# What Is an Experience Point Worth?



## R_Chance (Sep 17, 2017)

I look at the class as the engine of growth and the experience points as the fuel of growth. No class, no making use of XP, no growth. Of course, I like NPC classes...


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## The Crimson Binome (Sep 17, 2017)

Experience Points measure the experiences of the character. There's nothing magical, meta-physical, or meta-gaming about it.

The only excuse for not awarding XP to an NPC is because you know that the NPC will never accumulate enough to gain any benefit from it.


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## Blue (Sep 17, 2017)

To me, classes are mere mechanical constructs.  They inform the setting by providing features that will affect the setting, but they are not part of it.  In-game, there is no Fighter - the class.  These is "fighter", a word that can be used to describe people, like that NPC gardsman, or that PC (regardless of his class), etc.

With classes and all of the paraphenalia that hang off it not an in-game item, neither can be levels nor XP.  To be sure, there are some people more experienced than others.  But that grizzled knight can be more experienced than your Fighter even though XP isn't used to describe them.

But even if I build an NPC (or all NPCs liek in 3.x edition) using classes, that's just a mechanical shorthand of balance, not something in-game.  Can an NPC possess a class is a backwards question.  Classes aren't something that one can possess, and more than one can possess the equation f=ma (force=mass times acceleration) even though physics applies to your body.  Can an NPC be described by a class mechancially out of game?  Sure, but they don't have to.

The "0 for this campaign" is interesting.  I've seen games where players kept favorite characters and brought them, full of XP and items, into another DM's campaign.  And I've seen players rebuild favorite characters in new campaigns (and even different systems) to play again, starting from the beginning.  I've also seen newly created charactrers, both with 0 XP and starting above that.


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## Panda-s1 (Sep 17, 2017)

y'know I was pretty sure it was 1 xp per silver piece found as treasure, so....


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## 77IM (Sep 17, 2017)

> As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?




XP only exist _in your mind_. The game works a lot better when everyone at the table is imagining the same XP values in their minds. Beyond that constraint, though, XP can be anything your table wants.

In practice, I find it best to view XP as a pacing mechanic: they let you know when it would be fun to level up. In this sense, if you think it would be fun for henchmen to level up, then sure, award them XP. As another example, it sounds like your DM doesn't think it would be fun for your character to level up sooner than everyone else just because you are re-creating a character from 20 years ago.

XP has a strong secondary use as an incentive: if the DM wants the PCs to engage in some fun activity, make it worth XP, and players will pursue that activity.


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## GMMichael (Sep 17, 2017)

77IM said:


> In practice, I find it best to view XP as a pacing mechanic . . .
> XP has a strong secondary use as an incentive: if the DM wants the PCs to engage in some fun activity, make it worth XP, and players will pursue that activity.




Nice recovery.  I would have said that XP have, at best, a flimsy relationship with when characters -should- level up.  But they are decidedly well-suited to act as incentives.



> are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?



I was actually very happy to see XP appear as a sort of currency in 3E, but that divorces them a bit from representing -experience-.  Unless there's some sort of amnesia involved?

I'd rather award levels than XP, and those make for much better rewards than incentives.  So, I mostly use XP to sprinkle across tavern floors to replace the old, dirty XP that were down there before.


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## R_Chance (Sep 17, 2017)

Blue said:


> To me, classes are mere mechanical constructs.  They inform the setting by providing features that will affect the setting, but they are not part of it.  In-game, there is no Fighter - the class.  These is "fighter", a word that can be used to descry ibe people, like that NPC gardsman, or that PC (regardless of his class), etc.




If the classes were more generic I could agree with that, but some have very specific class based abilities. Only a Wizard has the same skill in memorizing magic spells and using a certain range of spells. There are other magic using classes but they all differ in technique, range of spells available (not the distance at which you cast a spell), and other abilities. That speaks to a difference in training / methodology... in essence a different class. In game they might have 1 or 5 or 10 names for it, but they all have certain training / techniques in common. Hence, a "class".

With the choice of Archetypes at 3rd level classes differentiate members from others. Even the Fighter changes in abilities. This could be dressed up in a number of ways. It could reflect differing experiences along the way or different interests. Or it could be specific training. But somewhere along the way all characters of the same class had a lot in common.



Blue said:


> With classes and all of the paraphenalia that hang off it not an in-game item, neither can be levels nor XP.  To be sure, there are some people more experienced than others.  But that grizzled knight can be more experienced than your Fighter even though XP isn't used to describe them.




I agree, levels and XP are just measures of something less measurable "in world". 



Blue said:


> But even if I build an NPC (or all NPCs liek in 3.x edition) using classes, that's just a mechanical shorthand of balance, not something in-game.  Can an NPC possess a class is a backwards question.  Classes aren't something that one can possess, and more than one can possess the equation f=ma (force=mass times acceleration) even though physics applies to your body.  Can an NPC be described by a class mechancially out of game?  Sure, but they don't have to.




That shorthand is useful in describing a group of people with similar skills and training, and setting up a ladder of increasing skill / experience for them. That's why I liked the NPC classes. It saves the trouble of building every NPC, or type of NPC, from scratch. 



Blue said:


> The "0 for this campaign" is interesting.  I've seen games where players kept favorite characters and brought them, full of XP and items, into another DM's campaign.  And I've seen players rebuild favorite characters in new campaigns (and even different systems) to play again, starting from the beginning.  I've also seen newly created charactrers, both with 0 XP and starting above that.




Same here. 

I think you could build your world with classes as a specific known in game thing (i.e. a Knight archetype for Fighters that is common to the feudal gentry of a world) or not. That's a matter of preference. Some people like tinkering with the mechanics, some with the fluff, and some both.


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## R_Chance (Sep 17, 2017)

Panda-s1 said:


> y'know I was pretty sure it was 1 xp per silver piece found as treasure, so....




That was 1 XP per gold piece. Trying to start some old school experience inflation?  

Oddly enough though, I use the silver piece as the standard coinage, not gold. I like to keep gold a bit rarer than common in D&D.


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## TrippyHippy (Sep 17, 2017)

XP is, of course, an abstraction. It's why I always preferred earning Credits as happens in Traveller, as they have a more defined economic value. 

In the case of D&D, it's less a case of how much an XP is worth, but more a question of how fast a rate do you want characters to gain levels?


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Sep 17, 2017)

1 XP per GP, just like Gary handed down on stone tablets.

You may find your silver, copper, and electrum pieces and weep.


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## Blue (Sep 17, 2017)

R_Chance said:


> If the classes were more generic I could agree with that, but some have very specific class based abilities. Only a Wizard has the same skill in memorizing magic spells and using a certain range of spells. There are other magic using classes but they all differ in technique, range of spells available (not the distance at which you cast a spell), and other abilities. That speaks to a difference in training / methodology... in essence a different class. In game they might have 1 or 5 or 10 names for it, but they all have certain training / techniques in common. Hence, a "class".




While on the player side this is the way that they mechanically can present those features, the DM is not under that limitation.  There can be plenty of NPCs who are consistent in-world on how they cast but are not based on the Wizard class.  Monsters with class features similar to their casting, etc.


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## Sunseeker (Sep 17, 2017)

"Experience Points" are just a numerical representation of in-game experience gained by an in-came character while participating in in-game activities.  NPCs can gain experience, gain classes and advance in level just fine.  They are simply not the party and not the focus of the story so we don't talk about it, if an NPC survives an encounter, they get XP but they're less likely to ever be involved in another encounter.  I think it's odd that one might say NPCs cannot gain classes or levels, if that were true, how would the PC paladin ever get trained?  To whom would the Wizard go to learn from?  While some classes are self-learning (like Sorcerers) and some degree of self-teaching can occur in all classes, most classes would at least require teaching for level 1.  Which would imply that _someone else_ has made it to level 1 to pass on that knowledge, a someone else that is likely an NPC.


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## SMHWorlds (Sep 17, 2017)

Experience Points in the various D&D editions (and some other games and OSR games) is very much everything that has been discussed. It is pacing and it is a judge of experience and a way judge the relative power of a character. In my own head XP are the hand of fate and the currency of the classical hero rolled into one.  

The player character is a practically unique individual whose pool of destiny and personal ambition allow them to grow and thrive in a world full of men and beasts that lead stagnant lives.  Yes many NPCs are former adventures and some are current adventures but we meet them at  a point (or several points) in time where their lives intersect with the lives of the PCs. As classical heroes (i.e. larger than life rock stars as opposed to "good guys") the PCs have this pool of experience to help them over come the tragedies and challenges of their lives. As mechanical as XP are they are the stuff of legends and fuel for the PCs' story to continue on. 

One way to look at it is look at how a PC becomes an NPC when they become a lich or "turn evil" (depending on the campaign). They stop growing and stop being able to tap into that quality that makes them great. Greatness fuel might be one way to look at it.

But mechanically an XP is worth one moment of experience, one thought, or one moment of reflection on what has happened. So it takes roughly 300 of those moments to get to 2nd level from 1st. It would take 600 more, 900 total, to get to 3rd etc.. That is how I kind of look at it.


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## Scoobs (Sep 17, 2017)

You can't sell experience, but I suppose you could sell training. Perhaps it would grant a percentage bonus over experience calculated at the end of a session, and only acting as a buff for that level until you 'outgrow' the training that was taught.


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## Warbringer (Sep 17, 2017)

Will answer this once right after 

"how many angels can fit on the tip of a pin.?"


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## Oryzarius (Sep 17, 2017)

For one interesting, published perspective on this question, see JürgenWerks' excellent (and, now, pay-what-you-wish) PDF _Doomed Slayers_.


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## jmucchiello (Sep 18, 2017)

"Mommy, Greebzz said I was worthless."
"Oh, don't listen to him. One day you will grow up to be a strong warrior who goes out raiding the local human villages of livestock, ale, and gold. Other kobolds will be proud of you."
The boy's eyes gleam with pride as his mother continues.
"And then a group of four or five 'civilized' folk will sweep through our caves slaughtering us to last kobold."
"So, ultimately, I am worth nothing."
"Oh, no, child," she says cupping his chin in her hand. "Those civilized folk are only killing you because you are worth 5 or 6 experience points to each of them. So you see, you are not worthless."
"I'm worth ten and ten again x-spear-ee-ants points."
"25 or so, yes."


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## Jhaelen (Sep 18, 2017)

For D&D-like games I've eliminated XP since we started playing 4e. In 13th Age XP no longer exist - not even as an option.

By contrast in D&D 3e XP were even used to pay for item creation or the casting of powerful spells.

I still use them in games like FFG's Star Wars or Ars Magica. Neither game has levels, and a rather loose concept of 'classes'.
In Star Wars, it's used as a currency to buy additional abilities, increase skills, or follow additional career paths.

In Ars Magica, XP are mostly just a measurement for training. You can earn plenty of xp without ever participating in an adventure by spending seasons studying, experimenting, or simply doing whatever your occupation requires. If you do engage in adventures, it allows for quicker advancement, though.

Earthdawn is similar to FFG's Star Wars but has a concept of 'levels' that even finds an expression in-game:
It causes your reputation to increase and it's assumed that nps have a pretty good idea about your power-level.
Similar to old-school D&D, certain levels also translate into titles that are used in-game.

So, there's all kinds of different ways xp are used (or not used) in RPG systems. I don't think there's a 'right' or 'wrong' to use them,
but these days I prefer to avoid them, if possible.


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## Connorsrpg (Sep 19, 2017)

I've always liked XP, but have grown to love systems where there are fewer of them and you get advances (rather than everything at a whole level).

However, this makes giving out RP XP awards harder etc. I have especially noticed this with short lunchtime sessions with students learning the game. I really want to award every attempt to RP.

So, we have moved all the games we play to 100 XP per level/tier etc. BUT at every 25 you get an advance. About to try this with 5E D&D (similar to 13Age) where you choose a level ability every 25 XP (and get the rest at 100).

Just makes it easier to hand out off the cuff arbitrary awards. But everything you had out can be measured as a % of their level  (Taking inspiration from the Unearthed Arcana article on the subject).

We also like the idea of XP being used for Bennies, but working that out with new system.


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## Campbell (Sep 19, 2017)

I have a deep and abiding for specific and targeted XP like you see in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.

One of the issues I have with games like D&D is the way larger numbers of experience points and lack of knowledge of how many a given encounter, milestone, etc. is worth makes it almost impossible to effectively reason about and make informed decisions.


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## Lanefan (Sep 19, 2017)

sirlarkins said:


> Think about it: can _anyone_ earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class?



These questions tie together neatly.  Yes, anyone can earn xp.  The type of activities done to earn said xp is going to determine what class you become.  And what qualifies you for the class* is the earning of said xp - in other words, one goes hand in hand with the other.

* - in games with things like stat requirements to be in a class, you need those too.



> The 1st-edition *Dungeon Master’s Guide* specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?



Misinterpretation.  The henches default to half xp because it's assumed they're only contributing half as much to proceedings as a full party member.  Whether that assumption is correct or not is wide open for debate, but that's the rationale.  No xp "disappear" anywhere.



> These esoteric questions were highlighted for me recently when I recreated a 20-year-old *D&D* character from memory for a new campaign I’m playing in. All I could remember of this character from my high school days was her race and class (half-elf Bladesinger, because I liked the cheese, apparently) and that the campaign fizzled out after only a handful of sessions. If I made it to level 2 back then, I couldn’t rightly say.
> 
> I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP _for this campaign_.



A better justification would have been that as everyone else is starting at 0 xp then so will you, in the interests of fairness etc.



> As the character probably only had a few hundred XP to her name to begin with, I let the matter slide. But it did get me thinking: do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns? Was my DM onto something?



Xp exist within a campaign as a measure of character advancement and improvement.  If multiple campaigns are linked in other ways e.g. two or more DMs have decided their worlds share a common universe, then xp become portable across those campaigns along with the characters.  But if someone comes to me and says "I'll play in your game, I've got this character from Bob's game I can run" my response will be something like "Who's Bob?  I don't know anything about his game - does it even use the same system as mine? How about you roll up something new using this game's system, just like everyone else is doing.  You can always use the same name, characterization, and so forth from your previous version if you like, just not its mechanics and-or levels." 



> This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels? Different editions of *D&D* have presented different interpretations of this question, from essentially statting up all NPCs as monsters, with their own boutique abilities (as in the earliest iterations of the game), to granting NPCs levels in "non-adventuring classes" (the famous 20th-level Commoner of 3rd-edition days).



I certainly think NPCs can have classes and levels just like PCs...if not, where are the replacement PCs going to come from when the current lot get killed? 



> The current edition of *D&D* has come back around to limiting classes and XP awards to player-characters only...



Which I personally think is a bad idea 







> ...—which brings us back to our original question: are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world? How do you, the reader at home, treat XP in your campaigns?



Xp are, as I said above, a measure of character advancement - a reward, if you will.  They are earned by the characters on an individual basis, based on what said characters do or don't do in the game.  They are also earned in a similar manner by NPCs when said NPCs do things that merit such, though obviously not tracked nearly as closely as PC xp are.

And notice I keep saying xp are a character reward.  They are not intended as a player reward, nor as a player punishment.  I shudder when I hear or read about DMs who give xp to a character when its player brings snacks to the game or does up an elaborate backstory, and I also shudder every time I hear or read about DMs who don't give xp to a character for a session's worth of adventuring with the party just because its player didn't make it to the game.

I also really disliked the 3e idea of using xp as currency.  Intentionally erasing some of your memories in order to create a magic item just doesn't make any sense at all.  That said, I've no problem with the malicious erasure of some of a character's memories and theft of a bit of its soul that was old-school level loss.



			
				SMHWorlds said:
			
		

> One way to look at it is look at how a PC becomes an NPC when they become a lich or "turn evil" (depending on the campaign). They stop growing and stop being able to tap into that quality that makes them great. Greatness fuel might be one way to look at it.



I don't know where to start with this.  Who says that a character who turns evil stops earning xp? (and who says it has to become an NPC?)  What's to stop a lich from continuing to slowly gain xp and levels over the years?  It's not like it won't have the time... 

Lan-"has anyone ever come up with a workable mechanic for how level-based skills and abilities (and xp?) erode after a character has been retired for a long time"-efan


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## jmucchiello (Sep 19, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Lan-"has anyone ever come up with a workable mechanic for how level-based skills and abilities (and xp?) erode after a character has been retired for a long time"-efan



Older D&D systems had rules for losing ability scores as you age. If those systems had also had ability score based skills then the mechanic would already have existed. But you can always import those rules into a more modern version of D&D. 

In 5E specifically, you could also tie the proficiency bonus to aging. So that all things one is good at erodes as you age. So if getting to middle age is a flat -1 to str/dex/con/pb, old is -2 to str/dex/con/pb, and venerable is -3 to str/dex/con/pb. All of your physical skills will end up in the tank when your characters are in the decembers of their lives.


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## Sunseeker (Sep 19, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Xp exist within a campaign as a measure of character advancement and improvement.  If multiple campaigns are linked in other ways e.g. two or more DMs have decided their worlds share a common universe, then xp become portable across those campaigns along with the characters.  But if someone comes to me and says "I'll play in your game, I've got this character from Bob's game I can run" my response will be something like "Who's Bob?  I don't know anything about his game - does it even use the same system as mine? How about you roll up something new using this game's system, just like everyone else is doing.  You can always use the same name, characterization, and so forth from your previous version if you like, just not its mechanics and-or levels."




I had planned to comment on this part of the OP as well, but didn't get around to it.

I've played the same character in 4 separate D&D campaigns.  Two 4E games, one 3.5 game and one 5E game, all my same tiefling paladin.  But, while they share a similar backstory and similar characterization they are unique incarnations of the character.  They gained XP separately, they had different experiences, they grew in different directions and they were all enjoyable unique experiences, which to some degree I have combined for my own personal writings into a greater whole character.

But I've experienced people seeking to bring characters from other campaigns in before, worse than asking for a smattering of XP, no more than one often gets for writing a good backstory, they've asked for whole levels, even very high levels, with strange and spectacular benefits.  

Then these people have often remade their characters, much to their disappointment.

There is certainly value in remaking a character if you're willing to treat it like a new experience.  I wouldn't place much value on trying to make a clone.


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## Lanefan (Sep 19, 2017)

jmucchiello said:


> Older D&D systems had rules for losing ability scores as you age. If those systems had also had ability score based skills then the mechanic would already have existed. But you can always import those rules into a more modern version of D&D.
> 
> In 5E specifically, you could also tie the proficiency bonus to aging. So that all things one is good at erodes as you age. So if getting to middle age is a flat -1 to str/dex/con/pb, old is -2 to str/dex/con/pb, and venerable is -3 to str/dex/con/pb. All of your physical skills will end up in the tank when your characters are in the decembers of their lives.



That works for skills, you're quite right.

But levels?

It comes down to this: if Richard had got up to 10th-level Fighter at the peak of his 4-year adventuring career and then retired at age 27 to open a pub (because all retired characters open a pub; it's part of the Code, don't'cha know) how long does it take for that 10th level to in effect become 9th, or 6th, or fade away to nothing?  Corollary question: how much training and practice does Richard need to put in to slow or prevent this decay, should he so desire?

Lanefan


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## jmucchiello (Sep 19, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> That works for skills, you're quite right.
> 
> But levels?
> 
> ...




Why would levels fade? Aging doesn't negate experience. It reduces ability. Ability scores, skills, and proficiency bonus penalties over time would reduce effectiveness. A wizard who doesn't hang out in dungeons is going to lose the ability to cast fireball because he drops from level 5 to level 4? I don't get it.


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## Lanefan (Sep 20, 2017)

jmucchiello said:


> Why would levels fade? Aging doesn't negate experience. It reduces ability. Ability scores, skills, and proficiency bonus penalties over time would reduce effectiveness. A wizard who doesn't hang out in dungeons is going to lose the ability to cast fireball because he drops from level 5 to level 4?



Exactly.  If she doesn't cast fireball once in a while - or even look at her old spellbook - she's eventually over the years going to forget how.  (she could learn again, of course, but that's a different issue)  How does this work mechanically?

Just like a Fighter who spends all his time these days tending bar and washing glasses, 5 years later - 10 years later?  15 years later? - can he still pick up a sword and use it just like he did when last in the field?  I say no, as by then he's badly out of practice; and have been trying for years to come up with some sort of mechanics system to codify this.  No success, so every now and then I throw the question out there to see if anyone else has any bright ideas.

Lanefan


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## jmucchiello (Sep 20, 2017)

I suspect it doesn't exist because no one wants it to exist, aside from you.  After all, this game is fantasy. Getting old is just a bummer that gets in the way of having fun. 

IIRC, GURPS is all about realism and its aging effects are kinda nasty as you get older.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 20, 2017)

jmucchiello said:


> Getting old is just a bummer that gets in the way of having fun.



That clearly depends on the RPG system (or setting).
E.g. in Ars Magica it's a brilliant source for stories. Magi brewing Longevity potions to extend their natural life span is a default assumption since aging eventually reduces stats and results in negative afflictions. It gets increasingly hard to successfully create these potions, as each new one must be more powerful than the previous one. Also, Magi start to become increasingly 'magical' as soon as they start using these potions. Thus they may be able to prevent a natural death only to suffer from increasingly long 'Twilight episodes', i.e. their minds are temporarily sucked into the Magic realm, until it becomes a permanent condition.

There are a number of alternatives to Longevity potions (e.g. Lichdom), but all of them come with their own complications. Searching for a new and better way to extend life can easily become the focus for an entire campaign.


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## jmucchiello (Sep 20, 2017)

I don't want to sidetrack the original topic with my tongue-in-cheek bummer comment. But how many people run Ars Magica (or any campaign in any RPG) long enough that getting old matters.

In D&D throughout the editions, there's been the issue of a handful of people who meet in a tavern in year 1002 rising meteorically to level 23 by year 1004 and then there's a world shattering event that they prevent and they retire. If the campaign world is reused they become the Elminster of the setting, a background figure of infinite renown. But the players no long give those characters much agency. They're just window dressing.

I'm sure there are exceptions to the 2 year span and some DMs manage to make it take longer to get to high level. But does anyone make it take 50 or more years? I don't see many 70 year old characters running around as murder hobos.  (That could be an interesting campaign. A village is attacked and only the old folk survive. They band together to defeats the invading orcs who kidnapped their adult children as slaves. Eventually the band of seniors find themselves fighting against a demon cult and yada yada yada.)


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## jasper (Sep 20, 2017)

Warbringer said:


> Will answer this once right after
> 
> "how many angels can fit on the tip of a pin.?"



easy first the student needs to decide on the dance music. Then as practical exercise the student takes a take measure and notes the buttocks and leg length of each angel. That will get you the step distance. the rest is math.


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## CapnZapp (Sep 21, 2017)

Approximately 1 gold piece.

One 1 XP is ≈ 1 GP if you squint enough


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## GMMichael (Sep 21, 2017)

Campbell said:


> I have a deep and abiding for specific and targeted XP like you see in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.



I have a deep and abiding too.  However, players should be rewarded for all of two things in RPGs: role-playing, and having fun.  If the player is the ultimate authority on who his character is, then the GM is in a bad position to award XP for either of these cases since they're pretty subjective.  Sure, you can assign lesser XP goals like Helping Other PCs or Achieving Plot Goals, but why bother with XP then?  Just grant more character features or levels when these milestones are passed, and save some space on the character sheet.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 21, 2017)

DMMike said:


> I have a deep and abiding too.  However, players should be rewarded for all of two things in RPGs: role-playing, and having fun.



Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment, but: shouldn't 'having fun' be its own reward?

Rewarding good role-playing makes slightly more sense, but I still dislike the practice because some players _are_ good role-players and don't need (and usually don't care about) the extra xp. They're roleplaying because they consider it fun (i.e. see above). It's the players who struggle with role-playing who'd benefit most from a rule granting them extra xp to encourage them to give their best. But if you want to treat all your players fairly, they'll still always fall behind the players who are already good role-players.

In other words: granting xp isn't a good choice if you want to encourage good role-playing.

What you really want to achieve is that your 'problem' players realize that role-playing is fun! So, what works better, imho, is to give them more opportunities to be in the spotlight and reward their efforts with mostly immaterial things, like better contacts or allies.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 21, 2017)

jmucchiello said:


> I don't want to sidetrack the original topic with my tongue-in-cheek bummer comment. But how many people run Ars Magica (or any campaign in any RPG) long enough that getting old matters.



Interestingly, in our last Ars Magica campaign 'death' was the main theme right from the start:
We decided to start play in a Winter covenant and each of us created one of the old founding Magi that were still alive and ruling the place - if only in name. There was a Criamon Magus that had actually already become a ghost without realizing it, a Tytalus Magus seeking to cheat death, a Verditius Magus that nobody had seen for years after locking himself in his lab, and finally a Merinita Magus who had invited the players' young Magi to join the covenant in an attempt to bring about a new Spring.

Initially unknown to the players, the Tytalus Magus had found a way to stop his aging process by causing others to experience accelerated aging, so it didn't take long to become more than an abstract theme...


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## Lanefan (Sep 22, 2017)

jmucchiello said:


> I'm sure there are exceptions to the 2 year span and some DMs manage to make it take longer to get to high level. But does anyone make it take 50 or more years? I don't see many 70 year old characters running around as murder hobos.



What about Elves who can live for centuries?

In the game I play in the DM is using the same game world he did in the 1980's, only it's 250 years later.  What this means is that our "new" characters are occasionally running into our old characters - mostly Elves - who are still alive.  Now, when we meet these guys they're not 85th level (most were 6th-10th when last seen) so we have to assume they haven't been adventuring during this time...so what would have happened to their levels and so forth?

For simplicity the DM in this case just left them where they were - which from my quasi-selfish player point of view is fine as some of these old characters are mine and I can play them again.  But from a broader view this just doesn't work for me.  Those characters should have either lost some levels, gained some levels, forgotten their class entirely, or maybe even have levels in a different class by now...it'd be quite unlikely to find one that just happened to be at the same stage of development as it was 250 years ago.  They'd remember some key things they did back in the day, perhaps, and some striking events; and could tell us war stories till the sky turned pink...but that's it.

Does what I'm saying make sense?

Lan-"but for some of us it was only a ten-year time shift, and to explain that would take more time than anyone wants to spend"-efan


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## DerKastellan (Sep 22, 2017)

Campbell said:


> I have a deep and abiding for specific and targeted XP like you see in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.
> 
> One of the issues I have with games like D&D is the way larger numbers of experience points and lack of knowledge of how many a given encounter, milestone, etc. is worth makes it almost impossible to effectively reason about and make informed decisions.




Of course, the aforementioned games have an entirely different gameplay to it. 

The reasoning of D&D parties at the latest since 3e, but probably since 2e is very simple: Can we beat it? Charge!

I'm only half-kidding. Ever since the main and predominant source of XP has been monster-slaying, monster-slaying has become the dominant aspect of the game. In 0e and 1e that could get you killed very easily (at lower levels), so some players wizened up and actually approached situations with a more measured, calculating approach - especially since those monsters themselves yielded barely any XP. If you need somewhere between 1,251 and 2,501 XP for even 2nd level, slaying a 10 XP monster does not seem like a viable strategy. Outwitting monsters and taking treasures was, though.

With 2e, the monster awards shot up. I observe that some of my players will assess whether to attack humanoids when conflict can be avoided, but for monsters it's as simple as above. The XP do not really play into it. The most reasoning you will get is whether an encounter is morally wrong (slaughtering a goblin tribe is okay for some and anathema to others, so it often depends on who attacked first) or whether it waste time and resources and might endanger the mission. If the current quest is time-driven or does not allow for resting, players will be more likely to weigh encounters and seek ways around them. Most of the time they however expect to beat encounters and see combat simply as part of playing the game, not something to think about. 

So, XP to them is this happy thing that eventually leads to level up. Lack of XP award leads to player complaints. But the amount of XP earned is not informing how my players play the game. It simply helps them keep track of when they get more juicy stuff. They are not part of "informed decisions" - usually instead player weigh their own resources ("I'm almost out of spells") and the foes' approximate challenge and the particular mission and that in turn is what informs their decision-making.

And frankly, that's perfectly reasonable in-world thinking to me. Seeing the "I get better in doing stuff" reward would be a complete inversion of how people actually think. They think about actual goals - which are defined by the mission or by any loot they see or might find. They have a rough assessment of their own capabilities, as adventurers they have a rough assessment of the enemy's capabilities, and then they make a call. That's good immersion to me, even if sometimes a bit of game babble comes into it. In comparison, if somebody would say "but goblins earn me no XP at this level" (3e...) then I would say that undermines immersion as XP are no viable goal in-game.


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## tzxAzrael (Sep 22, 2017)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> 1 XP per GP, just like Gary handed down on stone tablets.
> 
> You may find your silver, copper, and electrum pieces and weep.




technically it was 1xp per gp value of non-magical treasure, totalled. (eg, coin, gems, jewelry...)

so a sack of 1000cp was still worth +1 xp.


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## DragonMan (Sep 22, 2017)

Experience is a measure of getting better at the abilities that you use all the time. In real life , people get better at their jobs and level up (i.e. Get pay raises) as they do. Although jobs are nearly always annual times to level up, characters will improve once they've used their skills enough. A level represents the % of your learning and once 100% is reached, they get better. Classes differentiate based on what they do.  Thus, although she might wield a dagger it's not their prime focus. The tables reflect that by slower hit bonuses for arcane casters.


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## GMMichael (Sep 22, 2017)

Jhaelen said:


> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment, but: shouldn't 'having fun' be its own reward?
> 
> Rewarding good role-playing makes slightly more sense, but I still dislike the practice because some players _are_ good role-players and don't need (and usually don't care about) the extra xp.




What, you mean people read my replies?  Okay, I'll choose my words more carefully, then:

Grant XP for doing fun things; don't make XP a chore to earn, or the game could become a chore.

Grant XP for good efforts to role-play.  This is as easy as including a character's backstory in the player's decisions/dialogue. 

Another take on what an XP is worth: whatever a player will do for one!  In this light, some XP could be worth pizza slices...


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## Lanefan (Sep 22, 2017)

tzxAzrael said:


> technically it was 1xp per gp value of non-magical treasure, totalled. (eg, coin, gems, jewelry...)
> 
> so a sack of 1000cp was still worth +1 xp.



Yep - and in true 1e style if one of those c.p. fell out of the sack en route back to town then no xp for you when you get there. 

That said, I've been playing and DMing 1e for ages and have never used the xp-for-gp rule.  This does lead to more monster killing, to be sure, but it also leads to a much slower-advancing (and thus longer-lasting) game.


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## Celebrim (Sep 22, 2017)

It is worth whatever fraction of worth having an additional level is worth.  So, if your approach to the game is that leveling up is cheap or worthless, then XP isn't worth very much at all.   If levels are granted, there is no value to XP.   If levels are earned, then its the most precious commodity you can have.

As for what XP means, it seems to represent both a sort of 'spiritual vitality' which can be removed or spent and which presumably increases the characters lucky, providence, resilience and so forth, and also an abstract marker of having learned or grown in skill based on having achieved something worthwhile and difficult.


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## Shasarak (Sep 23, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> That works for skills, you're quite right.
> 
> But levels?
> 
> ...




I was always under the impression that in DnD, in general, things got tougher the older they are.


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## Lanefan (Sep 23, 2017)

Shasarak said:


> I was always under the impression that in DnD, in general, things got tougher the older they are.



Mpst monsters seem to work this way, yes.

But people?  I've had jobs and skills (and played sports) in the past that were I suddenly dropped back into that mileiu now I wouldn't have a clue what to do - I didn't need those skills anytime since, so I've largely forgotten them.  I think most people tend to be like this...so why not characters?


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## Shasarak (Sep 23, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Mpst monsters seem to work this way, yes.
> 
> But people?  I've had jobs and skills (and played sports) in the past that were I suddenly dropped back into that mileiu now I wouldn't have a clue what to do - I didn't need those skills anytime since, so I've largely forgotten them.  I think most people tend to be like this...so why not characters?




But did you improve in your jobs and skills as a result of the XP taken from defeating your enemies?  Maybe you dont lose that type of XP as you get older.


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## R_Chance (Sep 23, 2017)

Lanefan said:


> Mpst monsters seem to work this way, yes.
> 
> But people?  I've had jobs and skills (and played sports) in the past that were I suddenly dropped back into that mileiu now I wouldn't have a clue what to do - I didn't need those skills anytime since, so I've largely forgotten them.  I think most people tend to be like this...so why not characters?





D&D and reality can be a tough fit sometimes  I've always attributed it to different underlying rules / assumptions. Anyway, did it take you as long to recover those skills as it took to learn them the first time? Or were you just "blowing off the rust" and returning to old patterns? Of course, you could argue that their level / skill is declining (but not gone)... well, lets just settle for D&D is different. I've always told my players it looks like real life, but it's not (hence Dragons, magic, etc.). Skill may not depart / degrade once acquired in a D&D world the way it does in real life.


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## Ogrork the Mighty (Sep 24, 2017)

There was an AD&D adventure called _Treasure Hunt _module that dealt with this issue. Players started out as 0-level and had to earn experience to reach 1st, during which time they basically figured out what type of class they wanted to play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Hunt_(module)


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## Jhaelen (Sep 25, 2017)

DragonMan said:


> Experience is a measure of getting better at the abilities that you use all the time. In real life , people get better at their jobs and level up (i.e. Get pay raises) as they do. Although jobs are nearly always annual times to level up, characters will improve once they've used their skills enough.



I disagree pretty much completely. It's always tricky to compare RPG mechanics to real-life, but imho you're getting several things mixed-up here:
- the measure of my skills represents my experience, not the other way around.
- getting a raise typically has nothing to do with your skills. It's either automatic (representing the general expectation that time spent in a job means you've become more experienced) or in anticipation of an improvement in your abilities (see the Peter Principle).
- in real-life there are no levels. Improvement is something that happens all the time, in small, unmeasurable increments.


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## Redthistle (Dec 30, 2017)

jmucchiello said:


> "Mommy, Greebzz said I was worthless."
> "Oh, don't listen to him. One day you will grow up to be a strong warrior who goes out raiding the local human villages of livestock, ale, and gold. Other kobolds will be proud of you."
> The boy's eyes gleam with pride as his mother continues.
> "And then a group of four or five 'civilized' folk will sweep through our caves slaughtering us to last kobold."
> ...




Priceless. My first, best laugh of the day!


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## pemerton (Dec 31, 2017)

77IM said:


> In practice, I find it best to view XP as a pacing mechanic
> 
> <snip>
> 
> XP has a strong secondary use as an incentive: if the DM wants the PCs to engage in some fun activity, make it worth XP, and players will pursue that activity.





Campbell said:


> I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.
> 
> One of the issues I have with games like D&D is the way larger numbers of experience points and lack of knowledge of how many a given encounter, milestone, etc. is worth makes it almost impossible to effectively reason about and make informed decisions.



XP work differently in different systems.

In 4e D&D XP are primarily a pacing mechanism: each 60 to 90 minutes of play should earn about a tenth-of-a-level worth of XP (this becomes almost tautological once you include the XP-for-time-spent-free-roleplaying option in DMG2). It is misleading for the DMG to describe them as a _reward_, given that to "earn" them all you have to do is play the game (by engaging the situations the GM frames the PCs into). The actual _rewards_ of 4e play - as in, the reasons that playing it might be worthwhile - are (a) the increase in mechanical complexity that comes about with level gain, and (b) the changes in the fiction that result from (i) moving through the tiers of play, and (ii) the details of the play of a particular game.

It's interesting that, because (a) is easily seen as a burden rather than a reward by many would-be players, it is possible to recalibrate the fiction of 4e so that the fiction escalates without the mechanics becoming more complex. The Neverwinter supplement takes this approach.

Conversely, if (b) is not present in a 4e campaign - ie the fiction does not change - then there is a lot of evidence that many would-be players don't find (a) very rewarding in and of itself. The evidence I'm referring to is the general disdain that is shown for the published 4e modules - especially the first run of them - which reflect the mechanical escalation but have only a veneer of development in the fiction.

XP obviously play a very different role in classic D&D (OD&D, Gygaxian AD&D, Moldvay Basic, etc). You don't accrue XP just by playing - you actually have to make skilled (or perhaps lucky) choices to earn them, and when you do the reward is power-up for the PC. It's obviously much closer to arcade-game type "who's the highest scorer" gaming. The fun of the game is in making the choices; having a higher XP total for your PC shows that you're better (or luckier).

Cortex+ Heroic (Marvel Heroic RP, and the Fantasy Hack variant) use individual character milestones to award XP - in other words, making particular character choices earns XP, on a sliding scale that culminates in a character-defining moment (eg Wolverine earns 1 XP every time he identifies another character as an old ally or an old enemy; and 10 XP when an old enemy becomes an ally, or vice versa). XP can be spent on PC power-ups, which are more modest than D&D level up but not negligible. So players are incentivised to explore and in some ways develop their PCs' characters in the course of play.

Burning Wheel doesn't use XP at all, but players have Beliefs and earn "artha" (= fate points) by pursuing their Beliefs, or (in some circumstances) dramatically breaking from them. In BW it's also impossible to advance your character without trying stuff that is almost, or even literally, impossible to achieve by ordinary means, and in those circumstances artha spend is what can make success possible. So Beliefs work something like milestones in Cortex+ Heroic, although with more subtlety (eg players can rewrite Beliefs largely at will, and any PC has 3 Beliefs at one given time). Tthere is more dynamism and conflict in BW character development than in Cortex+, which makes sense - BW aims at dramatic intensity, whereas Cortex+ is pretty light-hearted as befits a supers-oriented system).

I don't really understand the point of XP in 2nd ed AD&D, 3E D&D or 5e D&D - it's not pacing like in 4e (as it does not accrue simply via play), but nor does it seem like a measure of demonstrated skill in play as per classc D&D, given it is earned mostly by defeating monsters in encounters that the GM frames the PCs into. I'd have to leave it others to try and say what coherent role it might be playing.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 1, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I don't really understand the point of XP in 2nd ed AD&D, 3E D&D or 5e D&D - it's not pacing like in 4e (as it does not accrue simply via play), but nor does it seem like a measure of demonstrated skill in play as per classc D&D, given it is earned mostly by defeating monsters in encounters that the GM frames the PCs into. I'd have to leave it others to try and say what coherent role it might be playing.



Experience is experience. As with every game mechanic, it reflects how the game world works. In this case, it is a measure of how much the character has learned, which contributes to determining how capable they are at doing what they do. An experience point is the smallest unit along the mechanical interface which corresponds to the ability within the game world for some characters to survive being shot or stabbed while others die (among other things).

Note, specifically, that the DM cannot frame the PCs into encounters. That is not an ability which the DM has at their disposal. Instead, the DM simply creates the world, and the PCs approach it however they wish. The DM is encouraged to create a world where interesting situations are likely to occur. The PCs are encouraged to be as cautious as possible while still achieving their goals, not because it will impact their "score" in the classic sense, but because it _makes sense_ for anyone to be careful in dangerous circumstances; and if the players don't want to play as sensible characters, then it makes sense for those characters to die.


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## pemerton (Jan 1, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Experience is experience. As with every game mechanic, it reflects how the game world works. In this case, it is a measure of how much the character has learned



Except that, by default at least, it is accrued only by fighting.

RQ's character advancement system does a passable job of modelling experience in the literal sense; XP not so much. As is so often the case in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, a Gygaxian mechanic is retained while severed from the logic that underpinned it in classic D&D; and then, after the event, an implausible simulationist rationale is layered over the top of it.



Saelorn said:


> the DM cannot frame the PCs into encounters. That is not an ability which the DM has at their disposal.



Just off the top of my head: Expedition to the Demonweb Pits is a 3E adventure module that begins with a few-page description of an encounter which the GM is told to run in more-or-less the following fashion: "[GM to players in their capacity as the PCs] 'As you walk along the road, a group of drow materialise and attack you!'"

If that's not framing the PCs into an encounter, I don't know what it is.

I'm not bothering to dig out my copy of the 3E DMG, but I found the following on pp 4-6 of the 3.5 DMG (ie in the introduction, and on the first two pages of ch 1 under the heading "What is a DM?"):

The DM defines the game. . . . [Y]ou control the pacing, and the types of adventures and encounters . . . Your primary role in the game is to present adventures in which the other players can roleplay their characters. . . While all the players are responsible for contributing to the game, the onus must ultimately fall upon the DM to keep the game moving . . .​
I think the author of that text thought that the GM has the ability to frame the PCs (and, thereby, their players) into encounters.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 1, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Except that, by default at least, it is accrued only by fighting.



AD&D still had an option for individual awards by class (so magic users gained XP by casting spells, fighters gained by fighting, thieves gained by finding treasure). It also retained the option for all classes to gain XP from treasure, in which case thieves gained double for that; in this case, treasure is used as a rough metric for success, since other goals are difficult to quantify and it's reasonable(ish) to assume that a party which was very successful at one goal also succeeded equally well at its other goals.

Third edition primarily awarded experience for combat, because levels primarily govern how good you are at combat. You don't gain experience for crafting a sword, because crafting a sword doesn't make you better at fighting. (The fact that your level also determines how good you are at crafting is just poor system design. There are several places in 3.x where they saw how things _could_ be integrated into their standardized system mechanics, but failed to ask whether they _should_ be.) Still, advancement by combat isn't any better or worse than advancement by wealth; both ways are easier to quantify than the alternatives, so it's just a question of what's easier and what seems least ridiculous. (I would argue that getting better at picking locks by slaying a lot of dragons is relatively _less_ silly than being to slay dragons because you won the lottery, but both are contrived corner-case scenarios.)


pemerton said:


> Just off the top of my head: Expedition to the Demonweb Pits is a 3E adventure module that begins with a few-page description of an encounter which the GM is told to run in more-or-less the following fashion: "[GM to players in their capacity as the PCs] 'As you walk along the road, a group of drow materialise and attack you!'"
> 
> If that's not framing the PCs into an encounter, I don't know what it is.



That is a very good example of how framing is something that bad DMs do. I can't imagine a group of players who _wouldn't_ roll their eyes at that, while tallying a mark in the "do not play with this DM" column. Maybe 4E players, I guess.


pemerton said:


> I think the author of that text thought that the GM has the ability to frame the PCs (and, thereby, their players) into encounters.



Honestly, that whole quote just amounts to a lot of words for world-building. The DM builds the dungeon, and populates it, and places it within the world; the players are the only ones who can decide whether their characters enter, or how to approach each room, or whether to just bury the whole thing and move on to the next town.


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## pemerton (Jan 2, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> advancement by combat isn't any better or worse than advancement by wealth; both ways are easier to quantify than the alternatives



This is a mixture of confusing and error.

Gygaxian "advancement by wealth" isn't a _simulation_ of anything, and the rulebook (DMG, somewhere around p 81) tells us so. It's a system for rewarding skill in playing the game.

If you replace it with "advancement by fighting" then you get a game that rewards skill at combat design and play rather than skill at dungeon-delving - but no version of AD&D has sufficiently rich combat rules for the requisite differences in skill to be demonstrated, and hence for this to be really tenable.

You could equally have a system that rewards XP for every monster/NPC befriended, and that would be just as quanitifiable. (Charm spells make people friendly - it's in the description. So do successful reaction rolls, per the relevant charts.)

The number of gp in a sack, and the nunmber of hit points whittled away, aren't uniquely quanitiable. They just happen to be what Gygax quantified in his original design, for his purposes. The bizarre reification of them by players of subsequent editions which retain them simply out of habit or emulation is something I continue to be mystified by.

But if you want a _simulation_ then RuneQuest is obviously superior, and extremeley workable. Even Burning Wheel is superior, although not designed to serve a primarily simulationist purpose.



Saelorn said:


> That is a very good example of how framing is something that bad DMs do.



I've just been looking at the Book of Lairs II (published by TSR in 1987). Every "lair" begins with a list of "hooks", which say things like "If there is an elven PC, a hybsil from the forest comes to him/her and tells him/her of the Hybsils' troubles with the gnolls". That is framing the PCs into an encounter. It's a pretty basic bit of GMing technology.



Saelorn said:


> The DM builds the dungeon, and populates it, and places it within the world; the players are the only ones who can decide whether their characters enter, or how to approach each room



This is also bizarre, but for different reasons.

(1) It posits an aim of play ("entering the dungeon") which makes virtually no sense in simulationist terms.

(2) It avoids all questions of "framing" by simply eliding them - somehow the PCs know a dungeon is there (but no one ever walked up to them and told them, or asked them to do something about it), and somehow the PCs have existence and motivations (but the world beyond them never actually acted upon them in some proactive fashion), but the dungeon itsel is inert until the players have their PCs interact with it.

It is possible to play a game that exemplifies (2) - Moldvay Basic is the best published example, but the whole of classic D&D is all about this style of play - but it only avoid GM "framing" by compleltely abandoning any pretensions of world simulation.


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## Legatus Legionis (Jan 2, 2018)

.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 2, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This is a mixture of confusing and error.
> 
> Gygaxian "advancement by wealth" isn't a _simulation_ of anything, and the rulebook (DMG, somewhere around p 81) tells us so. It's a system for rewarding skill in playing the game.



I am aware of Gygax's intent, as silly and out-dated as it may be. It is simply the case that measuring success in terms of wealth acquired is as-reasonable of a metric as measuring in terms of monsters slain; both numbers correspond in a significant way to how well the PCs have accomplished their task, for a certain sub-set of tasks that we care about modeling. Gygax may not have cared about the model, but that doesn't make it invalid.


pemerton said:


> You could equally have a system that rewards XP for every monster/NPC befriended, and that would be just as quanitifiable. (Charm spells make people friendly - it's in the description. So do successful reaction rolls, per the relevant charts.)



You could, and some editions will award the same amount of experience for befriending a monster as you would get from killing it. The idea, here, is that you learn through the process of overcoming obstacles. In either case, experience is still just experience (by the common definition).

Given that the reaction tables and charm spells provide for a less-detailed interface than the combat rules, and only a few characters may end up participating in that - either the Bard uses Diplomacy, or the Wizard casts Charm - this is likely to result in an unsatisfactory play experience for many. One benefit of using the combat metric is that every player can participate in combat.


pemerton said:


> I've just been looking at the Book of Lairs II (published by TSR in 1987). Every "lair" begins with a list of "hooks", which say things like "If there is an elven PC, a hybsil from the forest comes to him/her and tells him/her of the Hybsils' troubles with the gnolls". That is framing the PCs into an encounter. It's a pretty basic bit of GMing technology.



If a hybsil magically appears because they sense an elf with the PC flag, then that's contrived framing and only a bad DM would ever do that. What it sounds like is that the hybsil is there regardless, and it is in a position where it would approach an elf when it sees one, which makes it a case of a world-building. Good DMs build worlds where interesting things are likely to happen.


pemerton said:


> This is also bizarre, but for different reasons.
> 
> (1) It posits an aim of play ("entering the dungeon") which makes virtually no sense in simulationist terms.
> 
> (2) It avoids all questions of "framing" by simply eliding them - somehow the PCs know a dungeon is there (but no one ever walked up to them and told them, or asked them to do something about it), and somehow the PCs have existence and motivations (but the world beyond them never actually acted upon them in some proactive fashion), but the dungeon itsel is inert until the players have their PCs interact with it.



I haven't mentioned why the dungeon exists, or why the party would want to go there. Obviously, there must be logical reasons for these, or else the entire game would be pointless. The party needs to weigh their motivations against what they can determine of the dungeon, in order to decide whether they want to enter and how they want to approach it.

One common mistake of bad DMs is that the PCs don't have sufficient motivation to enter a dungeon; or they have some motivation, but it's contrived rather than arising naturally from the setting and the characters.


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## Lanefan (Jan 2, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I've just been looking at the Book of Lairs II (published by TSR in 1987). Every "lair" begins with a list of "hooks", which say things like "If there is an elven PC, a hybsil from the forest comes to him/her and tells him/her of the Hybsils' troubles with the gnolls". That is framing the PCs into an encounter. It's a pretty basic bit of GMing technology.



If you mean it's framing the PCs into the encounter with the hybsil, then true; but the party retain the option of ignoring it and moving on.  The example from earlier, where drow just appear around the PCs and attack, is worse: the party have no choice but to engage, and no real choice* in what for that engagement will take: they have to fight.

* - well, they could always choose to surrender, I suppose.

There's a difference between hooks, where a DM drops things in to the game to see if anyone bites but the PCs can always say no or ignore them; and framing, where something happens and the PCs are unable to ignore it or just say no.



> This is also bizarre, but for different reasons.
> 
> (1) It posits an aim of play ("entering the dungeon") which makes virtually no sense in simulationist terms.
> 
> ...



Realistically, the PCs know the dungeon is there because they sought information about possible options for adventuring and in response the DM dropped a hook in form of a rumour or legend or map or whatever.  Why would you assume nobody told them about it or asked them to deal with it?

And maybe the world has tried acting on it before.  The DM's hook could easily include "a group went up there last summer and never came back", both as a nod to continuity and a warning that this place might be just a little risky.

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 4, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Given that the reaction tables and charm spells provide for a less-detailed interface than the combat rules, and only a few characters may end up participating in that - either the Bard uses Diplomacy, or the Wizard casts Charm - this is likely to result in an unsatisfactory play experience for many.



Gygax's rules for reactions are actually quite subtle, in terms of the weighing of various inputs into a reaction roll. Later editions drop some of this. 4e adopts a quite different but also rather subtle system for resolving social interaction. I think 5e also has something, but I'm less familiar with it.

As for the idea that only bards and wizards do social interaction - that is not true to my own experience, and seems to be mostly the result of GM's running social encounters in a very non-dynamic way.



Saelorn said:


> One benefit of using the combat metric is that every player can participate in combat.



I know from experience that every player can participate in social interactions (just as, in the real world, everyone at the table is participating in the social activity of playing the game - _verisimilitude_!).



Saelorn said:


> If a hybsil magically appears because they sense an elf with the PC flag, then that's contrived framing and only a bad DM would ever do that. What it sounds like is that the hybsil is there regardless, and it is in a position where it would approach an elf when it sees one, which makes it a case of a world-building.



Telling the players "A hybsil approaches you as you wander through a meadow, and adresses you in elvish" is not worldbuilding (under any standard definition of world-building I'm familiar with).

Designing a "meadows" random encounter table, then putting hybsils on it, then rolling up a hybsil encounter, would count as an application of worldbuilding - but that is not what is going on when a referee uses The Book of Lairs II!



Saelorn said:


> One common mistake of bad DMs is that the PCs don't have sufficient motivation to enter a dungeon; or they have some motivation, but it's contrived rather than arising naturally from the setting and the characters.



One obvious motivtion to enter a dungeon would be to rescue a captured family member. But by your lights it would be bad GMing (because "contrived") for the GM to write a dungeon with a captive in it who is related to one of the PCs. (This would also be bad GMing by [MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION]'s lights, based on this recent post, but I think for different reasons from you.)

I don't really know what you regard as the proper way for a GM to give PCs sufficient motivation to enter a dungeon, when it is verboten for the GM to deliberately write in any part of the gameworld to engage some cue or signal sent by a player in the build or play of his/her PC. You talk about a world in which "interesting things" happen, but that must mean "generically interesting, given some generic set of motivations". This would seem to lead to many rootless PCs with few personal/intimate motivations - or else players who write their PCs to accord to the GM's world/plot.



Lanefan said:


> Realistically, the PCs know the dungeon is there because they sought information about possible options for adventuring and in response the DM dropped a hook in form of a rumour or legend or map or whatever.  Why would you assume nobody told them about it or asked them to deal with it?



So instead of framing the PCs into an encounter, the GM runs an "imaginary" encounter off-screen? Did the players have the option to have their PCs stick their fingers in their ears, or to walk away, when the rumour-bearer turned up in that off-screen event?

The point I'm making is that the game can't proceed without the referee providing the players with some sort of information (but not other information - the gameworld is authored, and that fiction is conveyed by one person telling it to another person; it is not an actual world that actual people explore and inform themselves about by actually sensory investigation).



Lanefan said:


> If you mean it's framing the PCs into the encounter with the hybsil, then true



Which was my point. AD&D 2nd ed (and even late 1st ed AD&D products, like the Book of Lairs II) assumes that the GM will frame the PCs (and, thereby, the players) into encounters.



Lanefan said:


> the party retain the option of ignoring it and moving on.  The example from earlier, where drow just appear around the PCs and attack, is worse: the party have no choice but to engage, and no real choice* in what for that engagement will take: they have to fight.
> 
> * - well, they could always choose to surrender, I suppose.



This is all conjecture which depends heavily on table norms, and which the D&D rulebooks have never said anything about.

For instance, in the case of the hybsil, for all you know if the PCs tell the hybsil to go away, then the GM decides it attacks them; or decides that the gnolls attack the PCs in the night (which is not noticeably different from the drow encounter you don't like); etc.

And with the drow, the PCs can run, or ally themselves, or (as you note) surrender, or try and calm the situation by talking to the drow, etc. The idea that fighting is the only option seems very narrow to me.




Lanefan said:


> There's a difference between hooks, where a DM drops things in to the game to see if anyone bites but the PCs can always say no or ignore them; and framing, where something happens and the PCs are unable to ignore it or just say no.



I don't know why you would invent your own definition of what it is for the GM to frame the PCs into a situation, and then impute it to me.

Here's one definition of "situation" from someone who has thought a bit about RPGing: "Situation is the center. Situation is the imaginative-thing we experience during play." _Framing the PCs into a situation_, therefore, is establishing that there is some thing, some event, going on that calls for a response[/i]. In the fiction, that response will come from the PCs (or perhaps a pseuo-PC like a henchman etc under player control). At the table, that response will be authored by the player.

If the situation is an approach by a NPC, and the player in question decides that his/her PC ignores the NPC, then the rules of D&D leave the GM with a range of ways that the NPC in question might respond, regardless of whether that NPC is a hybsil or a drow.

A _hook_, as I understand it, is different from a situation because it tends to involve the referee narrating _some event that already occurred_ (eg via "boxed text").

_You're in a tavern. A grizzled old man approaches you, with a glint in his eye_. That's framing the PCs into a situation.

_While you're in the tavern, a grizzled old man with a glint in his eye asks you if you're interested in undertaking an exploration and rescue mission in the forest to the north_. That's a hook, but it's not really a situation. The GM has already resolved the would-be situation him-/herself: the PCs listended to the NPC and received his/her message.

I think the first - done well - tends to make for a more interesting RPG experience. The second, in my experience, is the companion of railroading and lacklustre fiction pre-authored by the GM.

Obviously others, presumably on the basis of different experiences and different tastes, prefer the second.


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## Lanefan (Jan 4, 2018)

pemerton said:


> So instead of framing the PCs into an encounter, the GM runs an "imaginary" encounter off-screen? Did the players have the option to have their PCs stick their fingers in their ears, or to walk away, when the rumour-bearer turned up in that off-screen event?



Players as a collective party: "We check some places where adventuring opportunities might be found.  Joe checks with the Mercenaries' Guild, and also keeps his ears open in the dockside taverns.  Sybil asks if the Thieves' Company know of anything.  Valiente looks in with the MU's Guild - they've always got something on the boil, those guys.  And Terrence can check with his temple, see what they might know of...and then keep an open ear in the market.  We'll all regather at our inn at sunset and each report our findings."

From this description, and past experience, the DM knows she can probably skip over all the info-gathering roleplay and jump straight to narrating their findings when they meet again that night:

DM: "So, one at a time.  Joe - nothing at all in the taverns but you did see someone had put up a notice in the Merc's Guildhall recruiting for help in a Yeti-hunting expedition in the mountains.  Sybil - the Thieves mentioned a ship in port; seems for some contractual reason they can't touch it but they dropped hints that they're very curious about what - or who - it's carrying.  Valiente - yeah, the mages have some things they want doing: seems one of 'em will pay big if someone will bring in some legitimate and verifyable Beholder parts (and says he knows where to find some, only they're still attached to their owners), while another is looking to hire a crew to go and clean out Tavistock Tower so she can move in.  Terrence - looks like you came up dry this time but the temple are still really pleased with you after your success last time out!"

So, options abound - lots of hooks there, whether the party decides to run with any of 'em or not.  But no framing, just prompted narration now that leads later to whatever happens next when-if the party follow up on one or more of these hooks...or seek out others.



> I don't know why you would invent your own definition of what it is for the GM to frame the PCs into a situation, and then impute it to me.
> 
> Here's one definition of "situation" from someone who has thought a bit about RPGing: "Situation is the center. Situation is the imaginative-thing we experience during play." _Framing the PCs into a situation_, therefore, is establishing that there is some thing, some event, going on that calls for a response[/i]. In the fiction, that response will come from the PCs (or perhaps a pseuo-PC like a henchman etc under player control). At the table, that response will be authored by the player.
> 
> If the situation is an approach by a NPC, and the player in question decides that his/her PC ignores the NPC, then the rules of D&D leave the GM with a range of ways that the NPC in question might respond, regardless of whether that NPC is a hybsil or a drow.



Same is true in reverse; if a PC proactively approaches an NPC and is ignored the rules allow the PC to do - or try - any number of things.  No news here.



> A _hook_, as I understand it, is different from a situation because it tends to involve the referee narrating _some event that already occurred_ (eg via "boxed text").
> 
> _You're in a tavern. A grizzled old man approaches you, with a glint in his eye_. That's framing the PCs into a situation.
> 
> _While you're in the tavern, a grizzled old man with a glint in his eye asks you if you're interested in undertaking an exploration and rescue mission in the forest to the north_. That's a hook, but it's not really a situation. The GM has already resolved the would-be situation him-/herself: the PCs listended to the NPC and received his/her message.



The first is a potential hook, unexplained as yet.  The second is the same thing only with the explanation already included.  They both somewhat expect a reaction of some sort from the PCs.

And the DM hasn't resolved the situation, she's just presented it in the second option and kinda waved at it in the first.  It doesn't resolve until the PCs say yes to the mission, or no to the mission, or start haggling about reward/price, or talk to the old man about something different, or roll him for his pocket change, or just tell him to get lost.



> I think the first - done well - tends to make for a more interesting RPG experience.



It forces the interaction into much more minute (and time-consuming) detail...which may be good at some tables that like going into these minutae and not so good at other tables where this is in theory no more than a scene-set for the coming adventure.  In an ideal world perhaps this level of detail would be sustainable; but in reality this level of detail all the time would make my already-long campaign take forever.



> The second, in my experience, is the companion of railroading and lacklustre fiction pre-authored by the GM.



Railroading is when the PCs have no choice.  Above I list 6 obvious choices that they have, without even going into any deep thought; hardly a railroad.

Lacklustre fiction, on the other hand...hey, nobody's perfect.  But oftentimes the DM is also expected to provide the story at least to some extent, and so we do what we can. 

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 4, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Players as a collective party: "We check some places where adventuring opportunities might be found.  <snippage>  We'll all regather at our inn at sunset and each report our findings."
> 
> From this description, and past experience, the DM knows she can probably skip over all the info-gathering roleplay and jump straight to narrating their findings when they meet again that night:
> 
> ...



Well, obviously I agree that in your example there is no framing of the PCs into a situation. That was my point. The potential situations - encounters with various NPCs who have various motivations that may intersect in interesting ways with those of the the PCs - are all elided by GM narration. The GM tells the players a series of stories about what happened to their PCs, and then narrates some GM-authored backstory/plot (about the mountain expedition, the beholder parts, etc).



Lanefan said:


> Railroading is when the PCs have no choice.  Above I list 6 obvious choices that they have, without even going into any deep thought; hardly a railroad.



Choosing between six bits of GM-authored backstory and plot is still choosing between six bits of GM-authored backstory and plot.

When do the players get to influence what the game's fiction will be?

EDIT: Another way to put it: a rail-roading adventure path doesn't cease to be a rail-roading adventure path because the players get to choose which of the six rail-roads the group is going to work through.


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## Lanefan (Jan 4, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Well, obviously I agree that in your example there is no framing of the PCs into a situation. That was my point. The potential situations - encounters with various NPCs who have various motivations that may intersect in interesting ways with those of the the PCs - are all elided by GM narration. The GM tells the players a series of stories about what happened to their PCs, and then narrates some GM-authored backstory/plot (about the mountain expedition, the beholder parts, etc).
> 
> Choosing between six bits of GM-authored backstory and plot is still choosing between six bits of GM-authored backstory and plot.



How is the party's reaction to the old man's proposal (the six options - yes, no, haggle, etc.) in any way pre-authored by the DM?



> When do the players get to influence what the game's fiction will be?



When they start making decisions based on what they've learned.  In the case of "what adventure will we take on?" (Yeti, beholder parts, etc., including none-of-the-above if nothing appeals) their influence will soon be obvious, as its their choice(s) that'll determine which story gets played out.

It's like a smorgasbord - there's a selection of dishes on the table (adventure hooks).  After walking up to the table and checking them out (party gathers information) the diners (party) choose one or two to feast on.  The rest get put in the fridge for later, or maybe fed to the cat.

What you're advocating is that the diners be instead allowed to go into the kitchen and produce their own dish...in which case what's the point of hiring a cook?



> EDIT: Another way to put it: a rail-roading adventure path doesn't cease to be a rail-roading adventure path because the players get to choose which of the six rail-roads the group is going to work through.



Assuming, of course, each option points to an independent and linear adventure path, rather than to just a single adventure that may or may not lead to anything further.  You're also assuming the DM is even looking any further ahead than the next adventure...which ain't always the case.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 5, 2018)

pemerton said:


> One obvious motivtion to enter a dungeon would be to rescue a captured family member. But by your lights it would be bad GMing (because "contrived") for the GM to write a dungeon with a captive in it who is related to one of the PCs. (This would also be bad GMing by @_*pming*_'s lights, based on this recent post, but I think for different reasons from you.)
> 
> I don't really know what you regard as the proper way for a GM to give PCs sufficient motivation to enter a dungeon, when it is verboten for the GM to deliberately write in any part of the gameworld to engage some cue or signal sent by a player in the build or play of his/her PC. You talk about a world in which "interesting things" happen, but that must mean "generically interesting, given some generic set of motivations". This would seem to lead to many rootless PCs with few personal/intimate motivations - or else players who write their PCs to accord to the GM's world/plot.



You can engage the PCs directly without treating them as mere protagonists in some meaningless story. You just need to treat them as you would anyone else. If the bandits kidnap every elf in the village, then that may well include the Paladin's sister, if she is an elf in that village. Of course, if you only have the bandits kidnap elves _because_ there's an elf in the party, then you're back to meta-gaming a contrived coincidence.

It's not hard to avoid protagonizing the PCs, when you're the DM. Just _stop meta-gaming_. It's not your job to make sure that the PCs are personally invested in everything that happens. Your job is to play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution.

As regards to motivation, the players should probably make characters who are willing to rescue those elves regardless of family affiliation. If the players have resigned themselves to playing bystanders, such that the only sufficient motivation would _be_ to protagonize them, then that's their own fault. You may need to reboot the campaign with new characters. Everyone needs to work together if there's any hope of playing this game.


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## R_Chance (Jan 5, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Choosing between six bits of GM-authored backstory and plot is still choosing between six bits of GM-authored backstory and plot.
> 
> When do the players get to influence what the game's fiction will be?
> 
> EDIT: Another way to put it: a rail-roading adventure path doesn't cease to be a rail-roading adventure path because the players get to choose which of the six rail-roads the group is going to work through.




If the PCs are looking for an adventure, there may only be so many options. They might pick one or choose to wait and look for more. I've had players do just that. I've also had players bail on an adventure they had undertaken or take one sideways into something completely different. I've also had players find some apparently insignificant bit and turn it into an adventure more or less spontaneously. It takes work and a good poker face but if done well the players will never know it wasn't planned out. In all of these cases the players have choice and input on the games story. Like real life, sometimes the options are more limited than other times. I run a sandbox game with what I think of as "adventure seeds" planted all over the place. The players live their lives, and make their choices. The world has it's own events and the game rolls on.


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## DerKastellan (Jan 5, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Except that, by default at least, it is accrued only by fighting.




This statement is neither correct for all versions of D&D nor for all recent editions. 5e needs less than two pages to describe several possible XP mechanics:

* Completely driven by what amounts to "story milestones." Which indirectly implies there is something to achieve at all - like killing a bandit you took a bounty (major) or finding vital clues to his whereabouts (minor).
* Based on completing missions within a larger campaign. This could be an adventure path but that is not inherently required.
* Session-based - divorced from actual in-game events.
* Driven by combat and non-combat encounters, where it's also mentioned that resolving a combat situation by any means that overcome the encounter earn you the XP. This includes several of the scenarios you mentioned later.

Even with these simple guidelines any GM is open to build any hybrid advancement system and not just reward combat or resolving tense situations with violence. Claiming otherwise is simply not true for 5e D&D. So, a general claim regarding "all D&D" is also untrue.

Just to address this point.


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## DerKastellan (Jan 5, 2018)

Regarding the other part of what is framing, railroading, etc, there are many implicit claims floating about from various statements, like...

* Playing an adventure path is inherently inferior experience because freedom. (I'm overstating this because there seems to be no rationale given as to why one style of play is inferior to another except by a matter of taste.)
* Nothing short of "simulating a world" is really a game enabling choice. (It's kind of implied that this is also superior, at least one could get that impression.)
* "Adventure path" seems to somehow subsume under it all notions that having missions combined with an idea how they will most likely play out is pretty much the same as railroading.

These are valid preferences to have but not necessarily universal truths. Not sharing these preferences one might come to other conclusions, given the usual constraints of how much time you can invest, your preferred mode of prep, and specifically, whether your players feel that their choices matter, that consequences of their actions matter, and last but not least, if they have fun playing the game. Simulating a world according to a certain standard is just the preferred mode of a subset of players, not all players, else the adventure paths wouldn't be the norm or not sell like hotcakes.

