one probably by now) and cursorily write down your 'stuff' (after rolling for gold) from an equipment table we'd utterly memorized (boots, high hard 5sp...). Now, 22 months later, your character is 8th level and his sheet has been transferred 3 times (because a hole got worn where you write your hit points). His gear is now stuffed on some back corner written in dull pencil (dull because this was the last thing you moved from the old sheet). Maybe now and then someone remembered to scratch out something that got broken or used up, but mostly the last 14 times you were in town you just mumbled something about 'gearing up' and probably didn't bother to reduce your 14,904 gp by 136sp for replacement stuff (nobody is quite sure, was it 5 or 7 iron spikes). 

Frankly, my character is an almost-name-level bad-assed dungeon crawler. I'm much more immersed in the character when I think "yeah, he's geared up, of course I've got flint and steel in my small belt pouch (3cp)." We invented, more informally than anything else, something like the kind of system DitV uses. It was just more immersive. When you got to the sloping rotating trick room/corridor thingy then of course Doug the Delver had 10 iron spikes and a 3' piece of chain in his backpack to use to bugger up the mechanism. There might not have been an exact number of times you could narrate this sort of preparedness, but don't overdo it and things are good.

If the DM was a bit dubious about a specific instance, maybe Douggy had to make a WIS check to see if he actually thought of having 3 colors of chalk or not. TO US, this much better emulated the sort of super prepared and vastly experienced types we imagined playing.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Interesting... Don't you guys (I mean you,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and there have been a couple others) often discuss things in terms of playing a game in which the PCs are NOT picked out by fate. Where in fact they are simply nobody special, unless perhaps they actual manage to forcefully inject themselves into the wheels of fate (and I would assume this to be a difficult process which rarely succeeds). So, I wouldn't think you would advocate for the use of encounter tables which would require such an interpretation.
> 
> I mean, even in a 'you are nobody' type of game maybe PCs draw a little attention, make a few enemies, etc. and see more action than Joe Farmer, and I doubt you'd find that objectionable to a certain degree. Still, I am just curious what your take is on this Gygaxian/Anesian design element which was particularly prominent in AD&D.




While I have a similar playstyle to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and some others, we do have our differences.  I like that the PCs are heroes of destiny.  What I don't do is have only people of destiny allowed to be members of a character class.  You might have a dozen fighters in the competition, but the PC fighter is probably the only one fate is following closely.


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## Sadras

Okay due to the number of responses I have only responded to @_*Aldarc*_'s comment so far, other points I either agree with or haven't really gotten around to them or do not form part of the conversation topic I'm interested in. I also provided a short synopsis of many of the responses below as it makes it easier for me to gather my thoughts. Feel free to correct.



Aldarc said:


> I don't agree because this seems like a binary viewpoint of combat defense that evaluates realism in terms of whether a system has an AC mechanic or not. It's overly simplistic, lacking scope of how other games perform a similar function with different mechanics. Some games use counter combat rolls. The DM rolls (defense/combat) and the player rolls (defense/combat), and the success of the attack is in the difference. Is that more or less realistic than AC? Other games have the player roll defense, whether using dice polls or defeating a static difficulty number. Is that more realistic than AC? Many systems use armor as damage absorption/reduction. Is that more or less realistic than AC? I can't say for certain, because this does not fundamentally strike me as a debate on realism, but, rather, a debate on gaming preferences and aesthetics rather than some silly, vacuous notion of realism being on a scale, which unsurprisingly seems to having moving goalposts and arbitrary standards. The "realism scale" has as much "meat" as talking about the invisible hand of the market, the leviathan of the state, the state of nature, or the social contract of governance.




Okay, in that instance I can agree with you when one attempts to measure up differing mechanics which are attempting to do the same thing (AC versus Absorption for instance). it does come down to subjectivity.

Would you agree though, for the sake of the argument, if we look at D&D solely and said the next edition of D&D will either have an AC mechanic (as it does now) or every attack will be considered successful, no die roll required. If you have to compare those two scenarios - is one _more realistic/authentic_ than the other or do you feel that still comes down to preferences: those that wish to role dice and those that don't.
Personally I feel at this point it cannot be just preferences and that there is a case for _insert preferred buzzword_, either wearing armour protects your character in some way, however abstract, or it is just cosmetic. 

*SYNOPSIS*

My conversation starter was AC vs No AC which is _more real_.

 @_*Aldarc*_ suggested its preferences as you cannot measure what is _more real_ between AC vs Absorption mechanic. Mostly dealt with above.

 @_*Ovinomancer*_ said he would measure _more realism_ at the fiction level not via processes and described a 'GM decides' game which inputs _realistic_ results via GM narration. Have to give this more thought. 

 @_*hawkeyefan*_ is ok with the terminology _more realism_ except when measuring system vs system, a little similar to Aldarc as he follows the line of preferences which I understand, but probably no surprise to him, I disagree with the BitD example he used - it is TOTALLY gamist and we probably won't agree. In this specific instance I would probably side with Max.  

 @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ returns to the semantic debate and prefers the term _more authentic_ giving his reasons for the use of either term as he views it. I may not agree entirely, but my interest does not lie in the semantic debate. I'm ok with the term _more authentic_ as I've said many times, I was using the _more realism_ term as a shorthand for a great many things.  

 @_*pemerton*_ reiterates everyone else's point in his first two replies (which is where I am). Where I feel I need to point out, the mechanics giving rise to _more realism_ were always acknowledged as very abstract in design and overly simplistic. i.e. If we fall from a distance in RL we take damage, similarly in the gaming fiction. Are they same or even close in design or outcome, of course not. @_*Maxperson*_ has made this point numerous times, but posters still feel the need to mention how poorly mechanics imitate RL.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Would you agree though, for the sake of the argument, if we look at D&D solely and said the next edition of D&D will either have an AC mechanic (as it does now) or every attack will be considered successful, no die roll required. If you have to compare those two scenarios - is one _more realistic/authentic_ than the other or do you feel that still comes down to preferences: those that wish to role dice and those that don't.



To be clear - are you positing a system in which _neither armour nor level/HD makes any difference in combat_, and combat is essentially the attrition of damage dice?

As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] already posted, the bit about armour not mattering takes us close to 4e, where armour is mostly a cosmetic thing except for a handful of classes (by default wizards and sorcerers have a bit less than anyone else, while paladins have a bit more). The bit about level/HD not mattering would be a big change for D&D but not inherently unrealistic.

This would be a big change in resolution compared to standard D&D, but I'm missing the bit where it's unrealistic. Of course if you write in some fiction _heavier armour makes people more robust in combat_ and then the mechanics contradict that you'll get some weirdness - but (eg) 4e avoids such weirdness by writing into the fiction that there are multiple ways to be robust in combat: armour, quick reflexes, quick thinking, etc.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> To be clear - are you positing a system in which _neither armour nor level/HD makes any difference in combat_, and combat is essentially the attrition of damage dice?




No it was strictly an AC or no AC mechanic, I wasn't even touching level/HD.



> As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] already posted, the bit about armour not mattering takes us close to 4e, where armour is mostly a cosmetic thing except for a handful of classes (by default wizards and sorcerers have a bit less than anyone else, while paladins have a bit more).




That is fair.


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## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> @_*Ovinomancer*_ said he would measure _more realism_ at the fiction level not via processes and described a 'GM decides' game which inputs _realistic_ results via GM narration. Have to give this more thought.



It's a tad stronger than that.  I'm saying you can only evaluate it in the fiction.  The process cannot be realistic.  This leads into...



> @_*hawkeyefan*_ is ok with the terminology _more realism_ except when measuring system vs system, a little similar to Aldarc as he follows the line of preferences which I understand, but probably no surprise to him, I disagree with the BitD example he used - it is TOTALLY gamist and we probably won't agree. In this specific instance I would probably side with Max.




This is a good example.  If we consider how the BitD example works vs "traditional" play, then, in the fiction, both have detailed planning, both have encumberance factors for gear brought, and both have these two things pay off when the right equipment for the situation is deployed.  They are indistinguishable from within the fiction.

The difference is what is played out at the table.  In Blades, the planning part is, at most, montaged and happens offscreen.  It's assumed that good planning occurred so the game jumps straight into tge execution.  As someone that's been through more than one full session planning spree, I immensely appreciate this.

But, not everyone does, so there's still lots of enjoyment in actually doing the planning.  That's cool, but it doesn't affect the "realism", just the focus of play.


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## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> To some extent I'll disagree with this, not so much from the system-v-realism point of view but from the system-v-immersion point of view.
> 
> Part of the goal of having one's game world be authentic and-or realistic is, I think, to help the players immerse themselves in the world and in the characters they play within it.  Given that, having the players track their gear and expenses adds to the immersion factor in that the players are doing what the characters would be doing.  Realistically, a character - particularly a poor one - is going to know how much money it has at any given time; and any adventuring character worth its salt is going to know what's in its backpack and what amount of remaining supplies it has on hand.  Player knowledge matching character knowledge where it can is highly beneficial for immersion, and thus just as the character knows what's in its pack at any given time, so should the player.
> 
> Hand-waving all this makes the game easier and more efficient to play, to be sure, but note there's this trade-off to consider.  Some might think the ease-efficiency is worth it, others might not.




I agree with you that it's a matter of opinion, and that what helps immersion or a feeling of authenticity will vary from person to person. 

In this case, what makes Blades in the Dark so immersive is that the character feels more like a person that actually exists in the world the game is portraying. The character is capable and has the ability to plan correctly. This is a trait of the character that the mechanics help portray. 

To me, as a quality of the character, it feels more fundamentally important to immersion than do the contents of their backpack. 

Look at films or other forms of fiction.....does it break immersion to see a character pull something from their backpack or utility belt that helps them in a given situation? There could be extreme examples we could cite ("Robin, get me the Bat-shark repellent!" comes to mind), but for the most part, we simply accept what we see. The character is prepared for what they're facing. 

Other times, we'll get a montage showing what the character is bringing, and that can work as well because it makes us wonder how each item will come into play. I like this approach in fiction because it builds anticipation, but I don't find that the typical RPG character inventory evokes the same sense of anticipation. I don't look at it and wonder "Wow, when will Ragnar need to use one of these torches!" 

So for me, a mechanic that replicates how a scoundrel in Doskvol will prepare for a score is going to feel more immersive than me as a player simply making choices about what to bring. 



Lanefan said:


> Where realism (and other less pleasant considerations that at their extreme go all the way to cheating) comes into it is if a player can determine a character's gear-on-hand on the fly, is it realistic/authentic/believable for that PC to always just happen to have some particular piece of exotic gear available just at the moment it happens to be needed?  Again, some might not care; but I sure do.
> 
> Maybe or maybe not more realistic, but I'd argue that on the whole these mechanics* push the game towards being more immersive.
> 
> * - and note this doesn't necessarily have to be done using hard-wired mechanics; the point is that it's paid close attention to at all rather than just hand-waved.




Well it's not quite that perfect. Each playbook/class has a specific list to choose from based on their specialty. Some items appear on the list for each playbook/class, others are unique to a specific playbook/class or two. Exotic gear is pretty limited, and beyond a few exceptions, requires that the player spend downtime actions for a long term project to add such an item to their list of available gear, or that they use a downtime action to acquire an asset for one time use. 

I wouldn't describe the method in Blades in the Dark as being "hand-waved" because there are specific mechanics involved. It's just that the mechanics work differently than what we'd consider standard. In fact, I find the selection and use of gear in Blades in the Dark to be far more important to the game than what is typical for D&D.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> To touch on the actual topic for a moment, "realism" however defined, cannot be a trait of game mechanics.  These do not exist in the fiction and are, in fact, means of establishing fiction.  It's the fiction that's "realistic" or not, not the mechanic.  There's zero "realism" in rolling a die to determine a cause or effect.






Maxperson said:


> It really doesn't matter, since many things you are adding to the fiction need associated mechanics.  Talking about mechanics is the same as talking about the fiction, since the mechanic as you note will result in the fiction being more realistic.  Your argument here is semantics.




I don't think that it's semantics at all. If you roll a die or play a card or spend a hero point or whatever other mechanic you may use in a game for a character to make an attack, the fictional result is that the character makes an attack. 

In other words, there are different types of mechanics that can be connected to the same type of fictional action, and none of those mechanics is "more realistic" than the other. Which is the entire point of the discussion, I believe; i.e. a GM making an informed decision, a GM making a die roll, a GM asking the player to make a die roll.....whatever mechanic is used it's the end result that we would determine as realistic or not, authentic or not, believable or not.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> @_*hawkeyefan*_ is ok with the terminology _more realism_ except when measuring system vs system, a little similar to Aldarc as he follows the line of preferences which I understand, but probably no surprise to him, I disagree with the BitD example he used - it is TOTALLY gamist and we probably won't agree. In this specific instance I would probably side with Max.




I think Ovinomancer explained it well, but I do want to address the description of how Blades handles gear being "totally gamist"; that's really not the case. There is game consideration given to the mechanic, yes, but it's also rooted in character. The freedom to choose gear as needed in play is meant to mirror the character's knowledge of the world and their specialty as a professional criminal. 

In one instance, the character's ability is what's being portrayed, in the other, the player's ability is what matters. Which you may prefer is a matter of opinion, of course, but I don't think the BitD method is purely a gamist approach.


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## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> It's a tad stronger than that.  I'm saying you can only evaluate it in the fiction.  The process cannot be realistic.  This leads into...
> 
> This is a good example.  If we consider how the BitD example works vs "traditional" play, then, in the fiction, both have detailed planning, both have encumberance factors for gear brought, and both have these two things pay off when the right equipment for the situation is deployed.  They are indistinguishable from within the fiction.
> 
> The difference is what is played out at the table.  In Blades, the planning part is, at most, montaged and happens offscreen.  It's assumed that good planning occurred so the game jumps straight into tge execution.  As someone that's been through more than one full session planning spree, I immensely appreciate this.
> 
> But, not everyone does, so there's still lots of enjoyment in actually doing the planning.  That's cool, but it doesn't affect the "realism", just the focus of play.




I hear what you are saying but it comes down to this:
In reality, we plan what to take before the trip/adventure, hard choices have to be made at planning level which will affect encumbrance depending on what we pack, it might affect how we travel depending on what is carried, it might affect how stealthy we are able to move, the choices are made on the intelligence gathered at time of departure, it will affect what the next person in the group decides to bring, our gear might affect the decisions/reactions of NPCs, it might affect what might get broken or damaged during the trip....

Much of this is circumvented via the BitD system which allocates slots based on when it is required.

The one is clearly gamist, it is not even a question.

And just to be clear I'm not knocking it. I'm just stating the mechanic is less like how it happens in real. I would love to go overseas and not pack anything *except a luggage bag with x slots and a generic weight* and just replicate clothing depending on the weather. My wife would have loved that on our last trip to Europe.

EDIT: Bolded part added for clarity.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> I hear what you are saying but it comes down to this:
> In reality, we plan what to take before the trip/adventure, hard choices have to be made at planning level which will affect encumbrance depending on what we pack, it might affect how we travel depending on what is carried, it might affect how stealthy we are able to move, the choices are made on the intelligence gathered at time of departure, it will affect what the next person in the group decides to bring, our gear might affect the decisions/reactions of NPCs, it might affect what might get broken or damaged during the trip....
> 
> Much of this is circumvented via the BitD system which allocates slots based on when it is required.
> 
> The one is clearly gamist, it is not even a question.
> 
> And just to be clear I'm not knocking it. I'm just stating the mechanic is less like how it happens in real. I would love to go overseas and not pack anything and just replicate clothing depending on the weather. My wife would have loved that on our last trip to Europe.




Not exactly.....there is the matter of selecting Load size ahead of the score. You have to pick Light, Normal, or Heavy Load.....which would mean you had 3, 5, or 7 inventory slots available, and that chocie alone will affect your speed and stealth and even how obvious it is that the character is up to some kind of job. 

So there is still consideration given to the situation ahead of time, and still risk in picking the wrong load size (i.e. you choose Heavy Load, and then only wind up needing 4 slots, or you go with Light Load and wind up needing more than 3). It's just a question of what specific items you've brought that is to be decided during play. 

Just wanted to clarify that.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> Not exactly.....there is the matter of selecting Load size ahead of the score. You have to pick Light, Normal, or Heavy Load.....which would mean you had 3, 5, or 7 inventory slots available, and that chocie alone will affect your speed and stealth and even how obvious it is that the character is up to some kind of job.
> 
> So there is still consideration given to the situation ahead of time, and still risk in picking the wrong load size (i.e. you choose Heavy Load, and then only wind up needing 4 slots, or you go with Light Load and wind up needing more than 3). It's just a question of what specific items you've brought that is to be decided during play.
> 
> Just wanted to clarify that.




LOL. We cross posted - I edited my original post as I knew this was going to come up as you had mentioned it previously. 

I love the BitD system for this, especially for themes I may be unfamiliar with. Your general D&D spelunking I have been doing for quite some time so you get to know your gear.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> I hear what you are saying but it comes down to this:
> In reality, we plan what to take before the trip/adventure, hard choices have to be made at planning level which will affect encumbrance depending on what we pack, it might affect how we travel depending on what is carried, it might affect how stealthy we are able to move, the choices are made on the intelligence gathered at time of departure, it will affect what the next person in the group decides to bring, our gear might affect the decisions/reactions of NPCs, it might affect what might get broken or damaged during the trip....
> 
> Much of this is circumvented via the BitD system which allocates slots based on when it is required.
> 
> The one is clearly gamist, it is not even a question.
> 
> And just to be clear I'm not knocking it. I'm just stating the mechanic is less like how it happens in real. I would love to go overseas and not pack anything *except a luggage bag with x slots and a generic weight* and just replicate clothing depending on the weather. My wife would have loved that on our last trip to Europe.
> 
> EDIT: Bolded part added for clarity.



But, it's kinda not.  The gear mechanic is very tightly tied into all the other mechanics such that, while it may appear super loose, it generates many hard choices as well and isn't nearly as loose in play as it looks in isolation.   

But, that aside, your objection isn't one of "realism" but rather play focus.  You may prefer the detailed planning and gearing and detailed encumberance, but in the fiction generated in play there's no realism difference.  This is an argument about where we prefer to spend our game time.


----------



## Numidius

[MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] Players that choose gear all by themselves before approaching a challenge, without a sort of linkage to how their characters would do it in their fictional world, looks pretty gamist to me.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Interesting... Don't you guys (I mean you, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and there have been a couple others) often discuss things in terms of playing a game in which the PCs are NOT picked out by fate.



Not to start with, anyway.  Most of the time they're just neophyte adventurers walking out into the wilds by their own choice, to maybe get rich and more likely die trying. 



> Where in fact they are simply nobody special, unless perhaps they actual manage to forcefully inject themselves into the wheels of fate (and I would assume this to be a difficult process which rarely succeeds).



Later on as the campaign develops and the wheat rises above the chaff in terms of successful PCs, fate might stop by for a word.  Or not. 

That, and some of the adventure/story hooks along the way will certainly provide them opportunities to inject themselves into the wheels of fate if followed up on - whether they a) recognize these opportunities for what they are when they arise and then b) do anything with them is largely up to them.



> So, I wouldn't think you would advocate for the use of encounter tables which would require such an interpretation.



Perhaps not, but from a let's-get-on-with-the-game perspective I can at least see a rationale for looking at it that way.



> I mean, even in a 'you are nobody' type of game maybe PCs draw a little attention, make a few enemies, etc. and see more action than Joe Farmer, and I doubt you'd find that objectionable to a certain degree.



Of course not.  The PCs don't operate in a vacuum, and it's almost unavoidable that once they start adventuring they're sooner or later going to attract attention; be it in good (e.g. the Queen rewards them for their heroism), bad (e.g. they killed some people during their last adventure and said people have powerful and vengeful friends), or neutral (e.g. people start coming to them with adventuring tasks) ways.

It would, in fact, be inauthentic/unrealistic if these things didn't occur.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would be the last to argue that you're wrong, in the sense that what is immersive for different players is likely different, and you've always been quite consistent and articulated your position on this kind of thing in a way that feels genuine.
> 
> For me, it is a bit different. See, we were playing AD&D, and we were playing it for a LONG time, like 10 years at least, and what we discovered was that you'd create a new PC (the 493rd one probably by now) and cursorily write down your 'stuff' (after rolling for gold) from an equipment table we'd utterly memorized (boots, high hard 5sp...). Now, 22 months later, your character is 8th level and his sheet has been transferred 3 times (because a hole got worn where you write your hit points).



Heh.  For just this reason we track our hit points on a different scrap of paper, or on the chalkboard. 



> His gear is now stuffed on some back corner written in dull pencil (dull because this was the last thing you moved from the old sheet). Maybe now and then someone remembered to scratch out something that got broken or used up, but mostly the last 14 times you were in town you just mumbled something about 'gearing up' and probably didn't bother to reduce your 14,904 gp by 136sp for replacement stuff (nobody is quite sure, was it 5 or 7 iron spikes).



The main reason I have to re-do character sheets is that the possessions lists (both magical and mundane) get so messed up that I can't find anything any more.

That said, at high level when we're rolling in money, with the DM's approval I'll just knock off a generous amount (considerably more than the book costs would add up to) and re-load the mundane gear; the extra money goes as tips and gratuities to the smiths/vendors/etc.  If my character happens to be short of funds I'll pull out the book and track it much more closely.



> Frankly, my character is an almost-name-level bad-assed dungeon crawler. I'm much more immersed in the character when I think "yeah, he's geared up, of course I've got flint and steel in my small belt pouch (3cp)." We invented, more informally than anything else, something like the kind of system DitV uses. It was just more immersive. When you got to the sloping rotating trick room/corridor thingy then of course Doug the Delver had 10 iron spikes and a 3' piece of chain in his backpack to use to bugger up the mechanism. There might not have been an exact number of times you could narrate this sort of preparedness, but don't overdo it and things are good.
> 
> If the DM was a bit dubious about a specific instance, maybe Douggy had to make a WIS check to see if he actually thought of having 3 colors of chalk or not. TO US, this much better emulated the sort of super prepared and vastly experienced types we imagined playing.



We're pretty strict in saying "if it's not on your character sheet, you don't have it", largely because we've had issues with  certain players in the past who either a) gamed the system a bit too much or b) would never otherwise bother to record anything and then just shrug when asked whether they had some specific piece of gear on hand (usually, for some reason, this always seemed to arise when the party needed a grappling hook).

Side story: tracking mundane equipment did directly lead to one of our long-standing gaming memes, that being "never carry a collapsible shovel".

This came about because in a long-ago game (1988-ish?) some player/character decides that having a collapsible shovel in the backpack is a fine idea, and so buys one while in town...and in the next adventure that PC dies at the first possible opportunity.  Party loots the corpse, someone finds the shovel and says "Hey, I'll take this!".  Then that PC gets killed in the very next combat.  Loot the corpse, someone else takes the shovel and...you can see this coming, can't ya?...that PC doesn't live out the day either, butchered by some monster or other.

Then someone realizes that the only common denominator is the shovel.  "It's cursed!  It's cursed!" they cry, and ritually bury the thing.  And wouldn't you know it, no more PC deaths for the rest of the trip!

All of this was due, of course, to sheer luck of the dice...the shovel was never anything more than a bland boring collapsible shovel with no enchantment or curse of any kind on it...but it made for some great entertainment!


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> I agree with you that it's a matter of opinion, and that what helps immersion or a feeling of authenticity will vary from person to person.
> 
> In this case, what makes Blades in the Dark so immersive is that the character feels more like a person that actually exists in the world the game is portraying. The character is capable and has the ability to plan correctly. This is a trait of the character that the mechanics help portray.



Question here: does the character have - or it is allowed to have - the ability to plan incorrectly?  Can a player intentionally make sub-optimal decisions if so desired, or can the game handle a character who is simply scatterbrained or forgetful or who fills his backpack with romance novels instead of adventuring gear?  If yes, good; the follow-up question then being how does the game deal with this either mechanically or otherwise?



> To me, as a quality of the character, it feels more fundamentally important to immersion than do the contents of their backpack.
> 
> Look at films or other forms of fiction.....does it break immersion to see a character pull something from their backpack or utility belt that helps them in a given situation?



If it otherwise makes no sense that the character would be carrying such a thing, then yes it does.



> There could be extreme examples we could cite ("Robin, get me the Bat-shark repellent!" comes to mind), but for the most part, we simply accept what we see. The character is prepared for what they're facing.
> 
> Other times, we'll get a montage showing what the character is bringing, and that can work as well because it makes us wonder how each item will come into play. I like this approach in fiction because it builds anticipation, but I don't find that the typical RPG character inventory evokes the same sense of anticipation. I don't look at it and wonder "Wow, when will Ragnar need to use one of these torches!"
> 
> So for me, a mechanic that replicates how a scoundrel in Doskvol will prepare for a score is going to feel more immersive than me as a player simply making choices about what to bring.



The problem with using movies or TV shows as a comparison is this: time.  A movie or TV show only has a limited time in which to tell its story and thus skipping details is a necessary and constant evil; and any significant prop is expected to come into use at some point.  The gadgets Q gives James Bond always turn out to be exactly what he needs, which has always over-stretched my credulity. But an RPG has no such time limits and no such expectations for the mandated use of significant props, and thus is open to going into far more detail and-or trial and error.

Your score-in-Doskvol example is excellent for this.  If I'm the player immersed in my character I'll know that every piece of gear I have access to might mean the difference between life and death, never mind the difference between pulling off the score or not; and so in-character I want to carefully choose (and-or procure) that gear based on what my research/casing/scouting has told me I'm likely getting into.  By the same token, every piece of gear I don't carry makes me lighter and more nimble, which might also make the difference between life and death etc. as above...and so I also have to consider that trade-off.  And I might unintentionally make wrong choices, which could come back to bite me.

Having a mechanic do all this for you is nice and convenient, but it doesn't seem to allow for wrong choices except as a post-hoc explanation for a failure (effect dictates cause; something I really don't like at all); where I'd rather see things done sequentially such that the gear choices - right or wrong - are made first, followed by playing out the actual score attempt (cause dictates effect).



> Well it's not quite that perfect. Each playbook/class has a specific list to choose from based on their specialty. Some items appear on the list for each playbook/class, others are unique to a specific playbook/class or two. Exotic gear is pretty limited, and beyond a few exceptions, requires that the player spend downtime actions for a long term project to add such an item to their list of available gear, or that they use a downtime action to acquire an asset for one time use.
> 
> I wouldn't describe the method in Blades in the Dark as being "hand-waved" because there are specific mechanics involved. It's just that the mechanics work differently than what we'd consider standard. In fact, I find the selection and use of gear in Blades in the Dark to be far more important to the game than what is typical for D&D.



Cool!


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't think that it's semantics at all. If you roll a die or play a card or spend a hero point or whatever other mechanic you may use in a game for a character to make an attack, the fictional result is that the character makes an attack.




This does nothing to change what I said.  All of that is mechanics being tied to the attack.  One is effectively the other.  An attack without a mechanic does nothing.  A mechanic without being in the fiction does nothing.  Saying "But realism is only the fiction and not mechanics!" is playing a semantical game.  



> In other words, there are different types of mechanics that can be connected to the same type of fictional action, and none of those mechanics is "more realistic" than the other.




This is untrue.  A mechanic in which an attack only happens when my cat farts is a lot less realistic than one in which an attack happens when a player declares his PC attacks with a sword and uses 5e attack mechanics.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> Having a mechanic do all this for you is nice and convenient, but it doesn't seem to allow for wrong choices except as a post-hoc explanation for a failure (effect dictates cause; something I really don't like at all); where I'd rather see things done sequentially such that the gear choices - right or wrong - are made first, followed by playing out the actual score attempt (cause dictates effect).




Why? Considering all that has been written here, why do you insist this somehow adds to your sense of realism in the game?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> While I have a similar playstyle to @_*Lanefan*_ and some others, we do have our differences.  I like that the PCs are heroes of destiny.  What I don't do is have only people of destiny allowed to be members of a character class.  You might have a dozen fighters in the competition, but the PC fighter is probably the only one fate is following closely.




Cool. I would say that, in AD&D, it made sense to have NPCs with character classes. The classes were reasonably simple, especially fighters and rogues and such, and not much would be gained by using a monster stat block. Spell casters are a bit different, frankly I would just sort of hack them to have whatever was immediately needed and not get into crazy things like spell books and lists of known/not known spells and all that complexity. Still, back in those days, I would often list an NPC as '4th level Magic User'. OTOH I did also often just create stat blocks, or 'power lists' for specific NPCs that didn't match up with any specific PC class.


----------



## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> It can be frustrating when you go through the whole process of trying to explain something, and get a one sentence non-response, and a followup that indicates that further argument about argument is ahead - however, given that that my viewpoints on this issue (re: arguing about arguing) were already well-known, I am just making my relief against banging my head permanent this time. I appreciate that you recognize that.




Sure thing!  They do the same thing to me, so I know what you're talking about.  I'm just a bit more stubborn than you are about this sort of thing.  



> Anyway, I apologize if you thought I was indicating that people were bullying you; I really was using that as an analogy in that prior post, and you have shown you are more than capable of standing up for yourself (as shown in this thread!). I do think that there is something distasteful with a group of people that have an insular and (not necessarily) widely-shared opinion taking turns being, at times, rude and dismissive* to a fellow forum member and then bolstering each other with XP; that's what I meant when I wrote that "the majority of people looking at this thread will just see a circular firing squad of people high-fiving each other without cause."




I didn't think you were saying that they were bullying me, so no worries.  I was My response was to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] who was equating the analogy with the accusation of bullying.  It was to let him know that I wasn't taking it the same way he was.



> Anyway, whether it's called "more realistic" or "more authentic" or "more asdwfnksaedjk," I have always preferred a level of abstraction in my games and favored fast gameplay over simulation/realism; that's why I played a stripped-down 1e and pretty much checked out when they published the DSG and WSG. I personally think it would be helpful to, instead of concentrating on this sole issue, to discuss how different goals in TTRPGs have to balanced against each other, and different goals have different costs; something which is familiar in almost every endeavor.




I agree, which is why I have repeatedly said here that while I enjoy more realism than 5e has at it's core, I won't engage realism to the point where the players' enjoyment of the game starts to suffer.  



> It might be interesting to even ask whether the weighting of realism/simulation has changed in TTRPGs, given the advent of amazing computer games; it seems unlikely (IMO) that there will ever be a mass-market for a truly complex and time-consuming TTRPG, and that the main value of these games in today's age may lie in the more social aspects as well as the creativity (which, unlike computers for now, remains unbounded). But that is probably a topic for a different thread!




I'm just going to throw this here since I've seen a lot of people quoting Gygax as being against realism for D&D.  Gygax was coming from a wargaming background where realism meant trying to mirror reality as closely as possible.  In that context, 1e was not about realism.  Gygax then spent tons of time engaging tables and such to simulate reality to a lesser degree, but to a degree that was greater than we saw in 3e-5e.  Realism as people have used it since the 90's has meant something different than what Gygax was talking about. 

I don't know whether computer games were responsible for the change, but realism in table top RPGs definitely means something different than it did in the 70's and 80's.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Cool. I would say that, in AD&D, it made sense to have NPCs with character classes. The classes were reasonably simple, especially fighters and rogues and such, and not much would be gained by using a monster stat block. Spell casters are a bit different, frankly I would just sort of hack them to have whatever was immediately needed and not get into crazy things like spell books and lists of known/not known spells and all that complexity. Still, back in those days, I would often list an NPC as '4th level Magic User'. OTOH I did also often just create stat blocks, or 'power lists' for specific NPCs that didn't match up with any specific PC class.




I like magic to be MAGICAL, so I don't have tons of NPC spellcasters running around the world.  A temple might have 30 priests, but only 2 clerics.  That's not to say that wizards are rare, but they're not a dime a dozen like Greyhawk and some other campaigns run them.  That has the side effect of cutting down on the number of complicated NPCs for me to prepare.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> To be clear - are you positing a system in which _neither armour nor level/HD makes any difference in combat_, and combat is essentially the attrition of damage dice?
> 
> As @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ already posted, the bit about armour not mattering takes us close to 4e, where armour is mostly a cosmetic thing except for a handful of classes (by default wizards and sorcerers have a bit less than anyone else, while paladins have a bit more). The bit about level/HD not mattering would be a big change for D&D but not inherently unrealistic.
> 
> This would be a big change in resolution compared to standard D&D, but I'm missing the bit where it's unrealistic. Of course if you write in some fiction _heavier armour makes people more robust in combat_ and then the mechanics contradict that you'll get some weirdness - but (eg) 4e avoids such weirdness by writing into the fiction that there are multiple ways to be robust in combat: armour, quick reflexes, quick thinking, etc.




I will allow this qualification in terms of 4e. I think it is authentic to the genre and tone of the game. I don't think it is at all realistic. I mean, for 1000's of years, people created and perfected forms of armor, which CLEARLY have value in preventing/reducing injury. The question, however, of one game mechanic vs another's relative realism, even given that we completely specify everything, is pretty fraught. Mostly the implementations are simplistic gamist attempts to create some degree of authenticity, not to really get very close to realism. 

So, I am hesitant to say that D&D's AC system is more realistic than none at all. It COULD be, I wouldn't be surprised if it were found to be so, but the analysis would be beyond anything anyone is probably capable of today. Beyond that I suspect the 'make it harder to hit' system has some limitations, so it may be more faithful in some situations and less in others. Maybe less in some than no system at all, so again the question is really hard to answer. It would be my contention that no game designer, ever, really attempted to create a realistic answer, they just followed the obvious general, uncontroversial, concept and made something reasonably authentic (or not if they weren't good designers).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This does nothing to change what I said.  All of that is mechanics being tied to the attack.  One is effectively the other.  An attack without a mechanic does nothing.  A mechanic without being in the fiction does nothing.  Saying "But realism is only the fiction and not mechanics!" is playing a semantical game.



Have you forgotten how to just play pretend?  Kids pretend "attacks" all the time with no mechanics.  You're only saying that attacks cannot exist without mechanics because you're mired in a rigid way of thinking about games.

Again, it's more than fine to prefer such ways of thinking, but you should have enough of an open mind to recognize that your preference is not the only way possible.



> This is untrue.  A mechanic in which an attack only happens when my cat farts is a lot less realistic than one in which an attack happens when a player declares his PC attacks with a sword and uses 5e attack mechanics.




Again you confuse a process with the fiction.  In the fiction, an attack occurs, whether determined by pure play pretend or a well-codified mechanic or your cat farting.  You may well prefer the codified mechanic over the other two (and be in the vast majority) but tgese things do not reflect "realism" in game because they are outside of the fiction.  Means do matter, but only to the players.  "Realism" can only be concerned with the ends (the fiction).

Frex, if I relate a story about how my character got scratched by a sewer rat and developed a disease, are you going to say that you can't say if this is a "realistic" outcome without knowing the precise manner in which it happened in the game rules?  It doesn't matter to the fiction if I used 1e mechanics or this was the outcome of a failed check in BitD.  It may matter to you, because you prefer one set of mechanics to the other because those mechanics better reoresent your play goals and game focus preference, but the mechanics used don't make the outcome more or less "realistic".


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Sure thing!  They do the same thing to me, so I know what you're talking about.  I'm just a bit more stubborn than you are about this sort of thing.



Whereas I feel the same way about you and   [MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION]13.  You refuse to pick up what's being put down.  I get both of your arguments because I used to make them myself.  There are quite a few threads from around 3 or more years ago where I'm arguing your current position.  I came to realize I had a very, very narrow view of gaming.





> I didn't think you were saying that they were bullying me, so no worries.  I was My response was to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] who was equating the analogy with the accusation of bullying.  It was to let him know that I wasn't taking it the same way he was.



Max, you've said that you engage in dishonest posting when you think others are being dishonest to you, and you've directly accused me of being dishonest with you (and admitted you were dishonest in responses).  You can't say you aren't feeling persecuted when you've outright stated that you retaliate for perceived persecution and then name names as to who you've done this to.  I mean, really, some people actually recall what you've said.



> I'm just going to throw this here since I've seen a lot of people quoting Gygax as being against realism for D&D.  Gygax was coming from a wargaming background where realism meant trying to mirror reality as closely as possible.  In that context, 1e was not about realism.  Gygax then spent tons of time engaging tables and such to simulate reality to a lesser degree, but to a degree that was greater than we saw in 3e-5e.  Realism as people have used it since the 90's has meant something different than what Gygax was talking about.
> 
> I don't know whether computer games were responsible for the change, but realism in table top RPGs definitely means something different than it did in the 70's and 80's.



Discussion of how Gygax played is an actual red herring.  I'm surprised you haven't noticed.


ETA:  Ah, I see lowkey13 has blocked me, but is still petulantly complaining about me (and others) in multiple threads.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Max, you've said that you engage in dishonest posting when you think others are being dishonest to you, and you've directly accused me of being dishonest with you (and admitted you were dishonest in responses).  You can't say you aren't feeling persecuted when you've outright stated that you retaliate for perceived persecution and then name names as to who you've done this to.  I mean, really, some people actually recall what you've said.




