TheRPGSite

Following on from the narrative thread, due to the success of FATE, X-World, etc... it's clear that there are a lot of people who like authorship in their roleplay, and very clear there's a lot of current game designers who do also. (I think they fall on their face when, like Ron Edwards, or Robin Laws, they assume that's what going on in their head is what's going on in mine, whether I realize it or not, but that's a different thread.)

In fact, I think for some people, there is always that "meta-layer" there, always the 4th wall aspect, the dual layer of playing the character and playing the game and making conscious decisions from both.  Now I realize that since we all are playing a game, unless we possess Daniel Day Lewis powers, we all have a dual layer, but for many of us, the whole point of roleplaying is to put aside that second layer, let it merge into the background and make decisions only from the point of view of the character.

Take for example this exchange that happened a few years ago.  We're talking about Immersion.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;567899I do EXACTLY the same thing. For example, when one of my characters is in a bar fight in a western town, I see the tables and chairs, I smell the beer, I hear the sound of broken glass, I'm THERE. Whatever makes sense to visualize.

But what happens when I go behind the bar and grab the shotgun? Wait, WHAT shotgun? The shotgun which I ASSUME WILL BE PRESENT in a western bar where fights tend to break out. And if a shotgun ISN'T present, it needlessly disrupts my immersion, just as it would if the GM suddenly corrected me and said the bar's walls were painted hot pink.

For immersion to work, you have to allow players to make assumptions based on their character's PoV which are valid in the shared fiction. But most GMs I've played with haven't gotten the hang of this yet. Nor have most systems.

And my response...emphasis added.

Quote from: CRKrueger;567974Immersion into what, exactly?

You see, your character can certainly assume there's a shotgun behind the bar and most of the time, he'd be right.  But are you roleplaying in a montage of Tombstone, Silverado, or Big Whiskey Montana, or are you roleplaying in this particular town, in this particular bar?

Because in the Songbird Saloon in the town of Jerusalem Falls, Ol' Clem Johnson who owns the place is one of those rare Christians who walks the walk.  He asked himself once "Who would Jesus shoot?" and the answer was "No one."  So Clem doesn't have a shotgun behind the bar, not even to defend himself.  Now his old buddy Jack, who plays the piano, however, isn't that much of a "turn the cheek" kind of person, and so he keeps a shotgun up under the piano keyboard where he can get to it.

This is stuff you'd find out if you were from this town, or spent time talking to it's inhabitants, but if you are some low-down, four-flushin' sumbitch outlander just off the range who thinks he's gonna shoot himself out of gettin' caught cheatin' at poker, by grabbin' Clem's gun?  Well, you're in a whole lot of trouble.  Welcome to a Living World, where it might just not be Hollywood.

I'm not going to claim that Anon isn't as "immersed" as I, or John Morrow, who was Anon was responding to, can be, but into what is he immersed? It seems pretty clear, he's immersed into an expression of a genre.  In other words, once he finds out "Western", his brain fills in the rest.  He's not immersed into the world at the table, he's immersed into the world of westerns in his head, of which the table is one expression.  If my character jumps behind the bar and looks for a weapon and there isn't one, my character thinks "Fuck", and I move on.  For Anon, the immersion stops because his player assumption based on genre disagrees with what happened at the table.  It seems to me the whole "narrative movement" with specific mechanics to reinforce that playstyle are there to make sure that immersion doesn't stop for anyone playing that way, because the mechanics are there to smooth over discrepancies between visions of what is happening. A whole lot of people play this way I think, hell they may even be the majority for all I know or care.  All I know is...I don't.  I don't play in literary genres, I play in worlds that are alternate universes, that could be just as real as ours.  They have their own physics and cosmology and while some things are the same as ours, others aren't.  

How do you roleplay?

I roleplay the way you, CRKrueger, describe. I might expect a shotgun behind the bar, but it isn't going to break anything if there isn't. (Some gunshops have shop guns placed in different places. Other gunshops, the staff all carries. It just depends.)

My players play the same way as you and I. Except, they may decide it would be fun to paint the walls of the bar pink, and have an in-character reason for this that fits their characters and the story. (Hmm. Didn't Clint Eastwood do that in one movie?)

But I think for the other people, that's part of the draw to shared narrative control--they can make those decisions/changes. I don't like it because to me it takes the fun out of solving the problem by using hand waving or technobabble (hello ST:TNG).

So for example... If I'm playing a non-narrative mechanic game, and the player says, 'Bubba dives behind the bar and grabs the shotgun!' - and unbeknownst to him, for whatever reason (i.e. my fiat) there isn't one. Then there isn't one. I might give him an assortment of options - a head-cracker, a bottle or whatever I think Clem might really keep behind the bar. Maybe nothing.


But if I'm running Savage Worlds or Fantasy Craft, and the player says, 'Bubba dives behind the bar and gets a shotgun! I blow my CraftyPointBenny!!!' - then I judged the situation, and if it's reasonable I'll roll with the flow and make a mental note (in case it comes up later*) why Clem, a God-fearing, church-going bar-man who hates firearms has a shotgun behind his bar on this particular day, and let it ride! Game on.

If the player does the same thing and says "I come up with a gatling-gun and start spraying." then I'll simply veto that as something beyond the scope of the situation... unless I REALLY want to make something of it (remember the asterisk?)...

* - So the asterisk. I love to let players do things in the game that lets their characters shine especially when it's extemporaneous. I adjust the world on the fly to make it look completely seamless. This creates immersion in my games. Case in point - later on after the shotgun gets used I come up with a plot-thread that relates however tenuously to WHY that shotgun was there in the first place. Or what if I mix both ideas - the player goes for a shotgun, blows a meta-die, and I say fuck it "you reach up for a shotgun... and you see this brand new, oiled, gatling gun with a box of clips next to it." Why is it there? Who knows? I'll figure it out later. The game is unfolding and it's ON.

Does the damn thing even work? Even if it doesn't - it might be enough to scare the shit out of the people he was gonna kill. WTF is Clem into? The PC's don't know, but you'll make the reason. Immersion happens when you keep the players engaged. Meta-point mechanics, imo, are equally useful for a good GM as they are for players who are simply just playing.

Keeping them immersed is letting shit fly within reason, and doing it confidently.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183Following on from the narrative thread, due to the success of FATE, X-World, etc... it's clear that there are a lot of people who like authorship in their roleplay, and very clear there's a lot of current game designers who do also. (I think they fall on their face when, like Ron Edwards, or Robin Laws, they assume that's what going on in their head is what's going on in mine, whether I realize it or not, but that's a different thread.)

In fact, I think for some people, there is always that "meta-layer" there, always the 4th wall aspect, the dual layer of playing the character and playing the game and making conscious decisions from both.  Now I realize that since we all are playing a game, unless we possess Daniel Day Lewis powers, we all have a dual layer, but for many of us, the whole point of roleplaying is to put aside that second layer, let it merge into the background and make decisions only from the point of view of the character.

Take for example this exchange that happened a few years ago.  We're talking about Immersion.


And my response...emphasis added.


I'm not going to claim that Anon isn't as "immersed" as I, or John Morrow, who was Anon was responding to, can be, but into what is he immersed? It seems pretty clear, he's immersed into an expression of a genre.  In other words, once he finds out "Western", his brain fills in the rest.  He's not immersed into the world at the table, he's immersed into the world of westerns in his head, of which the table is one expression.  If my character jumps behind the bar and looks for a weapon and there isn't one, my character thinks "Fuck", and I move on.  For Anon, the immersion stops because his player assumption based on genre disagrees with what happened at the table.  It seems to me the whole "narrative movement" with specific mechanics to reinforce that playstyle are there to make sure that immersion doesn't stop for anyone playing that way, because the mechanics are there to smooth over discrepancies between visions of what is happening. A whole lot of people play this way I think, hell they may even be the majority for all I know or care.  All I know is...I don't.  I don't play in literary genres, I play in worlds that are alternate universes, that could be just as real as ours.  They have their own physics and cosmology and while some things are the same as ours, others aren't.  

How do you roleplay?

I guess my view is both of these seem like viable worlds to role-play in. For me what matters is going in, I have a sense of what kind of universe we are meant to be in. If the "physics" of that world are more like our own (so a western that is set in the historical frontier) I'd have expectations like Krueger's. If the GM had gone in saying this was going to be a world more like a spaghetti western then I would probably expect to see things in the genre and for genre conventions to predominate (i'd also probably expect mechanics that allow for badass gunslingers who can take out a bunch of guys rather than mechanics where you die just as easily as Henchmen #2). I think though for me it is still important that these be worlds and that I have to interact with it through my character, as my character. Genre emulation is something I enjoy but I also like a more gritty historical type game too.

Quote from: tenbones;860190So for example... If I'm playing a non-narrative mechanic game, and the player says, 'Bubba dives behind the bar and grabs the shotgun!' - and unbeknownst to him, for whatever reason (i.e. my fiat) there isn't one. Then there isn't one. I might give him an assortment of options - a head-cracker, a bottle or whatever I think Clem might really keep behind the bar. Maybe nothing.


But if I'm running Savage Worlds or Fantasy Craft, and the player says, 'Bubba dives behind the bar and gets a shotgun! I blow my CraftyPointBenny!!!' - then I judged the situation, and if it's reasonable I'll roll with the flow and make a mental note (in case it comes up later*) why Clem, a God-fearing, church-going bar-man who hates firearms has a shotgun behind his bar on this particular day, and let it ride! Game on.

If the player does the same thing and says "I come up with a gatling-gun and start spraying." then I'll simply veto that as something beyond the scope of the situation... unless I REALLY want to make something of it (remember the asterisk?)...

* - So the asterisk. I love to let players do things in the game that lets their characters shine especially when it's extemporaneous. I adjust the world on the fly to make it look completely seamless. This creates immersion in my games. Case in point - later on after the shotgun gets used I come up with a plot-thread that relates however tenuously to WHY that shotgun was there in the first place. Or what if I mix both ideas - the player goes for a shotgun, blows a meta-die, and I say fuck it "you reach up for a shotgun... and you see this brand new, oiled, gatling gun with a box of clips next to it." Why is it there? Who knows? I'll figure it out later. The game is unfolding and it's ON.

Does the damn thing even work? Even if it doesn't - it might be enough to scare the shit out of the people he was gonna kill. WTF is Clem into? The PC's don't know, but you'll make the reason. Immersion happens when you keep the players engaged. Meta-point mechanics, imo, are equally useful for a good GM as they are for players who are simply just playing.

Keeping them immersed is letting shit fly within reason, and doing it confidently.

For me, if there's a mechanic I can use to enforce my will on the setting, there is no immersion.  I don't want to immerse in my head, I can do that whenever I want.  I want to immerse into something else, "play pretend" for lack of a better word in an alternate world where the challenges are real, the gloves are off, and I live or die by my choices and the roll of the dice.

If it turns out my guy is like the Viking from 13th Warrior who takes a critical to the ribs and can't run any more, so stands to hold the way and dies with his sword in his hand, then by god so be it.  I don't need any mechanical bonus because I'm playing to genre.  I'm going to Valhalla, and if the rest of the guys survive, my name will live on through tales of what happened.  I'm happy.

I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

I tend to feel the same way. I guess if I am really confident there is a shotgun there I might phrase it as 'I jump behind the counter and grab the shotgun' but if we're talking about me being able to edit the shot gun in just because I think it ought to be there, then that would mess with me a bit. But I am not sure this has anything to do with things being narrative or whatnot. I think it is more about I tend to see things from my character's point of view and I find it odd when a character the ability to decide things that for me just should be up to the GM (otherwise I think I feel like I am not exploring a real world).

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183How do you roleplay?

I'm all about literary and genre emulation. I love my cheap, escapist genre fiction and gaming is for me is a way to celebrate and revel in this. The game isn't about winning, it's about winning with flair. Hell even losing with flair is preferable to succeeding with dull, cold efficiency.

That doesn't mean I'm necessarily playing all these new, cool games. From Ghostbusters to TSR Marvel Super Heroes, there are plenty of oldies whose rules directed you towards playing the genre.

The notion that player may formally or informally assuming to a degree the sort editorial powers that normally confined to the GM is not a new thing. It's pretty much been a constant in all my gaming career. It works for me.

I don't think out gaming preferences are compatible. I'm OK with that if you are.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

I realize the natural question is, "Don't you use Luck Points?"  Yes and No. It depends.  In systems like WFRP1 or SR1-3 where they have actual setting rationale, sure I use them and don't really think about it.  
Luck Points in RQ6 bother me a little bit, they're definitely a "player chooses when the character is awesome" type of OOC mechanic.  I'd remove them, and most of my players don't care, we're deciding whether we want to keep them or not.  
I've been putzing around with Savage Worlds, the very large combats it can handle are a draw, but the narrative levels of being (Extra, Wild Card) and some of the more egregious examples of Bennie use are pure fingernails on chalkboard, unfortunately, once you start messing with SW, you mess with the speed, which is the whole point of playing the damn thing.

Quote from: Soylent Green;860198I'm all about literary and genre emulation. I love my cheap, escapist genre fiction and gaming is for me is a way to celebrate and revel in this. The game isn't about winning, it's about winning with flair. Hell even losing with flair is preferable to succeeding with dull, cold efficiency.

Me too.

But its cool if there's no shotgun behind the bar sometimes. Its fun to be surprised too.

Quote from: Soylent Green;860198
I don't think out gaming preferences are compatible. I'm OK with that if you are.

How does it go? :) You fish your side. I'll fish my side. Nobody fish the middle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chaubunagungamaug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chaubunagungamaug)

Quote from: Soylent Green;860198The notion that player may formally or informally assuming to a degree the sort editorial powers that normally confined to the GM is not a new thing. It's pretty much be a constant in all my gaming career. It works for me.

I don't think out gaming preferences are compatible. I'm OK with that if you are.

I agree, I think people have always played that way.  I think the realization that some people do and some don't is what started the whole Dramatist discussions on Usenet.

I'm perfectly fine with you playing your way and me playing mine.  The only issue I've ever had is that my way of playing also allows yours, albeit without mechanical enforcement.  Your way of playing, with a newer system designed with mechanical enforcement, precludes my way of playing if those mechanics can't be easily excised.  Even then, that's not really a problem. Unfortunately the game companies who are functioning as licensing warehouses these days like FFG, MWP and Modiphius use exactly those types of systems placing perennial classics like Star Wars, Marvel and Conan "behind the Narrative Wall".

The idea that one's "immersion" is ruined because their ability to auto-create shit they expect into the scene sounds a bit like horseshit. Anon's putting his own version of events at the forefront, and fuck everyone else. Unless you're running one-on-one with the GM, and this is coll with them, then whatever you've got in mind don't make it necessarily so.

We go with what the GM presents to us. And none of us auto-narrate ambient shit into the scene unless we're asked to do, or there's a mechanism in the rules. If I want character immersion, I'll join the cast of a play. But for a game, I have plenty enough imagination to paint pictures in conjunction with others, and not feel let down when my carefully layered head-scene is disrupted because I didn't get what I wanted. Put it simply, no one narrates shit into a scene that isn't there. You wanna ask if there's a shotgun there, maybe there is, maybe there ain't. But damned if I'm gonna let you just put whatever the fuck you want there because it tickles your fancy. Your image of things is no more valid than anyone else's. And if I designed the vessel you're sailing in, in this case, in the form of a saloon, then I'll decide whether that shotgun is there or not. I'll probably let you have it, if it makes sense for the narrative. But you and your immersion should probably go join an improv troupe--we're just playing a game (that obviously immersion person's fragile psyche cannot handle).

