Quote from: S'mon;1013127Dungeon World allows the creation of story/setting elements by players. As a mutual story-creation game it's not suitable for Grove's style, which appears to be Illusionist Storytelling with pre-written sequences of events.

I'm not sure Grove realises that Illusionist Storytelling is a very unpopular style with most posters here. If we toughass GMs are tyrant-kings at our tables, it is in order to give players a genuine challenge, which means genuine choice and genuine consequences for their actions. So we tend to like the game systems which facilitate that style - and most of those systems give fixed stats for stuff, to better enable players to understand and manipulate the in-game environment. 4e D&D is an exception, the reason I've suggested it.

(There are lots of other places though where Illusionist Storytelling is the paradigmatic style - the Gnome Stew/Newbie GM/Angry DM nexus is one such nest I'm aware of, though it may be dormant now. Their campaigns never seemed much fun to me - lots of comments about exhausted GMs and failed games - but YMMV).

I appreciate your support but your off base. "Illusionist storytelling with pre-written sequences" is not my thing at all. I may dabble a bit in each of those from time to time but the vast majority of my games are as freeform and sandbox as any other. I do however place setting above published rules and often deviate from the "Standard".

Quote from: rgrove0172;1013166I do however place setting above published rules and often deviate from the "Standard".

Has anyone at all in either thread said they never (or even hardly ever) deviate from what is written in a monster manual, list of creatures, or bestiary?

What you do that is different than what many of us, probably most of us, do is that after you have decided to make a variation you don't seem to feel any need to connect the variation to anything actually present (and thus potentially discover-able) in the setting like the type and quality of arms and armor used by the creature; the stats, skill, or level of the creature; and the personality, morale, and motivations of the creature. Nor do you seem to feel any need to maintain the consistency of those variations on a go forward basis.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1012955Its is, when such a thing occurs.. which is not all the time. I mean a rational explanation for something, of course. But when confronted on it by some ass hat player I would have thought the notion of modifying the rules to better present a suitable challenge reason enough.

I totally misinterpreted what I thought i would receive the tough, take no prisoners, "Its my fucking game", GMs here. But again, I learned something.

Ive played literally thousands of hours as GM and actually sticking my big GM Dong in the rules to 'get my story' is fairly rare. Yes, Im heavy on descriptive narrative. Yes, I push certain plot angles and Yes, I bend the rules now and then in the interest of what I believe to be a better, more fun, experience for my players and I. I do not crouch behind my GM screen and tell a story and pretend to be playing an RPG, despite what seems to be the common belief here.

1: Its not reason enough. Its allmost never reason enough. Yes there are some players more interested in the story more than the mechanics backing it. And there are even some who DEMAND this. Some dont even want to roll dice. But the great majority of RPG players need something more than "for drama".

2: This is probably one of the few of your threads where the majority are honestly trying to be helpful rather than the usual knee-jerk reactions.

3: Thank you for clarifying that. Alot of your posts have painted a somewhat different picture. Especially your early threads.

Quote from: joriandrake;1013146As a recent arrival for me all this is fascinating, although if this is repetition for others I can see why it would get boring.

Quote from: Tulpa Girl;1013150That's pretty much where I'm at.  This thread has a certain train-wreck quality that I can't turn away from.

This is actually the tail end and a much more mellow and downright friendly thread compared to some of the early stuff rgrove was posting. As I noted before he created a sort of negative feedback loop and members have gotten progressively tired of either being offhanded backhanded for their styles of play, or "look look!  what you are doing is really what I am doing so what I am doing is perfectly fine!" or... nearly consistently ignoring people who agree with or at least support some of his ideas and instead going after the detractors for 30+ pages. Notable patterns and members have put up with it for about a year now.

To his credit rgrove has mellowed out alot since those early posts.

Wish I could say the same for certain other members who are more like drive by lunatics and really should have been banned long ago as they contribute about nothing.