Now, it would be interesting to hear a full description of what pemerton's preferred mode is simply be describing it in sufficient broadness without assumed meanings of terms in enough detail that we can get a good idea about it without having another round of discussions what each term means (and ideally without claims of virtue, but that's my preference). What would their preferred mode of driving gameplay come down to in the first place, how is it set up and managed, and optionally how do name-dropped systems like Burning Wheel or RuneQuest actually enable that better in the first place. So, instead of disagreement about basic terms like "framing" it would be worthwhile to know from what set of perceived ideals pemerton wants the game to emerge, and hopefully from that a discussion can emerge that is less back-and-forth.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 6, 2018)

Campbell said:


> I have a deep and abiding for specific and targeted XP like you see in games like Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark. I think it is important to keep a game's reward structure transparent and easy to understand so players know the specific goals they should be shooting for in their play.
> 
> One of the issues I have with games like D&D is the way larger numbers of experience points and lack of knowledge of how many a given encounter, milestone, etc. is worth makes it almost impossible to effectively reason about and make informed decisions.






DMMike said:


> I have a deep and abiding too.  However, players should be rewarded for all of two things in RPGs: role-playing, and having fun.  If the player is the ultimate authority on who his character is, then the GM is in a bad position to award XP for either of these cases since they're pretty subjective.  Sure, you can assign lesser XP goals like Helping Other PCs or Achieving Plot Goals, but why bother with XP then?  Just grant more character features or levels when these milestones are passed, and save some space on the character sheet.






Jhaelen said:


> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comment, but: shouldn't 'having fun' be its own reward?
> 
> Rewarding good role-playing makes slightly more sense, but I still dislike the practice because some players _are_ good role-players and don't need (and usually don't care about) the extra xp. They're roleplaying because they consider it fun (i.e. see above). It's the players who struggle with role-playing who'd benefit most from a rule granting them extra xp to encourage them to give their best. But if you want to treat all your players fairly, they'll still always fall behind the players who are already good role-players.
> 
> ...




I agree with [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and (at least in part) with [MENTION=46713]Jhaelen[/MENTION] here.

The issue I have with [MENTION=6685730]DMMike[/MENTION] 's position above is that it seems to assume that GM-agnostic systemization of XP gain is either not feasible or undesirable.  The GM doesn't need to be in _any _position to hand out XP.

In the Powered By the Apocalypse systems that Campbell is bringing up, XP isn't "awarded" via one person's (likely opaque and cognitive bias-laden) adjudication.  Its simply gained via transparent, focused triggers; eg did you fail on a move, did you make Desperate Action Roll, did you overcome a tough obstacle/threat via coercion, did your Vice get you into trouble.  The GM's role in these things isn't in the awarding.  The GM's role is in following the game's premise and the player cues, in framing the action whereby decision-points related to vice temptation, desperate situations, and dangerous NPCs that can be coerced are the central focus of play (and whatever else might part of the game's PCs' portfolio and xp triggers such as themes of heritage, beliefs, aspirations, relationships).

I significantly appreciate this approach to designing games and running them because it reduces cognitive burden on the GM while serving as a handy/low overhead reference point that transparently cues all participants at the table about precisely what "the action" is about.  Accordingly, it moves units in enabling improvisational, focused play.


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## pemerton (Jan 7, 2018)

DerKastellan said:


> This statement is neither correct for all versions of D&D nor for all recent editions.



The statement was made about 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e. It is true that, in all those editions, the default rule for accruing XP is winning fights.

I'm aware that each has options and variants. Hence my reference to the default.


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## pemerton (Jan 7, 2018)

R_Chance said:


> If the PCs are looking for an adventure, there may only be so many options. They might pick one or choose to wait and look for more. I've had players do just that. I've also had players bail on an adventure they had undertaken or take one sideways into something completely different.



If I am looking for a movie to see in the cinema, there are only so many options: movies cost money to make, cinemas cost money to build and operate, and so I'm dependent on the commercial decisions of others that affect what films are available for me to watch.

But if I want to _imagine_ something, or write my own story, the only limit on options are the ones I bring with me - my imaginative and creative limits.

RPGing seems to me more like the second than the first.



R_Chance said:


> I've also had players find some apparently insignificant bit and turn it into an adventure more or less spontaneously. It takes work and a good poker face but if done well the players will never know it wasn't planned out.



I think what you are describing as a departure from the norm - the spontaneity that takes work and a good poker face - is more-or-less how I have been refereeing since about 1987.

For a bit of elaboration, here (spoiler blocked for length) are three actual play reports of how three of my more recent campaigns started:

[sblock]*4e D&D*


pemerton said:


> Up until recently my group had three campaigns active or semi-active: a core 4e campaign that is at 30th level and is close to its resolution (but always seems to manage to hold on a bit longer than I anticipated); a Burning Wheel campaign; and a Marvel Heroic RP campaign.
> 
> A few weeks ago we added a fourth campaign: we had the first session of 4e Dark Sun.
> 
> ...




*Cortex+ Heroic*


pemerton said:


> Over the past year or so my group has been playing a bit of Marvel Heroic RP, mostly as an alternative when the full 4e crew can't turn up.
> 
> Last week I bought the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide and, knowing that one of our players would be in the US for a couple of weeks, I wrote up some PCs to run a Heroic Fantasy session.
> 
> ...




*Classic Traveller*


pemerton said:


> Recently I've been re-reading my Classic Traveller books, and yesterday I GMed a session.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...





pemerton said:


> Another couple of thoughts:
> 
> Re-reading Book 3 (Worlds and Adventures), I was struck by the extent to which this 1977 RPG system envisages shared contribution to the fiction by players and GM. In the world creation rules, for instance, it says that if the generation system produces "combinations of features which may seem contradictory or unreasonable", then "the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation".
> 
> ...



[/sblock]There is no "story" or "adventure" in advance of play - we generate PCs (using different methods, depending on system and inclination), establish some backstory, and then start playing! Which means that, as GM, I establish an initial scene/encounter (or, in the case of the Dark Sun game, elaborate on one established by the players) - the arena in Dark Sun, the steading in Cortex+ Vikings, Lt Li's approach in Classic Traveller - and then the players start declaring actions for their PCs.



DerKastellan said:


> Simulating a world according to a certain standard is just the preferred mode of a subset of players, not all players, else the adventure paths wouldn't be the norm or not sell like hotcakes.



I don't doubt that adventure paths are popular. Despite it often being assumed that railroading is bad, there's actually no evidence that RPGers, in general, dislike railroading. 2nd ed AD&D, Vampire and allied games, Call of Cthulhu, 3E/PF and 5e adventure paths - these are all very popular RPGs, and for all of them the default adventure is a largely pre-scripted railroad, where the function of the players is to provide some colour and characterisation via their PCs, and to make a few choices that have purely local significance ("Do we take the bus or the ferry?" "Do we interrogate the barkeep or the watch captain?") but that make little or no difference to the overall arc of events (eg if the players don't have their PCs interrogate anyone, then the GM makes sure the clue is found in the form of a note on the next dead body, or whatever).



DerKastellan said:


> it would be interesting to hear a full description of what pemerton's preferred mode is simply be describing it in sufficient broadness without assumed meanings of terms in enough detail that we can get a good idea about it without having another round of discussions what each term mean



Besides this post and this thread, I have dozens of actual play threads on these boards that are illustrative.

The short version: the GM does not pre-author ingame events. The GM does not rely on secret backstory to inform adjudication. The basic driver of play is the GM's description of an ingame situation which (because of the way it presses the PCs'/players' buttons) generates action declarations from the players, which - when resolved - lead to a new situation that generates new decisions etc.

Eero Tuovinen describes it here as "the standard narrativistic model". This blog talks about the related idea of "no myth" roleplaying.

Note that the essence of "no myth" is not "no prep" but rather "no secret backstory as a factor in resolution". The GM might have stuff prepared (NPCs, other beings, worlds, maps, etc), and might have ideas (this NPC knows that person, hates this other person, etc); but it is only in the course of actual play that "the truth" of the gameworld is established. Which means that there is no role for "the truth" of the gameworld to be a constraint that the GM keeps secret from the players and applies in resolution and framing. That doesn't mean that backstory is unimportant - it's _crucial_, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is _known_ to the players!



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



In this context, an "adventure" is not relevantly different from an "adventure path" - it's a prescripted series of events (involving yetis, or beholders or whatever).

As I said, having the GM read you a story, with the bits that s/he reads being prompted by the choices you make (so a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure), is having the GM read you a story. That's not how I prefer to run or play RPGs.

Hence I don't find the culinary analogy very helpful. When I GM, I am not (metaphorically) the cook of a meal that the players consume, nor (literally) the author of a story that I then recite to them. I describe situations (eg in our last session, at one point - following a random encouner check - I told them that, when they returned to their ship's boat from a local market, it was surrounded by a group of armed and surly-looking individuals) and then they declare actions (eg in response to that description, the PCs waited until nightfall and then attacked the NPCs taking advantague of their superior technology).

There is no pre-authored story. There is situation, action, resolution, new situation. The new situations are established by a mixture of mechanical procedure (eg the encounter check I mentioned) and other guidelines. Some of those guidelines are implicit in the system (eg Traveller is a game about sci-fi adventure, so situations should be ones apt to lead to sci-fi adevnture, like using your superior tech to rout some tech level 3 locals). Others I have picked up over the years from a mixture of reading and experience (eg "always go where the action is" - so when a later encounter check indicated that the PCs encountered a pirate vessel while leaving orbit around the world they had been on, I decided that the "pirates" were connected to a bioweapons conpspiracy that is connected to that world, and that has been the main focus of the campaign so far).

To relate this back to the thread topic: for me, the 4e XP system works fine (as the game is played, the PCs advance in both mechanical and fictional terms, and the dramatic scope of the campaign grows larger and  becomes more cosmologically significant); so does the Cortex+ Heroic system (as the game is played, the players explore and develop their PCs, and those PCs grow gradually in power). So does Traveller, for that matter - ie there is no XP and mechanical development of PCs is pretty minimal.

But the 2nd ed AD&D and 3E/5e systems - especially in default "XP for fights" mode - really contribute nothing at all.



DerKastellan said:


> Regarding the other part of what is framing, railroading, etc, there are many implicit claims floating about from various statements, like...
> 
> * Playing an adventure path is inherently inferior experience because freedom. (I'm overstating this because there seems to be no rationale given as to why one style of play is inferior to another except by a matter of taste.)
> 
> ...



I've never said that they are universal truths; nor that anything is "inherently" inferior.

But I do stick to my claim that the point of XP in 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e is opaque to me: they don't plausibly _simulate_ anything (contrast advancement in Runequest, or even Rolemaster's default XP system); they aren't a pacing device (contrast 4e XP; or the somewhat similar but more GM-centric "milestone" idea found as a variant in 4e and 5e); and they aren't really a measure of skill in the manner of Gygaxian D&D, unless the game is _just about_ winning combat encounters (some 3E seems to be played that way, but I don't think that is the typical approach to play even for 3E, let alone 2nd ed AD&D or 5e).

A related claim: a recurrent consideration in 3E adventure design is ensuring that there are enough encounters to progress the PCs to meet the challenges at the culmination of the adventure. To me, this is a clear-cut case of the tail wagging the dog. Instead of adjusting the advancement mechanism to suit the sorts of adventures we want to write, we write adventures full of encounters that are pure filler, and pointless from the overall perspective of the adventure, so as to fit with our advancement system which is a sheer legacy of (quite different) Gygaxian RPGing. (Also: this claim is independent of the fact that, personally, I don't care for pre-written adventures at all.)


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## pemerton (Jan 7, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> You can engage the PCs directly without treating them as mere protagonists in some meaningless story. You just need to treat them as you would anyone else. If the bandits kidnap every elf in the village, then that may well include the Paladin's sister, if she is an elf in that village. Of course, if you only have the bandits kidnap elves _because_ there's an elf in the party, then you're back to meta-gaming a contrived coincidence.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> As regards to motivation, the players should probably make characters who are willing to rescue those elves regardless of family affiliation.



So you seem to be agreeing with what I said:



pemerton said:


> One obvious motivtion to enter a dungeon would be to rescue a captured family member. But by your lights it would be bad GMing (because "contrived") for the GM to write a dungeon with a captive in it who is related to one of the PCs.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You talk about a world in which "interesting things" happen, but that must mean "generically interesting, given some generic set of motivations".



I stick by my further claim that



pemerton said:


> This would seem to lead to many rootless PCs with few personal/intimate motivations - or else players who write their PCs to accord to the GM's world/plot.


The latter seems to be confirmed by the following part of your reply:



Saelorn said:


> If the players have resigned themselves to playing bystanders, such that the only sufficient motivation would _be_ to protagonize them, then that's their own fault. You may need to reboot the campaign with new characters. Everyone needs to work together if there's any hope of playing this game.



_Working together_, here, seems to mean exactly "players who write their PCs to accord with the GM's world/plot", so that eg if the GM is writing an elf-kidnapping adventure then the obligation is on me to write a PC who will rescue elves, if I don't want my PC to be a bystander.

That is pretty standard AD&D 2nd-ed, mid-to-late 80s through 90s RPGing. 

The most common two arguments I see on ENworld in favour of this approach are that (i) the GM has to have fun too, and (ii) anythinge else (eg improvisation, "no myth", etc) will lead to an incoherent and contradictory gameworld. But these are (obviously) both metagame considerations. What I don't really understand about your paritcular take on it is why you think it's all realistic and non-metagamey for players to build PCs who care about elves because the GM is all over elves, but terrible and verboten metagaming for a GM to build NPCs who care about elves because the _players_ are all over elves and have (eg) built this group of elven PCs.


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## Lanefan (Jan 7, 2018)

pemerton said:


> [/sblock]There is no "story" or "adventure" in advance of play - we generate PCs (using different methods, depending on system and inclination), establish some backstory, and then start playing! Which means that, as GM, I establish an initial scene/encounter (or, in the case of the Dark Sun game, elaborate on one established by the players) - the arena in Dark Sun, the steading in Cortex+ Vikings, Lt Li's approach in Classic Traveller - and then the players start declaring actions for their PCs.
> 
> I don't doubt that adventure paths are popular. Despite it often being assumed that railroading is bad, there's actually no evidence that RPGers, in general, dislike railroading. 2nd ed AD&D, Vampire and allied games, Call of Cthulhu, 3E/PF and 5e adventure paths - these are all very popular RPGs, and for all of them the default adventure is a largely pre-scripted railroad, where the function of the players is to provide some colour and characterisation via their PCs, and to make a few choices that have purely local significance ("Do we take the bus or the ferry?" "Do we interrogate the barkeep or the watch captain?") but that make little or no difference to the overall arc of events (eg if the players don't have their PCs interrogate anyone, then the GM makes sure the clue is found in the form of a note on the next dead body, or whatever).
> 
> The short version: the GM does not pre-author ingame events. The GM does not rely on secret backstory to inform adjudication. The basic driver of play is the GM's description of an ingame situation which (because of the way it presses the PCs'/players' buttons) generates action declarations from the players, which - when resolved - lead to a new situation that generates new decisions etc.



Which in the moment is fine, but when there's no "big picture" behind it all you're stuck there in the moment - and all you can do is lurch from moment to moment.  You as DM can't or don't or won't plan ahead such that some big event coming later can be foreshadowed or hinted at now, nor can you bring the currently-played moments into any sort of larger focus.



> Eero Tuovinen describes it here as "the standard narrativistic model". This blog talks about the related idea of "no myth" roleplaying.
> 
> Note that the essence of "no myth" is not "no prep" but rather "no secret backstory as a factor in resolution". The GM might have stuff prepared (NPCs, other beings, worlds, maps, etc), and might have ideas (this NPC knows that person, hates this other person, etc); but it is only in the course of actual play that "the truth" of the gameworld is established. Which means that there is no role for "the truth" of the gameworld to be a constraint that the GM keeps secret from the players and applies in resolution and framing. That doesn't mean that backstory is unimportant - it's _crucial_, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is _known_ to the players!



If there's no secrets, what's the point?  There's nothing to discover...which, when one of the theoretical pillars of the game is discovery (via exploration) seems kinda counter-intuitive and counterproductive.

The DM makes a game world (and by the by, a rule system), populates it, puts stories and adventures and what-have-you in it, and away we go.

I as player then get to explore this game world along with the other players, encountering and solving its mysteries as we go along but always able to wonder "What's over that next ridge?" or "What clue have we missed?".  We might explore things the DM expects us to, or we might not.  But we get to explore, and discover...which we can't do if we already know what's there! (which is also why I don't much enjoy playing in pre-published settings - same problem)

Having all the backstory be pre-known by the players is to me the same as showing us all the dungeon map before we go in - it ruins the mystery; and thus the game.  And having no predesigned world at all, with the whole thing instead being some sort of Schroedinger's Universe, is even worse - I want to know these things in the game world would be the same if I explored it again tomorrow with a different party after having not explored it today.



> In this context, an "adventure" is not relevantly different from an "adventure path" - it's a prescripted series of events (involving yetis, or beholders or whatever).



Or a made-up-on-the-fly series of events, and if I'm doing it right you-as-player won't be able to tell the difference.



> Hence I don't find the culinary analogy very helpful. When I GM, I am not (metaphorically) the cook of a meal that the players consume, nor (literally) the author of a story that I then recite to them. I describe situations (eg in our last session, at one point - following a random encouner check - I told them that, when they returned to their ship's boat from a local market, it was surrounded by a group of armed and surly-looking individuals) and then they declare actions (eg in response to that description, the PCs waited until nightfall and then attacked the NPCs taking advantague of their superior technology).



But if the players already know the back-story - which obviously includes what makes these guys tick including the logic/rationale/context of who they are and why they are there - they'll already know who the attackers are, right?  They'll have metagame information players really shouldn't have which will make dealing with their foes a much simpler matter than it probably should be.  Either that, or you're not following your own principles as noted above.



> There is no pre-authored story. There is situation, action, resolution, new situation.



Which is really sad, in that not looking any further takes away all kinds of opportunity for mystery and long-term story.

The group of armed and surly-looking men, for example.  You as DM can have them just be a random bunch of toughs, or they can be members of or hired by a gang whose toes the PCs have unwittingly stepped on (setting this gang up as later opponents or long-term villains), or they could be there as a distraction to allow someone to stow away on the PCs' ship (again setting something up for later).  The players (and characters) don't and shouldn't know at the meta-game level whether these men are a random interrupt or part of something bigger; they just have to deal with the moment.  You as DM, however, can juggle all sorts of things behind the scenes; and it makes for a better game if you do.



> To relate this back to the thread topic: for me, the 4e XP system works fine (as the game is played, the PCs advance in both mechanical and fictional terms, and the dramatic scope of the campaign grows larger and  becomes more cosmologically significant); so does the Cortex+ Heroic system (as the game is played, the players explore and develop their PCs, and those PCs grow gradually in power). So does Traveller, for that matter - ie there is no XP and mechanical development of PCs is pretty minimal.
> 
> But the 2nd ed AD&D and 3E/5e systems - especially in default "XP for fights" mode - really contribute nothing at all.



5e is more like 1e in that it's not straight xp-for-fights; avoidance, diplomacy, etc. get you the same reward.



> But I do stick to my claim that the point of XP in 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e is opaque to me: they don't plausibly _simulate_ anything (contrast advancement in Runequest, or even Rolemaster's default XP system); they aren't a pacing device (contrast 4e XP; or the somewhat similar but more GM-centric "milestone" idea found as a variant in 4e and 5e); and they aren't really a measure of skill in the manner of Gygaxian D&D, unless the game is _just about_ winning combat encounters (some 3E seems to be played that way, but I don't think that is the typical approach to play even for 3E, let alone 2nd ed AD&D or 5e).



Xp aren't very simulationist and are probably best just left that way.  They do work as intended if used as individual character rewards based on what a character does, to measure the mechanical advancement of characters as they progress through the game.



> A related claim: a recurrent consideration in 3E adventure design is ensuring that there are enough encounters to progress the PCs to meet the challenges at the culmination of the adventure. To me, this is a clear-cut case of the tail wagging the dog. Instead of adjusting the advancement mechanism to suit the sorts of adventures we want to write, we write adventures full of encounters that are pure filler, and pointless from the overall perspective of the adventure, so as to fit with our advancement system which is a sheer legacy of (quite different) Gygaxian RPGing. (Also: this claim is independent of the fact that, personally, I don't care for pre-written adventures at all.)



The root cause of this problem in 3e-4e-(sort-of-5e) is that level advancement is simply far too fast.  Fix this, and these other headaches go away.

Lanefan


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## Manbearcat (Jan 7, 2018)

Few comments on the "contrived" component of conversation that  @_*pemerton*_ and  @_*Saelorn*_:

1)  D&D and all TTRPGs have a premise (sometimes multiple), themes, and tropes.

2)  D&D and all TTRPGs have machinery/procedures by which (a) the game is expected to be facilitated and (b) the fiction is meant to be generated and interfaced with by physical players who are not able to actually interact with/inhabit the imaginary space which the participants are to share.

Given 1 and 2 above, I'm left wondering how is that D&D specifically, and TTRPGs generally, are going to be anything but overburdened by contrivance?  

1 contracts the creative space such that it focuses it on very specific things to the exclusion of other things.

2 makes a game of imagination capable of being played at all (while still being called a game) and enables the distillation of and interaction with 1.

The only way I see to remove or significantly mitigate the "contrivance-based" nature of TTRPGing is to broaden, vanillia-ize, or dilute a game's premise (which you buy into to play at all!), themes, and tropes such that it is barely recognizable as a thing...and then have super generic rules that don't perpetuate much of anything.  

I'm thinking:

"Lets play a game!"

"Ok, what kind of game?"

"A game where you do stuff!"

"What kind of stuff?"

"Stuff that happens!"

"Ummmm...ok, what is the game about?"

"Whatever!"

"Ummmm...how do we make stuff happen in this game about whatever?"

"You tell me what you want to do and I'll just tell you what happens...maybe if you give me candy better stuff will happen?"


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## pemerton (Jan 7, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> 1)  D&D and all TTRPGs have a premise (sometimes multiple), themes, and tropes.
> 
> 2)  D&D and all TTRPGs have machinery/procedures by which (a) the game is expected to be facilitated and (b) the fiction is meant to be generated and interfaced with by physical players who are not able to actually interact with/inhabit the imaginary space which the participants are to share.
> 
> ...



I think the model that has emerged pretty clearly in  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s most recent reply to me is:

the GM supplies all the theme and tropes, under the guise of "worldbuilding" (thus answering your point 1); and,

the players play PCs who respond to those themes and tropes without injecting any of their own (thus answering your point 2).​
I use the word "injecting" deliberately - the player can build an elf paladin if s/he likes, but elfishness and paladinhood will become significant elements in play only if _the GM_ - by dint of his/her "worldbuilding" - choose to make it so.



Manbearcat said:


> "Lets play a game!"
> 
> "Ok, what kind of game?"
> 
> ...



Well, it seems at  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s table that "the stuff" is _something made salient by the D&D rulebooks_ - so there'll be dungeons, but probably not family relationships - and the "whatever" is the GM's world, which the players will learn about as they go along. The burden is clearly on the players to just follow whatever cues the GM provides them with: so if the GM writes a story about rescuing captured elves, it's the players' job to write PCs who find rescuing captured elves a compelling thing. I don't know what happens at Saelorn's table if the players decide to have their PCs kidnap more elves on behalf of the "bad guys". (How do we even tell who are the "bad guys" without GM metagaming by just telling the players who they're meant to fight? I assume that's all taken for granted and implied via the alignment rules, the way the GM frames a patron encounter, etc.)


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 8, 2018)

Pulling this back to the original discussion and perhaps being a bit too literal in reply.

An experience point is an arbitrary amount of work given out to represent learning on the part of a character during an adventure.
How much it's worth has much to do with the individual DM.  They're not worth as much if they're given out like candy, and they're worth a lot more if they're given out frugally.  Same with any other currency that you use to buy something (levels)

The issue of value is strange though in a closed market where there's only one thing you can do with a currency.  If all XP are used for is to benchmark how close you are to gaining a level, then there are better ways to go about level advancement.  It's just another fiddly bit that doesn't need to be calculated.  Just gain a level when you hit a milestone.  (in a team game it doesn't matter who lifted more stuff if the whole team survived and achieved together level them all - if someone died and didn't go through the majority of things, level them later - miss a milestone).

In an open market where there are a few things to spend XP on, then it makes sense that there would be a increasingly rigid experience system.  When you gain enough expeirence you gain a level.  Maybe instead of that level you want a new relationship/contact that can affect the game.  Maybe you want a magic item.  There are many examples of this sort of thing if you look around and find other game systems that are less level based; however, there's plenty of ways to house rule things.

Being very literal - 
At face value 1gp - 1xp - I'm pretty sure that's 1ed/2ed only.

Being more open to things I'd allow if the players wanted it unanimously.  Table needs to be in agreeance and giving up a level.  Additionally, it's wise to keep in mind that giving up a level early on (level 2 at 300XP) is much different than giving up a level later on (level 20 at 55000XP)

- Dumping a level for an equal amount of gold.
- Dumping a level for a level appropriate magic item
- Dumping a level for a level appropriate favor or contact - given that there needs to be an in game reason for such things - 

Things I'm generally against would be dumping a level for a feat or a stat increase.  That tends to be overpowered or cause odd rules issues later on. 

Another thought that comes to me as I'm typing this is that a character's experience point total can be used to assign a sort of cosmic value to the character.  As far as the powers that be are concerned, Cosimo the farmer who might have accrued 15XP over the course of his life by shooing off kobolds isn't as important to the grand scheme of things as Cosimo the Paladin at 165,000XP or Alexi the Ranger at 23000 XP.

So in a world where Cosimo bites it and True Resurrection isn't available, if Alexi wanted to drop his eighth level of experience once earned for the favor of resurrecting Cosimo (because they're brothers or something and there's good plot around it) I'd allow it, but Cosimo would come back at 11000XP (Level 5) and have a lot of role-playing ahead of him and enemies to hide from.  

Just some thoughts.


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## Lanefan (Jan 8, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> The issue of value is strange though in a closed market where there's only one thing you can do with a currency.  If all XP are used for is to benchmark how close you are to gaining a level, then there are better ways to go about level advancement.  It's just another fiddly bit that doesn't need to be calculated.  Just gain a level when you hit a milestone.  (in a team game it doesn't matter who lifted more stuff if the whole team survived and achieved together level them all - if someone died and didn't go through the majority of things, level them later - miss a milestone).



I disagree that it "doesn't matter who lifted more stuff" - I'd rather see the rewards go to those who pull more than their weight, rather than those who let others do the work.  Otherwise the system counterproductively encourages doing less, and taking less risk.



> Being very literal -
> At face value 1gp - 1xp - I'm pretty sure that's 1ed/2ed only.



1e only.  This was removed for 2e, largely because so many tables weren't using it in 1e.



> Being more open to things I'd allow if the players wanted it unanimously.  Table needs to be in agreeance and giving up a level.  Additionally, it's wise to keep in mind that giving up a level early on (level 2 at 300XP) is much different than giving up a level later on (level 20 at 55000XP)
> 
> - Dumping a level for an equal amount of gold.
> - Dumping a level for a level appropriate magic item
> ...



Danger Will Robinson!

Anything where PCs can in any way trade in xp to gain monetary or magical wealth is going to lead to headaches that will unfortunately greatly outweigh the benefit (slowing your advancement down): they'll all end up way too rich.

There's perhaps an argument for going the other way - allowing wealth to be used to in effect "buy" xp - but I'm not a fan of that either.

Lanefan


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 8, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I disagree that it "doesn't matter who lifted more stuff" - I'd rather see the rewards go to those who pull more than their weight, rather than those who let others do the work.  Otherwise the system counterproductively encourages doing less, and taking less risk.




I'll agree to disagree with this thought, if only because regardless of who does what, the entire group needs to accept risk in order to accomplish anything.  If someone isn't pulling their weight in one encounter it will balance out when they're the only person who can do anything to finish the next one.  Of course, if the character isn't there then they don't get the benefit of passing the milestone.



> 1e only.  This was removed for 2e, largely because so many tables weren't using it in 1e.




Thank you



> Danger Will Robinson!
> 
> Anything where PCs can in any way trade in xp to gain monetary or magical wealth is going to lead to headaches that will unfortunately greatly outweigh the benefit (slowing your advancement down): they'll all end up way too rich.
> 
> ...




I used to believe there was something as "way too rich" then I had a player that became a merchant on the side.  Then all the players had mercantile interests and were all rather wealthy.  All it really did was give them the resources to take on different levels of challenges and at the end of the day even if you have a well-equipped army at your beck and call, that doesn't save you from competitors and the random appearance of the burning legion (bad WoW reference made to make a point.)

End of day, it's about what you're willing to take on as a DM.

Be well
KB


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## Lanefan (Jan 8, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> I'll agree to disagree with this thought, if only because regardless of who does what, the entire group needs to accept risk in order to accomplish anything.  If someone isn't pulling their weight in one encounter it will balance out when they're the only person who can do anything to finish the next one.



In theory this is true.  In practice I find it's quite often - not always, but quite often - the same characters taking the risks over the long term and the same characters avoiding them.  I'd like the system to encourage those who get stuck in, somehow.



> I used to believe there was something as "way too rich" then I had a player that became a merchant on the side.  Then all the players had mercantile interests and were all rather wealthy.  All it really did was give them the resources to take on different levels of challenges and at the end of the day even if you have a well-equipped army at your beck and call, that doesn't save you from competitors and the random appearance of the burning legion (bad WoW reference made to make a point.)
> 
> End of day, it's about what you're willing to take on as a DM.



Yeah, I once had a group get into corporate dealings on the side.  They ended up owning a couple of countries.  Never again.

And the problem I find with having lots of wealth in the party isn't the wealth itself, but that it invariably ends up concentrated in a few long-surviving characters who are lucky enough not to suffer major losses along the way; leading to some rather wild imbalances that are really hard to remove once they get entrenched.

5e, like 1e and 2e, isn't as hung up on wealth-by-level as 3e and 4e were - but it's still possible to overdo it.

Lanefan


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 8, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Working together, here, seems to mean exactly "players who write their PCs to accord with the GM's world/plot", so that eg if the GM is writing an elf-kidnapping adventure then the obligation is on me to write a PC who will rescue elves, if I don't want my PC to be a bystander.
> 
> That is pretty standard AD&D 2nd-ed, mid-to-late 80s through 90s RPGing.
> 
> The most common two arguments I see on ENworld in favour of this approach are that (i) the GM has to have fun too, and (ii) anythinge else (eg improvisation, "no myth", etc) will lead to an incoherent and contradictory gameworld. But these are (obviously) both metagame considerations. What I don't really understand about your paritcular take on it is why you think it's all realistic and non-metagamey for players to build PCs who care about elves because the GM is all over elves, but terrible and verboten metagaming for a GM to build NPCs who care about elves because the players are all over elves and have (eg) built this group of elven PCs.



From a practical standpoint, creating a world requires a lot more work than creating a character, so the GM needs more time to do that and it would be impractical for the potential players to intervene at that stage. If you have a stable group in place _before_ the DM starts creating the world, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking suggestions on what kind of world they want the game to be set in. If one of the players is tired of elves, then they could well reach a group consensus that the next game they play should take place in a world that doesn't have any elves, or where elves are extinct.

All of that is out-of-game stuff, though. It takes place before session one, or even before character creation. Meta-gaming isn't a consideration at this stage, because meta-gaming (by the common definition, rather than a technical definition) is only a meaningful term in regards to the actual _game_ - how each character within the game world goes about the process of making their decisions. The main benefit of having the GM pre-establish the facts of the world instead of inventing everything as the story unfolds, aside from issues with consistency, is that it prevents the possibility of meta-gaming on their part. You never have to worry that the GM altered something to hurt you, or even to help you, if you know that it was written-in-stone before you ever got near it. (Failing that, you just need to trust that the GM isn't going to meta-game, which can be difficult in-the-moment when the GM needs to account for what everyone knows and doesn't know and compensate for their own anti-meta-game bias without over-compensating for it.)


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> In theory this is true.  In practice I find it's quite often - not always, but quite often - the same characters taking the risks over the long term and the same characters avoiding them.  I'd like the system to encourage those who get stuck in, somehow.
> 
> Yeah, I once had a group get into corporate dealings on the side.  They ended up owning a couple of countries.  Never again.
> 
> ...




Hi Lane - 

So on point one about players owning countries.  I feel for you.  I made that mistake once too.

Here's the deal though, any player with significant wealth who tries to disrupt the region's status quo is going to have a lot of people looking to maintain it.  Being completely honest, that's the kind of change that will have NPCs of completely divergent alignments working together to prevent it.  Real world mercantile guilds of massive wealth ran into that problem when nobles simply banished them instead of paying debt, and had the might to do so.  There's absolutely zero reason why wealth should be allowed to pool in the first place, players will mess up if challenged in a way they don't plan for.

So I'd argue that every DM gets screwed once, then we get savvy.

On the point of "same characters avoid risk" 

- Create an encounter where the party dies unless the super conservative character takes one.  
- Make it obvious but not rail roady - there are tons of ways to do this on a dungeon crawl or exploration mission.
- When the party TPKs the other players will take care of it.  When the party succeeds, problem solved.

The world isn't always able to be worked around.  If you get blamed for rail roading the character in question, tell them that you can't always avoid everything, even in real life people get cornered into things.  If you've got to go meta, there's supposedly tons of examples of the player not pulling weight.

To each his or her own.
KB


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## pemerton (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Which in the moment is fine, but when there's no "big picture" behind it all you're stuck there in the moment - and all you can do is lurch from moment to moment.  You as DM can't or don't or won't plan ahead such that some big event coming later can be foreshadowed or hinted at now
> 
> <snip>
> 
> not looking any further takes away all kinds of opportunity for mystery and long-term story.



We've had this discussion before. Everything you say here is not true.

Here are four mysteries that were signalled in the actual play reports I quoted in the post you replied to:

* Who killed the veiled alliance contact?

* Who killed 29's master?

* Why are Norhern Lights behaving strangely?

* What is the nature of Lt Li's bioweapons program?​
The Dark Sun game is about three sessions in. The first mystery is resolved - in the second session, a fourth PC was introduced as the assassin. The second mystery is still open. Furthermore, there is potential foreshadowing there - the purse with 14 gp may turn out to be very significant. (We don't know yet.)

The Cortex+ Heroic game is about fiwe sessions in. That mystery hasn't been resolved yet, as the PCs have failed to gather any significant amount of information about it - all they know is that the giant shaman has also seen signs of pending doom (this was the result of a player spending a resource to establish a social resource at the giants' court, as is described in the post that I linked to above).

The Traveller game is also about five session in. The mystery of the bioweapons program remains unresolved, but some things have been learned. Here's a non-exhaustive list: that there were agents of the program on the world of Byron; that Lt Li kidnapped and (it seems) infected a marine who was convalescing in a naval hospital (this was a PC introduced in the second session); and that there are Imperial officials who are suspicious of her activities and want them to be further investigated (this followed one of the players triggering a patron encounter roll, and the roll delivering a Diplomat as propsective patron).

And to step back from examples to the more general point: imagine if you (Lanefan) read a post saying it was impossible to run a successful D&D campaign that ran for more than 5 years. Or that involved conflict between PCs. You would think those claims were absurd, because your own play experience is of (successfully) running and playing in campaigns that run for more than 5 years, and include conflict between PCs.

Well, that's how I respond to your claim above, which frankly comes across as based purely ignorance. It's not that you've tried to run a game in the way I'm describing and found it hard to have mysteries or complex storylines. You're just speculating. And I'm here to tell you, on the basis of actual play experience, that it can be done and it's not very hard.



Lanefan said:


> If there's no secrets, what's the point?  There's nothing to discover



This is also just wrong.

Here's something to discover in my Traveller game: what is the nature of Lt Li's bioweaons program? That's unknown. But it's not a _secret_, because I - the GM - don't know either.

Here's a more banal example from the same campaign: what sorts of vessels do the bioweapons conspirators have access to? In the first session, all we knew was that they used to have a yacht, but then (as part of his backstory) one of the PCs won it from them gambling. (This was the backstory that explained the noble PCs ownership of a yacht.) Hence the reason that Lt Li had to recruit the players to ferry materials from Ardour-3 to Byron - it was the PCs who had the necessary ship!

In the fourth session, it became clear that the conpsirators also had access to another vessel capable of firing on surface targets from orbits. It was established that this was the laboratory research vessel St Christopher. (Which I had taken from an old White Dwarf adventure, Amber to Red.) I decided to introduce the St Christopher into the game after generating a NPC - an ex-naval forward observer - on my bus ride to the house of my friend hosting the session. I was driven by two thoughts - I thought it would be fun to test out the directed fire rules; and I thought having a NPC call down directed fire onto the PCs would drive some action and decision-making, which would prevent the game bogging down in investigation and indecision at the bioweapons outpost the PCs had taken over at the end of the previous session - and the debates at the wind-down of that session had made be a bit worried that the players might get bogged down. As it turns out, my plan to force some decision-making worked; and at least a couple of the players also found the "drive our ATVs across the barren world trying to avoid getting blown up by laser fire being called in from an orbiting ship" epsiode exciting.

Then, in the most recent session, as the PCs were departing from their orbit around the world that is the source of the bioweapons conspirators' pathogen, the starship encounter roll turned up an encounter with a pirate patrol cruiser. The PCs decided to intercept this cruiser's communications (I can't now remember why - I think the players were supsicious of a cruiser turning up on a fairly isolated world uninteresting for anything but this pathogen) and learned that it had jumped from Olyx, Lt Li's base world and the PCs next intended destination. The decision to have the "piratical" nature of the cruiser be its connection to the bioweapons conspiracy was mine, as GM - made on the basis of the principle "Always go where the action is." It established that the conspirators also have access to a patrol cruiser (not too surprising given the strong involvement of Imperial marines, naval and scouts personnel that had already been established in play); and it prompted discussion over what will probably be the main focus of next session: do the PCs try and take control of this cruiser for their own purposes? (Here's a thread I started to get advice for my players on this question.) 

The general point: there can be systems and methods for introducing new content into the game that don't require the GM to have authored it in advance. Random encounter checks are one; scene framing techniques are another (and the previous two paragraphs you how you combine these two - "indie"-style Classic Traveller); the sort of system that let the player introduce the giant shame into the game is another.



Lanefan said:


> The DM makes a game world (and by the by, a rule system), populates it, puts stories and adventures and what-have-you in it, and away we go



That's one way to run a game. My point is that it's not the only way.



Lanefan said:


> The group of armed and surly-looking men, for example.  You as DM can have them just be a random bunch of toughs, or they can be members of or hired by a gang whose toes the PCs have unwittingly stepped on (setting this gang up as later opponents or long-term villains), or they could be there as a distraction to allow someone to stow away on the PCs' ship (again setting something up for later).  The players (and characters) don't and shouldn't know at the meta-game level whether these men are a random interrupt or part of something bigger; they just have to deal with the moment.  You as DM, however, can juggle all sorts of things behind the scenes; and it makes for a better game if you do.



This is very obvious. Notice also that I don't have to decide anything about the NPCs _at that particular moment of play_ in order to do this.

Also, "juggling things behind the scenes" just means "keep various possibilities in mind when later deciding what would be an interesting thing to introduce into the game".



Lanefan said:


> Having all the backstory be pre-known by the players



I have never said any such thing. I have said that the GM does not use secret backstory as a factor in adjudication.

To give a concrete example: when the player wants to spend a resource to establish (in the scene) a giant shaman who is sympathetic to the PCs' cause, under my principles I'm not allowed to veto that action declaration on the basis that there is no giant shaman there.

Here's an example of some backstory that wasn't know by the players until they discovered it in play: Lt Li is a bioweapons conspirator (the players discovered that when the PC spy seduced her, and successfully interrogated her, and I had to make up some stuff for her to tell him); the bioweapons conspiracy is based on the planet Olyx (I can't remember excalty when I made this up, but I think it was introduced after the PCs took over the research outpost on Byron and interrogated the people they had captured there); the bioweapons conspirators have access to the various vessels I menteiond above.

The difference between authoring in advance and authoring in response to player action declarations and other discussion and interaction at the table is that the former is (in my view) railroading, as it is the GM who establishes all the possibilities and outcomes of investigation and action; whereas the latter is a collective endeavour ini which the fiction that emerges contains elements resulting from the contributions and participation of everyone at the table.



Lanefan said:


> having no predesigned world at all, with the whole thing instead being some sort of Schroedinger's Universe, is even worse - I want to know these things in the game world would be the same if I explored it again tomorrow with a different party after having not explored it today.



That's a statement of preference - you would rather have the GM read you his/her notes than participate in jointly creating a shared fiction - but it doesn't show that the latter can't be done. (By the way, I don't really follow "Schroedinger's Universe". The imaginary universe doesn't become more "real" because it was written yesterday rather than today. The Schroedinger phenomenon in particle physics is interesting and surprising because one generally takes the real world to have an existence and character that is independent of human interaction with it. But no one but a child would suppose that imaginary worlds exist indpedently of their human creators.)



Lanefan said:


> Or a made-up-on-the-fly series of events, and if I'm doing it right you-as-player won't be able to tell the difference.



Well, they might tell the difference because they can see that their contributions are having an effect on the content of the shared fiction. In any event, I don't know why you would do this, given it seems to contradict the very strong preference you state in the sentence I quoted just above.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 9, 2018)

pemerton said:


> The imaginary universe doesn't become more "real" because it was written yesterday rather than today.



It does become an _objective_ place, though, which is important. It exists the way that it exists, free of interference from outside of that universe. It demonstrates basic linear-time causality. I don't have to be afraid of changing its past, based on any of my actions in the present (short of time travel).

And in that sense, it _does_ become more _real_. It may never be _entirely_ real, because it's still just an imaginary universe, but at least it becomes a _believable_ imaginary universe. Every conceivable universe worth exploring must demonstrate internal causality, and if you don't even have that, then what remains is not worth buying into.


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## Lanefan (Jan 9, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Here's the deal though, any player with significant wealth who tries to disrupt the region's status quo is going to have a lot of people looking to maintain it.  Being completely honest, that's the kind of change that will have NPCs of completely divergent alignments working together to prevent it.  Real world mercantile guilds of massive wealth ran into that problem when nobles simply banished them instead of paying debt, and had the might to do so.  There's absolutely zero reason why wealth should be allowed to pool in the first place, players will mess up if challenged in a way they don't plan for.



Yet if the PCs don't go into business etc. wealth is still going to pool around them - the loot from their adventures. (and in the game I'm referring to it didn't help that some of the PCs _were_ the local nobles; in fairness to them they didn't abuse this too badly in their business dealings...but they also didn't run themselves out of town either  )



> So I'd argue that every DM gets screwed once, then we get savvy.



If by "savvy" you mean flat-out stating that if any such nonsense rears its ugly head ever again someone else will be DMing it because I won't, then yes. 



> On the point of "same characters avoid risk"
> 
> - Create an encounter where the party dies unless the super conservative character takes one.
> - Make it obvious but not rail roady - there are tons of ways to do this on a dungeon crawl or exploration mission.
> ...



Sounds easy in theory.  In practice one of three things happens:

1. The rest of the PCs (or some of them) find and employ a viable exit or avoidance strategy I didn't see coming, and thus save the party; or
2. The usual suspects take lots of risks, some of them die, but some (and the coward) survive; or
3. The coward takes the risk this one time, saves the day, and we never hear the end of it.

In well over 30 years of DMing I've only ever managed one actual TPK (despite several very close calls) and that came because the party's tank in the lead got dominated against the party and mowed them down one by one as they arrived at the bottom of a shaft leading to the encounter.  The tank, permanently dominated, was then left to starve...which he duly did, after eating his way through the only available food source: the party corpses.

Lan-"bloody resilient things, these adventuring parties"-efan


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## Lanefan (Jan 9, 2018)

pemerton said:


> We've had this discussion before. Everything you say here is not true.
> 
> Here are four mysteries that were signalled in the actual play reports I quoted in the post you replied to:
> 
> ...



That's four examples of questions whose answers lie in the secret backstory which the DM knows and the players don't - yet.  Seems fine to me.



> And to step back from examples to the more general point: imagine if you (Lanefan) read a post saying it was impossible to run a successful D&D campaign that ran for more than 5 years. Or that involved conflict between PCs. You would think those claims were absurd, because your own play experience is of (successfully) running and playing in campaigns that run for more than 5 years, and include conflict between PCs.



I've had those conversations... 



> Well, that's how I respond to your claim above, which frankly comes across as based purely ignorance. It's not that you've tried to run a game in the way I'm describing and found it hard to have mysteries or complex storylines. You're just speculating. And I'm here to tell you, on the basis of actual play experience, that it can be done and it's not very hard.
> 
> This is also just wrong.
> 
> Here's something to discover in my Traveller game: what is the nature of Lt Li's bioweaons program? That's unknown. But it's not a _secret_, because I - the GM - don't know either.



Well somebody has to know, otherwise how can it develop and hope to maintain any internal logic?  And, it seems, someone did know...



> Here's a more banal example from the same campaign: what sorts of vessels do the bioweapons conspirators have access to? In the first session, all we knew was that they used to have a yacht, but then (as part of his backstory) one of the PCs won it from them gambling. (This was the backstory that explained the noble PCs ownership of a yacht.) Hence the reason that Lt Li had to recruit the players to ferry materials from Ardour-3 to Byron - it was the PCs who had the necessary ship!



OK, so the conspirators don't have a ship.  Got it.



> In the fourth session, it became clear that the conpsirators also had access to another vessel capable of firing on surface targets from orbits. It was established that this was the laboratory research vessel St Christopher. (Which I had taken from an old White Dwarf adventure, Amber to Red.) I decided to introduce the St Christopher into the game after generating a NPC - an ex-naval forward observer - on my bus ride to the house of my friend hosting the session.



But wait...now it seems the conspirators do have a ship; which means they had said ship all along in hindsight, making it an element of a secret backstory that you-as-DM chose to reveal during session 4. (and introducing some inconsistency if said ship could also have been firing on them or doing anything else relevant (including something as simple as just being noticed to be present at all) during sessions 1-3)



> I was driven by two thoughts - I thought it would be fun to test out the directed fire rules; and I thought having a NPC call down directed fire onto the PCs would drive some action and decision-making, which would prevent the game bogging down in investigation and indecision at the bioweapons outpost the PCs had taken over at the end of the previous session - and the debates at the wind-down of that session had made be a bit worried that the players might get bogged down. As it turns out, my plan to force some decision-making worked; and at least a couple of the players also found the "drive our ATVs across the barren world trying to avoid getting blown up by laser fire being called in from an orbiting ship" epsiode exciting.



OK, though I-as-player might have been annoyed that we didn't get the chance to investigate the outpost and decide on our own what to do next without being forced.



> Then, in the most recent session, as the PCs were departing from their orbit around the world that is the source of the bioweapons conspirators' pathogen, the starship encounter roll turned up an encounter with a pirate patrol cruiser. The PCs decided to intercept this cruiser's communications (I can't now remember why - I think the players were supsicious of a cruiser turning up on a fairly isolated world uninteresting for anything but this pathogen) and learned that it had jumped from Olyx, Lt Li's base world and the PCs next intended destination. The decision to have the "piratical" nature of the cruiser be its connection to the bioweapons conspiracy was mine, as GM - made on the basis of the principle "Always go where the action is." It established that the conspirators also have access to a patrol cruiser (not too surprising given the strong involvement of Imperial marines, naval and scouts personnel that had already been established in play); and it prompted discussion over what will probably be the main focus of next session: do the PCs try and take control of this cruiser for their own purposes?



And...so now the conspirators have two ships, one of which is a fast patrol ship.  So, as again they've in hindsight had this ship all along and thus could have used it to ferry the stuff from Ardour-3 to Byron (and hidden the ferrying as part of a normal patrol, even!), what did they need the yacht for again?

This is where the DM knowing at least some of this stuff ahead of time is invaluable: you can avoid these sort of plot holes and inconsistencies.



> The general point: there can be systems and methods for introducing new content into the game that don't require the GM to have authored it in advance.



Yes, but the DM has to be bloody careful when doing this.  The more solidly things are nailed down in advance, the easier it is to introduce new elements on the fly and have them remain consistent and fit in.


> This is very obvious. Notice also that I don't have to decide anything about the NPCs _at that particular moment of play_ in order to do this.



Though I maintain you should, so that if one of 'em gets charmed and questioned (a common enough occurrence) you've already got the answers and backstory ready to go and can thus be consistent with your answers without worrying about talking yourself into a corner.



> I have never said any such thing.



Actually, you have.  From post 68, this thread:


			
				pemerton post 68 said:
			
		

> That doesn't mean that backstory is unimportant - it's crucial, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is known to the players!



Soounds to me like that's saying the players know the backstory.



> To give a concrete example: when the player wants to spend a resource to establish (in the scene) a giant shaman who is sympathetic to the PCs' cause, under my principles I'm not allowed to veto that action declaration on the basis that there is no giant shaman there.



Well, if you want to give away your world like that, more power to ya.  Far as I'm concerned it's the DM's world and she can veto anything she flippin' well wants to - as long as she's internally consistent.



> Here's an example of some backstory that wasn't know by the players until they discovered it in play: Lt Li is a bioweapons conspirator (the players discovered that when the PC spy seduced her, and successfully interrogated her, and I had to make up some stuff for her to tell him); the bioweapons conspiracy is based on the planet Olyx (I can't remember excalty when I made this up, but I think it was introduced after the PCs took over the research outpost on Byron and interrogated the people they had captured there); the bioweapons conspirators have access to the various vessels I menteiond above.



OK, but how does this agree with what I quoted above from post 68 where the players know the backstory?



> The difference between authoring in advance and authoring in response to player action declarations and other discussion and interaction at the table is that the former is (in my view) railroading, as it is the GM who establishes all the possibilities and outcomes of investigation and action; whereas the latter is a collective endeavour ini which the fiction that emerges contains elements resulting from the contributions and participation of everyone at the table.



You have a particularly harsh definition of railroading, it seems.  Of course the DM establishes the possiblities and outcomes (and odds, etc.) of investigations and actions - that's part of her job as the builder and maintainer of the game world.



> That's a statement of preference - you would rather have the GM read you his/her notes than participate in jointly creating a shared fiction - but it doesn't show that the latter can't be done. (By the way, I don't really follow "Schroedinger's Universe". The imaginary universe doesn't become more "real" because it was written yesterday rather than today. The Schroedinger phenomenon in particle physics is interesting and surprising because one generally takes the real world to have an existence and character that is independent of human interaction with it. But no one but a child would suppose that imaginary worlds exist indpedently of their human creators.)



One of the first things I do when designing a world is draw a map of some of it.  Once that map is done to my satisfaction it gets "locked in".  I might add minor elements to it later, but nothing will ever come off it unless game events dictate that it should e.g. a city gets wiped out.  That map makes the world much more "real" than if there was no map; it's something concrete that I and others can look at and glean the same information from.  And, as world design is strictly the purview of the DM, the players don't share in the making of said map.  It's long done before any players ever get near it.



> Well, they might tell the difference because they can see that their contributions are having an effect on the content of the shared fiction. In any event, I don't know why you would do this, given it seems to contradict the very strong preference you state in the sentence I quoted just above.



Making stuff up on the fly happens, usually when the players throw me a curveball and go somewhere or do something I simply haven't prepped and-or didn't see coming.  Some of the time I can make it look like nothing's different - they still think I'm running off my notes etc. - but sometimes it's obvious I'm winging it, usually because I talk my way into inconsistencies; greatly annoying myself in the process.

But even when I'm winging it I'm rarely if ever using elements introduced by the players or PCs.  What I will do sometimes is if I hear a good idea from a player I'll make a note and sit on it for long enough (several months, usually) that the player whose idea it was has forgotten about it.  Then I'll use it, giving credit afterwards if asked.

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 9, 2018)

In a spirit of response which I hope is not too combative!



Kobold Boots said:


> An experience point is an arbitrary amount of work given out to represent learning on the part of a character during an adventure.



This claim is already controversial - that is, it takes a stand on an issue of game design where other stands are possible. To give concrete examples: I think it is largely true of XP in Rolemaster. I think it is largely false of XP in classic D&D, which are awarded to represent skill and success on the part of the player. (Hence, Gygax in his DMG explains that novice players should ideally begin at 1st level so as to get the full learning experience; but experienced players who have already undergone that learning experience, and raised PCs above 1st level, may wish to begin PCs at levels higher than 1st. They have already undergone the requisite learning and demonstrated the requisite skill in raising other PCs from 1st level.)



Kobold Boots said:


> If all XP are used for is to benchmark how close you are to gaining a level, then there are better ways to go about level advancement. It's just another fiddly bit that doesn't need to be calculated. Just gain a level when you hit a milestone.



This also takes stands on issues that can differe across RPGs.

What is a "milestone", for instance? In Cortex+ Heroic, two milestones are defined for each character - eg Wolverine's "Old Friends, Old Enemies" milestone earns him 1 XP for identifying a character (PC or NPC) as an old foe or old ally, and 10 XP when he declares his old ally to now be an enemy (or vice versa); Captain America's "Mentor the Hero" milestone earns hims 1 XP when he chooses to aid a specific hero for the first time, and 10 XP when he either gives leadership of the team to his chosen hero or forces his chosen hero to resign or step down from the team.

In our MHRP game, Nightcrawler completed his "Romantic"milestone (the 10 XP trigger is "10 XP when you either break off a romantic relationship, or seek to enter into a more
permanent partnership and ask your love to marry you" - in our case, Nightcrawler proposed to his lover in order to manipulate her for other purposes, and then left her jilted on top of the Capitol building). He spent some of the XP earned to replace his "Devout Catholic" trait with a new trait, "The Devil Within", to reflect the direction the player was taking the character in; and took a new milestone that I wrote up, in discussion with the player, to fit with this change of direction: 1 XP when he deliberately does a bad thing; 10 XP when either he brings an ally to his own state of disillusionment, or when an ally bring him back to the side of righteousness.

So milestones are devices, worked out between GM and player, for setting defined paths of character exploration/development; and meeting the milestone triggers earns XP that are used to build and rebuild the PC.

That's not a system for PC advancement that everyone would want in every RPG.

As I understand it, "milestone" advancement in 5e means earning a level when the GM thinks the relevant point in "the story" has been reached. That might work where the main aim of play is for the players to work through the GM's story, and the main aim of levelling is to keep up with the challenges in the GM's story; but it obviously won't suit a Cortex+-type game, where the focus is more on exploring the character's development (eg it's Captain America's player who is expected to decide whether to hand over leadership to his chosen hero, or kick that hero out of the team - that's not the GM's decision!).

Those sort of milestones won't work in a Gygaxian game, either, where there is no "story" but rather a dungeon to be explored and looted, and XP are a measure of how skilled a particular player is in obtaining that loot.

So replacing XP with GM-determined milestones might suit some RPGing, but not all RPGing.



Kobold Boots said:


> They're not worth as much if they're given out like candy, and they're worth a lot more if they're given out frugally. Same with any other currency that you use to buy something (levels)



This is true only assuming that levels are valued by the person accruing the XP (as you note, and unlike actual currencies, XP are not a universal medium of exchange that is useful whatever it is one wishes to acquire), _and_ that levels are scarce.

If levels are not valued by players, then they may not care particularly about whether they earn many or few XP. If levels are not scarce (eg they are a 4e-style pacing device, not a Gygaxian-style measure of player skill) then players may sometime want fast pacing and sometimes slow pacing, depending on varying taste and mood.

If XP are so rare that gaining levels ceases to be a signifcant element of play then players may shift their focus to other aspects of gameplay, resulting in XP not being valued even though they are frugally awarded.

I think the above two paragraphs aren't just hypotheticals but describe actual things that have happened in various RPG groups over the years (including some I've participated in).



Kobold Boots said:


> When you gain enough expeirence you gain a level. Maybe instead of that level you want a new relationship/contact that can affect the game. Maybe you want a magic item. There are many examples of this sort of thing if you look around and find other game systems that are less level based; however, there's plenty of ways to house rule things.



Different games use different sorts of PC build "currencies", and different ways of accruing it.

In points buy games, points can be used to buy all sorts of stuff (depending on the details of the game). At least in some such systems, gear and gold is something you buy with points, rather than something independent that your character can collect. 

In Cortex+ Heroic, XP can be used to improve existing attributes, or add new ones - and (some) attributes in that system are the basis for relationships. Also, it is another system where is no such thing as "gear" or "wealth" independent of PC attributes.

There can also be multiple currency systems in a game. 4e, for instance, uses XP to set PC level, which in turn sets hp, defences, skill and attack bonuses, feats, and powers; and then it uses gold (which is awarded by reference to level) primarily to acquire magic items, which are a parallel source of powers and feat-like abilities.

In classic D&D gold isn't really a separate currency for PC building, as there is not much you do with it and magic items aren't generally for sale, until you get to high levels and use your savings to build a castle and thereby enter the name level endgame.

In 5e there seems to be recurrent uncertainty as to exactly what the function of gold is as a seemingly parallel but independent system for improving one's PC.

In a system with two different currencies, it may make sense to allow them to be exchanged, but not always. That would break the basic 4e design, for instance, and not generate much of a return that I can see.



Lanefan said:


> Xp aren't very simulationist and are probably best just left that way.  They do work as intended if used as individual character rewards based on what a character does, to measure the mechanical advancement of characters as they progress through the game.



Well, if you want to reward fighting, they will work. If you want to reward (say) forging diplomatic alliances, the default presentation of them won't work. You'll have to adapt, or make up, some variant.

My bottom line: different XP systems achieve different things. And it's a mistake in game design to emulate another game's XP system "just because" that's how it's been done in the past. (And in case my other posts haven't made it clear, I think that 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and probably 5e are guilty of this mistake, retaining aspects of Gygax's XP system but for no particularly clear purpose given the typical way they seem to be played.)


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## pemerton (Jan 9, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> From a practical standpoint, creating a world requires a lot more work than creating a character,
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The main benefit of having the GM pre-establish the facts of the world instead of inventing everything as the story unfolds, aside from issues with consistency, is that it prevents the possibility of meta-gaming on their part.



I think the number of GMs who wrote all the backstory in advance of actual play is zero, or very close to that.

Just to give one example: many GMs, especially of D&D, use random encounters. When a random encounter occurs, the being in question needs to be given beliefs, backstory, motivation, etc. I've never heard of a GM who worked out all this stuff ahead of time.

And the idea that it's _bad_ GMing to give the random encounter an interesting motivation is one that I think is unique to you, or very nearly. I've never encountered anyone else who espouses it.



Saelorn said:


> It does become an _objective_ place, though, which is important. It exists the way that it exists, free of interference from outside of that universe. It demonstrates basic linear-time causality. I don't have to be afraid of changing its past, based on any of my actions in the present (short of time travel).



I think the number of gameworlds that exhibit this property is very close to zero also.

One example: the PCs meet a peasant. They ask the peasant what she ate for breakfast that morning. The GM probably has to make something up. So the actual causation of the authoring of the world (the GM writes something now in response to a question) does not mirror the ingame direciton of causation.

I think examples like that are pretty common in RPGing.



Saelorn said:


> And in that sense, it _does_ become more _real_. It may never be _entirely_ real, because it's still just an imaginary universe, but at least it becomes a _believable_ imaginary universe. Every conceivable universe worth exploring must demonstrate internal causality, and if you don't even have that, then what remains is not worth buying into.



"Internal causality" is itself purely imaginary - ie the imagined causal connections between imagined events. And there is no reason at all for it to track real world causality.

Here is an example that makes the point:

I can imagine _now_ a peasant telling me what she ate for breakfast _in the past_, and I can imagine that her telling me that is caused by her past event of having eaten that breakfast - the imagined events have an imaginary causal structure - eating breakfast _then_ causes the peasant to tell me _now_ what she ate then - that is not mimiced by my process of imagination - ie I imagine first what she tells me, and then - because of that first imagining - go on to imagine that her telling me so is caused by her past breakfast eating.

That is a completely unremarkable - even typical - example of the imaginative process. It is very apt to produce believable worlds. The idea that the world becomes unbelievable because the GM doesn't have a record of the peasant's breakfast, and makes that up only because a player's action declaration forces a bit of the gameworld's past to be authored, is one that I have never heard espoused by anyone but you.


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## pemerton (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Well somebody has to know, otherwise how can it develop and hope to maintain any internal logic?



The same way as any other serial fiction.



Lanefan said:


> OK, so the conspirators don't have a ship.  Got it.
> 
> But wait...now it seems the conspirators do have a ship; which means they had said ship all along in hindsight, making it an element of a secret backstory that you-as-DM chose to reveal during session 4. (and introducing some inconsistency if said ship could also have been firing on them or doing anything else relevant (including something as simple as just being noticed to be present at all) during sessions 1-3)
> 
> ...



It's not secret backstory. A secret is something that one person knows and another doesn't. A piece of fiction that no one knows because it hasn't been written yet isn't secret from anyone.

As to the alleged inconsistency - there's 101 reasons why the conspirators need a ship on Ardour-3 and the ones they have aren't available (eg the lab ship is undergoing reparis, and they don't want to be seen in a military vessel so far from their base with no obvious military reason to be there). If it comes up in play - and it may or may not - no doubt one of the 101 possible reasons will become established as _the_ reason.



Lanefan said:


> the DM has to be bloody careful when doing this.  The more solidly things are nailed down in advance, the easier it is to introduce new elements on the fly and have them remain consistent and fit in.



The risks of inconsistency are, in my experience, grossly exaggerated.

If I could run games half as compelling as Raymond Chandler stories, I'd be pretty pleased with myself. But Chandler himself didn't know the reason for one of the murders in the film version of The Big Sleep.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



In the post you refer to, I said "backstory is . . . crucial, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is known to the players!"

But that doesn't mean _all_ the backstory is known to the players. Because, over time, new backstory will emerge, establishing new context, new significances, new twists, etc. A story is dynamic in that sense - it unfolds over time. A story is also written over time. In the sort of play I am describing, the two events are concurrent - the writing of the story occurs with the learning of it.

As I posted, that also doesn't mean that the GM doesn't have ideas. As soon as I started running the Traveller game, I had the idea of the PCs being stuck on an airless world in their ATV. But one person's idea is not backstory; it's not part of the shared fiction.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



None of those things were true in the gameworld before they became announced by me at the table, and hence known to the players. I authored them _as part of the process_ of adjudicating player action declarations - eg they interrogate their captives; their captives therefore tell them stuff about the conspiracy; so I make up some stuff about the conspiracy. These are therefore established as backstory, and able to inform subsequent events and provide them with context and meaning.



Lanefan said:


> Well, if you want to give away your world like that, more power to ya.  Far as I'm concerned it's the DM's world and she can veto anything she flippin' well wants to - as long as she's internally consistent.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You have a particularly harsh definition of railroading, it seems.



A game where the GM vetoes PC action declarations on the basis that she has already decided (privately, in secret) that they can't succeed - what else is that but a railroad? It is the GM who is deciding where the action goes and what the outcomes are?



Lanefan said:


> Of course the DM establishes the possiblities and outcomes (and odds, etc.) of investigations and actions - that's part of her job as the builder and maintainer of the game world.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



So if a player wants to come from a village of fisherfolk, but there isn't one on your map, then they can't?

That sort of GM story-telling is one way to run a RPG, but it's not _the job_ of a GM. It's one way of being a GM. It's very far from how I like to GM.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Yet if the PCs don't go into business etc. wealth is still going to pool around them - the loot from their adventures. (and in the game I'm referring to it didn't help that some of the PCs _were_ the local nobles; in fairness to them they didn't abuse this too badly in their business dealings...but they also didn't run themselves out of town either  )
> 
> If by "savvy" you mean flat-out stating that if any such nonsense rears its ugly head ever again someone else will be DMing it because I won't, then yes.




The furthest I've gone down the nobility track with players has either been "ok it's around 15th level and you're the nobles" or "ok it's 1st level and you're all the second/third sons and daughters of nobility".  But as far as mercantile stuff goes, I've had more than a couple players open a "magic shop" with spare stuff they didn't want or couldn't use and expand into other things like mercenary armies.  The harder you play the game, the bigger the opposition gets.  Until you get an LN Imperial Prince and evil Blackguard each with significant resources/armies annoyed at you, you haven't lived as a player.  Especially when one of your other players has significant ties with an Assassin's guild and the church needs to stride the middle to maintain power.  Good times.  Death everywhere.






> Sounds easy in theory.  In practice one of three things happens:
> 
> 1. The rest of the PCs (or some of them) find and employ a viable exit or avoidance strategy I didn't see coming, and thus save the party; or
> 2. The usual suspects take lots of risks, some of them die, but some (and the coward) survive; or
> ...





1. Viable exit strategies done on the fly allow the enemies to plan better next time.  Just let one of them live to come after them later with more knowledge of the party's capability and congratulate the players.  They'll feel good, until they don't.
2. Cowards that live get reputations.  Have one of the new player characters secretly be a relation of one who died saving him with a strong opinion of who is at fault.  The coward either proves himself and lives or mystery meat shows up at the campfire the next morning for breakfast.
3. This is what I like to call the "Your Savior has Arrived" moment. (Thor: Ragnarok)  It's classic for role-playing.  Let them have fun with it.  If I was the coward player, I'd try to commission a bard and have a statue built in the party's hometown later in the campaign.  Preferably with funds that someone else got me.  I'm like that. 

For me 
5E - Only run a few games with no TPK.  We were just trying to figure out the rules so not a campaign yet.
All others - TPK about once a module.  Mostly due to good use of tactics and players not coordinating efficiently at all times, plus I've got good luck with dice (all rolls in front of players)

Important to note about my TPK's.  When a TPK is going to happen, my regular players can smell it and generally start acting smart while trying to retreat.  When they don't manage to do so themselves, I do allow at least one, usually two players to escape just so we have game continuity if we're in the middle of a module.  If we're at the big blow off at the end of a module, I don't let up and deaths do happen.  It's up to the group to take precautions to afford whatever version of raise dead they can get their hands on.