So what I said, is I mirror back what's coming at me.  If someone is rude to me, I will be rude in response.  I don't post dishonestly.  My positions are my positions, and I don't make stuff up that I don't believe.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I hear what you are saying but it comes down to this:
> In reality, we plan what to take before the trip/adventure, hard choices have to be made at planning level which will affect encumbrance depending on what we pack, it might affect how we travel depending on what is carried, it might affect how stealthy we are able to move, the choices are made on the intelligence gathered at time of departure, it will affect what the next person in the group decides to bring, our gear might affect the decisions/reactions of NPCs, it might affect what might get broken or damaged during the trip....
> 
> Much of this is circumvented via the BitD system which allocates slots based on when it is required.
> 
> The one is clearly gamist, it is not even a question.
> 
> And just to be clear I'm not knocking it. I'm just stating the mechanic is less like how it happens in real. I would love to go overseas and not pack anything *except a luggage bag with x slots and a generic weight* and just replicate clothing depending on the weather. My wife would have loved that on our last trip to Europe.
> 
> EDIT: Bolded part added for clarity.




I understand why you are putting it this way, but this comes down again to the kind of 'realism' that is being discussed. If you want to have the gear that actually gets pulled out of the backpack realistically reflect what a highly experienced professional thief with significant knowledge of the details of the types of obstacles he's likely to face, then maybe the BitD system is MORE REALISTIC! You have put all the value on 'process simulation', but less/little on the fidelity of outcomes. 

Your luggage back example is not apt, because you are, presumably, a pretty experienced traveler. In any case you are exactly as experienced as yourself, and thus there's no greater degree of preparedness skill which realistically could have appeared. Even if your trip was in an RPG, if you are playing yourself in that game, there's no such greater skill possessed by your character, and again BitD's mechanic would be meaningless, it would have no work to do.

However, in the actual game, BitD, the mechanic does actual work and produces actually more authentic types of results, at least arguably. This is the kind of reason why Max's absolute insistence on one specific sort of realism doesn't cut it. There just really are more kinds, really and truly, and no amount of commentators trying to tell us that isn't so will ever get much traction (although I'm happy that I have refined my views on authenticity, that will be interesting to apply to some more editing I will do soon).


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> In reality, we plan what to take before the trip/adventure, hard choices have to be made at planning level
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Much of this is circumvented via the BitD system which allocates slots based on when it is required.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the mechanic is less like how it happens in real. I would love to go overseas and not pack anything except a luggage bag with x slots and a generic weight



In some previous threads I've been criticsed for suggesting that other posters conflate the ficiton and the real world - but it's hard to see what else might be going on in this post!

The _characters_ in BitD do not pack luggage bags with X slots and generic weights. They plan, and make hard choices.

But in the _real world_, we author all that at a certain point in time, being in possession of certain information.

There is nothing unrealistic about the resulting fiction. And as [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] says, it's not obvious that the decision process for the player is very different from that for the character: the player's knowledge of situation X that triggers a decision that the character packed item Y corresponds to the skilled character's decision, in anticipation of situation X, to pack item Y.

The first D&D mechanic that I thought of that is the same as this is from Oriental Adventures, mid-1980s. The yakuza class has an ability to have _contacts_ (a certain number per level). The player does not need to decide who the contact is until s/he wants to have his/her PC meet that contact.

This is not new game tech.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

darkbard said:


> Why? Considering all that has been written here, why do you insist this somehow adds to your sense of realism in the game?




I think its just his preference. We can argue about what is possible, and what different kinds of play can and do produce, but I won't argue with anyone's preferences. I will say that BitD's mechanic might be more authentic to the idea of an experienced thief, but that isn't really relevant to the guy who enjoys thinking out his equipment list because the RP he enjoys is doing that thinking. He needn't justify it at all.


----------



## darkbard

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think its just his preference. We can argue about what is possible, and what different kinds of play can and do produce, but I won't argue with anyone's preferences. I will say that BitD's mechanic might be more authentic to the idea of an experienced thief, but that isn't really relevant to the guy who enjoys thinking out his equipment list because the RP he enjoys is doing that thinking. He needn't justify it at all.




Totally. I'm just curious as to *why* he holds these preferences. Y'know: the unexamined life and all that (or, possibly, examined and well considered)...


----------



## pemerton

I've commented before that a curious feature of D&D is the use of magic items to circumvent its own "process simulation" conventions.

When it comes to this issue of equipment list mechanics, what is the Bag of Holding but a gameplay device intended to produce much the same experience as BitD, but with an in-fiction process gloss cast over it?


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I've commented before that a curious feature of D&D is the use of magic items to circumvent its own "process simulation" conventions.
> 
> When it comes to this issue of equipment list mechanics, what is the Bag of Holding but a gameplay device intended to produce much the same experience as BitD, but with an in-fiction process gloss cast over it?




Yep.  I've repeatedly found that my players really drive hard to finding/buying/crafting a bag of holding in D&D so that they can skip over the inventory mini-game.  I find it very odd that the game devotes so much page space to items weights and sizes and to encumbrance rules (5e has two separate encumbrance options!) only to add an item that makes such things largely pointless.  I mean, you could overload the bag by having a lot of stuff the players want to take, but then it's pretty easy to weed without serious hard choices except for the gameplay time it takes to do so.  D&D does this often with magic items -- short out entire sections of rules or radically change gameplay.  Not that this is bad, per se, but it is odd that they'd build in these mechanics only to discard them when the appropriate item is acquired.  Flying is kinda the same way.


----------



## hawkeyefan

I always took the bag of holding and similar items as being rewards for progressing through the game. Usually, you didn’t get that kind of stuff right away. So it was a kind of “Guess what? You don’t have to deal with this tedious game element anymore!”

Which, honestly, seems to me like a pretty glaring sign that some design change is in order.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> This does nothing to change what I said.  All of that is mechanics being tied to the attack.  One is effectively the other.  An attack without a mechanic does nothing.  A mechanic without being in the fiction does nothing.  Saying "But realism is only the fiction and not mechanics!" is playing a semantical game.
> 
> 
> This is untrue.  A mechanic in which an attack only happens when my cat farts is a lot less realistic than one in which an attack happens when a player declares his PC attacks with a sword and uses 5e attack mechanics.




Actually, those things are equally realistic. Cats fart and people roll dice. 

But at this point, I don’t think you’re ever going to see the point, so I’ll stop going on about it.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I always took the bag of holding and similar items as being rewards for progressing through the game. Usually, you didn’t get that kind of stuff right away. So it was a kind of “Guess what? You don’t have to deal with this tedious game element anymore!”
> 
> Which, honestly, seems to me like a pretty glaring sign that some design change is in order.



My guess is that, in its original incarnation, the Bag of Holding was an opportunity to earn more XP by carrying out more loot. Whereas it's function as an inventory circumventor was perhaps a by-product - and for the first player who thought of it, a clever piece of skilled play!

In post-loot versions of D&D (ie everything since AD&D 2nd ed), thoguh, that side-effect function changes to become a primary function. Which then creates the weird phenomenon you describe, of being rewarded for playing the game by not having to play (this part of) the game anymore.

Just write a game thats fun to play!


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Actually, those things are equally realistic. Cats fart and people roll dice.
> 
> But at this point, I don’t think you’re ever going to see the point, so I’ll stop going on about it.




Okay thanks, because no, no they aren't.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Question here: does the character have - or it is allowed to have - the ability to plan incorrectly?  Can a player intentionally make sub-optimal decisions if so desired, or can the game handle a character who is simply scatterbrained or forgetful or who fills his backpack with romance novels instead of adventuring gear?  If yes, good; the follow-up question then being how does the game deal with this either mechanically or otherwise?




It could, sure. It’s not meant to, but there’s no reason you couldn’t select all your gear prior to the score and have that gear be less useful. 

The game does push players towards involving their characters flaws....each PC has a vice that influences them, and if they allow it to complicate matters for them, they get XP. PCs Could also suffer traumas through play, which will have a lasting negative impact on their personality.

I suppose this could manifest as devoting inventory space to less useful gear. For example, a PC with the Paranoid trauma might feel the need to carry around a ledger that details exactly how everyone is out to get him, or something similar.



Lanefan said:


> If it otherwise makes no sense that the character would be carrying such a thing, then yes it does.




Sure...that’s why I mentioned edge cases. But what we’re talking about is a criminal pulling out some gear to help commit a crime. Not remotely unexpected stuff.



Lanefan said:


> The problem with using movies or TV shows as a comparison is this: time.  A movie or TV show only has a limited time in which to tell its story and thus skipping details is a necessary and constant evil; and any significant prop is expected to come into use at some point.  The gadgets Q gives James Bond always turn out to be exactly what he needs, which has always over-stretched my credulity. But an RPG has no such time limits and no such expectations for the mandated use of significant props, and thus is open to going into far more detail and-or trial and error.




Well my gaming time is not infinite, so I don’t agree with you there. Also, I don’t think that’s the sole reason that we typically don’t see characters in fiction agonizing over the choices of what gear to bring. It’s not very entertaining in most cases, and it’s more dramatic for the audience to not know.



Lanefan said:


> Your score-in-Doskvol example is excellent for this.  If I'm the player immersed in my character I'll know that every piece of gear I have access to might mean the difference between life and death, never mind the difference between pulling off the score or not; and so in-character I want to carefully choose (and-or procure) that gear based on what my research/casing/scouting has told me I'm likely getting into.  By the same token, every piece of gear I don't carry makes me lighter and more nimble, which might also make the difference between life and death etc. as above...and so I also have to consider that trade-off.  And I might unintentionally make wrong choices, which could come back to bite me.




Yeah....all that can still happen in the game. These decisions are constantly coming up throughout play. When your PC runs into the wall he has to scale, he has to decide if the climbing gear is worth the inventory space. If he thinks it is, he marks it off and the character uses it. If not....if he thinks there’ll be other things he’ll need more, then he doesn’t take the climbing gear, and the character decides to look for another way around the wall.

So far, my BitD game has yielded much more meaningful decision points regarding gear. Each character has a good sized list to choose from, but only a few spaces. Where as I think in D&D, each character is more likely to be carrying around the full list of items, and never really has a decision to make. They just bring everything they have with them at all times. 



Lanefan said:


> Having a mechanic do all this for you is nice and convenient, but it doesn't seem to allow for wrong choices except as a post-hoc explanation for a failure (effect dictates cause; something I really don't like at all); where I'd rather see things done sequentially such that the gear choices - right or wrong - are made first, followed by playing out the actual score attempt (cause dictates effect).




I can understand that preference. I think you’d be surprised at how the BitD mechanic actually feels when you play it out. All my D&D players reacted similarly; at first they balked at the idea (“seems odd to not pick gear ahead of time”), then they saw it in play and thought it was something to exploit (“well we can just pick whatever gear we want at any time”), then they finally realized that it gave them flexibility and choice....but that their choices could have consequences.



Lanefan said:


> Cool!




Yup!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I always took the bag of holding and similar items as being rewards for progressing through the game. Usually, you didn’t get that kind of stuff right away. So it was a kind of “Guess what? You don’t have to deal with this tedious game element anymore!”
> 
> Which, honestly, seems to me like a pretty glaring sign that some design change is in order.




Right, it seems very weird. OTOH if you go back to D&D ca 1976, then it isn't quite so weird. I mean, the game was mostly about nothing but hauling around a bunch of gear and combining it with some spells, to defeat some traps/kobolds/whatever and then haul out the max loot. So Bag of Holding is kinda the ultimate hack. But ALL the magic items are really game hacks. They are all cheats. Potion of Healing lets you cheat on your hit points, +1 chain mail on your AC (and encumbrance!), etc. Some of the more interesting items move more into the realm of plot or just 'being gear themselves'. You can still look at them as game hacks.

The conceptual framework of D&D is no more complex than something like 'Bards Tale'. It just has a DM and thus open-ended situations, and the potential for the players to actually express some personality, though that rarely helps them win. 

2e, or more properly OA, breaks that mold, but you still to this day see a lot of people's concept of play has not really evolved much beyond the 'stocked dungeon' as model play paradigm.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The conceptual framework of D&D is no more complex than something like 'Bards Tale'. It just has a DM and thus open-ended situations, and the potential for the players to actually express some personality, though that rarely helps them win.
> 
> 2e, or more properly OA, breaks that mold, but you still to this day see a lot of people's concept of play has not really evolved much beyond the 'stocked dungeon' as model play paradigm.



This!


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> Why? Considering all that has been written here, why do you insist this somehow adds to your sense of realism in the game?



I could go on for ages answering this, but it's late so I'll just give the Reader's Digest version.

Why does this add to my sense of realism?  Simply put, because reality happens sequentially.  Time only moves in one* direction.  Therefore realism suggests you do things at the table in a sequence based on the time sequence in the fiction: you choose your gear first because that is what happens first, and then you attempt the score. (and before any of that you do your research/casing/etc. to inform your gear choices, among other things)

Playing through the score first and then blaming failure post-hoc on choice of gear is unrealistic and inauthentic for two reasons: first, there's no way of knowing what the player/character would actually have chosen (as opposed to whatever the failure result said she didn't have) had she been able to do her own choosing; and second, because it goes backward in time in the fiction and puts the effect before the cause.

* - if the particular game/campaign has established that its fictional time behaves abnormally then all bets are off; but such campaigns are rather uncommon I think.

If the above makes no sense, let me know and I'll try again when I'm more awake.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Yep.  I've repeatedly found that my players really drive hard to finding/buying/crafting a bag of holding in D&D so that they can skip over the inventory mini-game.



Slight correction: the BoH allows you to skip over (most of) the encumbrance mini-game.  You still need to know what you've got in the bag.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> I could go on for ages answering this, but it's late so I'll just give the Reader's Digest version.
> 
> Why does this add to my sense of realism?  Simply put, because reality happens sequentially.  Time only moves in one* direction.  Therefore realism suggests you do things at the table in a sequence based on the time sequence in the fiction: you choose your gear first because that is what happens first, and then you attempt the score. (and before any of that you do your research/casing/etc. to inform your gear choices, among other things)
> 
> Playing through the score first and then blaming failure post-hoc on choice of gear is unrealistic and inauthentic for two reasons: first, there's no way of knowing what the player/character would actually have chosen (as opposed to whatever the failure result said she didn't have) had she been able to do her own choosing; and second, because it goes backward in time in the fiction and puts the effect before the cause.
> 
> * - if the particular game/campaign has established that its fictional time behaves abnormally then all bets are off; but such campaigns are rather uncommon I think.
> 
> If the above makes no sense, let me know and I'll try again when I'm more awake.




Thanks for the response; I don't find it lacking in details in the least.

If I were to summarize your view, I guess it would be something like the sequential narrative mirroring the sequencing of events in real life is a high priority. While I don't share that priority (and disagree that this makes for a "more realistic" game), I certainly understand why you might hold such a priority.


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> Thanks for the response; I don't find it lacking in details in the least.
> 
> If I were to summarize your view, I guess it would be something like the sequential narrative mirroring the sequencing of events in real life is a high priority. While I don't share that priority (and disagree that this makes for a "more realistic" game), I certainly understand why you might hold such a priority.



Yup.  Prefering this kind of sim play is cool, but it doesn't make the fiction any more "realistic".  You can do this and still have unrealistic outcomes (the fighter that survives the fireball but none of his gear does, frex).

"Realism" doesn't depend on a specific mode of play.  This has been the point since the OP.


----------



## darkbard

Ovinomancer said:


> "Realism" doesn't depend on a specific mode of play.  This has been the point since the OP.




True enough. But it's a hill some are prepared to die upon!


----------



## Sepulchrave II

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] – my apologies. My previous posts were rather acidic.

Ironically, I suspect my actual _play style_ hews closer to yours than, say, pemerton’s. But I think it's important to realize that every individual experience is unique; I cannot assert that “I experience [Y] more authentically than you because of [X].” This seems especially germane to any imaginative endeavour.

I am fascinated by the idea of a “sub-reality” to the game – for want of a better term. Mechanical assumptions upon which the game world is built; it is what draws me to games such as Crusader Kings – a desire to crack the algorithms which underpin the universe. System mastery and resource management scratches an itch for me. And I find playing with those systems a source of genuine creative inspiration. For me, the mechanical "sub-reality" acts as a springboard for my imagination, often by way of a challenge - i.e. _how can I make the game world comport with what the numbers tell me_.

_But_ this is not true for all. I know a number of people for whom it is an honest impediment to their sense of immersion. It disrupts their subjective experience of realism.


----------



## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] – my apologies. My previous posts were rather acidic.




Thank you very much. 



> Ironically, I suspect my actual _play style_ hews closer to yours than, say, pemerton’s. But I think it's important to realize that every individual experience is unique; I cannot assert that “I experience [Y] more authentically than you because of [X].” This seems especially germane to any imaginative endeavour.




I think that the unique experiences are where the subjectivity comes in.  Lets say that X is more realistic than Y, but will person A may not think X is as realistic as person B does, and person B may not think it's fun, while person a might have a blast with it.  



> I am fascinated by the idea of a “sub-reality” to the game – for want of a better term. Mechanical assumptions upon which the game world is built; it is what draws me to games such as Crusader Kings – a desire to crack the algorithms which underpin the universe. System mastery and resource management scratches an itch for me. And I find playing with those systems a source of genuine creative inspiration. For me, the mechanical "sub-reality" acts as a springboard for my imagination, often by way of a challenge - i.e. _how can I make the game world comport with what the numbers tell me_.
> 
> _But_ this is not true for all. I know a number of people for whom it is an honest impediment to their sense of immersion. It disrupts their subjective experience of realism.




I agree.  Even at a single table you can have 4 different people who are looking for 4 different things or combination of things out of a game.  At my table I have 1 guy who in addition to roleplaying, like to figure out the builds that are strongest.  He will plan out his characters from level 1-20 before the campaign even begins.  Never mind that game play changes his plan multiple times, as things that happen to his character during play influence the direction his PC goes.  He just likes to calculate things.  Rules are very important to him.  A second guy just likes to roleplay and the number mean very little to him.  Periodically we will look at his sheet and discover that he hasn't leveled up some parts of his character in like 2-3 levels and we will help him out.  During 3e skill points were the major offender.  His dad, who I have been playing D&D with since 1984, also puts roleplaying at the top, but he will pay attention to the numbers as a way to flesh out his roleplaying.  He plans somewhat, but not for power.  He also likes the "rule of cool," and rules tend to take backseat to what makes sense and/or what is cool.  My last player also likes to plan, but not to the extent that the first player does.  He also likes rules, but that will take second seat to the rule of cool.  Unlike the first player, though, he will occasionally take a sub-optimal choice if it fits his character.  Roleplaying is important to him as well.  

When you have people who look for different things, it's important to at least be able to integrate them somehow.  At my table roleplaying is the key point.  It's important enough to everyone that even though some other things can cause frustration(Player #1 vs. the guy who often forgets to level), those things are acceptable since the primary motivator is present across the board.  People who are too different will often not be able to play together.  It also helps that we have all been friends for anywhere from 15-35 years.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Maxperson said:


> I think that the unique experiences are where the subjectivity comes in.  Lets say that X is more realistic than Y, but will person A may not think X is as realistic as person B does, and person B may not think it's fun, while person a might have a blast with it.




But in the example I give, Y is _a subjective cognitive state_, not a function of "reality." That's the point. There is no real "Y" which exists independently of the experiencer.


----------



## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> But in the example I give, Y is _a subjective cognitive state_, not a function of "reality." That's the point. There is no real "Y" which exists independently of the experiencer.




But it is a shared imagined space and we all know what reality is.  Therefore, we can all imagine that X will make Y shared imaged space more realistic.  We may disagree on the amount of added realism, and/or the value of it, but it's not hard for us to understand what increased realism is for the imagined space we are sharing.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

Maxperson said:


> Therefore, we can all imagine that X will make Y shared imaged space more realistic.




You continue to presuppose _a priori_ what "realistic" means. It means different things to each of us. When pemerton writes that adding a table for weapon deterioration does nothing to increase his sense of realism, I am inclined to take him at his word. 

Fundamentally, your argument is circular: _I believe this because I believe it._ My snarkiness about _faith_ notwithstanding, it is a mode of argumentation I generally tend to encounter amongst biblical scholars.

Consider what I wrote earlier:



			
				Me said:
			
		

> I cannot assert that “I experience [Y] more authentically than you because of [X].”




Now substitute your assertion:

"I experience [the feeling of verisimilitude] more authentically than you because of [the rules which I favor]."

On what basis do you declare an insight into something which I feel, and how can you measure it against your own subjective feelings?


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> That does nothing to change the fact that if weapons don't get dull, as they do not in D&D, adding in the ability to get dull is an increase in realism.
> 
> <_snip_>
> 
> For you to show a counter example, you would have to show in the D&D rules where care of weapons is a listed part of the game.




Whetstone	1 cp	l lb.


----------



## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> You continue to presuppose _a priori_ what "realistic" means. It means different things to each of us. When pemerton writes that adding a table for weapon deterioration does nothing to increase his sense of realism, I am inclined to take him at his word.




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is one of the few people whose word I won't take on things like this.  Not because I think he's lying, but rather because he's notorious for redefining terms to fit his needs and expecting others to either conform to them, or at least accept his personal definition.  




> "I experience [the feeling of verisimilitude] more authentically than you because of [the rules which I favor]."
> 
> On what basis do you declare an insight into something which I feel, and how can you measure it against your own subjective feelings?



I think people are capable of recognizing reality in an imagined space, and if they can recognize reality when they "see" it, they can recognize shifts in it.  It can't really be quantified for the reasons I've given, but they can tell if something is becoming more or less realistic.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Slight correction: the BoH allows you to skip over (most of) the encumbrance mini-game.  You still need to know what you've got in the bag.




Well... 

Even the 1e 01-30 quality BoH will accommodate 250 pounds worth of gear of up to 30 cubic feet. While you couldn't put ridiculous stuff in that space it is enough to hold a heck of a lot of ordinary dungeoneering type equipment. Enough that only highly unusual situations would require you to keep track of it beyond "when I go to town I replenish whatever was used up." You could carry 100's of feet of rope, dozens of spikes, many bags, backpacks, belts, pairs of spare boots, 100's of torches, dozens of flasks of oil, several lanterns, and many other supplies of a diverse nature without exceeding that limit.

If you are blessed with even an average bag of holding, up that to 500 pounds and 70 cubic feet, which certainly seems like enough to carry many suits of armor, a small arsenal of weapons, and all the stuff mentioned above. 

And of course if you happen to be lucky enough to have a Portable Hole! Heh, forget it, you're set. The hole is presumably 6' in diameter, by 10' deep, which means a bit over 300 cubic feet in size and there is no weight limit. My 1e Wizard actually figured out how to equip a fairly usable magical laboratory in his! 

Of course, all of these items could well be quite rare. Still, they do kinda pretty much subvert the basic logistics game.


----------



## pemerton

Sepulchrave II said:


> When pemerton writes that adding a table for weapon deterioration does nothing to increase his sense of realism, I am inclined to take him at his word.



Generally I agree with the thrust of your posts, but just wanted to come in on this given I was mentioned:

I accept the proposition that weapons can deteriorate through use. I think there are a range of ways of introducing this into the fiction: mere background colour, as [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] suggested; as narrated consequence of failure in a system that permits that (Prince Valiant would be an example; so would Burning Wheel; so, I believe though not from experience but from posts in this thread, would be BitD); via a GM-side complication mechanic (which is how Cortex+ Heroic handles it); and via a randomisation mechanic annexed to the attack roll resolution process, which is what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] seems to have in mind.

Any of these might contribute to a sense of realism, depending on details of implementation. I think the lattermost is also often liable to _detract_ from it, if (i) it generates implausible frequencies (too many to be taken seriously; or so convoluted an unlikely that it never comes up, thus not engendering the realistic/authentic experience that was looked for in the first place), or (ii) it creates an implausible contrast with other salient features of play (eg why do our weapons always break but our pitons and armour never do?).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I think people are capable of recognizing reality in an imagined space, and if they can recognize reality when they "see" it, they can recognize shifts in it.  It can't really be quantified for the reasons I've given, but they can tell if something is becoming more or less realistic.




But, if you read the posts earlier discussing the way BitD introduces an element into the game via its architecture and mechanics which could be seen as more realistic, but where that realism is in terms of 'authenticity of the narrated outcome' vs 'authenticity of the process' (which [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] argued for) then you must know that at least these two deeply differing sorts of realism exist, and yet not everyone seems to recognize them, or consider them to be effective at increasing authenticity. It is really just not as simple as 'subsystem X which arbitrates injection of element Y into the game, where element Y exists in the real world is the definition of realism and everyone recognizes that'. Where that true, then your criticisms, or those of [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] etc. would all be super accurate, but they're not because there really truly is no one single agreement about this. [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] cares about reality of outcomes, but [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] cares about process (and I assume he would say that outcomes take care of themselves to some degree).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Any of these might contribute to a sense of realism, depending on details of implementation. I think the lattermost is also often liable to _detract_ from it, if (i) it generates implausible frequencies (too many to be taken seriously; or so convoluted an unlikely that it never comes up, thus not engendering the realistic/authentic experience that was looked for in the first place), or (ii) it creates an implausible contrast with other salient features of play (eg why do our weapons always break but our pitons and armour never do?).




So just a little addition.  Were I to implement some sort of breakage system, I would include armor, shield, pitons, and anything else that would be placed in similar situations and could deteriorate/break.  I wouldn't limit it to just weapons.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But, if you read the posts earlier discussing the way BitD introduces an element into the game via its architecture and mechanics which could be seen as more realistic, but where that realism is in terms of 'authenticity of the narrated outcome' vs 'authenticity of the process' (which [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] argued for) then you must know that at least these two deeply differing sorts of realism exist, and yet not everyone seems to recognize them, or consider them to be effective at increasing authenticity.




I've already acknowledged multiple times that there are different ways to institute realism into a game.  And that people will have different opinions on how much realism any given addition adds to the game.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Whetstone	1 cp	l lb.




That's better, but a whetstone can be used to sharpen cutlery, too.  There's no rule about caring for weapons, and further, if I were to go around at the next convention at the open gaming area looking at character sheets, how many do you think would have whetstones?  I'm going to go with 0, but I could be wrong.  Some people still hold over from 1e and buy just about one of everything for their backpacks.  It would definitely be a small minority, which means that weapon care isn't happening for the vast majority.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Hriston said:
> 
> 
> 
> Whetstone	1 cp	l lb.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That's better, but a whetstone can be used to sharpen cutlery, too.
Click to expand...


I can't recall cutlery coming up very often in D&D games. It's at least as uncommon as a focus of play as is the care of weapons and armour!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I can't recall cutlery coming up very often in D&D games. It's at least as uncommon as a focus of play as is the care of weapons and armour!




True, but that misses the point entirely.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> True, but that misses the point entirely.



You'll have to elaborate on your point, then. I took it to be that the presence of a whetstone on the gear list is not an implication that weapons need sharpening because it might be for sharpening kitchen knives instead.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You'll have to elaborate on your point, then. I took it to be that the presence of a whetstone on the gear list is not an implication that weapons need sharpening because it might be for sharpening kitchen knives instead.




That point has been made repeatedly by myself and others for hundreds, if not a thousand posts now.  If you don't understand it yet, my telling it to you one more time won't help you.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> It could, sure. It’s not meant to, but there’s no reason you couldn’t select all your gear prior to the score and have that gear be less useful.
> 
> The game does push players towards involving their characters flaws....each PC has a vice that influences them, and if they allow it to complicate matters for them, they get XP. PCs Could also suffer traumas through play, which will have a lasting negative impact on their personality.



OK, that helps.



> I suppose this could manifest as devoting inventory space to less useful gear. For example, a PC with the Paranoid trauma might feel the need to carry around a ledger that details exactly how everyone is out to get him, or something similar.



One thing leaps to mind: if gear slots are that restricted it'd be hard to mechanically justify carrying items purely for flavour reasons only e.g. a prissy Elf that always has a complete personal-grooming kit on hand, along with his convention adventuring gear.

In a more D&D-like system using encumbrance and item weights, a character is free (or freer, anyway) to carry some non-essential lightweight gear and not be quite as deficient at dungeoneering or survival.



> Sure...that’s why I mentioned edge cases. But what we’re talking about is a criminal pulling out some gear to help commit a crime. Not remotely unexpected stuff.



In general, no.  In specific, however, there is (to me) a big difference in perception of realism/authenticity between having three open-ended slots which anything of any weight can end up in depending on what the character needs as she goes along, and having what amounts to a pre-determined weight allowance that can be made up of any combination and-or number of pieces of gear the character (pre-)selects.



> Well my gaming time is not infinite, so I don’t agree with you there.



Well true, we're all going to die sometime.  But unless you're getting close to that point it might as well be infinite - so if something takes three sessions to play through instead of one, so what?  As long as everyone is engaged, where's the harm?



> Also, I don’t think that’s the sole reason that we typically don’t see characters in fiction agonizing over the choices of what gear to bring. It’s not very entertaining in most cases, and it’s more dramatic for the audience to not know.



Perhaps; but in an RPG we're not the audience, we're the characters.  Bit of a difference. 



> Yeah....all that can still happen in the game. These decisions are constantly coming up throughout play. When your PC runs into the wall he has to scale, he has to decide if the climbing gear is worth the inventory space. If he thinks it is, he marks it off and the character uses it. If not....if he thinks there’ll be other things he’ll need more, then he doesn’t take the climbing gear, and the character decides to look for another way around the wall.
> 
> So far, my BitD game has yielded much more meaningful decision points regarding gear. Each character has a good sized list to choose from, but only a few spaces. Where as I think in D&D, each character is more likely to be carrying around the full list of items, and never really has a decision to make. They just bring everything they have with them at all times.



Unless encumbrance rules are strictly enforced, I agree this can become a problem.  Even bags of holding have limits.



> I can understand that preference. I think you’d be surprised at how the BitD mechanic actually feels when you play it out. All my D&D players reacted similarly; at first they balked at the idea (“seems odd to not pick gear ahead of time”), then they saw it in play and thought it was something to exploit (“well we can just pick whatever gear we want at any time”), then they finally realized that it gave them flexibility and choice....but that their choices could have consequences.



And I can see how that would happen, certainly from an at-the-table point of view where the players have to sometimes agonize over these decisions.  And from that aspect alone, it sounds great.

I guess my point is that a system like that seems to take those choices too far out of character - I'd rather see the players role-play their characters agonizing over these same decisions, maybe without as much information as they'd otherwise have.

For example, using the score again: 

D&D - the character's done her research and realized she'll very likely need climbing gear, a crowbar, a towel or small blanket to muffle sounds, a bag to put the loot in, and some high-quality lockpicks - and so that (along with a small but nasty weapon and the blacked-out clothes she's wearing) is what she takes; intentionally leaving herself gobs of encumbrance headroom for all the loot she's about to steal!  She gets in successfully (and in the process uses all the gear she brought other than her weapon; it turns out her research and casing were spot-on) and grabs the loot.

BitD - the character's done her research and realized there's a score to be had here, so she sets off.  Being a cautious sort she decides weight be damned, I'm going 7 slots wide on this one. During the process she finds obstacles that require her to use climbing gear (slot 1), a crowbar to pry some bars loose over a window (2), a towel to muffle the sounds of the crowbar (3), her lockpicks (4), and a bag for the loot (5).  She now has the loot in the bag (and thus the loot becomes part of slot 5; her weapon was in slot 6 all along).

Then just as she's making good her escape she meets a guard dog she had no previous knowledge of at all; the character looks for any sort of out-clause and (via whatever means) the GM ends up narrating that the dog looks hungry.  The D&D character is likely hosed at this point as, having no idea there was a dog anywhere involved, she didn't think to bring any meat; while the BitD character, having one slot left, can simply put some meat in that slot (7), throw it to the dog, and escape.

This is the sort of thing that would bug me; that the BitD character just happens to have exactly what it needs when an unforseen or unexpected situation arises.

Obviously, had the BitD character foregone the weapon and only gone 5 slots wide the outcome would have been the same as in the D&D example, as she'd be out of slots by the time the dog showed up.

I hope you see what I'm getting at here.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> This is the sort of thing that would bug me; that the BitD character just happens to have exactly what it needs when an unforseen or unexpected situation arises.



But it's not unforeseen by the character. That's the point, really.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Yup.  Prefering this kind of sim play is cool, but it doesn't make the fiction any more "realistic".  You can do this and still have unrealistic outcomes (the fighter that survives the fireball but none of his gear does, frex).



Actually that example is quite realistic: the gear in effect sacrificed itself for the wearer.  Similar to throwing a closed wooden box full of papers into a bonfire and then after a while suddenly realizing you weren't done with the papers yet - when you haul it back out of the fire the box could be burned beyond repair yet the papers inside might be mostly undamaged.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well...
> 
> Even the 1e 01-30 quality BoH will accommodate 250 pounds worth of gear of up to 30 cubic feet. While you couldn't put ridiculous stuff in that space it is enough to hold a heck of a lot of ordinary dungeoneering type equipment. Enough that only highly unusual situations would require you to keep track of it beyond "when I go to town I replenish whatever was used up." You could carry 100's of feet of rope, dozens of spikes, many bags, backpacks, belts, pairs of spare boots, 100's of torches, dozens of flasks of oil, several lanterns, and many other supplies of a diverse nature without exceeding that limit.
> 
> If you are blessed with even an average bag of holding, up that to 500 pounds and 70 cubic feet, which certainly seems like enough to carry many suits of armor, a small arsenal of weapons, and all the stuff mentioned above.



500 pounds doesn't go far once you start racking up coinage.

Our most common uses for devices of holding are either a) a way for otherwise-spindly mage types to carry all their spellbooks or b) treasure holders, empty at the adventure's start and (with any luck!) full to bursting by the end.



> And of course if you happen to be lucky enough to have a Portable Hole! Heh, forget it, you're set. The hole is presumably 6' in diameter, by 10' deep, which means a bit over 300 cubic feet in size and there is no weight limit. My 1e Wizard actually figured out how to equip a fairly usable magical laboratory in his!



Yeah, I've seen this sort of thing in play and were I the DM (I wasn't) I'd probably have an issue with it as to me the Hole is just that - a hole.  Not a pit, and not a container.  It's for sticking on a wall a la Bugs Bunny, to give you a tunnel or passage to somewhere on the other side.



> Of course, all of these items could well be quite rare. Still, they do kinda pretty much subvert the basic logistics game.



Agreed.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> OK, that helps.
> 
> One thing leaps to mind: if gear slots are that restricted it'd be hard to mechanically justify carrying items purely for flavour reasons only e.g. a prissy Elf that always has a complete personal-grooming kit on hand, along with his convention adventuring gear.



I would say, in systems like this, that an item which has no story impact really doesn't NEED to be regulated. The character only carries one or two small 'mementos' because that comports with the dramatic RP aspect of it, but the rules needn't get involved.



> In a more D&D-like system using encumbrance and item weights, a character is free (or freer, anyway) to carry some non-essential lightweight gear and not be quite as deficient at dungeoneering or survival.



I would think that something like a "personal grooming kit" would indeed be pretty negligible, but then again its possible for rule systems which are meant to create realism to discourage RP at times. I mean, pretty much any system that lets you pick a limited number of resources will do that, like skill systems. NOBODY has 'stamp collecting' as a skill. Of course my comment above can be applied here too, it is just often people are pretty literal-minded with these types of systems and forget that some leeway can exist and not break things.


----------



## Sadras

Ovinomancer said:


> But, it's kinda not.  The gear mechanic is very tightly tied into all the other mechanics such that, while it may appear super loose, it generates many hard choices as well and isn't nearly as loose in play as it looks in isolation.




When @_*hawkeyefan*_ first mentioned the mechanic I pretty much realised how it could be used in a game and given your above post, this confirms it. It is an excellent mechanic!   

Hard choices and integration can be incorporated in both gamist and _more authentic_  mechanics.



> But, that aside, your objection isn't one of "realism" but rather play focus.  You may prefer the detailed planning and gearing and detailed encumberance, but in the fiction generated in play there's no realism difference.  This is an argument about where we prefer to spend our game time.




Planning beforehand ticks more realism/authenticity boxes. 
Play focus does not enter the conversation, it is a completely separate issue in this instance.

In the same vain one could have weapon slots so when you face undead, you can replace a weapon slot with an appropriate weapon that does significant damage to undead (i.e. bludgeoning). 
Is this more authentic to you? I find the more you deviate from how things occur in RL, the more you tend towards a gamist system. Hard choices and integration are still there, and play focus has shifted, but this type of deviation leans more towards abstraction.



Numidius said:


> @_*Sadras*_ Players that choose gear all by themselves before approaching a challenge, without a sort of linkage to how their characters would do it in their fictional world, looks pretty gamist to me.




In what way? I'm not following.
I would think adventurers would equip themselves between their travels. Are you inferring that they do not confer with each other or with others/specialists before equipping?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sadras said:


> When @_*hawkeyefan*_ first mentioned the mechanic I pretty much realised how it could be used in a game and given your above post, this confirms it. It is an excellent mechanic!
> 
> Hard choices and integration can be incorporated in both gamist and _more authentic_  mechanics.
> 
> Planning beforehand ticks more realism/authenticity boxes.
> Play focus does not enter the conversation, it is a completely separate issue in this instance.