I like alot of rgroves posts even if I dont necessarily agree with some of his ideas.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1013166I appreciate your support but your off base. "Illusionist storytelling with pre-written sequences" is not my thing at all. I may dabble a bit in each of those from time to time but the vast majority of my games are as freeform and sandbox as any other. I do however place setting above published rules and often deviate from the "Standard".

Heres the thing. A large majority of the posters here are opposed to, or REALLY opposed to RPGs with either too many rules or too locked down and rigid rules. Theres a reason why all but about one version of D&D is so popular as it gives alot of freedom to tweak. Despite what some will claim. Its one of the reasons I like BX D&D, and early Gamma World and Star Frontiers so much.

Quote from: Sommerjon;1013138Bless your heart.

Well if most of his players like his style, and he certainly does, I wouldn't really advocate he radically change his style. Just pointing out it's a different style from most GMs here, and an unpopular one here. It's a common enough style elsewhere (to the extent that many people assume it's the only style), and was the dominant style in the 1990s.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1013166I appreciate your support but your off base. "Illusionist storytelling with pre-written sequences" is not my thing at all. I may dabble a bit in each of those from time to time but the vast majority of my games are as freeform and sandbox as any other. I do however place setting above published rules and often deviate from the "Standard".

Well ok, but it seems like the complaints you get - that you post about here - come when you deviate from running an objective 'play to see what happens' style, towards more of a storytelling style? The orcs seem to have been given AC 11 for story reasons not in-world reasons. The PC not allowed to succeed on catching the NPC because you didn't want the Big Reveal yet.

Quote from: S'mon;1013218...and was the dominant style in the 1990s.

I played in the 90s and don't recall this being the dominant style of play.

Quote from: Voros;1013221I played in the 90s and don't recall this being the dominant style of play.

I gave up playing for awhile in the 90s because it seemed all the published stuff was in this linear/railroad Storytelling style, either brute force or illusionist. Obviously home games will have varied. But 2e AD&D went that route, following Vampire, and my other '90s games like Heavy Gear were much the same.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1013158The character was in the first Deadpool too.

Haven't seen that either but  yeah, maybe I caught a glimpse of her in a trailer or clip and the image stuck. And its correctly been observed this isn't on topic so moving right along...

Quote from: S'mon;1013218Well if most of his players like his style, and he certainly does, I wouldn't really advocate he radically change his style. Just pointing out it's a different style from most GMs here, and an unpopular one here. It's a common enough style elsewhere (to the extent that many people assume it's the only style), and was the dominant style in the 1990s.

Have to second the part about "common style elsewhere", I had two such GM-s and one of them was my very first one for the group. Of course as a total beginner I didn't recognize the changes right away, we never got weird explanations for ...irregularities, but as time passed I noticed things that felt incorrect more and more, and later another old player/veteran in the party had a heated argument with the GM and that is when I realized the many modificiations he did mostly on the spot/whim as that player listed the actions of the GM.

The GM wanted the 'best' for the party, but as this was the only GM ever using AD&D the result was that I never properly understood and learned the system. Have to point out this guy was very charismatic, friendly, popular not just in our group but in the whole community of about 20 pnp players of the city (explains why there were so few arguments with him) at the time, and was skilled in describing scenes and sitations to make GM modifications make sense. Still it doesn't change the fact that he made spells have different effects which he after a few months forgot and denied to player mages to do/cast as well.

He moved from Hungary to Britain somewhere in 2004 or around that time, since then we didn't play AD&D at all, although as our group moved to other systems and 3.5 we didn't really miss it, and I noticed that in counter-reaction to the typical GM-ing of the person the rest of the community turned more towards being the 'lawyer' type of players who looked for stability and accuracy in the book rules.


EDIT:
The other player was from the capital, as far I can see most of the GMs in Hungary are still this type and when he came in 2010 (or was it 2011?) the local party was already very "anti-behind-the-scenes-modification" and after two attempts of GM-ing decided to just be a player. While players and GMs always checking the books irked him, he ended up also joining in and having fun before he returned to Budapest as he felt on his own skin that stability, rule integrity for a story and genuine challenge/consequences didn't make him unnecessarily jumpy or anxious every single time when something happened in the campaign.