Just because it's hard to kill players doesn't mean it can't be done regularly.  Figure out what the game's standard difficulty is and if it doesn't suit your preferred playstyle, make it more dangerous.

BTW, the shaft la machine is great and gave me a good laugh this morning.  Thanks.

KB

(edit: Yes I realize that near TPK is not actually TPK, but in the event my players have to run away it's a major shock to their system, moreso than rolling up the new characters to replace those who aren't raised.  Raise magic is not widely available as it's considered heresy by most major religions in my world - Thus the differentiation.  TPKs are nasty.)


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## Manbearcat (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Making stuff up on the fly happens, usually when the players throw me a curveball and go somewhere or do something I simply haven't prepped and-or didn't see coming.  Some of the time I can make it look like nothing's different - they still think I'm running off my notes etc. - but sometimes it's obvious I'm winging it, usually because I talk my way into inconsistencies; greatly annoying myself in the process.
> 
> But even when I'm winging it I'm rarely if ever using elements introduced by the players or PCs.  What I will do sometimes is if I hear a good idea from a player I'll make a note and sit on it for long enough (several months, usually) that the player whose idea it was has forgotten about it.  Then I'll use it, giving credit afterwards if asked.
> 
> Lanefan






pemerton said:


> I think the number of GMs who wrote all the backstory in advance of actual play is zero, or very close to that.
> 
> Just to give one example: many GMs, especially of D&D, use random encounters. When a random encounter occurs, the being in question needs to be given beliefs, backstory, motivation, etc. I've never heard of a GM who worked out all this stuff ahead of time.
> 
> ...




On (reverse engineering) internal causality (and post-hoc justification), random encounters, and GM-side ad-libbing:

How many AD&D and BECMI GMs have run their games as below (as I always have):

1)  Make a map w/ a vague town or two (themed and roughly geographically and politically laid out) w/ random urban encounters keyed to it/them.

2)  Make a few themed/stocked/keyed dungeons/adventuring sites.

3)  Make wilderness random encounters for the travel in-between the two.

Between Wandering Monsters, Random Encounters, and Monster Reactions, I'm spending well over the majority of gameplay ad-libbing causality (via reverse engineering and post-hoc justification) as required (if it even comes up) due to the randomized nature of content introduction.

My guess is this isn't procedurally too far afield from a healthy cross-section of present and past OSR GMs.

So why does a gaping hole in the integrity of "internal causality" or continuity (temporal, geographic, thematic) suddenly emerge when, instead of (nearing) thematically neutral content introduction, when the dice are rolled in (say Dungeon World), outcomes are to be derived by fidelity to play principles that are centered around hooking into the (a) the thematic portfolio of the PCs and (b) dangerous action/adventure that propels the game ever forward.

I guess that is when it becomes "contrived" because outcomes aren't absent of thematically-relevant material?  "So my brother, who is my hero, seems to have fallen short of his oaths...well of course he has!...I put 'my older brother is my hero' as one of my foundational (Relationship) PC build components!  How contrived!"  Seems a pretty metagame-ey mental framework for any player at the table to be holding onto!  And also seems mildly dysfunctional in a game with Relationships as central PC build components!


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 9, 2018)

pemerton said:


> In a spirit of response which I hope is not too combative!




Not combative at all, we're just having a discussion.  Appreciate the concern though.

After going through much of what you've written, what I'll say is this.

1. I don't think my stance on XP is really controversial.  I'm not sold on the difference between Gygaxian experience and modern experience points in D&D.   Reason why is simply that whatever Gary wanted something to be is much different from what it was actually used for in any given person's game.  "Player skill" is correlated to experience points but in no way are xp in any way causal of player skill.  Just my opinion.

2. Like the XP response above, I don't see any difference between a story milestone that provides an experience award or level up, and doing it when a party goes through a very linear dungeon crawl and makes it to the next level of the dungeon after clearing the previous.  If you have a clear delineation point; you can use a milestone to level up.  If the party takes a shortcut and moves to the next part of the story without doing sufficient work, they don't level.. then they TPK when they make it to the next area without the XP.  GM call

3. Of course different systems achieve different things, I'll agree tactically with that statement.  Strategically, the point of all XP systems is to advance within the framework of any given game.  Making strategic changes to an XP system to suit your game isn't a bad thing.

Peace
KB


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 9, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> So why does a gaping hole in the integrity of "internal causality" or continuity (temporal, geographic, thematic) suddenly emerge when, instead of (nearing) thematically neutral content introduction, when the dice are rolled in (say Dungeon World), outcomes are to be derived by fidelity to play principles that are centered around hooking into the (a) the thematic portfolio of the PCs and (b) dangerous action/adventure that propels the game ever forward.



The short answer is that this is narrative causality, which is an absurd principle for any world to operate on. If a game world demonstrates narrative causality, such that things happen _because_ it's just a story, then nothing that happens actually matters in any way -- because it's just a story.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 9, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Just to give one example: many GMs, especially of D&D, use random encounters. When a random encounter occurs, the being in question needs to be given beliefs, backstory, motivation, etc. I've never heard of a GM who worked out all this stuff ahead of time.



The job of the GM, in such a case, is to figure out what these things should be _based on_ what they already know about the world. This is a case where you need to trust the GM to not meta-game. Whatever the backstory of this random encounter, it is based on events that happened in the past, and certainly not on who the PCs are or what would be "interesting" for the players.

If a player asks whether there are clouds visible, then the _most important_ thing about the existence or non-existence of those clouds is that it is _not_ influenced by the fact that the player asked or whether they have a clever idea that is contingent on there being or not-being clouds visible. If the GM has been tracking the weather patterns lately, then great. If not, then rolling randomly is still infinitely better than the alternative.


pemerton said:


> "Internal causality" is itself purely imaginary - ie the imagined causal connections between imagined events. And there is no reason at all for it to track real world causality.



It doesn't need to track how the real world works, except in that we want players to be able to understand how the world works. Most games take place in some sort of fantastic world with magic in it, and that's mostly fine.

What's explicitly _not cool_ is when things happen based on what the player or GM _wants_ or _doesn't want_ to happen; or what they think _is_ or _is not_ exciting or dramatic. Those perceptions and opinions are factors which are external to the game world, and taking them into consideration at any point would be an act of meta-gaming.


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## Lanefan (Jan 9, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This claim is already controversial - that is, it takes a stand on an issue of game design where other stands are possible. To give concrete examples: I think it is largely true of XP in Rolemaster. I think it is largely false of XP in classic D&D, which are awarded to represent skill and success on the part of the player. (Hence, Gygax in his DMG explains that novice players should ideally begin at 1st level so as to get the full learning experience; but experienced players who have already undergone that learning experience, and raised PCs above 1st level, may wish to begin PCs at levels higher than 1st. They have already undergone the requisite learning and demonstrated the requisite skill in raising other PCs from 1st level.)



I'm not as convinced of EGG's motivations in writing that.  Low-level play is a specific type of play which can rather obviously only be experienced at low level; and he's trying to ensure all players get the chance to do this.  The "learning" part of it isn't as big a deal, as a new player is going to learn a bunch of stuff no matter what level she starts at.  He's wrong, however, in saying a novice player will get the full experience by simply starting at 1st level as he fails to note that it'll be completely different (and somewhat lost) if the rest of the party doesn't start at 1st level along with him. (in other words, playing a 1st in a party of 5ths is hugely different than playing a 1st in a party of 1sts).



> As I understand it, "milestone" advancement in 5e means earning a level when the GM thinks the relevant point in "the story" has been reached.



Or the game itself thinks such a point has been reached, as noted in several of the early 4e adventures which have embedded notes saying in effect "If you haven't levelled 'em up yet, do it now".



> That might work where the main aim of play is for the players to work through the GM's story, and the main aim of levelling is to keep up with the challenges in the GM's story



I can also see it working...well, as well as it can work; I'm dubious...in a system where keeping a homogenous character level within the party is important e.g. 3e and 4e.



> This is true only assuming that levels are valued by the person accruing the XP (as you note, and unlike actual currencies, XP are not a universal medium of exchange that is useful whatever it is one wishes to acquire), _and_ that levels are scarce.
> 
> If levels are not valued by players, then they may not care particularly about whether they earn many or few XP. If levels are not scarce (eg they are a 4e-style pacing device, not a Gygaxian-style measure of player skill) then players may sometime want fast pacing and sometimes slow pacing, depending on varying taste and mood.
> 
> If XP are so rare that gaining levels ceases to be a signifcant element of play then players may shift their focus to other aspects of gameplay, resulting in XP not being valued even though they are frugally awarded.



As DM of such a game I can tell you that although levels are scarce xp are not; players generally enjoy getting them, and tracking their character's slow progress through each level.  Levelling is not the focus of play, however, but more an occasional pleasant side effect.



> There can also be multiple currency systems in a game. 4e, for instance, uses XP to set PC level, which in turn sets hp, defences, skill and attack bonuses, feats, and powers; and then it uses gold (which is awarded by reference to level) primarily to acquire magic items, which are a parallel source of powers and feat-like abilities.
> 
> In classic D&D gold isn't really a separate currency for PC building, as there is not much you do with it and magic items aren't generally for sale, until you get to high levels and use your savings to build a castle and thereby enter the name level endgame.



Except in 1e, where by RAW gold translates directly to xp.  Also, IME in old-school D&D magic items can usually be bought or traded for somehow, so monetary wealth can be translated that way into (sometimes temporary!) character ability gain.



> In 5e there seems to be recurrent uncertainty as to exactly what the function of gold is as a seemingly parallel but independent system for improving one's PC.



Agreed - their insistence on magic items not being sellable or buyable turns non-magical wealth into a means of buying social status (maybe) and not much else.



> Well, if you want to reward fighting, they will work. If you want to reward (say) forging diplomatic alliances, the default presentation of them won't work. You'll have to adapt, or make up, some variant.



Of course.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 9, 2018)

pemerton said:


> It's not secret backstory. A secret is something that one person knows and another doesn't. A piece of fiction that no one knows because it hasn't been written yet isn't secret from anyone.



Or, conversely, it's secret from everyone.



> If I could run games half as compelling as Raymond Chandler stories, I'd be pretty pleased with myself. But Chandler himself didn't know the reason for one of the murders in the film version of The Big Sleep.



Sorry, never heard of 'im.



> In the post you refer to, I said "backstory is . . . crucial, because it establishes the infiction logic/rationale/context of the events the GM is describing. But the backstory that plays this role isn't secret from the players. In fact, it is able to play this role excatly because it is known to the players!"
> 
> But that doesn't mean _all_ the backstory is known to the players. Because, over time, new backstory will emerge, establishing new context, new significances, new twists, etc. A story is dynamic in that sense - it unfolds over time. A story is also written over time. In the sort of play I am describing, the two events are concurrent - the writing of the story occurs with the learning of it.
> 
> ...



Which is fine going forward.

But you also have to look backward, and here's where problems arise; as any time an important new element is introduced out of nothing that element immediately becomes part of the game world not just now but in the past as well.  Where the inconsistency comes in is whether anything would have or could have been done differently had that element been in place sooner even if nobody except the DM knew about it; that's the sort of thing I'll pick up on as a player, and seriously squawk about.



> A game where the GM vetoes PC action declarations on the basis that she has already decided (privately, in secret) that they can't succeed - what else is that but a railroad? It is the GM who is deciding where the action goes and what the outcomes are?



You want to jump your 100-h.p. fighter off a cliff onto jagged rocks below?  OK, I won't veto your action - but I'll veto your survival at the bottom (and probably mention this while you're still at the top).



> So if a player wants to come from a village of fisherfolk, but there isn't one on your map, then they can't?



There's going to be fishing villages somewhere.   But if the player wants their PC to come from a fishing village where the population is made up mostly of alien survivors of a crashed spaceship...no.  Not happening.  Ditto for coming from a foresters' village in an area where there's no trees...

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 9, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> The furthest I've gone down the nobility track with players has either been "ok it's around 15th level and you're the nobles" or "ok it's 1st level and you're all the second/third sons and daughters of nobility".



The two main nobles in that party came to it in very different ways: one got extremely lucky on my background/secondary skills table and ended up rolling "reigning monarch" as her profession.  The other was put on a different throne as a result of a several-adventure story arc.



> But as far as mercantile stuff goes, I've had more than a couple players open a "magic shop" with spare stuff they didn't want or couldn't use and expand into other things like mercenary armies.  The harder you play the game, the bigger the opposition gets.  Until you get an LN Imperial Prince and evil Blackguard each with significant resources/armies annoyed at you, you haven't lived as a player.  Especially when one of your other players has significant ties with an Assassin's guild and the church needs to stride the middle to maintain power.  Good times.  Death everywhere.



That same party had a long-standing Assassin in it whose guild came after him for not paying his dues.

The party went to the guildhouse and blew it off the map.



> (edit: Yes I realize that near TPK is not actually TPK, but in the event my players have to run away it's a major shock to their system, moreso than rolling up the new characters to replace those who aren't raised.  Raise magic is not widely available as it's considered heresy by most major religions in my world - Thus the differentiation.  TPKs are nasty.)



I have revival magic reasonably available - for the right price.  But there's a big difference between killing half a party (where the rest can continue and-or reload) and killing all of one.

Lanefan


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Sorry, never heard of 'im.



Raymond Chandler is fondly remembered for having codified a writing convention which is now known as Chandler's Law: _"When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand."_ If nothing else, you can get a few hundred words out of explaining who this man is and why he has a gun, and then maybe someone will get shot. It's a way to keep the story moving, when the plot has grown stagnant.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 9, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> The two main nobles in that party came to it in very different ways: one got extremely lucky on my background/secondary skills table and ended up rolling "reigning monarch" as her profession.  The other was put on a different throne as a result of a several-adventure story arc.
> 
> That same party had a long-standing Assassin in it whose guild came after him for not paying his dues.
> 
> ...




I'm not one to judge how people play the game unless I'm at the table and experience it first-hand.

Suffice to say that I'd find a way to make the party suffer on occasion and make it linger in exchange for those gifts.  Reigning monarch on a starting background table just blows my mind.

As far as a big difference between half a party and a TPK.  Presently, I don't allow myself to run games with less than six players or more than 13.  8 or 9 is my sweet spot.  If one or two get away I've seen seven or eight die.  That's a TPK to me even if I don't get them all.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 10, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Reigning monarch on a starting background table just blows my mind.



From my perspective, an ideal D&D campaign is roughly similar to a Final Fantasy game, the best of the classic games in that series was IV, and like half of the playable characters in that game were reigning monarchs by the end of it (Cecil and Rosa, Edward, Yang, Edge and Rydia). So it doesn't seem weird to me for a PC to be a reigning monarch. (A similar trend can be observed in Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom.)


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> "Player skill" is correlated to experience points but in no way are xp in any way causal of player skill.



XP don't cause player skill. But if playing a high level PC is a reward for being a skilled player, then tying levelling to demonstrations of skill makes sense.

Gygax clearly thought it was "improper" (a type of soft "cheating") for inexperienced and unskilled players to nevertheless build and play high level PCs. The intro to Tomb of Horrors describes the purpose of that dungeon being to bring such players to grief.

With the right social contract in place, I think Gygax's XP system can do the work he wanted it to. But I think it's completely crazy to hang onto it, or a loose variant of it, when the social contracts and goals for play are completely different. Hence my doubts about its utility in 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e. (I'm excepting 4e here because XP in 4e is not really a variant on Gygaxian XP at all.)



Kobold Boots said:


> I don't see any difference between a story milestone that provides an experience award or level up, and doing it when a party goes through a very linear dungeon crawl and makes it to the next level of the dungeon after clearing the previous.



That may well be true. But a lot of RPGing, including D&D play, does not inovlve "going through linear dungeon crawls and making it to the next level". For a very evocative account of an alternative approach to dungeon play, which also makes sense of the idea of XP as a reward for skilled play, have a look at Luke Crane's description of his Moldvay Basic experiences.

(For the record, I don't play classic D&D. I sucked at it, as a GM, 30-odd years ago, and that hasn't changed. Nor do I have the patience for it as a player. But it's a real thing, and "story milestones" have no work to do in it.)


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> On (reverse engineering) internal causality (and post-hoc justification), random encounters, and GM-side ad-libbing:
> 
> How many AD&D and BECMI GMs have run their games as below (as I always have)
> 
> ...



Good question.

Referring again to my recent Traveller experience: when the random patron table throws up a diplomat, is it better GMing to introduce a "plot hook" that is indpendent of the players' current concerns in dealing with a bioweapons conspiracy, or to have the diplomat be an Imperial official who has heard of the PCs' anti-conspiracy exploits and wants them to investigate further?

When the random starship encounter table throws up a pirate cruiser, is it better for this to just be some random pirates who happen to be hanging out on the edge of a tech level 3 world? Or for the ship to be connected to the conspiracy, and coming back to the world that is the source of the pathogen that the bioweapons research is based on?

When I was a novice GM and didn't know any better, it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to use those random outcomes to establish connections to existing currents of play and thereby "go where the action is". But with a bit of experience under my belt, that seems the pretty natural thing to do!

I remember reading advice for dungeon building back in the early and mid 80s that talked about how to make sense of the results of random dungeon stocking (eg if room 1 has giant ferrets in it, and room 2 has traders in it, maybe the traders are trading in giant ferret skins). Extending that sort of principle to real time content generation, and also honing in on stuff that matters to the players, seems a straightforward extension of that approach. The fact that the resulting content is not "neutral" vis-a-vis events at the table and concerns/"biases" of the GM and players seems a _plus_ if the goal is to play a game that involves collectively imagining dramatic adventuring, not a negative.


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> You want to jump your 100-h.p. fighter off a cliff onto jagged rocks below?  OK, I won't veto your action - but I'll veto your survival at the bottom (and probably mention this while you're still at the top).



So what's the point of the falling damage rules?


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Sorry, never heard of 'im.



Raymond Chandler is one of the more famous American crime fiction authors. The movie version of The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is pretty well known and well regarded.



Lanefan said:


> any time an important new element is introduced out of nothing that element immediately becomes part of the game world not just now but in the past as well.  Where the inconsistency comes in is whether anything would have or could have been done differently had that element been in place sooner even if nobody except the DM knew about it



The world is such a wacky and unpredictable place that explanations for these things always abound.

There's nothing verisimilitudinous about imaginary worlds being _less_ surprsing than the real one.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 10, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> From my perspective, an ideal D&D campaign is roughly similar to a Final Fantasy game, the best of the classic games in that series was IV, and like half of the playable characters in that game were reigning monarchs by the end of it (Cecil and Rosa, Edward, Yang, Edge and Rydia). So it doesn't seem weird to me for a PC to be a reigning monarch. (A similar trend can be observed in Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom.)




Please note that I said “starting” background.  I’ve no issue with a character earning monarch status, I’m just not starting them that way.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 10, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Please note that I said “starting” background.  I’ve no issue with a character earning monarch status, I’m just not starting them that way.



Fair enough. Half of those characters are monarchs at the start of the game, though, so it's still not _that_ weird to me. "Reigning monarch" ranks up there with "bounty hunter" and "amnesiac" for common character backgrounds.


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I'm not as convinced of EGG's motivations in writing that.  Low-level play is a specific type of play which can rather obviously only be experienced at low level; and he's trying to ensure all players get the chance to do this.  The "learning" part of it isn't as big a deal, as a new player is going to learn a bunch of stuff no matter what level she starts at.  He's wrong, however, in saying a novice player will get the full experience by simply starting at 1st level as he fails to note that it'll be completely different (and somewhat lost) if the rest of the party doesn't start at 1st level along with him.



Gygax doesn't fail to note that. He expressly discusses it, and recommends the new player either starting solo, perhaps with experienced players playing the men-at-arms; or making sure the group of newbies starts separately from the old hands.



Lanefan said:


> Except in 1e, where by RAW gold translates directly to xp.



Yes. It's not a separate currency for PC building (contrast 3E and 4e, where it buys items).


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## howandwhy99 (Jan 10, 2018)

sirlarkins said:


> Are Experience Points, like character classes, meant to function solely as an abstract game mechanic, or are they an objective force within the game world?



XP Score is each player's game score. D&D, like other games, is designed for repeatability so players can actually improve their playing the game. The XP score can be a reliable measure for players reflecting on the different campaigns they've played and how they might change their play to improve their game.

The objective of D&D is to score as many XP as possible. One of the (once) unique things about D&D was your gaming piece improved in their class (roleplaying) abilities as the player demonstrated their ability at playing the role. As your piece's abilities increased you could more reliably aim to take on harder threats and receive even more points.



> Do Experience Points only exist within the context of individual campaigns?



I'd say this is an obvious yes. If you switch to a different game, a different campaign, you begin again at the start. No score. 



> I asked my Dungeon Master (DM)—the same fellow who had run the original game for me back in the days of the Clinton administration—whether I could start a level ahead, or at least with a randomly-determined amount of XP (say, 200+2D100). Being the stern taskmaster that he is, he shot down both suggestions, saying instead that I’d be starting at 0 XP and at level 1, just like the rest of the party. As justification, he said that my character had amassed 0 XP _for this campaign_.



To allow a fair game between players I think it's best to start everyone at the same time and without any head start points. After all, each campaign is different and their is a lot to learn each time. That said, experienced players who have played the same ruleset repeatedly might want to start a campaign at a higher level. This allows them to skip ahead to the range they are being challenged at, but there are drawbacks to this. New players might have some talent, but aren't experienced with the game, so they should always start off at zero. If they are very good, they will score points and advance quickly anyways.



> This sort of thinking can in turn lead down quite a rabbit hole. Are classes themselves an arbitrary construct? Do they exist solely for players, or are non-player characters (NPCs) also capable of possessing classes and levels?



Everything in a game is an arbitrary construct. What allows the construct to be a game is its persistence. It's the players who are roleplaying the class, but the design which has different focuses for mastering the game according to a role. As game constructs, NPCs might have gained ability in a class, but it depends on the monster type I suppose.



> The 1st-edition *Dungeon Master’s Guide* specifies that henchmen earn 50 percent of the group’s XP award. In other words, they get a full share awarded, but then only "collect" half the share. Where does the other half go? Did it ever exist in the first place?



The 1e DMG is notoriously unclear, but still is chock full of game design. I go with the interpretation that NPCs gain 50% XP compared to PCs (for a number of varying reasons) and taking only such from group XP totals, but it's up to the DM ultimately. How useful are NPCs when they aid the players at the game? I think that matters. Are they constructs the players game as well? Or, for some, are they some kind of way for a the DM to play a PC? A DMPC? (Which always struck me as an impossibility in a roleplaying game.)



> Think about it: can _anyone_ earn an XP under the right circumstances? Or must one possess a class? If so, what qualifies an individual for a class?



I think monsters gain classless XP, advancing as monsters, but that was a latter day rule to make monsters make sense. The early game really only had XP for treasure acquisition, same as Dungeon! boardgame. Not even XP by class for roleplaying mastery. 

As to what qualifies a character, a creature speaking broadly, for a class depends upon the design the DM chooses. I think it was originally treated as a human-only characteristic which the demi-humans were mimicking and the rest of the humanoids weren't. I don't think it's simply a measure in class abilities or many mindless monsters would qualify. I'd say it's closer to something like a high level of trained skill in a class. Ability + Skill to even reach 0 XP level 1 in a PC class. NPC classes would require less training and treated as a separate route of advancement altogether, one with slower and weaker progression. All very much depending on the particular class of course.


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## Lanefan (Jan 10, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> I'm not one to judge how people play the game unless I'm at the table and experience it first-hand.
> 
> Suffice to say that I'd find a way to make the party suffer on occasion and make it linger in exchange for those gifts.  Reigning monarch on a starting background table just blows my mind.



Getting into nobility at all is a very low chance - 1 or 2 in 1000, I think it was.  Then you have to roll again, for what you are (monarch, prince/ss, duke, baron, etc.) with monarch being maybe 1% chance.  She nailed it - right in front of me.

The party did suffer, a) because she was often trying to boss them around, and b) because domestic political machinations kept getting in her - and thus the party's - way.



> As far as a big difference between half a party and a TPK.  Presently, I don't allow myself to run games with less than six players or more than 13.  8 or 9 is my sweet spot.  If one or two get away I've seen seven or eight die.  That's a TPK to me even if I don't get them all.



I usually have 4 or 5 players at the table, running a party of 6-11 characters.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 10, 2018)

pemerton said:


> So what's the point of the falling damage rules?



To handle short-ish falls that may be survivable, or longer falls where you land on a forgiving surface.  Once a fall gets beyond about 50' onto a hard unyielding surface the falling damage RAW become rather useless; even more so if the landing area is jagged or spiked.


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## Lanefan (Jan 10, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Raymond Chandler is one of the more famous American crime fiction authors. The movie version of The Big Sleep, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, is pretty well known and well regarded.



Ah.  I don't read much (i.e. any) American crime fiction, and anything with Bogart and Bacall in it is a long way before my time. 



> The world is such a wacky and unpredictable place that explanations for these things always abound.
> 
> There's nothing verisimilitudinous about imaginary worlds being _less_ surprsing than the real one.



They can be surprising, and yet still maintain internal consistency.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 10, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Ah.  I don't read much (i.e. any) American crime fiction, and anything with Bogart and Bacall in it is a long way before my time.
> 
> They can be surprising, and yet still maintain internal consistency.




Lane - I'd recommend watching some Bogart if you have some time.  At least based on your profile I'm about 12 years younger than you, and I still consider Casablanca my favorite film.  Just don't go into it with a mind towards comparing it to anything modern and you'll have a good time of it.


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> I still consider Casablanca my favorite film.  Just don't go into it with a mind towards comparing it to anything modern



What modern American film would compare to Casablanca!


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The job of the GM, in such a case, is to figure out what these things should be _based on_ what they already know about the world. This is a case where you need to trust the GM to not meta-game. Whatever the backstory of this random encounter, it is based on events that happened in the past, and certainly not on who the PCs are or what would be "interesting" for the players.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What's explicitly _not cool_ is when things happen based on what the player or GM _wants_ or _doesn't want_ to happen; or what they think _is_ or _is not_ exciting or dramatic.



You write as if _based on events that happened in the past_ and _would be interesting for the players_ are inconsistent. But they're not.

For instance: the random encounter is with a bounty hunter. In the past, the PCs stole something from a powerful NPC. The GM could decide that the bounty hunter is looking for some random NPC the PCs (and players) have never heard of; or could decide that the bounty hunter is on the track of the PCs at the behest of the person they stole from.

One way to resolve that question is for the GM to just decide - this is how I would handle it if I were running 4e or Burning Wheel but (for some reason) using random encounters.

Another way to resolve it is to make a reaction check - a neutral or friendly reaction means the bounty hunter is not after the PCs; a poor reaction means that s/he is. That is how I would handle it running Traveller.

In other words, different games use different devices for establishing content; but I would never consider it "not cool" to read an interesting rather than uninteresting encounter off the output of those devices.



Saelorn said:


> If a player asks whether there are clouds visible, then the _most important_ thing about the existence or non-existence of those clouds is that it is _not_ influenced by the fact that the player asked or whether they have a clever idea that is contingent on there being or not-being clouds visible. If the GM has been tracking the weather patterns lately, then great. If not, then rolling randomly is still infinitely better than the alternative.



If a player has a clever idea contingent on clouds being visible there's any number of ways of handling it.

Again, details of different RPGs vary, but my default would be to allow the check, and if it fails narrate a lack of sufficient visible clouds as a cause of the failure. (One problem with non-4e D&D is that it has no check-based resolution system for casting spells, which makes it harder to GM by way of "say 'yes' or roll the dice. That's why I tend not to run non-4e D&D.)


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 11, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> To handle short-ish falls that may be survivable, or longer falls where you land on a forgiving surface.  Once a fall gets beyond about 50' onto a hard unyielding surface the falling damage RAW become rather useless; even more so if the landing area is jagged or spiked.



How do you know whether a fall is short-ish and potentially survivable, if not by rolling the dice and comparing against hit points? Why would 49' deal ~14 damage and have no chance of death (unless the character had fewer than 48 hit points), while 51' is instant death no matter what? What is the _actual_ rule by which you run the game?


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 11, 2018)

pemerton said:


> You write as if _based on events that happened in the past_ and _would be interesting for the players_ are inconsistent. But they're not.
> 
> For instance: the random encounter is with a bounty hunter. In the past, the PCs stole something from a powerful NPC. The GM could decide that the bounty hunter is looking for some random NPC the PCs (and players) have never heard of; or could decide that the bounty hunter is on the track of the PCs at the behest of the person they stole from.



If you make that determination based on what you think would be more interesting for the players, then it necessarily _wasn't_ determined by internal causality from past events. Regardless of whatever post-hoc rationalization you might make for how something _could have_ happened, the _*real*_ reason is that you-the-GM thought it would be more interesting for the players.

If you don't already know the past events leading up to a random encounter, then the only fair method is to make an honest guess at the probability, and then roll randomly if uncertain. Pushing your personal preferences of what you _want_ to happen constitutes an act of meta-gaming, which is cheating in any RPG worthy of that label.


pemerton said:


> If a player has a clever idea contingent on clouds being visible there's any number of ways of handling it.
> 
> Again, details of different RPGs vary, but my default would be to allow the check, and if it fails narrate a lack of sufficient visible clouds as a cause of the failure.



In most cases, the player would look at the observable fact (whether or not there are clouds), and then choose to make the attempt or not depending on the state of that variable. If you cannot describe the environment to the players, at least as far as what their characters can observe, then you have failed in your first and most important duty as the GM.


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## pemerton (Jan 11, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> In most cases, the player would look at the observable fact (whether or not there are clouds), and then choose to make the attempt or not depending on the state of that variable.



By _player_ I assume you mean _character_?

In any event, I'm assuming about something that gets easier, the more cloud there is (eg "I'm a vampire who wants to avoid being burned by the sun: I dodge from shadow to shadow, avoiding patches of sunlight"). If the state of the clouds is already established in the fiction, then it might provide a modifier to the check; but if it hasn't been, then the state of the clouds is one thing that might be read of the check result.



Saelorn said:


> If you cannot describe the environment to the players, at least as far as what their characters can observe, then you have failed in your first and most important duty as the GM.



But what are you going to say, when a player asks about the cloud cover? I assume there are metereological measures of degree of cloud cover, but (i) I don't know what they are, and (ii) I wouldn't be able to correlate them to what I can see in the sky on a day-to-day basis, and presumably neither would most PCs. If I tell the player "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", what does that mean to the player vis-a-vis his/her PC's clever scheme to exploit the cloud cover?

This is what the dice are for.



Saelorn said:


> If you make that determination based on what you think would be more interesting for the players, then it necessarily wasn't determined by internal causality from past events. Regardless of whatever post-hoc rationalization you might make for how something could have happened, the *real *reason is that you-the-GM thought it would be more interesting for the players.
> 
> 
> If you don't already know the past events leading up to a random encounter, then the only fair method is to make an honest guess at the probability, and then roll randomly if uncertain. Pushing your personal preferences of what you want to happen constitutes an act of meta-gaming, which is cheating in any RPG worthy of that label.



It can _never_ be determined by internal causality from past events, because fictional events exert no causal power in the real world (only imaginary causal power in the imagined world).

If the GM assigns probabilities and rolls, then the reason for outcome (1) rather than (2) - say, a bounty hunter seeking strangers rather than a bounty hunter seeking the PCs - is not internal causality either. The reason is (i) the GM's decisions about odds, (ii) the causal forces that operated on the dice, and (iii) the GM's decision to give effect to the rolled result.

So then the question is - why is a game in which the GM makes determinations based on assigning odds and rolling dice per se a better RPG than on in which the GM makes decisions based on what's interesting? Here's one reason it might be better: the players can't make predictions about the future game state based on knowldege of what is interesting and engaging to them. Here's one reason it might be worse: it's more likely to produce a boring experience, which is not a virtue in a game.

Neither has any particular connection to roleplaying, as neither is about the players' play of his/her PC.


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## Lanefan (Jan 11, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> How do you know whether a fall is short-ish and potentially survivable, if not by rolling the dice and comparing against hit points? Why would 49' deal ~14 damage and have no chance of death (unless the character had fewer than 48 hit points), while 51' is instant death no matter what? What is the _actual_ rule by which you run the game?



What I use isn't hard-and-fast; but there comes a point where I'll bypass hit points completely and either go to a straight save-or-die (on a made save you'll just take a boatload of damage and maybe still die) or straight to death if you'd clearly die even on a made save.

Hit points are great for simulating combat where their loss reflects you getting nicked, bruised, fatigued from parrying and dodging, and so forth until the real damage sets in at the end.  But you can't dodge the planet, nor can you parry it - and hitting it at great speed will do far more than nick or bruise you (if you're not wearing decent armour a 100' fall onto flat concrete in the real world will likely spread parts of you over the nearby area; 50' onto a hard jagged surface ain't pretty either).

Same thing for jumping into red flowing lava and assuming your ring of fire resistance is going to save you.  Sorry.  The absolute best you can hope for is to die just slightly more slowly than if you didn't have the ring; with the difference being little enough that someone watching from the shore probably wouldn't notice it.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> But what are you going to say, when a player asks about the cloud cover? I assume there are metereological measures of degree of cloud cover, but (i) I don't know what they are, and (ii) I wouldn't be able to correlate them to what I can see in the sky on a day-to-day basis, and presumably neither would most PCs. If I tell the player "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", what does that mean to the player vis-a-vis his/her PC's clever scheme to exploit the cloud cover?
> 
> This is what the dice are for.



I'd say exactly the same thing - "that's what the dice are for" - but probably mean something completely different.

Yes - if you-as-DM haven't described today's weather yet, assuming the PCs are able to observe it, then if-when someone asks about it you pull out some dice and roll on the weather tables you in theory have handy; with the roll (or your narration) maybe modified for continuity by yesterday's weather. (if it was rainy and cool yesterday the odds are just a little higher than usual it'll also be rainy and cool today, to reflect that it might be a pattern settling in rather than a passing phase)  But a player would never make this roll.

"There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through" tells me a lot as a player.  It tells me that if I really need to avoid the sun I'd best stay on the shady side of the hills (though for clarity I'd ask you about windspeed and-or how fast the clouds are moving - if they're moving quickly that makes it much more likely I'll get caught in the open by an unexpected sunny break - and here I-as-DM would have the player roll for their success in avoiding the sun); it also tells me that if I need clouds in the sky for a spell or whatever e.g. _Call Lightning_ I have them available, and also that the sun is visible enough that I can use it for navigation and-or timekeeping if I need to.

Lan-"being a life-long weather geek really has its uses in DMing"-efan


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 11, 2018)

pemerton said:


> What modern American film would compare to Casablanca!




I've seen it favorably compared to Allied with Brad Pitt.
Casablanca is better, it's just not modern scale.

KB


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## Manbearcat (Jan 11, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The short answer is that this is narrative causality, which is an absurd principle for any world to operate on. If a game world demonstrates narrative causality, such that things happen _because_ it's just a story, then nothing that happens actually matters in any way -- because it's just a story.




Isn't evaluation of narrative causality from a player's perspective verboten (for you) metagaming?  

How about this.  In human history there is an enormous cross-section of people who see "narrative causality" underpinning much/most/all of everything that happens to us.  The metaphysical hand of a deity (or deities), fate, destiny, design.  These all are profound components of "the human cognitive bias toward narrative."

A man fails to rescue his sister before she blows her head off with a gun but stares into her dead eyes for a moment.

A few years later, the same man holds his dog of 16 years for the 24 hours as her poor body winds down (because her vet was on vacation and he didn't want her to die on a cold slab at the hands of a stranger).  He watches the biological process and stares into her dying eyes.

His beloved mother comes down with the worst type of cancer and it takes everything from her over the course of 22 horrific months of despair and degradation.  He cares for her in the last 45 days when she is completely bed-ridden.  Watches the body wind down.  Stares into her eyes as she takes her last breath and the light fades forever.

Humans, such as they are, are prone to see narrative causality in this chain of events; one event steeling the man's emotional fortitude for each subsequent event perhaps.  Some folks certainly look at that and "see" the signature of an unknowable, but caring designer in such chain of events; "God only gives you what you're capable of handling."   Others still see some other type of narrative.

The point?

"Narrative Causality", as it is, is absolutely_fundamental_to_the_human_experience.  So calling a player metagaming about narrative causality either "not RPGing" or immersion-breaking while simultaneously not castigating the player for doing the metagaming themselves...?

That all strikes me as a bit incoherent and it may be a cognitive bias (this anti-narrative causality/metagaming crusade you have) on your part which burdens your clarity of thought on this issue.


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## pemerton (Jan 12, 2018)

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], that's an interesting post - if the player-as-PC understands the "narrative causality" as an ingame phenomenon, then that's just RPGing a typical (non-scientistic) human being; and if the player-as-PC understands it from the point of view of GMing techniques, then the player is him-/herself metagaming, which is (ex hypothesi, for [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]) forbidden.

Your fork seems sound to me.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], that's an interesting post - if the player-as-PC understands the "narrative causality" as an ingame phenomenon, then that's just RPGing a typical (non-scientistic) human being; and if the player-as-PC understands it from the point of view of GMing techniques, then the player is him-/herself metagaming, which is (ex hypothesi, for  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]) forbidden.
> 
> Your fork seems sound to me.




That's the long and short of it.

I'm an atheist.  As an atheist, I don't believe in a metaphysical narrative underpinning the actions of each and everyone and everything in the universe.  

However, I'm an extreme minority in my country.  I'm an even more extreme minority amongst the world's collective population.  

If you consider me against the 250-300 k history of humanity...I'm so remote that I'm barely there.  

Humans have an evolved need for meaning underlying their existence, for purpose and metaphysical heft to their actions and their connections with their loved ones (and others).  

Now consider the idea of atheism in a D&D setting.  Its absolutely preposterous!  Consequently, it seems to me that nearly universal belief in narrative causality (of course this isn't a coincidence...its a test/reward/punishment/a sign!) would only be sensical.  Accordingly, players disputing situation framing under the auspices of "narrative causality foul(!)" would not only be metagaming themselves in tendering the consideration (for shame!), but also behaving in an extremely atypical fashion if channeled into the characterization of their PC (which I think  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] also has an issue with because it damages the world simulation).


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## Sadras (Jan 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> The short version: the GM does not pre-author ingame events. The GM does not rely on secret backstory to inform adjudication. The basic driver of play is the GM's description of an ingame situation which (because of the way it presses the PCs'/players' buttons) generates action declarations from the players, which - when resolved - lead to a new situation that generates new decisions etc.
> 
> ...snip...
> 
> ...




so

*Example A 
*


> _You're in a tavern. A grizzled old man approaches you, with a glint in his eye_. That's framing the PCs into a situation.




And then what happens????
If a strange looking gentleman came to my table, I'd either wait for him to get on with why he approached me or I'd greet him and ask him what he wants. That is the natural flow of things.

If I as player have to 'input' that this man knows the secret to reading a treasure map I have been unsuccessful at deciphering, I'd find that situation pretty (in your own words) 'lacklustre' and very much railroaded on the part of the PC.
Sounds the the DM is introducing NPCs for PCs to railroad and pre-author with their objectives.

If that is not the case, then I really see no difference between example A and example B.

*Example B*


> _While you're in the tavern, a grizzled old man with a glint in his eye asks you if you're interested in undertaking an exploration and rescue mission in the forest to the north_. That's a hook, but it's not really a situation. The GM has already resolved the would-be situation him-/herself: the PCs listended to the NPC and received his/her message.
> 
> I think the first - done well - tends to make for a more interesting RPG experience. The second, in my experience, is the companion of railroading and lacklustre fiction pre-authored by the GM.


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## pemerton (Jan 12, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> As an atheist, I don't believe in a metaphysical narrative underpinning the actions of each and everyone and everything in the universe.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Now consider the idea of atheism in a D&D setting.  Its absolutely preposterous!  Consequently, it seems to me that nearly universal belief in narrative causality (of course this isn't a coincidence...its a test/reward/punishment/a sign!) would only be sensical.



I put fantasy into basically two camps.

There's romantic, providential fantasy - King Arthur, JRRT, Dragonlance, etc - in which atheism is as you say absolutely preposterous, and PCs should absolutely take "narrative causality" as a given within the world they inhabit.

And then there's modernist, even existentialist fantasy - REH, Elric, etc - in which there is no providence. In the optimistic version of this (Conan), individual human will can triumph. In the pessimistic version (Elric), the world is doomed to eternal recurrence resulting from the interplay of forces which frame human action ultimately as meaningless. In this sort of fantasy, the only causation that is of an significance is human will. Thus, the GMing "sin" in this sort of fantasy would be to fudge the dice when resolution is taking place - because that would be to replace will and action with providence. But manipulating events up to that point is neither here nor there: if the world the character inhabits appears to be a "narratively caused" test of the individual, that's no matter, because the will can work upon that as much as upon anything else.

The idea that the events of the game have purchase or meaning only if the GM _deliberately takes no interest in setting them in motion_ strikes me as a very strange premise for a game that involves shared fiction (because a premise for boring fiction), and as not connecting to any vision of fantasy at all. Consider even HPL: in his fantasy he _asserts_ that the world is uncaring and indifferent, but that's not the actual stories he tells - these involve any number of opportunities for the characters to discover and react to this notional cosmic indifference. You don't simulate HPL fantasy by actually indifferently framing events and encounters so that's their's a meaningful chance of the PCs never experiencing anything of interest or significance.


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## pemerton (Jan 12, 2018)

Sadras said:


> And then what happens????



That depends on the table. If the GM has done his/her job properly, this doesn't come out of nowhere.

But there's no script that tells you how to run a non-scripted game.


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## Sadras (Jan 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> That depends on the table. If the GM has done his/her job properly, this doesn't come out of nowhere.




Stating that this grizzly looking man hasn't _come out of nowhere_, you're tacitly suggesting that the adventure was already in motion and that this individual is going to continue the established storyline.

In your 'lacklustre' example, the hook usually represents the start of an adventure (refer to many published adventures). 

I don't see how you can compare these two examples fairly given that they begin at different parts in the story.




> But there's no script that tells you how to run a non-scripted game.




You don't need to have a script for either example. Whether you have written down what the grizzly man says/does or make it up on the fly (since he didn't _come out of nowhere_ and _the DM did his/her job properly_) shouldn't make much of a difference. Whether the agenda of the NPC is scripted or in the mind of the DM, it changes nothing. It is play that determines what actions/words are realised by the NPC.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 12, 2018)

pemerton said:


> By _player_ I assume you mean _character_?



No, I don't. The player is the one _actually_ making the decision, albeit from the character's perspective and based on what the character observes (i.e. they are _role-playing_). If the character was capable of independent thought, we wouldn't need the GM to convey that information to the player.


pemerton said:


> In any event, I'm assuming about something that gets easier, the more cloud there is (eg "I'm a vampire who wants to avoid being burned by the sun: I dodge from shadow to shadow, avoiding patches of sunlight"). If the state of the clouds is already established in the fiction, then it might provide a modifier to the check; but if it hasn't been, then the state of the clouds is one thing that might be read of the check result.
> 
> But what are you going to say, when a player asks about the cloud cover? I assume there are metereological measures of degree of cloud cover, but (i) I don't know what they are, and (ii) I wouldn't be able to correlate them to what I can see in the sky on a day-to-day basis, and presumably neither would most PCs. If I tell the player "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", what does that mean to the player vis-a-vis his/her PC's clever scheme to exploit the cloud cover?



I see the confusion. That's not where I was going with this. I meant the existence of clouds or not to be a simple observable fact, like whether it's raining or whether there's a tree nearby.

"There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", would be a very reasonable answer to the question of whether or not clouds are visible. Other good answers would be "It's overcast", or "There are some very nice cumulonimbus over to the east, but it's otherwise mostly clear", or even "No, there are no clouds visible right now". 

As the GM, it's (generally speaking) not your job to worry about how that the environment may affect any scheme that the players may or may not have. Your job is to describe the environment, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution. If the player needs more detail before deciding whether or not to attempt something, they can ask for clarification about what they observe, or even ask your opinion on whether the character might think that it's a reasonable course of action (if they think that the limiting factor in choosing a course is in your description). For example, if they want to climb a wall, they may ask what it's made from in order to determine whether it's feasible, and then ask you if _you_ think think the _character_ would think it's climbable (if your description otherwise does not address that point).


pemerton said:


> It can _never_ be determined by internal causality from past events, because fictional events exert no causal power in the real world (only imaginary causal power in the imagined world).
> 
> If the GM assigns probabilities and rolls, then the reason for outcome (1) rather than (2) - say, a bounty hunter seeking strangers rather than a bounty hunter seeking the PCs - is not internal causality either. The reason is (i) the GM's decisions about odds, (ii) the causal forces that operated on the dice, and (iii) the GM's decision to give effect to the rolled result.



If the GM is honest in their assigning of the odds, and not simply attempting to further some ulterior motive, then the results of the die roll should be indistinguishable from internal causality for all practical purposes.


pemerton said:


> So then the question is - why is a game in which the GM makes determinations based on assigning odds and rolling dice per se a better RPG than on in which the GM makes decisions based on what's interesting? Here's one reason it might be better: the players can't make predictions about the future game state based on knowldege of what is interesting and engaging to them. Here's one reason it might be worse: it's more likely to produce a boring experience, which is not a virtue in a game.
> 
> Neither has any particular connection to roleplaying, as neither is about the players' play of his/her PC.



A game based on random chance and the GM's interpretation of internal causality allows the players to engage with the game through role-playing, by pretending to be their characters, rather than worrying how their actions may retro-actively change details of the world which _should have_ been previously established if the world had been following internal causality. When the GM meta-games in order to make interesting things happen, the players are forced to treat the game _as a game_ in order to play it.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 12, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> Isn't evaluation of narrative causality from a player's perspective verboten (for you) metagaming?



Meta-gaming, in the colloquial sense, only refers to how things _outside_ the game world affect what happens _within_ the game world. Evaluation of meta-gaming is something that occurs entirely _outside_ of the game world.  


Manbearcat said:


> How about this.  In human history there is an enormous cross-section of people who see "narrative causality" underpinning much/most/all of everything that happens to us.  The metaphysical hand of a deity (or deities), fate, destiny, design.  These all are profound components of "the human cognitive bias toward narrative."



I'm going to cut my response short, since it might otherwise be taken as a personal attack against certain people, but suffice it to say that the real world does not operate on narrative causality, and suggestions to the contrary will not be entertained.


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## Lanefan (Jan 12, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> I see the confusion. That's not where I was going with this. I meant the existence of clouds or not to be a simple observable fact, like whether it's raining or whether there's a tree nearby.
> 
> "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there are patches of sunlight breaking through", would be a very reasonable answer to the question of whether or not clouds are visible. Other good answers would be "It's overcast", or "There are some very nice cumulonimbus over to the east, but it's otherwise mostly clear", or even "No, there are no clouds visible right now".
> 
> As the GM, it's (generally speaking) not your job to worry about how that the environment may affect any scheme that the players may or may not have.



Agreed, though if a DM knows why a player is asking about something she can put the response in terms that speak to the reason behind the question, if only to answer further questions before they are asked.  As an example, regarding the question "What is the weather doing?" asked for different reasons which the DM already knows about, here's some possible DM replies:

1. (asked because character needs to avoid sunlight) "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there's patches of sunlight breaking through which it might be difficult to avoid if you're in the open for any length of time."
2. (asked because character needs a cloud for casting a spell) "There's some cloud - more than enough to use for your spell - but no rain, and there's patches of sunlight breaking through."
3. (asked just to set a backdrop to the day) "There's some cloud, but it's not raining and there's patches of sunlight breaking through.  Not much wind, and warm without being too hot.  A pleasant day to be outside."



> Your job is to describe the environment, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution. If the player needs more detail before deciding whether or not to attempt something, they can ask for clarification about what they observe, or even ask your opinion on whether the character might think that it's a reasonable course of action (if they think that the limiting factor in choosing a course is in your description). For example, if they want to climb a wall, they may ask what it's made from in order to determine whether it's feasible, and then ask you if _you_ think think the _character_ would think it's climbable (if your description otherwise does not address that point).



Careful here, lest you stir the slumber of those to whom the "Mother may I" play style is strictly verboten. (I'm not one such; what you say here is perfectly reasonable to me)



> A game based on random chance and the GM's interpretation of internal causality allows the players to engage with the game through role-playing, by pretending to be their characters, rather than worrying how their actions may retro-actively change details of the world which _should have_ been previously established if the world had been following internal causality. When the GM meta-games in order to make interesting things happen, the players are forced to treat the game _as a game_ in order to play it.



This right here is the whole crux of the discussion: the risk in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along game of retro-actively changing or adding details of the game world which, had they been established sooner, would have or may have caused earlier events and decisions in play (by both the DM and the players!) to have been made differently than they were at the time.

Lanefan


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 12, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> Now consider the idea of atheism in a D&D setting.  Its absolutely preposterous!  Consequently, it seems to me that nearly universal belief in narrative causality (of course this isn't a coincidence...its a test/reward/punishment/a sign!) would only be sensical.  Accordingly, players disputing situation framing under the auspices of "narrative causality foul(!)" would not only be metagaming themselves in tendering the consideration (for shame!), but also behaving in an extremely atypical fashion if channeled into the characterization of their PC (which I think  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] also has an issue with because it damages the world simulation).



Maybe we read different fiction, but in the books I read, the first response of any character to their suspicion that the gods/fate/whatever are toying with them is to become indignant. Protagonists know, in-character, that all of their actions are meaningless if it's going to happen anyway just because destiny says so. They may go along with it, because they have no choice, but there's going to be a lot of eye-rolling.

So while that is certainly a way that you _could_ run a game, and it may even be possible to do it well, it would be more of a deconstruction of an RPG than anything else.


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## Nagol (Jan 12, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> That's the long and short of it.
> 
> I'm an atheist.  As an atheist, I don't believe in a metaphysical narrative underpinning the actions of each and everyone and everything in the universe.
> 
> ...




Denying that an ultra-powerful creature has presumed to take the role of the god X would be preposterous since it is standing _right over there_.  Denying that it actually _is_ a god appears not to be: the Athar in Planescape hold that view, for example.


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## pemerton (Jan 13, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> No, I don't. The player is the one _actually_ making the decision



Well, you said:



			
				Saelorn said:
			
		

> In most cases, the player would look at the observable fact (whether or not there are clouds), and then choose to make the attempt or not depending on the state of that variable.


But the imaginary clouds aren't an observable fact the player can look at. That's why I assumed you meant "character".

If you're talking about the player, the player looks at _the table_, _the dice_, _the GM_, _the words written on some bits of paper_, etc. And though some combination of such things arrives at the (shared) state of imagining a place with clouds in its sky.



Saelorn said:


> As the GM, it's (generally speaking) not your job to worry about how that the environment may affect any scheme that the players may or may not have.



That sounds odd - as GM I take it that if certain whether is established in the fiction, then I have to adjudicate that as a possible factor in action resolution (depending on the details of the particular RPG system). 



Saelorn said:


> Your job is to describe the environment, play the NPCs, and adjudicate uncertainty in action resolution. If the player needs more detail before deciding whether or not to attempt something, they can ask for clarification
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If the GM is honest in their assigning of the odds, and not simply attempting to further some ulterior motive, then the results of the die roll should be indistinguishable from internal causality for all practical purposes.



The player wants to climb a wall. In the fiction, it's not established how smooth the wall is (eg it might have very well-maintained mortar between its blocks, or be poorly maintained with lots of grippable gaps).

As GM, I could roll a die to determine that before the player makes the climb check. Or the player could roll the check, and if it fails the lack of gaps could be part of a narration of the failure.

From the point of view of mechanical gameplay, there seems to be no special benefit in making two rolls rather than one. From the pont of view of "inhabitation" of the PC, having the player make the roll, and (in failing) "discover" that the wall is too gapless for him/her to climb, might actually be superior, as the player lives through the uncertainty of his/her PC's experience, and the discovery of the difficulty of climbing.

The phrase "ulterior motive" seems misplaced, by the way. An "ulterior" motive is hidden. When the GM frames the players into some situation that engages them (via their PCs), the motive is not hidden. It's transparent.



Saelorn said:


> A game based on random chance and the GM's interpretation of internal causality allows the players to engage with the game through role-playing, by pretending to be their characters, rather than worrying how their actions may retro-actively change details of the world which _should have_ been previously established if the world had been following internal causality. When the GM meta-games in order to make interesting things happen, the players are forced to treat the game _as a game_ in order to play it.



Is your last sentence based on experience or conjecture?

Here's my description, based on my actual play experience: if the game is played based on the GM's interpreation of internal causality and decisions about what s/he thinks is interesting to make salient (given that the gameworld is a story/fiction related to the players by the GM), then the players have to engage with what the GM thinks is interesting, whatever s/he wants to do with his her PC. If the GM makes an effort to follow the players' leads, as evinced through their build and play of their PCs, then the players get to actually explore and express their characters as they conceive of them.



Lanefan said:


> the risk in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along game of retro-actively changing or adding details of the game world which, had they been established sooner, would have or may have caused earlier events and decisions in play (by both the DM and the players!) to have been made differently than they were at the time.



I could equally say - the risk in a preauthored game is that it is (i) a railroad and (ii) boring. Presumably you take steps to make sure your game isn't boring. Well, likewise, the risk you are afraid of is not one that troubles my games.



Saelorn said:


> the real world does not operate on narrative causality, and suggestions to the contrary will not be entertained.



Suppose that to be true (board rules preclude speculating about that) - it doesn't follow that the same is true for the imagined fantasy world.



Saelorn said:


> in the books I read, the first response of any character to their suspicion that the gods/fate/whatever are toying with them is to become indignant. Protagonists know, in-character, that all of their actions are meaningless if it's going to happen anyway just because destiny says so.



In providential literature (eg LotR), the protagonists don't feel they're being toyed with - they either have faith in the divine plan for the world (and in this context, the greatest sin is a lack of hope - eg Denethor), or they rebel against that plan (and in this context, the greatest sin is hubris - eg Saruman). Eithe way, choices aren't meaningless because they contribute to the plan ("even Gollum may have a part to play, before then end").


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## pemerton (Jan 13, 2018)

Sadras said:


> Stating that this grizzly looking man hasn't _come out of nowhere_, you're tacitly suggesting that the adventure was already in motion and that this individual is going to continue the established storyline.
> 
> In your 'lacklustre' example, the hook usually represents the start of an adventure (refer to many published adventures).
> 
> I don't see how you can compare these two examples fairly given that they begin at different parts in the story.



Here's an example that illustrates the difference:

I GMed my first Burning Wheel session earlier today.

<snip>

One of the players had bought rulebooks and built a BW PC (a noble-born Rogue Wizard inspired by Alatar, one of Tolkien's blue wizards of the East).

<snip>

Writing up beliefs took a little while. The rogue wizard, Jobe, had a relationship with his brother and rival. The ranger-assassin, Halika, had a relationship, also hostile with her mentor, and the player decided that was because it turned out she was being prepared by him to be sacrificed to a demon. It seemed to make sense that the two rival, evil mages should be one and the same, and each player wrote a belief around defeating him: in Jobe's case, preventing his transformation into a Balrog; in Halika's case, to gain revenge.

<snip>

each also wrote up a immediate goal-oriented belief: I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: _I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother_ and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, _I'm not leaving Hardby penniless_.

<snip>

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.)​
That's a starting session. But the build of the PCs allows the GM (me) to frame an opening situation in response to those builds (in the circumstances, a peddler of trinkets rather than an old man in a tavern), where "the adventure" is not something I, the GM, have settled on and want to "hook" the players into - but, rather, is something that unfolds out of their responses to my take up of their "hooks" (eg the belief about finding magic items to help confront the demon-possessed brother).

To connect that to the overall discussion with  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - in Saelorns' game, the player is expected to have a PC who is interested in whatever it is that the GM throws up (so if it's kidnapped elves, the player has to get on board with that), and the fact that the player writes a PC whose main concern is freeing his brother from balrog possession doesn't generate any guaranteee that that will actually come up in play; in Lanefan's game there might be six plotlines to choose from, but in respect of each of them the situation is the same as for Saelorn - there is no guarantee that what the player cares about will matter in the game.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 13, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But the imaginary clouds aren't an observable fact the player can look at. That's why I assumed you meant "character".
> 
> If you're talking about the player, the player looks at _the table_, _the dice_, _the GM_, _the words written on some bits of paper_, etc. And though some combination of such things arrives at the (shared) state of imagining a place with clouds in its sky.



The state of the sky is an observable fact within the game world, which the characters can observe, and which the players can observe second-hand through descriptions from the GM. If the GM is doing their job, then the players will know whether there are clouds before they decide whether the character will attempt the plan.


pemerton said:


> That sounds odd - as GM I take it that if certain whether is established in the fiction, then I have to adjudicate that as a possible factor in action resolution (depending on the details of the particular RPG system).



Exactly. It only matters to the GM when it comes time to resolve the action. Before they decide to do the thing, the possibilities of how the environment might influence that thing are irrelevant to the GM.


pemerton said:


> The player wants to climb a wall. In the fiction, it's not established how smooth the wall is (eg it might have very well-maintained mortar between its blocks, or be poorly maintained with lots of grippable gaps).
> 
> As GM, I could roll a die to determine that before the player makes the climb check. Or the player could roll the check, and if it fails the lack of gaps could be part of a narration of the failure.



The vast majority of the time, the player will ask you to describe the wall before they commit to the plan of climbing it. They won't even attempt to climb a wall if they don't think they have a chance to succeed, or if the consequences for failure seem especially dire. (If you describe that most of the wall is covered with razorthorns, or the wall is above a pit of acid while acid is also streaming down it in an irregular pattern.)

You must determine the nature of the wall _before_ the attempt is made, or else the player is incapable of taking its nature into consideration before choosing to make the attempt. Your method violates the basic process of play, by describing the environment _after_ adjudicating the resolution of uncertain actions.


pemerton said:


> The phrase "ulterior motive" seems misplaced, by the way. An "ulterior" motive is hidden. When the GM frames the players into some situation that engages them (via their PCs), the motive is not hidden. It's transparent.



I was assuming that you were playing an RPG, with role-players, who would rightfully kick you out of the game if they discovered you were cheating in such a malicious manner. If you aren't playing an RPG, with role-players, then you may not have to hide your true motive... but neither would that be relevant in any way to a discussion of role-playing games.


pemerton said:


> Is your last sentence based on experience or conjecture?



Both.


pemerton said:


> Here's my description, based on my actual play experience: if the game is played based on the GM's interpreation of internal causality and decisions about what s/he thinks is interesting to make salient (given that the gameworld is a story/fiction related to the players by the GM), then the players have to engage with what the GM thinks is interesting, whatever s/he wants to do with his her PC. If the GM makes an effort to follow the players' leads, as evinced through their build and play of their PCs, then the players get to actually explore and express their characters as they conceive of them.



Yes, if the GM tailors the play experience to what the players think is interesting, then they can collaborate together to tell a story instead of role-playing at all. While true, it also has nothing to do with role-playing or role-playing games.


pemerton said:


> I could equally say - the risk in a preauthored game is that it is (i) a railroad and (ii) boring. Presumably you take steps to make sure your game isn't boring. Well, likewise, the risk you are afraid of is not one that troubles my games.



It can't possibly be a railroad if the GM doesn't plan for the actions of the PCs, or enforce them. Whatever the GM may expect the PCs to do, they will probably do something else, and thus the "story" will go in a different direction; which is why it's beneficial to _not_ expect them to do anything in particular.

If you're afraid that the game might be boring, then that's something to address during setting creation. As long as the players have their characters, and the GM isn't going out of their way to mess with them, things generally turn out okay.


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## Lanefan (Jan 13, 2018)

pemerton said:


> That's a starting session. But the build of the PCs allows the GM (me) to frame an opening situation in response to those builds (in the circumstances, a peddler of trinkets rather than an old man in a tavern), where "the adventure" is not something I, the GM, have settled on and want to "hook" the players into - but, rather, is something that unfolds out of their responses to my take up of their "hooks" (eg the belief about finding magic items to help confront the demon-possessed brother).
> 
> To connect that to the overall discussion with  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - in Saelorns' game, the player is expected to have a PC who is interested in whatever it is that the GM throws up (so if it's kidnapped elves, the player has to get on board with that), and the fact that the player writes a PC whose main concern is freeing his brother from balrog possession doesn't generate any guaranteee that that will actually come up in play; in Lanefan's game there might be six plotlines to choose from, but in respect of each of them the situation is the same as for Saelorn - there is no guarantee that what the player cares about will matter in the game.



That's the difference between us as DMs, I suppose: if my players decided to write up all that stuff about relationships and goals and what-have-you that's great, but in no way would I as DM be bound to any of it, or committed to ensure that all of it - or even any of it - becomes relevant in play.  It might, it might not - depends how things go.  In the balrog example, if the party happens to someday meet a balrog (wouldn't be any time soon, as balrogs are pretty high-powered creatures and the party will need some serious levelling under their belts before even thinking of dealing with one) and if that character happens to still be around and involved at the time (not at all likely, players and characters come and go in my games) and still care about that brother-possession story (several real-world years may easily have passed between the player's writing of that story idea and the party being able to do anything with a balrog other than fall over dead in front of it, during which time the player and-or character may have stopped caring about that story line), and if I as DM haven't completely forgotten about it, then I'd probably work the brother in there somewhere.

Did the player whose main theme was freeing his brother from balrog possession check with you first, to see if balrogs or other demon-like things even existed in your game setting?

Lan-"fly, you fools"-efan


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## pemerton (Jan 13, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Did the player whose main theme was freeing his brother from balrog possession check with you first, to see if balrogs or other demon-like things even existed in your game setting?



Well, the whole point of this is that there _is no game setting_ outside the process of the group talking through PC creation, starting situation etc, and then kicking things off.

I've already posted three or four examples upthread of first sessions. I guess if I _really_ didn't want to run a game with balrogs in it I would discuss it with the player, but the player knows me well enough to anticipate that that should not be an issue.



Lanefan said:


> if my players decided to write up all that stuff about relationships and goals and what-have-you that's great, but in no way would I as DM be bound to any of it, or committed to ensure that all of it - or even any of it - becomes relevant in play.  It might, it might not - depends how things go.  In the balrog example, if the party happens to someday meet a balrog (wouldn't be any time soon, as balrogs are pretty high-powered creatures and the party will need some serious levelling under their belts before even thinking of dealing with one) and if that character happens to still be around and involved at the time (not at all likely, players and characters come and go in my games) and still care about that brother-possession story (several real-world years may easily have passed between the player's writing of that story idea and the party being able to do anything with a balrog other than fall over dead in front of it, during which time the player and-or character may have stopped caring about that story line), and if I as DM haven't completely forgotten about it, then I'd probably work the brother in there somewhere.



And you wonder why I call it a GM-authored railroad!

EDIT:


Saelorn said:


> It can't possibly be a railroad if the GM doesn't plan for the actions of the PCs, or enforce them. Whatever the GM may expect the PCs to do, they will probably do something else, and thus the "story" will go in a different direction; which is why it's beneficial to _not_ expect them to do anything in particular.



You've already made it clear that you "plan for the actions of the PCs": if you write a story about rescuing elves, and the players don't want their PCs to rescue elves, then there will be no game.

The PCs might provide some colour (eg details of _how_ the elves are rescued) but by your own account they're not the ones who determine the subject matter of the game and the fundamental content of the shared fiction.


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## pemerton (Jan 13, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The state of the sky is an observable fact within the game world, which the characters can observe, and which the players can observe second-hand through descriptions from the GM.



Having someone describe something they made up to you isn't "observing", either first-hand or second-hand. It's listening to a piece of fiction.

Here's a way to make the point concrete. I have visited the pyramids in Cairo. I can tell you that they are big. I can't tell you how big they are, because (a) I can't judge heights of structures particularly well and (b) I haven't got the height memorised from reading about it. Yet, from my report, you can know that _there is some definite height that the pyramids are_, because they are real existing things.

But if I tell you that, in my gameworld, there are some pyarmaids, and they are big, _there is no definite height that they are_, because they're not really existing things. They're imaginary.

The same is true of clouds. If I tell you that the sky was cloudy but not completely overcast today (not actually true where I am, but let's suppose it was) then there is some definite amount of cloud cover that occurred over the course of the day, although - from my remark - you can't tell what it was.

But if I tell you, as a player in my game, that the sky is cloudy but not fully overcast, _there is no definite amount of cloud cover that obtains_. That's the nature of fiction. For the same reason, there is no definite length of Sherlock Holmes' left big toenail on the occasion of his first meeting with Dr Watson - whereas there is such a length for my left toenail the time I made my first post on ENworld, even though neither I nor anyone else knows what it was.



Saelorn said:


> If the GM is doing their job, then the players will know whether there are clouds before they decide whether the character will attempt the plan.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The vast majority of the time, the player will ask you to describe the wall before they commit to the plan of climbing it. They won't even attempt to climb a wall if they don't think they have a chance to succeed, or if the consequences for failure seem especially dire.



What will happen "the vast majority of the time" is very variable across tables. I don't generally describe walls in a great deal of detail: it's not that interesting to me or my friends.

Furthermore, it is possible to misjudge: a wall might look easier to climb than it is (eg there are visible holds, but they turn out to be unexpectedly slippery) or vice versa. Likewise, the amount of cloud might be just enough for the PCs' plan, but maybe not quite - the proof might be in the eating. And in a RPG, "the eating" generally means rolling the dice.

A gameworld in which there are no unexpected factors, no surprises in the environment, and in which nothing exists which the GM has not described in advance, is going to be both (i) lacking in detail, and (ii) very very sparse. In a dungeon this can make sense (although not very much sense for dungeon walls, which might have surprising properties that become evident upon attempting to climb them); in any sort of moderately realistic or verisimilitudinous setting it makes no sense at all.

Even if you use random charts to roll for the contents of rooms, markets etc not all options can be covered - eg Gygax's table in his DMG for "furnishings and appointments, general" includes urns but not vases, stools but not tuffets, etc. But is it really the case that there are no vases to be found in the city of Greyhawk just because Gygax neglected to put them on his chart?