Quote from: CRKrueger;860203
I'm perfectly fine with you playing your way and me playing mine.  The only issue I've ever had is that my way of playing also allows yours, albeit without mechanical enforcement.  Your way of playing, with a newer system designed with mechanical enforcement, precludes my way of playing if those mechanics can't be easily excised.

What I ran into while reading lots of different rules is that the game balance often depends on the narrative mechanics, which I find annoying. In this case, the mechanics I refer to are the "points" by whatever name that players use in combat to reroll, recover HP, do extra damage, etc. A lot of reviews mention for a lot of those games the GM needs to hand out lots of them to keep the players alive.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183Following on from the narrative thread, due to the success of FATE, X-World, etc... it's clear that there are a lot of people who like authorship in their roleplay, and very clear there's a lot of current game designers who do also. (I think they fall on their face when, like Ron Edwards, or Robin Laws, they assume that's what going on in their head is what's going on in mine, whether I realize it or not, but that's a different thread.)

From my experience in running LARPS, MMORPGS, and Tabletop RPG campaigns there are certain constants that are found in 90% of the players. One of them is to play the character they imagine in their head. Which is why RPGs with a lot of detailed mechanics continue to exist.

The constant in this case is that most players want to be the hero. Mind you the "hero" in this case is highly subjective and doesn't really adhere to a particular stereotype. It is more the ultimate fulfillment of whatever image the player has of his character.

It hard to see how you get to be the hero when the campaign plays out more like a virtual reality. It like the guy who plays a LARP but can't hit with a boffer weapon or a beanbag spell packet for shit. Or a MMORPG gamer who reflexes and tactical skill are shit.

Everybody has a passing familiarity with storytelling and authorship. So Narrative control has a seductive appeal to player who finally wants make his character the hero.

The other half is artistic snobbery. There are people who define themselves as rebels against the status quo. Since the status quo are pen & paper virtual realities. Where the essence of the game is kitbashing shit together to make something that is fun. You rebel by injecting the idea of the narrative. That particpants are not goofy gamers but serious authors pursuit of THE story.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183unless we possess Daniel Day Lewis powers, we all have a dual layer, but for many of us, the whole point of roleplaying is to put aside that second layer, let it merge into the background and make decisions only from the point of view of the character.

I have found that the only minimum required for serious immersion is that the player act as if he there as the character even if the character is just a reflection of himself in the setting. If they act as a different personality and find it fun great! But it is not necessary and for some I would go as far to say it is not desirable.

Quote from: cranebump;860211The idea that one's "immersion" is ruined because their ability to auto-create shit they expect into the scene sounds a bit like horseshit. Anon's putting his own version of events at the forefront, and fuck everyone else.

I just flat out don't want to Play or run a game where Players get to alter the setting in that manner. Partially because my prejudice is that they're always going to be altering it in their favor, "I dive behind the bar and grab the shotgun" not "I dive behind the bar and get cut to ribbons on broken glass"... it just ends up feeling like I'm watching the Players masturbate over their imagined 'cool moves'.
I can sit around all day and describe how everything goes my way, just as I expect it too... but IMO that's fucking dull... for me there needs to be mystery and risk... that when I attempt to jump on top of the giant vampire rabbit there aren't any 'fate points' or whatnot ensuring my ass will come out unscathed.

Very differently, apparently.

Let's say it's Greyhawk Castle, and we hear footsteps and want to hide.

Rather than "we hide behind the tapestry" or "we hide behind the table" or "we hide behind the pillar," we used to say "What can we hide behind?"

It makes our intentions clear without having to worry about what we want to hide behind.

Likewise "I jump behind the bar and look for something I can use as a weapon."

If somebody started shitting themselves because there wasn't a shotgun back there, it would be game over for the night.  If you want a shotgun back there so fucking bad, run the game yourself.

Quote from: Tod13;860184My players play the same way as you and I. Except, they may decide it would be fun to paint the walls of the bar pink, and have an in-character reason for this that fits their characters and the story. (Hmm. Didn't Clint Eastwood do that in one movie?)

High Plains Drifter, but it was red.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860241Let's say it's Greyhawk Castle, and we hear footsteps and want to hide.

Rather than "we hide behind the tapestry" or "we hide behind the table" or "we hide behind the pillar," we used to say "What can we hide behind?"

It makes our intentions clear without having to worry about what we want to hide behind.

Grammar seems a trivial thing to pay attention to, until it isn't. The difference in grammatical construction in these examples highlights a significant difference in play style.
   

• I hide behind the drapes. vs What can I hide behind?
• I hit the orc or I hit the orc in the head. vs I swing at the orc or I swing at the orc's head.
• I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun. vs I jump behind the bar and look for a weapon.
• I shoot the guy with the machinegun. vs I shoot at the guy with the machinegun.

The first statement in each pair phrases an action as a fait accompli. The second statement is either a request for information or a statement of an intention, what would typically require a die roll or GM adjudication of the result.

I have seen brand new players use the first kind of statement. In part, because the division of creator GM and actor player is not clear to them.* The weirdest example I can recall was from Call of Cthulhu. Someone's significant other was playing for the first time and he said, "I hit him with my wooden leg." This provoked looks of utter confusion from the rest of the table because this seven word sentence included two faits accomplis. First it assumed the attack would hit. Second, and more unusual, it assumed that the character, who had hitherto not been an amputee, had a wooden leg. This would have been less jarring if the character had been, say a pirate from the Age of Sail, instead of a 1920s Miskatonic college student.

I've also seen people say "I shoot the guy with the machinegun." as shorthand for "I shoot at the guy with the machinegun." As long as everyone at the table is on the same page that player statements are statements of intention rather than statements of result, that's OK. But it can be confusing when you have someone who doesn't follow that same convention.


* If we imagine two small children playing, we might expect to see both of them trying to create the scene with each inserting their own ideas. Which may be fun for both or it may devolve into an argument about whether the couch covered in a blanket is a fort, a cave, a snow covered mountain, or a blobby monster. Many of us prefer to avoid that sort of argument, just as we prefer to avoid arguments of the "Bang you're dead!" "No I'm not, you missed me," sort.

I find myself somewhere in between the Anon Adderlan side of the authorial divide and CRKrueger and Gronan side. I've played a lot of games that do not have in game bennies like Hero, Fate, or Fortune Points. OD&D, AD&D, D&D-inspired games, Boothill, Runequest, Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, FASA Star Trek none of those use bennies that allow authorial powers.

The first game where I saw anything like authorial control was James Bond 007, which kind of makes sense for PCs who are a super spies like James Bond. So for that particular game, it was a brilliant innovation. But I haven't played 007 much. I played a lot of WEG's Star Wars D6 and I found the Character Points and Force Points in Star Wars D6 a pretty light authorial tool. Mostly they allowed and were used to let the PC try to do more stuff in a round or get a better or even a really good chance to succeed. But because they still had to roll the dice there was (nearly) always a chance, no matter how slight, that the roll would be crap and they would still fail. And for Force Points one could use the rationale that the character was actually doing something in game that aligned with spending a Force Point i.e. "Use the Force Luke."

Recently though I've played a game with even stronger authorial power, to whit Honor+Intrigue. H+I uses a benny called Fortune Points.

QuoteFortune
Swashbuckling heroes don't always prevail because they are skilled. Sometimes they are incredibly lucky. They always seem to find the secret passageway they need to escape, or grab onto a tapestry instead of plummeting to their death. Even when they are unaware they are in danger, Fortune may smile upon them and intervene. Honor + Intrigue handles this by a Characteristic called "Fortune" which represents the hand of destiny as well as a character's overall luck.

A Fortune Point allows the player some measure of control over what happens during the scene. The use of Fortune Points is important both dramatically and mechanically to the rules. [p. 14]

Some of the ways one spends Fortune Points are not or at least not very authorial. Examples of not authorial usage are adding a bonus die before a roll or adding +1 to a roll or to improve the quality of a roll.

Edging closer to authorial are the rules for Close Call.

QuoteClose Call: A narrowly avoided brush with death, usually occurring when a character spends a Fortune Point to avoid being shot. While the character is unhurt, they may be unnerved and must make a Daring roll or lose composure. [p. 8]

So you can automatically avoid a gunshot. This is a genre convention since neither the hero nor the villain in a cape and sword drama dies from a gunshot. Realistically early black powder weapons were less reliable than later types of guns so that gives us veneer of justification to place over what is a limited authorial power, equivalent to the kid who in reply to "Bang you're dead!" says, "No I'm not. You missed me."

Similarly but applied to skills more broadly we have the following*.

QuoteAutomatically succeed on a Task Roll to notice something or to evade notice. Spend the point before rolling. ["Quick into the closet, I hear somebody coming!"]

This also lets the PC, like Indiana Jones, just barely avoid the trap.

And even more clearly authorial.

QuoteMake a safe landing or avoid a fall ["Good thing this passing hay-wagon broke my fall from the tower!"]

With this we have reached something that is roughly equivalent to the shotgun behind the bar. Though this applies only to fairly small events. And as a GM I would clearly veto or adjust anything that really doesn't fit the setting.

Next is an example from the section titled, "For Dramatic License" which is a clear admission that this is giving the player dramatic license, which is clearly an authorial power.

QuoteTo create a major fact about the world ["But it • is high tide right now"]. This is subject to GM approval, and is only for major things. A PC can say "I grab the mug of ale off the table" and should be allowed to assume there is a mug of ale there without paying a point (again if the GM finds it reasonable).

There are two things to note here. One, is the phrase "subject to GM approval." When I GM any use of a Fortune Point is subject to GM approval. In practice, my players don't come up with something that needs vetoing very often. At most, a redirection is usually sufficient. "Well there aren't any hay wagons here since you are at the top of a cliff with only handholds leading to the top, but you could land on the very large midden heap on the side of the tower. That should break your fall."

Second is the reminder that taverns are likely to have mugs of ale or the like on the tables and Fortune Points shouldn't be required for common and obvious stuff like that. Similarly finding a pot or a knife in a modern restaurant kitchen wouldn't require spending a Fortune Point. A knife or a pot in a bedroom though...

One thing I've found as the GM that has helped me adjust to the limit authorial powers is to look at the scene as follows. I'll use the shotgun example. Here's how I'd want the player to phrase their statement. Instead of "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." I want the player to say, "I jump behind the bar and grab a weapon. Like a shotgun."

Now if, like CRKrueger, I know for a fact that there is no gun behind the bar, the player doesn't get a shotgun. Or even a gun. But there must be some weapon there—a bat, a bung starter, a big knife, a heavy champagne bottle, a bottle of 190 proof alcohol and a lit flame, something. So the player gets that. And I try to lean towards thinking of something (or getting the player to think of something else) that is closer to the utility of a shotgun than it is to the utility of a single beer bottle. In other words, my goal here is to maintain setting consistency, not to be a dick by blocking the players for grins.

On the other hand, if I haven't decided whether or not the bartender has a shotgun then if it isn't too ridiculous given the situation...there's a shotgun.

This seems to work for me. For now.


* [Quotes form pp 15-16.]

The original example blurs distinctions between a player's irritation with an inconsistent or poor scenario with narrative mechanics. Also there is the idea that if someone asks you if X is true about the game, it might be true, it wasn't an idea in your head but that's only because you hadn't previously considered the possibility, then at the least consider rolling to see if it's true. In this case, the DM may not have visualised there being a shotgun behind the bar until they're asked.

And while I was writing that Bren wrote something very similar:

Quote from: Bren;860257On the other hand, if I haven't decided whether or not the bartender has a shotgun then if it isn't too ridiculous given the situation...there's a shotgun.

In the context of RPGs, Roleplaying was originally not used in its thespian or psychology meaning, but used to describe literally what you are doing - you are playing the role of a character.

QuoteBefore they begin, players must decide what role they will play in the campaign, human or otherwise, fighter, cleric, or magic-user.

That is, you are told what your character sees / hears / experiences, you ask questions about this information and say what your character does, and the rules are used to resolve situations.

You can do this with/without any thespianism, or immersion.

I'm personally not that keen on meta-character mechanics, i.e. mechanics to affect the world in a way that isn't through the actions of your character.

Luck as a minor meta-character mechanic sounds plausible, but when I ran FASERIP none of my players ever used karma. They forgot it existed, as they were just playing their characters.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183How do you roleplay?

I think a little column A and a little column B. I make some assumptions based on my idea of the genre or setting. The GM can't humanly fill in every detail. But I try to react and interact to a living world model. If it doesn't make sense for my character to make an assumption (to continue the example my PC is a tenderfoot fresh off the train that's never been in the "Wild West" or maybe even a bar before I'm not going to have them assume there's a shotgun behind the bar though they may dive behind it for cover if a fight breaks out).

As a player I might have the assumption (or I might not, depends on how much I'm into my character's mindset) but having it prove wrong doesn't destroy my immersion anymore than having an assumption about the real prove generally doesn't shake my faith in reality.

I'm fine with narrative mechanics if I'm playing a narrative based game. I do not want someone trying to use such constructs while playing a game that doesn't feature them.

As long as the narrative stuff sticks to games written to account for it, everything is ok.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860199Luck Points in RQ6 bother me a little bit, they're definitely a "player chooses when the character is awesome" type of OOC mechanic.

I don't really see them that way.  The only functions for them as listed in the RQ6 core rules are to reroll any roll affecting the character, to gain an extra Action Point in combat, or to downgrade a Major Injury (potentially fatal) to a Serious Injury (potentially crippling).  The first two are easily rationalized in-game as the effect of pushing yourself to the limit, while the third helps to keep PCs from dying overly easily.  None of them are clear "create a shotgun behind the bar" meta-mechanics (although I suspect that allowing them to be used as such may be a common house rule).

Quote from: JoeNuttall;860268The original example blurs distinctions between a player's irritation with an inconsistent or poor scenario with narrative mechanics. Also there is the idea that if someone asks you if X is true about the game, it might be true, it wasn't an idea in your head but that's only because you hadn't previously considered the possibility, then at the least consider rolling to see if it's true. In this case, the DM may not have visualised there being a shotgun behind the bar until they're asked.

This is essentially how I'd handle it as a GM (and would want the GM to handle it were I a player).  If I've thought previously about whether this particular bar has a shotgun behind it or not, then my previous conclusion stands, period.  If not, I'll roll a d6 to determine whether one is there or not.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;860268I'm personally not that keen on meta-character mechanics, i.e. mechanics to affect the world in a way that isn't through the actions of your character.

Same here.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;860268Luck as a minor meta-character mechanic sounds plausible, but when I ran FASERIP none of my players ever used karma. They forgot it existed, as they were just playing their characters.

That's largely been my experience as well.  When I ran Savage Worlds, my players practically never used bennies unless they were incapacitated, blew the Vigor roll to survive, and needed to reroll it.  When we played DCC-influenced ACKS, they never spent Luck points unless it was a "use Luck or die" situation.  Etc.  And, while running those games, I just as consistently forgot that their foes had bennies/Luck as well.

I like genre tropes, but I always remember "whose world is this I'm in?" My player character is not the world, therefore to speak ex cathedra about what should be present when I need or want it is completely a non starter. Is or is not your PC the entire world? If not, and merely a mircroscopic actor within it, then act like it. No exceptions.