But there is planning beforehand in both.  It's a matter of play focus if that planning is something the player does at the table or the character does before the score, not "authenticity" or "realism". It's a play preference, not one of "realism."  Switching to "authenticity" is just more hiding the pea. 







> In the same vain one could have weapon slots so when you face undead, you can replace a weapon slot with an appropriate weapon that does significant damage to undead (i.e. bludgeoning).
> Is this more authentic to you? I find the more you deviate from how things occur in RL, the more you tend towards a gamist system. Hard choices and integration are still there, and play focus has shifted, but this type of deviation leans more towards abstraction.



As many of these things your talking about are narrativist tools, I feel that, once again, Forge-speak is a hinderance to discussion.  I have no idea what you mean by "gamist" in this regard.  I know what the Forge meant (as well as possible) but tgat diesn't seem to apply here.  I'm really getting the vibe that you're using gamist to mean more like a game?  That seems counterproductive when discussing ganes, though, so please elaborate.



> In what way? I'm not following.
> I would think adventurers would equip themselves between their travels.



Heh, Forge-speak, again.  Numidus is closer to proper usage here than you've been, but your confused by his point (understandably).  I'm pretty sure I see his point, but will defer to him (and you) to clarify without leaning on -ist terms.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> Would you agree though, for the sake of the argument, if we look at D&D solely and said the next edition of D&D will either have an AC mechanic (as it does now) or every attack will be considered successful, no die roll required. If you have to compare those two scenarios - is one _more realistic/authentic_ than the other or do you feel that still comes down to preferences: those that wish to role dice and those that don't.
> Personally I feel at this point it cannot be just preferences and that there is a case for _insert preferred buzzword_, either wearing armour protects your character in some way, however abstract, or it is just cosmetic.



I apologize if it sounds as if I am talking about this obliquely or without candor, as I think that this issue is more complicated than more/less realism. 

If we look at D&D solely, then we are looking at a system (or series of related systems throughout time) that has its own set of assumptions about the cultural norms, rationalities of the game, and how it nominally should function. However, if the next edition did not "have an AC mechanic (as it does now) or every attack will be considered successful, no die roll required" then I could not say with any certainty that the game is more or less realistic. Let me break the whole "D&D solely" stipulation. 

There is an OSR lite game called "Into the Odd" that does feature damage rolls without attack rolls. Every attack is fundamentally successful such that it contributes to wearing down the hit points of the adventurer. In this way, every attack committed against you drains your endurance, whether you are "hit" or avoiding being hit per the fiction. So this not only speeds up combat but also discourages the perils of combat as the primary means to solve dungeon delving problems due to its lethality.  I do not have my copy of the "book" on hand, so I cannot recall the benefits of armor, though I assume it is damage reduction. Despite the lack of "to hit" mechanics we could call this more realistic than AC because it reflects the "realism" of how physically draining combat is regardless of whether you are hit or not. But AC assumes that you do are not losing any HP (in the abstract or meat) regardless of how much you could be running around in combat or how many "hits" you may avoid. 

(Also, armor is mostly cosmetic in Fate, but it include optional armor/weapon rules in Extras. And differences in combat ability is accounted for in the opposed rolls system. )


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would say, in systems like this, that an item which has no story impact really doesn't NEED to be regulated. The character only carries one or two small 'mementos' because that comports with the dramatic RP aspect of it, but the rules needn't get involved.




Until they are stuck and need a sharp implement to pick a lock, then suddenly the tooth of a comb or the tip of the grooming scissors can come in handy.  The thing with picking gear in advance is that sometimes you will have what you need, and sometimes you have to be very creative.  There have been countless times that I've poured over my character sheet over and over, wracking my brain for some way to use something on my sheet to get us out of our current situation.  

When you pick gear in advance, creative thinking comes into play a lot.  I don't see that happening as often if you just have a bunch of nebulous objects that will become whatever you need, unless you run out of those objects and just have the things you already morphed those objects into.  How often can you restock on slots, and what happens to the objects you've created with the slots you've already used?


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> But there is planning beforehand in both.  It's a matter of play focus if that planning is something the player does at the table or the character does before the score, not "authenticity" or "realism". It's a play preference, not one of "realism."  Switching to "authenticity" is just more hiding the pea.




This is wrong.

Yes, in both scenarios the groups are picking gear in advance.  In real life, however, you will often not have exactly what you need for a given situation.  When you pick the gear in advance and know what that gear is, you will often not have exactly what you need for a given situation.  When you pick the gear in advance and don't set what that gear is, allowing you to just pick whatever is perfect for you to use in a given situation you encounter later, you will have exactly what you need far more often than you would in real life.  It's less realistic than knowing what gear you are picking before you get to a situation.



> As many of these things your talking about are narrativist tools, I feel that, once again, Forge-speak is a hinderance to discussion.  I have no idea what you mean by "gamist" in this regard.  I know what the Forge meant (as well as possible) but tgat diesn't seem to apply here.  I'm really getting the vibe that you're using gamist to mean more like a game?  That seems counterproductive when discussing ganes, though, so please elaborate.




Gamist is making decision in order to win at the current situation.  When I tell the DM I go buy 6 torches, a flint and steel, 50 feet of rope, a hammer and 20 iron spikes, I have no idea if those will come in handy or not.  I'm making decision as my character to outfit for things I might have to use or might not.  If I tell the DM I go spend 100 gold on 5 slots and can just turn them into whatever I need for a given situation, I'm making my decisions at the point of adversity in order to win at it.  That's gamist behavior.



> Heh, Forge-speak, again.  Numidus is closer to proper usage here than you've been, but your confused by his point (understandably).  I'm pretty sure I see his point, but will defer to him (and you) to clarify without leaning on -ist terms.




Er, what was Forge-speak?  Adventurers?  Equip?  Travels? Themselves?  Think?  I'm not seeing forge specific terms there.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> There is an OSR lite game called "Into the Odd" that does feature damage rolls without attack rolls. Every attack is fundamentally successful such that it contributes to wearing down the hit points of the adventurer. In this way, every attack committed against you drains your endurance, whether you are "hit" or avoiding being hit per the fiction. So this not only speeds up combat but also discourages the perils of combat as the primary means to solve dungeon delving problems due to its lethality.  I do not have my copy of the "book" on hand, so I cannot recall the benefits of armor, though I assume it is damage reduction. Despite the lack of "to hit" mechanics we could call this more realistic than AC because it reflects the "realism" of how physically draining combat is regardless of whether you are hit or not. But AC assumes that you do are not losing any HP (in the abstract or meat) regardless of how much you could be running around in combat or how many "hits" you may avoid.




How does hit point recovery work?  Because if you dodge 3 "hits"(rounds) before killing the goblin and your hit points are not fully restored 60 seconds later, it does not at all reflect physical drain as it happens in real life.  It doesn't take more than a few seconds to recover from a few dodges and swings. 18 seconds of exertion won't tire your for long.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> How does hit point recovery work?



I am amused that you don't let me first answer this before wildly charging blind with your own assumptions about how the game should work or what you deem realistic. 



> Because if you dodge 3 "hits"(rounds) before killing the goblin and your hit points are not fully restored 60 seconds later, it does not at all reflect physical drain as it happens in real life.  It doesn't take more than a few seconds to recover from a few dodges and swings. 18 seconds of exertion won't tire your for long.



You are assuming a lot about the fiction and what the mechanics are meant to reflect.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I am amused that you don't let me first answer this before wildly charging blind with your own assumptions about how the game should work or what you deem realistic.




You don't understand what "because if" means?



> You are assuming a lot about the fiction and what the mechanics are meant to reflect.




Bzzzzt!  Reading fail!  The words "because if," mean that I'm not assuming any particular state at all.  Rather I'm letting you know that if answer that it's the case, then it works that way. 

I note that you dodged with a Red Herring, too.  You failed to answer the question.  Why is that?  Could it be because you don't recover from such simple exertions in 60 seconds and it's not as realistic as you claim?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> You don't understand what "because if" means?
> 
> Bzzzzt!  Reading fail!  The words "because if," mean that I'm not assuming any particular state at all.  Rather I'm letting you know that if answer that it's the case, then it works that way.



Max, I'm not interested in playing your gotcha games. 



> I note that you dodged with a Red Herring, too.  You failed to answer the question.  Why is that?  Could it be because you don't recover from such simple exertions in 60 seconds and it's not as realistic as you claim?



The reason why I did not answer the only question you actually asked - "How does hit point recovery work?" - was because I can't recall the HP recovery mechanics by heart and don't have access to the book at work.


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## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> That's better, but a whetstone can be used to sharpen cutlery, too.  There's no rule about caring for weapons, and further, if I were to go around at the next convention at the open gaming area looking at character sheets, how many do you think would have whetstones?  I'm going to go with 0, but I could be wrong.  Some people still hold over from 1e and buy just about one of everything for their backpacks.  It would definitely be a small minority, which means that weapon care isn't happening for the vast majority.




Here are the claims you made to which I responded:



Maxperson said:


> That does nothing to change the fact that if weapons don't get dull, as they do not in D&D, adding in *the ability to get dull* is an increase in realism.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For you to show a counter example, you would have to show in the D&D rules where care of weapons is *a listed part of the game*.




If knives can get dull, then so can bladed weapons. I agree there's no rule about caring for weapons, but the whetstone is a listed part of the game the intent of which is clearly the sharpening of dull blades. The proportion of character sheets at a gaming convention that list whetstones in their inventories has zero to do with the presence of whetstones in the published rules or the intent thereof. One place you _can_ find whetstones listed in inventories is on three out of the ten pre-generated character sheets the D&D Next September 20, 2013 Playtest Packet, which I believe was the most recent one. These characters, the Dwarf Fighter, the Halfling Rogue, and the Human Bard, also all happen to carry bladed weapons like battleaxe, short swords, and daggers.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> OK, that helps.
> 
> One thing leaps to mind: if gear slots are that restricted it'd be hard to mechanically justify carrying items purely for flavour reasons only e.g. a prissy Elf that always has a complete personal-grooming kit on hand, along with his convention adventuring gear.
> 
> In a more D&D-like system using encumbrance and item weights, a character is free (or freer, anyway) to carry some non-essential lightweight gear and not be quite as deficient at dungeoneering or survival.




Well, there are some items in BitD that are light enough that they do not count toward the character's load. There's a handful for each playbook, and they are marked by italics, and are freely available. So these are essentially brought on every score, or can be. The same ruling could be applied to other items of negligible weight such as a keepsake or a grooming kit or the like. 

Basically, the game doesn't really care about a character being able to carry their mother's necklace or a grooming kit from a mechanical standpoint. If those items add to the character's story, then they can have them. 

The reason why I think this works is that there is enough to the system as it exists to give the player meaningful choices to make without having to rely on RP only reasons for them to make the decision. 



Lanefan said:


> In general, no.  In specific, however, there is (to me) a big difference in perception of realism/authenticity between having three open-ended slots which anything of any weight can end up in depending on what the character needs as she goes along, and having what amounts to a pre-determined weight allowance that can be made up of any combination and-or number of pieces of gear the character (pre-)selects.




Well, it's not really items of any weight. There are some items that count as two inventory slots....such as large weapons and heavy armor, and a few others that would be pretty bulky like climbing gear. And as I mentioned above, some that do not count toward inventory at all. Most items are one slot, some are two, some are zero. 



Lanefan said:


> Well true, we're all going to die sometime.  But unless you're getting close to that point it might as well be infinite - so if something takes three sessions to play through instead of one, so what?  As long as everyone is engaged, where's the harm?




The structure of the game expects that any given session will likely consist of a downtime section, some free play, and a score. This is not absolutely required, but it's kind of the expectation. 

This is likely one of the significant differences between Blades and a more traditional D&Desque game. There are specific modes of play and expectations about those modes. They can be bent or broken, but they are an assumed element of the game as designed. 

And personally, I prefer that. It helps maintain forward momentum. I've had plenty of D&D games that didn't need help in that area....but I've also had plenty that needed such help. 



Lanefan said:


> Perhaps; but in an RPG we're not the audience, we're the characters.  Bit of a difference.




Well I would say that participants in an RPG very much do serve as an audience. I just don't think their role is solely that. But certainly we are entertained by the story the game is building, right? Certainly, we can be surprised by what happens? If there isn't some aspect of being an audience, I'm not exactly sure what the point of playing would be. 



Lanefan said:


> Unless encumbrance rules are strictly enforced, I agree this can become a problem.  Even bags of holding have limits.




Well, I would say that the encumbrance rules do try to mirror the real world to the extent that there is weight involved, and a character's strength is involved and so on.....I don't know how accurate a representation it really may be. How much can a person carry and still remain mobile enough to wade into combat? I would guess that the average inventory list for the average D&D character would likely be very limiting if we gave it much thought. A backpack alone is restrictive. Add 50' of rope and a hammer and pitons and a bedroll and waterskin and a whetstone (just in case! ) and so on.....the label "realistic" starts to break down. 

I think abstracting all those weights and strength scores and the like into simple inventory boxes works just as well. Both are representing the real world fact that a person can only carry so much. So in that regard, they're appealing to the same thing, one's just more abstract. 




Lanefan said:


> And I can see how that would happen, certainly from an at-the-table point of view where the players have to sometimes agonize over these decisions.  And from that aspect alone, it sounds great.
> 
> I guess my point is that a system like that seems to take those choices too far out of character - I'd rather see the players role-play their characters agonizing over these same decisions, maybe without as much information as they'd otherwise have.




Here's the thing....in your D&D game, what choice do the players have to make in regard to their characters' gear? Do they generally have to decide what to bring with them into a dungeon? Or is it more a case that each character has basically come up with a default inventory that they have with them at all times and it rarely if ever changes? 

My experience....which I know is limited....is that it's more the second case. 90% of the characters roll around with the same gear at all times. Yes, every now and then they may be going on some specific mission where slight changes will be made. But is it agonizing to decide to bring your +1 Undead Bane Longsword versus your +2 Flaming Battleaxe just because you're expecting to face some undead? 




Lanefan said:


> For example, using the score again:
> 
> D&D - the character's done her research and realized she'll very likely need climbing gear, a crowbar, a towel or small blanket to muffle sounds, a bag to put the loot in, and some high-quality lockpicks - and so that (along with a small but nasty weapon and the blacked-out clothes she's wearing) is what she takes; intentionally leaving herself gobs of encumbrance headroom for all the loot she's about to steal!  She gets in successfully (and in the process uses all the gear she brought other than her weapon; it turns out her research and casing were spot-on) and grabs the loot.
> 
> BitD - the character's done her research and realized there's a score to be had here, so she sets off.  Being a cautious sort she decides weight be damned, I'm going 7 slots wide on this one. During the process she finds obstacles that require her to use climbing gear (slot 1), a crowbar to pry some bars loose over a window (2), a towel to muffle the sounds of the crowbar (3), her lockpicks (4), and a bag for the loot (5).  She now has the loot in the bag (and thus the loot becomes part of slot 5; her weapon was in slot 6 all along).
> 
> Then just as she's making good her escape she meets a guard dog she had no previous knowledge of at all; the character looks for any sort of out-clause and (via whatever means) the GM ends up narrating that the dog looks hungry.  The D&D character is likely hosed at this point as, having no idea there was a dog anywhere involved, she didn't think to bring any meat; while the BitD character, having one slot left, can simply put some meat in that slot (7), throw it to the dog, and escape.
> 
> This is the sort of thing that would bug me; that the BitD character just happens to have exactly what it needs when an unforseen or unexpected situation arises.
> 
> Obviously, had the BitD character foregone the weapon and only gone 5 slots wide the outcome would have been the same as in the D&D example, as she'd be out of slots by the time the dog showed up.
> 
> I hope you see what I'm getting at here.




Not entirely sure what you're getting at....you seem to understand the systems in a general way. The specific slots would work out differently because of the way some items are lumped together as "Burglary Gear" and so on, but for discussion, you seem to get the way the system works. Yes, in the BitD example, the character could choose to have brought some kind of food that the dog would want, and they could use that to distract the animal long enough to escape. 

Why I like this is that it makes the character look competent and capable. The character's preparation as a living being in their world is not affected by my limited knowledge. To me, that's a more authentic way to portray things. The character is more capable of making decisions about the score than I am.....which makes sense to me. This is not "unforseen or unexpected" to the character.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> How does hit point recovery work?  Because if you dodge 3 "hits"(rounds) before killing the goblin and your hit points are not fully restored 60 seconds later, it does not at all reflect physical drain as it happens in real life.  It doesn't take more than a few seconds to recover from a few dodges and swings. 18 seconds of exertion won't tire your for long.



If I'm reading [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] correctly, that system doesn't have any means of completely avoiding damage ("endurance drain") - though it seems you can try in the fiction to avoid being hit, you'll be hit anyway.  Put another way, every attack hits at least to some extent with the only variable being how much damage is inflicted.

That said, a question for [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] :  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] may have a valid point, I think, in questioning how long it takes to recover endurance loss suffered through avoided attacks (i.e. simple combat exertion) vs non-avoided attacks.  

I say "may have" above in that the answer will largely depend on the answer to a bigger question: whether endurance drain is seen as fatigue (easy to recover) or "meat" damage (not so easy to recover) or a combination of both, or whether the game system bothers with such distinctions.  In the realism-authenticity debate this matters because 99% of the time fatigue "damage" is easier to recover from than "meat" damage - after hard exertion you can recover for a few minutes and be good to go again (e.g. a hockey player does a shift on the ice, recovers for a few minutes on the bench, and is good to go for another shift) but if your finger gets mashed that's gonna hurt for days.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> When @_*hawkeyefan*_ first mentioned the mechanic I pretty much realised how it could be used in a game and given your above post, this confirms it. It is an excellent mechanic!
> 
> Hard choices and integration can be incorporated in both gamist and _more authentic_  mechanics.




I agree with you here. And I also want to point out that in both games, it is certainly possible that the question of load or encumbrance or carrying capacity may not come up in a given session/adventure. I have found that Blades and the way it works makes the choice of gear a more meaningful decision overall, but there have been several instances where a character never even came close to hitting their max load with items they needed. Sometimes, all they've had to do is mark off a weapon and the Score was completed with nothing more on their part. 




Sadras said:


> Planning beforehand ticks more realism/authenticity boxes.
> Play focus does not enter the conversation, it is a completely separate issue in this instance.




Planning beforehand ticks a box of doing things in a sequential order, which corresponds to real life. But I don't know if that means "more boxes". The Blades system ticks the "character knowledge" box for me, which seems more real or authentic to me because I am not a criminal nor would I know what to pack to break into the Dimmer Sisters' mansion to steal an artifact. 

So, because we can't really apply some objective number of realism boxes to these systems, then it actually becomes a matter of play focus. Some participants may enjoy planning a lot. Others may prefer to get to the action.



Sadras said:


> In the same vain one could have weapon slots so when you face undead, you can replace a weapon slot with an appropriate weapon that does significant damage to undead (i.e. bludgeoning).
> Is this more authentic to you? I find the more you deviate from how things occur in RL, the more you tend towards a gamist system. Hard choices and integration are still there, and play focus has shifted, but this type of deviation leans more towards abstraction.




I'm not sure I understand this example....I could just be misreading.....I don't see swapping one weapon type out for one that would be more effective against an expected enemy to be problematic. Either method we're discussing would allow for this. Blades has the option for certain playbooks/classes to carry ammunition that is effective against ghosts, but it costs an inventory slot to have that ammo be available. 



Sadras said:


> In what way? I'm not following.
> I would think adventurers would equip themselves between their travels. Are you inferring that they do not confer with each other or with others/specialists before equipping?




I can't answer for [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION], but my take on what was meant was that this sounds like a case of a player making a choice, rather than the character making a choice. Sure, there is some overlap in what the character would know and what the player would know.....but if you think about who would make a more informed opinion about what to bring on a mission, I think it's clear that it would be the character. 

So a game that lacks some way to evoke or emulate the character deciding, then it feels very much like a player making a decision....and therefore, seems like a game.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Well, there are some items in BitD that are light enough that they do not count toward the character's load. There's a handful for each playbook, and they are marked by italics, and are freely available. So these are essentially brought on every score, or can be. The same ruling could be applied to other items of negligible weight such as a keepsake or a grooming kit or the like.



OK, sounds good.



> Basically, the game doesn't really care about a character being able to carry their mother's necklace or a grooming kit from a mechanical standpoint. If those items add to the character's story, then they can have them.
> 
> The reason why I think this works is that there is enough to the system as it exists to give the player meaningful choices to make without having to rely on RP only reasons for them to make the decision.



Something here doesn't make sense to me, or maybe I'm reading you wrong, but shouldn't all decisions and choices ideally be based on RP-only reasons, if one is indeed assuming the role of one's character?



> Well, it's not really items of any weight. There are some items that count as two inventory slots....such as large weapons and heavy armor, and a few others that would be pretty bulky like climbing gear. And as I mentioned above, some that do not count toward inventory at all. Most items are one slot, some are two, some are zero.



OK, again sounds good.



> The structure of the game expects that any given session will likely consist of a downtime section, some free play, and a score. This is not absolutely required, but it's kind of the expectation.
> 
> This is likely one of the significant differences between Blades and a more traditional D&Desque game. There are specific modes of play and expectations about those modes. They can be bent or broken, but they are an assumed element of the game as designed.
> 
> And personally, I prefer that. It helps maintain forward momentum. I've had plenty of D&D games that didn't need help in that area....but I've also had plenty that needed such help.



In short, from the way you put this BitD is designed to be episodic rather than serial in play.  How hard does the system fight back if you try to make it more serial in play e.g. what was intended to be a score turns into something more resembling a full-on dungeon crawl that takes several sessions to play out?



> Well I would say that participants in an RPG very much do serve as an audience. I just don't think their role is solely that. But certainly we are entertained by the story the game is building, right? Certainly, we can be surprised by what happens? If there isn't some aspect of being an audience, I'm not exactly sure what the point of playing would be.



Agreed.  My point was that we're not just the audience (which to me implies passivity and non-participation), we're also collectively and individually the active entertainers participating in - and often improvising - the show.



> Well, I would say that the encumbrance rules do try to mirror the real world to the extent that there is weight involved, and a character's strength is involved and so on.....I don't know how accurate a representation it really may be. How much can a person carry and still remain mobile enough to wade into combat? I would guess that the average inventory list for the average D&D character would likely be very limiting if we gave it much thought. A backpack alone is restrictive. Add 50' of rope and a hammer and pitons and a bedroll and waterskin and a whetstone (just in case! ) and so on.....the label "realistic" starts to break down.



We always assume that the reason characters (and often their foes) almost never get full attack sequences in the first round* is that part of that first round is spent shrugging off and-or dropping such bulky gear and getting ready to fight; along with drawing weapons, fishing out spell components, etc.

* - probably a house rule, I forget where it came from but we've done it that way forever.



> I think abstracting all those weights and strength scores and the like into simple inventory boxes works just as well. Both are representing the real world fact that a person can only carry so much. So in that regard, they're appealing to the same thing, one's just more abstract.



More abstract, and from what I can tell also somewhat more metagame.  The decisions seem to be more play-based than character-based, if that makes any sense.



> Here's the thing....in your D&D game, what choice do the players have to make in regard to their characters' gear? Do they generally have to decide what to bring with them into a dungeon? Or is it more a case that each character has basically come up with a default inventory that they have with them at all times and it rarely if ever changes?



Once the low-level days have passed each character tends to settle in to having its own standard inventory that doesn't change often; but said inventory is different for every character.  We haven't really ever gone in for things like standardized "adventuring kits".

For characters who own more than they can carry - i.e. most of 'em! - it's ideally expected that the character sheet shows what's on board in the field vs what's been left back at home or base.  Ideally.  Player recordkeeping deficiencies sometimes make things less than ideal...some are far more meticulous about this than others... 



> My experience....which I know is limited....is that it's more the second case. 90% of the characters roll around with the same gear at all times. Yes, every now and then they may be going on some specific mission where slight changes will be made. But is it agonizing to decide to bring your +1 Undead Bane Longsword versus your +2 Flaming Battleaxe just because you're expecting to face some undead?



Thing is, in our games bringing gear into the field carries the risk that it'll be blown up by a lucky AoE spell of some sort (which is another common reason we need to know what you're carrying!).  Some players have their characters intentionally leave backup resources at home or base for just this reason.

But yes, most of the time the characters pack along everythng they can. 



> Not entirely sure what you're getting at....you seem to understand the systems in a general way. The specific slots would work out differently because of the way some items are lumped together as "Burglary Gear" and so on, but for discussion, you seem to get the way the system works. Yes, in the BitD example, the character could choose to have brought some kind of food that the dog would want, and they could use that to distract the animal long enough to escape.
> 
> Why I like this is that it makes the character look competent and capable. The character's preparation as a living being in their world is not affected by my limited knowledge. To me, that's a more authentic way to portray things. The character is more capable of making decisions about the score than I am.....which makes sense to me. This is not "unforseen or unexpected" to the character.



My hypothetical example, however, was trying to show the difference in what would happen in a situation that was unforeseen or unexpected.

If the system in effect mandates that the first [number of slots available] situations encountered will always be assumed to have been foreseen and-or expected, that to me blows authenticity out of the water.  Sometimes in a real situation it might be the very first obstacle that catches the character unprepared - in my example, maybe she meets the unexpected guard dog on the way in rather than on the way out - and unless there's more to it I can't see how BitD can reflect this provided the character has any unallocated slots left.

From a meta perspective it also comes down to a table-level guessing game for both the player(s) and the GM as to how many slots to have vs how many different types of obstacles* to throw at them.  Teh same can be said for D&D, of course, but it's not as cut-and-dried. 

* - if the max number of slots is 7 does that in effect limit the GM as to how many different-gear-requiring types of obstacles she can put in the way, or is a truly nasty GM allowed to put in 8 or more and thus guarantee failure?

EDIT TO ADD: Another aspect is information.  The BitD version seems to assume that if the character happens to have some meat on hand then the character knew there was (or could be) a dog involved.  The D&D version allows for this information to either have been a) kept intentionally hidden or b) be available to discover but outright missed during the research-and-casing phase.  To me this makes the D&D version more authentic in that the character can make a mistake or be caught by an oversight.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This is wrong.
> 
> Yes, in both scenarios the groups are picking gear in advance.  In real life, however, you will often not have exactly what you need for a given situation.  When you pick the gear in advance and know what that gear is, you will often not have exactly what you need for a given situation.  When you pick the gear in advance and don't set what that gear is, allowing you to just pick whatever is perfect for you to use in a given situation you encounter later, you will have exactly what you need far more often than you would in real life.  It's less realistic than knowing what gear you are picking before you get to a situation.



As a professional who must engage in travel to do my job, I very rarely find I lack a tool to overcome an issue onsite.  We take drills, hardware, test equipment, etc.  Long experience informs our packout.  Assuming my character has long similar experience with their job and can reasonably plan ahead, I don't know why I as a player should akso have such experience.  As such, I do not at all agree with what you are saying here.

In fact, this really looks like an argument that it's the player's task to plan ahead and has little or nothing to do with the character.



> Gamist is making decision in order to win at the current situation.  When I tell the DM I go buy 6 torches, a flint and steel, 50 feet of rope, a hammer and 20 iron spikes, I have no idea if those will come in handy or not.  I'm making decision as my character to outfit for things I might have to use or might not.  If I tell the DM I go spend 100 gold on 5 slots and can just turn them into whatever I need for a given situation, I'm making my decisions at the point of adversity in order to win at it.  That's gamist behavior.
> 
> 
> 
> Er, what was Forge-speak?  Adventurers?  Equip?  Travels? Themselves?  Think?  I'm not seeing forge specific terms there.



It's amusing that you tell me what another poster meant with a word and then show that you're not even aware of where such duscussion originated. I'd strongly recommend, however, that you avoid learning that history.  You'll thank me.

However, addressing your point, I would think that a player is akways making chouces to "win" (whatever that means) by succeeding at their chisen tasks.  Isn't, then, all play tmaimed at trying to succeed "gamist" under your definition, including, say, trying to preplan your gear to be as comprehensive as possible?  In short, your definition isn't very useful in analyzing ehich parts of a game are "gamist."


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Something here doesn't make sense to me, or maybe I'm reading you wrong, but shouldn't all decisions and choices ideally be based on RP-only reasons, if one is indeed assuming the role of one's character?




Sorry, that was poor wording on my part. What I meant was that you may have a difficult decision about gear without there being some RP related reason to make a supoptimal choice. Like the fastidious elf who wants to have a grooming kit....the game is not as concerned with such RP only related decisions. 



Lanefan said:


> In short, from the way you put this BitD is designed to be episodic rather than serial in play.  How hard does the system fight back if you try to make it more serial in play e.g. what was intended to be a score turns into something more resembling a full-on dungeon crawl that takes several sessions to play out?




Well, every serial is made up of episodes. What Blades does is try to make those episodes one session each. There could be any number of linked Scores where one leads to the next and then the next and so on.....but the game as designed expects each session to contain a Score. That's not always the case, though. 

The game doesn't push back too heavily against extending a Score, though. The main area is that XP is intended to be awarded at the end of each session. So idealy, you'd complete a session and a Score, and then get XP. If a Score takes more than one session, do you grant XP per session or per Score? That would be the big question. 

Having said that, the setting is different than most D&D style settings in that you generally aren't going on long expedition/excavation style missions. The setting is an urban location, and the characters are a gang or similar criminal group within that city. So usually, you're performing a heist or an attack on a rival or springing someone from jail or some other activity that won't be like a prolonged dungeon crawl. 



Lanefan said:


> We always assume that the reason characters (and often their foes) almost never get full attack sequences in the first round* is that part of that first round is spent shrugging off and-or dropping such bulky gear and getting ready to fight; along with drawing weapons, fishing out spell components, etc.
> 
> * - probably a house rule, I forget where it came from but we've done it that way forever.




Fair enough. But then if things don't go well, do they have to retrieve their belongings? If they flee, is all their gear lost? 

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the system....it's fine. But I just think it's not really very realistic when you scrutinize it at all. 



Lanefan said:


> More abstract, and from what I can tell also somewhat more metagame.  The decisions seem to be more play-based than character-based, if that makes any sense.




I don't think the inventory slots versus item weight is more metagame. I could see that argument about the other aspect of being able to choose during play rather than ahead of play, even if I disagree with it. But inventory slots and item weight are trying to replicate the same thing....."a person can only carry so much". 



Lanefan said:


> Once the low-level days have passed each character tends to settle in to having its own standard inventory that doesn't change often; but said inventory is different for every character.  We haven't really ever gone in for things like standardized "adventuring kits".
> 
> For characters who own more than they can carry - i.e. most of 'em! - it's ideally expected that the character sheet shows what's on board in the field vs what's been left back at home or base.  Ideally.  Player recordkeeping deficiencies sometimes make things less than ideal...some are far more meticulous about this than others...
> 
> Thing is, in our games bringing gear into the field carries the risk that it'll be blown up by a lucky AoE spell of some sort (which is another common reason we need to know what you're carrying!).  Some players have their characters intentionally leave backup resources at home or base for just this reason.




Okay, cool. I know many games where there isn't even a home base of any kind! 




Lanefan said:


> But yes, most of the time the characters pack along everythng they can.




Yeah, that's been my experience as well. 



Lanefan said:


> My hypothetical example, however, was trying to show the difference in what would happen in a situation that was unforeseen or unexpected.
> 
> If the system in effect mandates that the first [number of slots available] situations encountered will always be assumed to have been foreseen and-or expected, that to me blows authenticity out of the water.  Sometimes in a real situation it might be the very first obstacle that catches the character unprepared - in my example, maybe she meets the unexpected guard dog on the way in rather than on the way out - and unless there's more to it I can't see how BitD can reflect this provided the character has any unallocated slots left.




Sure it does....if you encounter something that early in the Score, you have to decide if you want to devote an inventory slot or two to the challenge at hand, and risk not having something later on. 

Maybe they decide to kill the dog. Maybe one of the other characters has a potion that could knock the dog out. In those cases, maybe they can get away without having to have someone devote an inventory slot to the meat. 



Lanefan said:


> From a meta perspective it also comes down to a table-level guessing game for both the player(s) and the GM as to how many slots to have vs how many different types of obstacles* to throw at them.  Teh same can be said for D&D, of course, but it's not as cut-and-dried.
> 
> * - if the max number of slots is 7 does that in effect limit the GM as to how many different-gear-requiring types of obstacles she can put in the way, or is a truly nasty GM allowed to put in 8 or more and thus guarantee failure?
> 
> EDIT TO ADD: Another aspect is information.  The BitD version seems to assume that if the character happens to have some meat on hand then the character knew there was (or could be) a dog involved.  The D&D version allows for this information to either have been a) kept intentionally hidden or b) be available to discover but outright missed during the research-and-casing phase.  To me this makes the D&D version more authentic in that the character can make a mistake or be caught by an oversight.




I don't think there's any way (or desire) for the GM to guarantee failure. Most obstacles can be overcome in more than one way, and there are multiple crew members, so a variety of challenges is desired, really.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Max, I'm not interested in playing your gotcha games.




Cool, because I don't like having to "getcha."  If you would actually read what I am saying and not twist things around, you wouldn't be "got" by me.  I made no assumption.



> The reason why I did not answer the only question you actually asked - "How does hit point recovery work?" - was because I can't recall the HP recovery mechanics by heart and don't have access to the book at work.




Then that's what you should have said instead of inventing fiction about me making assumptions.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Here are the claims you made to which I responded:
> 
> If knives can get dull, then so can bladed weapons. I agree there's no rule about caring for weapons, but the whetstone is a listed part of the game the intent of which is clearly the sharpening of dull blades. The proportion of character sheets at a gaming convention that list whetstones in their inventories has zero to do with the presence of whetstones in the published rules or the intent thereof. One place you _can_ find whetstones listed in inventories is on three out of the ten pre-generated character sheets the D&D Next September 20, 2013 Playtest Packet, which I believe was the most recent one. These characters, the Dwarf Fighter, the Halfling Rogue, and the Human Bard, also all happen to carry bladed weapons like battleaxe, short swords, and daggers.




So a whetstone is neither a rule, nor proof that weapons degrade in D&D.  If no whetstone is ever purchased, no weapon in 5e will ever degrade and become dull or dinged up.  There simply are no rules for those things in 5e.  You could buy a whetstone if it makes you feel better I suppose, but it's never going to be needed if you play by RAW.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> As a professional who must engage in travel to do my job, I very rarely find I lack a tool to overcome an issue onsite.  We take drills, hardware, test equipment, etc.  Long experience informs our packout.  Assuming my character has long similar experience with their job and can reasonably plan ahead, I don't know why I as a player should akso have such experience.  As such, I do not at all agree with what you are saying here.




Cool.  Let me know when it's your job to go into the *UNKNOWN* and face monsters, traps and situations where aren't going to be aware ahead of time what is going to happen.  Then, and only then, will your personal experience be relevant here.



> However, addressing your point, I would think that a player is akways making chouces to "win" (whatever that means) by succeeding at their chisen tasks.  Isn't, then, all play tmaimed at trying to succeed "gamist" under your definition, including, say, trying to preplan your gear to be as comprehensive as possible?  In short, your definition isn't very useful in analyzing ehich parts of a game are "gamist."




The player is not always making choices to win.  There have often been time swhen the suboptimal or even bad choice has been appropriate for my character to make.  The gamist person doesn't play that way. He's always out to win and having insta-advantage in his pocket is a great way to get there.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Cool.  Let me know when it's your job to go into the *UNKNOWN* and face monsters, traps and situations where aren't going to be aware ahead of time what is going to happen.  Then, and only then, will your personal experience be relevant here.



Sorry, but are you actually saying that a professional at exploring unknown places and fighting monsters cannot have relevant experience to make good plans on possible gear?  Because I related an anecdote that, as a professional, I know my job pretty well and have done extensive planning such that I'm very, very rarely caught offguard by surprises at jobsites, which often happen to be very far away, places I haven't been before, and have the kind of monster that is the customer who's been lying about the physical conditions onsite.  If you've never faced this kind of monster, I envy you -- they're truly horrifying and all too common.

But, point being, you're arguing that it's unrealistic for the character to be able to do such planning, which leaves the players to do it, but you just told me my personal experience cannot be relevant, so I'm left wondering if you really think that it shouldn't be possible to plan ahead well enough to bring the right equipment for the job?  



> The player is not always making choices to win.  There have often been time swhen the suboptimal or even bad choice has been appropriate for my character to make.  The gamist person doesn't play that way. He's always out to win and having insta-advantage in his pocket is a great way to get there.



Right, you're labeling anything that isn't sub-optimal as gamist.  That's a useless definition of the term, or, rather, a definition that lacks any negative connotations -- ie, you should be playing in a gamist manner most of the time.  Yet, you seem to be implying a strong negative connotation, which doesn't flow from your definition being 'doing things that aren't sub-optimal because you might win.'