Saelorn said:


> You must determine the nature of the wall _before_ the attempt is made, or else the player is incapable of taking its nature into consideration before choosing to make the attempt. Your method violates the basic process of play, by describing the environment _after_ adjudicating the resolution of uncertain actions.



For the reasons I've given, what you say is just wrong. There's _always_ the potential for a factor to be relevant which the GM doesn't describe - eg if the climbing is of a cliff, is there a small root poking out about halfway up which might provide a crucial handhold at a certain moment? Is the stone wedged in the crack next to the root going to give way if someone puts weight on it? (And human bodyweight, or halfling weight?)

All those things matter to a climb, but the players don't know before they declare and the dice are rolled. If the check fails, what do you tell the player? Is every failed climb because the PC pulled a muscle? Or are some the result of the environment revealing properties of itself that weren't known when the attempt was commenced?



Saelorn said:


> I was assuming that you were playing an RPG, with role-players, who would rightfully kick you out of the game if they discovered you were cheating in such a malicious manner. If you aren't playing an RPG, with role-players, then you may not have to hide your true motive... but neither would that be relevant in any way to a discussion of role-playing games.



This is just hyperbole. I've been RPGing for longer than you, and have played and GMed a wider range of games, from Classic Traveller and RQ through AD&D and 4e to Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic. I don't need a lecture about what is and isn't roleplaying, and what is or isn't cheating.



Saelorn said:


> if the GM tailors the play experience to what the players think is interesting, then they can collaborate together to tell a story instead of role-playing at all.



And this is silly. Playing "indie"-style, story now RPGs is nothing like collaborative storytelling.


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## Sadras (Jan 13, 2018)

pemerton said:


> That's a starting session. But the build of the PCs allows the GM (me) to frame an opening situation in response to those builds (in the circumstances, a peddler of trinkets rather than an old man in a tavern), where "the adventure" is not something I, the GM, have settled on and want to "hook" the players into - but, rather, is something that unfolds out of their responses to my take up of their "hooks" (eg the belief about finding magic items to help confront the demon-possessed brother).
> 
> To connect that to the overall discussion with  @_*Saelorn*_ and  @_*Lanefan*_ - in Saelorns' game, the player is expected to have a PC who is interested in whatever it is that the GM throws up (so if it's kidnapped elves, the player has to get on board with that), and the fact that the player writes a PC whose main concern is freeing his brother from balrog possession doesn't generate any guaranteee that that will actually come up in play; in Lanefan's game there might be six plotlines to choose from, but in respect of each of them the situation is the same as for Saelorn - there is no guarantee that what the player cares about will matter in the game.




I'm running two campaigns - 
1) One started with a group of adventurers called the Company-4-Hire with 4-5 backstories of the origin of the characters into the Company but with each character having no immediate "adventure" to pursue. I as DM provided a few "jobs" which the characters accepted for monies. The campaign has reached a point where they are now following the Tyranny of Dragons storyline - which is mostly me tinkering with published modules, players involvement in the story has very much ended.

2) This group of adventurers is made up predominantly of hin (halflings) and is based in the Five Shires and Karameikos. The players came up with the idea of an organisation kidnapping persons for the slave-trade - and the party have lost family and friends this way. The party plans to pursue this organisation and hopefully rescue their loved ones and exact much vengeance on all those involved in the slave trade. That is all the players' ideas - and they have added how the party was formed.
I used the Iron Ring as the slave trade organisation and added a cultist organisation who was the buyer of the slaves and they're now running a modified B10.

In both instances the story and ideas are now being led by me, with various paths and side-quests they may pursue.
In the first campaign, one of the player's background 'inherited' a piece of metal that could fashion into a weapon. I have secretly made this to be 1 section of the Rod of Seven Parts which will eventually be explored. 
Session 0 and the background material influences me as DM - but once the game starts it is the DM who fashions the rest of the world. Like you said _my take up of their "hooks"_.

*HOWEVER* what I do allow is the player to write additional exposition on their character, as long as it ties up with everything written/realised previously. I then as DM can obviously use some of that (and do if possible) in the ongoing story. Again, I'm not bound to though, but I also cannot dismiss it as invalid either.


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## Lanefan (Jan 13, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Having someone describe something they made up to you isn't "observing", either first-hand or second-hand. It's listening to a piece of fiction.
> 
> Here's a way to make the point concrete. I have visited the pyramids in Cairo. I can tell you that they are big. I can't tell you how big they are, because (a) I can't judge heights of structures particularly well and (b) I haven't got the height memorised from reading about it. Yet, from my report, you can know that _there is some definite height that the pyramids are_, because they are real existing things.
> 
> ...



And - with apologies to your left toenail - the amount of relevance to anything is also the same: zero.

But sometimes in both the real and game worlds, minor things like the amount and type of cloud cover can become extremely relevant.  In the real world we can simply look at it and observe for ourselves, while in the game world we're reliant on the DM to provide this information in the amount of detail required for the purpose at hand...which means that if the amount of detail isn't enough the players/characters either have to a) ask for more, or b) proceed using incomplete information where doing so may or may not come back to bite them later.



> What will happen "the vast majority of the time" is very variable across tables. I don't generally describe walls in a great deal of detail: it's not that interesting to me or my friends.
> 
> Furthermore, it is possible to misjudge: a wall might look easier to climb than it is (eg there are visible holds, but they turn out to be unexpectedly slippery) or vice versa. Likewise, the amount of cloud might be just enough for the PCs' plan, but maybe not quite - the proof might be in the eating. And in a RPG, "the eating" generally means rolling the dice.



Of course.  But if there's something obvious such as a pool of acid at the foot of the wall being fed by rivulets of acid running down said wall, it's kind of incumbent on the DM to point it out.  Even if she quite reasonably judges that the PCs can't tell the difference between acid and water without a (player-stated) closer look, she still has to mention the pool and rivulets...right?



> A gameworld in which there are no unexpected factors, no surprises in the environment, and in which nothing exists which the GM has not described in advance, is going to be both (i) lacking in detail, and (ii) very very sparse.



Perhaps.  It could also be overflowing in detail and very rich in environment...at risk of bogging the whole game down in said detail and richness.



> For the reasons I've given, what you say is just wrong. There's _always_ the potential for a factor to be relevant which the GM doesn't describe - eg if the climbing is of a cliff, is there a small root poking out about halfway up which might provide a crucial handhold at a certain moment? Is the stone wedged in the crack next to the root going to give way if someone puts weight on it? (And human bodyweight, or halfling weight?)
> 
> All those things matter to a climb, but the players don't know before they declare and the dice are rolled. If the check fails, what do you tell the player? Is every failed climb because the PC pulled a muscle? Or are some the result of the environment revealing properties of itself that weren't known when the attempt was commenced?



The question then becomes why the DM failed to describe it.  If she simply failed to point out something obvious, that's on her.  But if she judged (or secretly rolled, whichever) that the PC doesn't notice the not-obvious environmental factor and the PC subsequently fails a climb check, she's perfectly within her rights to narrate this overlooked factor as the reason.



> Playing "indie"-style, story now RPGs is nothing like collaborative storytelling.



Hmmm...the way you describe it sometimes, it seems mighty close.

Lanefan


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## Arilyn (Jan 14, 2018)

Nope, what pemerton is doing is not a "storytelling" game. Storytelling games share some similarities with rpgs, but differ in some very important ways. In a storytelling game the "conflict" arises with which player has control over the scene. There is often no GM. Time can bounce around, sometimes the end result is known, and players enact the scenes which lead to the end. If the story is about the fall of an empire, for example, players will take turn framing pivotal scenes. Often in storytelling games, players have no particular character, although this is not always true.  There are no individual challenges that players are trying to overcome. Instead, a player might declare that the emperor's daughter is planning on betraying her father. Other players may agree and the story goes on, or there could be disagreement about this piece of fiction, and then the "rules" of the game come in to help decide who's idea will triumph.

pemerton is using a more modern style of GMing, which is becoming more common. It's my preferred style, and it works really well, especially in keeping players engaged. There are lots of games which encourage this style, which are definitely rpgs, (13th Age, Fate, Cortex Plus, Dungeonworld, Gumshoe, etc.)


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## pemerton (Jan 14, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> sometimes in both the real and game worlds, minor things like the amount and type of cloud cover can become extremely relevant.  In the real world we can simply look at it and observe for ourselves, while in the game world we're reliant on the DM to provide this information in the amount of detail required for the purpose at hand



Or, alternatively, we can extrapolate it from the result of the action resolution attempt. Are those crumbling ledges strong enough to stand on? . . . let's roll the dice and find out.



Lanefan said:


> The question then becomes why the DM failed to describe it.  If she simply failed to point out something obvious, that's on her.  But if she judged (or secretly rolled, whichever) that the PC doesn't notice the not-obvious environmental factor and the PC subsequently fails a climb check, she's perfectly within her rights to narrate this overlooked factor as the reason.



My point is that the GM cannot possibly narrate everything that might, in principle, be observed. For me to describe everything I can see, sitting here at my computer, would be utterly impractical and perhaps, in practicat terms, impossible. Even describing just everything I can see on my screen would take hundreds of words (which is minutes of narration in a RPG situation). So it's never going to happen.

But when the check fails, _some_ account is needed. The GM is quite at liberty to introduce some appropriate fiction, such as a handhold that breaks away. In the real world, not every failed climb is because the climber's muscles gave way, or the climber lacked the agility to reach a hold; so why should it be that way in the gameworld? That lacks verisimilitude.



Lanefan said:


> if the amount of detail isn't enough the players/characters either have to a) ask for more, or b) proceed using incomplete information where doing so may or may not come back to bite them later.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> if there's something obvious such as a pool of acid at the foot of the wall being fed by rivulets of acid running down said wall, it's kind of incumbent on the DM to point it out.



But no one is going to narrate a failed climb attempt as "The waterfall of acid, that I didn't mention until now, corroded your rope." But they might reasonably narrate it as "A sharp edge on which your rope has been rubbing cuts it through, and it breaks!"

This is how consistency is maintained - new setting information that is introduced by way of narration (of consequences; of failed checks; of new scenes that are framed) elaborates on and complements what has already been introduced, but doesn't contradict it (literally or practically). Pools of acid in plain sight aren't good narration. But a sudden break in the clouds that allows the sun to shine through may well be fair game in many circumstances.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Collaborative storytelling: I say a bit of story, then you say a bit of story.

RPGing: The GM establishes a situation, the players say what their PCs do, and the mechanics are used to find out if the PCs succeed. The GM then establishes the next situation that results, incorporating the success or failure into that new situatiom.

Collaborative storytelling does not involve such things as distinctive "player" and "GM" roles, does not involve action declaration and resolution (the player-side "game moves" of RPGing), establishing a ficitonal situation (the GM-side "game move" of RPGing), etc.

Within RPGing, we can distinguish where the ideas for the shared fiction come from: GM alone, or GM and players; and we can distinguish how action resolution is adjudicated (via transparent rules, or via the GM's reference to secret details of the ficiton that only s/he knows); and we can distinguish goals of play (eg learn the secrets of the GM's maps and notes, as in Gygaxian dungeon play; play out the GM's storyline, as in AP play; find out what the destiny of _these_ characters is, as in character-focused indie-style play; etc); and so on. But these are differences within RPGing.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Meta-gaming, in the colloquial sense, only refers to how things _outside_ the game world affect what happens _within_ the game world. Evaluation of meta-gaming is something that occurs entirely _outside_ of the game world.




Instead of evaluating the events of the game world and interacting with them as they come (eg evidence that your brother, who is your hero, may either be (a) fallen to some degree or (b) in danger/dead), a player evaluates outcomes of action resolution on merits of "degree of narrative causality" and considers them "contrived."  Player becomes upset.

I don't see how that isn't metagaming (and nonsensical metagaming at that given that the premise of play is likely to engage with such things and also > below).



> I'm going to cut my response short, since it might otherwise be taken as a personal attack against certain people, but suffice it to say that the real world does not operate on narrative causality, and suggestions to the contrary will not be entertained.




Your position on how things operate in the real world is irrelevant.  The reality is, the overwhelming majority of our world's populace currently and has historically operated under the premise that "narrative causality" (metaphysical underpinnings and divine providence/organization of the universe) are fundamental to their existence.  And (I think we can agree!) they have infinitely less reasons to believe so as folks do in D&D's implied setting and cosmology!  Consequently, folks walking around actively disbelieving in "narrative causality" (not saying attributing it to everything, but actively disbelieving in the prospect on a per situation basis) is nonsensical.



Nagol said:


> Denying that an ultra-powerful creature has presumed to take the role of the god X would be preposterous since it is standing _right over there_.  Denying that it actually _is_ a god appears not to be: the Athar in Planescape hold that view, for example.




All I have to say about this is that this moves no units with me.

All I get from this is that someone wrote the Athar into Planescape and was extremely naive about the nature of divinity and the implications of D&D's setting and cosmology.  I certainly wouldn't attribute to them philosophical expert status on the nature of divinity (therefore ceding my own reasoning to their creation of an obtuse sect in a section of the cosmos that they no doubt that was interesting and coherent).

I think the only problem that D&D has (when it comes to dieties and "narrative causality") is finding the subtle distinctions to make regarding Wizards, Clerics, Demons/Devils/Celestials, and the greater powers (Archdevils/demons, Gods, Primordials, Elder Spirits).   If something is (a) immortal, (b) worshipped, and (c) possesses power over nature/creation/the fortunes of the inhabitants of the (typically) prime world...then they're a "god/deity" in our world.  There is work to be done regarding distinctions/clarifications in "D&D world", but that certainly doesn't have any implication on "narrative causality" that would make it less omnipresent!  That wouldn't be terribly difficult for myself to suss out in a coherent way (given time), so if the Athar don't possess the collective cognitive horsepower to do so then my guess is that they aren't worthy of their elevated Planescape Faction status!


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 15, 2018)

pemerton said:


> EDIT:
> You've already made it clear that you "plan for the actions of the PCs": if you write a story about rescuing elves, and the players don't want their PCs to rescue elves, then there will be no game.



As the GM, I can tell the players that they should create characters who would care about rescuing elves, because if they don't then there won't be much to the campaign. The players are free to not play in my game, if they don't want to buy into that premise. If one of them wants to run their own campaign, then maybe we'll collectively decide to play that instead, and I'll get to be a player for once. 



pemerton said:


> The PCs might provide some colour (eg details of _how_ the elves are rescued) but by your own account they're not the ones who determine the subject matter of the game and the fundamental content of the shared fiction.



The PCs are the ones who determine whether or not the elves are rescued, or if something else happens entirely. As the GM, I may set the theme for the campaign while creating the setting, but the actual _story_ is defined by whatever the PCs actually do.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 15, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But if I tell you that, in my gameworld, there are some pyarmaids, and they are big, _there is no definite height that they are_, because they're not really existing things. They're imaginary.



If something exists within the game world, then there is a definite height which it has _within the game world_. As the GM and setting-designer, you know what that height is. You _must_ know it, in case it becomes relevant. If one of the PCs uses _any_ method to measure it, then you need to know what to tell them, based on the reality which is known to you and the uncertainty involved in their method.

What you are describing is not an objective reality. It is not a world like our own world, or like any conceivable world. It is Schroedinger's world. It is a meaningless story construct, for perpetuating meaningless stories.


pemerton said:


> Furthermore, it is possible to misjudge: a wall might look easier to climb than it is (eg there are visible holds, but they turn out to be unexpectedly slippery) or vice versa. Likewise, the amount of cloud might be just enough for the PCs' plan, but maybe not quite - the proof might be in the eating. And in a RPG, "the eating" generally means rolling the dice.



The truth of the situation must be fixed, regardless of the quality of the observation. That is how _any_ reality must operate. A fluctuating quantum reality, where you can _causally_ change the fundamental nature of a wall by attempting to climb it, would be an absurd place and is not worth discussion.


pemerton said:


> This is just hyperbole. I've been RPGing for longer than you, and have played and GMed a wider range of games, from Classic Traveller and RQ through AD&D and 4e to Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic. I don't need a lecture about what is and isn't roleplaying, and what is or isn't cheating.



You may have been playing games for longer than I have, but I doubt that you've been role-playing for any significant period of that. Nothing you've said here indicates that you have any idea what it means to role-play.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 15, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> pemerton is using a more modern style of GMing, which is becoming more common. It's my preferred style, and it works really well, especially in keeping players engaged. There are lots of games which encourage this style, which are definitely rpgs, (13th Age, Fate, Cortex Plus, Dungeonworld, Gumshoe, etc.)



I have read through Fate, perused 13th Age, and had the contents of the remaining three summarized to me. They are not _definitely_ RPGs. They are _arguably_ RPGs. There is definitely _not_ any sort of universal consensus on the matter.

I would say that most of them are RPG-adjacent; with the exception of Fate, which is a garbage fire.


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## Arilyn (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> If something exists within the game world, then there is a definite height it is _within the game world_. As the GM and setting-designer, you know what that height is. You _must_ know it, in case it becomes relevant. If one of the PCs uses _any_ method to measure it, then you need to know what to tell them, based on the reality which is known to you and the uncertainty involved in their method.
> 
> What you are describing is not an objective reality. It is not a world like our own world, or like any conceivable world. It is Schroedinger's world. It is a meaningless story construct, for perpetuating meaningless stories.
> The truth of the situation must be fixed, regardless of the quality of the observation. That is how _any_ reality must operate. A fluctuating quantum reality, where you can _causally_ change the fundamental nature of a wall by attempting to climb it, would be an absurd place and is not worth discussion.
> You may have been playing games for longer than I have, but I doubt that you've been role-playing for any significant period of that. Nothing you've said here indicates that you have any idea what it means to role-play.




These are rather strange assertions. No GM could possibly have worked out every piece of reality ahead of time in their creation. That's absurd. You often have to make up things on the spot, depending on player decisions, and choosing the most interesting or letting the players' rolls guide the reality is good GMing. 

Of course we are not creating objective realities. We're telling stories, and are guided by the laws of narrative. No one could create a whole world which totally matches reality. How would that even be possible? 

As for role playing. Well, I really don't want to get into that fight again....


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## Arilyn (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> I have read through Fate, perused 13th Age, and had the contents of the remaining three summarized to me. They are not _definitely_ RPGs. They are _arguably_ RPGs. There is definitely _not_ any sort of universal consensus on the matter.
> 
> I would say that most of them are RPG-adjacent; with the exception of Fate, which is a garbage fire.




Of course they are rpgs. You not liking that particular style does not change their designation. RPG-adjacent...Really???


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 15, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> Of course they are rpgs. You not like that particular style does not change their designation. RPG-adjacent...Really???



RPG-adjacent, in that there is some role-playing that you can probably do within them, though it's not really their focus.

The fact remains that we don't have an internationally-recognized bureau of standards for designating what is and is-not an RPG. As such, it remains up for debate, unless there's universal consensus. Which there isn't, because I disagree with you.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 15, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> These are rather strange assertions. No GM could possibly have worked out every piece of reality ahead of time in their creation. That's absurd.



I didn't say they had to figure it all out ahead of time, but they could figure out any detail they felt like, if they really wanted to. The only time-constraint is that they must know every detail _before_ it becomes relevant, and the only content-constraint is that they can't use out-of-game knowledge to determine that detail.

If someone casts a powerful divination spell and contacts the god of mountains, because they want to know exactly how tall a particular mountain is, then you need to answer that question. Likewise if they scan it from orbit.  Within the game world, there is _some_ objective value for how tall it really is; and as the creator of that setting, the GM is responsible for providing that answer.







Arilyn said:


> You often have to make up things on the spot, depending on player decisions, and choosing the most interesting or letting the players' rolls guide the reality is good GMing.
> 
> Of course we are not creating objective realities. We're telling stories, and are guided by the laws of narrative. No one could create a whole world which totally matches reality. How would that even be possible?



Good and bad are subjective, but if you're meta-gaming, then you're doing it wrong. (In case you haven't heard, meta-gaming is bad.) The first job of the GM is to create the world, and describe it in as much detail as they need to, such that the players can make decisions for their characters. Ergo, the GM must describe the world in _at least_ as much detail as the players need to make their decisions.


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## Arilyn (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> RPG-adjacent, in that there is some role-playing that you can probably do within them, though it's not really their focus.
> 
> The fact remains that we don't have an internationally-recognized bureau of standards for designating what is and is-not an RPG. As such, it remains up for debate, unless there's universal consensus. Which there isn't, because I disagree with you.




Their whole focus is role playing, therefore, they are role playing games. The vast majority of players, designers and publishers don't seem particularly confused by the concept. The ubiquitous section, "What is a Role Playing Game?", which graces the first few pages of almost every rpg are practically identical. So no, there is no lack of a definition. On the other hand, there are many different games encompassing many different styles. Picking one particular style and dismissing the rest is silly. By your definition, there are more rpg-adjacent games than actual rpgs! Doesn't that become impractical?


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## pemerton (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> If something exists within the game world, then there is a definite height which it has _within the game world_. As the GM and setting-designer, you know what that height is. You _must_ know it, in case it becomes relevant.



Well I can tell you, it is established in my BW GH game that there is a pyramid in the Bright Desert (the PCs beat up on some orcs who were going to try and enter it); but I - the GM - do not know how high it is.

I can also tell you that Jabal the Red lives in a tower in Hardby, and that a lot of the action of the game has taken place in that tower. But no one knows exactly how high that tower is either; it has never come up as relevant. (It is established that there are multiple floors, and an internal staircase, but I don't think the number of floors has ever been established either.)

The absence of such fictional details has not been an obstacle to the game going on.



Saelorn said:


> If one of the PCs uses _any_ method to measure it, then you need to know what to tell them, based on the reality which is known to you and the uncertainty involved in their method.



I would make something up. Or, if it _mattered_ to the PC that it be this height rather than that (eg "the Tower at the Naval of the World is known to be exactly 100 cubits tall", or whatever), then the determination of the height might be the result of a successful (or unsuccessful) Towers-wise check.



Saelorn said:


> What you are describing is not an objective reality. It is not a world like our own world, or like any conceivable world. It is Schroedinger's world. It is a meaningless story construct, for perpetuating meaningless stories.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The truth of the situation must be fixed, regardless of the quality of the observation. That is how _any_ reality must operate.



With respect, I posit that JRRT's stories in LotR are more meaningful than any story that has ever resulted from your RPGing. Yet there is no "truth" as to the exact height of Glordindel, or Cirdan, or Haldir, or indeed most of the characters who populate those stories. Tolkien never told us, because it didn't matter. And a story that has not been told, and that cannot be inferred from what has been told, doesn't exist in some Platonic realm! It is a non-existent thing.

Sticking with character heights for a moment - no system for generating heights in a RPG that I've encountered has ever yielded details more accurate than fairly coarse fractions of an inch. Of two PCs both who turn out, on the random height table, to be 5' 10", it seems likely that one is in fact taller than the other. _But no one knows which_. Because the authorship hasn't happened yet.

You can wish as much as you like that imaginary worlds might write themselves without active authorship, but only children believe that that is actually possible. To believe that there are things that are "true" of fictions in the absence of acts of authorships is to be out of touch with reality!


EDIT:


Saelorn said:


> I didn't say they had to figure it all out ahead of time, but they could figure out any detail they felt like, if they really wanted to. The only time-constraint is that they must know every detail _before_ it becomes relevant, and the only content-constraint is that they can't use out-of-game knowledge to determine that detail.
> 
> If someone casts a powerful divination spell and contacts the god of mountains, because they want to know exactly how tall a particular mountain is, then you need to answer that question.



You didn't say that the GM must be able to figure it out. You said the GM must know it. I can figure out how many bricks are in the walls of my house, by counting them. But I've never actually done the count, and so I don't know that. _Can be known_ is not a synonym for _is known_.

And as far as figuring it out before it becomes relevant - if the only trigger for working out the height of a NPC, or a building, or a mountain, is that a player asks, then the GM is _not _figuring it out _until_ it becomes relevant!

And this clearly is triggered by out-of-game knowledge - namely, the out-of game knowledge that the person casting the divination spell is a PC (there can be oodles of NPCs casting such spells, and hence learning the height of the mountain, but this won't require the _GM_ to actually work out what that height is).

Knowing that the players care about the height of the mountain, because their PCs have asked a god about it, there are a range of ways the GM might work this out. Gygax, in his DMG, suggests that if the players are looking for a plot of land suitable for building a castle on in a certain place, then the GM should let them find it unless it is obviously out of place for the established terrain/geography of that place. The fact that you prefer another method - eg random tables that purport to model ingame causal processes, despite never delivering a range of results remotely commensurate to the actual diversity of the real world - doesn't establish any sort of truth about what counts as roleplaying.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 15, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> Their whole focus is role playing, therefore, they are role playing games. The vast majority of players, designers and publishers don't seem particularly confused by the concept. The ubiquitous section, "What is a Role Playing Game?", which graces the first few pages of almost every rpg are practically identical. So no, there is no lack of a definition.



You might be surprised in how much that text actually does vary between games. Suffice it to say that many RPG-adjacent games incorrectly believe that they are RPGs, and conveniently redefine the medium so that they are still included. Such is life in a hobby without unifying oversight.


Arilyn said:


> On the other hand, there are many different games encompassing many different styles. Picking one particular style and dismissing the rest is silly. By your definition, there are more rpg-adjacent games than actual rpgs! Doesn't that become impractical?



Impractical for whom? As long as we can distinguish between actual games where you role-play _as_ a character within an objective world, and other games where you tell a story _about_ a character within a narrative construct, the definition is doing its job.


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## Arilyn (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> I didn't say they had to figure it all out ahead of time, but they could figure out any detail they felt like, if they really wanted to. The only time-constraint is that they must know every detail _before_ it becomes relevant, and the only content-constraint is that they can't use out-of-game knowledge to determine that detail.
> 
> If someone casts a powerful divination spell and contacts the god of mountains, because they want to know exactly how tall a particular mountain is, then you need to answer that question. Likewise if they scan it from orbit.  Within the game world, there is _some_ objective value for how tall it really is; and as the creator of that setting, the GM is responsible for providing that answer.Good and bad are subjective, but if you're meta-gaming, then you're doing it wrong. (In case you haven't heard, meta-gaming is bad.) The first job of the GM is to create the world, and describe it in as much detail as they need to, such that the players can make decisions for their characters. Ergo, the GM must describe the world in _at least_ as much detail as the players need to make their decisions.




But I can't possibly know ahead of time, what information the players are going to want to know, so I'm going to have to make things up on the spot. As a GM, I don't want to waste my time deciding how tall every mountain is, or the colour of every horse on the street, just in case a player wants to know. It's a waste of my time, which could be better spent on interesting npcs and villainous plots.

The evils of meta-gaming are over-rated in my opinion. Character sheets, rolling dice, picking what feats you are going to learn are all minor forms of meta gaming anyway. Having players contribute to the narrative engages them in the fiction, relieves some of the burden on the GM, and is just plain fun. If the players ignore the beggar on the street, who has a vital clue, there is no sin in getting that clue to the players in another way. Having the story grind to a halt is way worse. And no, this is not railroading, because what the players choose to do is still entirely up to them.

What you are describing is very heavy on the simulationist end of the spectrum. Role playing can encompass your preferred style as well as mine. What I find amusing is that the "narrative snobs" might very well accuse you of being not a true role player!


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## pemerton (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> As the GM, I can tell the players that they should create characters who would care about rescuing elves, because if they don't then there won't be much to the campaign.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The PCs are the ones who determine whether or not the elves are rescued, or if something else happens entirely.



These two sentences are in contradiction. If the first sentence is true, then either (i) the game is about rescuing elves, or (ii) there is no game; hence (i) whatever game there is is about rescuing elves. So whatever happens in the shared fiction, it's going to pertain to the rescuing of elves. The scope of "something else entirely" seems to extent to trying but failing to rescue the elves.


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## Jhaelen (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The fact remains that we don't have an internationally-recognized bureau of standards for designating what is and is-not an RPG. As such, it remains up for debate, unless there's universal consensus. Which there isn't, because I disagree with you.



Funny. I was just going to point out, there'll never be universal agreement, because _you_ disagree 

Allow me to point out that there is absolutely _nothing_ that is _literally_ universally agreed on. It's absolutely sufficient if a significantly large part of a relevant group with a shared interest agrees. Not only are 13th Age and Fate RPGs, they're also some of the best RPGs on the market. Your disagreement does absolutely nothing to change that, just like a single person's disagreement about the existence of gravity doesn't cause everyone to float up into space!


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## pemerton (Jan 15, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> The evils of meta-gaming are over-rated in my opinion.



Agreed.

But the weird thing about this discussion is that it is not about player metagaming - which has a long tradition of attracting suspicion among RPGer - but _GM_ metagaming, which is objected to by Gygaxian skill-oriented RPGers (see eg Lewis Pulsipher's essays in early White Dwarf), but has never been objected to on the grounds [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] advances by anyone but Saelorn, to the best of my knowledge.



Arilyn said:


> If the players ignore the beggar on the street, who has a vital clue, there is no sin in getting that clue to the players in another way. Having the story grind to a halt is way worse. And no, this is not railroading, because what the players choose to do is still entirely up to them.
> 
> What you are describing is very heavy on the simulationist end of the spectrum.



Influenced by The Forge, I would regard the sort of RPGing in which there are "vital clues" that the GM has to get to the players as also simulationist - the players explore not a setting or a character but a story written by the GM. Personally I do regard this as a form of railroading, because the outcome - _PCs learn vital clue to this important matter_ - is written by the GM independently of play.



Arilyn said:


> the "narrative snobs" might very well accuse you of being not a true role player!



I don't know if I count as a "narrative snob", but personally what I prefer in RPGing is much closer to what The Forge calls "story now" or (less perspicuously) "narrativism".


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## Arilyn (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> You might be surprised in how much that text actually does vary between games. Suffice it to say that many RPG-adjacent games incorrectly believe that they are RPGs, and conveniently redefine the medium so that they are still included. Such is life in a hobby without unifying oversight.
> Impractical for whom? As long as we can distinguish between actual games where you role-play _as_ a character within an objective world, and other games where you tell a story _about_ a character within a narrative construct, the definition is doing its job.




Oh the text is pretty much the same...There are differences later, if the rules are discussed.

Incorrectly believe they are rpgs? That's just funny.

Saelorn, there must be very few rpgs out there, if we follow your very narrow view of true role-playing. And there must be a lot of very confused designers who don't realize that they are not actually creating role playing games...


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## Arilyn (Jan 15, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Agreed.
> 
> But the weird thing about this discussion is that it is not about player metagaming - which has a long tradition of attracting suspicion among RPGer - but _GM_ metagaming, which is objected to by Gygaxian skill-oriented RPGers (see eg Lewis Pulsipher's essays in early White Dwarf), but has never been objected to on the grounds [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] advances by anyone but Saelorn, to the best of my knowledge.
> 
> ...




Yes, and even Gygax encouraged players to add interesting sites to the GM map. At least sometimes. Gygax was inconsistent. Arneson, I suspect engaged in all kinds of meta-gaming. 

To me, railroading is when player choices don't matter. The GM has decided that the priceless artefact will be stolen, for example, no matter how clever and/or careful the players are. Another form of railroading would be telling the players how their characters react or feel. One GM threw an ex-husband at me I didn't even know existed. That was annoying. (An in-game npc, he wasn't throwing actual men at me..)

I enjoy playing through a story designed by the GM, as long as the player choices matter. When I GM, I come up with the plot and what will happen if the players don't interfere. Of course they do interfere, and then the story can go in a myriad of different directions. 

I enjoy your style of gaming too, and have actually been experimenting with GMing in that style more lately. It can be a lot of fun to just see what develops. I just need to gain a little more confidence that I can manage things. Did have a long PF campaign once, almost entirely driven by player character backstory and drives. Got really convoluted and interesting. Was a ton of fun, so I get you.

Wasn't accusing you of snobbery! There's snobs on both ends, though, which I find amusing. Lots of great ideas came out of The Forge. Game philosophy is very interesting, and all the many ways our hobby grew and evolved from those original little books, which didn't even have the words role playing in or on them is fascinating.


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## Lanefan (Jan 15, 2018)

pemerton said:


> These two sentences are in contradiction. If the first sentence is true, then either (i) the game is about rescuing elves, or (ii) there is no game; hence (i) whatever game there is is about rescuing elves. So whatever happens in the shared fiction, it's going to pertain to the rescuing of elves. The scope of "something else entirely" seems to extent to trying but failing to rescue the elves.



Yes Saelorn's sentences seem to contradict each other, but I kinda think I see what he's getting at.

At session 0 he-as-DM says something like "The basic idea I've got here to start with is the rescue of some Elves - keep that in mind while generating your characters - and we'll see what happens after that."  I might say something similar at the start of a campaign.  But - and here's the key - as DM I know full well (and I think from his second sentence Saelorn also knows) that once the puck drops and the players get going that I might very quickly find myself in react mode e.g. when by session 3 they've in-character decided the poncy Elves aren't worth bothering with (no reward is worth this!) and are instead headed to the coast to jump on a ship and see where it takes them.

When they throw me a curveball I have to react to it.  A railroady DM would react by saying or enforcing something like "you can't do that, you have to rescue the Elves".  A not-so-railroady DM would react by simply reacting neutrally to what the players (in character) do.  They go to the coast?  DM the trip to the coast - that's what your regional or national map is for.  They want to get on a ship and sail into the sunset?  DM them finding a ship and sailing into the sunset.  They want to go and beat people up in a waterfront tavern?  DM that...and then DM the consequences. 

Neutrally reacting doesn't make the game world any less the DM's.  The DM is going to be the one determining - probably by a somewhat random roll in all cases, taking any relevant skills etc. into account - what and how many ships are in port, how long it takes to get passage on one (or buy one outright), what the weather does once they leave harbour, and how good their navigation is.  It's even possible the DM has already made notes on what ships are in port...who knows?  But it's not the players' place to be determining any of these things, it's the DM's; forced in this case by the unexpected decision of the players/characters.  What the players have to do is react, preferably in character, to the world presented to them.



			
				Jhaelen said:
			
		

> Not only are 13th Age and Fate RPGs, they're also some of the best RPGs on the market.



I know nothing about Fate beyond what I've read on these forums, but I think that might be the first and only time I've ever seen anyone write anything positive about it.  13th Age, on the other hand, I've seen all kinds of positive things about.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 15, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> When I GM, I come up with the plot and what will happen if the players don't interfere. Of course they do interfere, and then the story can go in a myriad of different directions.



Exactly.

I also come up with the actual adventure modules or homebrews I can string together to make up said plot, again in isolation of player interference, knowing full well I'll be lucky to end up running half of them.  That said, I more or less know my players - and with that knowledge comes the realization that while they'll sometimes do their own thing and take things seriously sideways, there'll be other times when the game will grind to a complete halt unless I put on the engineer's cap and start the locomotive.  It's not seen as that big a deal by either they* or me as long as there's a game every week. 

* - or if it is, I never hear about it.

Lanefan


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## darkbard (Jan 15, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Neutrally reacting doesn't make *the game world any less the DM's.*  The DM is going to be the one determining - probably by a somewhat random roll in all cases, taking any relevant skills etc. into account - what and how many ships are in port, how long it takes to get passage on one (or buy one outright), what the weather does once they leave harbour, and how good their navigation is.  It's even possible the DM has already made notes on what ships are in port...who knows?  *But it's not the players' place to be determining any of these things, it's the DM's*; forced in this case by the unexpected decision of the players/characters.  What the players have to do is react, preferably in character, to the world presented to them.




And this right here,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], is why you (and  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] too) are likely never to see eye-to-eye with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], et al. when it comes to gaming philosophy. Your vision of roleplaying is limited to GM control, and you refuse to acknowledge as possible (let alone potentially preferable) any style of gameplay that seeks to limit the privilege of GM control over that of the other players in the game.


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## pemerton (Jan 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Good and bad are subjective, but if you're meta-gaming, then you're doing it wrong. (In case you haven't heard, meta-gaming is bad.) The first job of the GM is to create the world, and describe it in as much detail as they need to, such that the players can make decisions for their characters.



This is a statement of your preferences as an RPGer. It is not a definition of RPGing, or of the roles of GM and players in that process. AD&D and Classic Traveller are both RPGs - they say so in their rulebooks, and everyone in the world except you regards them as exemplars of the genre - and yet neither has instructions to players that conform to your preferences.



Saelorn said:


> As long as we can distinguish between actual games where you role-play _as_ a character within an objective world, and other games where you tell a story _about_ a character within a narrative construct, the definition is doing its job.



Besides the point just made, there is an additional objection to this claim: the only "objective" world is the actual one. Every "world" in which the game events of RPGs take place is _authored_, and hence has no existence independent of acts of creation. It isn't knowable by its author in an objective fashion.


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## pemerton (Jan 15, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> At session 0 he-as-DM says something like "The basic idea I've got here to start with is the rescue of some Elves - keep that in mind while generating your characters - and we'll see what happens after that."  I might say something similar at the start of a campaign.  But - and here's the key - as DM I know full well (and I think from his second sentence Saelorn also knows) that once the puck drops and the players get going that I might very quickly find myself in react mode e.g. when by session 3 they've in-character decided the poncy Elves aren't worth bothering with (no reward is worth this!) and are instead headed to the coast to jump on a ship and see where it takes them.
> 
> When they throw me a curveball I have to react to it.





Lanefan said:


> I also come up with the actual adventure modules or homebrews I can string together to make up said plot, again in isolation of player interference, knowing full well I'll be lucky to end up running half of them.



So what you describe is one way to run a game - the GM keeps throwing "hooks" at the players until they bite on one.

Another way is for the players to generate PCs that have hooks built in (eg the mage with a demon-possessed brother who wants to acquire magic items that will let him confront his brother and end the possession) and the GM bites on those.

 [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] asserts that the first is RPGing and the second is not. You seem to assert that the second is not possible. I know the second is possible, because I've done it. And I think it has one obvious advantage: instead of waiting until session 3 to get a game going that everyone is invested in, you can start with it in session 1. (And "session zero" becomes redundant.)

Another reason I prefer my approach - instead of characters who have only thin, mercenary motivations ("no reward is worth this!") you can have RPGing about characters who have a richer, more verisimilitudinous range of motivations (as is found in both romantic and modernist fantasy stories).



Lanefan said:


> A railroady DM would react by saying or enforcing something like "you can't do that, you have to rescue the Elves".  A not-so-railroady DM would react by simply reacting neutrally to what the players (in character) do.  They go to the coast?  DM the trip to the coast - that's what your regional or national map is for.  They want to get on a ship and sail into the sunset?  DM them finding a ship and sailing into the sunset.





Lanefan said:


> I more or less know my players - and with that knowledge comes the realization that while they'll sometimes do their own thing and take things seriously sideways, there'll be other times when the game will grind to a complete halt unless I put on the engineer's cap and start the locomotive.  It's not seen as that big a deal by either they* or me as long as there's a game every week.



If the players want to play the game, and yet the game is "grinding to a complete halt", what has gone wrong? (This doesn't happen eg if everyone has arrived and wants to play bridge.)

Another reason I prefer my approach is that you don't get this problem. If the players have arrived, and want to play, then there is a direction for the game and it's game on!

Part of this is not reacing neutrally. Eg your players want to sail into the sunset. But your map says there is no coastline. Now what happens? What does a "neutral reaction" look like?

This is why I call it a railroad - because in that situation the GM's vision of the fiction, and of the outcomes of choices and desires in the fiction, trumps the players'. And in most real RPGing situations it's situations more intimate to gameplay than sailing into the sunset - eg the players want their PCs to break into the bank using the sewers, and the GM declares there are no sewers; the players want to bribe a guard, but the GM decrees that all the guards are uncorruptable; etc.

In my approach, the GM takes the players' action declaration at face value, does _not_ veto it by reference to secret backstory (otherwise describable as the GM's personal preference for the gameworld), and instead either says "yes", or sets the parameters for a check which then resolves the matter.



Lanefan said:


> Neutrally reacting doesn't make the game world any less the DM's.  The DM is going to be the one determining - probably by a somewhat random roll in all cases, taking any relevant skills etc. into account - what and how many ships are in port, how long it takes to get passage on one (or buy one outright), what the weather does once they leave harbour, and how good their navigation is.  It's even possible the DM has already made notes on what ships are in port...who knows?  But it's not the players' place to be determining any of these things, it's the DM's; forced in this case by the unexpected decision of the players/characters.  What the players have to do is react, preferably in character, to the world presented to them.



And here, again, we see the reasons why I describe it as railroading. And also an explanation for what the game might grind to a halt.

Here's another possibility:

The question of how many ships in port only comes up because one of the players cares about it - they want a ship for some purpose (to hijack; to burn to the waterline; to stow away on; whatever). So either you tell them there's a ship, and then they can enacat their plan, and the game goes on (that's saying "yes") or - if that would be too easy and would deflate the high stakes of play - then you set a check (eg "Make a Perception roll to spot a ship suitable for your purposes") and if they succeed on the check their PC sees the ship they need, and if they fail some appropriate uhappy result is narrated ("The only ship that looks like you can get to it for your arsonist plans is also the one that you know has to carry your secret society's message to the next port - so what's it going to be?" - that's "roll the dice" instead of "saying 'yes'"). The game never grinds to a halt.



Lanefan said:


> I know nothing about Fate beyond what I've read on these forums, but I think that might be the first and only time I've ever seen anyone write anything positive about it.



We post in many of the same threads, and Fate is a very popular and widely-praised game. (I've read it but never played it myself.)



darkbard said:


> And this right here,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], is why you (and   [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] too) are likely never to see eye-to-eye with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], et al. when it comes to gaming philosophy. Your vision of roleplaying is limited to GM control, and you refuse to acknowledge as possible (let alone potentially preferable) any style of gameplay that seeks to limit the privilege of GM control over that of the other players in the game.



It's the issue of _possibility_ that frustrates me a bit. I don't mind how other people play their RPGs, but I find it baffling when they deny that other ways are possible even when pointed to actual play accounts of people playing in those other ways!


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## Manbearcat (Jan 15, 2018)

darkbard said:


> And this right here,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], is why you (and  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] too) are likely never to see eye-to-eye with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], et al. when it comes to gaming philosophy. Your vision of roleplaying is limited to GM control, and you refuse to acknowledge as possible (let alone potentially preferable) any style of gameplay that seeks to limit the privilege of GM control over that of the other players in the game.






pemerton said:


> It's the issue of _possibility_ that frustrates me a bit. I don't mind how other people play their RPGs, but I find it baffling when they deny that other ways are possible even when pointed to actual play accounts of people playing in those other ways!




Its very frustrating.  

My take (as you know) is that the AD&D 2e culture (GM metaplot, big setting/setting tourism, "its the GM's world/game", metagaming is bad, the only correct resolution mechanics/adjudication is binary pass/fail in action resolution that hews to GMs cognitive bias about internal causality, addressing a focused premise aggressively is bad/not RPGing) that pervaded the late 80s and early/mid 90s have come roaring back to life and presently has a stranglehold on EnWorld.  It makes nuanced discussion about interesting topics that I care about utterly impossible/not worth even trying to engage.  Hence why I don't post much anymore (along with the fact that it has chased away an enormous number of posters that I like to engage with!)!


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## Lanefan (Jan 15, 2018)

pemerton said:


> So what you describe is one way to run a game - the GM keeps throwing "hooks" at the players until they bite on one.
> 
> Another way is for the players to generate PCs that have hooks built in (eg the mage with a demon-possessed brother who wants to acquire magic items that will let him confront his brother and end the possession) and the GM bites on those.
> 
> [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] asserts that the first is RPGing and the second is not. You seem to assert that the second is not possible.



I see it as possible, but in all likelihood not sustainable.  Why's that, you ask?  Because if the DM isn't interested in running the game or story that results from the players' hooks that game ain't going very far (without a DM there's really no game); while if a player isn't interested in playing the game or story that results from the DM's hooks the game can (in many cases) survive that player's departure.

Put another way: if I as DM put together a campaign or setting with an underlying idea that the game will revolve around maritime tales and adventures, pirates, swashbuckling, build in some of the mythology etc. from Pirates of the Caribbean, etc., then that's what I'm largely looking to run.  But if the players turn up with one looking for a largely-urban and diplomatic campaign where he can save his brother from demonic possession, and another looking for a campaign where she can play out the story of working her way up from scurvy lab mage to the head of the guild, and a third looking for a campaign with lots of arctic ice-and-snow dungeon crawling...yeah, we'd better have a session 0.



> I know the second is possible, because I've done it. And I think it has one obvious advantage: instead of waiting until session 3 to get a game going that everyone is invested in, you can start with it in session 1. (And "session zero" becomes redundant.)



Depends.  Most of the time IME players simply want a game to play in, and they'll more or less buy in to what the DM is selling - at least to begin with - in order to play said game.  Then, as it goes along (unless the campaign is just a straight start-to-end AP) the players via their characters will learn more about the game world and start coming up with their own ideas as to what to do with/to it, to which the DM must react accordingly.



> Another reason I prefer my approach - instead of characters who have only thin, mercenary motivations ("no reward is worth this!") you can have RPGing about characters who have a richer, more verisimilitudinous range of motivations (as is found in both romantic and modernist fantasy stories).



As a player, I don't put that much thought into (most of) my characters until after they've survived their first adventure or two, as many - particularly at low levels - don't*.  And in process of surviving those first few adventures some of their backgrounds and much of their personalities will grow organically out of the run of play, so instead of doing a bunch of forethought and player prep ahead of time that might be wasted I need only do some later backfilling of gaps.

* - it's a known fact that any character so unfortunate as to have me as a player is in mortal peril every waking moment...



> If the players want to play the game, and yet the game is "grinding to a complete halt", what has gone wrong? (This doesn't happen eg if everyone has arrived and wants to play bridge.)



They have no ideas of their own as to what to do next and are looking to the DM to drive.  Some players are like that - they are perfectly good at reacting to what the game world does to them and playing through whatever arises, but that's about all they want to do as they're not so good at proactively driving the story.



> Part of this is not reacing neutrally. Eg your players want to sail into the sunset. But your map says there is no coastline. Now what happens? What does a "neutral reaction" look like?



Highly unlikely it would ever get to this point, as were there no coastline the characters (players) would almost certainly already know this - the basic maps are not hidden.  So instead they'd jump on horses and ride off into the sunset... 



> This is why I call it a railroad - because in that situation the GM's vision of the fiction, and of the outcomes of choices and desires in the fiction, trumps the players'. And in most real RPGing situations it's situations more intimate to gameplay than sailing into the sunset - eg the players want their PCs to break into the bank using the sewers, and the GM declares there are no sewers; the players want to bribe a guard, but the GM decrees that all the guards are uncorruptable; etc.
> 
> In my approach, the GM takes the players' action declaration at face value, does _not_ veto it by reference to secret backstory (otherwise describable as the GM's personal preference for the gameworld), and instead either says "yes", or sets the parameters for a check which then resolves the matter.



I think in these examples the end result might look very much the same in play, with the mechanical difference being that the DM is - if uncertain (e.g. she hasn't pre-determined whether there's any sewers or not that will suit the PCs' plans) - doing the random rolling to make these decisions instead of the players.  Were the players to seek information about the sewers then yes, they'd get some sort of roll to see how well they did.  Meanwhile I'd be rolling in secret to determine a) if this town has much by way of a sewer system, and b) whether the sewers will suit what the PCs are trying to do (e.g. are the pipes to the bank big enough for a person to fit through), then using all these rolls in combination, narrate the results of their info search.

Again, anything to do with the actual construction and make-up of the game world (in this case, the sewers) is DM-side stuff.



> Here's another possibility:
> 
> The question of how many ships in port only comes up because one of the players cares about it - they want a ship for some purpose (to hijack; to burn to the waterline; to stow away on; whatever). So either you tell them there's a ship, and then they can enacat their plan, and the game goes on (that's saying "yes") or - if that would be too easy and would deflate the high stakes of play - then you set a check (eg "Make a Perception roll to spot a ship suitable for your purposes") and if they succeed on the check their PC sees the ship they need, and if they fail some appropriate uhappy result is narrated ("The only ship that looks like you can get to it for your arsonist plans is also the one that you know has to carry your secret society's message to the next port - so what's it going to be?" - that's "roll the dice" instead of "saying 'yes'"). The game never grinds to a halt.



This is more or less how something like this would play out here too, though it'd probably go into a bit more detail instead of being concatenated into just one perception check.  If the PCs (players) cared about what ships there were I'd likely end up being asked for numbers, types, whether each is docked or anchored-off, presence or absence of crew or guards, etc.



> It's the issue of _possibility_ that frustrates me a bit. I don't mind how other people play their RPGs, but I find it baffling when they deny that other ways are possible even when pointed to actual play accounts of people playing in those other ways!



Anything is possible.  Not all things are practical.

Lanefan


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## Manbearcat (Jan 15, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I see it as possible, but in all likelihood not sustainable.  Why's that, you ask?  Because if the DM isn't interested in running the game or story that results from the players' hooks that game ain't going very far (without a DM there's really no game); while if a player isn't interested in playing the game or story that results from the DM's hooks the game can (in many cases) survive that player's departure.
> 
> Anything is possible.  Not all things are practical.
> 
> Lanefan




I don't understand this Lanefan.

You do realize that there are LOTS of TTRPGs that have a baked-in premise that is meant to be addressed during play.  That premise is neither owned by the GM nor is it owned by the players.  

Folks who agree to play Blades in the Dark are fundamentally agreeing to play a game about a ruthless gang that is starting at the bottom rung of the power ladder in a gothic, supernatural-charged, city (which is inspired by early 20th century London/Birmingham).  They aren't playing through a GM conceived metaplot.  They aren't playing to tour a GM-conceived setting.  They aren't playing to not address the premise of that gang scrapping and striving to climb that power ladder (eg, lets go eff off and sail the black sea and hunt Leviathans forever even though this game isn't about that!).  

Folks who agree to play Dogs in the Vineyard are agreeing to play gun-toting Paladins meting out justice in a "Wild West that never was".  There is a focused game premise baked-in, with character build-rules and setting that hook directly into that.  Then we play to test God's Watchdogs (the PCs) and see what happens to them, their loved ones, their Faith, and the people they're tasked to protect from sin and demonic influence.  Its not a game about "hey lets go be cattle ranchers because eff it!"

Folks who agree to play My Life With Master are looking to find out what happens when Love and Self-loathing compete as minions (PCs) under a dark lord(ess) enforce the villainous will of their master against a town held hostage...and ultimately rebel.  

There are tons of games with a baked-in premise and a baked-in setting with abstractions that gets fleshed out during play (because the setting isn't the point).  The game's premise and the game's setting doesn't belong to the GM.  Yet people play them...earnestly...and intensely.

I just don't understand what work "not practical" is supposed to be doing here?  I've GMed dozens of Dogs, Mouse Guard, My Life With Master, a few game of Blades, a game of Sorcerer, lots of Dungeon World & Apocalypse World, Monster Hearts, Masks, all the Cortex+ games, 10 Candles, Dread.  Others I'm failing to remember now.  They were all very practical.  All very functional.  All very coherent.  All very enjoyable.  All extraordinarily wieldy.

Games with a non-GM derived and focused play premise and a setting that doesn't belong to the GM (and isn't the point of play) are all very "practical."


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 15, 2018)

After reading all of this, I'm left with the desire to DM @_*pemerton*_, @_*Saelorn *_ [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and @_*Manbearcat*_ via virtual table in at least a one shot.  

While they're going back and forth with each other, all I'm thinking is that there's a lot of creativity that I'd like to see in one place.

I'll be careful what I wish for.
KB


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## Lanefan (Jan 15, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> After reading all of this, I'm left with the desire to DM @_*pemerton*_, @_*Saelorn *_ [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and @_*Manbearcat*_ via virtual table in at least a one shot.
> 
> While they're going back and forth with each other, all I'm thinking is that there's a lot of creativity that I'd like to see in one place.



Thanks. 



> I'll be careful what I wish for.



Would PvP be allowed?


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 16, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Thanks.
> 
> Would PvP be allowed?




It's expected   Seriously though were this to ever actually happen, all of my games allow players to do whatever they desire to do, including PvP but the social contract in return is that the game is highly dangerous and there are consequences to deal with.


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## Lanefan (Jan 16, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> It's expected   Seriously though were this to ever actually happen, all of my games allow players to do whatever they desire to do, including PvP but the social contract in return is that the game is highly dangerous and there are consequences to deal with.



Cool!  Sounds more or less like what I run.


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## Sadras (Jan 16, 2018)

darkbard said:


> Your vision of roleplaying is limited to GM control, and you refuse to acknowledge as possible (let alone potentially preferable) any style of gameplay that seeks to limit the privilege of GM control over that of the other players in the game.




What purpose does the GM have at your table?


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## Jhaelen (Jan 16, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I know nothing about Fate beyond what I've read on these forums, but I think that might be the first and only time I've ever seen anyone write anything positive about it.  13th Age, on the other hand, I've seen all kinds of positive things about.



Well, ENWorld is quite focused on RPGs that are either derived from or very similar to D&D. Apart from the initial buzz before and shortly after it was released, you don't get to read much about 13th Age here. It was overshadowed by D&D 5e very quickly.

Fate isn't the kind of system that is discussed here often, although the system and several of the RPGs that are based on it have won a few awards, including ENNies. I think it's one of the best systems to introduce new players to RPGs. It's free, quite free-form, light on rules, and very well suited for cinematic-style games. So, yeah, I think there's a lot to like at it.


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## pemerton (Jan 16, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> if I as DM put together a campaign or setting with an underlying idea that the game will revolve around maritime tales and adventures, pirates, swashbuckling, build in some of the mythology etc. from Pirates of the Caribbean, etc., then that's what I'm largely looking to run. But if the players turn up with one looking for a largely-urban and diplomatic campaign where he can save his brother from demonic possession, and another looking for a campaign where she can play out the story of working her way up from scurvy lab mage to the head of the guild, and a third looking for a campaign with lots of arctic ice-and-snow dungeon crawling...yeah, we'd better have a session 0.



Seriously, this looks like something that might take a couple of emails or a conversation at the start of the first session to sort out.

As [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] posted not far upthread, sometimes the game iteslf tells us what it is going to be about, at least in general terms. Of games that I GM, Marvel Heroic RP is a pretty clear example of this: Marvel super heroes come with built-in hooks. The players flipped through my printouts of "datafiles", chose War Machine, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Ice Man and Invisible Woman, and away we went!

Burning Wheel or default 4e (to look at some other games I GM) are a bit broader in their range of tropes and theme, but not _that _broad. I didn't have any problems starting a game with either system - the PCs that get thrown up tend to have *fantasy adventurer* written all over them.

When I started my Dark Sun game, I emailed around a quick spiel about what Dark Sun is about - sword & sandals, sword & planet, desert, psionics, sorcerer-kings, templars, gladiators. These are all pretty recognisable tropes, and the PC gen options (with themes like Gladiator, Wilder, Althasian Bard, etc) send clear signals to the players which in turn don't leave the GM in much doubt as to what the game might be about.

Rolemaster is a very open-ended system - but when I started my OA RM game in 1998, telling my players I was thinking a little bit more Japanese than Wuxia, the players made a couple of samurai, a fox spirit ninja, a martial artist sone of a merchant family, and a martial arts monk - ie the sorts of PCs that fit into a OA game.

I've just never found it that hard to work out some general parameters and then see where they lead.



Lanefan said:


> Most of the time IME players simply want a game to play in, and they'll more or less buy in to what the DM is selling - at least to begin with - in order to play said game.  Then, as it goes along (unless the campaign is just a straight start-to-end AP) the players via their characters will learn more about the game world and start coming up with their own ideas as to what to do with/to it, to which the DM must react accordingly.



Two things.

(1) Why not start with the players' ideas? Instead of mucking about for X sessions first.

(2) What form does the GM's reaction take? If the reaction is to veto actions and thwart plans on the basis of secret backstory, then what is the point fo the players coming up with those ideas? If the reaction is to resolve those actions and narrate the backstory accordingly, then how is what you're doing different from what I'm doing?



Lanefan said:


> As a player, I don't put that much thought into (most of) my characters until after they've survived their first adventure or two, as many - particularly at low levels - don't*.  And in process of surviving those first few adventures some of their backgrounds and much of their personalities will grow organically out of the run of play, so instead of doing a bunch of forethought and player prep ahead of time that might be wasted I need only do some later backfilling of gaps.



Again, the obvious alternative is to give some thought at the start and for the GM to take that seriously. Eg if you want to play a character who is committed to saving his brother from possession by a balrog, that seems a more likely way to get such an outcome.



Lanefan said:


> I see it as possible, but in all likelihood not sustainable. Why's that, you ask? Because if the DM isn't interested in running the game or story that results from the players' hooks that game ain't going very far (without a DM there's really no game)
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Anything is possible.  Not all things are practical.



Just to add to what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] said, about the fact that this must be practical to some extent given that thousands of RPGers are doing it: I trust my players to push the game in interesting directions. They have interesting characters, and interesting ideas about what to do with those characters.

I've got interesting ideas too - I think for a very amateur storyteller, I do OK at coming up with some interesting situations in the course of GMing my games.

The fiction that results is generated by the interaction of these creative endeavours, as mediated through the game rules.


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## darkbard (Jan 16, 2018)

Sadras said:


> What purpose does the GM have at your table?




Pretty much exactly the role described throughout this thread by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] (and elucidated at times by [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]): frame the PCs into scenes signaled by their character builds and stated goals and motivations, adjudicate the result of PC failure according to the mechanics of the game system, etc.

I should note that I haven't _always_ GMed in such a fashion. I've been gaming for some 35 years, and for the bulk of that time I knew no other way to play than through GM-driven plotlines, etc. It wasn't until I encountered an alternative vision of what RPGing could be via the influence of the "indie game" movement that I saw the possibilities opened up by reducing the "M" in GMing to a misnomer. Refereeing is a far more apt term in my opinion.

Just as one would say no sport is _about_ the referees(s), despite their crucial role, but _about_ the players, so too could RPGing be made in such a mold. But the kind of GMing I had done before my "conversion moment" was, indeed, about the GM and my vision of play (running APs, building mysteries for the PCs to solve according to preset information, etc.). Inevitably, though, I would run into problems when the goals of the player ran contrary or orthogonal to what I had preplanned, which opened up the can of worms of railroading the PCs back into the story in clever ways or forcing, in hamhanded fashion, their storylines into my own.

The posts of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] (and a few others) opened my eyes, though, to a form of gaming where all participants, the GM included, are equal participants in the narrative; where the GM too plays to find out what will happen, not simply reveal his already predetermined narrative to the players; and I haven't looked back since. 

Again, this is not to say that this way is inherently better than other forms of gaming; clearly others prefer other ways to play. _I_ think it is better, but that's a matter of preference. I also think it's ultimately more democratic, which makes for more appealing interpersonal dynamics, but, again, that too may be a matter of taste.

But when [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] deny that such gaming is possible (or practical, whatever that means in this context) or that it is even RPGing, I simply say, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] already have before me, the facts speak otherwise.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 16, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> What I find amusing is that the "narrative snobs" might very well accuse you of being not a true role player!



I also find this funny. It just goes down to the problems of not having a unified language for describing things, aside from the somewhat-functional-but-still-insufficient GNS theory.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 16, 2018)

pemerton said:


> These two sentences are in contradiction. If the first sentence is true, then either (i) the game is about rescuing elves, or (ii) there is no game; hence (i) whatever game there is is about rescuing elves. So whatever happens in the shared fiction, it's going to pertain to the rescuing of elves. The scope of "something else entirely" seems to extent to trying but failing to rescue the elves.



Just because the characters care about rescuing elves, and there are elves to be rescued, it does not necessarily follow that those characters will find the relevant dungeons _and_ explore it _and_ find what they're looking for. But yes, the primary alternative to rescuing the elves is in failing to rescue the elves. Depending on how badly they fail, they may end up captured by drow instead, at which point the goal becomes one of escape, and then survival.

Consider the Lord of the Rings, as an example. The GM is responsible for creating the ring, all of the bad guys, and thousands of years worth of history. The players are encouraged to make characters who have a reason to undertake this quest. The scenario is worth playing out, because we don't know what will happen. The choices of the players all _matter_, because the end isn't written yet, and the only way to see what happens is to play out the consequences of those choices.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 16, 2018)

darkbard said:


> And this right here,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], is why you (and  [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] too) are likely never to see eye-to-eye with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], et al. when it comes to gaming philosophy. Your vision of roleplaying is limited to GM control, and you refuse to acknowledge as possible (let alone potentially preferable) any style of gameplay that seeks to limit the privilege of GM control over that of the other players in the game.



It's not that the players have no control. Players have absolute control, over the decisions made by their characters.

What players _don't_ have is the burden of figuring out what _else_ is going on in the world. The player doesn't have to worry about establishing what the weather is like, or the conditions of a wall they might want to climb; whatever the state of the environment may be, it is what it is, and only a fool would try to argue with reality. The _only_ thing that the players need to worry about is _what their characters would do_.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 16, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> Its very frustrating.
> 
> My take (as you know) is that the AD&D 2e culture (GM metaplot, big setting/setting tourism, "its the GM's world/game", metagaming is bad, the only correct resolution mechanics/adjudication is binary pass/fail in action resolution that hews to GMs cognitive bias about internal causality, addressing a focused premise aggressively is bad/not RPGing) that pervaded the late 80s and early/mid 90s have come roaring back to life and presently has a stranglehold on EnWorld.  It makes nuanced discussion about interesting topics that I care about utterly impossible/not worth even trying to engage.  Hence why I don't post much anymore (along with the fact that it has chased away an enormous number of posters that I like to engage with!)!



For what it's worth, I feel the _exact same_ way about modern-hippie-indie game culture. It has a stranglehold over these forums, with people openly declaring that meta-gaming _isn't_ bad, and expecting to be taken seriously for it. It makes nuanced discussion about interesting topics that I care about impossible to engage with, since someone always barges in with some completely ludicrous idea about how nothing really exists and there's no point in pretending otherwise. And it has chased away a significant number of the posters that I previously enjoyed engaging with.


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## Arilyn (Jan 16, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> For what it's worth, I feel the _exact same_ way about modern-hippie-indie game culture. It has a stranglehold over these forums, with people openly declaring that meta-gaming _isn't_ bad, and expecting to be taken seriously for it. It makes nuanced discussion about interesting topics that I care about impossible to engage with, since someone always barges in with some completely ludicrous idea about how nothing really exists and there's no point in pretending otherwise. And it has chased away a significant number of the posters that I previously enjoyed engaging with.




There is no doubt that EN World attracts primarily DnD players. The idea that the forums are dominated by us "indie hippie players" is ludicrous. I think you might be feeling under siege because you have very extreme views, which are non-negotiable.

Question. Why do you equate the indie movement with hippies? What do hippies have to do with anything as regards to role playing? You complain about the lack of open dialogue, while showing zero respect for the more modern ideas, which have been emerging in this hobby for quite a number of years now. It's really hard to debate game theory with you, when you refuse to acknowledge that we are even engaged in the same hobby.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 16, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> There is no doubt that EN World attracts primarily DnD players. The idea that the forums are dominated by us "indie hippie players" is ludicrous. I think you might be feeling under siege because you have very extreme views, which are non-negotiable.



The idea that meta-gaming is bad should not be considered an extreme view. It should be the very minimum that all role-players can agree on.







Arilyn said:


> Question. Why do you equate the indie movement with hippies? What do hippies have to do with anything as regards to role playing?



I thought that was the standard terminology to describe people who play those types of games, like FATE and Burning Wheel. I've heard it in many places. Hippies are normally considered one of the least malicious subcultures in recent history, so I wasn't aware that the term might be offensive.







Arilyn said:


> You complain about the lack of open dialogue, while showing zero respect for the more modern ideas, which have been emerging in this hobby for quite a number of years now. It's really hard to debate game theory with you, when you refuse to acknowledge that we are even engaged in the same hobby.



Why would I possibly show any respect for meta-gamers, when their entire position is defined by destroying the hobby that I care about? I will stop dis-respecting these individuals when they stop dis-respecting the hobby.


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## Nagol (Jan 16, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> Its very frustrating.
> 
> My take (as you know) is that the AD&D 2e culture (GM metaplot, big setting/setting tourism, "its the GM's world/game", metagaming is bad, the only correct resolution mechanics/adjudication is binary pass/fail in action resolution that hews to GMs cognitive bias about internal causality, addressing a focused premise aggressively is bad/not RPGing) that pervaded the late 80s and early/mid 90s have come roaring back to life and presently has a stranglehold on EnWorld.  It makes nuanced discussion about interesting topics that I care about utterly impossible/not worth even trying to engage.  Hence why I don't post much anymore (along with the fact that it has chased away an enormous number of posters that I like to engage with!)!




The default style of the current D&D edition seems at its best when hewing to your description so I'm not surprised.  We've had some discussion about drifting it in a more "Nar"/PC-oriented mythic style that seemed unsatisfying; as a game engine I think it is ill-equipped to go there.


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## Nagol (Jan 16, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I see it as possible, but in all likelihood not sustainable.  Why's that, you ask?  Because if the DM isn't interested in running the game or story that results from the players' hooks that game ain't going very far (without a DM there's really no game); while if a player isn't interested in playing the game or story that results from the DM's hooks the game can (in many cases) survive that player's departure.
> 
> <snip lots because I have little time>




I find such games are easy to run for short campaigns and similarly easy to run for longer campaigns in specific genres like superheroes, film-noir, or other situations where the characters are expected to be primarily reactive.  For me, D&D isn't one of those, so I don't try to use those techniques when I want to run a D&D experience.   I could see a different GM running _Dungeon World_ for the moderate to long term though.


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## Lanefan (Jan 16, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> After reading all of this, I'm left with the desire to DM @_*pemerton*_, @_*Saelorn *_ [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and @_*Manbearcat*_ via virtual table in at least a one shot.



A small difficulty with this just occurred to me.