But then that tasks both GM and player to talk often and bring clarity to the scene. However this involves good description, active engagement, and active listening. Which seem like impossible arts at the best of times IRL, let alone on one's recreation.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860241Very differently, apparently.

Let's say it's Greyhawk Castle, and we hear footsteps and want to hide.

Rather than "we hide behind the tapestry" or "we hide behind the table" or "we hide behind the pillar," we used to say "What can we hide behind?"

It makes our intentions clear without having to worry about what we want to hide behind.

Likewise "I jump behind the bar and look for something I can use as a weapon."

If somebody started shitting themselves because there wasn't a shotgun back there, it would be game over for the night.  If you want a shotgun back there so fucking bad, run the game yourself.

99% of the time, when I'm running games with narrative mechanics - it still goes this way. Most of the time my players use those narrative mechanics to enforce something they're already trying to do in order to benefit that choice.

So for example - "Where can I hide?"

GM - There's a tapestry on one wall, a few barrels in a corner - it looks like they're prepping for a small feast. A large table in the center.

PC - "Is the tapestry large enough to hide the whole party? If not can I spend a metapoint to make it plus the barrels large enough to give us all cover?"

Or something like that. Break immersion? Yeah a little - but the back and forth of description can do that anyhow. I don't let it get in the way of things, unless they offer something I can play off of. That said - I certainly don't just hand over the reigns of things and let a player decide what's what either. I let them nudge, not change.

Using Savage Lands as an example - where I'm currently having a good time, I find the system pretty flexible. As I'm not a big huge proponent of metamechanics, I find the system if using Bennies lightly, to be a pretty violent. And I kinda like it like that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183...
How do you roleplay?

Almost always, I play with the "traditional" line between player (plays a character or maybe several, guiding what their character(s) do(es).) and GM (provides universe, plays everyone else, determines what happens).

As GM I take player suggestions for things outside PC scope into consideration, but determine whether to accept, reject, or modify them based on my own thoughts, rules, dice, etc. Occasionally I will go with suggestions that are "narrativist" (to use this thread's term) but I always check with my own filters and likely will determine a chance and roll dice if they're assuming something about the world that might not be true. e.g. I might intuit that there's a 40% chance this bar actually has a weapon behind it - character needs a spot check roll to find it immediately even if it is there, and roll to see where behind the bar it is, what type of weapon it is, and whether it's loaded or tied down or something.

I think some "narrativist" game designs are interesting (Microscope, anyway), but I don't see them as the same thing, and I'm not eager to mix it with the usual way I play.

However now that I think of it, I have done something a bit like it when I've collaborated with another very well-known GM to create adventures and worlds. But we usually worked out our own parts.

I don't think I like the "improv" style of what feels to me like roleplaying a character AND GM'ing at the same time, with other players doing the same things, unless we're both really tuned in and on the same page, and I can only think of a very few people I would want to even try that with. I really like there to be one authority for what exists and happens, and I like a lot of that to be pre-determined and subject to detailed and realistic rules, and not pulled from the nether regions by someone being tempted by spur-of-the-moment callings to what seems cool or fun or stylish. I hate that even in fiction, and I have an acute detection sense for the various common flavors of it. I'm even suspicious of my own impulses when writing fiction, playing solo, creating gameworld events away from the PCs, etc. Often other people's ideas of things that are cool and stylish, strike me as contrived, forced and unbelievable.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194For me, if there's a mechanic I can use to enforce my will on the setting, there is no immersion.  I don't want to immerse in my head, I can do that whenever I want.  I want to immerse into something else, "play pretend" for lack of a better word in an alternate world where the challenges are real, the gloves are off, and I live or die by my choices and the roll of the dice.

If it turns out my guy is like the Viking from 13th Warrior who takes a critical to the ribs and can't run any more, so stands to hold the way and dies with his sword in his hand, then by god so be it.  I don't need any mechanical bonus because I'm playing to genre.  I'm going to Valhalla, and if the rest of the guys survive, my name will live on through tales of what happened.  I'm happy.

I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

Yup yup yup. Me too.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183Following on from the narrative thread, due to the success of FATE, X-World, etc... it's clear that there are a lot of people who like authorship in their roleplay, and very clear there's a lot of current game designers who do also. (I think they fall on their face when, like Ron Edwards, or Robin Laws, they assume that's what going on in their head is what's going on in mine, whether I realize it or not, but that's a different thread.)

In fact, I think for some people, there is always that "meta-layer" there, always the 4th wall aspect, the dual layer of playing the character and playing the game and making conscious decisions from both.  Now I realize that since we all are playing a game, unless we possess Daniel Day Lewis powers, we all have a dual layer, but for many of us, the whole point of roleplaying is to put aside that second layer, let it merge into the background and make decisions only from the point of view of the character.

Take for example this exchange that happened a few years ago.  We're talking about Immersion.


And my response...emphasis added.


I'm not going to claim that Anon isn't as "immersed" as I, or John Morrow, who was Anon was responding to, can be, but into what is he immersed? It seems pretty clear, he's immersed into an expression of a genre.  In other words, once he finds out "Western", his brain fills in the rest.  He's not immersed into the world at the table, he's immersed into the world of westerns in his head, of which the table is one expression.  If my character jumps behind the bar and looks for a weapon and there isn't one, my character thinks "Fuck", and I move on.  For Anon, the immersion stops because his player assumption based on genre disagrees with what happened at the table.  It seems to me the whole "narrative movement" with specific mechanics to reinforce that playstyle are there to make sure that immersion doesn't stop for anyone playing that way, because the mechanics are there to smooth over discrepancies between visions of what is happening. A whole lot of people play this way I think, hell they may even be the majority for all I know or care.  All I know is...I don't.  I don't play in literary genres, I play in worlds that are alternate universes, that could be just as real as ours.  They have their own physics and cosmology and while some things are the same as ours, others aren't.  

How do you roleplay?

I think I can give you a hint.
Anon is, and that's my impression about him since the TBP, long before reading that, immersed in a kind of improv theater performance.
In improv, if you assume something is right, "say yes (and there's no dice)" means that it is right... someone can then come up with some elaboration why it doesn't work as you'd expect it, but unless it's done skillfully, it's frowned upon as "blocking".
The GM's reality doesn't have prevalence in this style, unless he had managed to already establish his facts. Games made for this style tend to make it easier on the GM to establish facts and restrict the facts players can establish (see: A World of Dew, Houses of the Blooded). A lot of groups just allow players to declare such facts, barring GM veto, if they want it - while playing wholly traditional games.

And then there's the wholly different layer of playing where you don't control just your own character. You can be immersed in that, too, but it's not immersing in a character.

And on the other end of the spectrum, there's the usual kind of roleplayng that you, CRK, are used to. It's like roleplaying in a training simulation. If the simulation is skillfully done, it's the most immersive IMO.
Otherwise, I'd prefer the "improve" set-up.

Me? I've done a little improv, I've done quite a bit of traditional roleplaying. I've done story games and I like writing.
I can do any of these, but I prefer the traditional style. Except when I'm in the mood for something else, I default to it.

I'd add that not only do I generally want a line between player and GM saying what happens or what is in the world, but I also don't want the GM making choices too much based on what seems cool, especially not at the level of what happens. I want to play in a game where things make a certain amount of sense (and mostly, completely make sense in a realistic, not genre-stylish, way), so I can believe in it and choose what to do based on what makes sense, and end up playing in a world that makes realistic sense, rather that being driven by some surreal sense of genre-style or rule-of-cool. I don't like playing in games where it generally works best to do what seems cool and stylish because the GM has that work, and there's no need to do things that actually make sense, because the GM and/or other players aren't thinking that way.

For example, when players who choose to jump on an enormous serpent or dragon and climb up to it's neck or something are just sort of allowed to do so, as if that weren't a suicidal ridiculous tactic that would probably just get them killed for umpteen reasons, because it seems cool and heroic and oh it would be unfun to have the brave heroic (but highly improbable) move get someone's PC embarrassed and injured or killed. Meanwhile the players using actual tactics that make sense end up being sidelined.

Quote from: AsenRG;860313I think I can give you a hint.
Anon is, and that's my impression about him since the TBP, long before reading that, immersed in a kind of improv theater performance.

I agree, we talked about that before back in the day, and that's something that crops up in a lot of other gaming techniques like "Say Yes, or Roll the Dice", "Fail Forward", etc. they are techniques for roleplaying within a collaborative story.

Quote from: Skarg;860315For example, when players who choose to jump on an enormous serpent or dragon and climb up to it's neck or something are just sort of allowed to do so, as if that weren't a suicidal ridiculous tactic that would probably just get them killed for umpteen reasons, because it seems cool and heroic and oh it would be unfun to have the brave heroic (but highly improbable) move get someone's PC embarrassed and injured or killed. Meanwhile the players using actual tactics that make sense end up being sidelined.

What is the point of having a giant serpent if you can't jump on its back? That's giants serpents are for!

If the GM throws something cool, fantastical and imaginative at me I should be able to respond in kind and have my character do something equally cool, fantastical and imaginative back and not simply stick to sensible tactics. Otherwise it's a bit like the GM gets the full technicolor treatment while the rest of us have to make do with the black and white version!

Quote from: Soylent Green;860329What is the point of having a giant serpent if you can't jump on its back? That's giants serpents are for!

If the GM throws something cool, fantastical and imaginative at me I should be able to respond in kind and have my character do something equally cool, fantastical and imaginative back and not simply stick to sensible tactics. Otherwise it's a bit like the GM gets the full technicolor treatment while the rest of us have to make do with the black and white version!

To me, it's not even a game about a giant serpent, if the rule of cool defies physics and suddenly allows a character to do things like jump farther than they could before, get on the back of something taller than they are without explaining how, hang on to and climb an enormous monster which has full freedom of movement itself and would in reality be extremely difficult to hold onto even if it couldn't just move or shake or scrape you off or roll over, etc all just because drool of cool.

Also, jumping on enormous monsters and killing them in nearly impossible ways isn't cool to me - it's some sort of weird contest-of-cool metagame that undermines for me the whole exercise of playing a game about some situation, by not having it be like the situation. If you can think of a way to kill an enormous monster as a human-sized adventurer... a way that would actually work, and you are willing to have your character face the actual odds your strategy would result in, and it works, or even if you die or lose a limb trying, that's what's cool to me. And hey, if you actually do something that has you get on its neck and kill it without bending logic other than by lucking out, then that's pretty wild too. (I also think it's cool if you realize it's not worth the risk and run like hell.) But just saying that you're doing something awesome (especially out of envy for the coolness of the GM's role) and then having the GM let it work for some meta-game reason, is a game I'm not really interested in showing up for.

Quote from: Skarg;860334To me, it's not even a game about a giant serpent, if the rule of cool defies physics and suddenly allows a character to do things like jump farther than they could before, get on the back of something taller than they are without explaining how, hang on to and climb an enormous monster which has full freedom of movement itself and would in reality be extremely difficult to hold onto even if it couldn't just move or shake or scrape you off or roll over, etc all just because drool of cool.

Also, jumping on enormous monsters and killing them in nearly impossible ways isn't cool to me - it's some sort of weird contest-of-cool metagame that undermines for me the whole exercise of playing a game about some situation, by not having it be like the situation. If you can think of a way to kill an enormous monster as a human-sized adventurer... a way that would actually work, and you are willing to have your character face the actual odds your strategy would result in, and it works, or even if you die or lose a limb trying, that's what's cool to me. And hey, if you actually do something that has you get on its neck and kill it without bending logic other than by lucking out, then that's pretty wild too. (I also think it's cool if you realize it's not worth the risk and run like hell.) But just saying that you're doing something awesome (especially out of envy for the coolness of the GM's role) and then having the GM let it work for some meta-game reason, is a game I'm not really interested in showing up for.

Exactly.  If you want to be a Jedi Knight let's play Star Wars where the genre expects it,

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860353Exactly.  If you want to be a Jedi Knight let's play Star Wars where the genre expects it,

That's where maybe the disconnect lies for me. For me jumping onto a the back of a giant snake is part and parcel of the fantasy genre. I can totally see Conan doing that and he's kind of like the king of all of giant snake fiction.

Granted I'm probably not as widely read in the fantasy genre as some here.

I guess what I am saying is this. I find it jarring that the GM gets to create a world filled with genre tropes, things that are wondrous, imaginative and that cater for the full-blown escapist experience and then expect the players to completely ignore the genre tropes and act as though it were a training simulation exercise.

I appreciate that is actually a very established still of play, one as old as the hobby itself, so it clearly works. But it still puzzles me.

Depends on the setting. In some setting the proper reaction to a giant flying serpent is "OHSWEETFUCK WHATS THAT!? RUN!!!!!" followed by screaming and dying.

"Fantasy" is an incredibly broad genre that includes innumerable tropes and conventions. Its important for everyone to be on the same page, meta scene editing or no.

Quote from: Nexus;860362Depends on the setting. In some setting the proper reaction to a giant flying serpent is "OHSWEETFUCK WHATS THAT!? RUN!!!!!" followed by screaming and dying.

"Fantasy" is an incredibly broad genre that includes innumerable tropes and conventions. Its important for everyone to be on the same page, meta scene editing or no.

Exactly.

In Tales of the Arabian Nights, Sinbad hides and sneaks then uses his turban to tie himself to the leg of the Giant Roc to hitch a ride out of the Valley of Diamonds.

In some other tale, Maxtar the Mighty leaps more than nine times his height in the air to reach the tail of the rock, then runs up it's back like Legolas* in Peter Jackson's movie, while swinging his surf-board sized sword around his head in a giant windup before chopping the Roc's head off with one super powered swing. And then lightly falls to the ground safely.

Both Sinbad and Maxtar are taking a ride on a Giant Roc, but they probably shouldn't be played at the same table.


* Have I mentioned how much I loath that scene?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860353Exactly.  If you want to be a Jedi Knight let's play Star Wars where the genre expects it,

Those would be the jumping green frog Yoda and the Clone Wars cartoon Jedis. Our WEG D6 Jedis never could do shit like that. Neither could any other Jedi in the first three* movies.


* According to release date

I don't think my sense of immersion is as fragile as either Anon's or Krueger's. Perhaps there is some trade off in that it is lower fidelity because of that. I don't know.

What I can tell you is this:

I don't consciously seek out genre emulation for any game that would be longer than a couple of sessions.

I think every campaign, through actual play and cooperation of the GM and players, develops its own sensibility that informs play as much as some external genre might.

I very much dislike metagaming, by which I mean players using OOC knowledge from previous games/characters to short circuit their interaction with the world.

In order to *not* metagame when I'm a player, I need to be conscious enough of what I know versus what my character knows. This means I have to cycle between first and second person states of mind, and if this hinders my immersion, it certainly doesn't do it to the point of hindering my enjoyment.

I do not mind OOC mechanics, and I don't find they bother my sense of immersion. They seem no greater bother to me than the cycling mentioned above.

My preference on the shotgun thing:
If the GM knows there is a shotgun there, then it's there.  
If the GM knows there is no shotgun there, then it's not there.
If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion.  GM's call. Always.

I don't think I could play a campaign with someone like Anon. Player entitlement of just about any sort chaps my ass, and that's how their quote came across to me.

I think I'd like playing a campaign with Krueger, but I wonder if my tendency toward some OOC discussion exploring what might/should be IC for my character would make him not enjoy playing with me.