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> So a whetstone is neither a rule, nor proof that weapons degrade in D&D.



Upthread, when I suggested that pork is not a part of the D&D rules unless a GM adds it in, you cited the presence of boar in the MM animal listing as a counter-point. But when  [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] points to the presence of whetstones on the equipment list, and in some WotC-published character inventories, as a counterexample to your claim about weapoin degradation, you scoff.

Why the difference in the two cases?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Numidius said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Players that choose gear all by themselves before approaching a challenge, without a sort of linkage to how their characters would do it in their fictional world, looks pretty gamist to me.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In what way? I'm not following.
> I would think adventurers would equip themselves between their travels. Are you inferring that they do not confer with each other or with others/specialists before equipping?
Click to expand...




Aldarc said:


> If we look at D&D solely, then we are looking at a system (or series of related systems throughout time) that has its own set of assumptions about the cultural norms, rationalities of the game, and how it nominally should function.



I've quoted Aldarc here in the context of Sadras's response to [MENTION=6972053]Numidius[/MENTION] because it seems highly apt in that context even though that wasn't quite the context Aldarc was responding to.

I took Numidius to be referring to the standard approach for equipping a new PC in D&D, which is (i) to roll (or, in more recent editions, otherwise establish) starting money, then (ii) choose equipment from a list which has various items (with a particular focus on combat gear, and then travelling gear, and less focus on (say) household furnishings or cute trinkets) and prices next to them, with (iii) this often being done more-or-less independently by each player, or - if there is collaboration - the collaboration being purely in terms of ensuring not too many iron spikes and ensuring enough oil and lanterns.

And the poiint that I took to be the main one is that this process doesn't bear any close resemblance to what is happening in the fiction, which is that (i) this character lives in a quasi-mediaeval economy where a lot of trade is barter- rather than coin-based, and (ii) this character has a backstory, family history, geographic and social context, etc which will establish what equipment it is plausible that s/he does or doesn't have accesss to, and (iii) that same personal background has more too it than simply this current at-the-table context of preparing to go on the first adventure of the campaign.

And my own reason for brining [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]'s reference to cultural norms and expectations associated with the game is because these are really what is driving the player's equipment choice in most cases. The player is not getting into character and asking "What sort of stuff would _this_ person own?" The player is getting ready to run his/her PC through an adventure and is asking "Given the norms of D&D adventures, which include pits and corridors and doors and so on, but tend not to include much need to entertain upper middle class gentlemen in my apartments, what sort of stuff do I want on my inventory?"

The notion that this becomes _realistic_ or _more realistic_ simply because of the time sequence at the table - establish a player-side resource list in advance of the need for the equipment in the fiction, rather than (as in BitD) choosing whether or not to expend a player-side resource pool in response to the demands of the fiction - is not something that I find plausible, or even really very meaningful.



Maxperson said:


> When you pick gear in advance, creative thinking comes into play a lot.  I don't see that happening as often if you just have a bunch of nebulous objects that will become whatever you need, unless you run out of those objects and just have the things you already morphed those objects into.





Maxperson said:


> When you pick the gear in advance and know what that gear is, you will often not have exactly what you need for a given situation.  When you pick the gear in advance and don't set what that gear is, allowing you to just pick whatever is perfect for you to use in a given situation you encounter later, you will have exactly what you need far more often than you would in real life.  It's less realistic than knowing what gear you are picking before you get to a situation.





Maxperson said:


> How often can you restock on slots, and what happens to the objects you've created with the slots you've already used?



These claims are completely unsubstantiated.

In a typical BitD session, what is the ratio of _decision situations that make gear salient_ to _number of gear slots available_? I don't know the answer to this question, because I've neither read the rules for the game nor played it. Given the question that you ask, I'm pretty sure you don't know the answer either. So you have no idea how often in (say) [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s game the players choose to forgo choices to establish gear because they're saving slots for later. Which is to say, you don't know what the frequency is of occasions when these characters don't have exactly what they need.

Furthermore, you haven't proferred any such frequecy of occasions as being "realistic" for experienced criminals in the real world. So whatever the "realistic" frequency may be, which itself seems to me pretty much just conjecture or taste, you don't know whether or not anyone's BitD gameplay has the same frequency, a greater one or a lesser one!

Also, as your question shows, you have no idea what the rules are for use of gear, re-use of gear, expenditure of gear, etc. So you have no idea how often BitD players make creative choices involving already-established gear rather than expend unspent slots on establishing new gear. So your claim about how often creative thinking might take place is also completely unsubstantiated.

A system that I am experienced with, and which handles inventory not as a resource established in advance but as something to be established in play by expending player-sided resources, is MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic. In that system it's simply not true that players always have what they want, because for various reasons (ranging from prospects of success on a required roll, to availability of plot points, to desires about how to spend their turns) players don't always try to establish inventory that in principle they might be able to. And I see creative uses of inventory quite often - for instance, a player established a riding horse as part of his PC's inventory because he had the opportunity to do so and thought it might come in handy for riding and fighting, and then found himself using the horse to help in a social interaction with a giant chieftain by offering it up as a gift of food.

I don't know whether or not BitD produces moments like that because, as I've said, I don't know the details of the system and how it interacts with the broader dynamics of the play of the game. But nor do you! Yet you make all these confident assertions as if you're an expert.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Upthread, when I suggested that pork is not a part of the D&D rules unless a GM adds it in, you cited the presence of boar in the MM animal listing as a counter-point. But when  [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] points to the presence of whetstones on the equipment list, and in some WotC-published character inventories, as a counterexample to your claim about weapoin degradation, you scoff.




This is a False Equivalence.  Pork being from a boar isn't a rule.  Neither one of those are rules.  I asked for a RULE for weapon degradation(that would be a mechanic in case you weren't aware), not a whetstone that is not a rule.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Cool, because I don't like having to "getcha."  If you would actually read what I am saying and not twist things around, you wouldn't be "got" by me. I made no assumption.



A desire to refrain from playing your "gotcha games" doesn't mean that you "got me." It means that I don't want to get roped into playing them by you. Please stop trying to turn every discussion into a competition to be won. 



> Then that's what you should have said instead of inventing fiction about me making assumptions.



Your "because if" still implies things about the game, reality, etc. that are not necessarily true. For example, your entire bit about 3 rounds of combat in "Into the Odd" being 18 seconds is most definitely an assumption that you bring from D&D.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> If I'm reading [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] correctly, that system doesn't have any means of completely avoiding damage ("endurance drain") - though it seems you can try in the fiction to avoid being hit, you'll be hit anyway.  Put another way, every attack hits at least to some extent with the only variable being how much damage is inflicted.
> 
> That said, a question for [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] :    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] may have a valid point, I think, in questioning how long it takes to recover endurance loss suffered through avoided attacks (i.e. simple combat exertion) vs non-avoided attacks.
> 
> I say "may have" above in that the answer will largely depend on the answer to a bigger question: whether endurance drain is seen as fatigue (easy to recover) or "meat" damage (not so easy to recover) or a combination of both, or whether the game system bothers with such distinctions.  In the realism-authenticity debate this matters because 99% of the time fatigue "damage" is easier to recover from than "meat" damage - after hard exertion you can recover for a few minutes and be good to go again (e.g. a hockey player does a shift on the ice, recovers for a few minutes on the bench, and is good to go for another shift) but if your finger gets mashed that's gonna hurt for days.



I don't necessarily think that it matters. From what I recall, and maybe   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] can clarify his views, but he plays (per RAW) in 5E that the first half of hit point loss is luck, fatigue, abstracted that do not reflect actually being "hit" while the second half of hit point loss are "meat" hits. However, 5E does not make a distinction with how the first half (fatigue/luck) are recovered versus how the second half (meat) are recovered. In fact I am not sure if D&D makes a distinction between the recovery of HP. The closest is maybe subdual damage from 3E though subdual represents damage inflicted meant to subdue. Star Wars in 3E distinguished between wounds and HP. One could make the argument that D&D does this by distinguishing between HP damage and ability score damage. But  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I'm not sure that this is a clear cut valid point at least without not scrutinizing the assumptions that our own games (namely D&D) about these sort of things.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> As a professional who must engage in travel to do my job, I very rarely find I lack a tool to overcome an issue onsite.  We take drills, hardware, test equipment, etc.  Long experience informs our packout.  Assuming my character has long similar experience with their job and can reasonably plan ahead, I don't know why I as a player should akso have such experience.



The corollary questions then become, how many tools do you take on a typical site visit that don't end up getting used?  And, is this all gear that's carried by you or is it carried by/in a vehicle to be pulled out if and when required?

I ask because the comparison being made is with examples of game mechanics trying to emulate limits - in some cases rather severe limits - where people are carrying only what they themselves can carry.  The character isn't taking a gear-laden horse to the site of the score, for example, if for no other reason than its presence would likely be a dead giveaway that someting was afoot. 

Another possible flaw with your real-life example is that you-as-you quite likely have means of information access a typical PC probably doesn't.  For example (and not knowing anything more about your specific job than what you've posted here) it's reasonable to think you can phone ahead to someone already on site, ask what the issue is, and then pack to suit.  A character on the other hand, has to prepare for a possibly very wide range of potential occurrences as best she can within her limitations as enforced by the game mechanics in use.



> However, addressing your point, I would think that a player is akways making chouces to "win" (whatever that means) by succeeding at their chisen tasks.  Isn't, then, all play tmaimed at trying to succeed "gamist" under your definition, including, say, trying to preplan your gear to be as comprehensive as possible?  In short, your definition isn't very useful in analyzing ehich parts of a game are "gamist."



There's an admittedly fine line sometimes between playing to a character's own sense of self-preservation and outright gamism...it's one of those things where even though there's no hard and fast definition you kind of know which is which when you see it.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Sorry, that was poor wording on my part. What I meant was that you may have a difficult decision about gear without there being some RP related reason to make a supoptimal choice. Like the fastidious elf who wants to have a grooming kit....the game is not as concerned with such RP only related decisions.



Ah, OK.



> Well, every serial is made up of episodes. What Blades does is try to make those episodes one session each. There could be any number of linked Scores where one leads to the next and then the next and so on.....but the game as designed expects each session to contain a Score. That's not always the case, though.
> 
> The game doesn't push back too heavily against extending a Score, though. The main area is that XP is intended to be awarded at the end of each session. So idealy, you'd complete a session and a Score, and then get XP. If a Score takes more than one session, do you grant XP per session or per Score? That would be the big question.
> 
> Having said that, the setting is different than most D&D style settings in that you generally aren't going on long expedition/excavation style missions. The setting is an urban location, and the characters are a gang or similar criminal group within that city. So usually, you're performing a heist or an attack on a rival or springing someone from jail or some other activity that won't be like a prolonged dungeon crawl.



So a completely different setting as well, then, from the typical pseudo-medieval or pseudo-renaissance D&D.  Got it.

Given this, then short missions being the basis of (most) play makes much more sense.



> Fair enough. But then if things don't go well, do they have to retrieve their belongings? If they flee, is all their gear lost?



What is this thing you call "flee"? 

Unless there's extenuating curcumstances it's easy to assume they swoop by and at least pick up their packs on the way out.  Where it gets nasty is if the foe has a teleporting effect when it hits an opponent...but even then not all their gear is lost - they'd still have whatever they were wearing, and what they had in hand, and what they had in small containers e.g. belt pouches or scabbards.  But it's still a headache for the characters.

One effect dropping gear does have is that if the dropped gear gets hit by an AoE effect its saves are "unattended" i.e. it doesn't get any bonuses that the owner might give it were it being carried.



> To be clear, I'm not criticizing the system....it's fine. But I just think it's not really very realistic when you scrutinize it at all.



Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's perfect.  It just seems a little better than ignoring it all.



> I don't think the inventory slots versus item weight is more metagame. I could see that argument about the other aspect of being able to choose during play rather than ahead of play, even if I disagree with it. But inventory slots and item weight are trying to replicate the same thing....."a person can only carry so much".



In a broad sense, I agree.  The question then is one of granularity in detail.



> Okay, cool. I know many games where there isn't even a home base of any kind!



IME that would be unusual.  The home base might not be the same for every character, mind you, but most if not all characters have a base of some sort.

In my current campaign, for example, Decks of Many Things have turned up The Keep far more often than random chance would seem to dictate (particularly for one specific player who seems to get one every flippin' time!); thus parties have their choice of several small castles to use as a base (and each owning character obviously bases him/herself at his/her own keep); three of these castles that have been put quite close together have become something of a base for nearly all now.

Early on in the campaign, before Keeps started springing up like weeds, one character built a small inn and pub which became home base for loads of people for a while.  One character - who oddly enough isn't even a Cleric - has made a particular temple her home base, and it's hundreds of miles away from where most other characters base themselves. 



> Sure it does....if you encounter something that early in the Score, you have to decide if you want to devote an inventory slot or two to the challenge at hand, and risk not having something later on.
> 
> Maybe they decide to kill the dog. Maybe one of the other characters has a potion that could knock the dog out. In those cases, maybe they can get away without having to have someone devote an inventory slot to the meat.



To keep the example simple I've been assuming this score was being done by a character acting alone.  Once you get a whole party involved then yes, it would be possible to cover way more eventualities in either system simply by having different people carry different things: "Joe, you take the cracker tools.  Cindy, you're on ropes.  Bobbie, pitons and grapnels are yours.  Pips, you're the bagman once we get in.  I'll worry about lights and covers.  Everyone got a weapon and face charcoal?  Right, let's go!"

But yes, the character could decide to kill the dog - or try to - and risk a lot of noise; or could even try to tame or befriend the dog, again at some risk if the attempt fails.



> I don't think there's any way (or desire) for the GM to guarantee failure. Most obstacles can be overcome in more than one way, and there are multiple crew members, so a variety of challenges is desired, really.



Fair enough.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> I don't necessarily think that it matters. From what I recall, and maybe   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] can clarify his views, but he plays (per RAW) in 5E that the first half of hit point loss is luck, fatigue, abstracted that do not reflect actually being "hit" while the second half of hit point loss are "meat" hits. However, 5E does not make a distinction with how the first half (fatigue/luck) are recovered versus how the second half (meat) are recovered. In fact I am not sure if D&D makes a distinction between the recovery of HP. The closest is maybe subdual damage from 3E though subdual represents damage inflicted meant to subdue. Star Wars in 3E distinguished between wounds and HP. One could make the argument that D&D does this by distinguishing between HP damage and ability score damage. But  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I'm not sure that this is a clear cut valid point at least without not scrutinizing the assumptions that our own games (namely D&D) about these sort of things.



Fair point re D&D; we long ago overlaid a body-fatigue system on to hit points in 1e D&D because of just this, along with mechanics for how they do recover differently.

IMO 5e seriously missed the boat on this - they got down to the dock by having h.p. be first-half luck and second-half a bit meatier, but then failed to get aboard by having them recover differently.  4e, for all its other failings, was really on to something with its 'bloodied' mechanic...and even there could have taken it a lot further.

But I was more asking you about the system (whose name I forget now) that you were referencing upthread and that Max was responsding to, where every attack "drains your endurance" (I think that's the term you used for it), and how recovery works there.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> But I was more asking you about the system (whose name I forget now) that you were referencing upthread and that Max was responsding to, where every attack "drains your endurance" (I think that's the term you used for it), and how recovery works there.



_Into the Odd_. I don't necessarily know if every attack drains your endurance. It's simply that there are no attack rolls, only damage. (Armor does mitigate damage.) So the fiction is loose with explaining and rationalizing the mechanics. "Draining your endurance" was one possible explanation among many rather than an official one.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> The corollary questions then become, how many tools do you take on a typical site visit that don't end up getting used?  And, is this all gear that's carried by you or is it carried by/in a vehicle to be pulled out if and when required?
> 
> I ask because the comparison being made is with examples of game mechanics trying to emulate limits - in some cases rather severe limits - where people are carrying only what they themselves can carry.  The character isn't taking a gear-laden horse to the site of the score, for example, if for no other reason than its presence would likely be a dead giveaway that someting was afoot.
> 
> Another possible flaw with your real-life example is that you-as-you quite likely have means of information access a typical PC probably doesn't.  For example (and not knowing anything more about your specific job than what you've posted here) it's reasonable to think you can phone ahead to someone already on site, ask what the issue is, and then pack to suit.  A character on the other hand, has to prepare for a possibly very wide range of potential occurrences as best she can within her limitations as enforced by the game mechanics in use.



When was the last time, in your game, someone said "shucks! I was going to bring [thing] but didn't have room for it?"  Every time in my games it wasn't because it couldn't be sqeezed into someone's inventory but because it was not thought of.  So, no, I don't see your corollary to be very telling at all.

D&D has always been loose with emcumberance because it's a gane that has a "bring the kitchen sink" style of play.  A good question would be if this kind of player-aimed puzzle improves "realism" at all.


> There's an admittedly fine line sometimes between playing to a character's own sense of self-preservation and outright gamism...it's one of those things where even though there's no hard and fast definition you kind of know which is which when you see it.



I do not, or, rather, this is not a problem I have at all.  I expect my players to advocate for their characters, which neans they should be striving to succeed at all times.  It's ridiculous, in a discussion of "realism" in games, to add a new term "gamist" that describes trying to succeed!  I mean, to avoid "gamist" play as players we have to make suboptimal choices for our characters, but this is in pursuit of "realism?"

When will it be recognized that these terms and ideas are being presented not in service of a discussion of how games work but instead to protect a specific style of play?  "Realism," "authenticity," and now "gamist" aren't being presented as things that describe how we play but instead as  stand-ins to make subjective preferences sound less like subjective preference.  We play pretend elf ganes, folks.  It's okay to just say you like your elves this way and not have to make it seem like your elves are the most logical, most realistic, least gamey pretend elves there are.

There's value in discussing how we play, but not if your part is just trying to make your elves the most proper ones.  How you like your elves is great!  We can have different elves.  But we can also talk about how you pretend in relation to elves in a way that might better play because we've looked at how play works and understand it better and so can get even closer to how we like our elves.  So much of these discussions seem to be more a defense of a system rather than how we can best achieve our own version of pretend elves.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> I don't necessarily think that it matters. From what I recall, and maybe   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] can clarify his views, but he plays (per RAW) in 5E that the first half of hit point loss is luck, fatigue, abstracted that do not reflect actually being "hit" while the second half of hit point loss are "meat" hits.




This isn't accurate.  The second half are not meat hits.  They are still skill, luck, fatigue, etc. hits, but ones which show some slight meat damage such as scratches, small cuts and bruising.  There is only ever one true meat hit in 5e, and that's when the one being hit drops to 0.  



> However, 5E does not make a distinction with how the first half (fatigue/luck) are recovered versus how the second half (meat) are recovered. In fact I am not sure if D&D makes a distinction between the recovery of HP.




It's mostly consistent, except for that last hit. You can go from a hit that literally by RAW has you dying and then be up and going a short time later through use of hit dice or a long rest.  I don't like that part of it at all.  I am using a variant of the gritty realism rest variant.  I don't mind a short rest being an hour, but I've made a long rest 7 days.


----------



## Sepulchrave II

I’m not sure what the impediment to understanding is in this thread.

1.	We make up systems in our heads so that we can represent certain phenomena in an exercise of shared imagination. 

2.	The systems are not empirically derived. We just make them up. We base them on “ideas” that we have about “things” in which we have no expertise: human recovery, medieval warfare, warp physics, mental illness – whatever. They are highly genre- and system-dependent.

3.	These systems do not now become “realistic.” They are at best clumsy caricatures of a narrow selection of possibilities within the phenomena which we are representing.

The insanity mechanic in _Call of Cthulhu_ does not add realism to _CoC_. The disease mechanic in 1e does not add realism to D&D. The mustering out process in _Traveller_ does not add realism to _Traveller_.  The glory mechanic does not add realism to _Pendragon_.

They are all little games which we play with our imagination in order to lend structure and emphasis.


----------



## Baron Opal II

What you say is true, however sometimes we employ research to determine actual limits and capabilities in the real world. These we attempt to port over to the game through various sub-systems of the rules.

There is a wide variance on how these limits and capabilities are interpreted given the goals and genre of the games we play. Given this, I'm really only quibbling with your second point.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Ah, OK.
> 
> So a completely different setting as well, then, from the typical pseudo-medieval or pseudo-renaissance D&D.  Got it.
> 
> Given this, then short missions being the basis of (most) play makes much more sense.




Yeah, that's kind of the intention. The setting is designed to promote the play style and the mechanics. The city is for all intents and purposes closed off from the rest of the world. So the Crew can't simply get out of dodge when things start to get hairy. They have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. This is why I wouldn't say that the game is not a serial because new events very much flow from what's already happened. This happens both mechanically, and in what the players and GM decide to bring to the game. 



Lanefan said:


> What is this thing you call "flee"?
> 
> Unless there's extenuating curcumstances it's easy to assume they swoop by and at least pick up their packs on the way out.  Where it gets nasty is if the foe has a teleporting effect when it hits an opponent...but even then not all their gear is lost - they'd still have whatever they were wearing, and what they had in hand, and what they had in small containers e.g. belt pouches or scabbards.  But it's still a headache for the characters.
> 
> One effect dropping gear does have is that if the dropped gear gets hit by an AoE effect its saves are "unattended" i.e. it doesn't get any bonuses that the owner might give it were it being carried.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's perfect.  It just seems a little better than ignoring it all.




So an area of attack spell could basicalyl destroy all their stuff? Do you ever have someone run off with one of their backpacks? I would assume that theft would be a motivator for at least some opponents...bandits or goblins and the like....so the PCs dropping their gear would seem a prime opportunity to grab some and go. Do you use a map and minis? Do you mark where the PCs have dropped their gear? 

It sounds to me like you've kind of abstracted this for ease of playing a game, is that right? 

I think it's fine if that's the case.....but again, this seems really more a question of preference. There's a nod to cause and effect, but ultimately what you're doing is more about making the game simpler to play. 



Lanefan said:


> In a broad sense, I agree.  The question then is one of granularity in detail.




Right....this seems to me an acknowledgement that it's about play preference. "I like my inventory management system to be a bit more involved" versus "I like my inventory management system to be simplified". 



Lanefan said:


> IME that would be unusual.  The home base might not be the same for every character, mind you, but most if not all characters have a base of some sort.




Well the classic idea of "murderhobos" is based on the idea that the PCs are wanderers. And I don't mean to say your game is anything like that, but I think the idea of the party wandering from location to location and getting into adventures is still relevant even when not taken to that extreme. 

Your PCs have castles that they use as bases of operations. My D&D party does as well....but they still tend to leave their base with everything they think they'll need, and that list generally remains static for each character except maybe for some consumable items, or the occasional piece of specific gear based on their expected destination. I admit that we don't track inventory very closely because as a group we've found that to be more tedious than engaging, but that's just our preference. So we kind of eyeball it, so to speak. 



Lanefan said:


> To keep the example simple I've been assuming this score was being done by a character acting alone.  Once you get a whole party involved then yes, it would be possible to cover way more eventualities in either system simply by having different people carry different things: "Joe, you take the cracker tools.  Cindy, you're on ropes.  Bobbie, pitons and grapnels are yours.  Pips, you're the bagman once we get in.  I'll worry about lights and covers.  Everyone got a weapon and face charcoal?  Right, let's go!"




Yeah, this is a big part of it. Each playbook/class in the game has an area of focus, and their XP triggers, abilities, and gear are all themed on that focus. So the lock picks are only available to the Lurk (similar to a thief or rogue) as a free inventory item, any other playbook would have to spend an inventory slot on Burglary Gear to have access to lockpicks. The other playbooks have access to other specific items suited to their focus, and so on. 



Lanefan said:


> But yes, the character could decide to kill the dog - or try to - and risk a lot of noise; or could even try to tame or befriend the dog, again at some risk if the attempt fails.
> 
> Fair enough.




And that's where the choice comes into play. In a D&Desque game, the resolution of the dog situation is pretty much decided when the player picks his gear before the adventure starts. He either has some food that the dog may like or he doesn't (obviously there are other class abilities and so on that can be used, but just for the sake of argument let's say no magic and no ranger abilities are available). In Blades, this challenge of how to deal with the dog creates a decision for the player....do I devote inventory space to deal with this dog effectively, or do I try to sneak around it or fight it, and risk it alerting the bad guys? This may be an easy decision for some, or a difficult one for others, depending on other factors at play. 

So this is a game mechanic that provides the player with a meaningful decision as a player...which is good for a game....but which can be supported by the fiction either way. 

I get that these "quantum inventory slots" seem unrealistic at the surface, but I think when you consider what they are meant to represent, then they make a lot more sense....much like HP or AC make sense but are abstractions.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, that's kind of the intention. The setting is designed to promote the play style and the mechanics. The city is for all intents and purposes closed off from the rest of the world.



Interesting that the setting is built in as an integrated part of the game; and is so restricted in scope - it's almost like the city is analagous to a Castle-Greyhawk-like megadungeon, where you can sandbox around within it all you like but you can never completely leave it and go elsewhere.



> So the Crew can't simply get out of dodge when things start to get hairy. They have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. This is why I wouldn't say that the game is not a serial because new events very much flow from what's already happened. This happens both mechanically, and in what the players and GM decide to bring to the game.



Fair enough, and obviously some GMs will end up tying successive events together into an overarching plot line more than others will.



> So an area of attack spell could basicalyl destroy all their stuff?



The luck of dice would almost certainly dictate that not all of it goes up, as each (relevant) item gets its own saving throw. (side note: yes this can take some time at the table to sort out) (second side note: due to an incredible run of luck early on in my campaign where backpacks always made their saves - and thus protected their contents - it has been declared here that in fact Backpacks are the Master Race)

But yes, if they got unlucky they could lose a bunch of gear - it's happened - and even just losing the backpack itself presents a problem as to how its surviving contents will now be carried.



> Do you ever have someone run off with one of their backpacks? I would assume that theft would be a motivator for at least some opponents...bandits or goblins and the like....so the PCs dropping their gear would seem a prime opportunity to grab some and go.



Good point - I should do this more often.  That said, often the gear is left in the area the PCs are defending, thus if the foes get to the gear it probably means there's no PCs left anyway. 



> Do you use a map and minis? Do you mark where the PCs have dropped their gear?



'Yes' to the first and 'only if it becomes relevant' to the second.  If for example a fireball spreads out enough to maybe clip their gear then we'll determine where it is, and whose is where.  Otherwise we don't bother.



> It sounds to me like you've kind of abstracted this for ease of playing a game, is that right?
> 
> I think it's fine if that's the case.....but again, this seems really more a question of preference. There's a nod to cause and effect, but ultimately what you're doing is more about making the game simpler to play.



Kind of a combination between abstracted and assumed-standard-operating-procedures, I guess.



> Right....this seems to me an acknowledgement that it's about play preference. "I like my inventory management system to be a bit more involved" versus "I like my inventory management system to be simplified".



To a point, along with a general reminder to people that it's not a free-for-all and that there are some reasonable limits: you can't normally carry a grand piano around with you, for example, no matter how badly you want to practice your concerto every night at camp. 



> Well the classic idea of "murderhobos" is based on the idea that the PCs are wanderers. And I don't mean to say your game is anything like that, but I think the idea of the party wandering from location to location and getting into adventures is still relevant even when not taken to that extreme.



It's relevant, yes, but I find that once a party (or group of parties) establish a base they tend to want to go back there between adventures whenever they can in order to evaluate and divide treasury, train up (my game has training), reshuffle their lineup if desired, and so forth.  

In general, once a base is established I find that if they stay in the field for more than one or two consecutive adventures it's usually because either a) they've ended up a long way from their home base and thus are temporarily using a different town or sanctuary as a between-adventures base, or b) I've used some sort of DM force to keep them there.  And once they gain access to long-range travel magic then all bets are off - they can return home whenever they like.

"Wandering murderhobo" play certainly happens, but IME only either at very low level while they're still finding their feet as adventures or (rare IME) when a party specifically decides to adopt that lifestyle.



> Your PCs have castles that they use as bases of operations. My D&D party does as well....but they still tend to leave their base with everything they think they'll need, and that list generally remains static for each character except maybe for some consumable items, or the occasional piece of specific gear based on their expected destination. I admit that we don't track inventory very closely because as a group we've found that to be more tedious than engaging, but that's just our preference. So we kind of eyeball it, so to speak.



At higher levels, pretty much same here.  But what the castles provide is a place to safely store spare gear and backups.  The wizard types, for example, almost always keep backup spellbooks at home - or if they're really co-operative a master spellbook which they all share in the maintenance and scribing of and which they can each access to rebuild their own book if required.  The base also serves as a place to park things that are too cumbersome to take into the field but are still very useful - e.g. a full-size writing desk with a neverending supply of spellbook-grade ink or a plant-based scrying device that's the size and bulk of a dining table plus chairs.



> And that's where the choice comes into play. In a D&Desque game, the resolution of the dog situation is pretty much decided when the player picks his gear before the adventure starts. He either has some food that the dog may like or he doesn't (obviously there are other class abilities and so on that can be used, but just for the sake of argument let's say no magic and no ranger abilities are available).



Maybe not even just in a D&D-esque game, but in any system where the mechanics allow the GM to introduce unforeseen complications for whatever reason e.g. on a failed roll of some sort.  It would seem the threat of such complications is considerably reduced if the system allows for on-the-fly inventory selection and the character (or party) have any item slots left.



> In Blades, this challenge of how to deal with the dog creates a decision for the player....do I devote inventory space to deal with this dog effectively, or do I try to sneak around it or fight it, and risk it alerting the bad guys? This may be an easy decision for some, or a difficult one for others, depending on other factors at play.



The same decision as to how to deal with the dog is still there in other games, except that because the inventory decisions were all made earlier the easy out-clause of throwing some meat to the dog won't (usually) be available.

Put another way: in BitD, assuming at least one available slot, the dog represents a threat that first forces a metagame decision from the player whether to burn a slot on meat or not, and only if that decision is 'no' do things get to the next step - which is where a D&D-style game would start at: a player-driven in-the-fiction decision by the PC as to how to (otherwise) deal with the dog.  Fight it?  Tame it?  Ignore it?  Abandon the score for now and come back later with some meat?

It's that metagame decision part in mid-play that I don't like, as it pulls the player out of character.



> So this is a game mechanic that provides the player with a meaningful decision as a player...which is good for a game....but which can be supported by the fiction either way.



AH, here's where we disagree I think.  I agree that meaningful decisions are good, but I want to see those meaningful decisions be made in character as part of role-playing rather than out of character as part of the metagame.



> I get that these "quantum inventory slots" seem unrealistic at the surface, but I think when you consider what they are meant to represent, then they make a lot more sense....much like HP or AC make sense but are abstractions.



I can see how they'd work well from the perspective of sheer game play if that's what's desired, but I can't get square with the way it forces metagame decisions into the fiction on the fly like that.


----------



## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> I’m not sure what the impediment to understanding is in this thread.
> 
> 1.	We make up systems in our heads so that we can represent certain phenomena in an exercise of shared imagination.
> 
> 2.	The systems are not empirically derived. We just make them up. We base them on “ideas” that we have about “things” in which we have no expertise: human recovery, medieval warfare, warp physics, mental illness – whatever. They are highly genre- and system-dependent.
> 
> 3.	These systems do not now become “realistic.” They are at best clumsy caricatures of a narrow selection of possibilities within the phenomena which we are representing.
> 
> The insanity mechanic in _Call of Cthulhu_ does not add realism to _CoC_. The disease mechanic in 1e does not add realism to D&D. The mustering out process in _Traveller_ does not add realism to _Traveller_.  The glory mechanic does not add realism to _Pendragon_.
> 
> They are all little games which we play with our imagination in order to lend structure and emphasis.




Except that they do add realism.  For what you just said to be true, realism would have to be a dichotomy where it's all or nothing.  It's not, so you can in fact have small incremental increases where adding something like disease mechanics will edge you closer towards the real life end of the spectrum.  That's a realism increase.  To quote someone else in this thread, "I'm not sure what the impediment to understanding is in this thread."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> OK, sounds good.
> 
> Something here doesn't make sense to me, or maybe I'm reading you wrong, but shouldn't all decisions and choices ideally be based on RP-only reasons, if one is indeed assuming the role of one's character?
> 
> OK, again sounds good.
> 
> In short, from the way you put this BitD is designed to be episodic rather than serial in play.  How hard does the system fight back if you try to make it more serial in play e.g. what was intended to be a score turns into something more resembling a full-on dungeon crawl that takes several sessions to play out?
> 
> Agreed.  My point was that we're not just the audience (which to me implies passivity and non-participation), we're also collectively and individually the active entertainers participating in - and often improvising - the show.
> 
> We always assume that the reason characters (and often their foes) almost never get full attack sequences in the first round* is that part of that first round is spent shrugging off and-or dropping such bulky gear and getting ready to fight; along with drawing weapons, fishing out spell components, etc.
> 
> * - probably a house rule, I forget where it came from but we've done it that way forever.
> 
> More abstract, and from what I can tell also somewhat more metagame.  The decisions seem to be more play-based than character-based, if that makes any sense.
> 
> Once the low-level days have passed each character tends to settle in to having its own standard inventory that doesn't change often; but said inventory is different for every character.  We haven't really ever gone in for things like standardized "adventuring kits".
> 
> For characters who own more than they can carry - i.e. most of 'em! - it's ideally expected that the character sheet shows what's on board in the field vs what's been left back at home or base.  Ideally.  Player recordkeeping deficiencies sometimes make things less than ideal...some are far more meticulous about this than others...
> 
> Thing is, in our games bringing gear into the field carries the risk that it'll be blown up by a lucky AoE spell of some sort (which is another common reason we need to know what you're carrying!).  Some players have their characters intentionally leave backup resources at home or base for just this reason.
> 
> But yes, most of the time the characters pack along everythng they can.
> 
> My hypothetical example, however, was trying to show the difference in what would happen in a situation that was unforeseen or unexpected.
> 
> If the system in effect mandates that the first [number of slots available] situations encountered will always be assumed to have been foreseen and-or expected, that to me blows authenticity out of the water.  Sometimes in a real situation it might be the very first obstacle that catches the character unprepared - in my example, maybe she meets the unexpected guard dog on the way in rather than on the way out - and unless there's more to it I can't see how BitD can reflect this provided the character has any unallocated slots left.
> 
> From a meta perspective it also comes down to a table-level guessing game for both the player(s) and the GM as to how many slots to have vs how many different types of obstacles* to throw at them.  Teh same can be said for D&D, of course, but it's not as cut-and-dried.
> 
> * - if the max number of slots is 7 does that in effect limit the GM as to how many different-gear-requiring types of obstacles she can put in the way, or is a truly nasty GM allowed to put in 8 or more and thus guarantee failure?
> 
> EDIT TO ADD: Another aspect is information.  The BitD version seems to assume that if the character happens to have some meat on hand then the character knew there was (or could be) a dog involved.  The D&D version allows for this information to either have been a) kept intentionally hidden or b) be available to discover but outright missed during the research-and-casing phase.  To me this makes the D&D version more authentic in that the character can make a mistake or be caught by an oversight.




I'm far from an expert on BitD, but I would think there are 2 relevant comments here. One is that it may well have many other subsystems which provide ways to produce the things you're asking about. I know it has 'stress' and some other types of currency, as well as an SC-like (in some ways) mechanic. I'm sure [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] will tell you about how these work. 

The other thing though, is that maybe this is the type of story the game is aimed at. No game is good for everything. It is very difficult to do some types of fairly obvious stories in D&D, at least without them seeming very contrived, unless you subscribe to some unusual interpretations of hit points and other things.

Finally, this is not by any means the last word in possible mechanics of this ilk. Looking at my own game, HoML, I don't find any trouble in having things happen in various ways, even though most of the things that do happen have some kind of dynamic associated with them where the players can 'change the situation', much in the way that BitD allows you to choose a piece of gear when you need it. These actions all have consequences. For instance a player could expend their Inspiration to have their PC come up with a piece of gear, but then it is spent, and getting it back will require leveraging a character attribute in an unfavorable way. So PCs have both fortune and misfortune, and because both require leveraging an attribute, they add to the coherence of the story (generally, though players ARE devils sometimes).


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Do you ever have someone run off with one of their backpacks? I would assume that theft would be a motivator for at least some opponents...bandits or goblins and the like....so the PCs dropping their gear would seem a prime opportunity to grab some and go. Do you use a map and minis? Do you mark where the PCs have dropped their gear?



Very much a tangent, but . . .

In my 4e game, which typically does use maps and counters in circumstances of physical conflict, I sometimes mark dead bodies using counters (which also makes the players assume that there is a NPC/creature with a reanimate ability) and will generally mark a dropped piece of gear. (Because if its significant enough to note that it's been dropped, it's significant enough to keep track of it for purposes of the "picking stuff up" rules.) A PC lost a carpet of flying this way: it had been temporarily abandoned for whatever reason, and the NPC lich picked it up and flew off on it, and the PCs didn't have the capacity at that time to chase it down.