Looking at our various locations, I see you, Saelorn and Manbearcat are all in eastern North America.  I'm on the west coast, three hours time difference but not insurmountable.

Pemerton, however, is (I believe) in Australia.  That would put him roughly half a day out of synch, thus finding a common time to do this would be...well, difficult at best.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 16, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> You do realize that there are LOTS of TTRPGs that have a baked-in premise that is meant to be addressed during play.  That premise is neither owned by the GM nor is it owned by the players.



Yes, but unlike the examples you listed D&D on the whole isn't really such a game.  D&D is malleable enough to be able to handle pretty much anything pre-modern-technology (and can even deal with a bit of that sprinkled in), thus a Greco-Roman-era setting is just as playable as a Renaissance European setting or something prehistoric.  Which means there's much less baked-in premise, and much more room for the DM to design the setting she wants...or choose to use a pre-fab setting such as FR or Greyhawk, whatever.



> Folks who agree to play Blades in the Dark are fundamentally agreeing to play a game about a ruthless gang that is starting at the bottom rung of the power ladder in a gothic, supernatural-charged, city (which is inspired by early 20th century London/Birmingham).  They aren't playing through a GM conceived metaplot.  They aren't playing to tour a GM-conceived setting.  They aren't playing to not address the premise of that gang scrapping and striving to climb that power ladder (eg, lets go eff off and sail the black sea and hunt Leviathans forever even though this game isn't about that!).
> 
> Folks who agree to play Dogs in the Vineyard are agreeing to play gun-toting Paladins meting out justice in a "Wild West that never was".  There is a focused game premise baked-in, with character build-rules and setting that hook directly into that.  Then we play to test God's Watchdogs (the PCs) and see what happens to them, their loved ones, their Faith, and the people they're tasked to protect from sin and demonic influence.  Its not a game about "hey lets go be cattle ranchers because eff it!"
> 
> Folks who agree to play My Life With Master are looking to find out what happens when Love and Self-loathing compete as minions (PCs) under a dark lord(ess) enforce the villainous will of their master against a town held hostage...and ultimately rebel.



And these, when looked at from the more open-ended viewpoint of a D&D player, are all very limiting in what they let you do.  If you're only looking to play this campaign or game for a few months or half a year then it doesn't matter, you accept the premise knowing it won't last long; but if you're looking for something that'll last for 5 or 8 or 10+ years of regular play....  This is what I mean by sustainable.



> I just don't understand what work "not practical" is supposed to be doing here?  I've GMed dozens of Dogs, Mouse Guard, My Life With Master, a few game of Blades, a game of Sorcerer, lots of Dungeon World & Apocalypse World, Monster Hearts, Masks, all the Cortex+ games, 10 Candles, Dread.  Others I'm failing to remember now.  They were all very practical.  All very functional.  All very coherent.  All very enjoyable.  All extraordinarily wieldy.



And how long did any of those games/campaigns last?

Lanefan


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## Arilyn (Jan 16, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The idea that meta-gaming is bad should not be considered an extreme view. It should be the very minimum that all role-players can agree on.I thought that was the standard terminology to describe people who play those types of games, like FATE and Burning Wheel. I've heard it in many places. Hippies are normally considered one of the least malicious subcultures in recent history, so I wasn't aware that the term might be offensive.Why would I possibly show any respect for meta-gamers, when their entire position is defined by destroying the hobby that I care about? I will stop dis-respecting these individuals when they stop dis-respecting the hobby.




I do not believe for a minute that your hippie comment was not meant to be an insult.
The rest of your post is just proving my point.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 17, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> A small difficulty with this just occurred to me.
> 
> Looking at our various locations, I see you, Saelorn and Manbearcat are all in eastern North America.  I'm on the west coast, three hours time difference but not insurmountable.
> 
> ...




The only way that works is if we were to run at 7-8pm EST and Pemerton was willing as that would be 7-8am his time.  I've had some managerial responsibilities that put me in charge of folks in Malaysia and while that was entirely painful on a day to day basis, I can imagine that the difference is manageable if folks were willing to overcome it.

That said, my desire to do so is in no way any guarantee that anyone would want to.  I'm relatively new here after a long time off and I've already had one mini-tantrum - not very compelling in a DM I'd say, regardless of how good I may be - it's still a risk to take to trust me just yet.

KB


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 17, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> And how long did any of those games/campaigns last?
> 
> Lanefan




Shhhh.  Don't ask the hard questions.  Everyone is a 20 year plus DM with the same group on the Internet.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The idea that meta-gaming is bad should not be considered an extreme view. It should be the very minimum that all role-players can agree on.I thought that was the standard terminology to describe people who play those types of games, like FATE and Burning Wheel. I've heard it in many places. Hippies are normally considered one of the least malicious subcultures in recent history, so I wasn't aware that the term might be offensive.Why would I possibly show any respect for meta-gamers, when their entire position is defined by destroying the hobby that I care about? I will stop dis-respecting these individuals when they stop dis-respecting the hobby.




Passion is good.  Delivery needs work.

My personal beliefs..

1. No one is disrespecting something by choosing to do something else insofar as no one is harmed doing so. 

The concept that metagamers are disrespecting conventional RPG is a bit rough if only due to what I fear would be significant damage to both hobbies if either side just went away.  I have played quite a few systems in addition to D&D and I'm a better D&D DM because of it.  Now if you have a specific "indie-hippie person" that's actively saying "I want to lead an inquisition against D&D with my friends who live in an autonomous collective that have decided D&D is inferior." I'll agree with you about them only.

2. "Hippie" is a label.   Initially there was no negative connotation for about 50 years, but early in the 60's the term fell in with the drug culture due to popular media at the time.  If you don't want labels to be interpreted badly on a forum community by someone who may not be favorably disposed to whatever argument you're making.. don't use em. 

Just opinions, nothing personal here.  I like what you post generally.
KB


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> TYou complain about the lack of open dialogue, while showing zero respect for the more modern ideas, which have been emerging in this hobby for quite a number of years now.



Just to pick up on this (not to contradict it, but to point out that it's actually quite an understatement):

Gygax's DMG (1979), p 90 (under the heading "Territory Development by Player Characters":

Assume that the player in question decides that he will set up a stronghold about 100 miles from a border town, choosing an area of wooded hills as the general site. He then asks you if there is a place where he can build a small concentric castle on a high bluff overlooking a river. Unless this is totally foreign to the area, you inform him that you can do so.​
That is a pretty banal example of "saying 'yes'" to a player suggestion/request about the geography of the gameworld. Classic Traveller (1977) also recognises that players will contribute to making sense of the geography of the gameworld (and in the first session of my current Traveller campaign, after I rolled the starting world it was a player who suggested that (given its stats) it was obviously a gas giant moon).

Games with "fate point"-type mechanics were published in the 1980s (the James Bond 007 RPG is one example).

Over the Edge was published in 1992. It has inconsistent tendencies within it (nicely discussed by Ron Edwards here), but while the main text is by Jonathan Tweet the game includes an essay by Robin Laws that explains that "GMs will find it fruitful to approach decisions as an artist creating a collaborative work with players." And the PC design system is based on free descriptors, similar to many later "indie" and "indie"-style RPGs.

Maelstron Storytelling was published in 1997, and is the first example I'm aware of of descriptor-based PC sheets supporting closed scene-resolution mechanics. That's at least a few years before HeroWars and then HeroQuest as an example of the same approach, and more than 10 years before 4e's skill challenges.

So what I'm trying to say is that "modern" ideas have been part of the RPGing hobby more-or-less from the get-go; and while 2nd-ed and White Wolf-sytle gaming may have become dominant in the 80s and 90s, it has never been exhaustive of what RPGing has been taken to include.



Nagol said:


> The default style of the current D&D edition seems at its best when hewing to your description so I'm not surprised.  We've had some discussion about drifting it in a more "Nar"/PC-oriented mythic style that seemed unsatisfying; as a game engine I think it is ill-equipped to go there.



I agree with the first sentence. The second also seems fair. Although I don't have a really good sense of what might be done by pushing backgrounds and inspiration hard, the lack of serious non-combat resolution mechanics does seem to create limitations.



Lanefan said:


> D&D is malleable enough to be able to handle pretty much anything pre-modern-technology (and can even deal with a bit of that sprinkled in), thus a Greco-Roman-era setting is just as playable as a Renaissance European setting or something prehistoric.



As far as technological tropes are concerned, D&D is rather weak for anything where heavy armour is not on the table, because fighters as a class lose access to an important class feature (ie decent AC) without access to heavy armour (including its magic versions).

As far as story tropes are concerned, D&D (outside of 4e) cannot even do something like Conan especially well: in Conan nearly every person is killed or knocked unconscious with a single blow (Conan being an obvious exception) - eg when Conan is attacked by were-hyenas, he dispatches them one blow per hyena. But in D&D (outside of 4e) were-hyenas would have 4 or so HD and hence double-digit hit points and hence not be able to be punched to death. 4e is an exception, because it has minion rules which allow for one-blow kills of beings other than rats and kobolds.

That's not to assert that D&D is especially focused; rather, that it is not as malleable as you assert. I don't think that Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy Hack or Rolemaster is narrower in any significant fashion.



Lanefan said:


> And how long did any of those games/campaigns last?



I ran a GH Rolemaster campaign that lasted for 8 years, and an OA Rolemaster campaign that lasted for 9 years. My first 4e game went for 6+ solid years, but is now played only intermittently as we have an understanding that we won't play it unless everyone can make it.

Over the past couple of years we've run multiple games concurrently, so all but Burning Wheel is in single digits of sessions.

There is no correlation between approach to RPGing and length of campaign, in my experience. It's much more about the mechanical capacity of the system to support developments in the story: Rolemaster breaks down between 20th and 30th level; 4e has a cap at 30th level (which is where our game currently is); etc.



Kobold Boots said:


> Shhhh.  Don't ask the hard questions.  Everyone is a 20 year plus DM with the same group on the Internet.



I think I've got more actual play posts than anyone else on ENworld. My 4e actual play posts go back to Jan 2011. I guess it's _possible_ I just made all those events up. . . .



Saelorn said:


> Just because the characters care about rescuing elves, and there are elves to be rescued, it does not necessarily follow that those characters will find the relevant dungeons _and_ explore it _and_ find what they're looking for. But yes, the primary alternative to rescuing the elves is in failing to rescue the elves.



So the players may fail to find the adventure at all; or fail to rescue the elves.

I hope it's fairly clear why I call that a railroad.



Saelorn said:


> Consider the Lord of the Rings, as an example. The GM is responsible for creating the ring, all of the bad guys, and thousands of years worth of history. The players are encouraged to make characters who have a reason to undertake this quest. The scenario is worth playing out, because we don't know what will happen. The choices of the players all _matter_, because the end isn't written yet, and the only way to see what happens is to play out the consequences of those choices.



The LotR is a novel, not an actual play report. Nothing can be inferred about the actual play of a RPG simply from a post-hoc description of the story.

But consider this: a GM first plots out some backstory about a ring etc. Then writes an episode about a trip to Bree and an escape from the inn there. Then write an episode about travelling to Rivendell, and an attack on Weathertop. Then an episode about a trip through Moria. (This could be thought of as analogous to a DL module, or a short AP.)

At that point, the basic outline of events is already established. No choices or suggestions that the players make is going to alter it. Maybe the GM notes include the following sidebar "If the players try to have their PCs avoid Moria by taking the pass, it becomes impassable due to weather." And "If the players try to backtrack through Moria, they find their way blocked by an undefeatable balrog". Etc. But we don't need those little bits of icing to discern the railroad in the cake.

We don't know, in advance, whether the PCs will make it through all the episodes or not (maybe there is a TPK in Bree; maybe the players can't solve the riddle at the entrance to Moria - although the GM's notes might then allow for an INT check, with a note that the GM should fudge it to make sure the players get the information they need; or perhaps a friendly talking swallow sent by Radagast gives them the answer if the GM thinks they've puzzled about it for long enough). What we do know is that, if the game is to occur, it will have this basic shape with this sequence of events, and it will all be focused on this fiction that the GM has already written.



Saelorn said:


> It's not that the players have no control. Players have absolute control, over the decisions made by their characters.



Having control over what I wish for my PC is no control at all, in the context of gameplay. In your model, the players have _no ability_ to actually change the ingame situation. _Everything_ is up to the GM.



Saelorn said:


> What players _don't_ have is the burden of figuring out what _else_ is going on in the world. The player doesn't have to worry about establishing what the weather is like, or the conditions of a wall they might want to climb



Nor do they in any of the game I'm GMing. If you don't understand that, I strongly encourage you to reread my account of how action resolution works, and who has what sort of authority and responsibility for establishing the shared fiction.

A player can say "I look for handholds" in my game, just as in yours. The difference is that, in my game, the players' desire for the wall to have handholds is actually relevant to determining whether, in the ficiton, it does or doesn't. (The method I use, to repeat again, is "say 'yes' or roll the dice").



Saelorn said:


> someone always barges in with some completely ludicrous idea about how nothing really exists



No one in this thread has said _nothing_ really exists. I have made the obvious point that _imaginary_ things don't really exist - that's inherent in them being imaginary. Only young children think otherwise.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I think I've got more actual play posts than anyone else on ENworld. My 4e actual play posts go back to Jan 2011. I guess it's _possible_ I just made all those events up




It's fair to assume slight.  I apologize.  In my defense, the original post I quoted did not have the user associated with the quote inline so my reply was a general one, not intended to be applied to you.

Since we're elaborating, just for the future.

My first game was in 1981.  It was a juvenile one off intended to satisfy my older cousins who simply used it as a way to take advantage of or crap on their younger cousin.  We played a few games, I sucked and retreated to reading the game and making maps.  Over time, I played a few more games, still sucked.  Went to military school and got into wargaming and history.  Played a few more games, made a few more maps, group stabilized.  Game went 4 years til we went to college.  Never called it a "campaign" we were playing very serially but about six months in players started talking about building on what happened "last time".  

I still say to this point that if it wasn't for my constantly making maps and writing out character sheets, my penmanship would be lousy.  The hobby was good for trying to neaten up writing, because the character sheets didn't take kindly to crappy lettering.  I still don't know if I took architectural drawing because I liked designing, or because I wanted neater game notes.

Anyway on to college.  (about 5 years of real game experience once a week).  It's the 90s, I call these the dark times.  Transition to 2nd edition from 1st was easy enough and the first generation of characters was put aside for a bit.  Built out another section of the game world which now was considered a "campaign" because I first heard the term used proactively at this time and actively thought about prepping in the "world" because it would cut my "prep".  

I feel I learned a lot about people and performing during this time.  Without any doubt in my mind, I sucked at DMing because I couldn't connect across a table with what people wanted.  Until this point I had only DM'd friends with a common desire to put up with the game because we weren't really able to do much else with our downtime.  Here, we had distractions and better things to do, so the game better be fun, or we weren't going to be doing it much.  I was entirely too formulaic.  By the end of the 90s I dropped tabletop in favor of LARP.  

The 2000s - LARP and 3X - So this is what I'll call a mentorship in WTF.  I was fortunate enough to be on the home turf of NERO and while Ford wasn't part of the equation anymore he left behind some wonderful people who were running LARPs in my neighborhood.  One person in particular was highly talented and had all the answers for how to manage 70 plus players, for two days, four times a year and get folks to pay 70 bucks each to do so.  That one person had a strong writing committee around him, and I soaked it all in.

To be entirely fair, I was also very good at being a giant jerk during this time and I didn't appreciate what I was a part of until long after my ego convinced me I could do what they were doing, better than they did it and was proven entirely wrong.  One thing that came away from it though was my first experience with meta when about 15 of those LARPers allowed me to DM them over a three-four year span.  Easily the best gaming of my life and where I finally broke through on DMing.

So on meta.  If you have the right players and they're willing to do things like
- Have one main plot and three side plots for their character
- Involve two other PCs in their side plots.
- Still take part in the main storyline of the campaign
- Write post event letters about what their characters experienced and tell you in character what they want to do next.
- Actually play NPCs in cut scenes to develop the world further
- Allow you to facilitate

The game lives and is absolutely amazing.  These players became the second generation of characters such that I was able to bring some friends in from the first group via PBP and hand off the early plot from the 1st ed game.  The 2nd ed game events colored things somewhat but were relegated to trivia by the end.  This group ended due to my aforementioned jerk behavior and I've apologized where I could.  

Anyway, by this time, I've got a strong love of the game as it was and a great grounding in meta or story over mechanics.  What comes next goes entirely in the other direction.

2008 - 4e - Wargaming. - By this time I had really screwed myself in terms of gaming as I had alienated almost everyone I had known locally and those that weren't had pursued careers away from my area.  Went to a local gaming store, ran a game there for a few months and continued the trend.  Many reasons for being a jerk but no excuses.  Take away was I had a new group of folks that liked my DM style and agreed to play through the Shadowfell series of adventures.   

This was sort of a throwback as we had at least one player that was really 1st ed/2nd ed and a few that were more third, but I think I was the only one that truly appreciated 4e due to its wargaming/positioning basis.  it's still my favorite version of D&D but it's probably because I liked ASL and other Avalon Hill games back when I was in mil school.   So that's another three years of gaming off and on in the DM chair.  While I did superimpose those modules on my own game world I did not interleave them with the 1st/3rd groups timeline and consider them more in line with the 2nd ed group as I did have a couple of those folks take part once or twice when they were available.

2017 - I've taken five years off.  It was necessary to deal with some things that were contributing to my less than wonderful behavior and focus on family.  Better person, not necessarily interested in starting fights on forum boards about games.  So as I started the post I'll end it.

Sorry for the slight.   Obviously looking for the next group.  Willing to be open about history due to anonymity and to establish some common knowledge 

Be well
KB


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> As far as story tropes are concerned, D&D (outside of 4e) cannot even do something like Conan especially well: in Conan nearly every person is killed or knocked unconscious with a single blow (Conan being an obvious exception) - eg when Conan is attacked by were-hyenas, he dispatches them one blow per hyena. But in D&D (outside of 4e) were-hyenas would have 4 or so HD and hence double-digit hit points and hence not be able to be punched to death. 4e is an exception, because it has minion rules which allow for one-blow kills of beings other than rats and kobolds.



You could model such a thing in third edition, through use of the Power Attack feat. There's no conceptual issue with Conan being level 20 while everyone else is level 1-3. It just doesn't make for a very exciting narrative, because we see how skewed the odds really are.

Back in the OGL days, when everything was getting converted to d20, one of the games which made the transition was called Testament. It was supposed to be a game about role-playing in the Biblical era, and it included conversions for many Biblical figures into d20. Relevant to the topic at hand, it has Goliath as something like a level 13 giant fighter, and David is like a level 25 multiclass rogue/priest/paladin. It doesn't change the events of the story in any way; it just changes our interpretation of them.


pemerton said:


> Having control over what I wish for my PC is no control at all, in the context of gameplay. In your model, the players have _no ability_ to actually change the ingame situation. _Everything_ is up to the GM.



A player has _at least_ as much control over the game world as the player has over the real world; often significantly moreso, since they are acting in the capacity of their PCs, many of which possess great skill or strength or magical ability. Which is _exactly_ the amount of control that the players _should_ want, if they mean to actually _role-play_ and not just _tell a story_.


pemerton said:


> A player can say "I look for handholds" in my game, just as in yours. The difference is that, in my game, the players' desire for the wall to have handholds is actually relevant to determining whether, in the ficiton, it does or doesn't. (The method I use, to repeat again, is "say 'yes' or roll the dice").



The player still has to worry about those things becoming established as a result of their actions, whether or not they take a personal hand in deciding yea or nay. When you live in a world where things only become fixed once they are observed, you have to be careful about what you choose to observe (which is not the main complaint here, but it is ridiculous and worth mentioning).


pemerton said:


> No one in this thread has said _nothing_ really exists. I have made the obvious point that _imaginary_ things don't really exist - that's inherent in them being imaginary. Only young children think otherwise.



Only young children (or someone indoctrinated into the cult of meta-gaming) would fail to grasp that, for the purposes of meaningful resolution, we must treat imaginary things _as though_ they did exist. The fact that things are imaginary cannot possibly affect how they resolve, because they are _only_ imaginary in an out-of-game context.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> You could model such a thing in third edition, through use of the Power Attack feat. There's no conceptual issue with Conan being level 20 while everyone else is level 1-3. It just doesn't make for a very exciting narrative, because we see how skewed the odds really are.
> 
> Back in the OGL days, when everything was getting converted to d20, one of the games which made the transition was called Testament. It was supposed to be a game about role-playing in the Biblical era, and it included conversions for many Biblical figures into d20. Relevant to the topic at hand, it has Goliath as something like a level 13 giant fighter, and David is like a level 25 multiclass rogue/priest/paladin. It doesn't change the events of the story in any way; it just changes our interpretation of them.
> A player has _at least_ as much control over the game world as the player has over the real world; often significantly moreso, since they are acting in the capacity of their PCs, many of which possess great skill or strength or magical ability. Which is _exactly_ the amount of control that the players _should_ want, if they mean to actually _role-play_ and not just _tell a story_.
> ...




I think perhaps you two are posting more to disagree with each other than actually say something is different?


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## Lanefan (Jan 17, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> The only way that works is if we were to run at 7-8pm EST and Pemerton was willing as that would be 7-8am his time.



That'd be about 4-5 p.m. here.  OK.



> That said, my desire to do so is in no way any guarantee that anyone would want to.  I'm relatively new here after a long time off and I've already had one mini-tantrum - not very compelling in a DM I'd say, regardless of how good I may be - it's still a risk to take to trust me just yet.



As long as the players can have tantrums as well, all is good.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 17, 2018)

Its late.  I'm tired.  

This hippy indie GM who needs to be McCarthyismed out of the hobby because he is going to destroy it with his viva la resistance ways is going to watch an episode of Peaky Blinders and go to bed.  I'll get some heretical hippy indie responses up tomorrow (that should no doubt immediately be destroyed in the face out of existence for the sake of the hobby and RPG children everywhere).


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## Lanefan (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Just to pick up on this (not to contradict it, but to point out that it's actually quite an understatement):
> 
> Gygax's DMG (1979), p 90 (under the heading "Territory Development by Player Characters":
> 
> Assume that the player in question decides that he will set up a stronghold about 100 miles from a border town, choosing an area of wooded hills as the general site. He then asks you if there is a place where he can build a small concentric castle on a high bluff overlooking a river. Unless this is totally foreign to the area, you inform him that you can do so.​



I'll admit this one surprised me, when I was looking into what would be involved in my character building a stronghold.  Basically, if there's no good reason not to, the DM gives the player a hex on the map to work with (though still retains control of whatever monsters etc. might happen to reside there), and it's up to the player-in-character to clean out the hex of monsters and make it habitable.



> As far as technological tropes are concerned, D&D is rather weak for anything where heavy armour is not on the table, because fighters as a class lose access to an important class feature (ie decent AC) without access to heavy armour (including its magic versions).



Perhaps.  That said, 0-1-2-5e are all malleable enough to handle even this, via the DM tweaking what classes are available to play and-or changing some classes (Fighter might become Swashbuckler, for example; reliant on Dex and guile and attacking prowess rather than heavy defense).



> As far as story tropes are concerned, D&D (outside of 4e) cannot even do something like Conan especially well: in Conan nearly every person is killed or knocked unconscious with a single blow (Conan being an obvious exception) - eg when Conan is attacked by were-hyenas, he dispatches them one blow per hyena.



That's because most of the time Conan in D&D terms is a 25th-level behemoth fighting things a very long way below his pay grade e.g. hyenas.


> But in D&D (outside of 4e) were-hyenas would have 4 or so HD and hence double-digit hit points and hence not be able to be punched to death.



For all we know Conan is probably doing double-digit damage with those punches....

That, and is Conan what core D&D is really trying to replicate?  I think not.  Instead I suggest it's trying more to replicate the LotR/Hobbit parties.



> I ran a GH Rolemaster campaign that lasted for 8 years, and an OA Rolemaster campaign that lasted for 9 years.



I'm impressed.  Well done.



> My first 4e game went for 6+ solid years, but is now played only intermittently as we have an understanding that we won't play it unless everyone can make it.



You're not the first I've heard of who has managed to make a 4e game last well beyond the norm.



> There is no correlation between approach to RPGing and length of campaign, in my experience. It's much more about the mechanical capacity of the system to support developments in the story: Rolemaster breaks down between 20th and 30th level; 4e has a cap at 30th level (which is where our game currently is); etc.



To support developments in the story, or mechanical developments in the caracters?

A story or campaign can develop quite happily for a very long time without the characters advancing in level or mechanics at all.  It's the mechanical advancement that puts an end to what really should be open-ended; to which the obvious solution is to dramatically slow down said advancement until it becomes an occasional side effect of ongoing play rather than a/the focus of it.

Your 4e game might have had another 6 years in it had you slowed down the advancement; but now you're at 30, and where can you go from there?



> So the players may fail to find the adventure at all; or fail to rescue the elves.
> 
> I hope it's fairly clear why I call that a railroad.



Actually, it isn't clear at all.  A true railroad would not allow for failure - they'd find that adventure no matter what they did, and get run into it somehow.  Allowing for failure to even find the adventure in fact speak to the game not being a railroad.  Yes the DM has a story in mind and an adventure ready to run, but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to get to run it.

And if they do find the adventure but fail to rescue the elves...well, that's just part of the game.  PCs don't (or shouldn't) automatically succeed at everything they try; and if their fireball just happens to clip the prison cells where the elves are being held and wipe half of 'em out, all you can say is 'oops'.



> The LotR is a novel, not an actual play report. Nothing can be inferred about the actual play of a RPG simply from a post-hoc description of the story.
> 
> But consider this: a GM first plots out some backstory about a ring etc. Then writes an episode about a trip to Bree and an escape from the inn there. Then write an episode about travelling to Rivendell, and an attack on Weathertop. Then an episode about a trip through Moria. (This could be thought of as analogous to a DL module, or a short AP.)



Sure.  No problem here; the DM has storyboarded out what will ideally hapen if everything goes according to plan, and has her adventure ideas lined up ready to go.



> At that point, the basic outline of events is already established. No choices or suggestions that the players make is going to alter it.



And here's where you go off the chart.  Player choices can - and almost certainly will, at some point - alter it; and the DM has to be able to roll with that.



> Maybe the GM notes include the following sidebar "If the players try to have their PCs avoid Moria by taking the pass, it becomes impassable due to weather." And "If the players try to backtrack through Moria, they find their way blocked by an undefeatable balrog". Etc. But we don't need those little bits of icing to discern the railroad in the cake.



If we take LotR as a game log, we've no way of knowing whether the DM in fact had them storyboarded to get through Caradhras without problem but a combination of her weather tables and player choices got in the way, after which she had to improvise.  Maybe Moria wasn't even on the original storyboard!



> We don't know, in advance, whether the PCs will make it through all the episodes or not (maybe there is a TPK in Bree; maybe the players can't solve the riddle at the entrance to Moria - although the GM's notes might then allow for an INT check, with a note that the GM should fudge it to make sure the players get the information they need; or perhaps a friendly talking swallow sent by Radagast gives them the answer if the GM thinks they've puzzled about it for long enough). What we do know is that, if the game is to occur, it will have this basic shape with this sequence of events, and it will all be focused on this fiction that the GM has already written.



We know from the game log that they succeeded.  What we don't know is how close to the original storyboard the end result wound up.

Using a different example: I keep a log of my game here:

www.friendsofgravity.com/games/decast/dec_adventure_list.html

That page shows the list of adventures played in the current gameworld/campaign, with each one linked to the log for that adventure. (caution: long and possibly very boring reading ahead should you be so brave as to delve into those...  )

What you won't know...and my players mostly don't know...is how much resemblance* that list of adventures and the stories told therein has to the original storyboard I drew up for this campaign.  The only thing that was nailed down and agreed on by all ahead of time was that the first adventure would be Keep on the Borderlands, because...Keep.

* - hint: not much.

So if this is a railroad, there's sure a lot of interweaving tracks and choices on where to go. 



> Having control over what I wish for my PC is no control at all, in the context of gameplay. In your model, the players have _no ability_ to actually change the ingame situation. _Everything_ is up to the GM.



Not quite, me hearty.  You can't change the ingame situation before you interact with it (just like real life), but once you're there you can change the hell out of it.  You can't decide whether or not there's a cottage in that glade ahead - the DM says there is, and so there is - but on seeing it you can decide to burn it down and kill its occupants, thus changing the ingame situation significantly.

The theoretical limit of the players' control is their own characters and what they do; with the results of consequences of their actions reflected by changes to the game world.  The more usual limit IME is that the players can make minor changes to the game world that don't and can't affect the run of play (e.g. as a player I can design the cottage or even the village I grew up in provided it's extremely unlikely it will ever enter play).

But a player can't declare "The world has three moons, not two"; nor can she say "The world has two moons, I'm looking for a third" and on a successful check a third moon appears.  It just don't work that way. 



> A player can say "I look for handholds" in my game, just as in yours. The difference is that, in my game, the players' desire for the wall to have handholds is actually relevant to determining whether, in the ficiton, it does or doesn't. (The method I use, to repeat again, is "say 'yes' or roll the dice").



"I look for handholds" forces a determination (or, if pre-determined, a narration) of whether there are any.  The difference lies in who makes that determination, and how it's arrived at.  As the handholds would or would not have been there regardless of PC interaction, they are thus part of the game world and under the DM's purview.  She uses whatever means she likes to determine their presence or absence, and narrates accordingly...which might mean simply saying "There aren't any, as far as you can tell."



> No one in this thread has said _nothing_ really exists. I have made the obvious point that _imaginary_ things don't really exist - that's inherent in them being imaginary. Only young children think otherwise.



This is where it gets confusing, as some of us are arguing that _from the perspective of the PC_ it does really exist - the imaginary-to-us game world is the reality the PCs operate in and has to be treated as such when talking about what a PC can observe.

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Sorry for the slight.



No need to apologise, but thanks - I was just wanting to make it clear that my accounts of my gaming experiences aren't made up - they are there in those dozens of actual play posts.

My timeline and backstory (sblocked for length):

[sblock]*1982* - start playing and GMing Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X
*1984* - start GMing AD&D.

At this time I had read Lewis Pulsipher's essays in White Dwarf, advocating the "wargaming" style of D&D. I must have read Gygax's accounts in his PHB and DMG too, but don't think I understood them at the time. I had no context outside of the game for making sense of all that advice; and my attempts to implement it failed. I wasn't good at it; my players weren't interested in it. (I've since learned that I'm not a very good wargamer/boardgamer - I lack the patience to develop my position, and so act/commit too early. I've also learned that I like teasing/provoking/prodding my players when I'm GMing, which is pretty much the opposite of dispassionate, neutral Gygaxian/Pulsipherian refereeing.)

Those early games that I GMed weren't meaningfully distinguishable from a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook experience, except that - with a referee rather than a book - there was a bit more flexibility in sequencing of exploration and fighting.

I also had a copy of Classic Traveller from around 1978/79. At first I didn't know what to make of it - it tends to assume the reader knows what a RPG is and how it works. Moldvay Basic is hugely different in this regard - it tells you how to play, and even if the "skilled play" aspect of it isn't something you pick up on (I didn't), it establishes basic procedures like drawing a dungeon map, the PCs exploring the dungeon, etc.

In the early-to-mid 80s I toyed with Traveller again a little bit, but never got beyond the odd bit of skirmishing, some trading rolls, etc. No serious play.

I would say the best part of my first AD&D campaign was when the name level PCs had set up a base, and defended it against a series of plots and attacks from NPC rivals/enemies who had been built up over the course of the campaign. This was my first experience at "scene framing" in response to player-signalled concerns/interests in respect of the shared fiction. (Of course I wouldn't have described it anything like that back then.)

*1986-89* - I ran an OA AD&D campaign, and then an all-thieves campaign, starting with the Keep of B2 and then moving first to Critwall and the the City of Greyhawk (using the boxed set). This was where I developed my preferred approach to GMing - "scene-framing" in a way that respnds to player signals and the play of the game, with a character focus but not necessarily that deep or serious. (I think of Claremont X-Men as a big influence on my sense of how adventuring-group-focused serial fiction can work.)

*1990* - A very bad experience as a player in a 2nd ed AD&D game with what I would regard as a super-railroading GM (but whom ENworld posters have defended on previous occasions when I've described the episode). It only lasted two or three sessions, I think. My lasting memory is that we were defending a city from kobold infiltrators, and (against the GM's expectations) we captured a kobold. We tried to interrogate it, and get it to show us on a map where the kobolds were coming from. The GM played the kobold as absolutely incapable of meaningful communication (despite kobolds defaulting to Average (but low average) intelligence in AD&D). It was transparent that the GM had a preconception of how the story was going to unfold (I assume he was running some module or other) and the players gaining intelligence about the kobolds was not part of that story.

When that GM indicated that he would be away for our next meeting time (this was a University club game), I arranged with the other players to start a Rolemaster game for them. Which I did - so in effect we sacked our GM (I think we invited him to join the RM game if he wanted; he declined, and I believe got new players). That RM game continued from early 1990 to late 1997, with a shifting cast of players and PCs (though a couple were constant from 1991 onward, and one of the originals, who had moved to the US, would drop in whenever he was back in Melbourne). A few of the players who joined over the years were refugees from standard (ie railroading) AD&D games. The campaign became fairly well-known in the club for byzantine mechanics (that's RM for you), byzantine backstory, and some interesting characters.

This same group also did some other RPGing together, in the club and at local conventions - we especially enjoyed (and sometimes won prizes for) BRP systems - RQ, CoC, Stormbringer, etc. At conventions they had two strengths compared to (eg) D&D games: first, the GMs tended to be better (more evocative in their play of NPCs, more impassioned in their framing, etc); second, the game was more likely to be focused on a single big conflict, with earlier scenes and sessions being build-ups to the payoff. (I woudln't have been able to articulate this analysis at the time, but can see it in retrospect.) The pre-gens gave everyone some starting motivations, and that would be enough to give you direction through the set-up. But then in the big finale it as your vision of your PC that came to the fore, as you had to choose (eg) between honouring alliances or betaying the group for some other commitment.

I can't really do that sort of evocative GMing, but I think I learned some lessons from the way those games were structured. In retrospect, they illustrated the difference between tight framing and railroad.

In the mid-to-late 90s (95(?)-97) I played in a 2nd ed AD&D game. This was also quite influential on my thinking. The GM's efforts were a railroad of the classic type - there was a prophecy (connected to some game this guy had run for a different group) and he would drip-feed us clues but never really signal whether we were making any progress in our interpretation.

It was quite a big group of players (six or seven), most who had no connections outside the game, and so what happened was that we (as players) made up our own game, involving a mix of our own backstories for our PCs and the connections we developed between PCs playing the game. This was especially easy because the GM spent more time with the "prophesied" PC's player than with any single other player, which gave the rest of us "free time", which we would fill in in-character rather than with out-of-game chatter, precisely because we didn't really know one another out of game. Some of this also fed back into our interpretations of the prophecy.

At a certain point it clearly got too much for the GM, because he time-shifted the whole thing 100 (? or so) years into the future, which basically invalidated all the connections, backstory, intreprations etc that we had built up as players, allowing him to reassert his authority over the fiction. I quit that game a session or two after that, and I think it broke up completley not long after.

For me, it was an abject lession in how railroading and GM control is the enemy of player engagement and creative contributions.

Anyway, my first RM campagin eventually came to an end when I started full time work, and so didn't have the time to take proper notes to manage the backstory. This, together with weaknesses in high-level RM mechanics (especially around scry-fly-die), meant that a good campaign (which I think probably peaked around 1994/95) had a slightly ignomious TPK ending. One thing I discovered running this game was that extensive campaign world notes were largely redundant, except as a tool for generating situations, and for integrating, and establishing context for, players' desires for the game.

To elaborate a bit on that last point: the game (set in Greyhawk, although in this thread from a while ago some posters argued that the way the setting was adapted and developed made it a not-really-GH game) had a pretty extensive ancient history backstory, and that was something that the players (via their PCs) gradually learned as the game unfolded. Because of the way RM knowledge skills work, the players dont really have the capacity to _establish_ that sort of backstory via checks (contrast, say, Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic); what a knowledge check does is oblige the GM to reveal some new bit of backstory that is salient to the players' concerns (because that's why his/her PC wants to know). But that backstory was developed by me over the course of the campaign, with initial thoughts being dropped or reworked or amplified to reflect where the players were taking the campaign and what they cared about. At the start of the campaign, neither I nor the players had any conception of the Great Kingdom except, perhaps, as the "evil, tyrannical empire to the east of Greyhawk City". By the end of the game, it was established that the Great Kingdom was a type of heir to the Suel Empire, riven by some of the same splits (political, religious, metaphysical) that had riven the Suel Empire - and the PCs were taking various stands in relation to that history, tyring to make the Great Kingdom what they wanted it to be in relation to that history. In this context, it made no sense to have big lists of events _currently taking place_ in the GK or other parts of the gameworld - because these had to be adapted to reflect what was going on in play, both in terms of "ingame causation" and "narrative causation". (Rolemaster emphasises the former for the local consequences of character actions, but has no ingame causation oriented mechanics for social and political developments.)

*1998-2008* - We started a new (Oriental Adventures) Rolemaster game after the first RM campaign ended, which ran until the end of 2008. I used what I had learned about both campaign management and issues with RM's mechanics to help make sure this game didn't collapse under it's own weight. (At one point I toyed with trying to move the campaign to HARP - a RM-lite also published by Iron Crown - but the group didn't want to.) I say more about the ending of this game in reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] below.

Some time around 2000-ish I bought the HeroWars rulebooks, but at that time couldn't work out how the system was meant to work. (It's a free-descriptor system with both simple contest and complex contest resolution options, all based on "closed scene" resolution.) In early 2004 I discovered The Forge. For me, that was like a revelation. It took a lot of thinking, and required me to revisit and correct some uthinking assumptions I'd made about RPGing, but it made sense of so much of my RPGing experience - I could see RM as a "purist for system" simulation engine, but also could see that my group was using it to run a "vanilla" narrativist/"story now" game (ie one without any funky mechanics); and I could see why my attempt to use RQ for the same purpose hadn't worked (RQ doesn't give the player enough control over either PC build or the minutiae of action resolution to send signals - eg there is no such thing as "effort" in RQ action resolution - whereas RM is different in both respects). BRP can work for one-shots, but not (in my view, given what I'm looking for) for a campaign. (I used to think Classic Traveller had the same problem as BRP in this respect; my current experiences have made me look at CT in a new light, though. But I don't think RQ has the features that CT has that make it amenable to vanilla narrativist play. But it's possible I'm wrong about that, and that my past failures just showed a lack of GM mastery of the appropriate techniques.)

The Forge also let me make sense of the HeroWars rules. And then when D&D 4e was announced, and being discussed, it was clear to me that it was going to meld aspects of HeroWars (which around then was re-released and subsequently genericised as HeroQuest and HeroQuest revised) with traditional D&D mechanics, but abandoning the (in my view failed) simulationist accretions of 2nd ed AD&D and 3E while embracing the heroic and gonzoe romantic fantasy aspect of play first heralded in the Foreword to Moldvay Basic (with the tale of the overthrow of the dragon tyrant using the sword gifted by the mysterious cleric) but not delivered by earlier versions of D&D. Even as announcements about the direction of 4e seemed to cause chaos and apoplexy, the design direction seemed crystal clear to me and the published rules delivered on that 100%. (That's not to say 4e is perfect at what it does. There are active threads at the moment on the "old D&D editions" subforum that discuss ways in which 4e might have been improved. But nevertheless, it delivers what it promises on the tin.)

*2009* - As more group members moved overseas, we merged two groups which had overlapping members and overlapped more generally in friendship circles. From 2009 to mid-2013 I GMed 4e exclusively, for this group. And through 2016 it remained the group's primary game. That campaign has reached 30th level, but is not resolved as the PCs have not yet recovered the seventh part of the Rod of Seven Parts, and haven't decided what to do if they do find it - they are all of the view that the Dusk War needs to be averted somehow, but have differing views on the best way to do that. We have also started a Dark Sun game, although it remains in its early stages.

But over the past few years I've also GMed Buring Wheel, Cortex+ Heroice (both Marvel and a Fantasy Hack), a session of AD&D (for nostalgia purposes when one of the emigrants returned for a holiday), and most recently Classic Traveller. None of these games is the same as the other - just to give one example, in Burning Wheel fictional positioning factors directly into resolution (a player can seek an advantage die if s/he thinks that his/her PC's ficitonal positioning would help; the system has other mechanisms, connected to character advancment, that mean players don't always want to roll the maximum number of dice they might be able to lobby for); whereas in Cortex fictional positioning only provides a basis for establishing an asset in the course of action resolution, which can then provide a bonus die to subsequent actions - so fictional positioning is mediated throught the action economy and player action declarations rather than impacting directly, which makes the game less gritty than BW, and also (I would say) a bit less visceral.

Nevertheless, I find that all can be run in my preferred style (conceived of relatively broadly): the PCs have dramatic needs, which means the players have things they want out of the game; I describe a situation that puts pressure on those needs/wants; action delcarations are therefore made; we resolve those, which helps establish elements of a new situation; and then we keep going.

And to put it in negative/contrastive terms: since 1995 or thereabouts I think I have drawn maybe half-a-dozen "dungeon" maps: I remember one for a dragon lair in the OA game; a handful in the heroic tier of the 4e game, when some dungeon exploration seemed to make sense; and randomly generating a dungeon (using DMG Appendix A) for the AD&D session. I've used some building floorplan maps in RM too, and obviously lots of them in 4e, but as situations in their own right, not as components of big bits of setting to be explored by the players.

In Cortex+ and Traveller there have been no maps at all (action resolution doesn't need them in Cortex, and Traveller doesn't really need them either - my "star map" is just a list of worlds with jump distances to other worlds that have come up in the game, and a little sketch that illustrates the same thing geometrically). And in BW we use the GM maps for "big picture" stuff, and I used the Keep map from B2 for the keep on the borderlands between Hardby and the Abor-Alz.

These are the experiences that underpin my posts about how RPGing can be, in this and other threads.[/sblock]



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



In D&D, developments in the story and mechanical developments in the characters are correlated. As PCs advance from being figures of local significance to important rulers or representatives of gods and empires to (in 4e) being cosmological figures in their own right, naturally the scope and stakes of the fiction grow. (4e articulates this by reference to the "tiers" of play: heroic, paragon and epic. This is set out in both the PHB and the DMG.) At a certain point, the story comes to a natural end, and/or the mechanics lack the capacity to support any further escalation (eg in RM, the PCs become "paragon"-like somewhere between 12th to 15th level; by the mid-20s the mechanics fail to support a full-fledged escalation to cosmological/epic, but the PCs have too much mechanical capacity to face meaningful "paragon"-type challenges - that's what I mean when I say the system breaks down).

Slowing down advancement doesn't necessarily help, though - in D&D the scope of the story _can't_ develop without commensurate mechanical development, and if the scope of the story doesn't advance then it is easy to get stuck in stale, repetitive storytelling (an example from serial fiction in another mode: how many bad marriages has Aunt May had to be rescued from by Peter/Spidey - Mysterio, Doc Ock and no doubt countless others that I'm not aware of, having stopped reading Spidey in the mid-80s).

I can see my Traveller game eventualy reaching its denouement also - in Traveller, if the players have paid off their ship or have acquired some sort of high-quality cruiser or similar; have access to all the best tech; have located the Psionics Institute; etc - then what else is left for the game? Where is it going to go? Not every story is never-ending, especially in a medium (RPGing) which tends to place such a focus on character development.

A big influence on the way I ended our OA RM game came from reading about Paul Czege's My Life With Master (I don't own a copy, and so have never read or played it, but I know it incorporates an explicit endgame mechanic), and from downloading and reading his Nicotine Girls. I can't imagine actually playing Nicotine Girls, but it also has an explicit endgame mechanic. I framed an explicity engame situation for the OA game, the culmination of the last 10 years of play. We resolved it through a mixture of fictional positioning + saying "yes", and action resolution mechanics. It almost seemed that the PC "paladin "was going to have to sacrifice himself to save his god (who was trapped, dying/dead, in the void beyond the material world of space and time in an eternal struggle with a being of that realm who hoped to enter and destroy the material world); and the player was ready to commit his PC in this way. But then the players (I can't remember which one, or whether it was a collective thing) realised that they could use the "Soul Totem" they had been gifted by a banished god (the idea for that artefact comes from the 3E module Bastion of Broken Souls) to "split" the PC's karmic trajectory, investing his karmic "history" into a simulacrum (which another PC had the power to create) thus giving it the wherewithal to take the god's place in the battle, while the PC would be free to return to the material world and found a monastery on the island which was (in fact) the head of the giant stone body of his god where it had "died" on the material world blocking the entrance of the voidal entity.

I can't say the sentimentalist in me was disappointed by this happy outcome; but it was a result of the players engaging what the ingame situation had become, not the result of them guessing the solution to a GM-authored puzzle that I put in front of them.

With the final situation resolved, the other players also narrated the future destinies of their PCs, and it was quite interesting as (for instance) we got to see how the less assuming of the two main samurai PCs - through his courship (player-initiated) of a NPC wizard whome the PCs had encountered and rescued - had actually set himself up to establish a dynasty with an important role in sealing the barrier between the world and the void (but because it was a series of mortals over the generations, rather than a single god, would not go made from exposure to the void as had happened to the dead god); whereas the more dominant samurai had secured his own worldly position as lord of an important seaport, but did not have so much to offer to the metaphysical security of coming generations of mortals.

This sort of free narration of the campagin resolution, in collaboration between GM (as framer and provocateur) and players (as advocates for their PCs, but constrained by the established fiction), is to me the opposite of a module or AP ending, where the GM knows from the outset what the final situation will be, what the solution space is, and what the denouement is (more-or-less) going to look like.



Lanefan said:


> A true railroad would not allow for failure - they'd find that adventure no matter what they did, and get run into it somehow.  Allowing for failure to even find the adventure in fact speak to the game not being a railroad.  Yes the DM has a story in mind and an adventure ready to run, but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to get to run it.
> 
> And if they do find the adventure but fail to rescue the elves...well, that's just part of the game.  PCs don't (or shouldn't) automatically succeed at everything they try
> 
> ...



A "true railroad" is - in my view - a game in which the GM determines the significant possible outcomes. So a game in which the only solution is _X_ doesn't cease to be a railroad just because the players fail to identify X. To give a simple example: it is possible for my character to die in a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook, but those books _obviously_ count as railroads - it's all prescripted on the page in clear black type.

As for the storyboard and going off script - what's the point of the storyboard? What's it for. If the GM is really ready to follow the leads of the players, and to introduce new story elements in response to evinced desires/inclinations/suggestions etc, then _why bother writing a story that only you will read and that is of no utility to actual play_?


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## Sadras (Jan 17, 2018)

darkbard said:


> Pretty much exactly the role described throughout this thread by @_*pemerton*_ (and elucidated at times by @_*Manbearcat*_): frame the PCs into scenes signaled by their character builds and stated goals and motivations, adjudicate the result of PC failure according to the mechanics of the game system, etc.




Do you ever frame scenes/adventure scenarios which are not signalled by the character builds or stated goals?

For instance, the PCs are travelling via ship - do you introduce a complication where no die have been rolled or called for, such as an attack by a group of sea trolls serving a covey of sea witches which may or may not play a role further along the campaign.


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## Sadras (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> As for the storyboard and going off script - what's the point of the storyboard? What's it for. If the GM is really ready to follow the leads of the players, and to introduce new story elements in response to evinced desires/inclinations/suggestions etc, then _why bother writing a story that only you will read and that is of no utility to actual play_?




The story could be as much as 30 pages of detail to a mere 5 significant lines. The Tyranny of Dragons adventure path is two books full of detail which are there to assist the DM, but all the information is not necessary to run the AP.


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...





Saelorn said:


> You could model such a thing in third edition, through use of the Power Attack feat. There's no conceptual issue with Conan being level 20 while everyone else is level 1-3. It just doesn't make for a very exciting narrative, because we see how skewed the odds really are.
> 
> Back in the OGL days, when everything was getting converted to d20, one of the games which made the transition was called Testament. It was supposed to be a game about role-playing in the Biblical era, and it included conversions for many Biblical figures into d20. Relevant to the topic at hand, it has Goliath as something like a level 13 giant fighter, and David is like a level 25 multiclass rogue/priest/paladin. It doesn't change the events of the story in any way; it just changes our interpretation of them.



This proves my point. If the only way you can use D&D to emulate Conan (or the Biblical stories) is by using it in a way that is so counterintuitive (eg 25th level PCs vs 1st to 3rd level opponents) then that shows that traditional D&D can't do the story tropes of Conan. Whereas, say, RM or RQ can without needing to use the system in such a bizarre way, although it will fail in other departments - eg Conan will probably die quite early one unless the dice deliver resuts that are astronomically improbable; and 4e can do it pretty straightforwardly if you use only martial classes plus some rituals, and stick to Heroic and perhaps Paragon tier.



Saelorn said:


> A player has _at least_ as much control over the game world as the player has over the real world; often significantly moreso, since they are acting in the capacity of their PCs, many of which possess great skill or strength or magical ability. Which is _exactly_ the amount of control that the players _should_ want, if they mean to actually _role-play_ and not just _tell a story_.





Lanefan said:


> You can't change the ingame situation before you interact with it (just like real life), but once you're there you can change the hell out of it.  You can't decide whether or not there's a cottage in that glade ahead - the DM says there is, and so there is - but on seeing it you can decide to burn it down and kill its occupants, thus changing the ingame situation significantly.
> 
> The theoretical limit of the players' control is their own characters and what they do; with the results of consequences of their actions reflected by changes to the game world.



Comparisons to real life are in my view quite misleading.

The way that it becomes true that I pick up a cup is that (i) some causal process has brought it about that there is a cup in my vicinity; (ii) perceptual processes bring it about that I am aware of said cup; (iii) other complex neural processes bring it about that motor functions in my body are triggerd (colloquially speaking, I decide to pick up the cup I can see); (iv) my arm and hand move (in virtue of various mechanical forces transmitted from my muscles through my bones etc) and, via various mechanical processes (to do with the rigidity of the cup, friction between my fingers and it, etc) interact with the cup such as to pick it up.

The way it becomes true that my PC picks up a cup is that (i) some social causal process has brought it about that I and my fellow players agree that there is a cup in the vicinity of my PC; (ii) a complex neural process occurs within me (colloquially speaking, I decide to declare an action for my PC); (iii) a mixture of neural and motor functions results in my voicing the outcome of that neural process (ie I state my action declaration); (iv) some sensory processes lead to my fellow players, including the GM, knowing my action declaration; (v) further neural processes in my fellow players, including the GM, that then feed into social causal processes - possibly in conjunction with some motor processes (eg rolling dice) and external mechanical processes (dice falling to the table and coming to a stop) and sensory procegsses (ie reading the dice) - generate assent that my PC has, indeed, picked up a cup.

The above are of course the barest of sketches, but they illustrate the difference between the activity of picking up a cup, and the activity of contributing to the authorship of a shared ficiton in which an imaginary person picks up a cup.

As far as player impact on the game, railroading, etc are concerned, what is key is step (v) in the second of the above two paragraphs - ie how do we, as RPGers, generate assent that the PC has picked up a cup? What are the rules, habits, expectations, etc that guide this?

In [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]'s game, the GM _always_ has a veto at step (v). Hence the player does not have control over whether or not his/her PC picks up a cup - the best that s/he can do is make it true that the PC _wants_ to pick up a cup.

To say that the veto is exercised "fairly", or "neutrally", or by reference to the "truth" about the gameworld (eg the GM has secretly determined, at some point or other, that the "cup" the PC can "perceive" is really an illusion) is neither here nor there as far as my point is concerned - that the GM exercises the veto for some reason doesn't stop it being a veto. In other words, outcomes only occur in the fiction if they are consistent with what the GM is prepared to permit the fiction to be. The players don't have control over outcomes in the fiction - at best they can force the GM to choose between alternatives. (Is or isn't the PC going to be allowd to pick up a cup?)



Lanefan said:


> The more usual limit IME is that the players can make minor changes to the game world that don't and can't affect the run of play (e.g. as a player I can design the cottage or even the village I grew up in provided it's extremely unlikely it will ever enter play).
> 
> But a player can't declare "The world has three moons, not two"; nor can she say "The world has two moons, I'm looking for a third" and on a successful check a third moon appears.  It just don't work that way.



In the real world, an astronomer once said "This solar system has six planets; I'm looking for a seventh" - and low and behold, he discovered Uranus. Rinse and repeat for every astronomical discovery since.

There is nothing remotely unrealistic or threatening to verisimilitude for a PC to discover a hitherto unknown astronomical phenomenon.

As well as in the context of action declaration, players can and do contribute to framing and backstory authorship. I've already quoted the Gygax passage in which he encourages the GM to allow the player to establish geographic details for his/her stronghold. And in my Traveller game, in accordance with advice given in Book 3 (published in 1977), it was a player who decided that the best way to make sense of the randomly-generated starting world was that it was a gas giant moon.

I appreciate that in your game PCs never discover things the GM didn't already pre-author; and, apparently, never contribute directly to estabishing any significant elements of backstory or framing. But I don't think that's particuarly typical at all. When I started my first RM campaign in 1990, one of the players authored the backstory for his PC's mentor, including living in a hollow tree, and being a wizard on the run from, and in hiding from, powerful enemies - hence why he was living in a small village tutoring a relatively insignificant young mageling.

No one in our group regarded it as at all remarkable that a player would exercise that degree of control over what obviously was, and would go on to be affirmed as, a significant story element, although the only RPGs we were familiar with were the standard ones like D&D, RQ, RM, Traveller, etc.



Lanefan said:


> "I look for handholds" forces a determination (or, if pre-determined, a narration) of whether there are any.  The difference lies in who makes that determination, and how it's arrived at.  As the handholds would or would not have been there regardless of PC interaction, they are thus part of the game world and under the DM's purview.  She uses whatever means she likes to determine their presence or absence, and narrates accordingly...which might mean simply saying "There aren't any, as far as you can tell."



Again, this is a description of your method. It's not a description of how RPG per se work. The Classic Traveller description of the Streetwise and Bribery skills, for instance - written in 1977 - puts forward a different method from what you describe.

With Bribery, there is a reaction check first, and if that comes up hostile (the player knows the result, and in my game rolls the reaction check) then bribery can't succeed. If the reaction is neutral or positive, then the Bribery check is made, and that is how we learn whether or not this NPC is amenable to being bribed.

With Streetwise, the way we find out whether or not their are shady arms dealers on a world is by finding out whether or not a player's Streetwise check succeeds in locating them. The system does not use this approach for all such inquiries, however; when it comes to the Psionics Institute, the GM first makes a secret roll to find out if a branch is present on world, and then the player makes a check, with Streetwise serving as a bonus, to try and look for ti; but this check can only succeed if the GM's roll also came up positive. The practical difference is that, because of the interaction between dice rolls, it is much less likely that a given world will have a branch of the institute than a gang of shady arms dealers; and that the GM can know the truth about the Institute independently of the player knowing it, whereas if the check to find arms dealers fails it is left open whether that is because there are none, or because the PC failed to find them.

So here we have examples, from 1977, where the details of the situation (social analogues of "are there firm handholds") are expressly determined not prior to the resolution attempt, but as part of the proces of resolution. I don't know what Marc Miller had in mind exaclty when he wrote these rules, but to me they are clear illustrations that the way I handle action resolution is a very intuitive way of adjudicating action declarations and establishing the fiction in a RPG - especially in contexts (like the social ones I've described) where it is (i) impractical for the GM to establish all the details in advance, and (ii) it is more _interesting_ to establish details in the context of gameplay rather than prior to it.



Saelorn said:


> When you live in a world where things only become fixed once they are observed, you have to be careful about what you choose to observe (which is not the main complaint here, but it is ridiculous and worth mentioning).
> 
> Only young children (or someone indoctrinated into the cult of meta-gaming) would fail to grasp that, for the purposes of meaningful resolution, we must treat imaginary things _as though_ they did exist. The fact that things are imaginary cannot possibly affect how they resolve, because they are _only_ imaginary in an out-of-game context.





Lanefan said:


> This is where it gets confusing, as some of us are arguing that _from the perspective of the PC_ it does really exist - the imaginary-to-us game world is the reality the PCs operate in and has to be treated as such when talking about what a PC can observe.



I find the passage I've just quoted from Saelorn largely impenetrable.

But anyway, it is obvious that _from the perspective of the PCs the gameworld exists_. No one is suppposing that, _in the fiction_, the state of the handholds is a result of the PC's desire to climb the wall; or that the readiness (or otherwise) of the official to be bribed is a result of the PC's attempt to bribe her.

But that is a banal point. It tells us nothing about how to establish those elements of the fiction; and absolutely central to the playing of a RPG is _establishing a shared fiction_. Someone has to do it; it won't write itself.

I can treat the imaginary cup as though it does exist; hence, I know that it may be amenable to being picked up. But how do I know whether or not it has a hitherto unnoticed hairline fracture in the handle, such that when that is grasped the handle will in fact break off? Likewise for the handholds - _treating them as real_ tells me that, for instance, they are probably made of rock or earth rather than (say) jelly or big piles of cinnamon. But it doesn't tell me what their weight-bearing capacity is.

The established details of any RPG fiction are simply _not sufficient_ to generate, by sheer inference from what is already established, all subsequent details that are relevant to resolution of declared actions. So we need to generate new fiction. There are different ways to do that.  The GM making stuff up, or rolling dice and reading off a table, is an out-of-game happening, just as much as is a player wishing for something to be true in the fiction; or just as much as the GM narrating something in the context of establishing consequences of action resolution. Which of these methods you prefer in your RPGing is a fundamental question of play and of design, but has no bearing on whether or not the game you're playing is a RPG. And the gameworld doesn't become any more "real" or "objective" because the GM does all the authoring independent of the processes of action resolution, or of the desires of the players.


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Sadras said:


> The story could be as much as 30 pages of detail to a mere 5 significant lines. The Tyranny of Dragons adventure path is two books full of detail which are there to assist the DM, but all the information is not necessary to run the AP.



This doesn't really answer the question, though. How does that two books worth of detail assist the DM, if the DM is just going to ignore it and follow the players' leads?



Sadras said:


> Do you ever frame scenes/adventure scenarios which are not signalled by the character builds or stated goals?
> 
> For instance, the PCs are travelling via ship - do you introduce a complication where no die have been rolled or called for, such as an attack by a group of sea trolls serving a covey of sea witches which may or may not play a role further along the campaign.



I will answer this question for my part.

It depends on the system I'm running. In Burning Wheel or Cortex+, the answer is no. The rules of those games are (among other things) devoted to ensuring that the GM always goes where the action is.

4e is more obscure in this department, but - if one takes seriously the idea about player-authored quests etc, plus the stuff about "skipping to the fun" (which I take to be a slightly less confident way of saying "go where the action is") - then it seems to point the same way. And that's certainly how I run it.

In Classic Traveller, random encounters are a key part of the system, which relies heavily on random content generation to generate the feel of the universe through which the PCs travel. My own approach is to try and link those random encounters into the bigger picture as much as possible, so that the game doesn't get diverted from going where the action is.

To illustrate: in my most recent session, there were three random encounters: with some people onworld; with an animal onworld; and with a starship while leaving the world. The "people" encounter was with bandits; I ran that encounter as a group of locals trying to stop the PCs getting back on board their ship's boat to return to orbit. On a low-tech, high law-level world which the PCs might want to come back to, this therefore forced them to make choices about how they confronted the bandits and what sort of reputation they wanted to leave behind them: they chose to use their technological advantage to utterly crush the bandits, but weren't able to stop one escaping and so are now known, onworld, to have blown up bandits with unlawful high tech weaponry.

The animal roll on the encounter table turned up a small, solitary insectivore - I narrated it as being discovered in the cargo hold after they lifted off (having wandered in unnoticed at some point either when the PCs were unloading or redocking their air/raft), and the PCs were able to take a blood sample to try and identify its biological connection to the people on the planet, who were knonw to have alien (ie non-human) elements in their DNA. So the animal encounter figured into one part of the "big picture".

The starship encounter was with a pirate cruiser. I decided that it's "piratical" nature consisted in its being connected to the secret bioweapons conspiracy the PCs are investigating. This was the end of the session, but the next session will probably begin with the PCs either trying to take the cruiser, or alternatively using its absence from the world where the bioweapons research is taking place as their cue to jump to that world with a reduced chance of being blown up by an enemy cruiser!

I don't think what I've described is the _only_ way, or even the canonical way, to run Classic Traveller, but it's how I've been doing it.


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## Sadras (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This doesn't really answer the question, though. How does that two books worth of detail assist the DM, if the DM is just going to ignore it and follow the players' leads?




The AP provides Backgrounds available for the PCs to tie up the characters to the story.
The APs allows the DM to generate a timeline which reflects on the ever changing nature of the Sword Coast due to the Cult of the Dragon's progress. 

Should the PCs decide to skip a section or two within the book and pursue their own agenda of stopping the Cult or even something else - the DM is able to inflict on their meanderings various characters, framed scenes and resultant fall outs of the Cult's activities. This is not railroading but _content generation for the PCs to get the feel of the setting_ as in your Classic Traveller. 
The books from that point of view become useful as setting content and act as a guideline. 



> I don't think what I've described is the _only_ way, or even the canonical way, to run Classic Traveller, but it's how I've been doing it.




That is fair. Do you roll for this beforehand (pre the adventure) so that you may have time to think on how to tie these random encounters to the main storyline or on the spot? 

See, personally, I prefer to have the time available to be able to have a think about it and not being put on the spot. This then allows me to frame a scene such as the sea trolls and a social encounter with the covey of sea hags and not have to think too much about motivation besides the fact that they want slaves and treasure from the vessel the PCs are on. Sessions later, I might decide to use these NPCs again but tie them in  tighter to the main storyline.


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## Lanefan (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> And to put it in negative/contrastive terms: since 1995 or thereabouts I think I have drawn maybe half-a-dozen "dungeon" maps: I remember one for a dragon lair in the OA game; a handful in the heroic tier of the 4e game, when some dungeon exploration seemed to make sense; and randomly generating a dungeon (using DMG Appendix A) for the AD&D session. I've used some building floorplan maps in RM too, and obviously lots of them in 4e, but as situations in their own right, not as components of big bits of setting to be explored by the players.



I simply can't imagine trying to run a dungeon crawl without a map - within minutes I'd end up having different rooms trying to occupy the same space, distances and features that didn't line up, and so forth.  Also, as players we meticulously map the dungeons we explore (as I would absolutely insist on doing were I in your game); the assumption being that if there is no map there's a risk of getting lost...which means the DM's map or imagination has to be good enough to make things line up properly. 



> In D&D, developments in the story and mechanical developments in the characters are correlated.



Only to a point.  All editions of D&D have a "sweet spot*" in terms of what levels are the best for good play, and it behooves any DM to try and keep her game within this range for as long as possible.  So, how to do this?  First, slow down the advance rate to a crawl.  Then, instead of expecting the party to on average level up once or twice per adventure, try running three adventures per level and (by whatever means) stringing those adventures together into a story.  Now you've got something that'll take 30 adventures to get through 10th level instead of just 6 or 7.  The levels still advance and the story and characters still develop, only they spend longer at each stage...and as a pleasant side effect the sweet spot also lasts longer.

* - in 1e and 2e it's about 3rd to 9th level; in 3e about 4th to 12th.  Not sure about 4e and 5e other than having heard it's still a thing.



> As PCs advance from being figures of local significance to important rulers or representatives of gods and empires to (in 4e) being cosmological figures in their own right, naturally the scope and stakes of the fiction grow. (4e articulates this by reference to the "tiers" of play: heroic, paragon and epic. This is set out in both the PHB and the DMG.)



I know about 4e's tiers.  They kind of bake in what might be an erroneus assumption, however; that a campaign is going to go from "figures of local significance" to "cosmological figures in their own right".  I much prefer a campaign that takes quite some time to get from "neophyte adventurers just starting out" to maybe "important local rulers or power-brokers" or "bad-asses nobody wants to mess with".  In my eyes "figures of local significance" is already some way along the campaign's trail.



> At a certain point, the story comes to a natural end



Not if you can weave numerous different stories in such that one starts partway through another so when the first ends the second is in full swing and a third is starting to rear its head. 


> and/or the mechanics lack the capacity to support any further escalation (eg in RM, the PCs become "paragon"-like somewhere between 12th to 15th level; by the mid-20s the mechanics fail to support a full-fledged escalation to cosmological/epic, but the PCs have too much mechanical capacity to face meaningful "paragon"-type challenges - that's what I mean when I say the system breaks down).



Yes this is a bigger problem, solved as I said earlier by massively delaying that point from arriving.  Or, plan B: tweaking the rules so the system can handle higher levels.



> Slowing down advancement doesn't necessarily help, though - in D&D the scope of the story _can't_ develop without commensurate mechanical development, and if the scope of the story doesn't advance then it is easy to get stuck in stale, repetitive storytelling



Yes, this can happen if one isn't careful and-or paying attention.  But there's many stories to be told within any given scope.



> (an example from serial fiction in another mode: how many bad marriages has Aunt May had to be rescued from by Peter/Spidey - Mysterio, Doc Ock and no doubt countless others that I'm not aware of, having stopped reading Spidey in the mid-80s).



Lost on me - I don't do comics. (which happily means I can enjoy the Marvel movies unencombered by any thought of canon) 



> I can see my Traveller game eventualy reaching its denouement also - in Traveller, if the players have paid off their ship or have acquired some sort of high-quality cruiser or similar; have access to all the best tech; have located the Psionics Institute; etc - then what else is left for the game? Where is it going to go? Not every story is never-ending, especially in a medium (RPGing) which tends to place such a focus on character development.



And that right there is the crux of it.  Get the focus off of mechanical character development and on to a) characterization development and b) the here-and-now story being played out (regardless how said story is being generated) and you're good to go...and keep going.  