Now that much time has passed since the first GM moved to Britain I can conclude that he was a great storyteller, perhaps the greatest I ever had, and greatly inbfluenced the growth of the RP community in my corner of Hungary, but at the same time he wasn't a good or consistent GM.

Two things that are somewhat related but not inextricably tied together and often conflated here is doing things or making choices for drama, mood, tone and other meta/Doylesian(?) considerations and make choices based on "story' in the sense of steering things down a preset path way in a sense that the players actions and choices mean little to nothing. All of them are points along a continuum of play styles and, IME, most games falls somewhere along with pure extremes being fairly rare.

Quote from: joriandrake;1013232Have to second the part about "common style elsewhere", I had ...

Now that much time has passed since the first GM moved to Britain I can conclude that he was a great storyteller, perhaps the greatest I ever had, and greatly inbfluenced the growth of the RP community in my corner of Hungary, but at the same time he wasn't a good or consistent GM.

My current GM, the one I helped build a Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic game with, is one of these style GMs. He loves making stuff up on the fly, and crafting the stats to fit the situation, and so forth. However, the rules system basically supports this. To continue with the current scenario, defense and hp are very opponent specific, and armor has an damage reduction value which depends on the armor quality. So if he wanted the guy in 'chain mail' (well, road leathers with stapled on hubcaps or something) to die to a relatively low hit, he can say that the guy simply had poor combat competency and his armor was quality level 0. But beyond those specifics, if the players start digging around, asking questions to try to ascertain how challenging a fight that group over the hill is, he will either answer questions and then stick to them ("They look like green troops, wearing spiked armor made more for intimidation than protection"), or he'll put up roadblocks which say roughly 'you can't tell, try something else' (and if we're being actively deceived, such that we think the armor is chainmail, but it is instead costume chain or something, there would have been some way to figure that out, even if we didn't think of it).

That's the difference, I believe, between what I consider successful* impromptu/deviate-from-the-book-standard GM-ing, and the OP's style--as he has explained it. If the players are trying to garner information to use to make good decisions on how best to approach the game world (because in the end, the only thing a player really has is his ability to make decisions), he will facilitate that act, or actually just not throw up roadblocks.
*and I use that term in this instance strictly to mean one that would be inoculated to the upset-player-scenario the OP originally described. OP's game is clearly by in large successful in the grand scheme because the people whom he cares about having fun are indeed having fun.

Quote from: Omega;10131891: Its not reason enough. Its allmost never reason enough. Yes there are some players more interested in the story more than the mechanics backing it. And there are even some who DEMAND this. Some dont even want to roll dice. But the great majority of RPG players need something more than "for drama".

2: This is probably one of the few of your threads where the majority are honestly trying to be helpful rather than the usual knee-jerk reactions.

3: Thank you for clarifying that. Alot of your posts have painted a somewhat different picture. Especially your early threads.

You are right, the thread has been extremely useful. There have been a couple of the usual low points but overall, good stuff. I enjoy open debate, even when I see I am losing terribly. Some take the attacks a bit too far though. Kind of hard not to react to those in turn.

Quote from: S'mon;1013218Well if most of his players like his style, and he certainly does, I wouldn't really advocate he radically change his style. Just pointing out it's a different style from most GMs here, and an unpopular one here. It's a common enough style elsewhere (to the extent that many people assume it's the only style), and was the dominant style in the 1990s.

You are right... My gaming kind of took on new life in the 90s after a long break. The players I started in with then remained my long term players until only a few years ago when a couple passed away and another moved. We saw no need, and thus I saw no need, to change the method of playing for almost two decades. I have a couple players now that have taken to my style and we get along great. There have been issues when a new player is inserted in the mix, apparently used to other types of GMing etc. Thats been the root problem with two of my posts that highlighted my own apparent deviation from today's GM norm and what drew such consternation from the members here.