I wouldn't put any of that under the heading "realism". I'd put it under the heading _stakes_.



hawkeyefan said:


> I admit that we don't track inventory very closely because as a group we've found that to be more tedious than engaging



For me this is very system-dependent.

In 4e we track magic items closely, as they're elements of PC build. Mundane gear doesn't come into play very often, and tends to be assumed. Occasionally if the players say "We'll do such-and-such" and it depends on some relatively improbable piece of gear, like say a good length of chain, I might ask who is carrying it and if they can't show it one someone's equipment list I'll block it - but that's not about realism so much as the GM establishing some adversity by drawing on the system conventions (which include inventory).

In Cortex+ Heroic inventory is basically irrelevant except as it is displayed through Assets, Resources and Gear-oriented Limits. Outside those well-defined mechanical contexts it's just flavour.

In Prince Valiant gear is notionally listed on a PC's sheet, but most of the time it's even more peripheral than in 4e, because the sorts of situations that arise in a Prince Valiant game are even less likely to be gear-oriented. The one exception is important stuff like quality horses, armour and weapons, tokens of a lady's favour, etc - the stuff that is integral to being a knight. This is tracked closely, and (at least in our experience) is frequently lost and won as a result of the outcomes of jousts, wooing attempts and the like.

In Traveller and Burning Wheel inventory is tracked closely, and I take steps as referee to keep the players on task here. Acquiring and using gear - from vacc suits to spaceships to portable hologram recorders - is a central part of Classic Traveller. In BW it's an optional subsystem, but it's a subsystem we use. It includes but certainly isn't limited to repairing damage to armour after fights.

The point of these anecdotes is just to elaborate on your contention, with which I agree, that this is all about system and preferences, not realism.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I wouldn't put any of that under the heading "realism". I'd put it under the heading _stakes_.




There's no requirement that it be one or the other.  Both is valid.

For me this is very system-dependent.



> The point of these anecdotes is just to elaborate on your contention, with which I agree, that this is all about system and preferences, not realism.




Again, both is valid.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Sepulchrave II

lowkey13 said:
			
		

> I get what you are saying. You're asserting that because the systems in TTRPGs don't model things very well (or, sometimes, are completely incorrect), they can't be said to be more or less realistic.




Almost. Systems in RPGs don't typically model things at all; they model _ideas which we have about things_. That's _one_ problem.

The bigger problem is that the experience of "realistic-ness" is entirely subjective, and neither you nor Max can possibly be qualified to dictate the terms or context of someone else's subjective experience. 

The even bigger problem is bound up in the initial premise of this thread. Reality is characterized by an infinite number of variables from which complex phenomena emerge. Nothing which we do at the table can ever be anything other than a stereotype of a few of those variables, whatever our methodology. The variables which we choose to stereotype and emphasize are entirely system- and genre-dependent.

"My feeling of something being more realistic" is not "something being more realistic." It is an aesthetic preference.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Interesting that the setting is built in as an integrated part of the game; and is so restricted in scope - it's almost like the city is analagous to a Castle-Greyhawk-like megadungeon, where you can sandbox around within it all you like but you can never completely leave it and go elsewhere.




Yeah, the setting and mechanics of BitD are very tightly interwoven to produce the desired effects. The mechanics lean into the setting, and vice versa. It's actually very impressive.



Lanefan said:


> Fair enough, and obviously some GMs will end up tying successive events together into an overarching plot line more than others will.




Sure, and this is true of any game, ultimately. In BitD however, there are actual mechanics that come into play...ratings with other factions within the city will fluctuate, and the crew can find themselves at war with another gang. Or their Heat can rise to the point where the cops show up at their door, and so on. During each Downtime Phase, the crew has to roll for an Entanglement, and then something happens that they have to deal with. There's a chart that determines what it is, but the expectation is that whatever the result is, that the GM shapes the Entanglement around what's already happened. So, if the Entanglement is "Reprisals" or "Show of Force" then the GM should use a Faction with whom the crew already has a negative standing and then have that Faction make a move on the crew. 

So BitD promotes the serial element of ongoing matters and continuing relationships, where as with D&D that stuff is up to the DM and players to incorporate. 



Lanefan said:


> The luck of dice would almost certainly dictate that not all of it goes up, as each (relevant) item gets its own saving throw. (side note: yes this can take some time at the table to sort out) (second side note: due to an incredible run of luck early on in my campaign where backpacks always made their saves - and thus protected their contents - it has been declared here that in fact Backpacks are the Master Race)
> 
> But yes, if they got unlucky they could lose a bunch of gear - it's happened - and even just losing the backpack itself presents a problem as to how its surviving contents will now be carried.
> 
> Good point - I should do this more often.  That said, often the gear is left in the area the PCs are defending, thus if the foes get to the gear it probably means there's no PCs left anyway.
> 
> 'Yes' to the first and 'only if it becomes relevant' to the second.  If for example a fireball spreads out enough to maybe clip their gear then we'll determine where it is, and whose is where.  Otherwise we don't bother.
> 
> Kind of a combination between abstracted and assumed-standard-operating-procedures, I guess.
> 
> To a point, along with a general reminder to people that it's not a free-for-all and that there are some reasonable limits: you can't normally carry a grand piano around with you, for example, no matter how badly you want to practice your concerto every night at camp.




Seems reasonable. That's largely how we handle it in D&D 5E with my group. We kind of assume certain default expectations....people have a waterskin and so on. We only track significant gear like weapons and magic items and the like. 

Here's what I'll say on how my play in these two systems shakes out. D&D has a more detailed system that we largely ignore in favor of a mix of abstraction and assumed basics. BitD Has a simpler system that creates a potentially compelling aspect of play.

As for the realism of either system....I really don't favor one over the other in that respect. It's more about how they play out at the table.




Lanefan said:


> Maybe not even just in a D&D-esque game, but in any system where the mechanics allow the GM to introduce unforeseen complications for whatever reason e.g. on a failed roll of some sort.  It would seem the threat of such complications is considerably reduced if the system allows for on-the-fly inventory selection and the character (or party) have any item slots left.




I don't know if the threat of the dog is reduced, really. On one hand, I see what you're saying in that the player could decide to have a bit of gear that might resolve the issue out of hand (although I expect there'd likely still be a roll of some sort, the use of the meat would likely make that roll less difficult for the PC), and that seems an easier option, so therefore the challenge is lesser. I can understand that logic. 

But, I think it becomes more of a question of is the loss of the inventory spot worth making this challenge easier? The limited availability of such slots makes it a question of resource management rather than just a question of what skill to use (stealth or attack). So in that sense, it's potentially more meaningful. Sure, the risk of harm may be removed, but the player may find out later that the inventory slot could have been put to use toward something perhaps more significant. 



Lanefan said:


> The same decision as to how to deal with the dog is still there in other games, except that because the inventory decisions were all made earlier the easy out-clause of throwing some meat to the dog won't (usually) be available.
> 
> Put another way: in BitD, assuming at least one available slot, the dog represents a threat that first forces a metagame decision from the player whether to burn a slot on meat or not, and only if that decision is 'no' do things get to the next step - which is where a D&D-style game would start at: a player-driven in-the-fiction decision by the PC as to how to (otherwise) deal with the dog.  Fight it?  Tame it?  Ignore it?  Abandon the score for now and come back later with some meat?
> 
> It's that metagame decision part in mid-play that I don't like, as it pulls the player out of character.




Why do you consider it a metagame decision? It really is very much in the game....it's only the timing of that decision that is different. If a player in D&D said before the Score "I want to pack a hank of beef in case there are any guard dogs or the like watching this place" you would allow it, right? So in BitD it's the same decision. The Character is not acting on outside of game info....the player is acting on inside the game info. I don't think this is what we would typically consider "metagaming" when that's brought up. 

To use your own phrase; how does this: "a player-driven in-the-fiction decision by the PC as to how to deal with the dog" not apply to the BitD example? What part of your statement is untrue for BitD? 




Lanefan said:


> AH, here's where we disagree I think.  I agree that meaningful decisions are good, but I want to see those meaningful decisions be made in character as part of role-playing rather than out of character as part of the metagame.
> 
> I can see how they'd work well from the perspective of sheer game play if that's what's desired, but I can't get square with the way it forces metagame decisions into the fiction on the fly like that.




Yeah, I don't think we agree at all that this is metagaming in what would be considered the "traditional" sense. The player is making a decision for his character about how to address a challenge in the game. 

The character is in no way acting on knowledge outside of the fiction.


----------



## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> The bigger problem is that the experience of "realistic-ness" is entirely subjective, and neither you nor Max can possibly be qualified to dictate the terms or context of someone else's subjective experience.




It doesn't matter what they experience.  They can experience it as a moon made of cheese and that won't change the fact that there was some amount of realism increase.  The value each person places on the realism increase based their perception of it can very wildly.  That there was a realism increase is set in stone.



> The even bigger problem is bound up in the initial premise of this thread. Reality is characterized by an infinite number of variables from which complex phenomena emerge.




This is no problem at all.  Realism =/= reality, so it doesn't have to take all of those, or even most of those into consideration.  The fewer variables you account for, the smaller the realism increase.


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## Sepulchrave II

Maxperson said:


> It doesn't matter what they experience.




Thanks for encapsulating your perspective.


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## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> Thanks for encapsulating your perspective.




Taking that out of context that way is really immature.  Given your earlier responses, though, I suppose I should have expected that.  My bad.


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Taking that out of context that way is really immature.  Given your earlier responses, though, I suppose I should have expected that.  My bad.




As I read it, that was the big takeaway -- the rest of the 'context' was explaining this sentence.  You've clearly said that you do not care what subjective experience on if an addition adds realism or not, because you can categorically say that there's an objective realism added outside of subjective opinion.  Nothing immature happened here except maybe your reaction to having your thesis sentence quoted without your supporting sentences.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> As I read it, that was the big takeaway -- the rest of the 'context' was explaining this sentence.




The context was critical.  Out of context it sounds bad.  In context it isn't at all.



> You've clearly said that you do not care what subjective experience on if an addition adds realism or not, because you can categorically say that there's an objective realism added outside of subjective opinion.




That's a lie.  What I said is that their subjective experience doesn't matter with regard to whether something adds realism or not, not that I don't care about their experiences.  Out of context what it sounds like is that I don't care about their experiences.


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> The context was critical.  Out of context it sounds bad.  In context it isn't at all.
> 
> 
> 
> That's a lie.  What I said is that their subjective experience doesn't matter with regard to whether something adds realism or not, not that I don't care about their experiences.  Out of context what it sounds like is that I don't care about their experiences.






Maxperson said:


> The context was critical.  Out of context it sounds bad.  In context it isn't at all.



The context doesn't do this, though.




> That's a lie.  What I said is that their subjective experience doesn't matter with regard to whether something adds realism or not, not that I don't care about their experiences.  Out of context what it sounds like is that I don't care about their experiences.



Yes... that's what I said it said.  Are you doing okay, Max?


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## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> The context was critical.  Out of context it sounds bad.  In context it isn't at all.
> 
> 
> 
> That's a lie.  What I said is that their subjective experience doesn't matter with regard to whether something adds realism or not, not that I don't care about their experiences.  Out of context what it sounds like is that I don't care about their experiences.




So what you're saying is that their experience doesn't matter....but you care about their experience?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> *To the extent it does, I hereby state to anyone reading that they win the internet always and forever!




Woot! I'm a winner!

. . . at least until the Internet Olympic Committee rules that I have to take humour suppression drugs to level the playing field. Ain't no way I'm doing that, so I'll have to forfeit.


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## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> So what you're saying is that you don't understand the difference between _characterizing_ someone else's position in an attempt to better understand it and advance to conversation, and _caricaturing_ someone else's position in order to score points on the internet for a game that doesn't exist?*
> 
> Hmmm..... I'm pretty sure that's not the case. And if that's not the case, why not ask Max questions about what he meant, instead of defending the juvenile use of a one-sentence out-of-context quote for an insult?
> 
> 
> *To the extent it does, I hereby state to anyone reading that they win the internet always and forever!




So you're replying to a post where I asked Max to clarify what he's saying to tell me that I should ask Max to clarify what he's saying? 

Not sure how you see what I asked as defending anyone, but I can assure you it wasn't.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> So what you're saying is that their experience doesn't matter....but you care about their experience?




Not even close.  Try again.


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## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> It's not whether you win or lose; it's how you place the blame!




The whole thread is her fault.


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## Aldarc

Edit: Changed my mind.


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## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Not even close.  Try again.




I’m genuinely asking for clarification. You said both those things....and they seem contradictory to me. How do you reconcile them?


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I’m genuinely asking for clarification. You said both those things....and they seem contradictory to me. How do you reconcile them?




Both things are not contradictory.  It's all in the context.  They don't matter *for the purpose of determining if there is increased realism*.  I can personally care about what they experience without it having to do with realism at all.  Those are two separate things.  That's why I've said that increased realism on a particular topic won't happen in my game if it affects the enjoyment of my players.


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## Sepulchrave II

hawkeyefan said:


> I’m genuinely asking for clarification. You said both those things....and they seem contradictory to me. How do you reconcile them?




Maxperson is asserting:

a)	I care about people’s experiences, and they matter

and

b)	I don’t care about people’s experiences of realism, and they don’t matter 

He doesn’t understand that by denying the specific case, he also invalidates the general case. His position is better summarized as:

c)	I care about people’s experiences, and they matter, unless I decide otherwise

We are not privy to the mysterious circumstances under which Max arrives at his decision that one experience matters, but another doesn’t.


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## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Both things are not contradictory.  It's all in the context.  They don't matter *for the purpose of determining if there is increased realism*.  I can personally care about what they experience without it having to do with realism at all.  Those are two separate things.  That's why I've said that increased realism on a particular topic won't happen in my game if it affects the enjoyment of my players.




Okay, so you're saying that the addition of realism is objective, but that opinions about the value add of a realism injection will vary, and you care about that? 

I can at least understand that. I don't think it quite addresses the issue because I think its the Objectivity or Subjectivity of "added realism" that's in question. 

To use an example that's already been brought up, you think that the addition of a system to introduce disease into the fictional world increases realism because it attempts to bring a real world element into the fictional world. 

However, someone else may say that the implementation of such a rudimentary system actually reduces realism for them. They would find disease having no impact on the story being crafted in their campaign to be more realistic than would a world dictated by such a basic system. For the sake of discussion, let's say this person works in the medical field and has access to information beyond what is commonly available, and they have strong opinions about how adding such information into the fiction should work. 

So in this sense, their opinion is that the system in question so poorly models the real world that it actually decreases their sense of realism. They could more easily accept that disease never became a concern for the PCs than they can accept the system as it is designed. 

Does this person's opinion matter? Would you say this opinion is somehow wrong?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> I don't know about Max's answer to this, but I'd like to take one last stab at this, even though I addressed this before (perfect being the enemy of the good, etc.).
> 
> Think of it not in terms of a TTRPG, but in terms of a computer model of something. Let's say ... a computer model of the epidemiological spread of disease!
> 
> Now, imagine back in the day, with limits on processors. Someone would have to program a very basic, limited model. It couldn't possibly capture all the vagaries of actual disease, right? It would be exceedingly basic. Now, maybe someone would say, "Hey, why bother. That's not realistic." Because it wasn't perfect. It wasn't .... reality. But it was more real than not having any model at all.
> 
> And this is important, because once it's there, then you can at least have a conversation about how to improve that model- how to make it more real (or more authentic, or more closely matching the actual spread of disease). Get it?




Sure. I think when research enters the situation and people are attempting to accurately model some real world event in a statistical manner, then we can perhaps compare models and determine which is more accurate. I think you're using "real" in place of "accurate", but yes, I otherwise agree with what you're saying. 

Do you think such statistical analysis is what's used to come up with a chart in the DMG? 

Or do you think that what's being attempted is to come up with some game mechanic that may create interesting instances of play, and that the game mechanic has a bit of a nod toward real world cause and effect? 



lowkey13 said:


> It's the same here. Having a model in a TTRPG (like the disease table in 1e) is "more real" than not having it in the game. But that's not really the point; the point is that once you do that, you can then improve upon the model (or not) because you have a baseline comparator.
> 
> _Because it's not all subjective. Because disease does happen and spread in a certain way, and it can be modeled._
> 
> Now, that's why people talk about whether something is "simulationist/realistic" or not. And, again, it's okay if it's not (I'd argue that TTRPGs are not very good at it, and this shouldn't be a goal). But to say that people just can't understand what this even means seems .... to me ... like sohpistry, because these are generally understood ideas and concepts. It doesn't mean it's a laudable goal, but it does mean that most people have a general idea of what is being discussed, even to the extent of going back and understanding the debates of the last several decades in TTRPGs, and the debates in wargaming as well.




I disagree that it's not all subjective. I think opinions will vary, as my example attempted to show. What did you think about my example? 

I have no problem if someone says they add a system of some kind to their game because the addition makes it more realistic. That's fine. It's conversational and casual, and I generally wouldn't bother correcting such a usage because it's semantics. 

But insisting that one system is more realistic than another....even if it's no system....that's when I think the question of objectivity versus subjectivity comes into play. There's no metric we can apply to determine which is objectively more realistic. 

Lanefan and I have been discussing PC inventory systems in D&D and Blades in the Dark. Both seem equally reasonable to me, and the one I like more is simply a matter of preference in how it plays at the table. 

I think that it's especially true in RPGs where what we're talking about is the content of a fictional world. If a game lacks a system for something, that doesn't mean it's absent from the world, does it? We can assume the common cold exists in most RPG worlds despite there being very few (if any?) that have some kind of rule to determine when a PC comes down with a cold. This can be handled narratively, or assumed to come up now and again, but to not have a mathematical impact on the game. 

Maybe a player has a cold one week, so he decides to roleplay his character as if he has a cold, too. Is this less realistic or more realistic than if we rolled percentile dice and consulted a chart? I mean, I'm sure we could conduct a few years of research and see which method more accurately maps to real world trends.....but absent that kind of analysis, can we really eyeball them and say that one is more real than the other? 

This is why I said that I can see how sometimes no system may actually be more accurate than a system.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, the setting and mechanics of BitD are very tightly interwoven to produce the desired effects. The mechanics lean into the setting, and vice versa. It's actually very impressive.



For its specific purpose, I'm sure it is; and that's great.

I'd rather have a big-tent system that can handle many specific purposes, however, because I'm lazy and only ever want to have to learn one system, once.



> Seems reasonable. That's largely how we handle it in D&D 5E with my group. We kind of assume certain default expectations....people have a waterskin and so on. We only track significant gear like weapons and magic items and the like.
> 
> Here's what I'll say on how my play in these two systems shakes out. D&D has a more detailed system that we largely ignore in favor of a mix of abstraction and assumed basics. BitD Has a simpler system that creates a potentially compelling aspect of play.
> 
> As for the realism of either system....I really don't favor one over the other in that respect. It's more about how they play out at the table.



Where to me the pre-hoc assignment of resources is far more realistic - as defined as being reflective of how real life works - than ad-hoc (or even post-hoc) assignment.



> I don't know if the threat of the dog is reduced, really. On one hand, I see what you're saying in that the player could decide to have a bit of gear that might resolve the issue out of hand (although I expect there'd likely still be a roll of some sort, the use of the meat would likely make that roll less difficult for the PC), and that seems an easier option, so therefore the challenge is lesser. I can understand that logic.
> 
> But, I think it becomes more of a question of is the loss of the inventory spot worth making this challenge easier? The limited availability of such slots makes it a question of resource management rather than just a question of what skill to use (stealth or attack). So in that sense, it's potentially more meaningful. Sure, the risk of harm may be removed, but the player may find out later that the inventory slot could have been put to use toward something perhaps more significant.



Maybe, but remember my original example had the unexpected dog appearing during the escape, such that after the dog there's unlikely to be any more significant obstacles on this score.



> Why do you consider it a metagame decision? It really is very much in the game....it's only the timing of that decision that is different.



And it's that very thing - timing - that pulls it from in-game to metagame. 



> If a player in D&D said before the Score "I want to pack a hank of beef in case there are any guard dogs or the like watching this place" you would allow it, right?



Yes.



> So in BitD it's the same decision. The Character is not acting on outside of game info....the player is acting on inside the game info. I don't think this is what we would typically consider "metagaming" when that's brought up.
> 
> To use your own phrase; how does this: "a player-driven in-the-fiction decision by the PC as to how to deal with the dog" not apply to the BitD example? What part of your statement is untrue for BitD?



The character didn't know about the dog.  In D&D if she didn't bring any meat she's got a problem; a decision (or oversight) in her past is causing her headaches now - simple sequential cause and effect.  In BitD if she didn't bring any meat the problem goes away if the player solves it in the metagame by now saying "I put meat in my empty inventory slot" and thus implying preparations were made in the past _that would highly likely not otherwise have been made had no dog appeared_.  If some other previously-unknown-of obstacle had appeared at this point instead of the dog the player could just as easily have said "I put [problem-solving item x] in my empty inventory slot", again implying preparations that would not otherwise have been made.

For gameplay this is fine.  For realism (or authenticity) it isn't, because it violates sequentiality (is that even a word?).



> Yeah, I don't think we agree at all that this is metagaming in what would be considered the "traditional" sense. The player is making a decision for his character about how to address a challenge in the game.
> 
> The character is in no way acting on knowledge outside of the fiction.



Yes it is - or, at least, the player is.  The whole point here is that the character specifically did not know of the dog beforehand and thus had no real reason to prepare for one.  Thus by putting meat into that slot now (thus implying the meat was being carried the whole time) the player is acting on knowledge the character didn't have prior to this point.

Lan-"it's a refreshing change to have a discussion about meat where the words 'hit points' never appear"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Or do you think that what's being attempted is to come up with some game mechanic that may create interesting instances of play, and that the game mechanic has a bit of a nod toward real world cause and effect?



That's just it, though - even "a bit of a nod" is better than nothing.



> I have no problem if someone says they add a system of some kind to their game because the addition makes it more realistic. That's fine. It's conversational and casual, and I generally wouldn't bother correcting such a usage because it's semantics.
> 
> But insisting that one system is more realistic than another....even if it's no system....that's when I think the question of objectivity versus subjectivity comes into play. There's no metric we can apply to determine which is objectively more realistic.



Well in some cases there is, if realism is defined as being reflective of reality as we know it.

Take weather.  If a DM decides that the composition of her game-world's atmosphere is the same as Earth's and that her game world is the same distance from the same type of star as Earth is, then one can directly compare whatever weather tables she comes up with to what happens on the parts of Earth that are similar and more or less determine the level of realism (here defined as accuracy) of those tables.  This then determines how realistic the weather is that the PCs encounter in their day to day adventuring, and also gives them a basis on which to note any changes or oddities.



> I think that it's especially true in RPGs where what we're talking about is the content of a fictional world. If a game lacks a system for something, that doesn't mean it's absent from the world, does it? We can assume the common cold exists in most RPG worlds despite there being very few (if any?) that have some kind of rule to determine when a PC comes down with a cold. This can be handled narratively, or assumed to come up now and again, but to not have a mathematical impact on the game.
> 
> Maybe a player has a cold one week, so he decides to roleplay his character as if he has a cold, too. Is this less realistic or more realistic than if we rolled percentile dice and consulted a chart? I mean, I'm sure we could conduct a few years of research and see which method more accurately maps to real world trends.....but absent that kind of analysis, can we really eyeball them and say that one is more real than the other?
> 
> This is why I said that I can see how sometimes no system may actually be more accurate than a system.



I see what you're saying.  However the reality is that if there is no system or other reminder that certain things might exist in the game world e.g. the common cold then both GMs and players will tend to forget about them or ignore them.  A reminder reminds all involved to pay attention to such things now and then (always good); a system forces them to (essential sometimes, overkill at other times, depending on what is being looked at).


----------



## Maxperson

Sepulchrave II said:


> Maxperson is asserting:
> 
> a)	I care about people’s experiences, and they matter
> 
> and
> 
> b)	I don’t care about people’s experiences of realism, and they don’t matter




Go troll someone else.  At this point there's no chance that you don't understand what I have said, so this is a deliberate untruth on your part.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Okay, so you're saying that the addition of realism is objective, but that opinions about the value add of a realism injection will vary, and you care about that?




Yes.



> To use an example that's already been brought up, you think that the addition of a system to introduce disease into the fictional world increases realism because it attempts to bring a real world element into the fictional world.
> 
> However, someone else may say that the implementation of such a rudimentary system actually reduces realism for them. They would find disease having no impact on the story being crafted in their campaign to be more realistic than would a world dictated by such a basic system. For the sake of discussion, let's say this person works in the medical field and has access to information beyond what is commonly available, and they have strong opinions about how adding such information into the fiction should work.




Sure, but that's a misperception on their part.  Perception is greater than reality, so when someone misperceives increased realism for decreased realism, that becomes "real" for them.  



> So in this sense, their opinion is that the system in question so poorly models the real world that it actually decreases their sense of realism. They could more easily accept that disease never became a concern for the PCs than they can accept the system as it is designed.




It may decrease their enjoyment of the system, and it may decrease their sense of realism, but it still increases realism in the game. 



> Does this person's opinion matter? Would you say this opinion is somehow wrong?




That person't enjoyment does matter to me.  I don't want anyone playing my game to not have fun.  Depending on the issue, the answer could be to remove the offending system from my game, or if it's something deemed critical by myself and my other players, the new player would be very nicely encouraged to find a game where they could have fun.  My group is very like minded with me.  That's intentional as players should have similar tastes so as not to cause disruption in the game.  A new player coming into the group would need to be similar(not the same) as the rest of us in what they are looking for in game play.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Sure, but that's a misperception on their part.  Perception is greater than reality, so when someone misperceives increased realism for decreased realism, that becomes "real" for them.




Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Lemme unpack this.

"Realism" is added.  This is objectively true, realism has increased.

Someone sees this addition as not realism, but they are wrong and have made an error of perception because the realism increase is objectively true. 

But, because perception is greater than reality or objective realism, there is now a decrease in realism.  

We increased realism only to have decreased realism because someone has the wrong idea.

Again, whiskey tango foxtrot.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. I think when research enters the situation and people are attempting to accurately model some real world event in a statistical manner, then we can perhaps compare models and determine which is more accurate. I think you're using "real" in place of "accurate", but yes, I otherwise agree with what you're saying.
> 
> Do you think such statistical analysis is what's used to come up with a chart in the DMG?
> 
> Or do you think that what's being attempted is to come up with some game mechanic that may create interesting instances of play, and that the game mechanic has a bit of a nod toward real world cause and effect?
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree that it's not all subjective. I think opinions will vary, as my example attempted to show. What did you think about my example?
> 
> I have no problem if someone says they add a system of some kind to their game because the addition makes it more realistic. That's fine. It's conversational and casual, and I generally wouldn't bother correcting such a usage because it's semantics.
> 
> But insisting that one system is more realistic than another....even if it's no system....that's when I think the question of objectivity versus subjectivity comes into play. There's no metric we can apply to determine which is objectively more realistic.
> 
> Lanefan and I have been discussing PC inventory systems in D&D and Blades in the Dark. Both seem equally reasonable to me, and the one I like more is simply a matter of preference in how it plays at the table.
> 
> I think that it's especially true in RPGs where what we're talking about is the content of a fictional world. If a game lacks a system for something, that doesn't mean it's absent from the world, does it? We can assume the common cold exists in most RPG worlds despite there being very few (if any?) that have some kind of rule to determine when a PC comes down with a cold. This can be handled narratively, or assumed to come up now and again, but to not have a mathematical impact on the game.
> 
> Maybe a player has a cold one week, so he decides to roleplay his character as if he has a cold, too. Is this less realistic or more realistic than if we rolled percentile dice and consulted a chart? I mean, I'm sure we could conduct a few years of research and see which method more accurately maps to real world trends.....but absent that kind of analysis, can we really eyeball them and say that one is more real than the other?
> 
> This is why I said that I can see how sometimes no system may actually be more accurate than a system.



Alternatively, if you add disease to a mosel but it's completely wrong, like, say, the modelled disease is a 53% hourly chance you turn into an elephant if you live at an even-numbered address, then it's addition reduces realism by a greater degree than adding the concept of disease could increase it.

So, all your points plus bad models are just bad.  A bad model can be very much worse than no model.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
> 
> Lemme unpack this.
> 
> "Realism" is added.  This is objectively true, realism has increased.
> 
> Someone sees this addition as not realism, but they are wrong and have made an error of perception because the realism increase is objectively true.




So far so good.



> But, because perception is greater than reality or objective realism, there is now a decrease in realism.




And now you've lost it.  Nope.  There is not a decrease in realism.  However, the misperceived decrease in realism *seems real* to the person.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. I think when research enters the situation and people are attempting to accurately model some real world event in a statistical manner, then we can perhaps compare models and determine which is more accurate. I think you're using "real" in place of "accurate", but yes, I otherwise agree with what you're saying.
> 
> Do you think such statistical analysis is what's used to come up with a chart in the DMG?
> 
> Or do you think that what's being attempted is to come up with some game mechanic that may create interesting instances of play, and that the game mechanic has a bit of a nod toward real world cause and effect?
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree that it's not all subjective. I think opinions will vary, as my example attempted to show. What did you think about my example?
> 
> I have no problem if someone says they add a system of some kind to their game because the addition makes it more realistic. That's fine. It's conversational and casual, and I generally wouldn't bother correcting such a usage because it's semantics.
> 
> But insisting that one system is more realistic than another....even if it's no system....that's when I think the question of objectivity versus subjectivity comes into play. There's no metric we can apply to determine which is objectively more realistic.
> 
> Lanefan and I have been discussing PC inventory systems in D&D and Blades in the Dark. Both seem equally reasonable to me, and the one I like more is simply a matter of preference in how it plays at the table.
> 
> I think that it's especially true in RPGs where what we're talking about is the content of a fictional world. If a game lacks a system for something, that doesn't mean it's absent from the world, does it? We can assume the common cold exists in most RPG worlds despite there being very few (if any?) that have some kind of rule to determine when a PC comes down with a cold. This can be handled narratively, or assumed to come up now and again, but to not have a mathematical impact on the game.
> 
> Maybe a player has a cold one week, so he decides to roleplay his character as if he has a cold, too. Is this less realistic or more realistic than if we rolled percentile dice and consulted a chart? I mean, I'm sure we could conduct a few years of research and see which method more accurately maps to real world trends.....but absent that kind of analysis, can we really eyeball them and say that one is more real than the other?
> 
> This is why I said that I can see how sometimes no system may actually be more accurate than a system.




Agreed: Also, I think, speaking as someone with some knowledge of actual mathematical models of the sorts that might be envisaged here, that there are two very different things you can talk about.

Here's an example. Dr Svante Arrhenius made a basic set of calculations on the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere and the degree of warming to be expected back in about 1912. This number is in very close agreement with what you see in the latest IPCC report etc. The difference is Arrhenius was doing a simple 1-dimensional calculation which yielded a single number, but no particulars. Today we can model all the details of climate change to some fair degree of resolution. There is a qualitative difference. 

Suppose we made a model of the spread of disease with a few variables, etc. It could tell us (again math that was done 100 years ago) about how many people might get sick given a few basic parameters (onset time, vector, rate of transmission, etc.). It is worthless for telling you who will get sick. Not even the most sophisticated simulations we can currently imagine could do that. 

So, you can achieve a type of realism, but there is a big qualitative difference between that and something that would translate into the narrative of a game. Again, realism turns out to be a quite slippery concept.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Yes it is - or, at least, the player is.  The whole point here is that the character specifically did not know of the dog beforehand and thus had no real reason to prepare for one.  Thus by putting meat into that slot now (thus implying the meat was being carried the whole time) the player is acting on knowledge the character didn't have prior to this point.




But the same could be said of the D&D player...they didn’t know about the dog when they decided to select a hank of meat for their inventory. They had no real reason to prepare for the dog.

The only reason they may have had is the hunch that it might come in handy. In this case, that hunch is the player’s more so than the character’s. 

What Blades does is create a model that reflects the fact that a criminal would have a better idea of what to bring on the job than the player would. It’s the scoundrel who has the hunch, not the player. 

For me, that makes it seem realistic. 

Not more realistic than some other method....just how it feels to me. To me, that aspect of portraying the scoundrel’s knowledge is more meaningful than me selecting gear ahead of time. 

I don’t think anyone can accurately tell me I’m wrong so much as they can simply say they prefer something different.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> That's just it, though - even "a bit of a nod" is better than nothing.




Well, not necessarily....see the mention of bad models in recent posts. 

But aside from that...the two systema we’ve been discussing each have a nod toward the real world. One mirrors real world sequentiality (it is a word!) and the other mirrors the ability of a criminal to effectively plan for a crime. 

Is one of these objectively better than the other? Or is it just a matter of preference? 



Lanefan said:


> Well in some cases there is, if realism is defined as being reflective of reality as we know it.




Okay...then how do you quantify this? Both the approaches above are reflective of reality as we know it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Sure, but that's a misperception on their part.  Perception is greater than reality, so when someone misperceives increased realism for decreased realism, that becomes "real" for them.




What does “perception is greater than reality” mean? I think you mean that a person can be misinformed and therefore their opinion about added realism could be wrong? Am I following?



Maxperson said:


> It may decrease their enjoyment of the system, and it may decrease their sense of realism, but it still increases realism in the game.




I don’t know if I see a distinction between “sense of realism” and “realism” in this way. What’s the difference? I would think it’s all “sense of realism”.



Maxperson said:


> That person't enjoyment does matter to me.  I don't want anyone playing my game to not have fun.  Depending on the issue, the answer could be to remove the offending system from my game, or if it's something deemed critical by myself and my other players, the new player would be very nicely encouraged to find a game where they could have fun.  My group is very like minded with me.  That's intentional as players should have similar tastes so as not to cause disruption in the game.  A new player coming into the group would need to be similar(not the same) as the rest of us in what they are looking for in game play.




That’s all seems reasonable, thanks for clarifying.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Well, not necessarily....see the mention of bad models in recent posts.
> 
> But aside from that...the two systema we’ve been discussing each have a nod toward the real world. One mirrors real world sequentiality (it is a word!) and the other mirrors the ability of a criminal to effectively plan for a crime.
> 
> Is one of these objectively better than the other? Or is it just a matter of preference?
> 
> 
> 
> Okay...then how do you quantify this? Both the approaches above are reflective of reality as we know it.



Quantifying it is very easy in one respect at least: whether or not things happen at the table in the same order as they would in reality; or - put another way - whether cause and effect at the table and in the fiction mirror what would happen in real life.

The end-result tale of the score that appears in the game log is (or certainly can be) perfectly reflective of reality in either system, but the end tale isn't the point.  The point here is the process: whether reality is reflected (as best as reasonably possible) in the moment as things occur, which D&D in this case does better than BitD simply due to sequentiality.  Choices are made up front, and for better or worse those choices may have consequences later.

Yes a D&D character might well have decided to pack some meat along, and on meeting the dog will be happy she did so.  This is fine.  She just as easily might not have brought any meat, and thus ended up with an unexpected and possibly unsolvable problem.  This is also fine.

With BitD this same scenario can't happen as long as the PC has a slot left, as that slot can be used _at any time of the player's choosing_ to bypass a problem. 

The highlighted bit there is the meta-part: on seeing the dog the character doesn't suddenly choose to have meat in her pack as it's far too late in the fiction to be making such choices.  The player, however, can make this choice here and now at the table but retroactively in the fiction (i.e. in the fiction the meat was there all along); and the ability to make such a retroactive choice is what pulls it into the meta realm.  Retroactive choice-making doesn't happen in reality unless you've got a handy time-travel machine stowed somewhere (and if you do, I want on!).

Which can lead to another issue.  The meat example doesn't work here but I'll use it anyway: though it'll perhaps sound a bit absurd I ask you to look at the intent rather than the actual rather silly example.

The issue is this: if after having done 90% of the score the PC encounters a dog and declares she's using her last item slot on meat to feed it with, this means she had the meat with her the whole time.  But what if the presence of the meat would have or could have had some other significant effect or consequence earlier in the score had its presence been known then, e.g. (and here's the silly example) what if the door to the loot chamber had a trap on it that sounded an alarm if any non-living meat entered the space?

In a cause-and-effect based D&D-like system this all takes care of itself: the GM knows (or can ask) what the PC has on hand when she reaches the trapped door and can take appropriate measures at the time e.g. call for a traps roll or narrate the alarm going off or whatever.

But where the dog (and thus meat) haven't come up yet and the character's items-in-slots at the time of passing through the door thus don't include any meat the GM has no reason to do anything with the meat-based trap.  But when the PC uses that last slot for meat the GM is suddenly stuck with saying "By the way, you doing this means we'll have to retcon half the score 'cause that meat would have caused a problem earlier", which is utterly awful on many levels.

Unless, of course, it's taken as a given that the meat or any other item doesn't actually appear in her pack until she at the table uses the slot for it, at which point it just shows up.  This might be fine as a game mechanic and avoids all those messy retcon possibilities but blows away much hope of reflecting reality.