> <snip>
> 
> This sort of free narration of the campagin resolution, in collaboration between GM (as framer and provocateur) and players (as advocates for their PCs, but constrained by the established fiction), is to me the opposite of a module or AP ending, where the GM knows from the outset what the final situation will be, what the solution space is, and what the denouement is (more-or-less) going to look like.



I've been running my current campaign for close to ten years and I've no clue what the final situation or denouement will look like.  I've got about three years worth of adventures on the current storyboard (which has proven over time to be a rather malleable document; see below) but I know full well that one or more of the following could happen:

 - we play through everything I've got and then keep going into more that I haven't thought of yet
 - we more or less play through what I've got and then call it quits
 - we play through other stories and adventures that come out of the run of play independent of anything I've thought of
 - the game winds down sooner for other reasons e.g. players leave or I burn out or whatever



> A "true railroad" is - in my view - a game in which the GM determines the significant possible outcomes.



Then every game is a railroad, even yours; because going in to any situation - big picture or small pitcure - there's going to be three possible outcomes that are dictated by the logic of the game: success, failure, or something unexpected.  What a DM can pre-determine isn't the possible outcomes (those are already locked in by that logic), but what happens next because of each of those possible outcomes - and that's her job.  She needs to be looking ahead to both "what happens if they succeed?" and "what happens if they fail?" while always being ready for the unexpected; and if her notes are any good she already knows what happens on success or failure and thus doesn't need to make it up on the fly, needing only to make stuff up if the unexpected occurs.



> As for the storyboard and going off script - what's the point of the storyboard? What's it for. If the GM is really ready to follow the leads of the players, and to introduce new story elements in response to evinced desires/inclinations/suggestions etc, then _why bother writing a story that only you will read and that is of no utility to actual play_?



"Writing a story" is gilding the lily a bit. 

My storyboard consists of a series of lists of adventures, some connected together into vague APs, with notes on what level range each is for and about how long I expect each will take to play through.  There's also notes on some key plot ideas, possible enemies or villains, and on how some of these various adventures or paths might fit together and interweave; relevant as I've multiple parties in my game and need to consider which group might end up doing what and which active characters have encountered which plot points etc. during their careers.  I also note whether a particular canned module will fill the bill for any given adventure or whether I have to design it myself.

This all fits on one page.

Every year or so I re-do it, knocking off things that have been completed, adding in ideas I've had since I did up the last version, tweaking it to suit what I can actually run (e.g. for some years I was running two games a week, but for a while now it's been one), and so forth.  Knowing what might be coming down the road allows me to drop hints in now, whether they're picked up on or not.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This doesn't really answer the question, though. How does that two books worth of detail assist the DM, if the DM is just going to ignore it and follow the players' leads?



In my case it's not two books (yikes!) but one page, mostly for if the players don't give me any leads (or any leads I'm interested in running; I'm not keen on running something I'm not interested in).



> In Burning Wheel or Cortex+, the answer is no. The rules of those games are (among other things) devoted to ensuring that the GM always goes where the action is.



 Whether she wants to or not.  The GM in such games is kind of forced into running with whatever storylines the players give her, largely regardless of what she'd like to run; yet she still has to do the heavy lifting when it comes to narration and action resolution.  Bleah.

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Whether she wants to or not.  The GM in such games is kind of forced into running with whatever storylines the players give her, largely regardless of what she'd like to run; yet she still has to do the heavy lifting when it comes to narration and action resolution.  Bleah.



Have you played either game? Or any game run in a similar style?

Obviously if you don't think your players will give you interesting material to work with, that might be an issue. Happily, I can rely upon my players!


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Sadras said:


> Do you roll for this beforehand (pre the adventure) so that you may have time to think on how to tie these random encounters to the main storyline or on the spot?



I do it on the spot, because I don't know in advance what encounters might be called for. In the case of the starship encounter, I had one of the players make the roll as the PCs' ship left orbit.



Sadras said:


> The AP provides Backgrounds available for the PCs to tie up the characters to the story.



That's not railroading, agreed.



Sadras said:


> The APs allows the DM to generate a timeline which reflects on the ever changing nature of the Sword Coast due to the Cult of the Dragon's progress.
> 
> Should the PCs decide to skip a section or two within the book and pursue their own agenda of stopping the Cult or even something else - the DM is able to inflict on their meanderings various characters, framed scenes and resultant fall outs of the Cult's activities. This is not railroading but _content generation for the PCs to get the feel of the setting_ as in your Classic Traveller.



But this bit I don't agree with so much. The difference I see is that, in the Traveller game, I'm generating content in the moment and integrating it into the current ingame situation.

Whereas the AP content is pre-authored independently of the current ingame situation.

(If the AP content is being used as inspiration or a "lucky dip", that is closer to what I'm doing. As I posted upthread, I do prep - in the sense of generating NPCs, creatures, maps (for my 4e game), worlds and ships (for my Traveller game), etc. This is also how I use modules - as sources of NPCs, locations, little vignettes, etc. But I think the canonical way of using an AP is different from this - it's a sequence of events that the players work through systematically under the guidance of the GM.)


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## darkbard (Jan 17, 2018)

Sadras said:


> Do you ever frame scenes/adventure scenarios which are not signalled by the character builds or stated goals?
> 
> For instance, the PCs are travelling via ship - do you introduce a complication where no die have been rolled or called for, such as an attack by a group of sea trolls serving a covey of sea witches which may or may not play a role further along the campaign.




pemerton already did an excellent job of addressing this, but I will add my own answer.

For context, I play 4E D&D (though I've read through Blades in the Dark in its entirety and excerpts (sometimes large) of Dungeon World, Burning Wheel, and some of the other "indie style" games that come up in threads like this).

If my players have signaled to me that the ship journey itself is "going to the action," i.e. a narrative element with which they wish to engage, then I will frame a scene wherein complications like the one you present (sea trolls and hags, etc.) are introduced as the result of failed actions on the parts of the PCs (generally speaking, a failed roll in a Skill Challenge or something similar). If the players have not signaled that the ship journey is anything other than a means to an end, i.e. "getting to where the action is," then I may narrate elements that seem flavorful as descriptive text ("during the journey you learn that the Hag Thrall Narrows are worthy of their name, for not only does the ship contend with the region's notorious choppy waters and hillock swells, but your group aids the crew in fending off an attack by amphibious Sea Trolls who serve the mythic Hags who govern a subaqueous realm deep in the Narrows"), but this will serve only as description, not as a complication, for they haven't failed any action declarations.


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## pemerton (Jan 17, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I simply can't imagine trying to run a dungeon crawl without a map



Here's an actual play post that describes part of the underdark sequence in our main 4e game.

There were encounter area maps for most of the combat encounters, but there was no overall dungeon map - I think at a certain point, as things went along, I drew up a simple line diagram just to lock in the basic geography that we'd established (but no distances, angles, compass rose, etc).

I don't recall if the players made any sort of map. Mapping is not an important part of how we play RPGs.



Lanefan said:


> All editions of D&D have a "sweet spot*"
> 
> <snip>
> 
> instead of expecting the party to on average level up once or twice per adventure, try running three adventures per level and (by whatever means) stringing those adventures together into a story.  Now you've got something that'll take 30 adventures to get through 10th level instead of just 6 or 7.



The "sweet spot" for 4e is approximately 1st level to 30th: the maths doesn't break down (provided the players don't go for obviously broken/degenerate builds) and the mechanics and fiction correlate properly.

The issue in 4e is _PC complexity_ - ie player "search and handling time", rather than the maths per se. That's why the Neverwinter campaign setting re-corelates fiction and mechanics, to give a heroic through paragon story experience without mechanically advancing beyond heroic tier.

My personal preference (for my Dark Sun game) is to step up the rate of levelling rather than slow it down; I don't think there's enough content in Dark Sun to support a full 30 levels worth of play.



Lanefan said:


> I know about 4e's tiers.  They kind of bake in what might be an erroneus assumption, however; that a campaign is going to go from "figures of local significance" to "cosmological figures in their own right".



That's a lot like saying that D&D bakes in an erroneous assumption, that the game will be about swords and spells rather than lasers and forged cargo manifests.

It's not an _assumption_, it's a design premise to try and make D&D work in its correlation of fiction and mechanics.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The phrase "logic of the game" is yours. I referred to outcomes being _determined by the GM_. In my game, the GM does not determine all the significant possible outcomes. Action declaration can either result in an outcome determined by the player (if the check succeeds, or if I as GM say "yes") or an outcome determined by the GM (if the check fails). This is the significance of not adjudicating by reference to secret backstory, and thus not having GM vetoes that block possible ouotcomes _before_ the dice are rolled.



Lanefan said:


> What a DM can pre-determine isn't the possible outcomes (those are already locked in by that logic), but what happens next because of each of those possible outcomes - and that's her job.  She needs to be looking ahead to both "what happens if they succeed?" and "what happens if they fail?" while always being ready for the unexpected; and if her notes are any good she already knows what happens on success or failure



How can the GM know from his/her notes what happens on success or failure? That would require the GM knowing what the action declarations will be. Which would require the GM knowing, in advance, what the sequence of significant events is going to be. Which takes us back to railroading.

Here's a prosaic example: in my last session, the PCs landed on the world of Enlil to visit a local market to look for trinkets that might reveal something about the alien heritage of the people of Enlil. How can I know in advance, from my notes, what will happen on success or failure in that attempt? It never occurred to me that such a thing would happen until the players declared it as their PCs' actions.


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## Sadras (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I think the canonical way of using an AP is different from this - it's a sequence of events that the players work through systematically under the guidance of the GM.)




True the canonical way is sequential.



> But this bit I don't agree with so much. The difference I see is that, in the Traveller game, I'm generating content in the moment and integrating it into the current ingame situation.
> 
> Whereas the AP content is pre-authored independently of the current ingame situation.
> 
> (If the AP content is being used as inspiration or a "lucky dip", that is closer to what I'm doing. As I posted upthread, I do prep - in the sense of generating NPCs, creatures, maps (for my 4e game), worlds and ships (for my Traveller game), etc. This is also how I use modules - as sources of NPCs, locations, little vignettes, etc.




If the PCs had no tie in to the AP and did not follow the storyline, when I meant use the AP for setting content - so say for instance the characters were visiting Waterdeep, their visit to the City of Splendours might coincide with the Council Meetings organised to deal with the Cult, so they could perhaps meet characters from the AP, or hear rumours of the cults progress, perhaps even approached by Faction representatives having heard of their exploits wishing to recruit them....etc

I feel I lie somewhere in between your's and @_*darkbard*_'s style of roleplaying and @_*Lanefan*_'s but leaning towards Lanefan's in terms of play style, but with the characters' background/motives playing a more central theme as opposed to his.
Also I think a large factor at our table's gamestyle are the players and their preferences (which is limited to their experiences).


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## Lanefan (Jan 17, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Here's an actual play post that describes part of the underdark sequence in our main 4e game.
> 
> There were encounter area maps for most of the combat encounters, but there was no overall dungeon map - I think at a certain point, as things went along, I drew up a simple line diagram just to lock in the basic geography that we'd established (but no distances, angles, compass rose, etc).



Two things here.

First, in that log you mention several times you're using a map, and it seems for more than just individual encounters.

Second, it's far easier to go mapless in a situation like underdark tunnels that maybe don't meet up very often than it is when trying to pull a castle out of one's head where all the rooms etc. have to a) fit together, b) fit in the building's footprint, and c) connect in a reasonably logical fashion both vertically (stairs etc.) and horizontally (doors, passages, etc.).



> The "sweet spot" for 4e is approximately 1st level to 30th: the maths doesn't break down (provided the players don't go for obviously broken/degenerate builds) and the mechanics and fiction correlate properly.



Given the number of complaints I've seen about high-level 4e I'll take this with a grain of salt, if you don't mind.



> The issue in 4e is _PC complexity_ - ie player "search and handling time", rather than the maths per se.



Another reason I as player don't like fast advancement - I don't have time to get used to one level's worth of abilities and what I can do before another gets piled on.



> That's why the Neverwinter campaign setting re-corelates fiction and mechanics, to give a heroic through paragon story experience without mechanically advancing beyond heroic tier.



Ditto for the E6 idea for 3e, I suppose.



> My personal preference (for my Dark Sun game) is to step up the rate of levelling rather than slow it down; I don't think there's enough content in Dark Sun to support a full 30 levels worth of play.



How can that be possible, when you as DM can make up as much content as you need.  And, if it doesn't go to 30, slow it down so you get the same campaign depth out of 1-20 or 1-15.



> That's a lot like saying that D&D bakes in an erroneous assumption, that the game will be about swords and spells rather than lasers and forged cargo manifests.
> 
> It's not an _assumption_, it's a design premise to try and make D&D work in its correlation of fiction and mechanics.



With 4e in particular you can't go from simple farmhand to local hero unless the DM does some serious kitbashing to mechanically fill in the "gap" between a basic commoner and a 1st-level adventurer.  Instead, 4e bakes in the assumption that at 1st level - the theoretical start of your career - you're already significant within your community, thus implying your career is already well underway.  Other editions also exhibit this gap but it's nowhere near as pronounced and is much more easily overcome.



> The phrase "logic of the game" is yours. I referred to outcomes being _determined by the GM_. In my game, the GM does not determine all the significant possible outcomes. Action declaration can either result in an outcome determined by the player (if the check succeeds, or if I as GM say "yes") or an outcome determined by the GM (if the check fails). This is the significance of not adjudicating by reference to secret backstory, and thus not having GM vetoes that block possible ouotcomes _before_ the dice are rolled.
> 
> How can the GM know from his/her notes what happens on success or failure? That would require the GM knowing what the action declarations will be. Which would require the GM knowing, in advance, what the sequence of significant events is going to be.



And in most cases a DM who knows her game can look ahead and reasonably guesstimate what's coming next, both in the small picture and the large, and be ready for it.


> Which takes us back to railroading.
> 
> Here's a prosaic example: in my last session, the PCs landed on the world of Enlil to visit a local market to look for trinkets that might reveal something about the alien heritage of the people of Enlil. How can I know in advance, from my notes, what will happen on success or failure in that attempt? It never occurred to me that such a thing would happen until the players declared it as their PCs' actions.



In theory you'll have some idea why they're going to Enlil at all, from previous play; and if Enlil is a new place to the PCs it only makes sense they're probably going to start by doing some investigation and info gathering - which means you can anticipate this and  determine ahead of time what relevant info might be there to be gathered, assuming any reasonable success.  Further, you can reasonably guess that if their info gathering fails they're either going to blunder around blind (you can have some seemingly-random encounters ready for this) or leave and go to a different planet (putting you in react mode unless you know from the run of play where they're likely to go next).  You can also reasonably guess what'll happen should their info gathering succeed, and can prepare for that as in theory this will lead to the next phase of whatever adventure they're doing.  And if your guesses are wrong then you're in react mode until you can again predict what might be coming next.

This isn't railroading.  It's called being prepared, whether by copious notes or simply in your head.

Looked at in a bigger picture, you can reasonably predict at the start of most adventures what'll happen in the game world if they succeed and what'll happen if they fail, and have contingencies and-or consequences in place to suit either outcome.  You might even have a logical next adventure in mind, one for each likely outcome.  And hey - you're on your way to a storyboard, which in your example above (which I'll take liberties with as I don't  know why they're actually on Enlil) might - other than the lousy formatting - look lie this:

Enlil - find and bust up smugglers' base

Succeed: move to Fraka and bust up known base there (the PCs' current plan) unless they find info about HQ on Gurda
Fail: smugglers alerted to party's existence (bad!).  Open season on the PCs unless they go into deep hiding or leave the quadrant

Fraka - find and bust up smugglers' base, again might find info about Gurda if they look/listen.  Ships etc. that flee Enlil might end up here, pointing to a connection.

Succeed: by now they should know there's something bigger behind this, info gather should point to Gurda
Fail: smugglers alerted to party's existence but now there's less of 'em, not quite as bad.  PCs still in danger, need to dig deeper or hide.

Gurda - bust up smugglers' headquarters, discover trade-federation connections (troops, supplies etc.) in the process

Succeed: start acting against the trade federation?  Could lead to a long story arc...
Fail: smugglers much weakened but now PCs are on radar of the trade federation - could lead to a long story arc and lots of cloak-and-dagger stuff...

On paper this would look more like a flowchart with connection lines etc.

What this tells me is that I need to design the Enlil and Fraka bases, the Gurda HQ, and a bunch of encounters that would follow a failure at any point.

It's not a railroad if a story arc simply and naturally progresses from one thing to the next, and the DM sees this coming and prepares for it.

Lanefan


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## Manbearcat (Jan 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> For what it's worth, I feel the _exact same_ way about modern-hippie-indie game culture. It has a stranglehold over these forums, with people openly declaring that meta-gaming _isn't_ bad, and expecting to be taken seriously for it. It makes nuanced discussion about interesting topics that I care about impossible to engage with, since someone always barges in with some completely ludicrous idea about how nothing really exists and there's no point in pretending otherwise. And it has chased away a significant number of the posters that I previously enjoyed engaging with.




That is persuasive to precisely no one (including yourself).

You are not so compromised (from a perspective bias angle) to actually believe what you just wrote.  You aren't.  I give you more credit than that.  This is just trolling.  I feel like you're trying to draw out a moment of Godwin's Law or something with comments like this and your extremism.

You can respond and rearrange my words for rhetorical effect or anything else.  It won't work.  I believe in you Saelorn.  Even if you don't believe in yourself!


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## Manbearcat (Jan 18, 2018)

Nagol said:


> The default style of the current D&D edition seems at its best when hewing to your description so I'm not surprised.  We've had some discussion about drifting it in a more "Nar"/PC-oriented mythic style that seemed unsatisfying; as a game engine I think it is ill-equipped to go there.




You know I certainly agree with you on this!

I'm not sure if we agree on my position that this was the aim at the outset of the playtest though.  My sense is that the 5e playtest (predisposition, survey bias, consultant bias, and procedures) was constructed to bring exactly about this sort of game to satisfy the revolutionaries who mobilized a grass-roots effort to create just such an overhwelmingly toxic environment that this pendulum swing was nearly assured.  There were many opportunities (from predisposition to survey objectivity, to consultant diversity, to iteration) to create an actually deft chasis that could do all the things they initially said they were trying to do.  But that didn't happen and here we are.

And honestly, great!  D&D is doing well because they made a very satisfactory product for the swell of those folks, all the hippie indie gamers have been driven from the D&D fold and they aren't jilted lover compromised such that they are willing to endlessly deluge/harrass/agitate to bring about the sort of toxicity that permeated our gaming culture from 2008 to 2014.  And, luckily, it happened during a period where so many incredible games, authored by so many truly talented and insightful designers, that dangerous indie gamers like myself who have played D&D for 30+ years wouldn't have a reason to care even if we were as immature as those who incited (perpetually...non-stop) the edition war!


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 18, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> You are not so compromised (from a perspective bias angle) to actually believe what you just wrote.



From my perspective, whenever a thread like this pops up, one of those darned meta-gamers always posts some horrible meta-game response that compels refutation lest anyone take them seriously. And then the entire thread gets derailed. Has that not been your observation?

Whatever bias may be due to my perspective, I'm sure that the actual problem is even worse, since I have the worst of the meta-gamers set to Ignore.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 18, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> And these, when looked at from the more open-ended viewpoint of a D&D player, are all very limiting in what they let you do.  If you're only looking to play this campaign or game for a few months or half a year then it doesn't matter, you accept the premise knowing it won't last long; but if you're looking for something that'll last for 5 or 8 or 10+ years of regular play....  This is what I mean by sustainable.
> 
> And how long did any of those games/campaigns last?
> 
> Lanefan




I was addressing the usage of the term "practical".  You mean "practical as a vessel for sustaining a 5+ year campaign"  That is quite a different thing.  And honestly, not very compelling due to the minority of games that reach that stage (hell, my guess is way less than 1 % of D&D games even sustain 2 years worth of play).  Consequently, I don't see much value in that metric.

But let me do some accounting of my GMing and length of games since 1984.

Classic Traveller:  Multiple games that just got off the ground but didn't last.

AD&D game:  Ongoing 22 years (we very rarely play this one, but we get together about once a year now).  Its not rewarding at all at this point.  Its just social grease and a laugh.   One game 7 years.  Tons of one shot dungeon crawls.

BECMI game:  8 years.  Tons of dungeon crawls that lasted a few months so Basic to Expert.  The latter has all been very rewarding.

3.x game:  4 year game and 1 year game.

4e game:  2 * 3.5 - 4 years @ 1 - 30 levels.  Both very rewarding.  A few short games.

5e game:  Several (very unrewarding but I'm a charitable sort) stand-ins for a negligent GM.  They've been playing since release and I know he has GM Forced his way out of several TPKs to keep his hexcrawl game and his metaplot alive.  

Call of Cthulu:  Meh.  I can GM Force my way through preconceived metaplot very deftly but it doesn't do much for me.  I've GMed 1-2 session games 4 times I think?

Sorceror:  A few games of 4-5 sessions.

My Life With Master:  6 games of 1-3 sessions.  All concluded.  All very satisfying. 

Dogs in the Vineyard:  Ongoing 12 year game that is played very sparingly but is extremely rewarding every time its played.  Several games of length 1 - 20 sessions.  All concluded in very satisfying manner.

Mouse Guard:  Several short games of a few months.  All very satisfying.

The One Ring (forgot about this one):  3 games of length 4-12 sessions.  All very satisfying.

Dread:  Multiple 1 or 2 shots.  Extremely satisfying.

Cortex+ (MHRP/Heroic Fantasy Hack/Leverage/Smallville):  Ummm...12ish games from one shots to 12ish sessions.  Two are ongoing and could last a long time if need be.

10 Candles:  3 short games.

Apocalypse World:  1 game ongoing 4 years, played sparingly but very satisfying.  Several games of 1 - 4 sessions.

Dungeon World:  1 game @ 2.5 years.  Several one shots or 1 - 12 sessions (and a Darkest Dungeon Hack game)

Fate (including Core):  5ish games in the vicinity of 1 shots.

Blades in the Dark/Masks/Monsterhearts:  About 10 games from 1 session to 12 including a current Blades game around 20 sessions in that could easily go for a looooooooooooong...loooooooooooong time.



That is a lot of games...but a vanishingly short list of "practical" games!


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## Nagol (Jan 18, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> You know I certainly agree with you on this!
> 
> I'm not sure if we agree on my position that this was the aim at the outset of the playtest though.  My sense is that the 5e playtest (predisposition, survey bias, consultant bias, and procedures) was constructed to bring exactly about this sort of game to satisfy the revolutionaries who mobilized a grass-roots effort to create just such an overhwelmingly toxic environment that this pendulum swing was nearly assured.  There were many opportunities (from predisposition to survey objectivity, to consultant diversity, to iteration) to create an actually deft chasis that could do all the things they initially said they were trying to do.  But that didn't happen and here we are.




I can't know another's motivations, of course.  Developers' public comments did seem to reflect be some predisposition about aspects they didn't want to perpetuate (shouting limbs back on for example).  Considering their base need to retrench and reconnect with the wider base after a seeming poor acceptance the 4e's Essentials line, it would be expected for the brand to try to emulate older editions.

The original aspirational statements around one big tent and a highly modular game with many dials that could emulate any edition appeared way too ambitious at the time and proved out that way as the books were released.  In the end, we got a game that embraced DM force even more than 1e does and has a strong rules focus on a single aspect of play (combat pillar).



> And honestly, great!  D&D is doing well because they made a very satisfactory product for the swell of those folks, all the hippie indie gamers have been driven from the D&D fold and they aren't jilted lover compromised such that they are willing to endlessly deluge/harrass/agitate to bring about the sort of toxicity that permeated our gaming culture from 2008 to 2014.  And, luckily, it happened during a period where so many incredible games, authored by so many truly talented and insightful designers, that dangerous indie gamers like myself who have played D&D for 30+ years wouldn't have a reason to care even if we were as immature as those who incited (perpetually...non-stop) the edition war!




New and old.  One of the great things about this hobby is stuff published decades ago is as good now as it was then (with the major exception of modern and near-future games that need a setting update to conform with the massive social changes that have happened in the last 30 years) and some of it is quite good.  There are a lot of cool games being made.  There are a lot of cool games sitting in boxes for me to dig out again. There is limited time for any single one, unfortunately.

In many ways the "hippie indie gamers" are facing their equivalent of the OSR movement.  And like the OSR environment there are a whole bunch of small publisher games to choose from, many of which are excellent.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 18, 2018)

Nagol said:


> I can't know another's motivations, of course.  Developers' public comments did seem to reflect be some predisposition about aspects they didn't want to perpetuate (shouting limbs back on for example).  Considering their base need to retrench and reconnect with the wider base after a seeming poor acceptance the 4e's Essentials line, it would be expected for the brand to try to emulate older editions.
> 
> The original aspirational statements around one big tent and a highly modular game with many dials that could emulate any edition appeared way too ambitious at the time and proved out that way as the books were released.  In the end, we got a game that embraced DM force even more than 1e does and has a strong rules focus on a single aspect of play (combat pillar).
> 
> ...




Great post and I agree across the board.  And I don't begrudge the 5e developers the course they charted (though its not a newly blazed trail, it clearly is a deftly trod path!).  I could have just done without the dog and pony show and bait and switch...and the disingenuousness of playtest participants not acknowledging what was happening (as it was transparently happening and being called out).

And the OSR is still creating great games with Stars Without Number and (especially) Beyond the Wall.   We are in a golden era of TTRPGs and its not because of 5e.  Its because of the breadth of great games by indie publishers (OSR included) is extraordinary.


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## pemerton (Jan 18, 2018)

Replying to three things:

*1. Amount of content in a setting*



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Because after a certain amount of play, the tropes and themes of Dark Sun will be exhausted. There'll be nothing new to do with the setting. (It's the same reason that serial fiction, after a certain point, tends to either begin recycling stories, or jumps the shark.)


*2. Use of maps in RPGing*


Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I just reread the post. Here is every reference to a map, or to terrain and geography more generally.



pemerton said:


> By misadventure, the PCs in my game have ended up in the Underdark. They are looking for the Soul Abbatoir, using a magical tapestry woven in an ancient minotaur kingdom as *their map*.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...


The _actual maps_ referenced are a poster map of a temple (used twice); a map of Moria-like stairs and landings, used for the bodak encounter; a map that I drew based on a picture, with tunnels and a chasm, used for the beholder encounter; and a map of the volcanic chasm with the river running through it, used for the final encounter.

Those are all encounter maps. Two describe adjacent areas (the temple, and the staircase behind its altar), but there is no map of the underground tunnels and passages that connect them, which the PCs travelled through.

I also refer to two pictures - the one I based the beholder map on, and the one from Into the Unknown which I used to illustrate the general flavour of their descent down stairs into the vast underdark caverns.

Finally, I refer to one imaginary map, the one from the ancient minotaur kingdom. The PCs were in possession of that map, and using it to guide them on their journey through the underdark; but it did not and does not actually exist. It's only real-world represenation was an entry on a characer shet equipment list.

The geography of the underdark - the relationship between caverns, the abandoned duergar farm, the underground river, etc - was not mapped out in advance (nor was much of it mapped out after the event). Likewise when the PCs went to the cavern of the duergar stronghold, or - some time later on - travelled down the river to the Shrine of the Kuo-toa.



Lanefan said:


> it's far easier to go mapless in a situation like underdark tunnels that maybe don't meet up very often than it is when trying to pull a castle out of one's head where all the rooms etc. have to a) fit together, b) fit in the building's footprint, and c) connect in a reasonably logical fashion both vertically (stairs etc.) and horizontally (doors, passages, etc.).



As I think I posted upthead, quite a bit of the action in my BW game has taken place in the tower of Jabal the Red, mage of Hardby. We've had descriptions of his laboratory/library (near the top), the entrance hall (near the ground), the dining hall (above the entrance hall), and a floor with living quarters (above the dining hall, and having an internal wall separating rooms). That has not been mapped out. It's not necessary. Nor were all the rooms established in advance - the tower itself, and its entry level and laboratory level, were established in the first session; the other rooms I mentioned were established some time later, after the PCs had returned to Hardby (having travelled to the Bright Desert, then the Abor-Alz, then a keep on the borderlands between the hills and Hardby).

In the same game, travel through the sewers and catacombs of Hardby has been resolved via Catacombs-wise checks and other appropriate checks (eg Speed checks, I think, when the PCs in the catacombs were trying to arrive at Jabal's tower in advance of an assassin travelling through the streets above them).

Even with your example of a castle, in my experience it's not generally necessary to map out the whole thing if the PCs are arriving there to talk to people and see what they can learn, rather than take an architectural survey and rip up every block of stone. In our 4e game, the PCs visited the bastion of Mal Arundak on the Abyss. No map was needed until they actually entered the reliquary within the fortress, because it was a complex encounter and 4e depends upon encounter maps to help with the resolution of complex encounters. (I used another poster map from a 4e module.)

In my Cortex+ Heroic game, the PCs entered a giant steading (some through the front door, one by stealth) and did a bit of fighting before everyone settled down and made friends. I described walls, and a gate, and a dining hall with dire wolves (inspired by G1), but there was no map, and no need of one, as Cortex+ does not use maps or tactical distances as part of its resolution mechanics. When the PCs later ended up in a dungeon, where they made there way through some tunnels, and a secret door, before being teleported into unknown depths by a crypt thing and then finding their way out through the faerie caverns of the dark elves, no map was necessary.

Maps play a very important role in one style of RPGing (broadly, the sort that Gygax advocates in the last section of his PHB before the appendices, and which Moldvay Basic is all about) - but the use of maps in RPGs that aren't aimed at that style of maze-mapping, puzzle-solving play is in my view mostly a result of cargo-cult-like fetishisation of the techniques of Gygaxian play. It doesn't actually serve much of a useful purpose.


*3. GM advance planning for success or failure*


Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I don't think I fully understand what you're saying, but to the extent that I can work it out, it seems _exactly_ like railroading.

Here's the actual situation: at the end of session 4, the PCs have recovered from previous misadventures, have had some work done on their ship (including adding a turret with double pulse lasers), have equipped themselves, and are ready to head off to Olyx - the research base for the bioweapons conspirators - as they have been retained to do by a (somewhat mysterious) Imperial official, notionally as agents of the branch of the Scout Servicek known as the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate.

Olyx is two jumps away, and between Byron (where the PCs have been since the end of session 1) and Olyx lies Enlil (the source of the pathogen that is at the core of the conspiratorial bioweapons program). The PCs also know (as a result of information provided by one of the bioweapons researchers they spoke to on Byron, and have since recruited as a computer expert) that the DNA of the Enlilians is not fully human, but includes traces of alien origin. One of the PCs has a doctorate in xeno-archaeology and is wanting to travel the universe looking for examples of alien life and artefacts, and was therefore quite intrigued by this information.

Session 5 begins with the PCs making the jump to Enlil in their ship. I know why they're there - it's on the way to Olyx. I don't know if they're going to visit it or not. As GM, I've deliberately set things up so that some PCs (and hence some players) have a reason to want to visit Enlil; while others (especially the owner of the ship, whose mortgage payments fall due every month, and who therefore doesn't want to spend time hanging out on Enlil earning no money) have a reason to push on straight to Olyx. The players (as their characters) debated their options and in the end a compromise was reached: the group would spend a day in orbit about Enlil, and those who wanted to go down to the world would do so; but those who were going down would also collecively pay the ship owner 8,000 credits - ie the amount of morgage repayment that accrues in a day.

Now, I know that the PCs who travel to Enlil are hoping to find out about the alien origins of its inhabitants. But how are they going to do that? I have no idea. It was already established that Enlil is a low tech world (TL 3, ie pre-industrial 18th/early 19th century) but with a starport (which I had therefore established was an Imperial facility in orbit above the world) and having some contact with other worlds. The players (and their PCs) knew this, and so they decided to get the standard tourist information from the starport, which included information about local markets, and to go and visit one of those markets to see if any of the items on sale exhibited signs of alien origin (eg designs, writing, etc). I can't remember how we established that the Enlilian markets would be a tourist attraction; but I know it didn't come from me, and equally that it seemed a very natural thing to be the case (think about the number of European and North American tourists who like to go to markets in less industrialised countries and buy trinkets there).

There was no prospect of planning in advance for the publications of the Enlil Imperial Tourist Board (or whatever other organisation is providing the tourist information at the orbiting starport), or for anticipating what it might say about Enlilian markets and the trinkets they sell there.

And when they did find a distinctive trinket (which I made up on the spot - it's metallurgy was clearly not from a TL 3 world), and learned about its origins (which I made up on the spot - it had been sold some time ago by the local bishop to raise funds for the bishopric) the next step couldn't be anticipated either. They decided to go and talk to the bishop. And so I made up some more stuff on the spot - the trinket had been a gift to the bishopric from co-religionist on the world of Ashar. (Which was a world I had rolled up as part of my prep, and which also had a religious government - Traveller world generation turns up surprisingly many of these - and which I now made part of the shared fiction.)

You say (in the part of your post that I've quoted above) that "you can anticipate this and  determine ahead of time what relevant info might be there to be gathered, assuming any reasonable success. . . . [and] can also reasonably guess what'll happen should their info gathering succeed". But that's just not true. I couldn't have anticpated all this stuff about markets and trinkets and metallurgy and bishops and gifts from the planet Ashar. What if the PCs had instead sought out ancient ruins on Enlil? Or had tried to take their own biological samples from the locals for analysis?

And nore can I anticpate what the PCs will do now. I think they're going to go on to Olyx (because that's what they've been paid to do). But are they going to go to Ashar? If so, when? And what will they try and do there? (I think one PC will try and find a branch of the Psionics Institute, but how will she do that?)

Unless the players are following rails (or a trail of breadcrumbs, or whatever) that has been laid by the GM, this stuff _can't_ be predicted, and - especially in a game like Traveller, where the whole of a universe is the backdrop, but even when the BW PCs are doing their thing in the city of Hardby - the details can't all be known in advance.



Lanefan said:


> Enlil - find and bust up smugglers' base
> 
> Succeed: move to Fraka and bust up known base there (the PCs' current plan) unless they find info about HQ on Gurda
> Fail: smugglers alerted to party's existence (bad!).  Open season on the PCs unless they go into deep hiding or leave the quadrant
> ...



In a game in which the players have any real agency - to choose what their PCs do, to choose what is going to be salient in the campaign, etc - the prep you describe here - designing those smuggler bases, for instance - is a pointless waste of time. It's only worthwhile if the whole sequence of events is more-or-less certain to happen - first the players follow the GM's lead and do the Enlil bit; then they follow the breadcrumbs to Fraka and/or Gurda; etc. And that is exactly a railroad!

If the players actually have input into the game, then they could choose to go to any other planet that is known to be part of the world, and the GM's write up of the smugglers on Fraka and Gurda is useless. And more subtly, if the GM _knows_ that the players have that degree of agency, then s/he won't prepare a storyboard of the sort you describe which makes sense only on the assumption that there is a set of tracks that the players are likely to proceed along. To go back to my actual play example, here are the things that were of obvous potential salience at the end of session 4: the starport on Enlil; Enlil itself (a whole planet with millions of inhabitants); Olyx (a small planet with a complex and well-equipped research base crewed by dozens of people); the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (and Imperial agencies, and the Scout Service, more generally); the naval base on the not-too-distant world of Shelley (the bioweapons conspirators have been established to have strong links to that base); and probably other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment.

It's absurd to suppose that all that could be detailed. But it would also be pointless for another reason, because it would already pre-author the fiction instead of allowing it to emerge out of play. (Eg are the conspirators working for or agaisnt the Imperium? What is the role of the PRSI in relation to the conspiracy? etc) In your storyboard example, what if the players want to play a game in which they work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings? You seem to have already ruled that out (by way of secret backstory). What is that but pre-determining outcomes in the fiction, ie, railroading?



Lanefan said:


> Further, you can reasonably guess that if their info gathering fails they're either going to blunder around blind (you can have some seemingly-random encounters ready for this) or leave and go to a different planet (putting you in react mode unless you know from the run of play where they're likely to go next).



As for this suggestion that I might use some filler encounters while the players "blunder around blind", I have no idea what the point of that would be. It can't get more of a railroad than having the players work through some "seemingly random encounters" until they stumble back onto the breadcrumbs that (for whatever reason) the GM has been keeping secret from them.

This, in particular, has nothing in common with how I GM a game.


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## Lanefan (Jan 18, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Replying to three things:
> 
> *1. Amount of content in a setting*
> 
> Because after a certain amount of play, the tropes and themes of Dark Sun will be exhausted. There'll be nothing new to do with the setting. (It's the same reason that serial fiction, after a certain point, tends to either begin recycling stories, or jumps the shark.)



Good reason to play a more variable and-or malleable setting than Dark Sun, eh. 



> *2. Use of maps in RPGing*
> As I think I posted upthead, quite a bit of the action in my BW game has taken place in the tower of Jabal the Red, mage of Hardby. We've had descriptions of his laboratory/library (near the top), the entrance hall (near the ground), the dining hall (above the entrance hall), and a floor with living quarters (above the dining hall, and having an internal wall separating rooms). That has not been mapped out. It's not necessary. Nor were all the rooms established in advance - the tower itself, and its entry level and laboratory level, were established in the first session; the other rooms I mentioned were established some time later, after the PCs had returned to Hardby (having travelled to the Bright Desert, then the Abor-Alz, then a keep on the borderlands between the hills and Hardby).



I'm really surprised it hasn't been mapped by the players, and - given its obvious importance - somewhat disappointed it hasn't been mapped out by you at some point.  Where, for example, are the stairs connecting the floors?



> In the same game, travel through the sewers and catacombs of Hardby has been resolved via Catacombs-wise checks and other appropriate checks (eg Speed checks, I think, when the PCs in the catacombs were trying to arrive at Jabal's tower in advance of an assassin travelling through the streets above them).



If all they're doing is trying to use the sewers to get from point A to point B and you've already determined that there's a way through the sewers from point A to point B, then a check or two for their navigation might be all you really need...unless there's other dangers down there in known locations, in which case you not only need a complete map but instead of relying on a simple navigation check you need the PCs to tell you which way they're going (left, right, straight, etc.) at each intersection they come to.  And if the PCs don't make a map or make marks on the walls they risk getting lost should they be forced to turn around and try to go back the way they came.



> Even with your example of a castle, in my experience it's not generally necessary to map out the whole thing if the PCs are arriving there to talk to people and see what they can learn,



Of course not; but if they're arriving there to explore the place, clear the monsters out, and take their stuff a map becomes extremely useful.



> rather than take an architectural survey and rip up every block of stone. In our 4e game, the PCs visited the bastion of Mal Arundak on the Abyss. No map was needed until they actually entered the reliquary within the fortress, because it was a complex encounter and 4e depends upon encounter maps to help with the resolution of complex encounters. (I used another poster map from a 4e module.)



So you don't play out in detail the exploration part between the outdoors and the reliquary?

Also, don't get me started on 4e encounter maps - IME (and despite not playing 4e I've run about 6 4e adventures, converted) they almost always show far more than the PCs can actually see or know about and thus end up giving the players knowledge they flat-out shouldn't have...because it's knowledge their characters don't have.



> In my Cortex+ Heroic game, the PCs entered a giant steading (some through the front door, one by stealth) and did a bit of fighting before everyone settled down and made friends. I described walls, and a gate, and a dining hall with dire wolves (inspired by G1), but there was no map, and no need of one, as Cortex+ does not use maps or tactical distances as part of its resolution mechanics.



This kind of boggles my mind, in that how else do you know where - say, in the fighting they did with the giants - everyone is, and how far you need to move to get to the next foe? (I just can't do that sort of thing in TotM mode - I need the visual reference).



> When the PCs later ended up in a dungeon, where they made there way through some tunnels, and a secret door, before being teleported into unknown depths by a crypt thing and then finding their way out through the faerie caverns of the dark elves, no map was necessary.



They made their way through some tunnels.  OK., let's run with that.

Here's a hypothetical example of what I absolutely want to avoid as DM and cannot stand as a player.  We're making our way through some twisty tunnels.  The DM describes a series of turns (without referring to a map; she's making this up on the fly), and we as characters are using string and angle measurements to try and map this out as we know our goal lies to the north and we know we were going north when we came in.  We're also using water to determine slope but haven't found any yet - it's all about level.

As we're playing this out in detail the DM obliges, and tells us the angles we measure of each turn and twist in great accuracy.  What she doesn't realize (because she's making it up as she goes) is she's turning us left about twice as often as she's turning us right, until eventually our mapping shows we've looped back to where we've already been and have in theory met our own tunnel...only there was no intersection there when we went by that place the first time.



> Maps play a very important role in one style of RPGing (broadly, the sort that Gygax advocates in the last section of his PHB before the appendices, and which Moldvay Basic is all about) - but the use of maps in RPGs that aren't aimed at that style of maze-mapping, puzzle-solving play is in my view mostly a result of cargo-cult-like fetishisation of the techniques of Gygaxian play. It doesn't actually serve much of a useful purpose.



Doesn't matter what the RPG is "aimed at"...maps are important from both the DM side and the player side, and often do serve a useful purpose.

Next you'll tell me your crew don't track the treasure they find.



> *3. GM advance planning for success or failure*
> I don't think I fully understand what you're saying, but to the extent that I can work it out, it seems _exactly_ like railroading.
> 
> Here's the actual situation: at the end of session 4, the PCs have recovered from previous misadventures, have had some work done on their ship (including adding a turret with double pulse lasers), have equipped themselves, and are ready to head off to Olyx - the research base for the bioweapons conspirators - as they have been retained to do by a (somewhat mysterious) Imperial official, notionally as agents of the branch of the Scout Servicek known as the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate.
> ...



So if I'm reading this right, the whole Enlil stopover was something of a left turn.  Fair enough.

But you know they're going to Olyx at some point, so seeing as you can anticipate this and prepare for it why not do so?



> Unless the players are following rails (or a trail of breadcrumbs, or whatever) that has been laid by the GM, this stuff _can't_ be predicted, and - especially in a game like Traveller, where the whole of a universe is the backdrop,



Yeah, I can see the headaches here with any space-based game where the PCs have the means to go where they like.



> but even when the BW PCs are doing their thing in the city of Hardby - the details can't all be known in advance.



Some can.  Hardby has obviously become a key location in that campaign - do you have it mapped out yet?  I would, at least in a loose form; if only so I could be and remain consistent on what's where each time they visit the place, should such become necessary, and on what's in the town at all.

I know for my part if a party visits a town once and spends some time there they'll learn some things about the place - what temples it has, what guilds it has, some of the pubs - and if they go back there 6 real-time months (or 6 real-time years!) later I'll never remember what they found the first time.  My in-game note-taking is usually almost non-existent - I can't write and talk at the same time - and so I have to either rely on something prepared ahead of time or on whatever notes I make after the fact.  Either way, the second time they visit they're getting what's on my notes. 



> In a game in which the players have any real agency - to choose what their PCs do, to choose what is going to be salient in the campaign, etc - the prep you describe here - designing those smuggler bases, for instance - is a pointless waste of time. It's only worthwhile if the whole sequence of events is more-or-less certain to happen - first the players follow the GM's lead and do the Enlil bit; then they follow the breadcrumbs to Fraka and/or Gurda; etc. And that is exactly a railroad!



A railroad if the DM forces it, an organic story if she doesn't.

If you know from prior play they're going to Enlil to bust up a smugglers' base then why not locate and populate and draw up the base ahead of time?  Yes there's a small chance you won't need what you've prepped - maybe they don't get there for some reason, or they left-turn on you - but the odds are you'll be able to use it as you've anticipated their next move...largely because they've told you what's coming.



> If the players actually have input into the game, then they could choose to go to any other planet that is known to be part of the world, and the GM's write up of the smugglers on Fraka and Gurda is useless.



An acknowledged risk, yes.


> And more subtly, if the GM _knows_ that the players have that degree of agency, then s/he won't prepare a storyboard of the sort you describe which makes sense only on the assumption that there is a set of tracks that the players are likely to proceed along.



A DM who knows her players well also probably has a pretty good idea of what sorts of stories will grab their attention and thus are likely to be followed up on.  Failing that, in a game like yours where the players in effect tell you what stories they want to play out (e.g. the balrog-possessed brother) they're also in effect handing you a half-made storyboard.  Between session 0 when they give you this stuff and session 1 when you drop the puck you could storyboard out some ideas about the balrog stuff and each other player's story, then do some figuring as to how these might somehow interweave.



> To go back to my actual play example, here are the things that were of obvous potential salience at the end of session 4: the starport on Enlil; Enlil itself (a whole planet with millions of inhabitants); Olyx (a small planet with a complex and well-equipped research base crewed by dozens of people); the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate (and Imperial agencies, and the Scout Service, more generally); the naval base on the not-too-distant world of Shelley (the bioweapons conspirators have been established to have strong links to that base); and probably other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment.
> 
> It's absurd to suppose that all that could be detailed.



True.  Remind me never to try running a sandbox-style game in space. 



> But it would also be pointless for another reason, because it would already pre-author the fiction instead of allowing it to emerge out of play. (Eg are the conspirators working for or agaisnt the Imperium? What is the role of the PRSI in relation to the conspiracy? etc)



Where in my opinion both of those are things you as GM should already know, so you can be consistent in how you present the scenes. 


> In your storyboard example, what if the players want to play a game in which they work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings? You seem to have already ruled that out (by way of secret backstory).



Then they can work with the trade federation to break up smuggling rings...and eventually they're very likely to learn some things they probably don't want to know, namely that the trade federation is in fact in league with the smugglers and (quite possibly) the PCs have been used as pawns all along just to get rid of those smugglers who aren't pulling their weight.  I love this sort of thing - plots within plots that, when revealed, force major decisions onto the PCs along with making them question their loyalties.

Can't happen without some hidden backstory.

Put another way, there should always be a reason to look beneath the surface.



> What is that but pre-determining outcomes in the fiction, ie, railroading?



Again I say your definition of railroading is far harsher than most - and probably far too harsh to be of any use here given the perjorativity of both the term and the way you use it.



> As for this suggestion that I might use some filler encounters while the players "blunder around blind",



If they've no idea or clear plan for what they're doing next, or have found themselves at a dead end due to lack of information, then they're running blind.  For example, in the Enlil game noted above, what if they'd gone to Enlil and found nothing of interest or use; then gone on to Olyx, finished up there and got paid but again found nothing of interest or use.  Now what will they do?  They're at a dead end due to lack of info, so all they can really do of use is head out into space and hope something presents itself...which is where you as GM come in by having something "randomly" present itself.

Same thing can happen in a more traditional sandbox-style D&D game - the PCs simply run out of things to do.  They've cleared out everything of note in or near the kingdom they're in, they're not interested in courtly intrigues, they don't fancy taking on the role of local petty-crime fighters and bar-brawl referees, and they can only spend so much time playing pranks on each other.  Their only real in-character option is to head off to another kingdom and see what presents itself...unless the DM steps in with her engineer's hat on and steers them toward some adventuring.

Lan-"just like there's always a bigger fish, there's always a deeper plot"-efan


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## pemerton (Jan 18, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I'm really surprised it hasn't been mapped by the players, and - given its obvious importance - somewhat disappointed it hasn't been mapped out by you at some point.  Where, for example, are the stairs connecting the floors?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



Hardby is not mapped out. Nor, as I mentioned, is the tower.

Why does it matter exactly where the staircases are?

Look at it this way - probably most of the time, you go through your RPGing never knowing exaclty what NPCs are wearing, what sort of stitching it has been made with, how it might be embroidered, etc. And this causes no problems.

Now if your were GMing for a group of embroidery-obsessed players, who kept track of all this stuff, you'd have to be careful - including avoiding slip-ups, like mixing up your different cultural motifs, or getting your sumptuary laws wrong, or whatever.

But most RPGers aren't that concerned with tailoring, and so it doesn't come up.

Maps are the same. In most of my games (4e combat being an exception), the details of locations simply aren't that important, and are not a focus of play. Even if the PCs were using tools (like plumb lines and the like) to help them with their architectural studies, that would all just be factored in as a bonus on the appropriate check (eg get an advantage die on your Catacombs-wise because you've got a plumbline on your equipment list) with no need to actually map things out, or describe all the minute details.



Lanefan said:


> if they're arriving there to explore the place, clear the monsters out, and take their stuff a map becomes extremely useful.



Sure, but that's a neglibile element in most of my RPGing. The PCs who got to Jabal's tower are either guests, or are looking for one particular thing (on one occasion a spellbook, on another a recuperating mage). There are no monsters to clear out, and they are not bent on exploring the place.

Likewise in Mal Arundak - the PCs befriended the angels, purified them of their Abyssal corruption, and then were shown into the reliquary where they then did what they had gone there to do.



Lanefan said:


> If all they're doing is trying to use the sewers to get from point A to point B and you've already determined that there's a way through the sewers from point A to point B, then a check or two for their navigation might be all you really need



It is the Catacombs-wise check that determines whether or not the character is able to find a path from A to B. If the check fails and no such path is found, it remains an open question whether that's because there _is_ no such path, or rather because the character just failed to find it.

(Ie the GM's state of knowledge mirrors that of the player, which in turn mirrors that of the PC.)



Lanefan said:


> This kind of boggles my mind, in that how else do you know where - say, in the fighting they did with the giants - everyone is, and how far you need to move to get to the next foe? (I just can't do that sort of thing in TotM mode - I need the visual reference).



Think of it this way: in AD&D you can resolve a thief's climbing of a wall without knowing where every, or even any, handhold is. The resolution doesn't depend upon that information.

In Cortex+ there is, similarly, no detailed geographic/tactical input into action resolution - the permissibility of a declared action is assessed by reference to fictional positioning (just as the thief can't climb a wall if his/her hands and feet are tied, so the PC who is surveying the steading from the top of the palisade can't declare an attack against the chieftain in his dining hall); but then resolution is by way of opposed checks.



Lanefan said:


> Next you'll tell me your crew don't track the treasure they find.



In 4e they do - it's part of the game. In BW, treasure is measured in bonus dice ("cash dice"), but there's been very little of that. Mostly the players track their gear.

In Cortex+ loot isn't that important - but when one scene ended with one of the PCs tricking a drow into leading him first to the treasury nd then out of the dungeon, while the other PCs got stuck in the lowest levels, that PC started the next session with a free "bag of gold" asset, which provides a bonus to appropriate action declarations.



Lanefan said:


> But you know they're going to Olyx at some point, so seeing as you can anticipate this and prepare for it why not do so?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If you know from prior play they're going to Enlil to bust up a smugglers' base then why not locate and populate and draw up the base ahead of time?



It's established that the interstellar research vessl the St Christopher - which was last seen jumping away from Byron - might be on Olyx, so I've got stats for its crew. But I don't want to stat up the research station, as its nature and inhabitants haven't been established yet in the fiction.

The last (and only) time the PCs staged a quasi-military assault on a base, the geography of the base was, in part, read of the results of the encounter range determination roll. I regard this as just another instance of Traveller's heavy reliance upon random generation of the content of the fiction.



Lanefan said:


> Put another way, there should always be a reason to look beneath the surface.



But that doesn't require anything being written in advance. The requisite content can be generated, using appropriate techniques, in the process of resolving the looking.



Lanefan said:


> If they've no idea or clear plan for what they're doing next, or have found themselves at a dead end due to lack of information, then they're running blind.  For example, in the Enlil game noted above, what if they'd gone to Enlil and found nothing of interest or use; then gone on to Olyx, finished up there and got paid but again found nothing of interest or use.  Now what will they do?



That's not going to happen in a game run the way that I run it.

There are different ways of establishing a compelling scene, depending on system details. But in Traveller the players would take steps to trigger a patron encounter; and then I (as GM) would make sure that the patron encounter draws play back to where the action is. (This is, in fact, exactly what happened at the end of session 4 - a player had his PC go to the TAS bar to meet a patron, the chart told us said patron was a diplomat, and I - as GM - established him as an Imperial official approaching the PCs on behalf of the PRSI.)


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## darkbard (Jan 18, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> So you don't play out in detail the exploration part between the outdoors and the reliquary?




The kind of gaming pemerton advocates for has as one of its defining desiderata: "go where the action is." If the players have indicated that the story with which they wish to engage is about the reliquary and they have failed no mechanical checks to keep them from exploring the reliquary directly, why must the GM place an additional obstacle in their path merely for the sake of what you seem to consider verisimilitude? The GM can simply describe the outdoor exploration with appropriate flavor elements and cut directly to the action.

Similarly, the players need not engage the size of the bedframes, the quality of the bedding, whether or not there are bedbugs or lice, etc. in the inn at which they rest. The GM simply describes their night's rest and cuts to the next action scene.



> Some can.  Hardby has obviously become a key location in that campaign - do you have it mapped out yet?  I would, at least in a loose form; if only so I could be and remain consistent on what's where each time they visit the place, should such become necessary, and on what's in the town at all.
> 
> I know for my part if a party visits a town once and spends some time there they'll learn some things about the place - what temples it has, what guilds it has, some of the pubs - and if they go back there 6 real-time months (or 6 real-time years!) later I'll never remember what they found the first time.




I work in NYC, the city which I've lived in or around for 18 of the past 22 years. I can tell you from real world experience that even with the familiarity I have, any number of times I have tried to find a restaurant or shop or bar that I remember visiting from weeks or months ago only to find that (1) it's closed since my last visit or (2) I was wrong about the location and it's actually two blocks south of where I thought it was. 

My point is that absolute, immutable historical accuracy enforced by a map defined to the last pothole is not verismilitudinous in the least in a constantly changing real world, and so trying to enforce such upon your fictional world actually works against what seems to be your goal in verismilitudinous play.



> Can't happen without some hidden backstory.




Of course it can! And I think this is exactly the largest gulf in your thinking and that of the style of play pemerton advocates. A failed check by the PC establishes the fiction: The PC fails a Diplomacy check (or whatever mechanic serves a similar role in Traveler, the example under consideration); the DM adjudicates that the reason for failure is because the diplomat with whom the PCs are working is actually a mole for the bioterrorists (or whatever the plot is). 

In your example of play, with secret backstory determining the result of checks rather than checks determining the backstory, how would you explain the PCs _succeeding_ at a Diplomacy check against an opponent who is secretly working against the goals of the PCs? Does it require you to change your hidden backstory? And if so, what purpose does it serve to have this backstory predetermined if it's mutable?


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## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Hardby is not mapped out. Nor, as I mentioned, is the tower.
> 
> Why does it matter exactly where the staircases are?
> 
> ...



No word of a lie, I had that player many years ago - she was a dedicated embroiderer and also involved in the SCA.  Yes, I had to mind my p's and q's. 



> Maps are the same. In most of my games (4e combat being an exception), the details of locations simply aren't that important, and are not a focus of play. Even if the PCs were using tools (like plumb lines and the like) to help them with their architectural studies, that would all just be factored in as a bonus on the appropriate check (eg get an advantage die on your Catacombs-wise because you've got a plumbline on your equipment list) with no need to actually map things out, or describe all the minute details.



Where often the "minute details" are also the interesting bits.  It's the same principle as telling the DM how you're searching the room and where you're looking (interesting) rather than just dropping a d20 down for a search check (boring as hell).



> Sure, but that's a neglibile element in most of my RPGing.



Heh, not in mine.  From the players'/PCs' point of view, if it's there, it's probably there to be sacked. 


> The PCs who got to Jabal's tower are either guests, or are looking for one particular thing (on one occasion a spellbook, on another a recuperating mage). There are no monsters to clear out, and they are not bent on exploring the place.



Were I playing a Thief or Rogue type in that game I'd have probably already quietly explored the place from top to bottom... 



> It is the Catacombs-wise check that determines whether or not the character is able to find a path from A to B. If the check fails and no such path is found, it remains an open question whether that's because there _is_ no such path, or rather because the character just failed to find it.



Again reducing something that could be detailed and interesting down to a simple die roll.



> (Ie the GM's state of knowledge mirrors that of the player, which in turn mirrors that of the PC.)



Player knowledge = PC knowledge: EUREKA!  We agree on something!!!

But DM knowledge isn't even part of that equation.  The DM knows all; or at least from the player side must appear to know all.  That's just how it works, unless (as I said in another post somewhere) you're trying to be a player in the game you're GMing.



> Think of it this way: in AD&D you can resolve a thief's climbing of a wall without knowing where every, or even any, handhold is. The resolution doesn't depend upon that information.



True enough.



> In Cortex+ there is, similarly, no detailed geographic/tactical input into action resolution - the permissibility of a declared action is assessed by reference to fictional positioning (just as the thief can't climb a wall if his/her hands and feet are tied, so the PC who is surveying the steading from the top of the palisade can't declare an attack against the chieftain in his dining hall); but then resolution is by way of opposed checks.



If there's a combat between 6 PCs and 8 Giants with various participants moving around and a mixture of terrain, I want to know where the tricky terrain is and where the people and monsters are at any given moment.  I don't know if Cortex+ has fireballs or an equivalent, but if it does how do I know where everyone is so I don't hit my allies if I-as-player can't see (via a map) what my character sees?

Don't get me wrong - I'm by no means attached to the 3e-4e style grid-based tactical game.  I just want a reasonable visual reference as to what is where.



> That's not going to happen in a game run the way that I run it.
> 
> There are different ways of establishing a compelling scene, depending on system details. But in Traveller the players would take steps to trigger a patron encounter; and then I (as GM) would make sure that the patron encounter draws play back to where the action is. (This is, in fact, exactly what happened at the end of session 4 - a player had his PC go to the TAS bar to meet a patron, the chart told us said patron was a diplomat, and I - as GM - established him as an Imperial official approaching the PCs on behalf of the PRSI.)



Ah, so the game system in effect provides both you and the players an "out clause" if things need to be jumpstarted.  Got it.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2018)

darkbard said:


> The kind of gaming pemerton advocates for has as one of its defining desiderata: "go where the action is." If the players have indicated that the story with which they wish to engage is about the reliquary and they have failed no mechanical checks to keep them from exploring the reliquary directly, why must the GM place an additional obstacle in their path merely for the sake of what you seem to consider verisimilitude? The GM can simply describe the outdoor exploration with appropriate flavor elements and cut directly to the action.



To me, that's just a different form of railroading in a way: jumping straight to the next "scene" without allowing for anything in between.

Hell, for all the DM knows in this instance something en route that the DM thought was irrelevant might have caught someone's attention, sending the party on a different course entirely.  But they'll never know, because the exploration sequence was skipped.

And note this happened in mid-adventure, when the stakes were in theory rather high.  Low-stakes or no-stakes stuff like this:



> Similarly, the players need not engage the size of the bedframes, the quality of the bedding, whether or not there are bedbugs or lice, etc. in the inn at which they rest.



Who cares?


> The GM simply describes their night's rest and cuts to the next action scene.



Again skipping the opportunity for PC choice ( = railroad).  Why not instead describe their night's rest, narrate the new day's weather, and ask what the PCs are going to do now?



> I work in NYC, the city which I've lived in or around for 18 of the past 22 years. I can tell you from real world experience that even with the familiarity I have, any number of times I have tried to find a restaurant or shop or bar that I remember visiting from weeks or months ago only to find that (1) it's closed since my last visit or (2) I was wrong about the location and it's actually two blocks south of where I thought it was.
> 
> My point is that absolute, immutable historical accuracy enforced by a map defined to the last pothole is not verismilitudinous in the least in a constantly changing real world, and so trying to enforce such upon your fictional world actually works against what seems to be your goal in verismilitudinous play.



Things change over time, of that there's no doubt.  That said, as an example I've been to London (UK) three times as an adult and several more times as a kid or teenager; with about 25 years between the last teenager visit and the first adult visit.  I didn't remember much by way of specifics, but I remembered enough that finding my way around the city's core was relatively simple - once I remembered to check for traffic coming from directions I didn't expect! 

Major landmarks, such as temples in a D&D city, aren't likely to change their locations very often.  And every now and then yes, I'll randomly determine that a shop or tavern or a person they visited last time is for some reason no longer present, to reflect the idea of it being a living breathing place rather than a painting.



> Of course it can! And I think this is exactly the largest gulf in your thinking and that of the style of play pemerton advocates. A failed check by the PC establishes the fiction: The PC fails a Diplomacy check (or whatever mechanic serves a similar role in Traveler, the example under consideration); the DM adjudicates that the reason for failure is because the diplomat with whom the PCs are working is actually a mole for the bioterrorists (or whatever the plot is).
> 
> In your example of play, with secret backstory determining the result of checks rather than checks determining the backstory, how would you explain the PCs _succeeding_ at a Diplomacy check against an opponent who is secretly working against the goals of the PCs? Does it require you to change your hidden backstory?



Nothing that's happened up to that point changes at all.  A minor Diplomacy success might lead to the opponent slipping up or acting oddly; while a heavy success might blow his cover completely.  From there, the backstory would proceed as makes sense: if the opponent has allies, at some point they may learn his cover's been compromised and act accordingly; while if the opponent is working alone that secret backstory has pretty much just become open...well, frontstory, if you will.



> And if so, what purpose does it serve to have this backstory predetermined if it's mutable?



History isn't mutable*.  Anything that's happened before now is locked in; anything that's happening now that the PCs can't affect is locked in; and anything that would happen in the future will happen once the future becomes the present unless something else occurs in the meantime (usually coming from the PCs) that would change it.

* - unless the PCs somehow gain access to time-travel, at which point all bets are off.

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 19, 2018)

darkbard said:


> A failed check by the PC establishes the fiction: The PC fails a Diplomacy check (or whatever mechanic serves a similar role in Traveler, the example under consideration); the DM adjudicates that the reason for failure is because the diplomat with whom the PCs are working is actually a mole for the bioterrorists (or whatever the plot is).
> 
> In your example of play, with secret backstory determining the result of checks rather than checks determining the backstory, how would you explain the PCs _succeeding_ at a Diplomacy check against an opponent who is secretly working against the goals of the PCs? Does it require you to change your hidden backstory? And if so, what purpose does it serve to have this backstory predetermined if it's mutable?



I think the answer is - that check _can't _succeed. (This is a variant of the notorious chamberlain example from years ago - a good GM, it was said, will veto any attempt by the players to have their PCs persuade the chamberlain to grant them an audience with the king, because verisimilitude and *the plot* demands as much.  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] will have fond memories of that incorruptible, unpersuadable chamberlain!)

If it can, then your (final) rhetorical question goes through with full force.

I've started a thread about "what's worldbuilding for" to try to tackle some of these issues from the point of view of analysis rather than advocacy.

EDIT: I encountered this reply:



Lanefan said:


> A minor Diplomacy success might lead to the opponent slipping up or acting oddly; while a heavy success might blow his cover completely.  From there, the backstory would proceed as makes sense: if the opponent has allies, at some point they may learn his cover's been compromised and act accordingly; while if the opponent is working alone that secret backstory has pretty much just become open...well, frontstory, if you will.



This answers [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s question - a successful Diplomacy check gets interpreted in a way that accords with the GM's secret backstory, rather than with the player's intention for the action declaration.



Lanefan said:


> History isn't mutable



But imagination and intention are. I can imagine that the reason an NPC is doing such-and-such is X; but then discover, through play, that it was Y. Charles Dickens rewrote the ending to Great Expectations when his editor suggested the original was too sad.


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## pemerton (Jan 19, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> often the "minute details" are also the interesting bits.  It's the same principle as telling the DM how you're searching the room and where you're looking (interesting) rather than just dropping a d20 down for a search check (boring as hell).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Again reducing something that could be detailed and interesting down to a simple die roll.





Lanefan said:


> To me, that's just a different form of railroading in a way: jumping straight to the next "scene" without allowing for anything in between.
> 
> Hell, for all the DM knows in this instance something en route that the DM thought was irrelevant might have caught someone's attention, sending the party on a different course entirely.  But they'll never know, because the exploration sequence was skipped.



Two things:

(1) It's always true that, had I done X instead of Y I _might_ have had more fun. Maybe your group would have had a better time RPGing if you'd spent all your efforts on D&D playing Over the Edge instead!

But to the extent that you're fairly confident that the stuff you did was more enjoyable, to you, then the stuff you didn't do - so likewise for me and my group. I don't think anyone thinks it would have been more interesting to map out some catacombs rather than find out what happens to the balrog-possess brother. (Spoiler: the assassin cut his head off before the PC brother could save him; but another PC did manage to catch a whole lot of his blood in a nearby ewer, and carried his head out of the tower in a chamberpot.)

(2) You write as if there was _actual _stuff to be discovered in the corridors leading from the PCs' chambers in Mal Arundak to the reliquary. But it's all a fantasy; it exists only in the imagination. The players can only "learn" about such stuff if someone goes to the trouble of making it up, and then telling it to them (at around 100 words per minute for spoken delivery of written text). Which takes us back to (1) - I guess it's possible that that would have been a more fun way to spend our time, but I don't see any actual evidence for that. After all, I've got quite a bit of evidence as to what the players will find interesting, and I've made sure that plenty of that sort of stuff is part of the framing and unfolding resolution of the reliquary scene!

And note this happened in mid-adventure, when the stakes were in theory rather high.  Low-stakes or no-stakes stuff like this:



Lanefan said:


> Again skipping the opportunity for PC choice ( = railroad).  Why not instead describe their night's rest, narrate the new day's weather, and ask what the PCs are going to do now?



The players say (speaking as their PCs) "Can we see the reliquary?" I, speaking as the angels, say "OK, we'll take you to it." I then start describing the reliquary entrance. That's not railroading. That's framing the scene the players have asked for!



Lanefan said:


> The DM knows all; or at least from the player side must appear to know all.  That's just how it works



Huh? That's like saying, to the inventor of Five Hundred, "But you have to have a dummy in an auction card game - that's just how it works!" Let's put aside the fact that that's _not_ how it works at every RPGing table - we could still ask, _why should it work that way_?