Genre emulation doesn't affect my sense of immersion. I maybe an exception. I can get into the mindset and envision how the character might think and react with a frame work once I buy into the premise.

Quote from: Skarg;860315For example, when players who choose to jump on an enormous serpent or dragon and climb up to it's neck or something are just sort of allowed to do so, as if that weren't a suicidal ridiculous tactic that would probably just get them killed for umpteen reasons, because it seems cool and heroic and oh it would be unfun to have the brave heroic (but highly improbable) move get someone's PC embarrassed and injured or killed. Meanwhile the players using actual tactics that make sense end up being sidelined.

This is why I think it is important for the group to establish what game world physics they are after. I am open to games where you jump on the snake and heroically survive but also open to games where real world tactical stuff is going to matter. What I like is to know what I am getting into before hand. Usually when I am about to run a campaign I use shorthand descriptors like Real World Physics, Action Movie Physics, Comic Book Physics, etc to give them an indication of what to expect. This stuff matters for exactly the reason you describe. I once had a player who thought we the game was meant to be more action/adventure when I was pretty much playing it gritty and real, so he got confused when his attempt to burn down an imperial fleet simply resulted in a small fire that didn't go anywhere. Once I clarified what the setting and game were about he was cool with it and adapted his tactics to match. Had I been thinking in terms of Action Movie physics, things might have panned out differently.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860369My preference on the shotgun thing:
If the GM knows there is a shotgun there, then it's there.  
If the GM knows there is no shotgun there, then it's not there.
If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion.  GM's call. Always.

I agree with everything you said, but this was so nicely said it bears repeating.

Quote from: Bren;860385I agree with everything you said, but this was so nicely said it bears repeating.

Thanks!

Thinking about it some more, my response is from a point of view of not playing very many games where there are rules explicitly giving authorial control to the players.  

I have enjoyed short runs with Spirit of the Century (which is both very genre-specific and full of things like player declarations), but other Fate-based games haven't played very well for me.  The collaborative setting design and character creation of some Fate games has been quite fun (e.g. Dresden Files) but the actual game flew like a fossilized dinosaur turd (e.g. Dresden Files).

Unlike Anon Aderlan, I don't have a ... existential? ... crisis when the world doesn't meet genre-standard expectations (such as an untended shotgun behind every bar). Whence the assumption that the world is so beholden to one dude's limited imagination? That seems bizarrely solipsistic even with just the usual supposition of a 19th-century American character that he's living in a real world, OR the out-of-character fact of playing the game with other people.

With both considerations? Most peculiar, mama.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;860377This is why I think it is important for the group to establish what game world physics they are after.

I am a firm believer that step one is the referee clearly and unequivocally states their expectations for the campaign, and the players respond and negotiations happen.

Quote from: Soylent Green;860356That's where maybe the disconnect lies for me. For me jumping onto a the back of a giant snake is part and parcel of the fantasy genre. I can totally see Conan doing that and he's kind of like the king of all of giant snake fiction.

Granted I'm probably not as widely read in the fantasy genre as some here.

I guess what I am saying is this. I find it jarring that the GM gets to create a world filled with genre tropes, things that are wondrous, imaginative and that cater for the full-blown escapist experience and then expect the players to completely ignore the genre tropes and act as though it were a training simulation exercise.

I appreciate that is actually a very established still of play, one as old as the hobby itself, so it clearly works. But it still puzzles me.

I'd say that you are thinking of a different style of fiction mechanics than I am. I like realistic/logical/consistent simulationist fiction and games. I infer that you relate to fantasy as having the action and results determined by coolness/fun/imagination/epicness in a "narrativist" (I don't like the term, but it seems to be in use) way. Fantasy (fiction and games) includes both modes, with different works (and different parts of some works) ranging somewhere between one end or the other.

When I want someone to be able to have extreme heroic abilities in my game, I assign them the values (and/or magical or divine assistance) to be able to do extreme feats within the same system that includes realistic limits. Of course, even if you _can_ leap onto the back of a giant serpent, you might be much more likely to succeed by staying on the ground and using a long metal trident, and deploying some other men to distract it. To me, that's a game actually about a heroic / extreme situation, where the nature of that situation is actually present and available to interact with. In a game where the mechanics are about generic comparison of levels, or about PCs getting to be the cool heroes, or about the GM/narrator saying something cool happens, to me that's not really about a serpent and a hero - it's about symbolic storytelling or abstract gaming or something.

The thing is, although I do sometimes want to play games and read/watch/hear stories about amazing heroes doing amazing things, if they do the amazing things just because the author/GM/rules bend reality so the amazing deeds are actually just allowed because they're heroes, so the universe just makes it just as easy for them to do things that don't make sense, then I tend to notice it and it degrades my interest because now it's clearly a silly universe where the amazing events aren't actually amazing - they're being forced and aren't really happening in any way worth paying attention to.

I'm totally interested in playing a game where a few heroes with extreme but plausible skills have to use actual tactics and face actual risks against overwhelming odds, to see what they can pull off, and how the situation actually develops, and having to choose what to do to try to survive unpredictable events as they develop. I'm totally not interested if the rules don't represent the situation realistically, or if the GM is going to hand-wave all the fighting with mooks until the designated "big bad guy" appears, or if the players are just going to be allowed to not really be at risk, or if the GM is going to declare that we automatically lose.

I think this line of reasoning has merit, because when people talk about 'breaking immersion' they really seem to be talking about 'context shifts', so it's useful to know how they define those contexts. But a major problem in these discussions is that people also tend to assume absolute positions as opposed to ideals at different ends of a spectrum. So let's see how it goes.

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Quote from: CRKrueger;860183In other words, once he finds out "Western", his brain fills in the rest.  He's not immersed into the world at the table, he's immersed into the world of westerns in his head

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I don't want to immerse in my head, I can do that whenever I want...I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

But there IS no world at the table, just the one inside your head, which is informed by very limited external input. You can't even be certain of the world in other people's head, yet still must be careful to avoid unintentionally contradicting their unstated assumptions and breaking their immersion, especially if you're the GM.

There's a whole collection of helpful techniques, but none of them are universal. Some players find 'combat mode' breaks their immersion, despite being perhaps the least ambiguous communication channel in play. I find playing the equivalent of '20 questions' with the GM to establish every (what perhaps only I believe to be) relevant detail breaks mine, but others rely on it to support theirs. And I get that every RPG needs to break immersion from time to time. I just prefer to minimize it when possible and have mechanisms which allow me to reengage quickly.

Quote from: cranebump;860211The idea that one's "immersion" is ruined because their ability to auto-create shit they expect into the scene sounds a bit like horseshit.

It's not about creation, but revelation.

When your character walks into a 20x20 room, do you imagine it to have colorless walls until the GM provides that detail? How do you immerse in that? What other details does the GM need to legitimize until you add it to the world inside your head?

That's deliberately hyperbolic to address a point. Of course people fill in those details, but they're usually not conscious of doing so, which means they don't tend to verify them with everyone else. So what happens when those undisclosed details are relevant to play? What happens when you base an action on an internal assumption you forgot to verify with the GM because it was too 'obvious' to bother? Because this situation pops up often enough that I consider it to be a huge problem.

Rules help by defining (though often not explicitly so) which elements players should assume are unknown or undefined until play determines them (for example, hitting something in D&D). Those elements also tend to be what the game is about, so changing them has a massive impact on play, and players working under an incompatible set a major disruption.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860241Rather than "we hide behind the tapestry" or "we hide behind the table" or "we hide behind the pillar," we used to say "What can we hide behind?"

Asking "What can we hide behind?" establishes intent but provides no hint as to what your current assumptions are. Even saying "I look for something to hide behind" is preferable for immersion, because at least that's engaging from a character's PoV. But "we hide behind the tapestry" establishes both and allows the GM to respond with things like "it won't hide all of you" to "strangely there are no tapestries, at best there's a pillar with bust on it".

It's not that amending a player's assumptions should never be done, only that it should never be done unnecessarily. So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?
 

Quote from: Bren;860256I have seen brand new players use the first kind of statement. In part, because the division of creator GM and actor player is not clear to them.

This division is nowhere near as simple and ubiquitous as many seem to think however, which leads to a lot of hostility in discussions like this. It takes time to establish this division, during which many new players may actually not stick around because they feel their contributions are not valued and constantly being 'corrected' is no fun. And the biggest reason I think people stick with specific GMs and rule systems is because they draw these lines in ways they're already familiar with, regardless of how much better other RPGs might be at supporting their style of play.

Quote from: Bren;860256Someone's significant other was playing for the first time and he said, "I hit him with my wooden leg." This provoked looks of utter confusion from the rest of the table because this seven word sentence included two faits accomplis. First it assumed the attack would hit. Second, and more unusual, it assumed that the character, who had hitherto not been an amputee, had a wooden leg. This would have been less jarring if the character had been, say a pirate from the Age of Sail, instead of a 1920s Miskatonic college student.

It was immersion breaking because neither the genre nor the character established such a possibility beforehand. It's examples like these which lead folks to think 'storygames' are like some Lucky Charms commercial where you just declare there's a balloon and fly away. But that's actually the kind of play they're designed to prevent, because the goal is to enable multiple participants to construct a coherent ongoing narrative which makes sense in the setting.

Quote from: Bren;860256I've also seen people say "I shoot the guy with the machinegun." as shorthand for "I shoot at the guy with the machinegun." As long as everyone at the table is on the same page that player statements are statements of intention rather than statements of result, that's OK.

I agree. Everything a player (and to a lesser extent the GM) presents is a proposal, and one of the purposes of play is to establish when such proposals become part of the shared fiction.

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Quote from: Opaopajr;860282But then that tasks both GM and player to talk often and bring clarity to the scene. However this involves good description, active engagement, and active listening. Which seem like impossible arts at the best of times IRL, let alone on one's recreation.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860421I am a firm believer that step one is the referee clearly and unequivocally states their expectations for the campaign, and the players respond and negotiations happen.

Which is why it's so important for RPGs to provide techniques which help facilitate this. Too many people involved in this hobby still think that all it takes to communicate clearly is the desire to, but in reality skill and effort play an enormous part.

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Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860353If you want to be a Jedi Knight let's play Star Wars where the genre expects it,

Quote from: Bren;860365Those would be the jumping green frog Yoda and the Clone Wars cartoon Jedis. Our WEG D6 Jedis never could do shit like that. Neither could any other Jedi in the first three* movies.

See? Genre conventions aren't even guaranteed to be consistent within the same setting.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860369I don't consciously seek out genre emulation for any game that would be longer than a couple of sessions.

But you have to rely on it when your character takes action in order to know what the results will be. Genre conventions are what establish the laws of a fictional reality.

For example, a gunshot wound:

• Realism? Nothing, dying and in shock, or dead.
• Toon? Outlandish dying monologe, then doesn't really die.
• 80's Action? Shrug it off, unless you're one day from retirement.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860369I don't think I could play a campaign with someone like Anon. Player entitlement of just about any sort chaps my ass, and that's how their quote came across to me.

Entitlement implies the assumption of a certain social order which here is not clearly expressed, and a level of selfish intent which I guarantee is not present. If anything, I specifically look for opportunities to work off and acknowledge the contributions of other players, which may not be the most immersive thing in the world, but I'm willing to make that concession because of how much better the experience becomes for everyone in the long run.

But to get a clearer idea of where you're coming from, let me propose a deliberately loaded question: Why does a player revealing a detail disrupt your immersion more than when the GM does?

Quote from: Phillip;860420Unlike Anon Aderlan, I don't have a ... existential? ... crisis when the world doesn't meet genre-standard expectations

Don't worry. RPGs are a big part of my life, but they're still not important enough to have an existential crisis (or even political opinions) over. Seriously, it's just a game, and treating them as anything more is starting to burn more bridges than build them.

Quote from: Skarg;860431I'm totally interested in playing a game where a few heroes with extreme but plausible skills have to use actual tactics and face actual risks against overwhelming odds, to see what they can pull off, and how the situation actually develops, and having to choose what to do to try to survive unpredictable events as they develop. I'm totally not interested if the rules don't represent the situation realistically

I actually want the same thing. The problem is everyone has a different idea of what realistic is. Hell, even physicists disagree on what the proper model of reality is, and they're the folks trying to model it as accurately as possible.

Assuming what's realistic should be obvious to everyone is another belief that generates lot of hostility.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592But you have to rely on it when your character takes action in order to know what the results will be. Genre conventions are what establish the laws of a fictional reality.

For example, a gunshot wound:

• Realism? Nothing, dying and in shock, or dead.
• Toon? Outlandish dying monologe, then doesn't really die.
• 80's Action? Shrug it off, unless you're one day from retirement.

No, one does not have to rely on a genre conventions to establish the laws of a fictional reality. The rules alone can provide that. Whatever things formed and informed those rules, however pure or mongrel, aren't necessary going forward.  That particular ancestral calculus might be impossible, or inconsistent as you have pointed out yourself.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592Entitlement implies the assumption of a certain social order which here is not clearly expressed, and a level of selfish intent which I guarantee is not present. If anything, I specifically look for opportunities to work off and acknowledge the contributions of other players, which may not be the most immersive thing in the world, but I'm willing to make that concession because of how much better the experience becomes for everyone in the long run.

But to get a clearer idea of where you're coming from, let me propose a deliberately loaded question: Why does a player revealing a detail disrupt your immersion more than when the GM does?

It does not.  Surprise, your question wasn't loaded! Quick, what genre is that?

If the character goes for the shotgun under the counter and it's there? That's cool.
If the character goes for the shotgun under the counter and it's not there? That's cool.
If the character goes for the shotgun under the counter and it's not there, and then the player huffs about how the shotgun would have been there in Cowboy Bebop? Lame.

Notice that in no case did it matter in my evaluation whether the GM had already decided whether a shotgun was there. It doesn't matter to my character, nor to me as a player.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592I think this line of reasoning has merit, because when people talk about 'breaking immersion' they really seem to be talking about 'context shifts', so it's useful to know how they define those contexts. But a major problem in these discussions is that people also tend to assume absolute positions as opposed to ideals at different ends of a spectrum. ...

I think you're basically correct.

Like so many things, this can be mitigated by player contracts / agreement / GM presentation, or can be a huge issue if there is no contract, contradictory player expectations, and/or GM or other issues.

QuoteBut there IS no world at the table, just the one inside your head, which is informed by very limited external input.

Well, there can be. Almost all my combats, and many of my mundane situations, get a map laid out with counters tracking where people and things are. In the games I started with (Melee, Death Test...) there really wasn't anything to make up and get confused about. If it wasn't written down, it didn't exist, and there was a clear rule for everything. Of course, the programmed adventure or enemy player might have things written down you didn't know about yet, but no one was allowed to just dream up objects, people, abilities or places. This formed the core model as we elaborated to full TFT sandbox campaign play.

This is of course exactly why I keep replying in the threads about whether a game system needs a map, or if it can get away with abstract movement or abstract weapon ranges, or just make all weapons do the same damage, or have hitpoints just abstractly represent that something happens to allow someone not to die yet. For myself (not for others) I answer those questions with a loud "no" exactly because I want to play a game with rules (and mapped locations) about all of that, so I can interact with something solid and play a tactical game about it that has consistent and realistic rules, rather than trying to have a collaborative imagination about it, especially if some players think rule of cool should determine what happens.