----------



## Aldarc

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I find that there is sometimes disconnect between your assumption regarding how D&D should be played and how other tables often play it: i.e., your play preference vs. broader play praxis. Equipment is one such case. At many tables I have seen, and this may also be a generational thing (though hopefully you can refrain from past condescending attitudes about "newer" players), the table doesn't really care about the equipment/resource minigame. The DM/Table may simply rule that a player having a particular piece of equipment is reasonable though it was never previously established on the character sheet, in the fiction, etc.


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] This is all well and good....although the Non-Living Meat Ward seems to be about as troubling as Otiluke’s OCD Sequential Backpack Exploder spell! 

I’ll grant you that the D&D method “beats” the Blades method in relation to sequentiality. I’ll say that I absolutely understand the reason that you prefer that method.

My point is that the Blades method “beats” the D&D method in that it reflects the knowledge and capability of the character and removes the limitation that the player’s knowledge places on the character.

So, given this, would you agree that each method appeals to realism, albeit a different aspect of realism? And if you can, then can you see why I’m saying that which works best for a given person is just a matter of preference?

If not, then please quantify the two methods for me using an actual metric other than opinion in order to prove one is more realistic than the other.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> What does “perception is greater than reality” mean? I think you mean that a person can be misinformed and therefore their opinion about added realism could be wrong? Am I following?




It means that if the reality is that there is added realism, but the person's perception is lower realism, reality takes second seat to perception.  I also use this example a lot.  If a person is very hard working, but takes his two breaks at irregular times and his boss happens to come out during those times, the bosses perception may be that the person isn't working very hard.  That worker may not get a good raise, despite working hard, because perception is greater than reality.



> I don’t know if I see a distinction between “sense of realism” and “realism” in this way. What’s the difference? I would think it’s all “sense of realism”.




Their sense of what the level of realism is may not match what the increase of realism is.  There is an objective increase, and there is a perceived increase or decrease.



> That’s all seems reasonable, thanks for clarifying.




Sure.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> It means that if the reality is that there is added realism, but the person's perception is lower realism, reality takes second seat to perception.  I also use this example a lot.  If a person is very hard working, but takes his two breaks at irregular times and his boss happens to come out during those times, the bosses perception may be that the person isn't working very hard.  That worker may not get a good raise, despite working hard, because perception is greater than reality.




Okay, gotcha. By “greater” you mean in the sense of being “more meaningful to the individual”. 



Maxperson said:


> Their sense of what the level of realism is may not match what the increase of realism is.  There is an objective increase, and there is a perceived increase or decrease.




Here’s where I don’t think your take holds up. There’s no objective addition. There is only a sense of realism, which will vary from person to person. 

I don’t think you’ve established this objectivity that you insist is present. I don’t think it can be established.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> So a whetstone is neither a rule, nor proof that weapons degrade in D&D.  If no whetstone is ever purchased, no weapon in 5e will ever degrade and become dull or dinged up.  There simply are no rules for those things in 5e.  You could buy a whetstone if it makes you feel better I suppose, but it's never going to be needed if you play by RAW.






Maxperson said:


> I asked for a RULE for weapon degradation(that would be a mechanic in case you weren't aware), not a whetstone that is not a rule.




You didn't ask for a rule (not from me anyway). You asked for "a listed part of the game", which is exactly what the whetstone entry on the equipment list is. The intent of its inclusion seems obvious, i.e. to aid in the roleplay of your character caring for its bladed weapons that would otherwise become dull. I agree there is no rule that obligates you to imagine blades being dulled in your game, but the lack of such a rule by no means prohibits you from doing so. In fact, the inclusion of the whetstone entry encourages exactly that sort of play!


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Okay, gotcha. By “greater” you mean in the sense of being “more meaningful to the individual”.




That's very close, but "more meaningful" implies that they know what reality is.  When perception is greater than reality, the individual is wrong about what reality is and is going on perception, which in these cases is really misperception or misidentification of what they are perceiving. 



> Here’s where I don’t think your take holds up. There’s no objective addition. There is only a sense of realism, which will vary from person to person.




There is.  Any time your model brings in something from the real world and attempts to model the real world to some degree, realism has increased, even if the model is still highly unrealistic.  The real world connection and modeling must have greater realism than having nothing at all, because nothing = 0 and you have at least something greater than 0 with those connections. 



> I don’t think you’ve established this objectivity that you insist is present. I don’t think it can be established.




Right.  This is where our differences originate and I'm not sure we can get past it.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> You didn't ask for a rule (not from me anyway). You asked for "a listed part of the game", which is exactly what the whetstone entry on the equipment list is. The intent of its inclusion seems obvious, i.e. to aid in the roleplay of your character caring for its bladed weapons that would otherwise become dull. I agree there is no rule that obligates you to imagine blades being dulled in your game, but the lack of such a rule by no means prohibits you from doing so. In fact, the inclusion of the whetstone entry encourages exactly that sort of play!




Dude.  When you responded with whetstone, you quoted me asking for a rule.  While I was not asking you specifically for a rule, I was asking for a rule.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> *Any time your model brings in something from the real world and attempts to model the real world to some degree, realism has increased, even if the model is still highly unrealistic.*  The real world connection and modeling must have greater realism than having nothing at all, because nothing = 0 and you have at least something greater than 0 with those connections.



This seems like circular reasoning, Max. You assert something as being self-evident, namely in the bold. When asked for clarification or support for that thesis, you just repeat the thesis again as if it were objective truth. This sort of circular reasoning is the primary point of disconnect and frustration that I suspect many of us are having with your argumentation.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] This is all well and good....although the Non-Living Meat Ward seems to be about as troubling as Otiluke’s OCD Sequential Backpack Exploder spell!
> 
> I’ll grant you that the D&D method “beats” the Blades method in relation to sequentiality. I’ll say that I absolutely understand the reason that you prefer that method.
> 
> My point is that the Blades method “beats” the D&D method in that *it reflects the knowledge and capability of the character* and removes the limitation that the player’s knowledge places on the character.



Change the word "reflects" to "pre-supposes" in the bit I bolded - as this is also true - and you might get an insight on my issue with it: it allows for pre-supposing of knowledge that the character in the fiction would not have, in situations where something unforeseen or unexpected arises.  Either that, or it pre-supposes a constant and perhaps artificially high level of success in the scouting/casing/information gathering process.

Note too that 'unforeseen' and 'unexpected' both imply things a capable character might still have missed while casing the place; and while a dog might well have been foreseen or prepared for by a competent thief it was the simplest example of a missed element I could think of at the time.

Removing the limitation of the player is fine, and I can see the benefits particularly for those newer to the game.  But it comes at a cost of - call it realism or believability or authenticity* or whichever term fits - where the character in the fiction never (or much less often) has to say "Oops, I didn't prepare for this!".  It also intentionally violates the principle of "player knowledge = character knowledge" but in an unusual way: most often this comes up when players use out-of-game knowledge their PCs don't have; here it's the reverse, where assumed character knowledge trumps actual player knowledge.

* - authenticity gets an asterisk as while this issue affects authenticity as per the real world it does not affect authenticity within the game world, which remains - as it should - authentic to itself.



> So, given this, would you agree that each method appeals to realism, albeit a different aspect of realism? And if you can, then can you see why I’m saying that which works best for a given person is just a matter of preference?



I agree they both (try to) reflect realism in their own way.  Neither are fully successful, of course, so it comes down to determining which one gets closer.



> If not, then please quantify the two methods for me using an actual metric other than opinion in order to prove one is more realistic than the other.



I thought I already did, unless you're looking for some sort of hard-numbers comparison - in which case you're out of luck, in that any attempt to put numbers on any of this will just lead us back away from realism and into abstraction.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> This seems like circular reasoning, Max. You assert something as being self-evident, namely in the bold. When asked for clarification or support for that thesis, you just repeat the thesis again as if it were objective truth. This sort of circular reasoning is the primary point of disconnect and frustration that I suspect many of us are having with your argumentation.



Except he's right, at least in this much: any attempt - no matter how badly done or off the mark it may be - is better than no attempt.

Why is this?  Because once the (or an) attempt has been made it's much easier to build on that attempt, refine it, and improve it than it is to start from scratch.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Dude.  When you responded with whetstone, you quoted me asking for a rule.  While I was not asking you specifically for a rule, I was asking for a rule.




No, I didn’t, and no, you weren’t. Your claims are false, and you ought to know it. If you think they’re true, show me where you asked for a rule in a post I quoted or to which I responded. As far as I can tell, the claim that there’s no rule is something you started saying after I provided the whetstone as an answer to your request for “a listed part of the game”, to which I was clearly responding. I’ve agreed twice now that there’s no rule, but there is a listed game-element, namely the whetstone. It shows that blades are assumed to become dull through use in worlds of D&D.


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Except he's right, at least in this much: any attempt - no matter how badly done or off the mark it may be - is better than no attempt.
> 
> Why is this?  Because once the (or an) attempt has been made it's much easier to build on that attempt, refine it, and improve it than it is to start from scratch.



Except that asserted assumption rests on a proposition that is neither inherently true nor logically consequential.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> No, I didn’t, and no, you weren’t.  Your claims are false, and you ought to know it. If you think they’re true, show me where you asked for a rule in a post I quoted or to which I responded.




Since your memory is shot, here you go.



> Quote Originally Posted by Maxperson  View Post
> That does nothing to change the fact that if weapons don't get dull, as they do not in D&D, adding in the ability to get dull is an increase in realism.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For you to show a counter example, you would have to show in the* D&D rules* where care of weapons is a listed part of the game.






> Whetstone    1 cp    l lb.






> It shows that blades are assumed to become dull through use in worlds of D&D.




This is patently false.  If you were to play in a game with me and you bought a whetstone and I did not, going through the exact same encounters with identical characters and weaponry, we would finish the campaign with weapons in identical condition.  There is no such assumption as weapons simply do not deteriorate.  At all.  The whetstone exists solely to provide people who want it, with a prop for roleplay.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Since your memory is shot, here you go.




Are you saying that the whetstone is not a listed part of the game or that it's not in the D&D rules? Since it's in the PHB, I'd say it's in the rules. Does that make it a rule? I'll leave that up to you, but I think it's definitely a listed part of the game, so it meets both your criteria.



Maxperson said:


> This is patently false.  If you were to play in a game with me and you bought a whetstone and I did not, going through the exact same encounters with identical characters and weaponry, we would finish the campaign with weapons in identical condition.  There is no such assumption as weapons simply do not deteriorate.  At all.  The whetstone exists solely to provide people who want it, with a prop for roleplay.




What are they roleplaying their characters as doing when using this item? Sharpening their weapons you say? Why are they sharpening their weapons if blades do not become dull in their world? Could it be that I am roleplaying that part of my PC's activities while you are not and that your PC has his/her blade sharpened off-screen, perhaps by a specialist during downtime?


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Are you saying that the whetstone is not a listed part of the game or that it's not in the D&D rules?




Items are not rules.



> but I think it's definitely a listed part of the game, so it meets both your criteria.




My criteria was D&D rules, so it fails to meet it.  You don't get to change my criteria.



> What are they roleplaying their characters as doing when using this item?




Wasting time and energy.



> Sharpening their weapons you say?




No.  I don't say.



> Why are they sharpening their weapons if blades do not become dull in their world?




To make themselves feel better.  OCD.  Who knows, but it's not to sharpen the weapons.



> Could it be that I am roleplaying that part of my PC's activities while you are not and that your PC has his/her blade sharpened off-screen, perhaps by a specialist during downtime?




No.

If the rules do not state that weapons get dull, they do not unless the DM adds it in.  Suppose I'm playing in Undermountain or another campaign where there is no specialist or other off-screen way to sharpen weapons.  What happens to my sword?  Absolutely nothing.  The game does not include weapon deterioration.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Items are not rules.




They are listed parts of the game found in the D&D rules, which is exactly what you were asking for. 



Maxperson said:


> My criteria was D&D rules, so it fails to meet it.  You don't get to change my criteria.




I haven't changed anything. You stipulated a requirement to be shown where care of weapons is a listed part of the game in the D&D rules. I showed you it's in the equipment list.



Maxperson said:


> Wasting time and energy.




Really? The whetstone is included so players can roleplay their characters as time-wasters? Somehow I don't think that's the intent of that game-element.



Maxperson said:


> No.  I don't say.




Then what? What's the item for, if bladed weapons don't get dull, seriously?



Maxperson said:


> To make themselves feel better.  OCD.  Who knows, but it's not to sharpen the weapons.




I seriously doubt that the whetstone is listed as an item so players can play deluded characters, or characters with personality disorders. I think it's intended as a piece of equipment with the function for which it was designed. I.e., the item exists in the game-world because blades becoming dull is a phenomenon in that game-world.



Maxperson said:


> No.




So if I declare that my character spends part of a short rest following a fight sharpening his sword with a whetstone to keep it sharp for the next fight, is your character going to wonder why in the world my character would hold on to such a ridiculous superstition as blades becoming dull?



Maxperson said:


> If the rules do not state that weapons get dull, they do not unless the DM adds it in.  Suppose I'm playing in Undermountain or another campaign where there is no specialist or other off-screen way to sharpen weapons.  What happens to my sword?  Absolutely nothing.  The game does not include weapon deterioration.




Then what’s the whetstone for? It’s in the game. It’s in the rules. Weapons get dull. I think what you mean to say is that the way weapons get dull isn’t implemented to your liking, in which case you’re free to house-rule it.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Really? The whetstone is included so players can roleplay their characters as time-wasters? Somehow I don't think that's the intent of that game-element.




Show me the rules for weapon deterioration then.  If you can do that, I will concede that weapon deterioration is in the game.



> Then what? What's the item for, if bladed weapons don't get dull, seriously?




Not weapon deterioration.  It doesn't exist in 5e.  If it did, you could quote me the rule.



> I seriously doubt that the whetstone is listed as an item so players can play deluded characters, or characters with personality disorders. I think it's intended as a piece of equipment with the function for which it was designed. I.e., the item exists in the game-world because blades becoming dull is a phenomenon in that game-world.




Again, if this were true you could in fact show me the rule for weapon deterioration.  Since you are making the claim that it exists, quote it.



> So if I declare that my character spends part of a short rest following a fight sharpening his sword with a whetstone to keep it sharp for the next fight, is your character going to wonder why in the world my character would hold on to such a ridiculous superstition as blades becoming dull?




You can say it all you like, but my PC who is right next to you with the exact same type of short sword purchased at the exact same time and used in the exact same fights, will have an equally sharp short sword despite never once having sharpened it.  Why?  Because weapons simply do not get dull in 5e.



> I think what you mean to say is that the way weapons get dull isn’t implemented to your liking, in which case you’re free to house-rule it.




There's nothing to house rule.  There are no rules that state that weapons deteriorate.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Okay, gotcha. By “greater” you mean in the sense of being “more meaningful to the individual”.
> 
> 
> 
> Here’s where I don’t think your take holds up. There’s no objective addition. There is only a sense of realism, which will vary from person to person.
> 
> I don’t think you’ve established this objectivity that you insist is present. I don’t think it can be established.




This is exactly why I used the label 'authenticity'. There's no consideration of ACTUAL realism here, certainly not in the sense of particular incidents in the game narrative can be ascertained to be closer to some real world analog. At best we have an idea that the participant wants to feel like what happened was authentic, that it resonated with the player in some fashion and made them feel like the experience was real, not that it was actually like any real experience in any measurable way.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Except he's right, at least in this much: any attempt - no matter how badly done or off the mark it may be - is better than no attempt.
> 
> Why is this?  Because once the (or an) attempt has been made it's much easier to build on that attempt, refine it, and improve it than it is to start from scratch.




Actually, I think the entirety of D&D is a refutation of this argument. A rather thorough one in fact! The game was instantly, at its initial inception, trapped by the structure of its mechanics, the places where it is abstract, and others where it is concrete, and the way it structures participant roles, etc. It has never escaped ANY of this, and the one time it got close/arguably did, you all utterly rejected the result! 

I would argue that game designers find it necessary to implement some sorts of mechanics, lest there be no game at all. Yet, to a large degree, the choices they make at the start are unlikely to be overcome later, or incrementally improved. Instead, whole new game systems are usually constructed.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Actually, I think the entirety of D&D is a refutation of this argument. A rather thorough one in fact! The game was instantly, at its initial inception, trapped by the structure of its mechanics, the places where it is abstract, and others where it is concrete, and the way it structures participant roles, etc. It has never escaped ANY of this, and the one time it got close/arguably did, you all utterly rejected the result!
> 
> I would argue that game designers find it necessary to implement some sorts of mechanics, lest there be no game at all. Yet, to a large degree, the choices they make at the start are unlikely to be overcome later, or incrementally improved. Instead, whole new game systems are usually constructed.




Actually it's the opposite.  1e had attack charts.  2e progressed to THACO.  3e simplified to high AC and bonuses to classes that matched THACO but were easier.  1e had a few background skills that you might get one of.  2e had proficiencies, but once you had them you pretty much never got better or worse.  3e went to a better skill system, but with numbers that were too high.  5e simplified while keeping skills that could be improved.  Class mechanics.  Spell mechanics.  Save mechanics.  And more.  All went through progressions that improved them.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> Actually it's the opposite.  1e had attack charts.  2e progressed to THACO.  3e simplified to high AC and bonuses to classes that matched THACO but were easier.  1e had a few background skills that you might get one of.  2e had proficiencies, but once you had them you pretty much never got better or worse.  3e went to a better skill system, but with numbers that were too high.  5e simplified while keeping skills that could be improved.  Class mechanics.  Spell mechanics.  Save mechanics.  And more.  All went through progressions that improved them.



You recognize that "improve" is entirely subjective, yeah?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> There is.  Any time your model brings in something from the real world and attempts to model the real world to some degree, realism has increased, even if the model is still highly unrealistic.  The real world connection and modeling must have greater realism than having nothing at all, because nothing = 0 and you have at least something greater than 0 with those connections.




No, a flawed model can be less use than no model. And what about when comparing two systems that add some kind of realism, but do so in different ways. How do you know which adds more realism?

It’s opinion. 



Maxperson said:


> Right.  This is where our differences originate and I'm not sure we can get past it.




Probably not, no.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> I agree they both (try to) reflect realism in their own way.  Neither are fully successful, of course, so it comes down to determining which one gets closer.




So how do we determine that? 



Lanefan said:


> I thought I already did, unless you're looking for some sort of hard-numbers comparison - in which case you're out of luck, in that any attempt to put numbers on any of this will just lead us back away from realism and into abstraction.




That’s what quantify means. If you’re going to claim that something is objectively true, that A is more than B, then you need to be able to show how. You need to show the value of A and then the value of B, so that the objective difference is clear.   

This is my point. There is no way to do this on this topic because it is simply a matter of preference. It is entirely subjective.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Actually it's the opposite.  1e had attack charts.  2e progressed to THACO.  3e simplified to high AC and bonuses to classes that matched THACO but were easier.  1e had a few background skills that you might get one of.  2e had proficiencies, but once you had them you pretty much never got better or worse.  3e went to a better skill system, but with numbers that were too high.  5e simplified while keeping skills that could be improved.  Class mechanics.  Spell mechanics.  Save mechanics.  And more.  All went through progressions that improved them.




All editions and versions of D&D prior to 3e have basically the exact same combat system, with a few slight tweaks or elaborations. 2e's THAC0 produces the EXACT same numbers as 1e's combat charts (there is an offset for certain very high ACs and the stepping for fighters is +1/1 instead of +2/2, but 1e offered that as an option). So, no, things pretty much stayed locked into exactly the same system. Even 3e's system has basically the same sort of model, attacks vs AC with a to-hit number followed by a damage roll, and save numbers for avoiding certain effects. All versions use a d20, etc. There was some change at the 3e break in terms of how the order of actions was determined, but that is really the biggest change in D&D combat. Fundamentally the model has remained unchanged for 40 years.

1e and 2e both had the optional background skills and NWP mechanics (not introduced into 1e until OA officially). This is a sort of incremental evolution, but note how these systems are always entirely optional until 3e, and all through AD&D they remain largely unworkable due to an adherence to a very limited type of design. Even 3e's version has problems based on its inheritance from NWPs. Only in 4e do we see some real evolution in the skill system, much of which has been subsequently undone in the name of 'tradition' (5e's system is somewhat of a mishmash of 4e and 2e influences). 

I am OK with the idea that there were 'improvements', and if you compare 4e to 0e there are some significant differences, but even 4e is still working largely within the paradigms and set of mechanical tools established at the earliest times in D&D. Meanwhile other games have introduced entirely new, or radically restructured, mechanical solutions which D&D will obviously never be able to absorb due to its established structure (and the unwillingness of many players to change how they play). 

Once you establish mechanical systems and subsystems it is very hard to go back and do something really different and potentially better. So creating poorly thought-out approaches to some aspect of the game and then expecting that to simply 'evolve' seems like a poor strategy to me. Most likely that element will remain almost the same, possibly being subject to revision at some edition break, but almost always with a lot of pushback and controversy.

Now, if you are talking about home brew, well obviously there's less of an issue with making ad-hoc changes where only a hand full of people use the system, but even then you may find it difficult to change.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Show me the rules for weapon deterioration then.  If you can do that, I will concede that weapon deterioration is in the game.
> 
> 
> 
> Not weapon deterioration.  It doesn't exist in 5e.  If it did, you could quote me the rule.
> 
> 
> 
> Again, if this were true you could in fact show me the rule for weapon deterioration.  Since you are making the claim that it exists, quote it.
> 
> 
> 
> You can say it all you like, but my PC who is right next to you with the exact same type of short sword purchased at the exact same time and used in the exact same fights, will have an equally sharp short sword despite never once having sharpened it.  Why?  Because weapons simply do not get dull in 5e.
> 
> 
> 
> There's nothing to house rule.  There are no rules that state that weapons deteriorate.




It isn't necessary that there be a rule or a mechanic for the degradation of weapons for it to be an element of the fiction in the game. All that's required is that the players at the table imagine it to be so. The whetstone is listed on the equipment list as an aid to that, so we can see that's what's intended. We can also see that it's intended to be a player-side element because it's on the equipment list, rather than something to be invoked by the DM whether the players want it to be a focus of play or not as a rule or mechanic would suggest.

You don't need a mechanic to tell you how fast grass grows or how many leaves fall from the trees in Autumn for those to be elements of the fiction in a game of D&D. If the party returns to a location after an absence of several months and the DM describes the grass as having grown longer in the intervening time, I don't think it's an appropriate response for the players to say that grass doesn't grow in D&D because there's no rule for it.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> No, a flawed model can be less use than no model. And what about when comparing two systems that add some kind of realism, but do so in different ways. How do you know which adds more realism?




Less use is a different metric, and a flawed model can't be of less use than no model.  No model = 0 use.  A flawed model will be used by at least someone out there.  I didn't use the disease mechanics in 1e, but I played with DMs who did.  No matter how bad a model is, someone will find use for it.  Nobody can find use for a non-existent model.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> It isn't necessary that there be a rule or a mechanic for the degradation of weapons for it to be an element of the fiction in the game.




Yes there does need to be a rule or mechanic for it.  Degradation causes weapons to hit less and do less damage, as well as break.  If there is degradation, you either have a rule for those things or the DM just uses fiat.  Otherwise, it doesn't actually exist.



> All that's required is that the players at the table imagine it to be so. The whetstone is listed on the equipment list as an aid to that, so we can see that's what's intended. We can also see that it's intended to be a player-side element because it's on the equipment list, rather than something to be invoked by the DM whether the players want it to be a focus of play or not as a rule or mechanic would suggest.




The players don't get to add things to the game without DM approval, and DM approval = the DM adding it to the game.  If the players came to me and said they wanted weapon degradation in the game, I would sit with them to work out the mechanics for it.  They could not unilaterally add it, though, and the existence of the whetstone doesn't do it by itself.

And the whole, "The players add it in by buying whetstones and saying they repair their weapons" is dead on its face.  Again, if we play a game together and you purchase a whetstone and "repair your sword, but I don't do either, my sword is still going to be identical to yours.  That proves that weapon degradation doesn't exist, because if it did, my weapon would degrade, but it doesn't.



> You don't need a mechanic to tell you how fast grass grows or how many leaves fall from the trees in Autumn for those to be elements of the fiction in a game of D&D. If the party returns to a location after an absence of several months and the DM describes the grass as having grown longer in the intervening time, I don't think it's an appropriate response for the players to say that grass doesn't grow in D&D because there's no rule for it.




False Equivalences are false.  You don't need a mechanic for grass and leaves, because grass and leaves don't impact mechanics he way weapon degradation will.  A degrading weapon will be less effective and eventually break.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Not if you have a whetstone!


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Less use is a different metric, and a flawed model can't be of less use than no model.  No model = 0 use.  A flawed model will be used by at least someone out there.  I didn't use the disease mechanics in 1e, but I played with DMs who did.  No matter how bad a model is, someone will find use for it.  Nobody can find use for a non-existent model.




But what if no system is mathematically closer to the real world? 

If a given real world disease affects 1% of the population, and a game system about disease indicates that a PC is afflicted when they roll a 1 on a d20, the that’s a 5% chance. 0% is closer to 1% than 5% is. Hence, more reals. 


What you’re claiming is simply not objectively true. It works for you and you think it’s more real, and that’s fine...but it’s silly to think people who don’t share your opinion are wrong.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hriston said:


> It isn't necessary that there be a rule or a mechanic for the degradation of weapons for it to be an element of the fiction in the game. All that's required is that the players at the table imagine it to be so. The whetstone is listed on the equipment list as an aid to that, so we can see that's what's intended. We can also see that it's intended to be a player-side element because it's on the equipment list, rather than something to be invoked by the DM whether the players want it to be a focus of play or not as a rule or mechanic would suggest.
> 
> You don't need a mechanic to tell you how fast grass grows or how many leaves fall from the trees in Autumn for those to be elements of the fiction in a game of D&D. If the party returns to a location after an absence of several months and the DM describes the grass as having grown longer in the intervening time, I don't think it's an appropriate response for the players to say that grass doesn't grow in D&D because there's no rule for it.




I think it is also a bit silly for someone to hold as an absolute that in classic D&D editions there is something that will never happen. DMs are pretty close to absolute authorities, and if one says "you know, after bashing that gargoyle with your sword for 10 minutes, you better have a whetstone or else blah blah blah..." that seems to me to be perfectly plausible. Sure, we can expect it might be more likely if there's an actual rule for it, but then who exactly is it that is doing all the tracking needed for said rule? If it is just as simple as "it is understood that the party sharpens their weapons fairly regularly, and if there's absolutely no sharpening equipment around, then maybe they'll start to have problems." then that sounds basically the same as the DM fiat case, it hardly warrants a rule.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> But what if no system is mathematically closer to the real world?
> 
> If a given real world disease affects 1% of the population, and a game system about disease indicates that a PC is afflicted when they roll a 1 on a d20, the that’s a 5% chance. 0% is closer to 1% than 5% is. Hence, more reals.




It doesn't work like that.  Flat math isn't everything.  0% = 100% unrealistic.  Therefore, if the system includes ANY amount of realism, even if it is mathematically farther from reality than 0%, must be more realistic as the realism of that system higher than 0%.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it is also a bit silly for someone to hold as an absolute that in classic D&D editions there is something that will never happen. DMs are pretty close to absolute authorities, and if one says "you know, after bashing that gargoyle with your sword for 10 minutes, you better have a whetstone or else blah blah blah..." that seems to me to be perfectly plausible. Sure, we can expect it might be more likely if there's an actual rule for it, but then who exactly is it that is doing all the tracking needed for said rule? If it is just as simple as "it is understood that the party sharpens their weapons fairly regularly, and if there's absolutely no sharpening equipment around, then maybe they'll start to have problems." then that sounds basically the same as the DM fiat case, it hardly warrants a rule.




Suggesting DM fiat is a good thing is close to heresy with many people on this forum.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], as far as I know there are no rules in 5e for clothes becoming dirty or sweaty. Does that mean you think a GM who narrates a failed physical manoeuvre in a swamp as "You fall into the mud, making your clothes filthy" is breaking the rules? Or a GM who narrates a failed CHA check to influence a NPC, in circumstances where the PC has been in the wilds for a long time without bathing, as the NPC walking away making a comment about _These reeking travellers_?

There are many ways that humans can degrade their clothes, their weapons, their pets, their companions (where are D&D's rules for putting a frog in someone's bed?) that D&D's rules don't model. That doesn't mean those things aren't part of the gameworld. It doesn't stop both players and GM's invoking them when the mood strikes, either as mere colour (like  [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s player who has a cold and so plays his/her PC as having a cold) or as part of the narration of failure (as per my examples above, or as per the suggestion that  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I made way upthread that a missed attack might be narrated as the weapon having become dulled) or even as mattering to resolution (maybe after falling in the mud, the GM imposes disadvantage on CHA checks to befriend strangers until the PC gets clean clothes).

The 5e Basic PDF has whetstones on its equipment list. It also has price lists for different qualities of clothing, food, drink and accommodation, even though there are no _mechanics_ governing social class and status.  There is an abacus on the list, although no rule that forbids a player using a calculator or pen-and-paper to do maths for his/her PC. All these things are clearly there to help establish these various elements of the fiction. The fact that there is no mechanic that necessarily invokes them is entirely beside the point.

EDIT: A lot of this was ninja-ed by [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] earlier today (my time), using the example of grass growing.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Less use is a different metric, and a flawed model can't be of less use than no model.  No model = 0 use.  A flawed model will be used by at least someone out there.  I didn't use the disease mechanics in 1e, but I played with DMs who did.  No matter how bad a model is, someone will find use for it.  Nobody can find use for a non-existent model.



This is a weird response. The meaning, in ordinary English, of _A is less use than B_ is not _A is less used than B_ but _A is of less utility than B_. In this particular discussion, the measure of utility is _realism_. The fact that some people _use_ A doesn't show that it has more utility (ie makes the game more realistic) than B. Maybe all their games become laughable jokes - from the point of view of realism - because of their use of A.



Maxperson said:


> Degradation causes weapons to hit less and do less damage



This is weird too. In this context, _degradation_ is a notion about what is happening to a weapon, either in real life or in the fiction; where as _hitting less_ and _doing less damage_ are purely mechanical notions associated with D&D and similar RPG systems.

In Tunnels & Trolls there's no such thing as "hitting", and so degraded weapons (should a group wish to introduce them) simply do fewer "hits".

In Cortex+ Heroic, a degraded weapon would normally be represented as a complication, which increases the size of an opposed dice pool.

Etc.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], as far as I know there are no rules in 5e for clothes becoming dirty or sweaty. Does that mean you think a GM who narrates a failed physical manoeuvre in a swamp as "You fall into the mud, making your clothes filthy" is breaking the rules? Or a GM who narrates a failed CHA check to influence a NPC, in circumstances where the PC has been in the wilds for a long time without bathing, as the NPC walking away making a comment about _These reeking travellers_?




So two things.  First, I said that the DM can add things to the game.  Second, that's a blatant false equivalence.  Getting dirty has no mechanical impact on the clothing. Degradation of weapons does.  Things that have mechanical impact need rules or else they are done by DM fiat which in the case of a broken weapon or turning a hit into a miss due to dullness, can lead to negative feelings.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is a weird response. The meaning, in ordinary English, of _A is less use than B_ is not _A is less used than B_ but _A is of less utility than B_. In this particular discussion, the measure of utility is _realism_. The fact that some people _use_ A doesn't show that it has more utility (ie makes the game more realistic) than B. Maybe all their games become laughable jokes - from the point of view of realism - because of their use of A.




Okay, so then a system, however bad, cannot be less useful than nothing.  Somebody will use any given system put into a game.



> This is weird too. In this context, _degradation_ is a notion about what is happening to a weapon, either in real life or in the fiction; *where as hitting less and doing less damage are purely mechanical notions associated with D&D and similar RPG systems*.




The bolded isn't true.  A dull weapon won't go through armor as well, so an enemy you might have killed had you kept your weapon sharp will sometimes live as you fail in your attempt to kill him.  That's modeled in an RPG through the hit and miss mechanics.  It will also fail to penetrate as far as as sharp weapon would have, doing less damage to the body you are swinging at.



> In Tunnels & Trolls there's no such thing as "hitting", and so degraded weapons (should a group wish to introduce them) simply do fewer "hits".
> 
> In Cortex+ Heroic, a degraded weapon would normally be represented as a complication, which increases the size of an opposed dice pool.
> 
> Etc.




However you want to model it, there will be a mechanical impact if your weapons are actually degrading.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Getting dirty has no mechanical impact on the clothing. Degradation of weapons does.



What does _mechanical_ mean here? Do you mean game mechanics? In that case, getting dirty _does_ have a mechanical effect: it makes people less appealing! Ie it lowers CHA, or otherwise makes it harder to succeed on tasks that require charisma.

Falling down can also tear holes in clothes. And walking in boots can wear them out. Where are the rules for that? None that I'm aware of, yet the Basic PDF has weaver's tools and cobbler's tools on the equipment list.



Maxperson said:


> Things that have mechanical impact need rules or else they are done by DM fiat which in the case of a broken weapon or turning a hit into a miss due to dullness, can lead to negative feelings.



Players often roll their own misses. Some of these can be narrated as the result of dulled blades.

But your desire to substitute mechanical outcomes for GM narration of the fiction is consistent with what I and some others have posted: that the issue here is not _realism_ but _system preferences_.



Maxperson said:


> Okay, so then a system, however bad, cannot be less useful than nothing.  Somebody will use any given system put into a game.



Sure, if there are systems people might use them. But using a system doesn't per se increase realism in the game. If the system is bad, it might make the fiction _less_ realistic than it otherwise would be.



Maxperson said:


> A dull weapon won't go through armor as well, so an enemy you might have killed had you kept your weapon sharp will sometimes live as you fail in your attempt to kill him.  That's modeled in an RPG through the hit and miss mechanics.



There are RPGs _without_ hit and miss mechanics - for instance, Tunnels & Trolls.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What does _mechanical_ mean here? Do you mean game mechanics? In that case, getting dirty _does_ have a mechanical effect: it makes people less appealing! Ie it lowers CHA, or otherwise makes it harder to succeed on tasks that require charisma.




If you want to model that with a penalty to persuasion, you can.  It doesn't cause any clothing degradation, though.  There is no mechanical impact on the quality of the clothing, though.



> Falling down can also tear holes in clothes. And walking in boots can wear them out. Where are the rules for that? None that I'm aware of, yet the Basic PDF has weaver's tools and cobbler's tools on the equipment list.




Not in 5e, unless you add it in.  Weaver's tools and cobbler's tools are used for making new clothing and tools.  Perhaps the PC wants to sell them. Perhaps he just wants a different color or for a special occasion.  Their existence does not meant that clothing wears out any more than the whetstone's existence means that weapons degrade.



> Players often roll their own misses. Some of these can be narrated as the result of dulled blades.




Unless the DM is rolling for everything, the players will roll all of their own misses.  Narration due to dulled blades is not supported by 5e rules, though.  Weapons in 5e do not degrade.  You are also avoiding breakage, which degraded weapons do.......a lot.



> There are RPGs _without_ hit and miss mechanics - for instance, Tunnels & Trolls.




That doesn't mean that dullness cannot be mechanically modeled, or that you couldn't have weapons break if they are truly degrading.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> There is.  Any time your model brings in something from the real world and attempts to model the real world to some degree, realism has increased, even if the model is still highly unrealistic.  The real world connection and modeling must have greater realism than having nothing at all, because nothing = 0 and you have at least something greater than 0 with those connections.





Aldarc said:


> This seems like circular reasoning, Max. You assert something as being self-evident, namely in the bold. When asked for clarification or support for that thesis, you just repeat the thesis again as if it were objective truth. This sort of circular reasoning is the primary point of disconnect and frustration that I suspect many of us are having with your argumentation.



Requoting this point for Max, hopefully adding to the point that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] made. If you are arguing that realism has increased in any objective sense, then you need to demonstrate how beyond simply repeating that point. I don't think that "someone will put it into a game" should be equated to mean "realism has increased." 

To rephrase my point above, it seems to some of us that you, Max, are asserting that X > 0, this is to say that any value of "realism" supplied by a Model (X) is inherently greater than 0 (i.e., no model). The problem is that you have not really demonstrated that X >= 0. It has been more of a circular assumption that X >= 1, ergo 1+ > 0 rather than demonstrating any actual proof of the value of X. Moreover this argument does not take into account multiple mechanical attempts to model reality. How does one comparatively measure the modeling of a realistic phenomenom between systems? To the best of my recollection, this query remains unaddressed.


----------



## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Yes there does need to be a rule or mechanic for it.  Degradation causes weapons to hit less and do less damage, as well as break.  If there is degradation, you either have a rule for those things or the DM just uses fiat.  Otherwise, it doesn't actually exist.
> 
> 
> 
> The players don't get to add things to the game without DM approval, and DM approval = the DM adding it to the game.  If the players came to me and said they wanted weapon degradation in the game, I would sit with them to work out the mechanics for it.  They could not unilaterally add it, though, and the existence of the whetstone doesn't do it by itself.
> 
> And the whole, "The players add it in by buying whetstones and saying they repair their weapons" is dead on its face.  Again, if we play a game together and you purchase a whetstone and "repair your sword, but I don't do either, my sword is still going to be identical to yours.  That proves that weapon degradation doesn't exist, because if it did, my weapon would degrade, but it doesn't.
> 
> 
> 
> False Equivalences are false.  You don't need a mechanic for grass and leaves, because grass and leaves don't impact mechanics he way weapon degradation will.  A degrading weapon will be less effective and eventually break.






hawkeyefan said:


> Not if you have a whetstone!