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## pemerton (Jan 19, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> If there's a combat between 6 PCs and 8 Giants with various participants moving around and a mixture of terrain, I want to know where the tricky terrain is and where the people and monsters are at any given moment.  I don't know if Cortex+ has fireballs or an equivalent, but if it does how do I know where everyone is so I don't hit my allies if I-as-player can't see (via a map) what my character sees?



How do you resolve a sprint contest in Moldvay Basic or AD&D?

Maybe you roll opposed DEX checks. Or just have each runner roll a D6, adding the individual initiative adjustment. However you do it, _you are not going to know where everyone is at any given moment_. The rules of AD&D are simply incapable of generating that sort of information; but, equally, you don't need it to resolve the sprint. And if the 18 DEX sprinter rolls a 1 and loses the race, you can easily narrate that as "Achilles loses his footing on some uneven ground he only noticed too late, and falls behind the rest of the pack."

Well, combat can be resolved like that too.

The Cortex+ Heroic resolution system is a bit more intricate than what I've just described, but it's about opposed checks using dice pools built up from character and setting attributes. If a player thinks the CROWDED MEAD HALL might make it hard for giants to get to his/her PC, then s/he can declare actions that make that so (eg by establishing a TAKING COVER UNDER THE GIANT'S TABLE asset).

If a giant succeeds in a check to avoid being toasted by a fireball, then the GM has resources to spend to cause the action to redound upon the PC who undertook it - by default, there are no rules for friendly fire (it's the PC who failed who cops the blowback), but it would be easy to narrate the fireball as nearly frying a friend, and the blowback could then take the form of emotional stress suffered by the PC who hurled it.


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## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This answers [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s question - a successful Diplomacy check gets interpreted in a way that accords with the GM's secret backstory, rather than with the player's intention for the action declaration.



You never said what the player's intention was.  Here, if using a check system, I might even give two rolls - one for the original intention of the Diplomacy check and a second without a stated reason (might even get another player to roll that second die, so as not to give anything away) where success and level of success would mean possible clues to and-or exposure of the operative's secret.



> But imagination and intention are. I can imagine that the reason an NPC is doing such-and-such is X; but then discover, through play, that it was Y.



Where I can imgaine an NPC's reason for doing something is X and write it down, then as play proceeds my narrations etc. are based around that now-fact.  It remains X.

Now in fairness sometimes this can make me kick myself, in a situation where, say, I think of reason X and build it into the narration etc. and then two weeks later think of a reason Q that would have worked much better.  But, them's the breaks - can't be perfect all the time. 

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Two things:
> 
> (1) It's always true that, had I done X instead of Y I _might_ have had more fun. Maybe your group would have had a better time RPGing if you'd spent all your efforts on D&D playing Over the Edge instead!
> 
> ...



No, I don't know if there's anything there to discover - and I won't know until I explore the corridors.  You owe it to your players to at least make passing mention of the corridors - whether it's a long walk or short; up or down or level; whether there's lots of intersecting passages, or few, or none; whether the corridors are damp or dusty or empty or well-used, etc., because that's what the PCs see.


> But it's all a fantasy; it exists only in the imagination. The players can only "learn" about such stuff if someone goes to the trouble of making it up, and then telling it to them (at around 100 words per minute for spoken delivery of written text).



It comes down to a pace-of-play issue, I suppose.  I don't always (or often) want to just rush from one action scene to the next, and I don't at all mind spending most of a session simply mapping and exploring what turn out to be empty corridors.  There's always another session, and another after that...it's open-ended, after all; or it should be.



> The players say (speaking as their PCs) "Can we see the reliquary?" I, speaking as the angels, say "OK, we'll take you to it." ^^^ I then start describing the reliquary entrance. That's not railroading. That's framing the scene the players have asked for!



It's both.

The place in the quote above where I put the ^^^ is the railroad part.  You jumped straight from talking to the angels to putting the PCs at the reliquary entrance (if memory serves, there was some distance to cover between the site of the angel conversation and the reliquary itself; and I don't recall the angels teleporting them or anything such) without a chance for the PCs to do anything in between...incuding talk further with the angels to get more info!  You took options away from the players / PCs by skipping that journey - they'd have had several minutes at least in which to continue their chat with the angels.  Who knows what they might have learned? 

Also, keep in mind that while you-as-DM might know there's no danger involved and that the journey is perfectly safe, the players / PCs very likely don't and must be given the chance to approach it with this in mind. (even just asking for assurance from the angels if the journey is safe would be a start, but you cut that off too).

Lanefan


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## darkbard (Jan 19, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> It comes down to a pace-of-play issue, I suppose.  I don't always (or often) want to just rush from one action scene to the next, and I don't at all mind spending most of a session simply mapping and exploring what turn out to be empty corridors.  There's always another session, and another after that...it's open-ended, after all; or it should be.




If that's how your group has fun--spending, in theory, a whole session mapping out empty corridors--that's certainly within your prerogative. I (and most, if not all, of the people I've played with) consider that a waste of time and unfun. But if you and your group enjoy that, I say to you, "have at it! The game can be many things to many people."

What rubs me the wrong way is that you continue to jump into threads like this one to argue that those who prefer another style of gameplay, be they myself, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], etc. "owe it to their players" (as if you know their players' true desires) or to the integrity of the game to play instead in your fashion.



Lanefan said:


> Where I can imgaine an NPC's reason for doing something is X and write it down, then as play proceeds my narrations etc. are based around that now-fact.  *It remains X.*
> 
> Now in fairness sometimes this can make me kick myself, in a situation where, say, *I think of reason X and build it into the narration etc. and then two weeks later think of a reason Q that would have worked much better.*  But, them's the breaks - can't be perfect all the time.
> 
> Lanefan




This seems to strike at the heart of it: you adhere to secret backstory at the cost of what even you yourself say would be better gameplay, i.e. "would have worked much better."


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## Sadras (Jan 19, 2018)

darkbard said:


> This seems to strike at the heart of it: you adhere to secret backstory at the cost of what even you yourself say would be better gameplay, i.e. "would have worked much better."




I'm not @_*Lanefan*_, but you might have misunderstood his quote in this instance.

He mentioned that he thought of the secret backstory (x) and built it _into the narration_. I understand that last part as it being firmly established at the table during play. To now change that (x) to , which according to him would have been a better backstory, is perhaps possible in some situations, but in many situations it is not. A DM who keeps chopping and changing established play and storylines will see the door very quickly in that style of game.

Secret backstory that has not yet been revealed/established may of course be changed.


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## darkbard (Jan 19, 2018)

Sadras said:


> I'm not @_*Lanefan*_, but you might have misunderstood his quote in this instance.
> 
> He mentioned that he thought of the secret backstory (x) and built it _into the narration_. I understand that last part as it being firmly established at the table during play. To now change that (x) to , which according to him would have been a better backstory, is perhaps possible in some situations, but in many situations it is not. A DM who keeps chopping and changing established play and storylines will see the door very quickly in that style of game.
> 
> Secret backstory what has not yet been revealed/established may of course be changed.




I think you're right that in this case I may have misinterpreted what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was describing. Yes, if the GM decides to retroactively change what had been established in narration, that would break "story now" principles as much as it would Lanefan's traditional approach. 

That said, the picture I've gotten from Lanefan is that the secret backstory is set, immutably, by the GM _prior_ to play and is introduced into the narration irrespective of PC actions, broadly speaking, assuming the PCs choose to interact with the elements he has designed prior to play.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 19, 2018)

.. as long as experience points can still be traded in for tacos, yummy tacos.. I'm fine with whatever you guys end up with ..

KB


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## Arilyn (Jan 19, 2018)

This is a very interesting conversation dealing with two distinct philosophies and game styles/preferences. As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been starting to experiment more with the "indie" style. Games like FATE and Cortex are my preferred games, but I often GM them in a more traditional style, although I alter a lot of details based on player choice and what's cool at the moment, as long as it doesn't break consistency.

I think having a large tool box is maybe the best way to go? Lanefan' s GM toolbox is filled with a selection of good traditional tools, and he is suspicious of those "newfangled" toys. pemerton, on the other hand, loves the "newfangled" toys and is ignoring the old ones, finding fault in their ability to help construct stories.

I enjoy the newfangled tools a lot. I also come up with stories for players to adventure through ahead of time, and I even purchase modules, cause I appreciate other ideas too. Although, modules end up playing very differently than what was published, I find them to be useful springboards, especially if I'm feeling tapped creatively. 

Looking back at my campaigns, I am using a variety of tools. Running with player driven goals can work really well, but sometimes it fizzles. Having a cool story is not railroading, and let's me come up with really neat twists and turns that might not happen, if I'm improvising, but sometimes, the players aren't that into it...

I think a good GM should have a full toolbox with goodies from the many years the hobby has existed. Being flexible and adaptable is usually considered an invaluable trait, and many different tools designed for different purposes can help. Mixing things up helps keep up player engagement. Game getting a little unfocused lately, as an indie style? Have players go through a preplanned story, and give them a creative break. Players getting restless with troubles GM is throwing at them? Let them create and pursue their own agendas for a while. It can be fun to explore all the details on a map. It can also be really tedious, so skip it and get to interesting bits. It all depends on mood, needs of the story, and player preferences. Those preferences, however, can change, even if playing with same group.


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## Sadras (Jan 19, 2018)

@_*Arilyn*_ pretty sums up my thoughts on this with his post above. As I mentioned our table plays with a combination of the two styles. What is important to note that the 5e DMG seemingly dismissed by the 4e proponents does possess a great deal of indie concepts/variants.

With concepts along with their mechanics for things such as - success at a cost, degrees of failure, the inspiration mechanic, backgrounds, ideals and flaws, skill variant rules, plot points and I'm sure quite a few others D&D has certainly evolved with the RPG community around it, recognising and incorporating various ideas from other games.


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## Nagol (Jan 19, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> .. as long as experience points can still be traded in for tacos, yummy tacos.. I'm fine with whatever you guys end up with ..
> 
> KB




What glorious temptation is this?  Where can such a trade be found?  I have many to trade for food!


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 19, 2018)

Sadras said:


> @_*Arilyn*_ pretty sums up my thoughts on this with his post above. As I mentioned our table plays with a combination of the two styles. What is important to note that the 5e DMG seemingly dismissed by the 4e proponents does possess a great deal of indie concepts/variants.




I think it's entirely possible to be a strong 4e proponent and also an "indie-hippie".  In my own case, I absolutely adore the 4e mechanics for combat and character powers.  However, I've never let the game get in the way of a good story.  The only thing you have to do as a DM to bridge the gap is work with the players to come up with viable story lines for whatever happens when the players lose or die.

Story should never eliminate risk, and if players really love story they should adore adapting to the unknown and creating better stories.  In fact, the only real way to tell any good story is through overcoming adversity and loss.

KB


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## Lanefan (Jan 19, 2018)

darkbard said:


> If that's how your group has fun--spending, in theory, a whole session mapping out empty corridors--that's certainly within your prerogative. I (and most, if not all, of the people I've played with) consider that a waste of time and unfun. But if you and your group enjoy that, I say to you, "have at it! The game can be many things to many people."



Yes it can. 



> What rubs me the wrong way is that you continue to jump into threads like this one to argue that those who prefer another style of gameplay, be they myself,   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], etc. "owe it to their players" (as if you know their players' true desires) or to the integrity of the game to play instead in your fashion.



I try to imagine myself in a game such as  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's* and while some elements of his games look excellent there'd be a lot of times where I-as-player would be tearing my hair out in frustration and yelling "Why did you skip that?  I might have wanted to do something there!", or "Slow down!  I'm trying to map this!", etc.

* - not to pick on pemerton specifically.  I use him as an example only because I've read some of his very detailed game-log posts.



> This seems to strike at the heart of it: you adhere to secret backstory at the cost of what even you yourself say would be better gameplay, i.e. "would have worked much better."



Once something's been introduced to play it's in, like it or not.

Before it gets introduced to play I can still mess with it if a better idea comes up (though I have to take care that messing with something here doesn't have unforeseen knock-on effects there).

Another example: there's been times in the past where I'll use some canned module for an adventure, modified to suit the campaign.  Then three months after we've played it I'll find another module that would have fit the bill so much better had I only known about it (or had it only been released) at the time.  D'oh!

Lanefan


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## Manbearcat (Jan 19, 2018)

Sadras said:


> @_*Arilyn*_ pretty sums up my thoughts on this with his post above. As I mentioned our table plays with a combination of the two styles. What is important to note that the 5e DMG seemingly dismissed by the 4e proponents does possess a great deal of indie concepts/variants.
> 
> With concepts along with their mechanics for things such as - success at a cost, degrees of failure, the inspiration mechanic, backgrounds, ideals and flaws, skill variant rules, plot points and I'm sure quite a few others D&D has certainly evolved with the RPG community around it, recognising and incorporating various ideas from other games.




A few responses on this Sadras (as I'm sure you're including me in this):

1)  I don't come at this conversation as a "4e proponent" so I'm not sure why that is the classification used here.  Further, my guess is I run (and appreciate) a wider variety of games than 99 % (of not more) of the folks on ENWorld, so "4e proponent" certainly isn't apropos on those grounds either.

2)  I'm not sure why you say that we haven't acknowledged indie-inspired components in 5e.  I'm certain that you have been involved in conversations where  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I have discussed (and tried to make the center of discussion) things like Background Traits (player fiat effectively), Lair Actions, Social Interaction conflict resolution mechanics, IBF and Inspiration, Success at a Cost, the invocation of Fail Forward in the Basic Set section on noncombat action resolution, and various Author or Director stance PC build features.  We were talking about these things 4ish years ago (in whichever iteration they came online during the playtest).

Acknowledging and understanding aspects of 5e's development goals or end design has never been an issue.

3)  Here is the issue with calling 5e a "mainstream indie game" or even an "indie-inspired game" (non-OSR I'm talking about).  (Non-OSR) Indie games aren't defined by a component here or a component there.  They are the opposite of an al a carte toolset for DIY and a loose play premise/paradigm where rulings not rules are a feature (which is basically the beating heart of the OSR!).  They are ultimately defined by their (a) tightness of design (b) engineered around a specific and focused play paradigm/premise.  

This is why 4e is easily looked at as a "mainstream indie game" or an "indie-inspired game" and why 5e is (very clearly and transparently...as this was obviously the design goal) basically a "meainstream OSR game" inspired primarily by a mash-up of AD&D 2e/Castles and Crusades and some 3.x with some (not fundamentally integrated...by design) indie knick-knacks that can easily be dispensed with!


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## pemerton (Jan 20, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> You owe it to your players to at least make passing mention of the corridors - whether it's a long walk or short; up or down or level; whether there's lots of intersecting passages, or few, or none; whether the corridors are damp or dusty or empty or well-used, etc., because that's what the PCs see.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



None of this makes any sense.

Why do I "owe it to my players" to describe the corridors? That's like saying I "owe it to them" to describe the embroidery, or the colour of the dirt on the road, or the details of the windows in the cathedral. Until you can show me that anything is actually at stake in any of these descriptions, they're all just colour - and I'm pretty satisfied with the amount of colour I establish in my game.

As far as the "railroading" issue - as I already posted, the players (in character) ask the angels to take them to the reliquary, and the angels do so. When, in your game, the players order an ale at a tavern, do you describe every motion of the barkeep in pouring the ale; every step of the barmaid in bringing the ale to the PCs' table? There is always detail that doesn't get narrated. Again, until you give me some reason to think that something was at stake, why would I bother about it?

(And I as GM know no more about what is in Mal Arundak between the room where the PCs lifted the curse on the angels, and the reliquary, than the players do. It never mattered in the game to establish that.)

You seem to be importing an asumption from Gygaxian dungeoneering - that geographic details of indoor areas (ie rooms, corridors, staircases, etc) _always_ matter. That assumption is true for dungeoneering, but in its universal form is simply false.



Lanefan said:


> I try to imagine myself in a game such as  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's* and while some elements of his games look excellent there'd be a lot of times where I-as-player would be tearing my hair out in frustration and yelling "Why did you skip that?  I might have wanted to do something there!", or "Slow down!  I'm trying to map this!", etc.



There's no mapping. Likewise, the player who wants to draw copies of the embroidery on every NPC's tunic is simply out of luck. I don't have that information ready to hand, and frankly have very little interest in it.

But as far as wanting to check out the corridors in Mal Arundak, if you want to do that well you can say so. I would ask, "What are you hoping to find?" And if you say "Whatever is interesing there" then I can quickly tell you "You wander the corridors for a bit, but there's nothing of interest other than some meditation rooms for the angels. The reliquary seems to be the heart of the structure." If there's something particular you're hoping to find (eg further information about Miska the Wolf-spider) then we can frame a check or two and resolve that.

But as I already posted, in my game no players declared such actions for their PCs. They asked to be taken to the reqliquary. And they were. No one's desire to do something different was thwarted.



Lanefan said:


> Where I can imgaine an NPC's reason for doing something is X and write it down, then as play proceeds my narrations etc. are based around that now-fact.  It remains X.
> 
> Now in fairness sometimes this can make me kick myself, in a situation where, say, I think of reason X and build it into the narration etc. and then two weeks later think of a reason Q that would have worked much better.  But, them's the breaks - can't be perfect all the time.



To follow up on  [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s post - what happens if, _at the moment of play_, you work out that Q would be better?



Lanefan said:


> Before it gets introduced to play I can still mess with it if a better idea comes up (though I have to take care that messing with something here doesn't have unforeseen knock-on effects there).





Sadras said:


> Secret backstory that has not yet been revealed/established may of course be changed.



This is a very significant claim. I think it's contentious.

Lewis Pulsipher, in his essays in early White Dwarf about how to GM D&D in a "wargaming"/Gygaxian style, emphasises that for the GM to change the backstory (eg redraw dungeon corridors) is bad play, because it makes it impossible for skilled players to "solve the puzzle" of what the dungeon contains, and to thereby exercise their skill in beating the dungeon.

And if we're playing in a different (non-Gygaxian) way, then it is still a big thing: because if the GM is free to change the backstory before it's established in play, then _how is s/he sometimes allowed to rely upon it to stipulate that action declaration fails_? What governs the choice between the two options? And how does this relate to the role of the _players_ in RPGing?


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## pemerton (Jan 20, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> I think having a large tool box is maybe the best way to go? Lanefan' s GM toolbox is filled with a selection of good traditional tools, and he is suspicious of those "newfangled" toys. pemerton, on the other hand, loves the "newfangled" toys and is ignoring the old ones, finding fault in their ability to help construct stories.



I'm not sure what you think I'm ignoring? I understand how to declare action delcarations unsucccessful, without rolling, based on my conception of what would make for good fiction; I just don't do it.

And as I posted just upthread of this, I think there is a big question here that I'm hoping we can now address - a lot of the distractions and underbrush having been cleared away:

 [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] have said that the GM can change backstory up to the moment it is revealed/established in play; but they also clearly think that the GM can rely on unrevealed, secret backstory to declare failures in the way I've described just above.

What governs the GM's decision in this respect? If the GM sticks to the secret backstory when s/he likes it; but then changes it when s/he thinks of something s/he likes better - so that the players' decision to search for the map in such-and-such a place will automatically fail, with no check, if the GM decides to stick to his/her original idea that the map is actually on the other side of the world; but may succeed, if the GM decides that this new suggestion is better - then how is that not railroading? It is the GM who is deciding all the outcomes, based on what s/he thinks does or doesn't make for good fiction.



Arilyn said:


> I think a good GM should have a full toolbox with goodies from the many years the hobby has existed. Being flexible and adaptable is usually considered an invaluable trait, and many different tools designed for different purposes can help. Mixing things up helps keep up player engagement. Game getting a little unfocused lately, as an indie style? Have players go through a preplanned story, and give them a creative break. Players getting restless with troubles GM is throwing at them? Let them create and pursue their own agendas for a while.



How do you envisage this working, in practical terms? Do you announce to the players "Hey, in today's session your action declarations won't really matter - just focus on the story I'm telling you"?

I can understand playing different sorts of RPGs, but I don't really see how what you suggest is meant to fit into a single "game"/campaign.


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## Arilyn (Jan 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what you think I'm ignoring? I understand how to declare action delcarations unsucccessful, without rolling, based on my conception of what would make for good fiction; I just don't do it.
> 
> And as I posted just upthread of this, I think there is a big question here that I'm hoping we can now address - a lot of the distractions and underbrush having been cleared away:
> 
> ...



I just meant the tools of traditional storytelling in rpgs, such as creating a story ahead of time for players to run through. Module kind of stuff.

As for railroading? No, I don't think having the GM  change things to be more interesting is railroading, as long as it's not impacting player choice in a negative way. Sometimes the GM is in charge of the story, just like at other times it's the players. GM usually ends up being the final arbiter in most games, anyway, and it works just fine. Your preferred style works too, and I enjoy that as well, but the " old fashioned" GM driven stories are not railroads. Railroading is the GM telling players how to act, or deciding ahead of time that certain events will occur, and players can't influence the results at all. 

As for mixing the two styles in same campaign? I do it all the time. If players decide to go after something unexpected, off we go. I had a PF arc go in all kinds of great directions that wasn't even remotely like what was published, but player back stories and ideas drove the story. FATE games are a constant mix of my stories, blending into player ideas. It's organic, and doesn't need announcements ahead of play. Even in games based off the Appocalypse engine, I will sometimes sketch out a rough story, so if players are floundering creatively, I can provide direction. Trains can be useful.


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## pemerton (Jan 20, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> As for railroading? No, I don't think having the GM  change things to be more interesting is railroading, as long as it's not impacting player choice in a negative way.



That's not quite what I was getting at - my point is that, if the GM is free to change to make things more interesting, then if the GM instead sticks to his/he notes and then declares a declared action a failure with no check, how is _that_ not railroading? The GM had the power to do something different - eg see how the check turns out and then narrate success or failure on the basis of that - but instead chose to establish the ficiton as s/he wanted it to be regardless of what the player was hoping for.



Arilyn said:


> Railroading is the GM telling players how to act, or deciding ahead of time that certain events will occur, and players can't influence the results at all.



Again, if players can only influence results when the GM decides not to veto them on the basis of his/her prior imagined backstory, how is that not a railroad?

(If the GM allows the player to roll the dice, and _pretends_ that the check might have mattered but nevertheless gives an answer based on his/her preference to stick to what s/he already imagined happening, that doesn't stop it being a railroad. It's just a railroad in which the GM is establishing an illusion that action resolution took place.)


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## Lanefan (Jan 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Why do I "owe it to my players" to describe the corridors? That's like saying I "owe it to them" to describe the embroidery, or the colour of the dirt on the road, or the details of the windows in the cathedral. Until you can show me that anything is actually at stake in any of these descriptions, they're all just colour - and I'm pretty satisfied with the amount of colour I establish in my game.
> 
> As far as the "railroading" issue - as I already posted, the players (in character) ask the angels to take them to the reliquary, and the angels do so. When, in your game, the players order an ale at a tavern, do you describe every motion of the barkeep in pouring the ale; every step of the barmaid in bringing the ale to the PCs' table?



You're very good at this: taking something potentially significant (in this case what may or may not have happened in the corridors of a hostile place) and throwing back a laughable example to compare it with and then saying they're the same.

News flash: they're not.



> There is always detail that doesn't get narrated. Again, until you give me some reason to think that something was at stake, why would I bother about it?



It's in theory a hostile place they're in, meaning that there's by default always something at stake for the PCs (i.e. potential danger) until exploration and observation shows them otherwise.

Yes there's details that get skipped...details that don't matter.  Travelling through a hostile place is not such a detail.



> (And I as GM know no more about what is in Mal Arundak between the room where the PCs lifted the curse on the angels, and the reliquary, than the players do. It never mattered in the game to establish that.)



Then that's squarely on you as GM.



> You seem to be importing an asumption from Gygaxian dungeoneering - that geographic details of indoor areas (ie rooms, corridors, staircases, etc) _always_ matter. That assumption is true for dungeoneering, but in its universal form is simply false.



Wrong.  Geographic details are *always* important, be it in a dungeon, a castle, a town, a wilderness, outer space.  I repeat: always important.  Knowing where you are and what's around you spatially is important.  Knowing how you got there is important.  Knowing how to get out is often even more important. 



> There's no mapping. Likewise, the player who wants to draw copies of the embroidery on every NPC's tunic is simply out of luck.



Yet again you take something important and liken it to a triviality.



> I don't have that information ready to hand



Again, that's on you as GM to have that information (the maps, not the tunics).


> and frankly have very little interest in it.



Ah, and now we come to it.  _You're_ not interested in mapping, and so your game doesn't use maps.  This at least I can relate to, even as I maintain you're short-changing your players.



> But as far as wanting to check out the corridors in Mal Arundak, if you want to do that well you can say so.



When would I have had the chance?  You jumped straight from the angels saying "OK, we wil take you there" to describing and scene-setting the reliquary, thus reducing the point in asking at all because we've already made it there safely.  Before you jump the gun I as player and PC don't know if the journey is safe (and by the sound of it, neither do you as DM in this case) so - hey, why not play to find out?



> I would ask, "What are you hoping to find?" And if you say "Whatever is interesing there" then I can quickly tell you "You wander the corridors for a bit, but there's nothing of interest other than some meditation rooms for the angels. The reliquary seems to be the heart of the structure."



And this is all it takes!  An acknowledgement that there's something there, that the journey took place, and that it is safe.


> If there's something particular you're hoping to find (eg further information about Miska the Wolf-spider) then we can frame a check or two and resolve that.



Never mind the checks, I'd probably ask you roughly how long the journey with the angels would take and then roleplay asking them for more information and not just about the adventure we're in.  Hell, they're angels for crying out loud - they know lots of stuff about lots of stuff.  I'd think of it as something like a several-minute-long _Commune_ spell!



> But as I already posted, in my game no players declared such actions for their PCs. They asked to be taken to the reqliquary. And they were. No one's desire to do something different was thwarted.



So it seems.  Your players aren't nearly as inquisitive as mine. 



> To follow up on  [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s post - what happens if, _at the moment of play_, you work out that Q would be better?



That would depend.  If X had come up in play or influenced anything in any way before now then consistency would commit me to X.  If X had not yet had any influence then it'd be a more open question; with the likelihood of my jumping to Q on the spot somewhat determined by the significance of whatever X-Q is.  If it's something minor I'd probably go with Q.  If it's something major I'd likely stick with X as I know I've already thought that through.



> This is a very significant claim. I think it's contentious.
> 
> Lewis Pulsipher, in his essays in early White Dwarf about how to GM D&D in a "wargaming"/Gygaxian style, emphasises that for the GM to change the backstory (eg redraw dungeon corridors) is bad play, because it makes it impossible for skilled players to "solve the puzzle" of what the dungeon contains, and to thereby exercise their skill in beating the dungeon.



Changing anything after it's seen or influenced play in any form is bad - I even think we can agree on that.

Changing something before it's seen or influenced play but after the DM knows who's going to potentially interact with it: almost always bad form, as nearly always those changes are being made based on this meta-info.

Changing it well ahead of time without clear knowledge of what players or PCs will or might eventually interact with it: fair game.



> And if we're playing in a different (non-Gygaxian) way, then it is still a big thing: because if the GM is free to change the backstory before it's established in play, then _how is s/he sometimes allowed to rely upon it to stipulate that action declaration fails_?



Simple.  Once the backstory has been relied on in such a manner it becomes locked in as it's had influence on play.



> What governs the choice between the two options? And how does this relate to the role of the _players_ in RPGing?



For the first question, see above.  For the second, the players just keep on truckin', doing what they do - which is to bring their characters to life and interact with the world around them.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 20, 2018)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] have said that the GM can change backstory up to the moment it is revealed/established in play; but they also clearly think that the GM can rely on unrevealed, secret backstory to declare failures in the way I've described just above.



See my previous post.  To repeat in short: relying on unrevealed backstory to determine success or failure means that backstory has now influenced play, and is thus locked in.



> What governs the GM's decision in this respect? If the GM sticks to the secret backstory when s/he likes it; but then changes it when s/he thinks of something s/he likes better - so that the players' decision to search for the map in such-and-such a place will automatically fail, with no check, if the GM decides to stick to his/her original idea that the map is actually on the other side of the world; but may succeed, if the GM decides that this new suggestion is better - then how is that not railroading?



But isn't that what you do, only instead of the map going from "the other side of the world" to "here it is" it goes from nowhere in particular to "here it is"?

And I don't know how long I have to keep banging this drum but here's another beat: a DM pre-designing her game world, or pre-designing a dungeon (and placing its contents) does not a railroad make.



> How do you envisage this working, in practical terms? Do you announce to the players "Hey, in today's session your action declarations won't really matter - just focus on the story I'm telling you"?



Not [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] but I'll try answering this one: if things are getting a little unfocused a DM might out-of-character say something like "Hey, things seem to be drifting a bit - if it helps I've got some adventure and story ideas ready to rock if you all haven't anything - how's that?"

Lanefan


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## Sadras (Jan 20, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> A few responses on this Sadras (as I'm sure you're including me in this):




I was 



> 1)  I don't come at this conversation as a "4e proponent" so I'm not sure why that is the classification used here.




You're absolutely correct, my apologies, perhaps a more apt description should have been "indie proponent"? 



> 2)  I'm not sure why you say that we haven't acknowledged indie-inspired components in 5e...(snip)...Acknowledging and understanding aspects of 5e's development goals or end design has never been an issue.




Ok, but...



> 3)  Here is the issue with calling 5e a "mainstream indie game" or even an "indie-inspired game" (non-OSR I'm talking about).  (Non-OSR) Indie games aren't defined by a component here or a component there.  They are the opposite of an al a carte toolset for DIY and a loose play premise/paradigm where rulings not rules are a feature (which is basically the beating heart of the OSR!).  They are ultimately defined by their (a) tightness of design (b) engineered around a specific and focused play paradigm/premise.
> 
> This is why 4e is easily looked at as a "mainstream indie game" or an "indie-inspired game" and why 5e is (very clearly and transparently...as this was obviously the design goal) basically a "meainstream OSR game" inspired primarily by a mash-up of AD&D 2e/Castles and Crusades and some 3.x with some (not fundamentally integrated...by design) indie knick-knacks that can easily be dispensed with!




It is true, many of them are not fundamentally integrated but referring to them as _knick-knacks that can easily be dispensed with_ ignores the plug-in styled nature of the 5e chassis, and furthermore, it may arguably be said you used such language as a slight pejorative. Lastly your comment is seemingly very dismissive of the effort that was made to include them by covering many pages within the core rulebooks, far more I might add than 4e's page 42, one solitary page, which is used to shield against and deflect comments about the rigidness of 4e's AEDU/action declaration. 






pemerton said:


> To follow up on  [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s post - what happens if, _at the moment of play_, you work out that Q would be better?
> 
> This is a very significant claim. I think it's contentious.




Sure, with the example you mentioned, but as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned we would never change x to y if it would in any way invalidate previous information or answers provided to the PCs.



> Lewis Pulsipher, in his essays in early White Dwarf about how to GM D&D in a "wargaming"/Gygaxian style, emphasises that for the GM to change the backstory (eg redraw dungeon corridors) is bad play, because it makes it impossible for skilled players to "solve the puzzle" of what the dungeon contains, and to thereby exercise their skill in beating the dungeon.
> 
> And if we're playing in a different (non-Gygaxian) way, then it is still a big thing: because if the GM is free to change the backstory before it's established in play, then _how is s/he sometimes allowed to rely upon it to stipulate that action declaration fails_? What governs the choice between the two options? And how does this relate to the role of the _players_ in RPGing?




Agreed.


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## pemerton (Jan 20, 2018)

Sadras said:


> Sure, with the example you mentioned, but as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] mentioned we would never change x to y if it would in any way invalidate previous information or answers provided to the PCs.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Agreed.



Sorry, I wasn't clear on what you're agreeing with.

I think it's a big deal if a player declares an action for his/her PC, and the GM _sticks to the X that s/he already decided_, which results in the action failing with no check, given that it was _permissible_ for the GM to _change to Q instead_. Because this seems to make the outcome of the action declaration depend very much on the GM"s view as to what would make for good fiction.

Is that what you're agreeing with? I get the feeling maybe not, hence this reply!


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## pemerton (Jan 20, 2018)

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]

You insist that corridors always matter. That's simply not true. Read REH's The Scarlet Citadel, or The Hour of the Dragon, or Xuthal of the Dusk. All involve "dungeons". None provides a map. Similarly for Moria in Fellowship of the Ring - no map.

Nuances of paths, holes in the wall, heights of ceilings, are not always the most important things - in life or in fiction.

As for your "But isn't that how you do it?" - no. To repeat: the PCs (voiced by their players) ask the angels to take the to the reliquary. The angels take them there. We then find out what happens at the reliquary, by deploying the action resolution mechanics. No unrevealed backstory has been used to thwart any action declaration.

But you say: _relying on unrevealed backstory to determine success or failure means that backstory has now influenced play, and is thus locked in_. Obviously it's locked in. My point is - _the GM could have changed that backstory to something that allowed the action declaration a chance of success, but didn't_. How is that not a railroad?

I'm interested in [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION]'s answer to the same question, if she'd like to (Arilyn, I apologise if I've got your gender wrong).


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

I guess after reading this, I'm left with one question. (and I guess a bunch of downstream ones)

Why does it matter if something is being played "gygaxian" or "non-gygaxian" or "indie" or such?  Based on RAW, the final arbiter of how the game is adjucated (sp.) is the DM.  Based on commonly accepted social norms, if the players don't like how the DM is running the game, they won't play.

So ultimately the group determines what game they're playing and as long as they all enjoy it, who cares what anyone's opinion is that isn't in the group?  Moreover, why do we need to project our desires on the rules system when the RAW already says you don't have to play it the way they write it?

Bottom line, even when a game is universally accepted to play the same way all the time by everyone who plays it.  (for a bad example I'll use the NFL) there are refs that will screw it up and the rules will change over time to adapt to mistakes and the viewing audience.  It doesn't nullify history or what happened in the past and ultimately the changes make a better game going forward.  If it doesn't, rules revert back.  

Good thing is at your table with your friends, your game is the way you want it to be.

Thank goodness that doesn't mean I have to play it. 

Be well
KB


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## Lanefan (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]
> 
> You insist that corridors always matter. That's simply not true. Read REH's The Scarlet Citadel, or The Hour of the Dragon, or Xuthal of the Dusk. All involve "dungeons". None provides a map. Similarly for Moria in Fellowship of the Ring - no map.
> 
> Nuances of paths, holes in the wall, heights of ceilings, are not always the most important things - in life or in fiction.



But they are important in the game where things like missile ranges, distance and area of spell effects (both combat and non), line of sight and so forth are constantly being asked by the rules.  And sure, there's no map for Moria in the book but that doesn't mean JRRT didn't have one in his notes, to show how things fit together and what could happen where.



> But you say: _relying on unrevealed backstory to determine success or failure means that backstory has now influenced play, and is thus locked in_. Obviously it's locked in. My point is - _the GM could have changed that backstory to something that allowed the action declaration a chance of success, but didn't_. How is that not a railroad?



It's a railroad if the DM merely sticks to her material?

Now you're really pushing the definition, close to the point of absurdity.

The DM is in no way obliged to change the backstory to something that would allow a chance of success where none was before; and in fact I posit that were she to do so she'd be violating the integrity of her world.  She'd also be making the game easier for her players / PCs as a side effect; and while it's might be an open question whether this is desireable or not the effect still must be noted.

If the map is stowed in a desk in room 14 (a study) then looking for it in a sheaf of papers in room 11 (a library down the hall) has no chance of success.  Zero.  None; no matter what the PCs try.  Put in game mechanical terms should someone want to roll for it, searching the library for the map has a DC of infinity.  To me this seems so blindingly obvious I can't understand why I have to spell it out.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> So ultimately the group determines what game they're playing and as long as they all enjoy it, who cares what anyone's opinion is that isn't in the group?  Moreover, why do we need to project our desires on the rules system when the RAW already says you don't have to play it the way they write it?



I agree with your sentiments here, but I have to ask: while 5e (and 1e*) D&D RAW do more or less say you don't have to play it the way they write it, is this true of all RPG systems...or even all editions of D&D?

* - Gygax changed his tune on this one: in the 1e DMG he encourages the DM to - with care and forethought - make whatever changes she thinks necessary for her game, but in later writings he trended ever further toward a RAW-uber-alles position.

Lanefan


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> I agree with your sentiments here, but I have to ask: while 5e (and 1e*) D&D RAW do more or less say you don't have to play it the way they write it, is this true of all RPG systems...or even all editions of D&D?
> 
> * - Gygax changed his tune on this one: in the 1e DMG he encourages the DM to - with care and forethought - make whatever changes she thinks necessary for her game, but in later writings he trended ever further toward a RAW-uber-alles position.
> 
> Lanefan




Logic says yes.

Here's why: Any desire of the owner or writer of a game to follow the rules exactly as written can never be enforced once the rules are in the wild and used by players.  It's the same thing as writing a law or policy without any ability to enforce it.  People will do what they want.

Arguing otherwise is not defensible, but it will certainly up the post counts.

Thanks,
KB


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

Adding a few things to help folks.  Mostly doing this because I have a slight issue with Gygax's name being thrown around without context, and my memory of him has nothing to do with strict RAW philosophy in combination with a rules-dense system.  

In original D&D there was a clear mindset towards the rules being as complete as could be allowed within the page counts and that interpretation and house rules were a given due to this.



> These rules are as complete as possible within the limitations imposed by the space of three booklets. That is, they cover the major aspects of fantasy campaigns but still remain flexible. As with any other set of miniatures rules they are guidelines to follow in designing your own fantastic-medieval campaign. They provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity — your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors, and the fact that you have purchased these rules tends to indicate that there is no lack of imagination — the fascination of the game will tend to make participants find more and more time. We advise, however, that a campaign be begun slowly, following the steps outlined herein, so as to avoid becoming too bogged down with unfamiliar details at first. That way your campaign will build naturally, at the pace best suited to the referee and players, smoothing the way for all concerned. New details can be added and old “laws” altered so as to provide continually new and different situations. In addition, the players themselves will interact in such a way as to make the campaign variable and unique, and this is quite desirable.  Gygax




Later in 1E D&D it was clear that the same idea was in play, granted with a much larger set of rules to consider.  The goal was to maintain game balance internally to any given group of players, then within the campaign and more largely within the rules set.  He addresses these three things in reverse, from the perspective of the author.  However the interpretation should not be that the game rules come first.  



> It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. NEVER hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, IF it goes against the obvious intent of the game. As you hew the line with respect to conformity to major systems and uniformity of play in general, also be certain the game is mastered by you and not by your players. Within the broad parameters give in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Volumes, YOU are creator and final arbiter. By ordering things as they should be, the game as a WHOLE first, your CAMPAIGN next, and your participants thereafter, you will be playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons as it was meant to be. May you find as much pleasure in so doing as the rest of us do.” EGG




In 2e, EGG was not part of that play but you can find comments from Zeb that echo.  The big shot to the system comes from Gygax's opinion of 3rd ed.  It's pretty clear that he was of the opinion that the game went too far in the rules direction and wasn't in the best interest of game, group or campaign.



> The new D&D is too rule intensive. It’s relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It’s done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good.
> 
> – Gary Gygax, GameSpy interview, Pt. 2 (16 August 2004)




So I'd sum all of this up with, if you're using the term "Gygaxian" to label rules-as-written in opposition to DM fiat, you're doing him wrong.  All he ever supported was game balance to ensure the best experience at the table.

Be well
KB


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## R_Chance (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But you say: _relying on unrevealed backstory to determine success or failure means that backstory has now influenced play, and is thus locked in_. Obviously it's locked in. My point is - _the GM could have changed that backstory to something that allowed the action declaration a chance of success, but didn't_. How is that not a railroad?




If I can step in here; it's simple. They had choices. It's not a railroad if they chose something that does not work. As long as they had choices. Or do you consider it a "railroad" if it doesn't work? I gather not, so what is the difference between slim (and did not work despite "a chance") and none (as in can't / didn't work due to existing world setting background)?

On other things...

As for the corridors / empty spaces, it can be very instructive. I run a sandbox game. It's entirely possible for the PCs to wonder into something over their head. A TPK in the making. I try to avoid that. The scenery along the way to a Dragons den (dead burned bodies, skeletons, broken weapons, scorch marks etc.) served to convince the PCs to make another choice. Unless they are suicidal or really dense it works. Or ready to take on a Dragon. They weren't (at the time) but were convinced by the otherwise relatively uneventful journey to go elsewhere. 

As for making it up along the way... I find it better to prepare and world build. My campaign world started out before D&D (I developed it as a setting for fantasy miniature campaign using Chainmail) and has had pretty continuous development since then. I've developed the world, it's geography, cultures, history, economy etc. ever since. Have I changed things? Yes. Have I altered things based on PC input? Yes. But not to overturn or change established (to the PCs) facts or to make major changes to the world / setting. I have updated / adapted the world with new editions of D&D (and personal experience / knowledge as I got older and earned degrees etc.), usually moving my timeline forward if possible. I did skip 4E because it didn't fit my game that well (although it looked OK, just not a game I was prepared to run).

This gives me the option of letting my PCs follow an adventure I've established / prepared, or run a game on the fly, that fits in, due to setting knowledge. My players can't tell the difference. I have combined both as well. My players ran into a random encounter in the wilderness once; Orcs. They defeated the Orcs and those who survived fled. My players decided to pursue them (having a Ranger helps). There was a pre-prepared end part of an adventure nearby; a ruined fortress being used by Orcs to prepare for an invasion of Human lands. The original adventure was planned as a mission from the local Duke to investigate the area and report back to him. There was a fairly long run up to the end game. It made sense for the Orcs to run to other Orcs, and the PCs followed. They came sideways into this adventure at the end. And ended up eventually reporting their findings to the local Duke while skipping the extensive first part of the adventure. Existing background material and geography combined with player choice to yield a somewhat different adventure. This only worked because I had both the pre-prepared material and the willingness to improvise and revise.

*edited* for clarity and additional information...


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Why does it matter if something is being played "gygaxian" or "non-gygaxian" or "indie" or such?



Well, in one sense it doesn't.

But this is the General RPG forum on a leading RPG message board. I think it's reasonable for posters her anallyse play techniques.

I'm espeically interested in this idea that the GM _might_ change the (as yet unrevealed) fiction to make the game "better", or might instead stick to what s/he pre-authored and, on that basis, declare an action declaration a failure with no check. To me, that seems to make the shared fiction that results from play very  much the product of the GM's preferences. I'm waiting for anyone else to post his/her view of it.


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Any desire of the owner or writer of a game to follow the rules exactly as written can never be enforced once the rules are in the wild and used by players.



This is true of games in general. It's not unique to RPGs.

Nevertheless, the opinion of a designer as to how s/he thinks his/her game works might be relevant.

Just to give one example: the 4e designers knew what they were talking about when they discouraged getting bogged down in minutiae of non-combat situations. Because if you do, then you eliminate the flexibility that is needed to narrate successes and failures in skill challenges.

EDIT:


Kobold Boots said:


> if you're using the term "Gygaxian" to label rules-as-written in opposition to DM fiat, you're doing him wrong.



I'm using Gygaxian to describe a type of play that he explains in detail in the section of his PHB called "Successful Adventuring". The same style of play is discussed extensively by Lewis Pulsipher (who describes it as the "wargaming" style) in his numerous essays in early White Dwarf (late-70s, early 80s). You can also see the same style exhibited in Gygax's sample dungeon, and example of play, in his DMG. Moldvay Basic is also buitl to support this style of play.

This style of play is based on the GM having a dungeon map and a key to it, which - once written - it is "locked in". The reason it's locked in is so that the players can engage with it: by searching, divining (there's a reason that short-range detection items are staples on the magic item lists in these games), etc; then taking out the best loot. Both endeavurs, but especially the second, will require avoiding or defeating monsters.

I think this style of play is reasonably uncommon in contemporary RPGing. It's not clear if it was ever the majority of played D&D. But it's very clearly the style of play that Gygax wrote AD&D to support. (Hence, for instance, there are rules for determining how likely you are to find a secret door if you search for it; but not rules to determine how likely a merchant is to have a bardiche for sale if you ask for one. If you actually catalogue the action resolution rules in Gygax's AD&D, you can see both (i) how many of them there are (many more than one might at first suspect), and (ii) how oriented they are towards the particular sort of "skilled play" that he advocates.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Well, in one sense it doesn't.
> 
> But this is the General RPG forum on a leading RPG message board. I think it's reasonable for posters her anallyse play techniques.
> 
> I'm espeically interested in this idea that the GM _might_ change the (as yet unrevealed) fiction to make the game "better", or might instead stick to what s/he pre-authored and, on that basis, declare an action declaration a failure with no check. To me, that seems to make the shared fiction that results from play very  much the product of the GM's preferences. I'm waiting for anyone else to post his/her view of it.




It's really not that hard to fathom, is it?

GM writes something up.  Lets' say it's a mystery about someone being murdered.
Player or players in the course of role-playing or adventuring come up with a common narrative that links a previous adventure that had nothing to do with the current one back to it (ie. Remember so and so, this looks like his work)

GM realizes that it makes sense and opens up an opportunity to add depth to his game.  One problem.
Different player rolled a successful skill check that gave him or her information about the original storyline that conflicts with the new, better storyline.  Player knows it was successful.  Now the GM needs to have it not conflict.

GM needs to think fast and handle this with good writing OR, do the wrong thing and railroad the skill check player into a direction that doesn't make sense to him.  This invalidates the check.

The fact that railroading happens in bad games is known.  The fact that the potential for it happens in every game is known.  The solution is the GM doing their job the right way to make sure everyone can enjoy themselves.  That's why there's skill involved in being one.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> This is true of games in general. It's not unique to RPGs.
> 
> Nevertheless, the opinion of a designer as to how s/he thinks his/her game works might be relevant.
> 
> ...




My opinion is that the designers opinion of how his or her rules set should be run is irrelevant the minute it goes to sale and others are playing with it.  EGG clearly understands this but offers advice to maintain game balance and enjoyment for the group.

So feel free to use the term Gygaxian to mean early play in line with OD&D and first ed, but it's probably wise to keep it away from RAW discussions.


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> One problem.
> Different player rolled a successful skill check that gave him or her information about the original storyline that conflicts with the new, better storyline.  Player knows it was successful.  Now the GM needs to have it not conflict.



If I've understood this properly, this is not what I'm talking about.

Upthread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] (I thinks) and  [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] all endorsed the follow two propositions:

(1) If some bit of fiction (let's call it X) is written down in the GM's notes, but has not yet been established, the GM is permitted to change it to something else (Q) during the course of play, if s/he thinks that Q will make the game better.

(2) If X is written down in the GM's notes, and during play a player declares an action for his/her PC that _cannot succeed_ if X is true (eg the player looks for the map in the study, but the GM has already written down in his/her notes that the map is hidden in a bread bin in the kitchen), then the GM is entitled to rely on X to declare that the declared action fails (and so can, for instance, tell the player that the search for the map in the study fails _without_ having regard to the outcome of any action resolution mechanics).​
I assert: in a game that is GMed in accordance with propositions (1) and (2), the outcomes depend primiarliy upon the GM's opinion as to what makes for a good game. If s/he likes Q, then Q can come about. If s/he prefers his/her pre-authored X, then X is how it is and player actions will fail because of it.

I'm waiting for anyone else to address this point - ie the interaction of the two propositions. As best I understand your post you haven't, because your example is about X _already having been established in play_ (you use the past tense: "gave him or her information about the original storyline that conflicts with the new, better storyline" - ie X is already established in play).

 [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] haven't, because they haven't posted again in this thread since I asked the quetsion. And  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] hasn't, because he only responded to (2) - asserting the GM's entitlement to uphold the integrity of his/her world - but without discussing it's relationship to (1) - ie the GM's entitlement to _change_ from X to Q if s/he likes.

It is the combination of (1) and (2) that I am asking about.



Kobold Boots said:


> The fact that the potential for it happens in every game is known. The solution is the GM doing their job the right way to make sure everyone can enjoy themselves. That's why there's skill involved in being one.



It's not true that there's potential for railroading in every game. A GM who plays Moldvay Basic in accordance with the rulebook can produce a _boring_ experience, but not a railroad, because the outcomes will depend upon the interaction between the GM's pre-authored notes - which establish a maze with various "puzles" (in the form of monsters, traps and treasures) within it - and the players' action declarations in their attempt to solve those puzzles.

The game will be boring if (i) the players don't like puzzles the focus of their RPGing (eg that's generally me, as far as RPGing is concerned - I have zero patience for scouting, mapping, optimised looting, etc) or (ii) the GM writes a boring dungeon (that's also me - I'm as bad a Gygaxian GM as I am a player).

A GM who plays Burning Wheel in accordance with the rulebook can't produce a railroad either, although (again) it might be boring if the GM does a bad job. It can't be a railroad, because - if the GM is following the rulebooks - then (i) every situation is framed by reference to the Beliefs, Relationships, etc that the players authored into their PCs; and (ii) the GM either says "yes" or calls for a check - so if it is a map at issue, and a player declares that his/her PC searches the study for the map, then either the GM declares that the PCs finds it (if the momentum of the game is such that there is nothing at stake in finding the map itself, such that failing to find the map would be a fizzle) or the GM frames a check (depending on context, this could be Perception or Study-wise or Map-wise or something else) and the outcome of that check determines whether the map is found, or whether some new obstacle or complication emerges instead (which the GM will narrate by reference to those Beliefs, Relationships etc plus whatever more immediate stakes are at issue in the situation as it is unfolding at the table).

A BW game will be boring if the GM can't think of compelling situations, or can't think of compelling ways to frame checks (saying "yes" to everything makes for a boring game), or can't think of decent consequences for failure. But it won't be a railroad.

This is why I am trying to bypass misleading generalities, and hone in on the pair of propositiongs I've identified above.


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> So feel free to use the term Gygaxian to mean early play in line with OD&D and first ed, but it's probably wise to keep it away from RAW discussions.



I don't understand what you mean by this. What is a "RAW discussion"?

This thread (for the past 8 pages or so) has been primarily about RPG design and GMing techniques. It is possible to play games in a fashion similar to how Gygax advocates in his PHB. Playing a DL game using the published DL modules has almost nothing in common with a game played in that fashion, other than that both are RPGs (ie both involve players engaging a shared fiction "administered" in some fashion by the GM, using individual characters as their vehicle for that engagement).


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Upthread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] (I thinks) and  [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] all endorsed the follow two propositions:
> 
> (1) If some bit of fiction (let's call it X) is written down in the GM's notes, but has not yet been established, the GM is permitted to change it to something else (Q) during the course of play, if s/he thinks that Q will make the game better.
> 
> ...




I must be dense, because I don't understand why we have to find and discuss the confluence point between the two items.

So if X means that Y can not succeed.  It should not succeed.  
e.g. X is that a map is in the bread box and a player looks in the study and makes a good skill roll he won't find it.  If it's my game and he makes a great skill roll he may get a clue that it's in the bread box.  (Parchment and ink on the table and the crumby remains of a scone or something).

If it's decided that X changes before Y happens, the player will never know.
If it's decided that X changes after Y happens, then you have the situation I declared with the skill check guy in my post above.
If it's decided that X changes during Y happening, then that's an issue only if the player finds out about it.

So if the answer is either: The GM has to make X and Y feasible together OR The player never knows about the sleight of hand, then you have your answer.  If the GM changes things mid flight and actually tells the player in process; then he or she is daft.

Also, rail roading can happen in any game with plot and a referee.  The rules have zero to do with it.  It's a social problem.

Be well
KB


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I don't understand what you mean by this. What is a "RAW discussion"?
> 
> This thread (for the past 8 pages or so) has been primarily about RPG design and GMing techniques. It is possible to play games in a fashion similar to how Gygax advocates in his PHB. Playing a DL game using the published DL modules has almost nothing in common with a game played in that fashion, other than that both are RPGs (ie both involve players engaging a shared fiction "administered" in some fashion by the GM, using individual characters as their vehicle for that engagement).




"RAW" - Rules as Written

Be well
KB


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> But they are important in the game where things like missile ranges, distance and area of spell effects (both combat and non), line of sight and so forth are constantly being asked by the rules.



Sure. But this is not true of Cortex+ Heroic, not true of Burning Wheel, not true of Classic Traveller outside of combat (eg you can resolve all of an interstellar trading exercise without need to know anything but world stats and jump distances - I know because I've done it), and not true of 4e outside of combat (eg skill challenges in 4e don't depend upon that sort of information for their resolution).



Lanefan said:


> If the map is stowed in a desk in room 14 (a study) then looking for it in a sheaf of papers in room 11 (a library down the hall) has no chance of success.  Zero.  None; no matter what the PCs try.  Put in game mechanical terms should someone want to roll for it, searching the library for the map has a DC of infinity.  To me this seems so blindingly obvious I can't understand why I have to spell it out.



But upthread you said that, if this hasn't already been established in play, the the GM can change it (from X to Q).



Lanefan said:


> It's a railroad if the DM merely sticks to her material?



If the GM is prepared to change those materials if _s/he_ thinks it woudl be more interesting, but equally sticks to them when s/he prefers them, how would you describe it?



Lanefan said:


> The DM is in no way obliged to change the backstory to something that would allow a chance of success where none was before



That may be true - I'm not talking about what a GM is obliged or not obliged to do.

But if the GM is _permitted_ to do that, and does so when s/he thinks it would be fun, but doesn't do so when s/he prefers what s/he already wrote, then isn't it the GM who's deciding how the situation resolves?



Lanefan said:


> I posit that were she to do so she'd be violating the integrity of her world.



But you already said that s/he's allowed to change it if s/he wants to.

Again, if what you're saying is that _the GM's opinion about the integrity of his/her world takes priority over player action declarations_, how would you distinguish that from a railroad?



Lanefan said:


> She'd also be making the game easier for her players / PCs as a side effect



That's an open question.

One form of difficulty is guessing what the GM wrote in his/her notes. Another form of difficulty is having to engage the fiction from the perspective of your PC and declare actions. I think many players would find 2nd ed AD&D less demanding than Burning Wheel.



R_Chance said:


> If I can step in here; it's simple. They had choices. It's not a railroad if they chose something that does not work. As long as they had choices. Or do you consider it a "railroad" if it doesn't work?1



There are two main reasons something "doesn't work" - ie an action delcaration (eg "I look for the map in the study") might fail. One is because the check is framed, the player rolls the dice, and they come up unluckily for the player. THe other is because the GM decides, by reference to fiction that has not yet been established (eg his/her notes state that the map is hidden in the kitchen), that the PC _cannot_ find the map in the study.

If the GM is obliged to write everything down in his/her notes, and stick to those notes, so that the aim of play for the players is (more-or-less) to "crack" the GM's notes, then it is not a railroad - it's a type of complex maze/puzzle game. This is what Gygax advocates in his PHB and DMG.

But if the GM is permitted to make stuff up on the way through (which is, in practical terms, inevitable once the imaginary scope of the game extends beyond the rather artificial dungeon environment), and/or is permitted to rewrite his/her notes during play, based on what s/he thinks might be good for the game, then it's not a puzzle game anymore - because there's nothing for the players to crack. In this latter case, it seems that what happens depends very heavily on what the GM likes eg does s/he want to stick to X in his/her notes, or change it to Q (maybe the map _is_ in the study) depending on what s/he thinks is better/more fun.

To me, that appears to be a railroad, because it is the GM who decides the important outcomes in the game. (The fact that the players can choose to have their PCs look for the map in the study seems not very signficiant - that won't actually change the outcomes, given that they only have a chance of finding it if the GM decides that Q would be more fun than the X that s/he wrote in his/her notes.)


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> "RAW" - Rules as Written



I'm familiar with the acronym. That doesn't tell me what you think a "RAW discussion" is, or how the notion is relevant to this thread.



Kobold Boots said:


> I must be dense, because I don't understand why we have to find and discuss the confluence point between the two items.



Well, when it comes to leisure activities like RPGing, we don't have to do much of anything. And you're not obliged to post in this thread. It's just the question I'm asking.



Kobold Boots said:


> So if X means that Y can not succeed.  It should not succeed.
> e.g. X is that a map is in the bread box and a player looks in the study and makes a good skill roll he won't find it.  If it's my game and he makes a great skill roll he may get a clue that it's in the bread box.  (Parchment and ink on the table and the crumby remains of a scone or something).
> 
> If it's decided that X changes before Y happens, the player will never know.
> ...



So it seems that the answer is that it's railroading, and the GM should be trying to keep the moments of railroading secret from the players.



Kobold Boots said:


> Also, rail roading can happen in any game with plot and a referee.  The rules have zero to do with it.  It's a social problem.



Cheating is a social problem. But presumably we're talking about playing a game in accordance with the rules and guidelines.

There is no _plot_ in Moldvay Basic or BW until play actually occurs (in Basic, it's a side effect; in BW, having play generate a plot is an important goal of play).

If the GM in a Moldvay Basic game changes things in his/her notes without telling the players, that's cheating. Gygax has a lot of discussion of this sort of thing in his DMG - for instance, he contrasts the GM exercising control over content introduction, which he thinks is permissible in certain circumstances, with the GM exercising control over action resolution, which he opposes except for a narrow case of a skilled player having his/her PC die unluckily - and then the exercise of control Gygax permits will be overt to the player, as the GM will narrate death from hp loss as maiming or coma instead.

If a GM in BW sets a difficulty, and then tells a player whose dice roll beats it that nevertheless s/he doesn't get what s/he wants, well again that's overt and the player will know that the GM is not following the rules.

The particular method that you set out in your post that I've quoted depends upon a whole lot of practices - eg a player can succeed on a check to find the map in the study and yet not get what s/he wants (instead, the GM gives the player some clue). There are plenty of RPGs that use different practices (of the ones I GM, Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller and Cortex+ are different; and 4e can be played in the same (different) way which is how our group plays it).a


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## Lanefan (Jan 21, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Logic says yes.
> 
> Here's why: Any desire of the owner or writer of a game to follow the rules exactly as written can never be enforced once the rules are in the wild and used by players.  It's the same thing as writing a law or policy without any ability to enforce it.  People will do what they want.
> 
> Arguing otherwise is not defensible, but it will certainly up the post counts.



Quite true.

My question was, however, how many games other than 5e and 1e (sort of) actually endorse kitbashing right in their rulebooks?


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## Lanefan (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Just to give one example: the 4e designers knew what they were talking about when they discouraged getting bogged down in minutiae of non-combat situations.



In your opinion.  I think they were diong the game a disservice.


> Because if you do, then you eliminate the flexibility that is needed to narrate successes and failures in skill challenges.



While at the same time maintaining the flexibility to role-play such that things don't get to skill challenges; which - while not that bad of a mechanic in themselves - are the sort of thing resorted to when other options have failed.  If the first thing that happens when engaging with a situation is a skill challenge then it's an ironclad guarantee that a bunch of stuff has been skipped, on both sides of the screen.



> I'm using Gygaxian to describe a type of play that he explains in detail in the section of his PHB called "Successful Adventuring". The same style of play is discussed extensively by Lewis Pulsipher (who describes it as the "wargaming" style) in his numerous essays in early White Dwarf (late-70s, early 80s). You can also see the same style exhibited in Gygax's sample dungeon, and example of play, in his DMG. Moldvay Basic is also buitl to support this style of play.
> 
> This style of play is based on the GM having a dungeon map and a key to it, which - once written - it is "locked in". The reason it's locked in is so that the players can engage with it: by searching, divining (there's a reason that short-range detection items are staples on the magic item lists in these games), etc; then taking out the best loot. Both endeavurs, but especially the second, will require avoiding or defeating monsters.
> 
> I think this style of play is reasonably uncommon in contemporary RPGing.



Maybe it's because we're in vastly different parts of the world, but round here it's as common as dirt.



> It's not clear if it was ever the majority of played D&D.



Until late 1e it's a safe bet that it was, with the likely exception of those playing Dragonlance.  Once 2e hit, playstyles started to splinter but even then I'd suggest the majority stayed with something vaguely - by your terms - Gygaxian.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Upthread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION],  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] (I thinks) and  [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] all endorsed the follow two propositions:
> 
> (1) If some bit of fiction (let's call it X) is written down in the GM's notes, but has not yet been established, the GM is permitted to change it to something else (Q) during the course of play, if s/he thinks that Q will make the game better.
> 
> ...



Simply put, (1) can only happen until and unless (2) happens for the very first time.  At the time (2) happens, if the DM has already changed X to Q in her notes etc. then Q is what will be used and locked in and X goes away.  If she hasn't, then X will be used and locked in and Q never sees the light of day.

However, there's a clause in (2) that needs a closer look, which I've bolded.  The DM in this case doesn't even need to invoke any action resolution mechanics: she can, if she wants, just use her knowledge of X (or Q if Q has been subbed in at some earlier point) to flat-out say the action fails.  Now most DM's IME wouldn't do it like this as it gives away information (that the action is currently impossible) that the PCs have no reason to know.  Instead, having already established in house that the DM makes these sort of rolls, she'd go through the motions of rolling and narrate a failure.  This leaves the PCs (and by extension, players) in a more realistic position: they don't know if they've failed because of lack of competence or luck, or because success is impossible.



> The game will be boring if (i) the players don't like puzzles the focus of their RPGing (eg that's generally me, as far as RPGing is concerned - I have zero patience for scouting, mapping, optimised looting, etc) or (ii) the GM writes a boring dungeon (that's also me - I'm as bad a Gygaxian GM as I am a player).



While from the DM side I'm every bit as capable - maybe more so - of writing a boring dungeon as the next guy, as a player the whole scouting-mapping-exploration bit is a huge part of the game.

This is something the 5e designers really got right, at least in theory: the game has three pillars, of which exploration is one.



> A GM who plays Burning Wheel in accordance with the rulebook can't produce a railroad either, although (again) it might be boring if the GM does a bad job. It can't be a railroad, because - if the GM is following the rulebooks - then (i) every situation is framed by reference to the Beliefs, Relationships, etc that the players authored into their PCs; and (ii) the GM either says "yes" or calls for a check - so if it is a map at issue, and a player declares that his/her PC searches the study for the map, then either the GM declares that the PCs finds it (if the momentum of the game is such that there is nothing at stake in finding the map itself, such that failing to find the map would be a fizzle) or the GM frames a check (depending on context, this could be Perception or Study-wise or Map-wise or something else) and the outcome of that check determines whether the map is found,



So either way, on a say-yes or a successful check the map is found in whatever location the PCs happen to be when they declare they're looking for it.  It just appears there.

So what happens in this situation: we're searching a known-to-be-empty manor house for a unique map we know we'll need later.  There's four of us, and we're in a bit of a hurry so in the interests of time efficiency we split up; Abercrombie says he'll search the upstairs bedrooms, Barnacle says he'll search the living and dining areas and the closets, Cadwallader says he'll search the library, and Delmionndia says she'll search the study and drawing room.  If nobody finds anything we'll reconvene and search the basement and storage sheds together.

But something odd happens on the way to the forum: all four individual searchers roll mighty successes on their checks.  But it's already been established that the map is unique - there's only one - which leaves our DM in something of a bind: four people somehow just found one map in four different places.

A bind, note, that she wouldn't be in had she pre-placed the map in a particular room.



> A BW game will be boring if the GM can't think of compelling situations



This is probably true of just about any game, not just BW.

Lan-"and saying that four maps were found - the one being looked for originally and three other different ones - invalidates three of the four success rolls"-efan


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Quite true.
> 
> My question was, however, how many games other than 5e and 1e (sort of) actually endorse kitbashing right in their rulebooks?



Cortex+ Hacker's Guide; Burning Wheel; Classic Traveller; Rolemaster - that's the one's I've GMed a reasonable amount.

Over the Edge; HeroQuest revised; The Dying Earth; Fate - they're the ones that I'm familiar with but haven't GMed.


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## Lanefan (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> But upthread you said that, if this hasn't already been established in play, the the GM can change it (from X to Q).



Only before the PCs start interacting with it.  If they're searching room 11 it's too late to move the map there from room 14 as they're already interacting with room 11.  But if they're searching room 11 and the DM has a sudden flash of inspiration and realizes things would be much more interesting were the map in room 18 instead of 14 (neither of which being places the PCs have had anything to do with yet) and no previous fiction or hints of clues have pointed specifically to room 14, then moving it is fair game.

That said, I try to do this sort of thing as little as possible.



> If the GM is prepared to change those materials if _s/he_ thinks it woudl be more interesting, but equally sticks to them when s/he prefers them, how would you describe it?



As a DM trying to provide the best game she can; because while you only here mention these changes being made due to DM preference they could just as easily be being made due to (perceived) player preference.  Most DMs know their players, and know what'll interest them; and chances are if she thinks it'll be better it'll be better if only because she'll run it better.  Either way, the players get a better game.



> But if the GM is _permitted_ to do that, and does so when s/he thinks it would be fun, but doesn't do so when s/he prefers what s/he already wrote, then isn't it the GM who's deciding how the situation resolves?



No.  The DM may be deciding (or heavily influencing) where and when the situation will resolve, but not how it will resolve.

<snipped the rest as it covers the same ground as above>

Lanefan


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## pemerton (Jan 21, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> If the first thing that happens when engaging with a situation is a skill challenge then it's an ironclad guarantee that a bunch of stuff has been skipped, on both sides of the screen.



Unless your game unfolds in a moment-for-moment correlatoin of real time and ingame events, stuff is being "skipped" - the narration of the gameworld is not total. It can't be.

Narration in a RPG involves choosing stuff that is salient. I don't see why you seem so horrified by the fact that I tend not to find the architectural details of building, sewers etc the most salient things.



Lanefan said:


> Simply put, (1) can only happen until and unless (2) happens for the very first time.



Obviously. My point is that if (1) is permitted, then everytime the GM does (2) she is choosing not to do (1) instead. Which means that whether or not the players get what they want depends, in effect, on the GM's opinion as to whether X or Q is better for the game.

How is that not railroading?