QuoteYou can't even be certain of the world in other people's head, yet still must be careful to avoid unintentionally contradicting their unstated assumptions and breaking their immersion, especially if you're the GM.

Yes, though it depends on the expectations. The way I and my original RPG pals play, the GM in theory has a map and a character sheet for everything, and if you go outside what he has written down, he generates it. The GM has the responsibility to describe things as their characters would be aware of them, not leaving out anything important. Players have the responsibility to ask about details they care about. If you imagined Foondar had a beard and the GM later says he didn't, you need to retcon your imagination if it matters. (Or you could try saying "Aw! I always imagined him with a beard!" and the GM might recon his version.)

That is, the GM is the authority, and avoids contradicting unstated assumptions by carefully telling them everything important that he's aware of that the PCs would notice. The players need to let him know what they're interested in. They might make some suggestions, but mainly they ask and try not to assume.

Quote...
It's not about creation, but revelation.

When your character walks into a 20x20 room, do you imagine it to have colorless walls until the GM provides that detail? How do you immerse in that? What other details does the GM need to legitimize until you add it to the world inside your head?

That's deliberately hyperbolic to address a point. Of course people fill in those details, but they're usually not conscious of doing so, which means they don't tend to verify them with everyone else. So what happens when those undisclosed details are relevant to play? What happens when you base an action on an internal assumption you forgot to verify with the GM because it was too 'obvious' to bother? Because this situation pops up often enough that I consider it to be a huge problem.

Rules help by defining (though often not explicitly so) which elements players should assume are unknown or undefined until play determines them ...

Yes! My answer to the "huge problem" is I feel this is a core GM skill, and you get good at it by GM'ing for years and making mistakes and learning from them, including learning to laugh and retcon things fairly and hopefully with the least upset.

In your example, I try to describe things like the appearance and details of the walls of a place when entering it, and then mention any variations as they come up... IF the character notices, which sometimes involves a roll. This was actually fairly well established in the campaign book I started with, In The Labyrinth, which includes things like the GM's responsibility to give out certain types of information, unless the players or their characters aren't doing their part. There are rules for rolling to notice things, how far different noise levels carry taking into account doors, and the chance to notice a gradual slope, and instructions to withhold information and deny mapping when players are running or fighting, etc.

QuoteAsking "What can we hide behind?" establishes intent but provides no hint as to what your current assumptions are. Even saying "I look for something to hide behind" is preferable for immersion, because at least that's engaging from a character's PoV. But "we hide behind the tapestry" establishes both and allows the GM to respond with things like "it won't hide all of you" to "strangely there are no tapestries, at best there's a pillar with bust on it".

It's not that amending a player's assumptions should never be done, only that it should never be done unnecessarily. So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Yes.

QuoteThis division is nowhere near as simple and ubiquitous as many seem to think however, which leads to a lot of hostility in discussions like this. It takes time to establish this division, during which many new players may actually not stick around because they feel their contributions are not valued and constantly being 'corrected' is no fun. And the biggest reason I think people stick with specific GMs and rule systems is because they draw these lines in ways they're already familiar with, regardless of how much better other RPGs might be at supporting their style of play.

Yes.

QuoteIt was immersion breaking because neither the genre nor the character established such a possibility beforehand. It's examples like these which lead folks to think 'storygames' are like some Lucky Charms commercial where you just declare there's a balloon and fly away. But that's actually the kind of play they're designed to prevent, because the goal is to enable multiple participants to construct a coherent ongoing narrative which makes sense in the setting.
...
Everything a player (and to a lesser extent the GM) presents is a proposal, and one of the purposes of play is to establish when such proposals become part of the shared fiction.

Yes and yes. Though some players and some games actually encourage this. Still, even in Microscope, it's an explicit rule that you are not allowed to contradict anything that another player has established. At most, if you catch it as they say it, you can challenge it then and suggest a variant, and then if the original player doesn't like your edit, there's a vote to determine what becomes the established fact.

Quote...
I actually want the same thing. The problem is everyone has a different idea of what realistic is. Hell, even physicists disagree on what the proper model of reality is, and they're the folks trying to model it as accurately as possible.

Assuming what's realistic should be obvious to everyone is another belief that generates lot of hostility.

Yeah, though if you agree on a ruleset, including the GM's house rules, then hopefully players are only bringing up any realism quibbles they have between sessions, with the aim of improving the realism of the rules.

I'm relatively happy with the level of realism in my chosen rules + houserules, and I'm almost always (between sessions) looking to learn and refine them.

I'm picky about what other rules I'm willing to play with, and avoid many games because of it, but when in someone else's game, I accept the rules they're playing with, and if I can't stand it, I bow out.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592But there IS no world at the table, just the one inside your head, which is informed by very limited external input. You can't even be certain of the world in other people's head, yet still must be careful to avoid unintentionally contradicting their unstated assumptions and breaking their immersion, especially if you're the GM.

You say, "especially if you're the GM" as if somehow the GM's changes are more disruptive that a players. Why "especially" the GM?

QuoteAnd I get that every RPG needs to break immersion from time to time. I just prefer to minimize it when possible and have mechanisms which allow me to reengage quickly.

It's not clear that you recognize that what you want conflicts with what some other people want. Or that if you get your preference that increases the effort, time, and difficulty for those other players to immerse or to "reengage."

QuoteIt's not about creation, but revelation.

Play-toe, po-tay-toe, po-ta-toe.

QuoteWhen your character walks into a 20x20 room, do you imagine it to have colorless walls until the GM provides that detail? How do you immerse in that? What other details does the GM need to legitimize until you add it to the world inside your head?

Generally I don't imagine the color. I spend more of my imagination and mental energy considering what detail has been provided than in inventing wall colors or other gap filling details. The color of the wall is seldom relevant to me in seeing the scene. And when it is relevant, it's almost always because the GM described it for some reason—possibly because they thought the color relevant. So ignoring it works well for me. I accept that it probably doesn't work so well for you though.

QuoteThat's deliberately hyperbolic to address a point. Of course people fill in those details, but they're usually not conscious of doing so, which means they don't tend to verify them with everyone else. So what happens when those undisclosed details are relevant to play? What happens when you base an action on an internal assumption you forgot to verify with the GM because it was too 'obvious' to bother? Because this situation pops up often enough that I consider it to be a huge problem.

People fill in different amounts and kinds of detail. I have had one player who has the problem you describe. And when that comes up, I frequently find their imagination of the scene does not align with that of anyone else. Not mine as the GM and not any of the other players at the table. So other than catering to that one player's imagination over and above that of the others at the table, there isn't much that can be done by me as the GM. Most players prefer a consistent world. The question is, of course, whose world to use. Traditional games use the GM's world. Some non-traditional games encourage group creation. I know which I prefer. I think I know which you prefer.

QuoteAsking "What can we hide behind?" establishes intent but provides no hint as to what your current assumptions are. Even saying "I look for something to hide behind" is preferable for immersion, because at least that's engaging from a character's PoV. But "we hide behind the tapestry" establishes both and allows the GM to respond with things like "it won't hide all of you" to "strangely there are no tapestries, at best there's a pillar with bust on it".

Often what is strange is not that there are no tapestries, but that one person thinks that there should be tapestries in the poor peasant's cottage. I find that often when players do that it is because they missed prior setting clues that would indicate an absence of tapestries as the most likely scene to imagine. And often the other players noticed those clues and imagined a hut without tapestries. So putting the tapestry in to make room consistent with A's imagining of the room necessarily makes the room inconsistent with the imaginings of B, C, and G. Here I default to utilitarian ethics in saying that it's better for A to have to reconcile the lack of tapestries in the scene than for everyone else to reconcile the insertion.

QuoteIt's not that amending a player's assumptions should never be done, only that it should never be done unnecessarily. So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

I  think I've answered that. For the game to occur there needs to be sufficient consistency so that actions make sense. The GM bears the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining consistency. Therefore the GM must always balance a player's imagined creations against what the GM has imagined and what the other players may have imagined. You mention a concern with playing questions with the GM. I agree that can be a problem, but if that is a problem, it is even more of a problem to expect the GM to play 20 questions with three or more different players who have each imagined different scenes. Any change made for Player A may well invalidate the imagining of Players B and C in addition to the imagination of the GM himself. And once again we are back to utilitarian ethics.

QuoteIt was immersion breaking because neither the genre nor the character established such a possibility beforehand. It's examples like these which lead folks to think 'storygames' are like some Lucky Charms commercial where you just declare there's a balloon and fly away. But that's actually the kind of play they're designed to prevent, because the goal is to enable multiple participants to construct a coherent ongoing narrative which makes sense in the setting.

Traditional games are designed to prevent a Lucky Charms style of play by designating one participant to create the bulk of the setting and to maintain its consistency. Axiomatically it is simpler for one person to hold a consistent vision than for four people to do so. In addition, some people prefer the experience of exploring an existent world rather than the experience of group narrating a shared creation. Joint creation by the group is incompatible with exploring an apparently existent world

QuoteI agree. Everything a player (and to a lesser extent the GM) presents is a proposal, and one of the purposes of play is to establish when such proposals become part of the shared fiction.

This purpose assumes that everyone desires group narration of a shared creation as a goal. As I said, even though that appears to be your preference, not everyone shares it. I lean more towards wanting to explore an existent world, myself.

QuoteWhich is why it's so important for RPGs to provide techniques which help facilitate this. Too many people involved in this hobby still think that all it takes to communicate clearly is the desire to, but in reality skill and effort play an enormous part.

Since you indulged in prior hyperbole, allow me to do the same. One technique that games seldom mention is for the players to exert some self-control over their imagination to prevent themselves from imagining the equivalent of red walls and golden tapestries in the hut of a humble farmer. Now it's hyperbole, because I suspect that controlling imagination is pretty difficult in general and very difficult for some specific people.

QuoteSee? Genre conventions aren't even guaranteed to be consistent within the same setting.

My point is that the first three movies are actually a very different setting with respect to Jedi powers than is found in the three prequels and the animated series. I enjoy both settings, but I recognize they aren't actually consistent with each other. Consistency is not really one of Lucas' signal virtues nor one that I suspect he has ever been as concerned with as he has for getting a particular image or scene on the screen.

No game setting can be 100% consistent. That doesn't mean we can't aim for consistency though. But you seem to see reality as being less liable to a shared understanding between the players at the table than a genre convention. To take your gunshot example, while I disagree with all three of your categories, let's look at reality. Sure we are fortunate to live in a society where most people aren't familiar with and have no need to be familiar with the real effects of gunshot wounds or even the real odds of hitting someone with a gunshot in a firefight. That's one of the reasons that most RPGs have rules for combat and damage though. So in an RPG the rules should provide a shared understanding for how gunshots work so we don't need to argue about which movie we each had in mind when we said, "Hollywood Physics."

QuoteBut to get a clearer idea of where you're coming from, let me propose a deliberately loaded question: Why does a player revealing a detail disrupt your immersion more than when the GM does?

There are two reasons. One is because it is less expected. Now that is just an artifact of how traditional gaming works so we might think it is irrelevant. But it's not.

The other reason is that part of what we do as players, or at least what we should do, is to try to intuit and understand how the GM sees the scene. This is a skill that takes effort and practice and that improves with experience. Its related to other social skills humans have developed in predicting social interactions. And it can be improved both by experience in general, but most particularly by experience with one particular GM.

Now when we allow Player A to insert some new element into the scene that does not accord with our current understanding, that new element is probably more unexpected and more distracting because it is coming from an unexpected and unanticipated direction. And if I, as a player, try to anticipate that new element I then need to intuit not just how the GM sees the scene but also how each of my fellow players sees the scene. That calls for spreading my available concentration across everyone at the table which means that I will be less effective at the intuition process than if I can safely limit the bulk of my attention and anticipation towards understanding and intuiting the GM's perspective.

QuoteI actually want the same thing. The problem is everyone has a different idea of what realistic is. Hell, even physicists disagree on what the proper model of reality is, and they're the folks trying to model it as accurately as possible.

As you already pointed out, using genre conventions does not solve this problem. It is a fundamental problem of differing perspectives that isn't fully resolvable. Clarity in setting expectations can help, but it isn't perfect.

QuoteAssuming what's realistic should be obvious to everyone is another belief that generates lot of hostility.

Reality has the advantage of providing an answer to most questions that come up in a game session. The participants may not want to research or experiment to find the answers, but the answers exist*. Genre conventions are just subjective categories or rubrics we create to simplify our thought process and thus there is no objective reality to genre conventions. The conflicts there are only resolvable by compromise or by not playing with those with whom we cannot reach a compromise.


* Obviously we can't use reality to experiment with things like dragons or FTL spaceships though we may be able to draw inferences from similar real world situations.

Quote from: Bren;860624Generally I don't imagine the color. I spend more of my imagination and mental energy considering what detail has been provided than in inventing wall colors or other gap filling details. The color of the wall is seldom relevant to me in seeing the scene. And when it is relevant, it's almost always because the GM described it for some reason—possibly because they thought the color relevant. So ignoring it works well for me. I accept that it probably doesn't work so well for you though.

Out of curiosity what do you picture? This just seems striking to me because I find I naturally fill in details like the coloration on my own. I don't know that I could imagine it without adding in color (unless I am picturing the location in black and white for some reason). If the GM clarifies the color and it is different than I initially imagined I just incorporate the new details in and adjust, but I definitely find I fill in more than just what the GM specifically describes.

Anon Adderlan: "... existential? ..." was not meant to imply any non-game significance in the term (uncertainty in choice of which I tried to indicate). The primary in-game issue to which I pointed was the apparent weirdness of such an in-character response. The relevance of real life is as a model of what to expect of an imaginary character who believes his own world to be real.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;860628Out of curiosity what do you picture? This just seems striking to me because I find I naturally fill in details like the coloration on my own. I don't know that I could imagine it without adding in color (unless I am picturing the location in black and white for some reason). If the GM clarifies the color and it is different than I initially imagined I just incorporate the new details in and adjust, but I definitely find I fill in more than just what the GM specifically describes.

This is where I fall. I do fill in details (or ask if the GM didn't mention them and they seem relevant or interesting) but if its later proved I was mistaken its not a big issue and I try to ask before basing any significant action on my assumptions.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;860628Out of curiosity what do you picture? This just seems striking to me because I find I naturally fill in details like the coloration on my own. I don't know that I could imagine it without adding in color (unless I am picturing the location in black and white for some reason). If the GM clarifies the color and it is different than I initially imagined I just incorporate the new details in and adjust, but I definitely find I fill in more than just what the GM specifically describes.

I don't tend to picture or "see" the walls at all. Seeing doesn't work like a camera photo. In real life when I'm in a room I don't spend much attention on the wall color unless it is jarring. I'm more likely to look at the people or objects in the room or on the walls. So in an RPG I see things in a similar fashion.

This is abetted by the fact that after years of looking at dungeon maps and gaming with miniatures I often have a top down tactical perspective unless my PC is looking "at" something. So if my PC looks at an NPC or an altar I might see that, but generally my PC doesn't look at the walls. Why would he/she? Usually the walls don't do and won't do anything but other objects and beings in the room might.

I suppose if I had to pick a color it might be something nondescript like gray or beige.

On assumptions:

In another (perhaps many other) threads, there has been posed the situation of the player of a high-level D&D character with plenty of HP leaping off a cliff confident of surviving.

That assurance is the default built into the official rules in most (all?) editions, which is one reason it is also common practice. It's as simply understandable as any assumption based on the premise of playing D&D as commonly understood.