I think this is an important point. If there were a weapon degradation mechanic in 5E that penalized players for not making weapon maintenance a focus of play, all that would accomplish is to force players to declare that their characters are maintaining their weapons and the mechanic would never be used. I think the designers of 5E were wise to avoid such a waste of page space.

The argument that weapon degradation must necessarily have a mechanical effect so that, without such an expression, weapon degradation cannot exist within the fiction is circular. There can be broken, rusty, dull, and notched swords strewn all around the in-game fiction without a single weapon belonging to a PC falling into disrepair, whether the game focuses on the PCs maintaining their weapons or not.


----------



## Aldarc

I appreciate your attempts, but I'm not sure if I agree with them. 


lowkey13 said:


> You have a computer flight simulation (early days). There is no model for wind in it.
> 
> One day, the developers put in a model for wind. It is, of course, crude and decidedly simple. Yet putting in wind does two things-
> 
> *1. It makes the simulation more "realistic"* than it was before,* because, hey, wind! Before, there was no accounting for wind, now there is.



Does it? Isn't this the debate?  

What if the prior "no wind" model was actually more realistic at simulating flight than the second program that attempted to crudely model wind? This latter one would simply make realism determined purely by intent rather than any actual accuracy of modeling reality. But as picked up in the other conversation, sometimes increased authenticity in TTRPGs does not require any modeling by the rules, simply through establishing the fiction. You will need to convince me that when it comes to TTRPGs that rules for wind is inherently more realistic than the table participants establishing the fiction of wind in the game. 



> 2. This is the more important point- once you have the model, *you can improve it if you want.* That's right; other people (the developers, the players, and so on) can see how the wind model works, and then they can determine how close it actually models, you know, wind. In various situations. And then they can determine if they want to improve the model (increase the complexity) or not, or maybe just take it out altogether (because any use of wind, while increasing realism, is decreasing the fun the people were having).



Or they could develop separate models independently. I'm not sure why an initial model claiming to model realism means that realism has objectively increased just because others can dick around with the model. You have not really demonstrated that realism has increased, but, rather, only that the number of models has increased. 



> So that's what people were getting at- this is not a new debate, at all. That is why this is so confusing to, inter alia, me. I already quoted EGG in the DMG from 1979- here, let me try some quotes from it again:
> 
> So, again, _five years after RPGs became a thing_, we see that this is a tired debate. Not because no one could understand what realism meant (or even the realism/simulation school), but because if you were familiar with the differences between wargaming and TTRPGs, it was already annoying. Gygax (and everyone else) knew exactly what realism entailed- increasing complexity. Because there's no such thing as a free lunch; the more you model things to match how they actually work (realism/simulation) the more complex the system. But that doesn't mean that no one could understand what it meant.



And EGG notably refers to the entire realism matter as "an absurd effort at best considering the topic!" while engaging the matter. His position is comparable to the position many of us here also have: it's an inherently absurd, futile effort. So it sounds as if EGG did not really think that realism was something that could be feasibly modeled in the game, and he even puts 'realistic' in quotes with a tinge of irony.  

And what remains unresolved: how the frak do you objectively compare the modeling of realism between games? Let's imagine that all else being equal, what is more realistic? A D&D 5E that has its longsword do d8 damage or a D&D 5E that has its longsword do a d10 damage?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Ovinomancer

I don't think defining realism by opportunity for possible future improvement is at all useful.  Especially as this state exists for non-modeled things as well as crudely modeled things.

You could have a model for "wind" that refuels the airplane, frex, which is a very bad model of "wind" such that it's actually worse than no wind for anything traceable to wind.  This means there's either some additional unstated constraints on this definition of "realism" (which likely hide subjectivity) or this definition is flawed.  I'm betting on the former.


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## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> It's really not hard. I swear. From my P.O.V., it's just you fighting the example at this point.



We have had so many examples in this thread at this point and many of our positions have roughly remained the same. So I suspect that the differences of perspective run deeper than a matter of "fighting the example." 



> Once you attempt to model reality, by definition you have increased the realism (the simulation) because at the point the model can be improved.





> And again, we are only looking at one simulation here (one computer flight game, one TTRPG, etc.). Before- no wind. After? Wind. *Once you have introduced it, you can at least attempt to improve it,* discuss it, and have it more closely match actual wind effects.



You are again just restating/repeating your thesis unsupported as if it were self-evident. Based upon your above comment that "it's really not hard," you find it to be self-evident. But there are those, myself included, who don't find this proposition to be self-evident. You are welcome to accuse us of living in a bubble of group think or being intentionally obtuse, but I do think we are all being genuine here. 

I don't think that adding a model for a phenomenon inherently makes it more realistic than one that does not because the unmodeled phenomenon may present a more realistic depiction than one with a modeled phenomenon. Just because others can "improve" the model is just a red herring. It doesn't matter. Because others may never see that model and provide a superior version. So simply having that model is not inherently a net positive. That has to be earned through more than a creative intent to model reality. 

Again, one TTRPG may have a model for wind. Another TTRPG may not have a model for wind but will instead allows for participants to freely establish game fiction, which may include wind. Knowing nothing about either the former game model or the latter established fiction, we cannot say which game is "realistic" than the other. 

What's more, as per my first post in this thread, most of the sh*t people make appeals of "realism" to when talking about games are not about "realism," but about aesthetic game preferences. These are gamist debates masquerading as "realism" debates. 



> But what you are stating, in effect, is that you can't even bother because there is no such thing- and that's crazy talk from my P.O.V.; that would mean that, basically, all of science, CGI, simulations, and even such things as econometrics and math applications to sports are useless because model aren't worth either doing or improving. And I'm pretty sure that's not your argument.



Probably because you are presenting a _reductio ad absurdum_. I'm stating that simply attempting to model phenomena in reality does not have any inherent objective positive value of contributing to realism and sometimes this models can be more harmful than the lack of models. 



> Again, I'm pretty sure I'm familiar with the debate, given that I've quoted it several times. Are you familiar enough with the 70s and 80s wargaming and TTRPG debates that you'd like to discuss what EGG really meant? I mean, I'm game! Are you sure you have this right?



I'm not sure what EGG really meant, but I have my own genuine reading of the text that you provided me as you have yours. You seem pretty confident about what EGG meant. But EGG's texts have been used to support people holding wildly different opinions and positions before, so I'm not sure how this may be different. 



lowkey13 said:


> Again, you are saying betweem games (and what does that have to do with your final example)? If you look back at what I have been consistently saying, I have never stated anything with regards to trying to make qualitative statements between different games, only about statements within a game.



The debate has variously been about both as the topic has broadly been about realism in tabletop gaming. This has included people making claims about the increase of objective realism within games and comparisons between games. The reason I asked about the sword is that systems and subsystems can vary across games. So if we just compare a single item, such as a longsword, can we say which version of the otherwise same game represents a more realistic portrayal of longswords. So if all things are equal between two games - one where a longsword deals d8 damage and one longsword deals d10 damage - which is more realistic?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

Comparing RPG rules to flight simulators is (in my view) largely unhelpful and unilluminating. I'll let  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] repeat his account of why, should he care to. All I'll say is that people desigining simulations of that sort don't just make stuff up. Whereas that is precisely what most game design involves.


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## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> I think this is an important point. If there were a weapon degradation mechanic in 5E that penalized players for not making weapon maintenance a focus of play, all that would accomplish is to force players to declare that their characters are maintaining their weapons and the mechanic would never be used. I think the designers of 5E were wise to avoid such a waste of page space.




This is not accurate.  There will be times when maintaining weapons is not possible, just like when you track ammo and encumbrance, sometimes you run out of arrows.  Most of the time it won't be an issue.  Sometimes it will. 



> The argument that weapon degradation must necessarily have a mechanical effect so that, without such an expression, weapon degradation cannot exist within the fiction is circular. There can be broken, rusty, dull, and notched swords strewn all around the in-game fiction without a single weapon belonging to a PC falling into disrepair, whether the game focuses on the PCs maintaining their weapons or not.




This is inconsistent, which is something to be avoided.  It's nonsense for the DM to include degradation for NPC items, but make PC items immune to degradation.  If PC items are not immune, there should be a mechanic to demonstrate it.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> And EGG notably refers to the entire realism matter as "an absurd effort at best considering the topic!" while engaging the matter. His position is comparable to the position many of us here also have: it's an inherently absurd, futile effort. So it sounds as if EGG did not really think that realism was something that could be feasibly modeled in the game, and he even puts 'realistic' in quotes with a tinge of irony.




His position is not one that either you or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  Gygax came from Wargaming where realism meant get as close to reality as possible.  Realism no longer means what he was talking about with that statement, and if you actually read 1e and 2e, he supports realism as it means today all over the place.  Gygax with how he designed his games actually supports my position far more than he supports yours.



> And what remains unresolved: how the frak do you objectively compare the modeling of realism between games? Let's imagine that all else being equal, what is more realistic? A D&D 5E that has its longsword do d8 damage or a D&D 5E that has its longsword do a d10 damage?




That's easy.  It's d8.  Size matters for damage in D&D, and d10 is for larger weapons than a longsword.  Glaives, halberds, pikes, and heavy crossbows(which hit with more force than a longsword).  So in the damage system that D&D has utilized since the early days, d8 is more realistic than d10 for longswords


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## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> This "debate" really has nothing to do with what we are discussing, but rather has to do with other debates you have had. And since you've had those debates (and apparently you don't much enjoy people using the word "realism" against you) you've decided to fight against the word, "realism," instead of the substance.




This.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Comparing RPG rules to flight simulators is (in my view) largely unhelpful and unilluminating. I'll let  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] repeat his account of why, should he care to. All I'll say is that people desigining simulations of that sort don't just make stuff up. Whereas that is precisely what most game design involves.




That's patently false.  People don't just make the vast majority of stuff up.  They make decision based on reason and what they know, which is kinda the opposite of "just making stuff up."


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It's nonsense for the DM to include degradation for NPC items, but make PC items immune to degradation.



Why? There's no mechanic in most versions of D&D (some 2nd ed AD&D variants may be exceptions, I think) by which an orc can maim a PC with a sword. But presumably some people sometimes get maimed in sword fights. So all those people must be NPCs!

I've never played a D&D game in which my PCs had fleas or lice. But presumably they abound. They must be on the NPCs!

Etc.

So far from being nonsense, in most RPGing it is NPCs - or more generally, _the setting_ - that bears the weight of signally the genre, the default expectations, the background reality. While the action of the protagonists plays out in ways that depart from that "normality" in all sorts of ways.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> That's patently false.  People don't just make the vast majority of stuff up.  They make decision based on reason and what they know, which is kinda the opposite of "just making stuff up."



No it's not. It's a version of it.

Last week I gave a lecture on social science methodology to non-social scientists. The most important point I made in the lecture was that a lot of work is produced that makes empirical claims about social institutions, social causation, etc, in which those claims are simply unsubstantiated. The people who write that work don't _think_ that they're making it up - they think they're using _reason and what they know_. That doesn't make their work any more realistic.

I was cautioning my audience not to fall into that error, of making unsubstanitated claims grounded in nothing but _reason and what they know_.


----------



## Aldarc

lowkey13 said:


> 1. Notice how you're continuing to compare different TTRPGs? There's a reason for that (see also, 2). Despite what I've written repeatedly that this is about comparisons within a single thing, not between things *(is the flight simulation more or less realistic with or without wind, not is the flight simulator more realistic with wind than the space simulation)*. But the thrust of this is you keep discussing, and retreating to, "established fiction," which is completely orthogonal to what we are discussing, which is why the issue is described in terms of realism/simulation. There is nothing wrong, or right, with fiction that is great, or bad, or in-between; only that it has little to do with simulating or modeling reality (realism).



You are presenting a strawman here (if not multiple ones), and I'm sure you will get some XP kudos from [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] for it.  

The reason for comparing different TTRPGs is that a singular TTRPGs generally do not have multiple subsystems for whether they "model wind" or not. They usually either do or do not because systems generally come as pre-packaged systems. We can look at singular systems such as D&D, but then when we speak of adding models or not, we are typically dealing with house rules. 

Likewise, I do not "retreat" to establishing fiction; I use it because it provides one way to compare claims about the realism added of "modeled realism" versus "no model." Even if we look within a singular system that added a model of wind, the same point would largely hold true. The addition of a model intending to model realism does not inherently provide a net positive of realism to a system. 



> 2. Which brings me to my second point, which I have both alluded to and outright stated. This "debate" really has nothing to do with what we are discussing, but rather has to do with other debates you have had. *And since you've had those debates (and apparently you don't much enjoy people using the word "realism" against you) you've decided to fight against the word, "realism," instead of the substance.* But let me assure you again- I am not a part of you edition or gamist or whatever wars.



Contrary to your assertion, these are not edition or gamist wars. These are debates regarding realism that exist in this thread, and many of those same issues and positions have resurfaced in our current discussions about realism. These are discussions that involve the same participants about the many of the same points. And others have raised similar points as I have. So here is something else that I swear is "really not hard" is refraining from bad faith arguments that you put in the bold. I would suggest that you don't insinuate my intent or motives. 



Maxperson said:


> His position is not one that either you or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  Gygax came from Wargaming where realism meant get as close to reality as possible.  Realism no longer means what he was talking about with that statement, and if you actually read 1e and 2e, he supports realism as it means today all over the place.  Gygax with how he designed his games actually supports my position far more than he supports yours.



I'll let someone more well-versed with those days to go down this rabbit hole. 



> That's easy.  It's d8.  Size matters for damage in D&D, and d10 is for larger weapons than a longsword.  Glaives, halberds, pikes, and heavy crossbows(which hit with more force than a longsword).  So in the damage system that D&D has utilized since the early days, d8 is more realistic than d10 for longswords



You basically just described gamist justifications and not realist ones.


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## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I'll let someone more well-versed with those days to go down this rabbit hole.



The bit of that rabbit hole that I ignored was the completely unsubstantiated assertion that the meaning of "realism" in RPGing has changed in the past 40 years. Obviously I missed that memo (despite playing Rolemaster continuously from early 1990 to late 2008!).



Aldarc said:


> You basically just described gamist justifications and not realist ones.



Are you suggesting that if I open a book about weapon-inflicted wounds, or fighting styles, it won't catalogue weapons by die size?


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## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> This is inconsistent, which is something to be avoided.  It's nonsense for the DM to include degradation for NPC items, but make PC items immune to degradation.  If PC items are not immune, there should be a mechanic to demonstrate it.




But, we've been repeatedly told that even a crude or bad model increases realism!  How can more realism also be nonesense?


As I noted, it's been clear for some time that there are additional unstated requirements and that this is where the subjectiveness is hiding.


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> You basically just described gamist justifications and not realist ones.




Hmm.  Looking at the forge I see Gamist, Narratavist, and Simulationist.  No Realist.  You're confusing yourself with terms again.

Realism exists in all three of the above game types.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The bit of that rabbit hole that I ignored was the completely unsubstantiated assertion that the meaning of "realism" in RPGing has changed in the past 40 years. Obviously I missed that memo (despite playing Rolemaster continuously from early 1990 to late 2008!).




Perhaps if you paid more attention to how terms are used by the gaming industry at large, and not how you personally choose to define terms, you wouldn't have missed it.



> Are you suggesting that if I open a book about weapon-inflicted wounds, or fighting styles, it won't catalogue weapons by die size?




And this is irrelevant to realism for reasons you already know.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> But, we've been repeatedly told that even a crude or bad model increases realism!  How can more realism also be nonesense?




I never once said it couldn't be nonsense.  I said it increases it more than nothing does.  I've also said that not all realism increases enjoyment.  And I've said that there are certain levels of realism that I like, and certain levels that aren't enough for me.  Nonsense levels of realism aren't enough for me.

It's really easy if you pull your head out of the sand and actually try to understand the conversation instead of winning the internet.


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Hmm.  Looking at the forge I see Gamist, Narratavist, and Simulationist.  No Realist.  *You're confusing yourself with terms again.*
> 
> Realism exists in all three of the above game types.



Not quite, though I extend my apologies for using the word "gamist" as an adjective as I had not intended to invoke or appeal to Forge terminology, simply an adjectival form of "games."


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Not quite, though I extend my apologies for using the word "gamist" as an adjective as I had not intended to invoke or appeal to Forge terminology, simply an adjectival form of "games."




Okay.  Realism exists in games, too.  The system that D&D uses to evoke realism with regard to weapon damage is escalating damage dice based on weapon size.  From daggers at d4 to greatswords and mauls at 2d6 in 5e.  Knowing how D&D models real life weapons, it's easy to see why it's more realistic for longswords in D&D to do a d8 damage rather than d10.  This is also why attempts to compare two different systems inherently fail.  They use different systems, so comparisons are useless.  There's not a lot of comparison that you can do between D&D's d8, and Rolemaster's flat damage based on what you roll plus your crit if any.


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## Aldarc

But weapon size is not necessarily an indicator of damage. A spear does 1d8 damage but a common spear is larger than a longsword. A quarterstaff does 1d6 damage is but is also larger than a longsword. Why does a mace deal 1d6 damage when a longsword deals 1d8 damage?


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> But weapon size is not necessarily an indicator of damage. A spear does 1d8 damage but a common spear is larger than a longsword. A quarterstaff does 1d6 damage is but is also larger than a longsword. Why does a mace deal 1d6 damage when a longsword deals 1d8 damage?




The damaging portion of a spear is smaller than the damaging portion of a sword.  The same with the staff.  The function of a spear is to give reach to the weapon portion at the end, which is a bit bigger than a dagger, but can be thrust harder. It really should be reduced back down to d6.  A quarter staff is blunt and only really uses the ends to deal damage with, so it deals a bit less than a longsword.  A mace also uses a smaller portion of the weapon  to deal damage and is blunt, so it deals less than a longsword.  

It all makes sense when you look at it from a realism perspective.   You should give it a try some time to understand realism, rather than just poo pooing on it because you want to win or because of some horror you experienced in the past.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> The damaging portion of a spear is smaller than the damaging portion of a sword.  The same with the staff.  The function of a spear is to give reach to the weapon portion at the end, which is a bit bigger than a dagger, but can be thrust harder. It really should be reduced back down to d6.  A quarter staff is blunt and only really uses the ends to deal damage with, so it deals a bit less than a longsword.  A mace also uses a smaller portion of the weapon  to deal damage and is blunt, so it deals less than a longsword.



From the perspective of "realism" I'm not sure if actual experts would necessarily agree with your assessments that mostly attempt to provide post hoc justifications for the provided weapon damage. 



> It all makes sense when you look at it from a realism perspective.   You should give it a try some time to understand realism, rather than just poo pooing on it because you want to win or because of some horror you experienced in the past.



If I merely muttered that water was wet, you would still feel compelled to tell me that my statement was a red herring/strawman/false dichotomy, that water is dry, and go out of your way to insult me. I am not sh*tting on this to win or because of any horrors that either you or [MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION]13 falsely project onto my past to redirect my statements into some sort of PTSD. Cut this out, Max. You are being unduly rude and making personal attacks. I'm sorry that you cannot conceive the idea that others would hold opinions different to your own, but I am being genuine in my argumentation and disagreement with yours. And there are better ways to resolve that than making bad faith statements about others.


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> From the perspective of "realism" I'm not sure if actual experts would necessarily agree with your assessments that mostly attempt to provide post hoc justifications for the provided weapon damage.




Aside from being an Appeal to Authority, experts are irrelevant here.



> If I merely muttered that water was wet, you would still feel compelled to tell me that my statement was a red herring/strawman/false dichotomy, that water is dry, and go out of your way to insult me.




Water isn't wet.  Things that have water on them are wet. 



> I am not sh*tting on this to win or because of any horrors that either you or [MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION]13 falsely project onto my past to redirect my statements into some sort of PTSD. Cut this out, Max. You are being unduly rude and making personal attacks. I'm sorry that you cannot conceive the idea that others would hold opinions different to your own, but I am being genuine in my argumentation and disagreement with yours. And there are better ways to resolve that than making bad faith statements about others.




Alright.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt again and see if we get a different outcome this time.


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## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Aside from being an Appeal to Authority, experts are irrelevant here.



Not all appeals to authority are irrelevant. The point being is that not everyone would necessarily agree with your assessment. 



> Water isn't wet.  Things that have water on them are wet.



Case in point proven. 



> Alright.  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt again and see if we get a different outcome this time.



As long as you are not going into this expecting that your outcome is the only acceptable one.


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## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Not all appeals to authority are irrelevant. The point being is that not everyone would necessarily agree with your assessment.




Experts are irrelevant, because you only need an expert if you intend to mirror reality as closely as possible, which is not generally the goal of realism in D&D.  It's certainly not my goal.  All it takes for the level of realism I seek is for me to have a system that generally works towards representing something in real life.  It doesn't have to be accurate or even anywhere remotely close to being accurate.  



> Case in point proven.




It was a joke, hence the winky face you seemed to have missed.  And do you seriously expect not to be corrected when you are wrong?


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The bit of that rabbit hole that I ignored was the completely unsubstantiated assertion that the meaning of "realism" in RPGing has changed in the past 40 years. Obviously I missed that memo (despite playing Rolemaster continuously from early 1990 to late 2008!).




That is one [em]huge[/em] rabbit hole. I think it is more like a dragon's den! Who wants to march into that thing??! 

I was a wargamer before I was an RPG gamer. I don't think there is a different definition of realistic. There may be some differences in the two genre of game, not surprisingly, but the same considerations faced Gygax in designing D&D as faced Gygax in designing Chain Mail. In either case you need relatively succinct mechanics which can provide a range of outcomes which would occur in the thing you are simulating. 

In the case of Chain Mail, the designer probably hoped that the mechanics of combat also produced results which were reasonably true to life. If a Roman cohort in good order stood on an even piece of ground facing off against some Celtic irregular warriors, guess what would happen about 99.9% of the time? You can produce this sort of outcome pretty reasonably in Chain Mail, and it can be run in a fair amount of time. 

Note, however, that Chain Mail does recommend (I don't think they demand it as a necessity) that there be a referee, who would likely adjudicate things not explicitly covered in the rules (IE decide what the effects of heavy rain might be on some archers). 

D&D obviously evolved from this, as we know, but the areas which it covers are much more diverse and this is probably why Gygax puts 'realism' in quotes when talking about D&D. Not because he is using a different definition, but because he simply has different goals and depicting heroic fantasy adventure doesn't need to be realistic in the same way that Chain Mail does.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I was a wargamer before I was an RPG gamer. I don't think there is a different definition of realistic. There may be some differences in the two genre of game, not surprisingly, but the same considerations faced Gygax in designing D&D as faced Gygax in designing Chain Mail. In either case you need relatively succinct mechanics which can provide a range of outcomes which would occur in the thing you are simulating.




They didn't sit down and write out a definition.  It was in how they treated realism.  They attempted to mirror reality as closely as possible.  That's what realism meant in those days. 



> Note, however, that Chain Mail does recommend (I don't think they demand it as a necessity) that there be a referee, who would likely adjudicate things not explicitly covered in the rules (IE decide what the effects of heavy rain might be on some archers).




And that referee would endeavor to figure out the effects of the rain as closely to reality as he could.



> D&D obviously evolved from this, as we know, but the areas which it covers are much more diverse and this is probably why Gygax puts 'realism' in quotes when talking about D&D. Not because he is using a different definition, but because he simply has different goals and depicting heroic fantasy adventure doesn't need to be realistic in the same way that Chain Mail does.




Correct.  He's not using a different definition.  He's using the one that wargamers used.  Mirroring reality as closely as possible.  

Read 1e and 2e.  He engages in realism as it is used now all over the place.

From 1e strength: "Strength is a measure of muscle, endurance, and stamina combined.* For purposes of relating this ability to some reality*, assume that a character with a strength of 3 is able to lift a maximum of 30 pounds weight above his or her head in a military press, while a character with 18 strength will be able to press 180 pounds in the same manner."

That's rife with realism.  He even states he is relating it to some reality.  With the exception of the statement about relating it to reality, all of his stats are written with realism.  The same with races and sexes.  He didn't give female characters a lower maximum strength because fantasy.  He did it because realism.  Throughout all of his books it's like that.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> They didn't sit down and write out a definition.  It was in how they treated realism.  They attempted to mirror reality as closely as possible.  That's what realism meant in those days.



"In those days", come now, the horse potatoes are dropping with great regularity here.



> And that referee would endeavor to figure out the effects of the rain as closely to reality as he could.



I'll accept this statement, sure. That would be expected, though I'd not be surprised if other considerations came into play.



> Correct.  He's not using a different definition.  He's using the one that wargamers used.  Mirroring reality as closely as possible.
> 
> Read 1e and 2e.  He engages in realism as it is used now all over the place.
> 
> From 1e strength: "Strength is a measure of muscle, endurance, and stamina combined.* For purposes of relating this ability to some reality*, assume that a character with a strength of 3 is able to lift a maximum of 30 pounds weight above his or her head in a military press, while a character with 18 strength will be able to press 180 pounds in the same manner."
> 
> That's rife with realism.  He even states he is relating it to some reality.  With the exception of the statement about relating it to reality, all of his stats are written with realism.  The same with races and sexes.  He didn't give female characters a lower maximum strength because fantasy.  He did it because realism.  Throughout all of his books it's like that.




And what other definition of 'realism' do you think exists? Apparently you DO think there's some other, because one thing is for sure. The one YOU use ain't nothin' like the one Gygax used! Any modern politician would be proud of you Max. You bend the language with the best of them.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And what other definition of 'realism' do you think exists? Apparently you DO think there's some other, because one thing is for sure. The one YOU use ain't nothin' like the one Gygax used!




I just showed you with multiple examples pulled from just the first few pages of the PHB that he uses my definition.  What's certain is that when he said realism doesn't belong in D&D, is that he meant mirroring reality.  The alternative is that he's a hypocrite that said realism doesn't belong in D&D, and then spent page after page after page putting realism into D&D.  I don't think he was a hypocrite.


----------



## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> Were you discussing the crisis in social sciences (aka, the replication crisis)?



No.

EDIT: I was talking about the ways in which empirical claims can be justified. _Thinking really hard_ isn't one of those ways.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Perhaps if you paid more attention to how terms are used by the gaming industry at large, and not how you personally choose to define terms, you wouldn't have missed it.





Maxperson said:


> Aside from being an Appeal to Authority, experts are irrelevant here.



These two posts were made within a span of less than 2 hours. How am I meant to reconcile them?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> All it takes for the level of realism I seek is for me to have a system that generally works towards representing something in real life.



I don't really know what you mean by this.

 [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has a system - whetstones on equipment lists - for "representing" (in some tenable sense of that word) something that occurs in real life, namely, warriors sharpening their blades.

But you say that that is not an element of realism.

Declaring that a PC comes down with a disease every time the clock strikes during the course of play would be a system for introducing disease - an element of real life - into gameplay. But upthread you seemed to assert that a system of that sort does not increase realism - I think (though am not sure) on the basis that _the decision-making process doesn't model the ingame infection process_.

But when some of us express _doubt_ that the AD&D DMG disease rules _work towards representing something like real life_, because the "model"/"simulation" (if one wants to call it that) seems to have little basis in reality, and furthermore is apt to produce inconsistencies in game play that don't mirror corresponding facets of real life, you say that we're missing the point of what you mean by _realism_.

I have almost no idea of what it is that you're defending.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> Experts are irrelevant, because you only need an expert if you intend to mirror reality as closely as possible, which is not generally the goal of realism in D&D.  It's certainly not my goal.  All it takes for the level of realism I seek is for me to have a system that generally works towards representing something in real life.  It doesn't have to be accurate or even anywhere remotely close to being accurate.



But you proceeded all this by appealing to how these weapons would work in real life - your own subjective sense of what is "realistic" - and that assertion could be disputed by people who actually know better than you about the subject matter. You are just ignoring reality when it's inconvenient for your game while also appealing to your sense of reality about that same matter.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> These two posts were made within a span of less than 2 hours. How am I meant to reconcile them?




The first is not an authority.  I'm not pointing to a single person and saying, "Listen to him."  I'm pointing to how the entire industry as a whole is defining something.  Nor are the individuals in the industry all experts.  The vast majority are not.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has a system - whetstones on equipment lists - for "representing" (in some tenable sense of that word) something that occurs in real life, namely, warriors sharpening their blades.
> 
> But you say that that is not an element of realism.




No I didn't, and you know that.  What I said is that it's not a rule.



> Declaring that a PC comes down with a disease every time the clock strikes during the course of play would be a system for introducing disease - an element of real life - into gameplay. But upthread you seemed to assert that a system of that sort does not increase realism - I think (though am not sure) on the basis that _the decision-making process doesn't model the ingame infection process_.




I didn't say that, either.  



> But when some of us express _doubt_ that the AD&D DMG disease rules _work towards representing something like real life_, because the "model"/"simulation" (if one wants to call it that) seems to have little basis in reality, and furthermore is apt to produce inconsistencies in game play that don't mirror corresponding facets of real life, you say that we're missing the point of what you mean by _realism_.




I don't think you are missing it.  You twist things I say in my posts too consistently for them to be accidents.  You know what I mean and do this deliberately.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> But you proceeded all this by appealing to how these weapons would work in real life - your own subjective sense of what is "realistic" - and that assertion could be disputed by people who actually know better than you about the subject matter. You are just ignoring reality when it's inconvenient for your game while also appealing to your sense of reality about that same matter.




What I have been saying, and I think you know it, is that we look at real life for the connection and idea of how they work, not exactly how they would work real life.  When I look at swords in real life having edges, that's not a subjective interpretation. When I look at swords having hilts in real life, that's not a subjective interpretations.    When I look at them being primarily made out of metal in real life, that's not a subjective interpretation.  When I look at them getting dinged up when used or the blade dulling, that's not a subjective interpretation.  When I look at them breaking during use, more often when not maintained, that's not a subjective interpretation.  

After I look at those things when I say that swords in D&D being primarily being made out of metal, and having edges and hilts is realism, that's not a subjective interpretation, either.  If I were to then implement a system of weapon degradation and breakage, even if that system did not mirror real life AND if I didn't consult an expert on swords, that would also be a realism increase that is not based on subjective interpretation.  Those are examples of realism that are based on facts, not subjectiveness.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I don't think you are missing it. You twist things I say in my posts too consistently for them to be accidents. You know what I mean and do this deliberately.



You are wrong. I don't know what you're defending.

As I already posted, I GMed Rolemaster continuously for about 19 years. As you may know, the slogan for RM is "Get Real, Get Rolemaster". I own and have read dozens of RM rulebooks, containing dozens and dozens of mechanical subsystems. I'm familiar with the concept of "realism" in RPGing.

But I can't make sense of what you're arguing for. For instance, you seem to be saying that RPGs are more realistic than they might otherwise be because they contain such real-world phenomena as objects falling to earth when dropped, or people wielding swords that hurt others when struck by them. That seems to be using, as a criterion of "realism", _the presence of real-world phenomena in the fiction_.

But you appear to deny that introducing content such as disease, or damaged weaons, as an element of narration increases the realism of the fiction. I don't know why. My sense is that when you deny that GM narration of such things as diseases, maimed limbs, notched weapons, etc is a way of introducing realism you are using a different criterion - one which emphasises _mechanical system_. (This is what Rolemaster means when it talks about realism. RM eschews GM narration as a way to establish fictional elements.)

You also appear to have asserted that a system for generating RPG content that is triggered by extraneous events - like clocks chiming or feline flatulance - is not a realistic one. And that also seems to be using, as a criterion of "realism", _the process whereby the fiction is established._

I don't know how to reconcile what seems to me to be an oscillation between two different criteria for realism. And I don't know how to reconcile either candidate criterion with what seems to be a further claim you're making, nmaley, that _any_ well-intentioned mechanical/dice-oriented system for introducing content is per se an increase in realism, regardless of whether that system and the outcomes it produces correlates in any genuine fashion to reality.

I'm sure you have something in mind that makes sense of all of the above. But I don't know what it is.

One thing I do know is that, despite invitations by me and many other posters to draw distinctinos like the ones I'm drawing - say, between _the content of the fiction_ and _the method for generating that content_ - you have not done so. I don't know why you don't. And the fact that you don't only makes it harder for me to work out what you have in mind.



Maxperson said:


> If I were to then implement a system of weapon degradation and breakage, even if that system did not mirror real life AND if I didn't consult an expert on swords, that would also be a realism increase that is not based on subjective interpretation.



See, the olnly person I know who uses the word "realism" like this is you. Everyone else I know would say that if the system you implement produces unrealistic incidences of swords breaking, then it in fact has not increased realism and may have decreased it.

In your usage, a player who says _The game was more realistic without that silly subsystem_ is literally engaged in self-contradiction. Whereas it strikes me as obvious that a player who says such a thing not only is not engaged in self-contradictio, but might be saying something true!

One of your more recent comments has only confused me all the more, namely, your suggestion that the system of damage dice in D&D is an instance of realism. Because that's not even pointing to a real-world phenomenon. Swords are longer than daggers, and hence give better reach; I suspect they may be better for parrying (for similar reasons). But is a sword twice as "stabby" as a dagger (4.5 vs 2.5 average damage)? What does that question even mean? Damage dice perform a clear function in the game, but the notion that they map "realism" in any serious way is something that I can't even make sense of. And that's _before _we even get onto the relationship between hit points as a damage mechanic and "realism".

When RM advocates talk about _increasing realism_ I know what they have in mind: more systems that (i) will produce in-fiction events that roughly correlate (in character and frequency) to real-world events, and (ii) involve a granularity of process that more-or-less reflects what happens in the real world, _especially_ as far as key decision-points are concerned. Mere narration doesn't cut it. And it would never occur to them to point to equipement lists with metal longswords on them as evidence of realism: even Tunnels & Trolls has that!

I have a certain fondness for the RM aesthetic. I don't play RM anymore, but two systems that I do play - Burning Wheel and Classic Traveller - have aspects that resemble RM quite closely.

But you aren't advocating for the RM aesthetic. You oscilllate between _fictional content_ and _content-generating processes_ as your criterion for realism. And you seem to deny that realism in any way depends on the relationshiop between the frequency of ingame events and the frequency of their real-world correlates. And you point to stuff that has virtually no meaning outside of its mechanical context - like weapon damage dice - as instances of realism.

When I say that I don't understand what the position is that you're defending, I'm quite sincere.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

lowkey13 said:


> I can't understand [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's reference to playing rolemaster since 1990



Because Rolemaster players feel that being lectured by a D&D player about what realism in RPGing means is like an Australian lecturing a Canadian about what cold and snow are all about.

Or to put it another way: I've done 100s and 100s of hours of process sim RPGing - far more than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has. Maxperson has, as far as I know, never played RM, never played RQ, never played C&S, and maybe has played some GURPS or HERO (I can't remember on these last two).

I've been part of a play culture that has a very robust sense of what realism in RPGing means, and that is very conscious of the difference between and relationships between _mechanical process_ and _fictional content_. And I can't make sense of what Maxperson is saying.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Because Rolemaster players feel that being lectured by a D&D player about what realism in RPGing means is like an Australian lecturing a Canadian about what cold and snow are all about.
> 
> Or to put it another way: I've done 100s and 100s of hours of process sim RPGing - far more than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has. Maxperson has, as far as I know, never played RM, never played RQ, never played C&S, and maybe has played some GURPS or HERO (I can't remember on these last two).
> 
> I've been part of a play culture that has a very robust sense of what realism in RPGing means, and that is very conscious of the difference between and relationships between _mechanical process_ and _fictional content_. And I can't make sense of what Maxperson is saying.




I've played Rolemaster, GURPS(a very small amount) and HERO, but not in a very long time.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But I can't make sense of what you're arguing for. For instance, you seem to be saying that RPGs are more realistic than they might otherwise be because they contain such real-world phenomena as objects falling to earth when dropped, or people wielding swords that hurt others when struck by them. That seems to be using, as a criterion of "realism", _the presence of real-world phenomena in the fiction_.




That's where realism starts, yes.  Those are attempts attempts to model real life happenings.



> But you appear to deny that introducing content such as disease, or damaged weaons, as an element of narration increases the realism of the fiction. I don't know why.




I didn't say that.  What I said is that you should have mechanics for them.  Otherwise they lack sufficient realism(in my opinion) to even bother with.  There's no point in telling someone his weapon is dinged up, bent, dull or whatever, if there's no mechanical difference between that weapon and a brand new sharp one.



> You also appear to have asserted that a system for generating RPG content that is triggered by extraneous events - like clocks chiming or feline flatulance - is not a realistic one. And that also seems to be using, as a criterion of "realism", _the process whereby the fiction is established._




Cat farts and clocks chiming don't cause weapons to break down.  Cat farts coming out of the rears of cats and clocks chiming when they hit the hour or half hour would be realism.