Lanefan said:


> However, there's a clause in (2) that needs a closer look, which I've bolded.  The DM in this case doesn't even need to invoke any action resolution mechanics: she can, if she wants, just use her knowledge of X (or Q if Q has been subbed in at some earlier point) to flat-out say the action fails.  Now most DM's IME wouldn't do it like this as it gives away information (that the action is currently impossible) that the PCs have no reason to know.  Instead, having already established in house that the DM makes these sort of rolls, she'd go through the motions of rolling and narrate a failure.  This leaves the PCs (and by extension, players) in a more realistic position: they don't know if they've failed because of lack of competence or luck, or because success is impossible.



Again, this is the GM dictating outcomes based on his/her view of what makes for good fiction. (Because, after all, s/he could have taken the player's implicity suggestion and switched from X to Q.) Again, isn't that the definition of railroading? Ie the GM decides all the outcomes.

While from the DM side I'm every bit as capable - maybe more so - of writing a boring dungeon as the next guy, as a player the whole scouting-mapping-exploration bit is a huge part of the game.



Lanefan said:


> This is something the 5e designers really got right, at least in theory: the game has three pillars, of which exploration is one.



You can run an exploration-focused episode of RPGing without extensive pre-authorship. Here's the actual play report of a session of that kind.



Lanefan said:


> So either way, on a say-yes or a successful check the map is found in whatever location the PCs happen to be when they declare they're looking for it.  It just appears there.



I don't understand what you mean by "It just appears there".

In your game, you determine the weather with a random roll. Does that mean the clouds "Just appear there?"

Using the results of random rolls to establish the content of the shared fiction is as old as published RPGing - original D&D used wandering monster rolls, for instance. Obviously, when the monsters "appear", _in the fiction_ they came from somewhere (even if that "somewhere" is a magical monster spawner). Likewise, if a check means that a PC finds a map, the map has a causal history every bit as complex as every other object in the gameworld.



Lanefan said:


> So what happens in this situation: we're searching a known-to-be-empty manor house for a unique map we know we'll need later.  There's four of us, and we're in a bit of a hurry so in the interests of time efficiency we split up; Abercrombie says he'll search the upstairs bedrooms, Barnacle says he'll search the living and dining areas and the closets, Cadwallader says he'll search the library, and Delmionndia says she'll search the study and drawing room.  If nobody finds anything we'll reconvene and search the basement and storage sheds together.
> 
> But something odd happens on the way to the forum: all four individual searchers roll mighty successes on their checks.  But it's already been established that the map is unique - there's only one - which leaves our DM in something of a bind: four people somehow just found one map in four different places.
> 
> A bind, note, that she wouldn't be in had she pre-placed the map in a particular room.



Let's put to one side that this example makes some assumptions about play which probably don't obtain in an actual game being played in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" manner - for instance, it seems unlikely that the map is a high-stakes item for every PC.

But that to one side, consider this: what happens if the GM's wandering monster table has some particular NPC on it (as is the case in X2 Castle Amber), and the PCs split up, and the wandering monster die comes up "6" for all of them, and then the encounter for each of them, oddly enough, comes up as Guillame D'Amberville?

Oddly enough, I think classic D&D weathered this possibility - there are numerous ways of handling it which we probably don't need to go through here (the most obvious: the first roll settles the matter).

The same is true for your example.

Edit:



Lanefan said:


> Only before the PCs start interacting with it.  If they're searching room 11 it's too late to move the map there from room 14 as they're already interacting with room 11.  But if they're searching room 11 and the DM has a sudden flash of inspiration and realizes things would be much more interesting were the map in room 18 instead of 14 (neither of which being places the PCs have had anything to do with yet) and no previous fiction or hints of clues have pointed specifically to room 14, then moving it is fair game.
> 
> That said, I try to do this sort of thing as little as possible.
> 
> ...



By deciding where the map is; and by choosing whether or not to move it from room 14 to 18, or even to some bit of room 11 that the PCs haven't searched yet (eg they've checked the chests, but not behind the tapestry, and the GM decides putting the map behind the tapestry would be more fun); the GM decides whether or not the players' declaration that their PCs search will bear fruit.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Quite true.
> 
> My question was, however, how many games other than 5e and 1e (sort of) actually endorse kitbashing right in their rulebooks?




I don't know of any that say "You must follow the rules exactly" as part of their rulebooks.  As far as I'm concerned, that's the equivalent of acknowledging that at the very least, the designer has no control over the gameplay.

To be honest, All versions of D&D have some reference to modifying things as you see fit.  I can look them up if you'd like.  I'm willing to bet that any book that spends significant time helping the GM will have at least one passage on rules modification and adjudication.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I don't understand what you mean by this. What is a "RAW discussion"?
> 
> This thread (for the past 8 pages or so) has been primarily about RPG design and GMing techniques. It is possible to play games in a fashion similar to how Gygax advocates in his PHB. Playing a DL game using the published DL modules has almost nothing in common with a game played in that fashion, other than that both are RPGs (ie both involve players engaging a shared fiction "administered" in some fashion by the GM, using individual characters as their vehicle for that engagement).




Hi Pem - 

A major underpinning of the arguments throughout this thread has been playing the game rules-as-written vs. making changes that suit the group and how Gygax supposedly wanted it at different points in time.  You've contributed by using the term "Gygaxian".  I don't agree with the use of that term to support rules-as-written.  I'm willing to agree with other definitions of the term specific to the era though.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 21, 2018)

Hi Pem



pemerton said:


> I'm familiar with the acronym. That doesn't tell me what you think a "RAW discussion" is, or how the notion is relevant to this thread.




Replied to this separately with another post.  



> Well, when it comes to leisure activities like RPGing, we don't have to do much of anything. And you're not obliged to post in this thread. It's just the question I'm asking.




Sure.  I could ignore you, or I could respect you by taking the time to reply.  My point about having to find the confluence has more to do with my thinking that the answer is obvious to experienced players of the game and I don't know why we're discussing it in the first place.  



> So it seems that the answer is that it's railroading, and the GM should be trying to keep the moments of railroading secret from the players.




Yes.  So long as we keep in mind that like most things, there's "good" and "bad" railroading, railroading is a tool in the box and the difference is whether or not the use of the tool is good for the majority of the table or just good for the GM.  

I'd suggest, if we're interested in having a longer discussion about railroading as a tool it gets its own thread.  This particular one is so far off topic at this point it's silly.



> Cheating is a social problem. But presumably we're talking about playing a game in accordance with the rules and guidelines.




I'd posit that "bad" railroading that doesn't serve the good of the majority of the table is cheating based on what Gary was getting at in the writings we have access to.  I'd certainly feel that way as a DM



> If the GM in a Moldvay Basic game changes things in his/her notes without telling the players, that's cheating. Gygax has a lot of discussion of this sort of thing in his DMG - for instance, he contrasts the GM exercising control over content introduction, which he thinks is permissible in certain circumstances, with the GM exercising control over action resolution, which he opposes except for a narrow case of a skilled player having his/her PC die unluckily - and then the exercise of control Gygax permits will be overt to the player, as the GM will narrate death from hp loss as maiming or coma instead.




I'd suggest you quote sources.  You're interpreting Gary a certain way that fits your worldview and that's very easy to do when only looking at the rules in a paragraph to paragraph way, but it's pretty clear that Gary's intentions were "Game as a Whole", "Your Campaign", and "Your Players" in that order. (Based on the high-level direct quote I posted earlier)  Any one paragraph needs to be interpreted first from the lens of "Game as a Whole" and I don't think you're doing that the way you're presenting the content.



> If a GM in BW sets a difficulty, and then tells a player whose dice roll beats it that nevertheless s/he doesn't get what s/he wants, well again that's overt and the player will know that the GM is not following the rules.




Or, alternatively, that the difficulty has less to do with the outcome and more to do with the circumstance.  If a player is looking for something that I know isn't in the room but the clue to find it is (crumbs) then regardless of what the player thinks, I'm giving them the difficulty for finding the clue. 

 Note: The clue (crumbs) may not be in my notes.  It may not have existed before the player went into the wrong area of the home and I may be trying to conserve game time by rewarding the right actions in the wrong places.  I don't consider that "bad" because most games only have a short timeframe to play in to get something done and the player does get some benefit.

The only way the player knows for a fact that the DM is not following the rules is if there's significant social impact (e.g it's clear that the player is getting screwed as he or she is not able to enjoy the game due to bias OR the DM makes it a habit of players rolling well with no benefit at all, OR the DM tells the player he or she is cheating.)



> The particular method that you set out in your post that I've quoted depends upon a whole lot of practices - eg a player can succeed on a check to find the map in the study and yet not get what s/he wants (instead, the GM gives the player some clue). There are plenty of RPGs that use different practices (of the ones I GM, Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller and Cortex+ are different; and 4e can be played in the same (different) way which is how our group plays it).a




The only practice it depends on is having a fair, balanced and experienced or creative DM.  I'd also add socially aware to that list as it goes a long way towards compensating for experience.

Be well
KB


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## Sadras (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Obviously. My point is that if (1) is permitted, then everytime the GM does (2) she is choosing not to do (1) instead. Which means that whether or not the players get what they want depends, in effect, on the GM's opinion as to whether X or Q is better for the game.
> 
> How is that not railroading?
> 
> ...




Good gawd Pemerton, given this and other threads, you argue against pre-written secret backstory and you argue against making stuff up on the spot since they are both railroads according to you. i.e. railroads = bad in Pemerton's world.

In B10 what if you changed the information obtained about the Iron Ring from one goblin tribe to another (i.e. changing the location of the map from one room to the other). 

So the module as written is railroading and changing the location of the information from one goblin tribe to another goblin tribe is also railroading.

Then I posit the only way one is not railroading according to Pemerton is if EVERYTIME the party happens upon a goblin lair, they roll for the information to be found (i.e. the map). Because the players certainly don't know and (get this) the DM doesn't know because he is playing to find out.  

Technically if you were at Pemerton's table, you could attempt to
(a) roll to find all the information about the Iron Ring at one of the Goblin Tribes' Dens and (b) roll to encounter Golthar (The Iron Ring Leader) and roll (c-z) xxxxxxx and essentially complete the adventure - if you rolled high enough because that is the only way you don't railroad. Heck, why even try find the goblin den? You should be able to complete the adventure from Misha's Ferry before you even reach Sukiskyn or better yet, that moment in the tavern when you got propositioned to to deliver the horses. That sounds like a swell adventure because there were no railroads and everyone (including the DM, again) rolled to find out stuff. Some more 

Imagine if the Hobbits could have just solved the entire problem with the ring from the Shires, what a great book that would be. So much railroading in the original.


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## Arilyn (Jan 21, 2018)

I've been thinking about play styles and railroading quite a bit, which is why I didn't answer pemerton' s query right away.

As regards to the map example, mostly it doesn't matter where the map is hidden, and having the players' rolls frame the action, is fine. As GM, however, I could have interesting information the players don't know. The map, in this case, has to be in the daughter's bedroom, because that's why her ghost is haunting the room, which ties into some other cool piece of story. Yes, I'm deciding this for my players, but it's a neat piece of the story. Since RPGS are shared storytelling experiences, they should also include the GM. And if I originally put the map in the study, and then realize, of course, it should be in the daughter's bedroom I will change it.

If your definition of railroading is the GM forcing story ideas on the world, than I am guilty of building some rails. In my many years of play, however, nobody has complained of feeling constrained under these circumstances. 

I haven't had a chance to play BW. I do enjoy Cortex Plus, Heroquest, Fate, Dungeonworld and I think Trollbabe is brilliant in its simplicity. I do appreciate where you are coming from, and as I mentioned before, am dabbling in campaigns that embrace the philosophy completely, but I think I will always be comfortable with mixing the two. 

As regards to skipping the mundane details, dungeon corridors? Yes, definitely! Conversations with bystanders that have nothing to do with the story? Those I enjoy.

Yes, pemerton, you did get my gender right. Thanks for asking.


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## Sadras (Jan 21, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I'm espeically interested in this idea that the GM _might_ change the (as yet unrevealed) fiction to make the game "better", or might instead stick to what s/he pre-authored and, on that basis, declare an action declaration a failure with no check. To me, that seems to make the shared fiction that results from play very  much the product of the GM's preferences. I'm waiting for anyone else to post his/her view of it.




 @_*Lanefan*_ was right, this has reached the height of absurdity.

No one is arguing that our roleplaying games are not affected/influenced by GM's preferences, the only one who might be denying it happens to their table might be you.

The changes you made in B10, not just for the players background (dwarves/minotaurs) but others were changes you made because of your own preferences which DID influence part of the play experience. You can deny it till you as blue as a smurf, but it doesn't change that fact.


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## Manbearcat (Jan 21, 2018)

Sadras said:


> It is true, many of them are not fundamentally integrated but referring to them as _knick-knacks that can easily be dispensed with_ ignores the plug-in styled nature of the 5e chassis, and furthermore, it may arguably be said you used such language as a slight pejorative. Lastly your comment is seemingly very dismissive of the effort that was made to include them by covering many pages within the core rulebooks, far more I might add than 4e's page 42, one solitary page, which is used to shield against and deflect comments about the rigidness of 4e's AEDU/action declaration.




I don't understand how you mean this.  "<My post> ignores the plug-in styled nature of the 5e chassis?"  That is 100 % precisely what I was saying.  Precisely.  The plug-in styled nature of the 5e chassis makes it so widgets (is that a better term?) that are not indispensable to the system/play experience (eg not fundamentally integrated) can be easily dispensed with (I don't understand your sensitivity regarding that word...it just means removed/gotten rid of...its just a word).  

This is actually good, deliberate design on behalf of the 5e designers.  They intended for this because, as we saw in the playtest and afterward, a certain cross-section of D&D players LOATHE(D) these indie components and used all sorts of truly pejorative language (other than benign words like "knick-knack/widget" or "dispensed") to describe them!  They knew they had a volatile, well-mobilized group of D&D players to appease...and they did it masterfully while also putting some component parts (widgets, knick-knacks) of indie play in the game that can easily be removed (dispensed with) because they aren't fundamentally integrated into the system.  

And again, that was the point of my post.  Components/widgets/knick-knacks do not an indie game make.  It is the fundamental integration of all the varying parts into a tight design and focused play paradigm/premise that makes a game a modern (non-OSR) indie game.  

Again, hence why 5e is basically a "mainstream OSR game" (a DIY-centric, rulings-not-rules game without a tight design around a focused play paradigm/premise) and not a "mainstream (non OSR) indie game" (and why 4e very much fits that bill).


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## pemerton (Jan 22, 2018)

Arilyn said:


> As regards to the map example, mostly it doesn't matter where the map is hidden, and having the players' rolls frame the action, is fine. As GM, however, I could have interesting information the players don't know. The map, in this case, has to be in the daughter's bedroom, because that's why her ghost is haunting the room, which ties into some other cool piece of story. Yes, I'm deciding this for my players, but it's a neat piece of the story. Since RPGS are shared storytelling experiences, they should also include the GM. And if I originally put the map in the study, and then realize, of course, it should be in the daughter's bedroom I will change it.



That's a very interesting example of a possible episode of play, thanks!

I'm trying to think of an analogue from my own recent play experience - here's one, though it may not be perfect: in my MHRP game, we have a somewhat fluctuating cast of players and hence of PCs (in part because it's a "backup" campaign, for when we can't all get together for the "main" campaign).

In the first session, Iceman, Invisible Woman, War Machine and Wolverine helped stop a raid on a piece of Stark tech that was on display at the Smithsonian. All that was established, at that point, was that (i) a pro-Super Hero Registration congressman had some sort of link to Titanium Man (I don't really know the canoncial backstory to this character, but in our game he was a Russian operating out of a secret base in Khazakstan), (ii) Titanium Man was connected to the raid on the Smithsonian, and (iii) Dr Doom had something to do with something that was going on, because the PCs confronted a Doombot in the back halls of the Capitol.

The second session begain with Nightcrawler turning up in DC and arranging to meet Iceman and War Machine (in civvies) at a bar. (Ie we had two of the orginal players, and a third player who had to be integrated.) There were more Smithsonian-oriented shenanigans as the PCs dealt with two different groups trying to steal the Stark shuttle. One was B.A.D; the other was clan Yashida ninjas led by the Silver Samurai. It wasn't clear which group (if either) was allied with Titanium Man.

In the third session, the PCs travelled to Japan to follow up on the Yashida connection. Wolverine's player had also turned up to that session, and so he needed to be integrated. As the main group of PCs was teleporting into the Yashida Corp skyscraper to steal data from their computers, I explained that Wolverine had been trying to get in touch with his (on again, off again) girlfriend Mariko Yashida, but had heard nothing; hence he was breaking into the Yashida skyscraper to see what he could learn. This created a context for joining the PCs together; it also established some fiction about Mariko.

In the next session, the PCs were back in the US, and following up on some or other lead (the details are hazy, sorry). They discovered that a more-or-less person sized, more-or-less person weight "diplomatic pouch" had arrived recently at the Latverian embassy in Washington, suggesting that Doom was behind Mariko's disappearance. So they staged a break-in to the Latverian embassy, which resulted in Wolverine being captured and fitted with a power-neutralising device.

Anyway, what's the point of the above? Mariko Yashida's actual location isn't known, either by me or by the players. (In the fiction it's not known by the PCs, but probably is known by Dr Doom - unless someone has kidnapped from the kidnapper!, which I guess can't be ruled out.)

But there are various limits that have been established on Mariko's possible location, and part of my job as GM in helping to frame and adjudicate resolution would include managing those limits and making sure they're reflected in the fiction that is being established through play. How far can I go to enfore a cool piece of story that I've thought of but the players don't know about? (Eg can I insist that she's really hidden inside the shuttle in the Smithsonian, so that if one of the rival groups takes it and flies it into space there's a danger that Mariko is going to be asphyxiated/depressurised/badly G-forced?)

I don't know. In my 4e game - a system that doesn't quite have overt "stake-setting" techniques, and so generally relies on a more informal understanding of what is at issue in play - I use my role as GM to stop play getting distracted by low-stakes stuff. So, for instance, if the players have their PCs try for a random loot search "just because" (ie they're hoping for some sort of "drop") but there's no reason (ingame, or thematic) to think that anything of interest is going to be found, I will happily say "You search and find nothing" to keep things moving. (This is easily done in 4e because it has a fairly strict ratio of treasure to level, based on the treasure parcels tables, and so the players don't actually miss out on anything - it's more about managing pacing. When there's something signficant the players are hoping their PCs will find then of course it's a different story.)

I could see managing the location of the map in a somewhat similar way. If the map is established as a "high stakes" item, with some thematic momentum and logic behind it, then the players can't just look in a random sewer and hope to find it - their action declaration has to be framed in the right way to engage with that theme. The room haunted by the daughter's ghost would seem to tick that box. The challenge of your example arises if there are other thematically salient contexts that arise in play, in one of which the players then declare that they search for the map.

I _think_ my own approach would be to allow the map to be found, and then find some other way to integrate the daughter's haunting of her bedroom into the context (eg maybe it's because the map was _taken_ from her room that she's haunting it). But, as I said, I think it's an interesting example.


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## pemerton (Jan 22, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> The only way the player knows for a fact that the DM is not following the rules is if there's significant social impact (e.g it's clear that the player is getting screwed as he or she is not able to enjoy the game due to bias OR the DM makes it a habit of players rolling well with no benefit at all, OR the DM tells the player he or she is cheating.)



This isn't right. In BW, for instance, the player declares intent and task ("I am searching the study for the map.") The GM sets the difficulty, which might involve clarifying with the player precisely what the PC is doing; this will also determine what the skill/ability is that is tested. Then the player rolls the dice, and from that it becomes evident whether or not the check succeeded.

If the check succeeds, and yet the GM then goes on to narrate something which departs from that success, the failure to follow the rules will be evident.

If 4e is played using a similar approach, then the same will be true. For instance, in my main 4e game, the players succeeded in a complex dinner-party skill challenge to establish that the Baron's advisor was a villain, _without_ alienating themselves from the Baron in the process. One aspect of this was that, as a result of the final success in the skill challenge, the advisor was goaded into showing his true colours.

That moment was the end of one session; the next session began with the advisor attacking the PCs in front of the Baron and his dinner guests in the banquet hall. Early in that session, I started to describe some reaction or remark from the NPC guests and one of the players pulled me up, reminding me that the players had _succeeded_ in the skill challenge, and one component of their success was that the advisor had revealed _himself _to be the villain. He was concerned that my subsequent narration wasn't honouring that success.

That player was correct, and I corrected my narration to properly and fully incorporate the players' success.

This wasn't about "significant social impact" of the sort you describe. It was a simple case of the GM (me) making a mistake in my narration by contradicting (in part) the players' prior success, and a player pulling me up on it. It's really no different from me rolling the d20 and reading it as a 9 and then one of the players pointing out it's actually a 6.



Kobold Boots said:


> The only practice it depends on is having a fair, balanced and experienced or creative DM.  I'd also add socially aware to that list as it goes a long way towards compensating for experience.



Again, this isn't right in my experience. For instance, you seem to be assuming that the GM doesn't make rolls where the players can see them (not true in Cortex+ Heroic, in BW or in 4e as I play it). You seem to be assuming that the GM is not under any rules-based constraints on narration (not true in BW, not true in 4e as I play it, as the above example illustrates). Etc.


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## pemerton (Jan 22, 2018)

Sadras said:


> Good gawd Pemerton, given this and other threads, you argue against pre-written secret backstory



No. I personally don't like _GM pre-authored backstory_ which is used as a basis to _stipulate that player action declarations for their PCs fail_ without consulting the action resolution mechanics.

A consequence of this dislike is (i) that GM pre-authored backstory needs to be fairly sparse, as otherwise it won't be possible to reconcile it with the outcomes of action declaration (for further on this, see  [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION]'s very interesting post about the ghost and the map, and my reply just a bit upthread of this post); and (ii) that richer initial backstory is best established in conjunction with the players, so that everyone is on the same page and hence understands what the parameters are for action declarations.



Sadras said:


> you argue against making stuff up on the spot since they are both railroads according to you



No. The particular approach to GMing I've been focusing on over the last few pages of this thread is the following:

(1) The GM is allowed to use his/her pre-written, secret-from-the-players notes to declare that a player's declared action for his/her PC fails; and,

(2) The GM is also allowed to change or depart from his/her pre-written notes if s/he thinks that will improve the game.​
The combination of (1) and (2) prevents the game being like classic Gygax/Moldvay/Pulsipher D&D, because (2) means that the game is not a puzzle/maze for the players to unravel. It also prevents it being player-driven in the "indie" sense of "go where the action is", because (1) prioritises the GM's prior conception of the shared fiction.

It is this combination - which I believe is orthodox in 2nd ed AD&D and White Wolf Storyteller RPGing, but became widespread before 2nd ed AD&D and WW (I would say in the early-to-mid 80s) and still retains, I think, a high degree of popularity among RPGers - that I am focusing on when I ask _how is it not a railroad_? And the reason I ask that is because it seems that _all outcomes depend, ultimately, on what the GM wants to happen in the shared fiction_.



Sadras said:


> No one is arguing that our roleplaying games are not affected/influenced by GM's preferences, the only one who might be denying it happens to their table might be you.
> 
> The changes you made in B10, not just for the players background (dwarves/minotaurs) but others were changes you made because of your own preferences which DID influence part of the play experience.



I'm not saying that the GM's preferences don't matter. Of course they do. For instance, my players know that if they build PCs with good abilities against undead and demons that is likely to pay off, as I have a known penchant for using lots of both in my fantasy gaming.

I'm talking about a very specific thing: that the outcome of action declarations depends ultimately on the GM's preferences, because - in virtue of the combination of (1) and (2) above - s/he is able to determine whether or not any particular action declaration fails, because at odds with the secret fictional positioning established by the GM's secret backstory, which s/he is permitted to write and rewrite as play unfolds.



Sadras said:


> In B10 what if you changed the information obtained about the Iron Ring from one goblin tribe to another (i.e. changing the location of the map from one room to the other).



Are you referring to an actual element of the module - in which case I don't recall it, sorry - or a hypothetical?

In my game, the players knew about the Iron Ring (in general terms) from the PCs' first encounter with them - the Kord worshippers, being enemies of Bane, knew of this sinister Bane-ite organisation. And interrogation of a captured leader of the assailants at the end of that encounter revealed further information.

The only other "mappish" thing I can think of is the location of the ruined city in the middle of the gatefold map. I can't remember how the players learned that in my game - I know at one point they were pursuing a hobgoblin chief and entourage (who were on foot) on horseback, taking their enemies down using "Parthian shots". But I've just checked my campaign notes, and that was before they headed to the ruined city. The only notes I have about how they found the city was that it was a skill challenge that they succeeded in.



Sadras said:


> So the module as written is railroading and changing the location of the information from one goblin tribe to another goblin tribe is also railroading.



What I've said above mostly answers this; but an additional point to make is that railroading is all about action declaration and outcomes. If the players don't even know or care about the map, then whenever and whereever the GM tells them they find a map is just some framing, either establishing a new situation or laying some groundwork for such down the track.

But if the players are actually hoping to have their PCs find the hidden fortress, then I would regard it as railroading for the GM to dictate that such attempts cannot succeed until the PCs have gone through whatever steps the GM has written into his/her notes as necessary to find the fortress (eg no one can find the fortress without the map; and the map can only be recovered from such-and-such a place using such-and-such a method).



Sadras said:


> I posit the only way one is not railroading according to Pemerton is if EVERYTIME the party happens upon a goblin lair, they roll for the information to be found (i.e. the map). Because the players certainly don't know and (get this) the DM doesn't know because he is playing to find out.



This is very divorced from any actual play techniques of any RPG I'm familiar with - eg it doesn't seem to involve action declaration by the players in respect of some significant element of the fiction that is at stake in the current situation.



Sadras said:


> Technically if you were at Pemerton's table, you could attempt to
> (a) roll to find all the information about the Iron Ring at one of the Goblin Tribes' Dens and (b) roll to encounter Golthar (The Iron Ring Leader) and roll (c-z) xxxxxxx and essentially complete the adventure - if you rolled high enough because that is the only way you don't railroad.



Again, this seems divorced from actual play techniques that I'm familiar with. Eg it's people who _don't_ know how to run skill challenges, because they don't have a proper sense of how to integrate fictional positioning with action resolution in a closed-scene resolution framework, who characterise skill challenges as "exercises in dice rolling".

Here are three links to acounts of actual skill challenge resolution that illustrate how they work - both how fictional positioning affects the framing of checks and how consequences of failure establish parameters (including new, undesired fictional positioning) for what might come next.

Eg in the first one, you can see that the player of the dwarf fighter has to declare actions on his weak skill/state (Intimidate, for instance) because the fictional positioning doesn't permit him to attain his goals through action or violence (which is what he is better at).

In the second one, you can see how the sudden arrival of a PC permits the situation to be framed in a way that really puts the pressure on the players (ie how can they falsely promise to spare a captive in exchange for information, in the name of the party paladin, _with the paladin being present_?).

In the third one, involving the manipulation of magical energy, you can see how fictional positioning opens up possible action declarations: because the PC wizard is wielding the Sceptre of Law, he can use it to quell and contain chaotic energies, using a marker of civilisation - an ancient Nerathi stair beside a waterfall - as an "anchor". Mechanically, this makes a Religion check possible to change the orientation of the magical vortex, which otherwise might not to possible.



Sadras said:


> Heck, why even try find the goblin den? You should be able to complete the adventure from Misha's Ferry before you even reach Sukiskyn or better yet, that moment in the tavern when you got propositioned to to deliver the horses. That sounds like a swell adventure because there were no railroads and everyone (including the DM, again) rolled to find out stuff. Some more
> 
> Imagine if the Hobbits could have just solved the entire problem with the ring from the Shires, what a great book that would be. So much railroading in the original.



You _seem_ to be arguing that the players will only declare boring actions, and nothing interesting will happen in the game, unless the GM railroads them. That's not my personal experience.

Just to give two examples of the independence of "interesting stuff" from _any particular predetermined pathway_: in the case of the interrogiation of the NPC, if the fiction had been different (ie the paladin PC didn't arrive on the scene) but the skill challenge failed, I would have had to find some other narration to explain the failure. I don't know what that would have been. It might have been less interesting; or perhaps it might have been more interesting! The main thing is that the game would have been different, with the dynamics beteen the PCs, the Baron and the priestess of Torog unfolding in a different fashion.

And in the "vortex of chaos energy" skill challenge, maybe the player - who is rather creative - would have found some other way to frame a Religion check even if his PC wasn't wielding the Sceptre of Law. In which case the game, again, would have had a different fiction which was interesting and creative in some different respect, and perhaps would have headed in a different direction.

My personal experience is that players of RPGs are keen to declare interesting actions for the PCs they're invested in, and will respond to vivid framing of scenes with equally vivid and engaged action declarations.


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## pemerton (Jan 23, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> I'd suggest you quote sources.  You're interpreting Gary a certain way that fits your worldview and that's very easy to do when only looking at the rules in a paragraph to paragraph way, but it's pretty clear that Gary's intentions were "Game as a Whole", "Your Campaign", and "Your Players" in that order.



There are two main passages in Gygax's DMG where he discusses GM authority in relation to dice rolls. Here they are (pp 9, 110):

The final word, then, is the game. Read how and why the system is as it is, follow the parameters, and then cut portions as needed to maintain excitement. For example, the rules call for wandering monsters, but these can be not only irritating - if not deadly - but the appearance of such can actually spoil a game by interfering with an orderly expedition You have set up an area full of clever tricks and traps, populated it with well thought-out creature complexes, given clues about it to pique players’ interest, and the group has worked hard to supply themselves with everything by way of information and equipment they will need to face and overcome the imagined perils. They are gathered together and eager to spend an enjoyable evening playing their favorite game, with the expectation of going to a new, strange area and doing their best to triumph. They are willing to accept the hazards of the dice, be it loss of items, wounding, insanity, disease, death, as long as the process is exciting. But lo!, everytime you throw the ”monster die” a wandering nasty is indicated, and the party’s strength is spent trying to fight their way into the area. Spells expended, battered and wounded, the characters trek back to their base. Expectations have been dashed, and probably interest too, by random chance. Rather than spoil such an otherwise enjoyable time, omit the wandering monsters indicated by the die. No, don’t allow the party to kill them easily or escape unnaturally, for that goes contrary to the major precepts of the game. Wandering monsters, however, are included for two reasons, as is explained in the section about them. If a party deserves to have these beasties inflicted upon them, that is another matter, but in the example above it is assumed that they are doing everything possible to travel quickly and quietly to their planned destination. If your work as a DM has been sufficient, the players will have all they can handle upon arrival, so let them get there, give them a chance. The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play.

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 gome, 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. . . .

In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice at any time and to roll dice for the players. You might wish to do this to keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give them an edge in finding a particular clue, eg a secret door that leads to a complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining. You do have every right to overrule the dice at any time if there is a particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player character with your actions. "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"

Examples of dice rolls which should always be made secretly are: listening, hiding in shadows, detecting traps, moving silently, finding secret doors, monster saving throws, and attacks made upon the party without their possible knowledge.

There will be times in which the rules do not cover a specific action that a player will attempt. In such situations, instead of being forced to make a decision, take the option to allow the dice to control the situation. This can be done by assigning reasonable probability to an event and then letting the player dice to see if he or she can make that percentage. You can weigh the dice in any way so as to give the advantage to either the player or the non-player character, whichever seems more correct and logical to you while being fair to both sides.

Now and then a player [sic] 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!​
Four examples of manipulating dice throws are given. Two pertain to content introduction, namely, wandering monsters, and finding a secret door that will lead to a new part of the dungeon. In both cases the GM is granted express permission to manipulate this content introduction in the interests of encouraging enjoyable play: ignore wandering monster rolls that would result in the PCs not making it to the part of the dungeon they are heading for; allow the PCs to find a ssecret door that will lead to a particularly entertaining part of the complext.

The two other examples pertain to action resolution, namely, mitgating PC death by treating it as some lesser form of incapacitation/disablement that "takes into account what the monster has done"; and allowing the PCs to kill wandeirng monsters easily or to escape from them "unnaturally". The GM is permitted to do, though gently discouraged from doing, the former; the GM is instructed not to do the latter, which would be "contrary to the major precepts of the game". What's the difference? The former mitigates the long-term impact of a monster's victory, but maintains its short-term impact (because it _takes into accouint what the monster has done_); whereas the latter bestows a victory on the PCs (and thereby the players) that they did not earn.

Notice also that emphasis is placed on respecting skilled play. If a party is being unskilled in their dungeoneering (ie not travelling quickly and quietly to their planned destination) then they _deserve_ to have wandering monsters inflicted upon them. If a player's PC died because the player played carelessly or recklessly, than no mitigation of consequences is warranted and the GM should let the dice fall where they may.

These examples of when it is or is not proper to mitigate consequences, or override wandering monster rolls, inform our understanding of the more general remark that the referee may override the dice. Clearly it would be "contrary to the major precepts of the game" to do this so as to allow the players to win a conflict (so no fuding of enemy hit points, to hit rolls etc). This is reinforced by the GM being told not to seriusly harm the NPCs or monsters in overriding the dice.

The GM is also told not to seriously harm the PCs by overriding the dice, which seems to rule out fudged capture scenes, NPC/monster escapes, etc. (This is also consistent with the idea that only skilled players are entitled to consequence mitigation, and even then only in a form that still "takes into account what the monster has done.)

Indeed, the comment about "major precepts" together with the comment about "tak[ing] into account what the monster has done" together with the invocation not to seriously harm PCs or NPCs/monsters are all read together, overriding the dice in circumstances of conflict seem to be ruled out.

So what sort of dice rolls might the GM override, consistently with everything that is said? Here are some examples that I can think of:

* Finding a secret door in the course of exploration (that is Gygax's example; note that the GM fiating the finding of a secret door if the PCs are losing a fight seems to be ruled out, as that would be allowing them to escape "unnaturallY' and would not "take into account what the monster ha[ve] done").

* A thief PC automatically succeeding on a check to climb a wall in the course of exploration (this is similar to the secret door example; and again, in an escape context it seems to be ruled out for the same reaons);

* A roll to find an item in cases where the item is not worth gold or XP (and so will not constitute a reward that is at odds with the precepts of the game) but rather is a plot device of some sort, like a key to a lower level or the password to a magical portal;

* A roll made to determine whether or not some monster turns up, or some similar untoward event occurs (like the example of the wandering monster roll Gygax discusses, this should not be done if the players have invited it - eg they walk into a room with a big gong in it and strike the gong - but might be applicable if the GM's notes say something like "This dining hall is normally empty, but there is a 20% chance that 6 goblin warriors are in here feasting").​

These are all instances of content introduction, whether consequent on action declarations (the first three examples) or consequent on GM-side processes (like wandering monsters and the fourth of my examples).

It's also noteworthy that all Gygax's examples of secret GM dice rolls pertain to content introduction - either searching, or otherwise establishing that the PCs are aware of the monsters/NPCs, or establishing that the monsters/NPCs are aware of the PCs.

I think this paints a pretty clear picture of how Gygax envisages the game being played, and the relationship between GM authority and the dice, and it is with all the above in mind that I made the remark, upthread, that:



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Gygax has a lot of discussion of this sort of thing in his DMG - for instance, he contrasts the GM exercising control over content introduction, which he thinks is permissible in certain circumstances, with the GM exercising control over action resolution, which he opposes except for a narrow case of a skilled player having his/her PC die unluckily - and then the exercise of control Gygax permits will be overt to the player, as the GM will narrate death from hp loss as maiming or coma instead.


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 23, 2018)

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 

Thank you for going through the process of finding the areas of the book that support your argument.

Suffice to say that I appreciate the effort but disagree with your interpretation in a few areas.  Mostly this has to do with the definition of skilled and smart play and the amount of latitude that is given in the rules set.  Too many people that I played with in the 80s missed the part about the point of the game being to have a good time and used a similar interpretation to yours to treat others poorly.  Too many games ended due to not having an understood social contract for the group.

I've learned over the years that the way around that is to make sure that everyone who joins a table understands the lethality level of the game and agrees to that as part of the social contract of the table.  Doing that has pretty much eliminated any misunderstandings of what the group's idea of "fun" is; but it's lacking from the advice given in the rulebooks of the era.

Again thanks, but I fear that if I continue this we're going to add another six pages to the thread going back and forth.  I'm going to bow out and declare you the winner   Too much work to do this week to be on the forums heavily.

Side note: I've put a bunch of people on ignore this week.  If you reply to anything I did in the most recent powergamer thread, I won't be able to reply to it.  Get me via PM instead.

Be well
KB


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## pemerton (Jan 23, 2018)

Kobold Boots said:


> Suffice to say that I appreciate the effort but disagree with your interpretation in a few areas.  Mostly this has to do with the definition of skilled and smart play and the amount of latitude that is given in the rules set.



Are you saying that Gygax said something different from what I attribute to him? Or that you disagree with what he says?

The latter would not be very surprising - I don't think many D&D players in the 80s were playing in the Gygaxian style. (And I certainly was not.)

But the former would be - Gygax's references to skilled play, to what player do or do not deserve, etc, seem pretty unambiguous to me.



Kobold Boots said:


> I've put a bunch of people on ignore this week.  If you reply to anything I did in the most recent powergamer thread, I won't be able to reply to it.



I don't know that thread, but if I'm now on ignore - well, farewell!


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## Lanefan (Jan 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I don't know that thread, but if I'm now on ignore - well, farewell!



If you can read his post here, you're not on ignore I don't think. (though if the thread-starter of the thread referred to has been 'ignore'd then he might not be able to see the thread at all any more)


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## Kobold Boots (Jan 23, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Are you saying that Gygax said something different from what I attribute to him? Or that you disagree with what he says?
> 
> The latter would not be very surprising - I don't think many D&D players in the 80s were playing in the Gygaxian style. (And I certainly was not.)
> 
> But the former would be - Gygax's references to skilled play, to what player do or do not deserve, etc, seem pretty unambiguous to me.






> I don't know that thread, but if I'm now on ignore - well, farewell!




@Pem - You are not on ignore.  Others are for now.  @_*Lanefan*_ is correct that if you put someone on ignore that's started a thread, then you can no longer see the entire thread.

On your other ask: It is entirely possible for two people to read the exact same passages, have those passages be pretty black and white, and through the lens of their own experiences walk away with different shades of gray scale.  We're not going to see eye to eye on this particular topic so I'm resigning the matter.

Be well
KB


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## Manbearcat (Jan 25, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I think the answer is - that check _can't _succeed. (This is a variant of the notorious chamberlain example from years ago - a good GM, it was said, will veto any attempt by the players to have their PCs persuade the chamberlain to grant them an audience with the king, because verisimilitude and *the plot* demands as much.  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] will have fond memories of that incorruptible, unpersuadable chamberlain!)
> 
> If it can, then your (final) rhetorical question goes through with full force.
> 
> ...




Just copying and pasting the reply from the other thread because its relevant here.  An important segment of the conversation was definitely about leveraging backstory to veto an action declaration due to yet to emerge backstory or internal causality (I recall folks bringing up the, poor, example of this in the 4e DMG1 where the Intimidate check outright fails?); eg a steward/chamberlain should deny mundane efforts to beseech him to see the king, merely on conceptions of orthodox administration of the affairs of royalty.

I want to say it was one of the Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards threads of yore! I believe that (as relates to this thread), the pair of contentions you, I, and others were making were the following:

* In D&D systems with (a) Vancian casters with Enchantment spells (especially with prolific spell load-outs) and (b) noncombat action resolution governed by a process sim (internal causality rather than genre logic) task resolution (rather than conflict resolution), Wizards/spellcasters are going to be inevitably dominate noncombat action resolution.

* The only way this doesn't take place is for GMs to either (a) preemptively protect crucial plot-points/NPCs by pulling out the classic (eye-roll-inducing to any hardened, long term player) blocks (secret backstory) or (b) make up and deploy those blocks on the spot when its clear their carefully sewn plot efforts are about to be undone by a few key spell power-plays. 

* Limited backstory/malleable setting (the only thing that is firm is what has been established in play), nerfed Vancian Casting (in both breadth and potency), and conflict resolution mechanics that are governed by genre logic are a functional way to deal with these issues.

Our efforts showed a pretty orthodox example of how an obstinate chamberlain who is denying access to the king can have his efforts upturned dramatically without:

a) Spellcasters dominating the action.

b) Immersion being shattered (in fact, when your conception of your archetype is realized in play by your deft action declarations meeting successful action resolution, I would say that is a big + for immersion!).

c) Firm backstory having to be the reference point for the GM's role in adjudicating action resolution and evolving the fiction afterward.


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## Nagol (Jan 25, 2018)

Manbearcat said:


> Just copying and pasting the reply from the other thread because its relevant here.  An important segment of the conversation was definitely about leveraging backstory to veto an action declaration due to yet to emerge backstory or internal causality (I recall folks bringing up the, poor, example of this in the 4e DMG1 where the Intimidate check outright fails?); eg a steward/chamberlain should deny mundane efforts to beseech him to see the king, merely on conceptions of orthodox administration of the affairs of royalty.
> 
> I want to say it was one of the Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards threads of yore! I believe that (as relates to this thread), the pair of contentions you, I, and others were making were the following:
> 
> * In D&D systems with (a) Vancian casters with Enchantment spells (especially with prolific spell load-outs) and (b) noncombat action resolution governed by a process sim (internal causality rather than genre logic) task resolution (rather than conflict resolution), Wizards/spellcasters are going to be inevitably dominate noncombat action resolution.




I would adjust this statement to: " In D&D systems with (a) Vancian casters with prolific access and (b) noncombat action resolution governed by a process-based or outcome-based sim (internal causality rather than genre logic) task resolution (rather than conflict resolution), users of magic are going to be inevitably dominate noncombat action resolution."

Another way to distribute the ability to engage with non-combat encounters is to distribute magical effects more widely among the group members through the inclusion of magical devices, consumables, and NPCs (factions, favours, and followers). 



> * The only way this doesn't take place is for GMs to either (a) preemptively protect crucial plot-points/NPCs by pulling out the classic (eye-roll-inducing to any hardened, long term player) blocks (secret backstory) or (b) make up and deploy those blocks on the spot when its clear their carefully sewn plot efforts are about to be undone by a few key spell power-plays.




Such blocks should have back-story, but not necessarily be secrets.  Everyone may know the chamberlain is a drow and thus 50% resistance to magic cast by an 11th level caster, or perhaps the PCs previously sold a ring of spell turning to the same man, or perhaps it is widely known (and the players were told in advance) that the position, being one with both access to power and public face, comes with its own perks and protections.  Then again, maybe it was a secret and until it was unearthed by the PCs  investigation (or not and is still a secret).  Secret backstory is usually not unknowable back-story.



> * Limited backstory/malleable setting (the only thing that is firm is what has been established in play), nerfed Vancian Casting (in both breadth and potency), and conflict resolution mechanics that are governed by genre logic are a functional way to deal with these issues.
> 
> Our efforts showed a pretty orthodox example of how an obstinate chamberlain who is denying access to the king can have his efforts upturned dramatically without:
> 
> ...




Immersion breaking is subjective and I do believe you'd get some people eye-rolling this form of play much like you indicate eye-rolling for blocks, above.

Other ways that exist to get around an obstinate public official that are open to most character types: 

Is a bribe expected or customary?  Pay it.
Is there anything he cares about more than blocking you?  Threaten it or offer protection in a persuasive way.
Is there something that must occupy his attention completely? Cause it to happen and deal with his fill-in.
Is there something in his life that causes him angst?  Solve it and earn a favour in return.
Is there a reason he doesn't like the PC group in particular? Change it.
Is the obstinacy to further his own interests or to work against the realm's?  Expose it.

Basically, step one is discover why you are being stonewalled.  Step two is resolve that issue.

Even if the obstinacy is unbreakable, go around it:

Connive an "accidental" encounter at a public event or appearance.
Persuade a friendly guard/servant/official to deliver a hand-written note begging for an audience or spelling out the threat.
Talk to someone the chamberlain cannot refuse (like the head of the priesthood, sister of the king, powerful noble, foreign embassy, and anyone else the king meets with) to bring you or your message to the king.

Nothing on these lists prevents a wide variety of GMing styles for being applied.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 25, 2018)

Nagol said:


> Secret backstory is usually not unknowable back-story.



This is a key point. As long as the truth of the world is established before-hand, every single observation of the world will be consistent with that truth, as long as the GM doesn't mess up.

And incidentally, the GM is far less likely to mess up when they only have to compare each new observation against one true state of the world, than when they have to compare every new observation against each individual truth which has previously been established during play.


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## darkbard (Jan 25, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> This is a key point. As long as the truth of the world is established before-hand, every single observation of the world will be consistent with that truth, as long as the GM doesn't mess up.
> 
> And incidentally, the GM is far less likely to mess up when *they only have to compare each new observation against one true state of the world,* than when *they have to compare every new observation against each individual truth which has previously been established during play.*




These are virtually identical, differing only in the method by which they become established. The former is established in the sense that   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] intends by "world-building" in the other thread, immutable pre-authoring of material by the GM, at least part of which is unknown to the players. The latter is established through play via scene framing by the GM that builds off PC build and belief goals and PC action declarations and their consequences. The totality of the latter is the "true state of the world."


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## The Crimson Binome (Jan 25, 2018)

darkbard said:


> These are virtually identical, differing only in the method by which they become established. The former is established in the sense that   @_*pemerton*_ intends by "world-building" in the other thread, immutable pre-authoring of material by the GM, at least part of which is unknown to the players. The latter is established through play via scene framing by the GM that builds off PC build and belief goals and PC action declarations and their consequences. The totality of the latter is the "true state of the world."



The method of establishment also has an impact on the ease-of-checkability. When the entire backstory of the world is authored by one person, it's easier to check each new question against that one state than it is to compare against each individual element that has been codified as a result of play.

If someone asks about the contents of a small shed, it's easier for the GM to remember what that is if the GM was the only one responsible for authoring that content (during the GM-prep phase), than if the contents may have been influenced at any point _during_ previous sessions, possibly without direct involvement from the GM. If the GM knows that there's a weed-whacker in the shed, then remembering that is easier than remembering that there was previously established to be garden shears in the kitchen and something that was probably a weed-whacker or leaf-blower or something like that in the garage (but nobody really remembers, because it was getting late - except for Jef, who knows that it was a weed-whacker and had written it down as such, but was in the bathroom during this discussion). And so the GM says there's a weed-whacker in the shed (after someone succeeds on a check to find one), and then Jef comes back and is confused as to why there are two weed-whackers in this house, and the narrative gets derailed as they go off on this meaningless tangent that only arose because someone forgot. You could easily imagine the circumstances as more troublesome, if the item being searched for was a specific key or a map or something.

Not to mention that the former method gives the GM the option of actually writing this all down ahead of time, during their prep phase, so they know exactly where in their notes to check for a definitive answer if they'd forgotten.

(The bigger difference, regarding the state of the world and how it is generated, is knowing that something only becomes true _when you become aware of it_ can cause the rational decision to be intentionally _not_ learning information that you don't want to be true. If you see someone murder a loved one in front of you, the rational decision should be to _not_ check and see if they're actually dead, because learning that will _causally_ make it true. It's the sort of logic that normally only shows up in stories about time travel. If you're not sure whether you might need a ladder or a bucket tomorrow, absolutely avoid checking the contents of that shed until you know what you're looking for; in fact, avoid looking _anywhere_, because more uncertainty now leads to more opportunities later.)


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## darkbard (Jan 25, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The method of establishment also has an impact on the ease-of-checkability. When the entire backstory of the world is authored by one person, it's easier to check each new question against that one state than it is to compare against each individual element that has been codified as a result of play.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Not to mention that the former method gives the GM the option of actually writing this all down ahead of time, during their prep phase, so they know exactly where in their notes to check for a definitive answer if they'd forgotten.




I see that what you say here _can_ be true. But I've read so many gaming supplements and campaign setting guides and such over the many years I've played (and designed plenty of homebrew material of my own), that I find it's much easier to keep track of the details that emerge in actual play, whereby group experience of the details validates and solidifies the details. But perhaps that's a function of how my individual memory works. I find the same to be true of textual details: I have far better recall of the details of a text discussed in a group setting, generally (say, in a classroom discussion), than one I read on my own. (The same goes for texts that I write: if they are discussed with others, say at a conference, I have better recall (and understanding!) of my own written words than if the words are experienced only by me.)


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## pemerton (Jan 25, 2018)

Nagol said:


> Other ways that exist to get around an obstinate public official that are open to most character types:
> 
> Is a bribe expected or customary?  Pay it.
> Is there anything he cares about more than blocking you?  Threaten it or offer protection in a persuasive way.
> ...



Different approaches don't rule in or out any particular fiction.

The difference would be where the fiction comes from: are the players, in trying to discover the reason for stonewalling, trying to learn what idea the GM has come up with? Or is the fiction being established by way of action declaration/resolution?


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## Lanefan (Jan 26, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> (The bigger difference, regarding the state of the world and how it is generated, is knowing that something only becomes true _when you become aware of it_ can cause the rational decision to be intentionally _not_ learning information that you don't want to be true. If you see someone murder a loved one in front of you, the rational decision should be to _not_ check and see if they're actually dead, because learning that will _causally_ make it true. It's the sort of logic that normally only shows up in stories about time travel. If you're not sure whether you might need a ladder or a bucket tomorrow, absolutely avoid checking the contents of that shed until you know what you're looking for; in fact, avoid looking _anywhere_, because more uncertainty now leads to more opportunities later.)



Which is going to sooner or later directly influence the run of play in terms of how players / PCs approach information gathering - they'll end up running on a need-to-know basis only, as what they don't know can't affect them; as opposed to asking about anything they feel like.

Learning more about the game world as seen and experienced by your PC - whether that info is relevant to the immediate run of play or not - makes playing in it a richer and more immersive experience.  Does anyone deny this?

And so if a rules system somehow implicitly discourages this as posited in the quote above?  Hardly a desirable outcome, I dare say

Lan-"which leads to more immersion: a DM who tells you the weather only when it's going to be relevant, or a DM who tells you the weather every day no matter what"-efan


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## pemerton (Jan 26, 2018)

If you're playing a game GMed in accordance with "say 'yes' or roll the dice", and you (as your PC) see a loved one murdered in front of you, the rational thing to do is to try and save them. If you succeed, they're saved! If you fail, they're not saved, and probably dead unless the GM is feeling a bit sentimental and softens the blow of failure (perhaps they're just comatose).

If you just walk away and leave them, then of course the GM has been given carte blanche to declare them dead! You, the player, have signalled that you don't care!


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## chaochou (Jan 26, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Learning more about the game world as seen and experienced by your PC - whether that info is relevant to the immediate run of play or not - makes playing in it a richer and more immersive experience.  Does anyone deny this?




Tell me about all your experiences with player-driven games. After all, you must have loads to be able to make such an authoritative claim.

I've played and run games in the way that @_*pemerton*_ describes, as well as games more freeform and player-driven than he describes, and your claim is false. Immersion can come just as much from player control - which gives investment in each new situation - as GM description of 'their world', which I don't care about.

Your immersion may well come from the play you describe. I find your playstyle tedious. So I'd like to hear you _explain your claim _that what provides immersion for you, _must by definition also provide immersion for me_.

Good luck with that.


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## pemerton (Jan 26, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Learning more about the game world as seen and experienced by your PC - whether that info is relevant to the immediate run of play or not - makes playing in it a richer and more immersive experience.  Does anyone deny this?



Learning about the gameworld that is irrelevant to the play of the game - which means, in effect, the GM reading me bits of his/her notes - is not very immersive to me. Frankly, if I want that sort of immersion I will read a novel - most published novelists are better writers than most GMs I have encountered (me included).

Learning about my PC's experiences which I care about (as player, and as "inhabitant" of my PC) does make the game immersive. But I don't need the GM to have pre-authored the gameworld in order for that to take place.


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## Nagol (Jan 26, 2018)

chaochou said:


> Tell me about all your experiences with player-driven games. After all, you must have loads to be able to make such an authorative claim.
> 
> I've played and run games in the way that @_*pemerton*_ describes, as well as games more freeform and player driven than he describes, and your claims is false. Immersion can come just as much from player control - which gives investment in each new situation - as GM description of 'their world', which I don't care about.
> 
> ...




Oh! Oh! Can I play too?

I'm happy to run player-driven games like FATE and Dungeon World; I'll even offer additional tools (like Whimsy Cards) to inject player direction into more traditional GM led games like D&D, Ars Magica, and Champions.  I don't like playing in player-driven games though because I find the ability to stay in the role of my character to be far more rewarding the few times I actually do get to play.  I find it a much richer and more immersive experience!

Immersion and enjoyment is subjective so what I like you need not.  Except for chocolate.  Everyone must enjoy chocolate.  Anyone who does not needs to be regarded with suspicion.


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## Nagol (Jan 26, 2018)

pemerton said:


> Learning about the gameworld that is irrelevant to the play of the game - which means, in effect, the GM reading me bits of his/her notes - is not very immersive to me. Frankly, if I want that sort of immersion I will read a novel - most published novelists are better writers than most GMs I have encountered (me included).
> 
> Learning about my PC's experiences which I care about (as player, and as "inhabitant" of my PC) does make the game immersive. But I don't need the GM to have pre-authored the gameworld in order for that to take place.




It is only irrelevant to the play of the game if the players deem it so.  Typically, game worlds are full of resources, opportunities, and potential inspiration.  World-building comes into its own for exploratory play and sand-boxing where the PCs are more proactive with their desires.  It's also great for soap-opera style relationship games (like some superhero games) which involve the interplay of personal relationships, both open and secret which is another form of exploratory play.


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## pemerton (Jan 26, 2018)

Nagol said:


> It is only irrelevant to the play of the game if the players deem it so.



I was just following along with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s description.



Nagol said:


> Typically, game worlds are full of resources, opportunities, and potential inspiration.



This is true, but it's as true of the gameworld that pertains to the focus of play as to "irrelevant" stuff - perhaps even moreso. 



Nagol said:


> World-building comes into its own for exploratory play and sand-boxing where the PCs are more proactive with their desires.  It's also great for soap-opera style relationship games (like some superhero games) which involve the interplay of personal relationships, both open and secret which is another form of exploratory play.



My experience of games with those soap opera elements is that they tend to be heavily player-led. At least in my experience, the players care about the soap-operatic dimensions of their PCs' social worlds, but not so much about NPC A's connections to NPC B.


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## Nagol (Jan 26, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I was just following along with @_*Lanefan*_'s description.
> 
> This is true, but it's as true of the gameworld that pertains to the focus of play as to "irrelevant" stuff - perhaps even moreso.
> 
> My experience of games with those soap opera elements is that they tend to be heavily player-led. At least in my experience, the players care about the soap-operatic dimensions of their PCs' social worlds, but not so much about NPC A's connections to NPC B.




Our mileages differ.  The players seem invested in discovering the relationships between the NPCs for a few reasons: they want explanations for apparent contradictory behaviour so as to better model the NPC's behaviour, they want alliances to deal with "the greater threat", they want to help some NPCs in unpleasant circumstance, and they seem interested in the act of exploring.  In other words, they didn't care about the relationship between NPC A and B as much as they cared how those relationships could impact them.


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## Sadras (Jan 30, 2018)

pemerton said:


> No. I personally don't like _GM pre-authored backstory_ which is used as a basis to _stipulate that player action declarations for their PCs fail_ without consulting the action resolution mechanics.




Understood.



> The particular approach to GMing I've been focusing on over the last few pages of this thread is the following:(1) The GM is allowed to use his/her pre-written, secret-from-the-players notes to declare that a player's declared action for his/her PC fails; and,
> 
> (2) The GM is also allowed to change or depart from his/her pre-written notes if s/he thinks that will improve the game.​
> The combination of (1) and (2) prevents the game being like classic Gygax/Moldvay/Pulsipher D&D, because (2) means that the game is not a puzzle/maze for the players to unravel.




Do not agree. If consistency remain then 2 does indeed remain a puzzle/made. For instance, during the Siege at Sukiskyn (B10), I inserted an additional NPC in the homestead. He left shortly after the siege for Kelven to gather assistance, leaving the characters to guard the homestead. 

In the module notes, Pyotr's daughter, is mentioned to be very perceptive and able to detect lies. 
I decided that she mentions to her mom, that she believes this NPC lied and would not be going to Kelven. The daughter's family having had experience with their daughter's uncanny perceptiveness in the past inform the PCs of his information. 

Now in my notes I have developed a _secret backstory_ on the NPC. I can change it, as long as the previous interactions the PCs had with this NPC remain valid for the new _secret backstory_ I develop. The puzzle is still there to be unravelled and retains its integrity.




> It also prevents it being player-driven in the "indie" sense of "go where the action is", because (1) prioritises the GM's prior conception of the shared fiction.




Pretty much...this is evident in D&D modules all the way from 1e to 5e.


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## Sadras (Jan 30, 2018)

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] speaking about your comment _GM pre-authored backstory which is used as a basis to stipulate that player action declarations for their PCs fail without consulting the action resolution mechanics_: 

In combat encounters PCs face assailants. The PCs are not always privy to the abilities and defences (i.e. immunity to fire...etc) of the assailants due to _secret backstory_ and so the result of the action declarations fail. Why are you accepting of this during combat, but have issues of this out of combat (such not finding a map in the desk draw)?


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## pemerton (Jan 30, 2018)

Sadras said:


> I inserted an additional NPC in the homestead. He left shortly after the siege for Kelven to gather assistance, leaving the characters to guard the homestead.
> 
> In the module notes, Pyotr's daughter, is mentioned to be very perceptive and able to detect lies.
> I decided that she mentions to her mom, that she believes this NPC lied and would not be going to Kelven. The daughter's family having had experience with their daughter's uncanny perceptiveness in the past inform the PCs of his information.
> ...



I referred to the combination of:

(1) The GM is allowed to use his/her pre-written, secret-from-the-players notes to declare that a player's declared action for his/her PC fails; and,

(2) The GM is also allowed to change or depart from his/her pre-written notes if s/he thinks that will improve the game.​
As far as I can tell, you're not combining (1) and (2) - you're not departing from your notes to establish some new backstory in virtue of which you then neutralise/veto a player action declaration.

But suppose a player, following up on the daughter's comments, decides to have his/her PC follow the NPC. In your notes, you had your NPC go to place X (with no stream between the homestead and X). But you think it won't be fun for the game if the players find the NPC at X straight away, so you decide that instead the NPC went to Y (which has a stream between the homestead and it), hence preventing tracking. So the player's action declaration fails due to secret backstory (1) which you made up as you went along for the fun of the game (2).

I'm not expressing a view on whether or not this approach to play is fun for your, or anyone else. As far as fun is concerned, I'm saying I don't enjoy it as player or GM.

But I have said - _how is the above not a railroad_? All the outcomes depend on the GM's opinion as to how the fiction should develop.



Sadras said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] speaking about your comment _GM pre-authored backstory which is used as a basis to stipulate that player action declarations for their PCs fail without consulting the action resolution mechanics_:
> 
> In combat encounters PCs face assailants. The PCs are not always privy to the abilities and defences (i.e. immunity to fire...etc) of the assailants due to _secret backstory_ and so the result of the action declarations fail. Why are you accepting of this during combat, but have issues of this out of combat (such not finding a map in the desk draw)?



I made a post about this in the other thread:



pemerton said:


> all action declaration in a RPG depends upon the fictional positioning of the PC - you can't say "I pick up a rock" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some rocks; you can't say "I buy a shovel" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some friendly purveyors of shovels; etc.
> 
> In a game run on the basis of GM pre-authorship with secret elements of the gameworld, it is possible for a player to _think_ that the fictional positioning is appropriate for declaring some action, but in fact it is not. So the player declares the action, and perhaps the GM even allows the dice to be rolled (or rolls them behind the screen), but the check will always fail (and thus the fiction not develop in the way that the player wants) because _in fact_ the fictional positioning was not apposite.
> 
> ...


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## Sadras (Jan 31, 2018)

pemerton said:


> As far as I can tell, you're not combining (1) and (2) - you're not departing from your notes to establish some new backstory in virtue of which you then neutralise/veto a player action declaration.




I don't believe anyone was suggesting vetoing player action declaration. 



> But I have said - _how is the above not a railroad_? All the outcomes depend on the GM's opinion as to how the fiction should develop




I do not disagree. The above is a railroad. Even my own example includes a railroad in that the daughter only mentioned her suspicions about the NPC organically during a conversation between the PCs and her mother about _how this threat of goblin attack would end soon as the NPC returned with reinforcements_. 
But by this stage the NPC already had a 3-4 hour start. I could have had the daughter mention her observations earlier allowing the PCs to confront the NPC, but I thought better for the story that it was revealed later.

Now the PCs along with refugees from other homesteads which had at this stage arrived decided to:

1) Investigate the nearest homestead for clues and survivors and return by nightfall in case there was a follow-up attack;
2) Follow the tracks of the NPC and establish if he is indeed heading towards Kelven for reinforcements and return by nightfall in case there is a followup Siege; and
3) Repair the defences of the Sukiskyn after the initial siege;

The trackers have uncovered that the NPC headed northwards following the Volaga river towards the hills instead of westwards towards Kelven for the reinforcements. 

PCs now are torn between chasing down the horse-thieves, investigating more homesteads, head towards Kelven for reinforcements themselves or attempt to track down this mysterious NPC - all the while ensuring that the Sukiskyn residents remain safe from any future goblin attacks. Some believe they (the homesteaders) should give up the settlement given the dire conditions they find themselves in.

I have no idea what table will decide - I just know various NPCs approach the party pulling them in this or that direction providing their own justifications. 

Are there railroad points (like the one I illustrated), sure. Is the adventure a complete railroad - No. The PCs are free to go where they like, however their backgrounds are tied to the Iron Ring and they are aware (from conversation and investigation) the Iron Ring is directly or indirectly behind the attack on Sukiskyn.


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## pemerton (Jan 31, 2018)

Sadras said:


> I don't believe anyone was suggesting vetoing player action declaration.



I've lost track, a bit, of who's said what in which thread. But when I talk about veto-ing an action declaration I'm not just meaning "You can't do that!" I'm also meaning "OK, you don't find what you're looking for" (or similar) because the GM has already decided, secfretly, that there's no such thing to be found.

This is what I have described as adjudication by reference to GM's secret backstory.

I don't think there was any of that in your example.



Sadras said:


> Even my own example includes a railroad in that the daughter only mentioned her suspicions about the NPC organically during a conversation between the PCs and her mother about _how this threat of goblin attack would end soon as the NPC returned with reinforcements_.
> But by this stage the NPC already had a 3-4 hour start. I could have had the daughter mention her observations earlier allowing the PCs to confront the NPC, but I thought better for the story that it was revealed later.



How is that a railroad?

What action declaration by a player was rendered pointless? What outcome _of play_ did you predetermine?

I see _framing_ - you as GM decided to present things a certain way, so that the challenge for the players is _can we catch this guy who has a 3 hour headstart_? But I don't see any predetermination of outcomes.

(In the bigger context of some of these discussions there's scope to talk about different ways in which we choose what challenges to present; and different ways in which we resolve player attempts to resolve them. I suspect that you and I have different preferred methods for both these things. But narrowing in just on your example from the earlier post - _how can you say that there is a railroad?_ It's not a railroad to present the players with a challenge!)


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## Lanefan (Feb 4, 2018)

pemerton said:


> I've lost track, a bit, of who's said what in which thread. But when I talk about veto-ing an action declaration I'm not just meaning "You can't do that!" I'm also meaning "OK, you don't find what you're looking for" (or similar) because the GM has already decided, secfretly, that there's no such thing to be found.



 "You can't do that!" is a veto.  "You don't find what you're looking for." is not a veto, in that the declared action (in this case, searching) was run through to its completion and a result duly narrated.

You might not like the method in which the action was resolved (the DM consulted her notes and based on info found there, said no) but you can't deny that it was in fact resolved rather than vetoed.


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## The Crimson Binome (Feb 4, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> "You can't do that!" is a veto.  "You don't find what you're looking for." is not a veto, in that the declared action (in this case, searching) was run through to its completion and a result duly narrated.
> 
> You might not like the method in which the action was resolved (the DM consulted her notes and based on info found there, said no) but you can't deny that it was in fact resolved rather than vetoed.



Moreover, it was resolved by use of the game's action resolution mechanics, which clearly stipulate that the DM only asks for a roll when the outcome is uncertain. 

If they know that the thing will not be found, because it doesn't exist in that location, then the game mechanics tell them how to resolve that (i.e. the DM narrates the certain result).


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## pemerton (Feb 4, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> "You can't do that!" is a veto.  "You don't find what you're looking for." is not a veto, in that the declared action (in this case, searching) was run through to its completion and a result duly narrated.



It's a veto on player contribution to the fiction. The mechanics weren't consulted (although the GM may have pretended to consult them by rolling but ignoring some dice); rather, the GM has exercised a unilateral power to declare that the intention/goal of the action declaration is not realised.

That the power is exercised on the basis of the GM's notes doesn't change the nature of the exericse of the power.


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## Lanefan (Feb 4, 2018)

pemerton said:


> It's a veto on player contribution to the fiction. The mechanics weren't consulted (although the GM may have pretended to consult them by rolling but ignoring some dice); rather, the GM has exercised a unilateral power to declare that the intention/goal of the action declaration is not realised.
> 
> That the power is exercised on the basis of the GM's notes doesn't change the nature of the exericse of the power.



Let's reverse it then: same situation, same mechanics, only this time the DM consults her notes and says "Yes, you find what you're looking for on the desk." - what's your take here?


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## pemerton (Feb 5, 2018)

Lanefan said:


> Let's reverse it then: same situation, same mechanics, only this time the DM consults her notes and says "Yes, you find what you're looking for on the desk." - what's your take here?



That's "saying 'yes'".

If the GM only says "yes" when his/her notes permit, it's (I think quite clearly) a GM-driven game.


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## Odunayo (Apr 19, 2018)

I would say that most of them are RPG-adjacent; with the exception of Fate, which is a garbage fire.


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