That does not mean there's anything wrong with Gronan declaring that in his world the leap is certain death. However, in the interest of role-playing, if that is my character's understanding then it should also be mine. In the interest of fairness and an interesting game, I should have at least a good chance of discovering the conventional wisdom even if my figure is a stranger to the world.

The notion that the laws of the world must be overturned just because I wish they were otherwise is untenable, because there is no criterion privileging my fancy; the laws would spin as often as another player with another whim spoke.

Hence the role of the Referee/Judge/GM in a role-playing game -- and of "narrative authority" rules in a story-telling game.

One of the most useful things I learned in grad school the first time through was "state your assumptions."  It applies to RPGs too, both referee and players.

I assume that I'm not playing with idiots or assholes - since I won't. That drastically decreases the number of other assumptions that need to be stated before play.

Is this another one of those cases where much of the problem falls away if you replace "immersion" with "in-character point of view"?

As in, "My immersion [in what I agree is an RPG] depends on an in-character point of view. Disrupt the IC-POV, and you disrupt my immersion."

Honest rejoinder: "My immersion doesn't depend on an IC-POV."

Questionable rejoinder: "My IC-POV isn't disrupted by the fact that I know I can dictate details of the setting."

To answer the original question: I've found my enjoyment of RPG-like games depends a lot on (a) expectations going in and (b) harmonization of the game's stance on IC-POV and player interaction. A game that allegedly requires me to advocate full-out for my character, and then expects me to also self-police my use of metagame resources or mechanics = teh suxx0rz.

"I'll take this penalty to get that bonus" is pretty screwy when it's not something my character would actually (at least consciously) choose.

To me I believe it has worked and could work if I don't really care about my character as much as I'm interested in the evolution of the "story". But then I'm not doing IC-POV.

Quote from: Bren;860641I don't tend to picture or "see" the walls at all. Seeing doesn't work like a camera photo. In real life when I'm in a room I don't spend much attention on the wall color unless it is jarring. I'm more likely to look at the people or objects in the room or on the walls. So in an RPG I see things in a similar fashion.

This is abetted by the fact that after years of looking at dungeon maps and gaming with miniatures I often have a top down tactical perspective unless my PC is looking "at" something. So if my PC looks at an NPC or an altar I might see that, but generally my PC doesn't look at the walls. Why would he/she? Usually the walls don't do and won't do anything but other objects and beings in the room might.

I suppose if I had to pick a color it might be something nondescript like gray or beige.

Okay. I was just curious. Personally I find I always fill in details like colors automatically so I just want wondering what things looked like to you, but this explanation makes sense (I would have a hard time doing that I think).

I go back and forth between immersing in character and treating the character as someone I'm invested in. I don't find that I need to be IC all the time, otherwise I wouldn't enjoy the mechanical bits of any game.

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183(I think they fall on their face when, like Ron Edwards, or Robin Laws, they assume that's what going on in their head is what's going on in mine, whether I realize it or not, but that's a different thread.)

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

Your trying to get whats going on inside your head to match what is going on inside their(GM) head?
That's nice, but will never happen.
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore.  Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860809Your trying to get whats going on inside your head to match what is going on inside their(GM) head?
That's nice, but will never happen.

1) So what if it doesn't? The inability to achieve perfection doesn't negate the utility or purpose of striving for perfection.

2) How do you know it will never match? I've certainly had instances in game of having total congruence between player and GM imagination. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen occasionally.

I suppose one might argue that there is some thing that never came up in play and that neither of us discussed in which our imaginations didn't actually match. Like say if I thought the walls were gray and the GM thought the walls were taupe or I thought short brown hair female NPC meant a pixie cut and the GM was thinking more of a crew cut, but since neither of us ever discussed the wall color or the exact hair length and it never impacted the actual play that occurred, then no one would ever know that we disagree on the imaginary wall color or hair length and thus no one would ever know that we weren't totally in sync, so in effect, in every observable way we were totally in sync.

QuoteI don't believe that anymore.  Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

Great, I guess. So what is it that you believe instead?

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183He's not immersed into the world at the table, he's immersed into the world of westerns in his head, of which the table is one expression.  If my character jumps behind the bar and looks for a weapon and there isn't one, my character thinks "Fuck", and I move on.  For Anon, the immersion stops because his player assumption based on genre disagrees with what happened at the table.

I quite agree.  For my part, I know more about the Old West than your average Hollywood potboiler imparts, and shotguns were in fact quite uncommon; they were far from standard equipment for bartenders.  (Heck, there's a short story by Louis L'Amour, who paid a lot more attention to realism than most Western authors, which hinged on that fact: how did the man convicted of the robbery get that shotgun, when it was well known that there were only a half-dozen of them in the area, and the owners of all of them known men?  Huh, maybe we ought to check them all and see which had been fired lately ...)

So ... should a player's expectation of the milieu supersede the GM's own preferences for the milieu he or she's running?  I don't think so.  For all we know, Anon's GM is running a strictly realistic Old West.

I understand Asen's notion about improv theater, but the hinge point is this: that style of play is -- I fancy -- unusual at best at the vast majority of gaming tables.  I'd never assume it was the default standard.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860809Your trying to get whats going on inside your head to match what is going on inside their(GM) head?
That's nice, but will never happen.
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore.  Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

Who is trying to match anything?

As a player playing a character in a fictional world you simply react and interact with the world as your character knows it. You can jump behind the bar because the bar was described as being present.

No part of that process involves trying to guess what anyone else is thinking. If you want more detail as to the nature or contents of an area just ask for more information. That information is yours to use in decision making.

It is a very simple process. If you want to be the one that creates world detail out of thin air then be the one running the damn game.

In a cooperative story telling game the role a player plays is one of co-author and not just an inhabitant of a fictional world. In that case the game should have rules and procedures for content creation that covers such situations.

I must remember to have my rpg characters dive behind the next bar they encounter and draw forth the triple sec or blue curaçao which must obviously be there! My expectations! Who doesn't drink mai tais and cosmos? :rolleyes:

Quote from: Opaopajr;860941I must remember to have my rpg characters dive behind the next bar they encounter and draw forth the triple sec or blue curaçao which must obviously be there! My expectations! Who doesn't drink mai tais and cosmos? :rolleyes:

Don't forget to grab a few oranges while you're back there. The Blue Moon sales rep has obviously been by to show the bartender how to garnish their beer! :rotfl:

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860944Don't forget to grab a few oranges while you're back there. The Blue Moon sales rep has obviously been by to show the bartender how to garnish their beer! :rotfl:

They'll be right behind the Zimas.

Quote from: Opaopajr;860941I must remember to have my rpg characters dive behind the next bar they encounter and draw forth the triple sec or blue curaçao which must obviously be there! My expectations! Who doesn't drink mai tais and cosmos? :rolleyes:

You better spend your damn Handwave Points!

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860938Who is trying to match anything?

CRKrueger.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860938As a player playing a character in a fictional world you simply react and interact with the world as your character knows it. You can jump behind the bar because the bar was described as being present.

No part of that process involves trying to guess what anyone else is thinking. If you want more detail as to the nature or contents of an area just ask for more information. That information is yours to use in decision making.

This fictional world resides where?  Oh in the DM's head.  So how are you not trying to match what is going on inside their head with what is going on inside your head?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860938It is a very simple process. If you want to be the one that creates world detail out of thin air then be the one running the damn game.

I game with mature adults.   People I have no problems with adding to the fictional game world we are all trying to inhabit.
If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always.
Nah I don't buy that.  The GM's call was never bothering to determine.  

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860938In a cooperative story telling game the role a player plays is one of co-author and not just an inhabitant of a fictional world. In that case the game should have rules and procedures for content creation that covers such situations.

And a 'traditional RPG' doesn't have any restrictions on the matter either, where does it say players are not allowed to add detail to the fictional settings?


What isn't lost on me is the majority of the people here run the games(supposedly) The everything starts and stops with the GM mantra isn't a surprise.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960What isn't lost on me is the majority of the people here run the games(supposedly) The everything starts and stops with the GM mantra isn't a surprise.

AS A PLAYER, I want the GM to handle that stuff so I can get on with my role-playing.

What's lost on you is that a lot of people happen to like that, even if we ALSO like narrative games, card games, live action games, video games, and whatever else.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960This fictional world resides where?  Oh in the DM's head.  So how are you not trying to match what is going on inside their head with what is going on inside your head?

Once world details are shared with the players it is no longer only inside the DMs head. Details that are communicated to the group are there for everyone to use.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960I game with mature adults.   People I have no problems with adding to the fictional game world we are all trying to inhabit.
If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always.
Nah I don't buy that.  The GM's call was never bothering to determine.

Me too. And in our games if  an individual has the ability to add something to the game world then it is used.  If their character does not command such a power then it isn't done.
 

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960And a 'traditional RPG' doesn't have any restrictions on the matter either, where does it say players are not allowed to add detail to the fictional settings?

Usually rule 0 takes care of that.

 Sometimes the DM will ask for details from the players. A while back in a D&D game that I was playing in, our characters were well off and built businesses for ourselves. My bugbear fighter opened a smithy and I was asked to detail the business, drew a map of it, created an apprentice NPC who worked in the shop, and some other stuff. It was a lot of fun.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960What isn't lost on me is the majority of the people here run the games(supposedly) The everything starts and stops with the GM mantra isn't a surprise.

Unless everyone participating in the game is co-storyteller then yeah thats the way it is. You want to run the world, then run the game. As a player I enjoy the aspect of only having to worry about a single character and those goals instead of keeping a world moving. Its refreshing to let all that go if you DM quite a bit.

I consider the GM the final arbiter on what exists in the setting and I go by what the GM describes, but if the GM says we enter a tavern, I am going to picture tables whether he says they exist or not. I'll be happy to change what I am picturing if he says there are not any, but I am going to fill in details based on assumptions, if only because I don't expect or want the GM to list of every little minor thing that is present.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;860975I consider the GM the final arbiter on what exists in the setting and I go by what the GM describes, but if the GM says we enter a tavern, I am going to picture tables whether he says they exist or not. I'll be happy to change what I am picturing if he says there are not any, but I am going to fill in details based on assumptions, if only because I don't expect or want the GM to list of every little minor thing that is present.

That's just it. The GM should explain everything they can, and the players are free to ask questions about details that maybe the GM hasn't even considered. But ultimately the GM is running the world no matter what the players are "believing" in their heads. But that's the dance - the GM's job is to make the 'ground' of the sandbox as detailed as needed to get the players to feel their mental imagery matches the GM's.

Where it matters, it will almost always be on the GM to establish that baseline because ultimately it's the GM that sets the bar for how the world operates. A player that tells me otherwise in my games is going to pretty much have a rough time as I rarely GM without a good understanding of how things work. Edit: But I'm always open to listen. With mechanics like these, it gives some players license to feel less cut-throat with me by trying some narrative hand-wavey to get their way. I'm willing to indulge if I think it's 1) possible within reason 2) the arbitrary level of meta introduced into the game isn't errs on the side of adding to the encounter. Otherwise Luke ain't ever making that Exhaust-Port shot in my game short of a 20....

I give noobie GM's the same respect when I'm playing with them (as I am now). But just as Rule Zero exists in gaming - Rule #0.1 also exists: Players have the right to not play if they don't like it.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960I game with mature adults.   People I have no problems with adding to the fictional game world we are all trying to inhabit.
If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always.
Nah I don't buy that.  The GM's call was never bothering to determine.  

GM: You walk into a kitchen.
Player: I grab the atom bomb.

The GM never "bothered to determine" whether or not there were atom bombs in the kitchen, so there should be no objection when a player assumes that there is, right?

You'll argue that no "mature adult" would assert the existence of an atom bomb in a kitchen. But that's just a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, implying that you and your players are never out-of-sync with your expectations. Even if that were true 100% of the time in the general case (which is unlikely), it's essentially impossible in the specific case.

For example, the assumption that one would find a knife in a kitchen is a reasonable one. But what if the GM knows that there are no knives in this particular kitchen because the NPC has a phobia of knives? And that this is, in fact, a crucial clue in figuring out what happened the night before?

Someone has the ultimate authority for determining truth in the game world. And, barring some sort of narrative control mechanic, that authority is going to rest with the GM.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960This fictional world resides where?  Oh in the DM's head.  So how are you not trying to match what is going on inside their head with what is going on inside your head?

• Listen to what the GM says.
• Ask questions about stuff you don’t know or understand.
• Imagine the scene based

   

• primarily on the input you get from the GM,
• secondarily based on what you have learned to date about the world your PC inhabits.
• And always remember that anything else you imagine is not definite until clarified.

Brendan gives a good example of how 2 and 3 are supposed to work.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;860975I consider the GM the final arbiter on what exists in the setting and I go by what the GM describes, but if the GM says we enter a tavern, I am going to picture tables whether he says they exist or not. I'll be happy to change what I am picturing if he says there are not any, but I am going to fill in details based on assumptions, if only because I don't expect or want the GM to list of every little minor thing that is present.

If the tavern setup in the game setting doesn't include tables - maybe because it is a centaur bar that just has tall counters or a harpy bar with perches or something, that should fall under #1, the first few times the players encounter the table-less centaur bar and from then on it probably falls under #2 for experienced players.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960And a 'traditional RPG' doesn't have any restrictions on the matter either, where does it say players are not allowed to add detail to the fictional settings?’

That’s the presumption of traditional games. They usually include some general statement about the GM being the final arbiter, but they seldom bother to write up specific restrictions because they state that the GM is in overall charge and they assume that you are not gaming with assholes so you can actually have a conversation about what you all want out of the game.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960What isn't lost on me is the majority of the people here run the games(supposedly) The everything starts and stops with the GM mantra isn't a surprise.

I both run and play games.

Personally, I find that also running games helps to make me content to let the GM handle the burden of most of the creation as well as vetting any ideas I might suggest when I am the player. Now maybe if I never GMed, I might feel like I wanted to control some world creation. I don't know for sure as I've always both played and GMed. And based on that experience, GM's prerogative works whether I am the GM or the player. If I can't even trust the GM to do the vetting of world creation ideas, than why in Ghu's name would I want to play in a game that they run? That seems like the RPG equivalent of playing poker for money with people you know who cheat. I guess somebody probably enjoys doing that, but it seems like a colossal waste of free time to me.

Quote from: tenbones;860982I give noobie GM's the same respect when I'm playing with them (as I am now). But just as Rule Zero exists in gaming - Rule #0.1 also exists: Players have the right to not play if they don't like it.

This also.

Quote from: Opaopajr;860941I must remember to have my rpg characters dive behind the next bar they encounter and draw forth the triple sec or blue curaçao which must obviously be there! My expectations! Who doesn't drink mai tais and cosmos? :rolleyes:

Quote from: tenbones;860953You better spend your damn Handwave Points!

I usually reserve my voguing for Madonna retro-mash-up nights, not the game table. :cool:

Quote from: Opaopajr;860993I usually reserve my voguing for Madonna retro-mash-up nights, not the game table. :cool:

You never know... they said the same thing about peanut-butter and chocolate.

Mash that shit up. Put your corset on and get your Hand-wavin on and change reality! OMG Mage!