> In your usage, a player who says _The game was more realistic without that silly subsystem_ is literally engaged in self-contradiction. Whereas it strikes me as obvious that a player who says such a thing not only is not engaged in self-contradictio, but might be saying something true!




Misperception.  A player who thinks the game was more realistic without the silly subsystem is misperceiving realism in the game.  With no system at all, there is 0 realism involved with that topic.  With a system, there is realism involved with that topic.  That's an objective increase in realism.  Where the misperception is likely coming from is that when there is no system, players often ignore the topic, but when a silly subsystem is used, it brings that topic to the forefront and smacks the players in the face.  They're suddenly paying far more attention to that topic, so it SEEMS less realistic when it's really not.



> One of your more recent comments has only confused me all the more, namely, your suggestion that the system of damage dice in D&D is an instance of realism.




That isn't what I said.  What I said is that D&D making larger and/or heavier weapons do more damage was realistic.  They use damage dice as the system to model that, so in the context of the system D&D uses, a d8 for a longsword is more realistic than a d10, because a longsword isn't as large or heavy as the other weapons in the d10 range.  



> Because that's not even pointing to a real-world phenomenon. Swords are longer than daggers, and hence give better reach; I suspect they may be better for parrying (for similar reasons). But is a sword twice as "stabby" as a dagger (4.5 vs 2.5 average damage)?




It doesn't matter.  Can the D&D system be made more realistic by getting into those issues and resolving them close to how real life daggers and swords are?  Sure.  It's not necessary for the current D&D system to involve realism, though.



> But you aren't advocating for the RM aesthetic. You oscilllate between _fictional content_ and _content-generating processes_ as your criterion for realism. And you seem to deny that realism in any way depends on the relationshiop between the frequency of ingame events and the frequency of their real-world correlates. And you point to stuff that has virtually no meaning outside of its mechanical context - like weapon damage dice - as instances of realism.




Rolemaster was fun, but took things too far with regard to realism.  I don't D&D to turn into Rolemaster.  I don't need a chart for each weapon, dealing with armor from skin to plate and the various hit point damage and crit types depending on what you roll.  What's with the number 66 anyway?  Why was that number so deadly on the crit charts?


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I just showed you with multiple examples pulled from just the first few pages of the PHB that he uses my definition.  What's certain is that when he said realism doesn't belong in D&D, is that he meant mirroring reality.  The alternative is that he's a hypocrite that said realism doesn't belong in D&D, and then spent page after page after page putting realism into D&D.  I don't think he was a hypocrite.




Not sure how you are disagreeing with me. D&D is NOT realistic, both Gary and I agree on that!


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## AbdulAlhazred

lowkey13 said:


> To sum up - the more I think about it, I can only think that individuals who enjoy playing with lighter rule sets (for example) believe that their system are realistic; and that's fair. I think that there is just a natural and disconnect going on between how people use terms, and their connotations, that causes a defensiveness - similar to the discussions between wargamers and RPGers more than 40 years ago. When the proper response is simply, "I like what I like, and there are no free lunches. Now, why don't you get back to me with your theories about how more realism is always good after you finish _The Campaign for North Africa_?"




Just to be amusing, since I have really nothing I want to expand on or disagree with, I actually belonged to a club which played _The Campaign for North Africa_. They then went on to play a full integrated run of War in the East, War in the West, and War in the Pacific. Ever seen the Earth at 30 miles per hex? She be big. 

That same group was bursting with D&D and other RPG players. We happily did all of these things and nobody cared. I had micro-armor, Sea Power, 15mm fantasy armies, etc. We just friggin' loved to ROLL SOME DICE! 

Now, there were those Napoleonics guys, they weren't really all that fun...


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Not sure how you are disagreeing with me. D&D is NOT realistic, both Gary and I agree on that!




But it does have a good amount of realism, which he was deeply into based on the rules and statements he makes all throughout the editions he wrote.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> But it does have a good amount of realism, which he was deeply into based on the rules and statements he makes all throughout the editions he wrote.




I think Gygax, as most game designers of that time and in some respects to this day, believed that there had to be a certain degree of authenticity. He was creating a fantasy RPG with heroes, swords, dragons, dungeons, wizards, etc. It had to reflect an understanding of the genre, and be relatable to real life in some degree, of course. Just like a fantasy novel must. So it is understood that the situations which happen in D&D are 'true to life' in some degree, which does mean realistic. That realism is in the service of play. It makes things comprehensible and relatable. He was uninterested in whether something was realistic per-se. As am I also.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Actually, I think the entirety of D&D is a refutation of this argument. A rather thorough one in fact! The game was instantly, at its initial inception, trapped by the structure of its mechanics, the places where it is abstract, and others where it is concrete, and the way it structures participant roles, etc.



All true, yet even there within that framework one can, if one wants, hew closer to or farther from the realistic.



> It has never escaped ANY of this, and the one time it got close/arguably did, you all utterly rejected the result!



If you're referring to 4e (and if not, to what are you referring) and thus trying to imply 4e was less abstract than the other D&Ds, you're off the mark all round.  One of the main reasons 4e was rejected was _because_ it was too abstract.



> I would argue that game designers find it necessary to implement some sorts of mechanics, lest there be no game at all. Yet, to a large degree, the choices they make at the start are unlikely to be overcome later, or incrementally improved. Instead, whole new game systems are usually constructed.



The mechanics give a framework, within which a DM can decide whether to - and how to - make her game seem to her players a) more or less realism-based and-or b) more or less authentic within itself.  Both a) and b) are choices a DM has to make, even if she doesn't realize she's doing so.


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## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> But weapon size is not necessarily an indicator of damage. ... Why does a mace deal 1d6 damage when a longsword deals 1d8 damage?



Good question.  In 1e a mace did d6+1 to non-large foes where a longsword did d8 - exactly the same average but the mace didn't have the option of doing 1 or 8.

One could argue there's in fact some realism behind this: a longsword hit could just nick you (1 pt damage) but any hit from a mace is more likely to pack some punch (thus starts at 2 pts damage).  At the other end a longsword, being a stabbing weapon, could carve through more vital bits on a good strike (thus 8 pts maximum) where a mace is only ever going to hurt you on the outside, though sometimes painfully (so max 7 pts damage).


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I've been part of a play culture that has a very robust sense of what realism in RPGing means, and that is very conscious of the difference between and relationships between _mechanical process_ and _fictional content_.



This difference is worth noting.

For my part I'm mostly concerned with realism (or authenticity) in the content of the fiction - the ends - rather than so much the mechanical processes used to get there - the means.

That said, there's means that make it easier* to achieve these desired ends and means that make it more difficult; and not all of these means are necessarily hard-coded rules.  All I want is to avoid those means that make it more difficult, and call them out when I see them.

* - though often more time-consuming; a spectrum along wich everyone eventually finds his-her acceptable trade-off point.



			
				Maxperson said:
			
		

> I didn't say that. What I said is that you should have mechanics for them. Otherwise they lack sufficient realism(in my opinion) to even bother with. There's no point in telling someone his weapon is dinged up, bent, dull or whatever, if there's no mechanical difference between that weapon and a brand new sharp one.



Here I disagree to some extent, as I'm not that much a part of the "rule-for-everything" crowd.

Telling someone a weapon is beat-up or dull or bent should, if the player is immersed in playing her role, cause her to have her PC tend to said weapon reasonably soon (or replace it) whether there's mechanical ramifications involved or not.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think Gygax, as most game designers of that time and in some respects to this day, believed that there had to be a certain degree of authenticity. He was creating a fantasy RPG with heroes, swords, dragons, dungeons, wizards, etc. It had to reflect an understanding of the genre, and be relatable to real life in some degree, of course. Just like a fantasy novel must. So it is understood that the situations which happen in D&D are 'true to life' in some degree, which does mean realistic. That realism is in the service of play. It makes things comprehensible and relatable. He was uninterested in whether something was realistic per-se. As am I also.




I don't see how he could be interested in making the game relatable to real life via realism, and be interested in making things in D&D true to life to some degree via realism, and be uninterested in realism.  I can see how he might be uninterested in excessive realism, though.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Just to be amusing, since I have really nothing I want to expand on or disagree with, I actually belonged to a club which played _The Campaign for North Africa_. They then went on to play a full integrated run of War in the East, War in the West, and War in the Pacific. Ever seen the Earth at 30 miles per hex? She be big.



Dare I ask, how big?

Was your map laid out on the floor of an aircraft hangar?


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## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Here I disagree to some extent, as I'm not that much a part of the "rule-for-everything" crowd.
> 
> Telling someone a weapon is beat-up or dull or bent should, if the player is immersed in playing her role, cause her to have her PC tend to said weapon reasonably soon (or replace it) whether there's mechanical ramifications involved or not.




That works for many things, but not for this.  If I'm immersed in my role and I have this beat up sword, but the other fighter in the party has a gleaming new sword, and both weapons are functioning identically, that's going to be jarring for me.  The role of a beat up sword is to function less well than a brand new one, and if you try to model that role, it's either going to be modeled though a mechanical rule or via DM fiat.  While I am a fan of DM fiat, in this case the DM just announcing periodically that the PC misses due to the sword being dull or does half damage this time for the same reason, or the weapon snaps now, is not going to go over all that well.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Cat farts and clocks chiming don't cause weapons to break down.



Nor does rolling a certain result on a die cause weapons to break down. We're talking about systems for deciding what happens in the fiction.



Maxperson said:


> What's with the number 66 anyway?  Why was that number so deadly on the crit charts?



Having a deadly result somewhere in the middle of the charts doesn't affect the odds of rolling an unmodified deadly result, but does change the odds of getting a deadly result if Ambush skill is used to modify a crit.


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## Bedrockgames

How on earth is this thread still going on?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> How on earth is this thread still going on?



Why? Do you find it unrealistic?


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> How on earth is this thread still going on?




New to the internet, huh? Or to people?


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## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> You know, I keep thinking about this topic (WHY, GOD, WHY?) and I'm remembering the example @_*pemerton*_ used a while back. I think it was him. Anyway, apparently it resonated, and I thought I'd use it again to be helpful (I can't find it, so if I've misunderstood or misconstrued it in some way, I apologize):
> 
> I believe the setup was that it was a sci-fi or space game (maybe Traveler?), but that's not really important. The important thing that I remember is that the players were trapped in a room with no independent air supply. That's the setup.
> 
> The problem: there was nothing in the rules to account for this. I mean, we all "know" (from science, from movies, from general knowledge) that a room without air, with people in it that need air, will run out of said air. Thus killing people inside of that room.
> 
> The issue: Without rules to handle that situation, what do you do?
> 
> Now, if I recall correctly, the DM borrowed rules (or made up some) for this situation, and there were players at the table who didn't like those rules because they didn't accurately reflect what would really happen in real life in that situation.
> 
> 
> I hope I did justice to what was presented; if not, again I apologize, but for purposes of discussion, I think what I remember - EVEN IF IT'S INCORRECT! -  makes for a great starting point!
> 
> So, this is the kind of issue that often presented itself in early D&D; a situation without a clear method of adjudication. Now, if you were at your own little table, the DM would make a ruling of some kind (using the DM's knowledge and "common sense") and the play would continue. At most table, this would work great; at low-trust tables, not so great, as there is always the problem that one person's common sense doesn't match another person's common sense.*
> 
> Okay, but let's think about this more generally. One way that we see that D&D "evolved" from early OD&D (basically a glorified combat system) to 1e (with randomized tables for forms of government) is the creation of more specialized sub-systems to deal with different situations. In effect, EGG might come across the room example above, do some quick research (or just pull some information out of his posterior) and create a "room suffocation table" and tuck it somewhere in the DMG (as it did not, there are just scattered references- for example, casting Otiluke's freezing sphere when submerged (insta-suffocation) or the rug of smothering, but I might be forgetting something).
> 
> Of course, another way to deal with this type of issue is to create more universalized system for resolving issues. That's pretty much where RPGs have gone; instead of having specialized rules and tables to deal with individual situations, there is a more universal mechanic ("Set a DC!" in modern D&D terms).
> 
> *So what does this have to do with realism?*
> 
> Well, let's look at the room example.
> 
> I think that for someone like Max, having a rule regarding the amount of air (say, the number of rounds you'd last per 100 cubic feet, maybe with increasing issues over time until death) would increase his sense of immersion. This would be true even if the rule was simplified and approximate and poorly modeled reality (a rug of smothering will smother you in 3-6 rounds - good luck with that!). Because to him, reality is that without oxygen**, you die. It increases immersion to account for this. In addition, with a rule there can be improvement and discussion about how "realistic" the rule is and whether further increasing the realism of the rule is worth the tradeoff of additional complexity.
> 
> For others, this is just a fool's errand, because the world has innumerable special cases. Since any of these can be negotiated and dealt with at the time (or ruled upon, often with a rule system involving the player/DM agreement), then it doesn't make sense. Moreover, whatever the table comes up with at the time will be more "real" to the table than a rule. The agreed-upon narrative (and or mechanics to support it) will have the table buy in, and thus be more real.
> 
> IMO, again, just a difference in approaches.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *I am always reminded of the "bats and magic silence" example and thread- how much you know about bats will really change your answer, or, for that matter, whether you choose to follow strict RAW or rule of cool in cases of uncertainty.
> 
> **We are all nerds, and we know what I'm talking about here. Don't make me break this out.




Honestly, I think this is the general consensus that's been established for a while now. The preferred method used to determine when the air will run out will vary from person to person, but that's all that it is.....a preference. A method may feel more real to you, and another method may feel more real to me.....neither is right or wrong, it's just opinion. 

And as realistic as we attempt to be about it, as much research as we may do on the topic.....any number of variables could enter any specific situation to render that research relatively meaningless. Because ultimately, the end result is a fiction that we've made up.....so it can be literally anything we want. How can you say one version of how to make believe is more realistic than another? 

I think Max's use of "added realism" is something that works as conversational usage (i.e. "We find that weapon degradation charts and penalties help make the game more realistic for us"), but when put forth as an objective fact ("Weapon degradation charts and penalties make the game more realistic than a game that relies solely on narration to handle such things") not so much.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> This is not accurate.  There will be times when maintaining weapons is not possible, just like when you track ammo and encumbrance, sometimes you run out of arrows.  Most of the time it won't be an issue.  Sometimes it will.




Then they'll bring carts full of duplicate weapons, and donkeys to pull them, which isn't a problem for some games. The point is this would narrow the range of playstyles the game supports. As it is, it's in the players' hands to make weapon maintenance a focus of play if that's the sort of game in which they're interested. If not, the game doesn't force it on them.



Maxperson said:


> This is inconsistent, which is something to be avoided.  It's nonsense for the DM to include degradation for NPC items, but make PC items immune to degradation.  If PC items are not immune, there should be a mechanic to demonstrate it.




I don't think this is necessarily true. The existence of weapon degradation as an element of the fiction is in no way dependent on the degradation of weapons belonging to the PCs. I think 5E treats items on the character sheet as within the purview of the player, so it's left to the player to describe his/her weapon as s/he sees fit and is consistent with his/her conception of his/her PC. I can describe my character obsessing over maintaining his weapon and worrying about it failing me in a battle, while you can play a character whose sword always stays sharp without giving it a thought, and both of our character conceptions can stay intact.

Here's some more evidence that weapons wear out in the base-game:

*Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment*
As a general rule, undamaged weapons, armor, and other equipment fetch half their cost when sold in a market. Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell.​
I'm sure that weapons and armor used by monsters were in better condition when they had been freshly crafted and that the inferiority of their condition is due in part to degradation over time due to lack of maintenance.


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## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> I think that may be the key; in the end, it's a difference of usage. Personally, I tend to favor Max's usage, but it's hardly worth 2000+ comments.




Oh sure....I'd personally never quesiton someone's use of a word in that manner. I think that lo those many posts ago, I became involved in this discussion to point out that there is a difference between conversational language and technical language. 

But then claims were made about realism when comparing systems or games, and that's where the interesting debate is at.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## hawkeyefan

lowkey13 said:


> Speaking of usage .... you and I might have a different definition of "interesting[.]"




Hey, at least I brought a comparison of specific game elements to the topic, instead of simply continuing to argue about arguing.

Speaking of which...what do you generally tend to mean when you say you don't like to do something?


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## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> Take your pick-
> 
> 1. Boredom.
> 2. SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNETZ!!!11!!!
> 3. Lots of cocaine.




Now this is why I went to the tea room! I don't care if anyone from the Bone Breaking Sect is here. I'm ordering a #3.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Dare I ask, how big?
> 
> Was your map laid out on the floor of an aircraft hangar?




If I remember correctly, each of those games requires 2 4x8 plywood game tables (we had something like 20 of these in our club/hobby shop). So it took up a very substantial amount of room, and there are various cards and whatnot that have to be laid out as well. TBH my recollection of the actual mechanics of these games is pretty vague. They are effectively not really playable games, more like battalion level studies in theatre operations, planning, logistics, etc. Probably well-appreciated by the 1970s era Soviet General Staff....


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## AbdulAlhazred

lowkey13 said:


> I don't know if I am envious or scared. Terrified or amazed.
> 
> Scenvious? Terrimazed?
> 
> Hmmmm.... only portmanteaus will do! I may have mentioned this before, but I remember some grizzled wargamers who preferred naval combat (with a table that was, oh, I want to say 30' on one side with long push sticks for the boats). What I truly remember, though, is that they killed time between turns by calculating artillery distances between various landmarks in town.
> 
> You know .... as people do. It was a different time.




ROFLMAO! I do remember that I liked the Yamato (Japanese WWII super-battleship) because the 48,000 yard range of its main battery was pretty much off the edge of most tables, even at the scale we used for Sea Power.


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## Maxperson

lowkey13 said:


> Take your pick-
> 
> 1. Boredom.
> 2. *EVERYONE ELSE* IS WRONG ON THE INTERNETZ!!!11!!!
> 3. Lots of cocaine.




Fixed that for you.


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## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Then they'll bring carts full of duplicate weapons, and donkeys to pull them, which isn't a problem for some games.




In some corner case games, sure.  



> The point is this would narrow the range of playstyles the game supports.




This is wrong.  It takes literally 2 seconds to say, "Guys, we're not using the degradation rules."  And poof, you don't have to worry about it any longer.  Inclusion of such mechanics does no limit playstyles in any way.



> As it is, it's in the players' hands to make weapon maintenance a focus of play if that's the sort of game in which they're interested. If not, the game doesn't force it on them.




No it doesn't, as weapon maintenance does not exist.  The players can buy a whetstone and have their PCs pretend to fix their weapons, but 5e includes no weapon degradation, so there's nothing to actually maintain.



> The existence of weapon degradation as an element of the fiction is in no way dependent on the degradation of weapons belonging to the PCs. I think 5E treats items on the character sheet as within the purview of the player, so it's left to the player to describe his/her weapon as s/he sees fit and is consistent with his/her conception of his/her PC. I can describe my character obsessing over maintaining his weapon and worrying about it failing me in a battle, while you can play a character whose sword always stays sharp without giving it a thought, and both of our character conceptions can stay intact.




You don't see a problem with, "Every NPC's weapons degrade, but the non-magical weapons your PCs have magically do not degrade."?



> "*Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment*
> As a general rule, undamaged weapons, armor, and other equipment fetch half their cost when sold in a market. Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell."
> 
> I'm sure that weapons and armor used by monsters were in better condition when they had been freshly crafted and that the inferiority of their condition is due in part to degradation over time due to lack of maintenance.




This is the inconsistency that I'm talking about.  It's a fact that PC weapons do not degrade.  As I've pointed out multiple times now, I can refuse to have my PC buy a whetstone and let the DM know explicitly that I am not tending to my weapon in any way, and yet my weapon will be in the exact same shape is a someone using a whetstone religiously.


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## lowkey13

*Deleted by user*


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## TwoSix

Maxperson said:


> This is the inconsistency that I'm talking about.  It's a fact that PC weapons do not degrade.  As I've pointed out multiple times now, I can refuse to have my PC buy a whetstone and let the DM know explicitly that I am not tending to my weapon in any way, and yet my weapon will be in the exact same shape is a someone using a whetstone religiously.



If a player went out of the way to tell me their PC is not buying a whetstone and refusing to care for their weapons, then I'm going to make a weapon degradation an issue for them.  Because they just told me specifically that they want weapon degradation to be a plot point!  (Alternatively, they just have a preference for more simulation and realism in their games, which I can then flag as a player-DM mismatch.)

In my own games, the NPCs exist in whatever fictional state I deem appropriate, but the NPCs would certainly never be in a fictional state better than the PCs only because they ignore simulative constraints I place on the PCs.  If I make the PCs tend their weapons, assume the NPCs do as well.  The lack of weapon degradation rules doesn't mean the PCs can't come up with a plan to rust out the contents of an enemy's armory, for example.  (Note this doesn't extend to NPC abilities, they can and do have combinations of abilities that PCs would not be allowed to gain through strict character building rules.)


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## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> In some corner case games, sure.




Right, and I think a rule that incentivizes a style of play that looks like a corner case is undesirable for obvious reasons.



Maxperson said:


> This is wrong.  It takes literally 2 seconds to say, "Guys, we're not using the degradation rules."  And poof, you don't have to worry about it any longer.  Inclusion of such mechanics does no limit playstyles in any way.




That isn't including the mechanic though. In fact, that's explicitly _excluding_ it.



Maxperson said:


> No it doesn't, as weapon maintenance does not exist.  The players can buy a whetstone and have their PCs pretend to fix their weapons, but 5e includes no weapon degradation, so there's nothing to actually maintain.
> 
> 
> 
> You don't see a problem with, "Every NPC's weapons degrade, but the non-magical weapons your PCs have magically do not degrade."?
> 
> 
> 
> This is the inconsistency that I'm talking about.  It's a fact that PC weapons do not degrade.  As I've pointed out multiple times now, I can refuse to have my PC buy a whetstone and let the DM know explicitly that I am not tending to my weapon in any way, and yet my weapon will be in the exact same shape is a someone using a whetstone religiously.




You acknowledge that the passage I quoted is inconsistent with your position that weapon degradation isn't an element of D&D 5E, yet you persist in saying it's "a fact" that "5e includes no weapon degradation". The passage shows that weapons do indeed degrade in 5E and that there's a mechanical effect, namely that they lose their re-sale value. The fact that your unmaintained weapon retains as much of its value as my more rigorously cared for weapon doesn't mean that some degradation isn't taking place. It's just not enough to de-value it.

At the risk of repeating myself, I think the default assumption of the game is that PC weapons are routinely maintained, and if the in-game situation doesn't conform to that, I think the DM is well within his/her duties to make a ruling that departs from the published rules.


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## Satyrn

lowkey13 said:


> Yep!
> 
> By the way- people who play that REALLY REALLY hate it when you walk by saying, "You sunk my battleship."
> 
> Um.... not that I would know that.




Oh please. You've probably done it enough times, you could publish reliable survey results.


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## Maxperson

TwoSix said:


> If a player went out of the way to tell me their PC is not buying a whetstone and refusing to care for their weapons, then I'm going to make a weapon degradation an issue for them.  Because they just told me specifically that they want weapon degradation to be a plot point!  (Alternatively, they just have a preference for more simulation and realism in their games, which I can then flag as a player-DM mismatch.)




Sure.  If you add it in for your game, it will be there.  Absent you making it an issue, though, it's just not.  That brand spanking new sword the bard bought is going to be in the same condition the fighter's 5 year old, well used sword is in, despite the fighter not caring for it.  5e does not have weapon degradation for PCs, whetstone or not.



> The lack of weapon degradation rules doesn't mean the PCs can't come up with a plan to rust out the contents of an enemy's armory, for example.




I agree.  I would allow that as well, despite not using a weapon degradation system myself.  I don't think such a system is enjoyable to my players and we're all there to have fun.


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## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Right, and I think a rule that incentivizes a style of play that looks like a corner case is undesirable for obvious reasons.




It doesn't look like a corner case.  Dragging around carts full of weapons IS a corner case.  I've played in games where you had to keep up weapons and that wasn't even on the radar.



> That isn't including the mechanic though. In fact, that's explicitly _excluding_ it.




You said, unless I completely misunderstood you, that including a weapon degradation system would limit playstyles.  So yes, I took 2.5 seconds to exclude it with a simple sentence to prove that statement wrong.  If all it takes is 1 sentence and 2.5 seconds to eliminate the system and use your playstyle, then you are not being limited by it.



> You acknowledge that the passage I quoted is inconsistent with your position that weapon degradation isn't an element of D&D 5E, yet you persist in saying it's "a fact" that "5e includes no weapon degradation".




I never said that quote there.  Hell, you even quoted what I said in the block you just responded to and got it very wrong.  Here's the actual quote, "This is the inconsistency that I'm talking about. It's a fact that PC weapons do not degrade."



> The passage shows that weapons do indeed degrade in 5E and that there's a mechanical effect, namely that they lose their re-sale value. The fact that your unmaintained weapon retains as much of its value as my more rigorously cared for weapon doesn't mean that some degradation isn't taking place. It's just not enough to de-value it.




That's not a mechanical effect of the weapon.  Don't pretend that you didn't understand though context, repeated over and over again, that I was talking about combat mechanics.  Further, it has no bearing on PC swords that aren't maintained.  Those won't ever be unsellable, unless you the DM add that into the game.


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## Maxperson

Satyrn said:


> Oh please. You've probably done it enough times, you could publish reliable survey results.




And he probably loaded the battleship with paladins and gnomes before it went down.


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## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> It doesn't look like a corner case.  Dragging around carts full of weapons IS a corner case.  I've played in games where you had to keep up weapons and that wasn't even on the radar.




Were you always able to maintain your weapons in those games, or did you incur penalties because you were somehow prevented? If you could always care for your weapons, then that doesn't fit the scenario we were discussing. If you couldn't, then why didn't you bring extras, unless it was a gotcha for which you were unprepared?



Maxperson said:


> You said, unless I completely misunderstood you, that including a weapon degradation system would limit playstyles.  So yes, I took 2.5 seconds to exclude it with a simple sentence to prove that statement wrong.  If all it takes is 1 sentence and 2.5 seconds to eliminate the system and use your playstyle, then you are not being limited by it.




But you also aren't _including_ it, which is the precondition for it having any effect on someone's game. Also, I don't think the goal of WotC's game design is to publish subsystems as part of the base game that are going to be removed or ignored by a majority of tables. That's what I mean by a waste of space.



Maxperson said:


> I never said that quote there.  Hell, you even quoted what I said in the block you just responded to and got it very wrong.  Here's the actual quote, "This is the inconsistency that I'm talking about. It's a fact that PC weapons do not degrade."




I pulled those quotes directly from the part of your post that I quoted. Is it not your position that there's absolutely no weapon degradation in 5E? The inconsistency of that position with the rule stating that monsters' weapons generally have no re-sale value because of their poor condition should at least tell you that your position isn't uncontroversial, if not that it's directly contradicted by the rules themselves.



Maxperson said:


> That's not a mechanical effect of the weapon.  Don't pretend that you didn't understand though context, repeated over and over again, that I was talking about combat mechanics.  Further, it has no bearing on PC swords that aren't maintained.  Those won't ever be unsellable, unless you the DM add that into the game.




Your conditions for acknowledging the existence of weapon degradation in the game keep getting higher and higher. First you needed a listed element. When that was provided, you wanted to see an actual rule with a mechanical effect. Now that that has been provided, you want the mechanical effect to manifest in combat. 

The truth is that none of that needs to be part of the game for weapon degradation to occur in the fiction, and the fact that there is no rule for the degradation of weapons belonging to PCs is not an indication that PC weapons can't degrade, but rather that there is an assumption that PCs aren't allowing their weapons to degrade. If a player introduces into the fiction that s/he is allowing his/her character's weapon to degrade, then it's up to the DM to adjudicate.


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## pemerton

Hriston said:


> the fact that there is no rule for the degradation of weapons belonging to PCs is not an indication that PC weapons can't degrade, but rather that there is an assumption that PCs aren't allowing their weapons to degrade. If a player introduces into the fiction that s/he is allowing his/her character's weapon to degrade, then it's up to the DM to adjudicate.



There's a parallel here to saving throws.

From the fact that, in mechanical terms, _getting a save against a fireball is automatic_, it doesn't follow that PCs don't have to try to save themselves. Rather, the mechanics take for granted that this is what PCs do. If a player describes his/her PC as standing unperturbed in the fireball making no effort to avoid or mitigate its effects, then presumably the GM is entitled to adjudicate as appropriate (eg deny the save, or impose disadvantage, or whatver else seems appropriate and consistent with established ficiton and table expectations).


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## Hriston

pemerton said:


> There's a parallel here to saving throws.
> 
> From the fact that, in mechanical terms, _getting a save against a fireball is automatic_, it doesn't follow that PCs don't have to try to save themselves. Rather, the mechanics take for granted that this is what PCs do. If a player describes his/her PC as standing unperturbed in the fireball making no effort to avoid or mitigate its effects, then presumably the GM is entitled to adjudicate as appropriate (eg deny the save, or impose disadvantage, or whatver else seems appropriate and consistent with established ficiton and table expectations).




I think the same is true of the attack roll against AC. It assumes active resistance to being struck on the part of the defender. Willingly receiving a hit without active resistance not only circumvents AC, IMO, but may also circumvent hit points, or at least auto-crit.

To me, this seems fundamental to understanding how the mechanics relate to the fiction.


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## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Were you always able to maintain your weapons in those games, or did you incur penalties because you were somehow prevented? If you could always care for your weapons, then that doesn't fit the scenario we were discussing. If you couldn't, then why didn't you bring extras, unless it was a gotcha for which you were unprepared?




I usually carried one extra weapon on me just in case.  



> I pulled those quotes directly from the part of your post that I quoted. Is it not your position that there's absolutely no weapon degradation in 5E? The inconsistency of that position with the rule stating that monsters' weapons generally have no re-sale value because of their poor condition should at least tell you that your position isn't uncontroversial, if not that it's directly contradicted by the rules themselves.




It kinda does and doesn't.  Monsters have poor quality gear sometimes, but it just kinda poofs in at that quality and hasn't degraded to that point over time.  However, the monster equipment is sometimes poor quality, implying that the monsters have rules that the players don't and sometimes have stuff degrade.  

PC equipment never degrades unless the DM adds that system into the game.  That's an easily provable fact, which I have proven multiple times in this thread.



> Your conditions for acknowledging the existence of weapon degradation in the game keep getting higher and higher. First you needed a listed element. When that was provided, you wanted to see an actual rule with a mechanical effect. Now that that has been provided, you want the mechanical effect to manifest in combat.




My conditions have never changed.  I've been referring to PC equipment from the beginning, and talking about combat mechanics for degradation.  

I did initially say that degradation was nowhere in 5e, but backed off that since your post showing that monsters only have something that's kinda, sorta, almost degradation.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Hriston said:


> I think the same is true of the attack roll against AC. It assumes active resistance to being struck on the part of the defender. Willingly receiving a hit without active resistance not only circumvents AC, IMO, but may also circumvent hit points, or at least auto-crit.
> 
> To me, this seems fundamental to understanding how the mechanics relate to the fiction.




While 'classic' D&D never really spelled this out in plain words, it was also the normal expectation there. If an enemy was helpless (note this works in 4e as well) then they wouldn't get a defense, and in 4e and in many GM's determination in earlier editions they would be CDGed. 

Rationalization for the 1e assassination table was similar, the assassin was basically getting a chance at a completely undefended blow, which would instantly kill the target. 

I would expect most 'old school' DMs would follow some version of this procedure. It really is never explicitly spelled out though in classic D&D. There are probably a few comments in text that would lead one to expect it, and likely some modules or something where a situation is spelled out as allowing for this in some situation, etc. Still, it was never a hard and fast RULE in AD&D or OD&D. It was always just assumed that anyone would defend themselves. I often wondered why there was not at least a "you don't have a weapon, take a penalty to your defense" or something like that. I guess in 2e there were some optional rules for making 'all out attacks' which could produce basically the same result (IE take a -2 to AC to get a +2 attack bonus, if the enemy is not armed the penalty is a freebie).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> PC equipment never degrades unless the DM adds that system into the game.  That's an easily provable fact, which I have proven multiple times in this thread.




While this is technically true in a very narrow sense, it isn't really a very honest reading of the rules of an RPG. All RPGs are open-ended affairs. They need not spell out how air or gravity or even money work by default. Likewise D&D need not spell out how weapon degradation works. In 4e and 5e monster equipment is deemed basically worthless, which can be fictionalized to 'it is degraded'. In 4e at least, PC equipment never fetches better than 40% of its purchase value, and the GM is free to go from there. So if the GM in a 4e/5e game says to you "you've never even sharpened your sword, it is now worthless" responding that this "isn't a rule" would, in most places, get you booted from the table unless you're joking.

Likewise if a GM stated at some point that you have no whetstone and made no provision to maintain your weapons, so from now on you may be subject to a penalty, objecting wouldn't really be a viable choice, unless the penalties seemed ridiculous and contrived. 

Frankly, the reason none of this was done in OD&D, and therefore later on or even in AD&D, was simply that tracking this garbage is tedious at best, its trivial for a fighter to simply loot a new weapon now and then, and it can be assumed that, other things being equal, oiling and sharpening a blade in an environment where stone is everywhere and most PCs carry gallons of oil is to something to bother fussing about. I mean, you do know that you can sharpen a sword on ANY RANDOM ROCK, right? I've sharpened any number of axes on 'some old rock' in the field, it works perfectly well (maybe a real whetstone is a bit faster and more convenient to use). Gygax just thought the whole idea was basically silly. No doubt he included a whetstone in the PHB out of a typical sense of completeness (this is the guy who included tables of 20 different pole weapons remember).


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> While this is technically true in a very narrow sense, it isn't really a very honest reading of the rules of an RPG. All RPGs are open-ended affairs. They need not spell out how air or gravity or even money work by default. Likewise D&D need not spell out how weapon degradation works. In 4e and 5e monster equipment is deemed basically worthless, which can be fictionalized to 'it is degraded'.




I've already talked about how it kinds sorta exists for NPCs/monsters.



> In 4e at least, PC equipment never fetches better than 40% of its purchase value, and the GM is free to go from there.




I can take a mint baseball card into a store and have the same thing happen to me.  Getting more than 40-50% of the value when you sell to a store is business.



> So if the GM in a 4e/5e game says to you "you've never even sharpened your sword, it is now worthless" responding that this "isn't a rule" would, in most places, get you booted from the table unless you're joking.




If said sword is worthless, then it would have been worthless in a fight BEFORE going to sell it.  If it has 100% usefulness in a fight, then a store has no business saying it's worthless, because by the very fact that it is 100% useful in combat, it has full or nearly full value.



> Likewise if a GM stated at some point that you have no whetstone and made no provision to maintain your weapons, so from now on you may be subject to a penalty, objecting wouldn't really be a viable choice, unless the penalties seemed ridiculous and contrived.




Yep!  I've already talked about the DM adding degradation for PC weapons into the game.  It's not there, though, unless the DM adds it in like this.



> Frankly, the reason none of this was done in OD&D, and therefore later on or even in AD&D, was simply that tracking this garbage is tedious at best, its trivial for a fighter to simply loot a new weapon now and then, and it can be assumed that, other things being equal, oiling and sharpening a blade in an environment where stone is everywhere and most PCs carry gallons of oil is to something to bother fussing about. I mean, you do know that you can sharpen a sword on ANY RANDOM ROCK, right? I've sharpened any number of axes on 'some old rock' in the field, it works perfectly well (maybe a real whetstone is a bit faster and more convenient to use). Gygax just thought the whole idea was basically silly. No doubt he included a whetstone in the PHB out of a typical sense of completeness (this is the guy who included tables of 20 different pole weapons remember).




Right.  This isn't an argument on how I think the game should be played.  I've already said that I wouldn't use a degradation system in my game.  Whetstones made it into 2e and beyond.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> I usually carried one extra weapon on me just in case.




Well, that seems pretty much normal for any game in which I've ever played, and yet we never bothered with weapon maintenance.



Maxperson said:


> It kinda does and doesn't.  Monsters have poor quality gear sometimes, but it just kinda poofs in at that quality and hasn't degraded to that point over time.  However, the monster equipment is sometimes poor quality, implying that the monsters have rules that the players don't and sometimes have stuff degrade.
> 
> PC equipment never degrades unless the DM adds that system into the game.  That's an easily provable fact, which I have proven multiple times in this thread.




This all seems to confuse fictional processes with the way fiction is established at the table, which seems to be a recurring theme in this thread.



Maxperson said:


> My conditions have never changed.  I've been referring to PC equipment from the beginning, and talking about combat mechanics for degradation.
> 
> I did initially say that degradation was nowhere in 5e, but backed off that since your post showing that monsters only have something that's kinda, sorta, almost degradation.




I think I may have missed some of your earlier posts on this, but in the one to which I first replied you seemed to want a listed game element, which is what I've offered.


----------