Oh my gawd, you're right! That's why mages can't wear armor! All those contorting somatic components — they're voguing!
:eek:

Quote from: Bren;860990

• Listen to what the GM says.
• Ask questions about stuff you don’t know or understand.
• Imagine the scene based

   

• primarily on the input you get from the GM,
• secondarily based on what you have learned to date about the world your PC inhabits.
• And always remember that anything else you imagine is not definite until clarified.

Brendan gives a good example of how 2 and 3 are supposed to work.
.

That is a little too systematic for my tastes. The way I'd describe what happens for me is the GM talks and I imagine things. I am sure a lot of what I imagine is not going on in the GM's head. But I defer to the GM when a conflict between my vision of the environment and the GM's are in conflict.

For me, part of the power of RPGs is the fact that my imagination kicks into overdrive once everyone at the table begins interacting. I don't think you are ever going to have a real match in what everyone is imagining. And I don't want to limit what I am allowing myself to imagine strictly to things the GM has mentioned. I do think it is good to have the GM have final say and be the source of consistency though. And I am working off what the GM says.

That said, if people want some kind of PC ability to create details, more power to them. I don't care if someone wants to run or play a game that way. Not my cup of tea but seems like a perfectly fine way to play to me.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;861003That is a little too systematic for my tastes.

It is intentionally systematic. It wasn't written for you. It was written for the person who says that congruence between the imagining of the player and the GM is always impossible.

QuoteFor me, part of the power of RPGs is the fact that my imagination kicks into overdrive once everyone at the table begins interacting. I don't think you are ever going to have a real match in what everyone is imagining.

Theoretically I agree. I'm certain that if one continued to drill down in detail after detail, there would eventually be some discrepancy.  But practically, I do not agree.

One seldom if ever drills down to minute levels of detail in an RPG scene. In a bar scene the GM is unlikely to have determined or even imagined exactly how many coasters there are on the tables, nor the exact quantity of beer left in all the glasses of the drinkers. Neither is the player likely to do that. So the fact that if either did for some strange reason decide to count the coasters and then they ended up with a different number, while technically that would be a discrepancy, practically I say that it has virtually zero relevance to the question of reaching congruent imaginings of the bar scene.

I've played out scenes where the GM and I (or if I am the GM the player and I) have complete concurrence on a scene that we each imagine with zero contradictions arising and including congruence on one or more independently imagined and previously undiscussed details. For me, that's good enough to call agreement between player and GM.

QuoteThat said, if people want some kind of PC ability to create details, more power to them. I don't care if someone wants to run or play a game that way. Not my cup of tea but seems like a perfectly fine way to play to me.

Of course. That's only reasonable. It would feel unsatisfying to me from either side of the screen, but if I'm not at the table no one, including me, cares about how satisfying I might find the game.

Quote from: Phillip;860965AS A PLAYER, I want the GM to handle that stuff so I can get on with my role-playing.

Exactly.  I want DIFFERENT THINGS as a player from what I want as a referee.

Imagine.

I ENJOY not knowing what's behind the bar until I get back there... exploration and discovery. I'm not getting any fun out of TELLING the GM what I find... I want him to tell me. When I sign up to Play with a GM it's a declaration that I think I'll enjoy playing in the world he runs... both the overt and hidden portions of it.

What Bren says about running AND Playing RPGs makes sense to me and I wonder if some fraction of the contingent pushing the 'Player agency' stuff are Players who are frustrated/shy about full-on GMing their own games... or like an previous GM of mine who really couldn't step into being 'just a Player'.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860972Once world details are shared with the players it is no longer only inside the DMs head. Details that are communicated to the group are there for everyone to use.

Until there is a question(s) from someone, then the details morph to fit with the answer(s)

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860972Me too. And in our games if an individual has the ability to add something to the game world then it is used.  If their character does not command such a power then it isn't done.

And in our games if an individual is playing they have that power, regardless of what system we are using.  Of course around here the instant hyperbole makes that "I grab the atom bomb" and/or goddamnedstorytellingbullshit.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;860972Usually rule 0 takes care of that.

Unless everyone participating in the game is co-storyteller then yeah thats the way it is. You want to run the world, then run the game. As a player I enjoy the aspect of only having to worry about a single character and those goals instead of keeping a world moving. Its refreshing to let all that go if you DM quite a bit.

That's the rub isn't it.  It's nothing but tradition.  No actual real rule, yet look at how many of you cling to it.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861048Until there is a question(s) from someone, then the details morph to fit with the answer(s)

If questions are being asked, they are about details that don't exist yet. Something that doesn't exist has no need of morphing.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861048That's the rub isn't it.  It's nothing but tradition.  No actual real rule, yet look at how many of you cling to it.

Do you need a rule to inform you that you like something? When I'm not running the game, I like being a player. This is something everyone has to decide for themselves. Either you like the role of player or you don't. If you don't like it then don't do it. The hobby is for fun. One shouldn't need a rule to tell them not to play games that aren't fun for them.

Quote from: Ravenswing;860839
I understand Asen's notion about improv theater, but the hinge point is this: that style of play is -- I fancy -- unusual at best at the vast majority of gaming tables.  I'd never assume it was the default standard.

Let me just point out that it doesn't matter what playstyle is the default on all gaming tables. I play in more than one game, yet I'm only interested in one table's style at a time because the other groups aren't there.
And it depends on who you're playing with, and what you're playing.
If you were playing with a troupe of improv actors, or just with a GM used to improv, you might get this playstyle even if you were playing GURPS 4e. New players that learned RPGs from a book often tend to add details. It comes naturally to lots of people. If they learned RPGs from a book after playing freeform, maybe they'd be doing it blissfully unaware that some people consider this anti-immersive.
If you were playing Houses of the Blooded, Wushu or A World of Dew, the style is right in the mechanics.

Other than that, I agree it's not the most popular style ever. And of course, if we were playing on your table, we'd be playing GURPS with your houserules, in your setting, and rely on you for details.

I also agree with the part I skipped. The "improv" style is jarring if you know that this assumption is based off Hollywood. While practicing improv, at an improv group, I used to get these moments really often with some partners, less so with others.
But people find immersive whatever they find immersive, so I'm not going to call any style anti-immersive, even if it's the height of anti-immersive experiences for some people.

Quote from: Sommerjon;860960What isn't lost on me is the majority of the people here run the games(supposedly) The everything starts and stops with the GM mantra isn't a surprise.

I do GM nearly-exclusively, sure.  I love world-building and I'll do it even when (like now) I'm not actively running a game.

But I do play on the other side of the screen occasionally, too.  The last game I was a (non-GM) player in was Dungeon World.  It was a lot of fun in general.  There were some things I didn't really care for.  But you know what the one thing was that utterly killed the game for me every time it happened?

nDervish:  I look out the window.  What do I see?
GM:  Good question.  Why don't you tell me what you see?

GM:  You see a group of dwarves approaching.  Roll Discern Realities.
nDervish:  I rolled a 10.
GM:  You recognize their leader.  Who is he and how do you know him?

Etc.

When I'm not GMing, I just want to play my character and explore the GM's world.  I don't want to be the one building it, despite my normal love of world-building.

Quote from: nDervish;861069When I'm not GMing, I just want to play my character and explore the GM's world.  I don't want to be the one building it, despite my normal love of world-building.

My experience is similar. I mean I won't get upset if the GM wants to play that way, but I don't usually enjoy it that much when the GM asks me to narrate or world build in that manner. If it is done in a way that I don't really notice it, it isn't going to be an issue. i.e. if I am inadvertently slipping in some world building info as my character is talking and the GM is allowing it, that isn't noticeable enough to bother me. On the other hand if it is like the example from above, that is definitely the sort of thing that has little appeal to me.

There are exceptions and this is why this is just a preference for me, not a hard rule that must be obeyed in all cases. The Doctor Who Game for example has story points that can sort of be used in this way and I enjoy playing that. But it is pretty contained by the story points and they are used for a lot more than just that.

If someone likes playing where the Players can world build in that way, no skin off my back, and if my group wants to play a game that way, I'd be happy to go along (I am always open to giving things a shot). It just isn't my preference.

Quote from: Bren;861020I've played out scenes where the GM and I (or if I am the GM the player and I) have complete concurrence on a scene that we each imagine with zero contradictions arising and including congruence on one or more independently imagined and previously undiscussed details. For me, that's good enough to call agreement between player and GM.
.

Sure, I have that as well. But I also recognize that our imaginations are going to be different, that I may picturing things in a much different way than the player to my right or left (and that the GM likely is imagining things differently). This is a strength of the game, not a weakness. I wouldn't want everything to be a 100% accurate visualization of what the GM says. I do agree that 9 times out 10, there is enough agreement on the details for us to say we are effectively imagining the same place. There is always that 1 out of 10 times though where I imagine a detail that isn't there and it becomes relevant. Again, I don't see this as a problem because I have no problem altering my vision of things to fit the new information the GM provides. It is important to me that the GM be the source of consistency in that regard; it isn't important to me that this be treated as some kind of accurate shared visions, nor would I want something like that. I am fine letting my imagination fill in details based on what the GM is telling me; that is going to occasionally lead me to include things the GM is not imagining.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861048That's the rub isn't it.  It's nothing but tradition.  No actual real rule, yet look at how many of you cling to it.

At this point you just aren't hearing what multiple people are saying.

Quote from: AsenRG;861068Let me just point out that it doesn't matter what playstyle is the default on all gaming tables. I play in more than one game, yet I'm only interested in one table's style at a time because the other groups aren't there.

This is a good point.

Quote from: Simlasa;861041What Bren says about running AND Playing RPGs makes sense to me and I wonder if some fraction of the contingent pushing the 'Player agency' stuff are Players who are frustrated/shy about full-on GMing their own games... or like an previous GM of mine who really couldn't step into being 'just a Player'.

I'm sure some are. I'm equally sure some people just prefer a whole lot more shared story telling in their RPG games than what is the norm in traditional gaming.

Quote from: nDervish;861069The last game I was a (non-GM) player in was Dungeon World.  It was a lot of fun in general.  There were some things I didn't really care for.  But you know what the one thing was that utterly killed the game for me every time it happened?

nDervish:  I look out the window.  What do I see?
GM:  Good question.  Why don't you tell me what you see?

GM:  You see a group of dwarves approaching.  Roll Discern Realities.
nDervish:  I rolled a 10.
GM:  You recognize their leader.  Who is he and how do you know him?

Etc.

When I'm not GMing, I just want to play my character and explore the GM's world.  I don't want to be the one building it, despite my normal love of world-building.

Good example.

Honest question, would it be less of a death sentence if something like that occurred outside of regular play?

For example, a lot of GMs have no problem with a player designing his character's home or fortress. And that might include populating it and naming the servants or retainers. Of course some systems, like OD&D & AD&D include rules for recruiting and hiring retainers and such, but I've often seen the details of naming or describing the appearance of the blacksmith or guard #2 left up to the player.

Similarly, GMs often allow players to invent most if not all of their PC's family.

Are these things less disruptive? And if they are less disruptive, is it because they (i) occur outside of play, (ii) have bounded or limited scope or effect in the game world, (iii) are more closely connected to the PC, or (iv) because it is socially and logistically easier for the GM and player to negotiate the boundaries of the player's inventions?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;861085Sure, I have that as well. But I also recognize that our imaginations are going to be different, that I may picturing things in a much different way than the player to my right or left (and that the GM likely is imagining things differently). This is a strength of the game, not a weakness. I wouldn't want everything to be a 100% accurate visualization of what the GM says. I do agree that 9 times out 10, there is enough agreement on the details for us to say we are effectively imagining the same place. There is always that 1 out of 10 times though where I imagine a detail that isn't there and it becomes relevant. Again, I don't see this as a problem because I have no problem altering my vision of things to fit the new information the GM provides. It is important to me that the GM be the source of consistency in that regard; it isn't important to me that this be treated as some kind of accurate shared visions, nor would I want something like that. I am fine letting my imagination fill in details based on what the GM is telling me; that is going to occasionally lead me to include things the GM is not imagining.

I agree with what you said here. Nothing more to argue about. ;)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987For example, the assumption that one would find a knife in a kitchen is a reasonable one. But what if the GM knows that there are no knives in this particular kitchen because the NPC has a phobia of knives? And that this is, in fact, a crucial clue in figuring out what happened the night before?

Hell, right now, as I type, every damn kitchen knife -- steak knives, butter knives, the butcher's knife, the mincing knife and the bread knife -- we own is in the dishwasher.  Which is locked, and cycling.  It'll be done in about 45 minutes.

There, not even a baroque reason for there being no knife available in my kitchen.

QuoteOriginally Posted by Sommerjon View Post
What isn't lost on me is the majority of the people here run the games(supposedly) The everything starts and stops with the GM mantra isn't a surprise.

Quote from: Phillip;860965AS A PLAYER, I want the GM to handle that stuff so I can get on with my role-playing.

What's lost on you is that a lot of people happen to like that, even if we ALSO like narrative games, card games, live action games, video games, and whatever else.

As a GM, yes I want to do what I like to be the GM's job - providing most of the universe.

As a player, I am actually even more strongly wanting the GM to do that. I quite dislike games where in order to play effectively, I need to have a real-world contest for attention with the other players, because the loudest and most "entertaining" or players are determining what does or doesn't happen based on dissociated out-of-character activity - I want the GM to filter that so that I can interact rationally with the game situation presented by the GM, without players warping reality by inventing convenient weapons or exaggerating their abilities or getting to do things I'm politely not suggesting because it doesn't make sense to me.

Some degree of it is ok. After all, even in reality I understand that out mindsets and behavior can limit what we notice and what's possible for us. But when I have to do nothing because a PC is again claiming center stage and taking actions that would probably have disastrous results but instead are being allowed and given full GM attention to drive what happens, especially if the GM is just afraid of disappointing that player... well, that's one of my pet peeves as a player. And why I don't play many narrativist games.

Quote from: Phillip;860965...
The last game I was a (non-GM) player in was Dungeon World.  It was a lot of fun in general.  There were some things I didn't really care for.  But you know what the one thing was that utterly killed the game for me every time it happened?

nDervish:  I look out the window.  What do I see?
GM:  Good question.  Why don't you tell me what you see?

GM:  You see a group of dwarves approaching.  Roll Discern Realities.
nDervish:  I rolled a 10.
GM:  You recognize their leader.  Who is he and how do you know him?
...

Oh geez... that would derail me too. My first thoughts are:

"Out the window? I see...
* Another game I'd rather be playing.
* Something else I'd rather be doing than playing this sort of um... game?
* Ok... I see Ed McMahon bringing me a giant reward check for having just won the Publishers' Clearinghouse lottery! Lucky me!
* I see the princess we thought we were going to have to rescue - looks like she made it out by herself, and looks like she thinks I'm really attractive.
* I see an atomic bomb counting down... 3... 2... 1... Gee looks like this campaign is toast! Shucks..."

Quote from: Bren;861088...
Honest question, would it be less of a death sentence if something like that occurred outside of regular play?

For example, a lot of GMs have no problem with a player designing his character's home or fortress. And that might include populating it and naming the servants or retainers. Of course some systems, like OD&D & AD&D include rules for recruiting and hiring retainers and such, but I've often seen the details of naming or describing the appearance of the blacksmith or guard #2 left up to the player.

Similarly, GMs often allow players to invent most if not all of their PC's family.

Are these things less disruptive? And if they are less disruptive, is it because they (i) occur outside of play, (ii) have bounded or limited scope or effect in the game world, (iii) are more closely connected to the PC, or (iv) because it is socially and logistically easier for the GM and player to negotiate the boundaries of the player's inventions?

To me yes, those things are welcome and not disruptive. In most games, I like providing my own character's background and suggestions for family character stats and so on, though I expect them to represent what my character thinks he knows about those characters, and that the GM can use, modify, change or ignore them as he likes.

(i) partly yes
(ii) yes
(iii) partly yes
(iv) maybe sort of, but not exactly. I'm more interested in avoiding polluting what players know or can cause in dissociated ways, or introducing meta-gaming effects that aren't well-considered. I love it in some games when players come up with backgrounds of friends and family, as long as it's not a way to get stuff outside the rules that's gamey/unbalanced. e.g. "I have 4 grandparents about to die and leave me their estates, and an uncle who is a master weaponsmith and a best friend who is a master enchantress who would do anything for me..." (Of course in GURPS you can charge points for all that, but like all systems where characters pick their character abilities, it should be done intentionally and consistently unless you enjoy munchkinry.)


Somewhat related, if not directly:

When I was first learning to GM, I had a player learning to play in RPGs, and he explored pushing various limits from within the player role. Examples:

Player: "What's the shopkeeper's name?"
GM: "Bob."
Player: "NO! His name is NOT Bob! The last three people in town I asked you their names were Bob!"
GM: "Ok... sorry, um... he's Kremulio." (writes down notes)

See, in addition to fun/immersion reasons, the player had figured out that people with interesting names might be interesting, and it was a way to detect if the GM had thought about them in advance, or at least to see how interested the GM was in that character, and whether they might be worth further investigation, burglary, questioning, looting, asking to join the party, or not. If his name is Urdruil, he might have skills or something worthwhile - ask for a description and see if the GM has something interesting to say; if the GM paused and said his name was Bob, Sam, Gromborg or Koom, maybe not. And/or it might even be a way to meta-game effects from conversation with an unwary GM. With experience (and from this type of experience) I became much better at making up names and details and limiting this sort of meta-game cross-examination.

That is, even without going over the line of roles overtly, a player can push some GM's into creating things on the fly that the player might exploit, just by asking questions and perhaps catching the GM off guard.

Now I tend to use tiers of detail. At first I might just know there's a type of shop. If the players go there and ask his name, the shopkeeper might say his name is Bob at first, but if players do investigate, maybe really he just doesn't use his real name, and I have a file full of various ideas and detailed merchant characters, and a file of names, and have thought about how likely and appropriate they all are to show up, etc. And/or I can "channel" it, having learned to GM decades ago...


Of course, this can also lead to some inappropriate GM meta-game counter-play:

Player: "Does this wizard's guild branch have a crystal ball?"
GM: "Um..." (rolls) "No."
Player: "Well, do they know of any branch in any city that has one?"
GM: "Um..." (rolls) "Er, yes, they say the guild house in Dranning has one, and they even let people get readings... for a price."
(Party travels to Dranning, pays the fee.)
Player: "I ask the crystal ball to show me if anyone is plotting to kill me."
GM: (rolls) "You see the roof of the building across from this guild hall. There are a couple of men up there manning a loaded siege ballista which is aimed at the front door of this guild hall."
Player: "What?!" (shocked and appalled)

I.e., I as a new GM was getting nervous about what the player was doing to try to use magic that the published setting suggested existed, to do things I wasn't sure I knew how to handle as a GM. I didn't want the player to be able to so easily learn exactly who was plotting against them because I thought it would spoil a situation I thought was interesting, and I was also afraid what this shopkeeper-name-tracking player might think of to ask, that might threaten my ability to come up with answers about my world that made sense, and extend the player's meta-game explorations of creating things in my world by cross-examining the GM, to an apparently legal/valid tactic of using magic that said it could answer any question or show any scene. So I intervened by having another group who also had the PC as an enemy, at that moment be planning a very scary threat. It felt like an unfair move.

 I later learned more fun/fair/interesting ways to be about such things, and that they don't have to be a problem and can be fun. (But powerful scrying magic if it exists has a huge effect on how I think about the whole balance of power/information in a game setting, so I also tend to limit its abilities quite a bit.) And it wasn't even really a big problem the way I ran it back then (and we still remember and joke about it). However I wouldn't do that now, and would think it was needless/silly meta-gaming, if/when the GM is making things happen and exist in the game world, just to try to hamper/counter the players' schemes, particularly in ways that probably wouldn't really happen that way. It seems to belong in the genre of horror stories where someone's trying to make a pact with a demon or djinn or something who is fooling them into a bargain for a wish, but really uses their godlike powers to always screw the foolish human bargainer. I tend to even dislike that as an intentional static-fiction story told well. So I don't like GM'ing or playing such things, even in subtle ways.

Quote from: Ravenswing;861101Hell, right now, as I type, every damn kitchen knife -- steak knives, butter knives, the butcher's knife, the mincing knife and the bread knife -- we own is in the dishwasher.  Which is locked, and cycling.  It'll be done in about 45 minutes.

There, not even a baroque reason for there being no knife available in my kitchen.

Your dishwasher locks? Darn, no +1 preheated knives... ;-)

Quote from: Opaopajr;861001Oh my gawd, you're right! That's why mages can't wear armor! All those contorting somatic components — they're voguing!
:eek:

Now I will demand that all my D&D Wizard players show me their somatic skills...

Quote from: tenbones;861127Now I will demand that all my D&D Wizard players show me their somatic skills...

You ain't much of a warlock if you can't throw down some toprock.

Quote from: Skarg;861120(i) partly yes
(ii) yes
(iii) partly yes
(iv) maybe sort of, but not exactly.

Cool. Thanks for answering.

QuoteSomewhat related, if not directly:

When I was first learning to GM, I had a player learning to play in RPGs, and he explored pushing various limits from within the player role. Examples:

Player: "What's the shopkeeper's name?"
GM: "Bob."
Player: "NO! His name is NOT Bob! The last three people in town I asked you their names were Bob!"
GM: "Ok... sorry, um... he's Kremulio." (writes down notes)

It's faster for me to invent a name than to look up one I already invented. And one nice thing about the Honor+Intrigue game I'm running is that it's set mostly in 1620s France and none of us are French nor fluent in French, so names like Jean, Jacques, and Francois still sound less mundane than John or Bob, but are easy to invent on the spur of the moment. I also have name lists organized by nationality that I can quickly access.

QuoteSee, in addition to fun/immersion reasons, the player had figured out that people with interesting names might be interesting, and it was a way to detect if the GM had thought about them in advance, or at least to see how interested the GM was in that character, and whether they might be worth further investigation, burglary, questioning, looting, asking to join the party, or not.

I'm actually OK with players being able to figure out that some NPCs just aren't that important. And on the other hand, I've had NPCs who started out as just another "Bob" and ended up being interesting or important. But I agree there is a line of metagaming in there somewhere that I'd rather the player just didn't cross.

QuotePlayer: "I ask the crystal ball to show me if anyone is plotting to kill me."
GM: (rolls) "You see the roof of the building across from this guild hall. There are a couple of men up there manning a loaded siege ballista which is aimed at the front door of this guild hall."
Player: "What?!" (shocked and appalled)

While your motives weren't the best, I thought that sounded kind of fun in an unrealistic over-the-top pulp action kind of way. Not appropriate for a sandbox or naturalistic setting, but probably just right for something more emulative of the 1930s pulp fiction, Comic Books, a lot of action movies and TV shows, and Leverage.

QuoteI later learned more fun/fair/interesting ways to be about such things, and that they don't have to be a problem and can be fun. (But powerful scrying magic if it exists has a huge effect on how I think about the whole balance of power/information in a game setting, so I also tend to limit its abilities quite a bit.)

Runequest 1-3 did a good job of considering how divinations would work with the game setting and intentionally limited them based on the scope of knowledge of the entity consulted by the diviner.

In that context, the question would be what entity should the PC consult to learn who is plotting against him? Given the multiple deity setting of most FRP games, there probably isn't any one being who can answer that question definitively.

• A devout PC's patron deity probably has a vested interest in keeping her alive, but doesn't have routine access to the minds of non-worshippers. And presumably if the plotters are devout worshippers of some other deity, their deity(ies) probably has an incentive to aid her worshippers - or at least conceal their plotting from deity #1..

• The god of assassins might know if an assassin is being planned.

• A war god might be able to give warning of an ambush - might probably not until the ambush was actually set up.

Then of course we may have the usual obscure prophetic answer that might apply to multiple enemies, times, settings, and methods.

Quote from: Skarg;861120Of course, this can also lead to some inappropriate GM meta-game counter-play:

Player: "Does this wizard's guild branch have a crystal ball?"
GM: "Um..." (rolls) "No."
Player: "Well, do they know of any branch in any city that has one?"
GM: "Um..." (rolls) "Er, yes, they say the guild house in Dranning has one, and they even let people get readings... for a price."
(Party travels to Dranning, pays the fee.)
Player: "I ask the crystal ball to show me if anyone is plotting to kill me."
GM: (rolls) "You see the roof of the building across from this guild hall. There are a couple of men up there manning a loaded siege ballista which is aimed at the front door of this guild hall."
Player: "What?!" (shocked and appalled)

Ha! That sounds kind of fun for the right sort of game.

Quote from: Nexus;861163Ha! That sounds kind of fun for the right sort of game.

Great minds. ;)

Quote from: Bren;861088At this point you just aren't hearing what multiple people are saying.

It's either "because that's the way I learned to play" or it's hyperbole.
Which hasn't surprised me in the slightest.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861048Of course around here the instant hyperbole makes that "I grab the atom bomb"

There's something incredibly satisfying about predicting that somebody is going to give a bullshit answer, pointing out exactly why it's a bullshit answer, and then watching them go ahead and give the bullshit answer anyway.

It's as if they've just rebutted themselves.

I'd predict that the next thing he'll do is start telling people that they're lying about how they actually play and what they prefer, but I see he's already done that.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;861082The Doctor Who Game for example has story points that can sort of be used in this way and I enjoy playing that. But it is pretty contained by the story points and they are used for a lot more than just that.

One key distinction is that you, as the player, choose when to use the story points. That's very different than having the GM periodically demand that you do something.

One thing that particularly annoys me in exchanges like this:

nDervish: I look out the window. What do I see?
GM: Good question. Why don't you tell me what you see?

Is that the GM is literally ignoring what I just said. I asked him to tell me what was outside the window and he deliberately thwarted that desire.

Quote from: Bren;861088Honest question, would it be less of a death sentence if something like that occurred outside of regular play? For example, a lot of GMs have no problem with a player designing his character's home or fortress.

For me, yes. Character creation never features associated mechanics and character advancement rarely does, so with the exception of pregenerated characters there is always going to be a role of authorship being fulfilled by the players. And I think it's generally true that people are very open to having these authorship powers extended past Day 1 of the campaign.

(There are some militants who think it's OK for a player to name their character's parents before play begins, but not three sessions later. They seem to be fairly rare, though.)

Quote from: Bren;861088Honest question, would it be less of a death sentence if something like that occurred outside of regular play?

In that same Dungeon World game, we started off with character creation which was heavily guided by the GM asking questions about our pasts, how we knew each other, etc.  I ended up playing a clockwork cyborg who had been a famous general, while the other PC was a dinosaur-riding druid who I'd been hired to hunt down.  Until we started answering the GM's questions, there were no dinosaurs or clockpunk elements in the setting.  Those things came entirely from the players and I had no issues with it.

Quote from: Bren;861088Are these things less disruptive? And if they are less disruptive, is it because they (i) occur outside of play, (ii) have bounded or limited scope or effect in the game world, (iii) are more closely connected to the PC, or (iv) because it is socially and logistically easier for the GM and player to negotiate the boundaries of the player's inventions?

(i) is a big part of it.  As Justin Alexander just alluded to, character creation and actual gameplay are handled in most RPGs as different kinds of things.  At character creation, the players are creating, so creating other things is an obvious extension of that.  During play, my preference is for the players to be acting through their characters and exploring, so creating things independent of their characters doesn't naturally fit into that context.

I don't think that (ii) is generally much of a factor for me, though I'm sure there are times that it becomes more significant.  The Dungeon World character creation example I just gave certainly wasn't limited in scope, after all.

(iii) also tends to be a factor for me.  I don't object to players naming their characters' parents three sessions in largely because, for most practical purposes, their parents tend to exist in the game primarily as an aspect of the PC, so the player defining their details seems appropriate (at least so long as they don't go all Mary Sue with it).  I suppose that example also falls under (ii), given that, when you get down to it, whether your dad is named Harry or George tends to have an extremely limited effect on the game world, if any at all.

(iv)...  Possibly?  I don't think this really enters into it for me in practice because, in play, I get as far as (i) through (iii) and either say "it's an in-character action, so ok", "it's effectively an aspect of your character and largely inconsequential, so ok", or "it's something your character has no influence over, so no" without ever getting to the point of thinking about the boundaries of a specific creation.  Or is that an implicit "yes", since I'm fine with negotiating boundaries of inventions outside of regular play sessions (not just at character creation, but also between sessions, given that it's something reasonably connected to or influenced by the character), when the logistical and social aspects make it easier to deal with?

Quote from: Skarg;861120See, in addition to fun/immersion reasons, the player had figured out that people with interesting names might be interesting, and it was a way to detect if the GM had thought about them in advance, or at least to see how interested the GM was in that character, and whether they might be worth further investigation, burglary, questioning, looting, asking to join the party, or not. If his name is Urdruil, he might have skills or something worthwhile - ask for a description and see if the GM has something interesting to say; if the GM paused and said his name was Bob, Sam, Gromborg or Koom, maybe not.

I've pretty much foiled that by keeping all my notes on a laptop, which also contains campaign-specific name generators that I use to name all NPCs, important or not.  So they ask for an NPC's name and I just click a couple times, then say "His name is Meran Blueback." without it being obvious whether I read the name from a character sheet or created it on the spot.

And then there was the day that a minor NPC's name came up with the epithet "Babywrecker"...  He didn't stay minor for long, as all the players tried to figure out just how horrible of a person he must be for people to call him that.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861189One key distinction is that you, as the player, choose when to use the story points. That's very different than having the GM periodically demand that you do something.

One thing that particularly annoys me in exchanges like this:

nDervish: I look out the window. What do I see?
GM: Good question. Why don't you tell me what you see?

Is that the GM is literally ignoring what I just said. I asked him to tell me what was outside the window and he deliberately thwarted that desire.

Sure, that would annoy me a lot more than story points. Just like "Say yes" tends to annoy me when I notice it happening.

I don't know if I'd be annoyed, but that would feel a whole lot different than what I'm used to. It would definitely break character immersion.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861185It's either "because that's the way I learned to play" or it's hyperbole.
Which hasn't surprised me in the slightest.

I'd imagine it's pretty easy not to be surprised when you actively ignore or willfully misinterpret anything that conflicts with your expectation.

I mostly GM these days, but I enjoy it when players want to collaborate with me as they get invested into the setting, offering suggestions on world-building to tap into their characters' backgrounds.

For example, I recently changed a sinister future dungeon from being a Babylonian Ziggurat into an Egyptian pyramid after a player requested it so that she could tie it in her (Egyptian PC's) background and character development. You know, so as to make it not just another dungeon, but also a trigger for character growth. I LOVE that kind of player buy-in as long as it is, as I said earlier, collaborative and not demanded.

When I DO play on the rare occasion, I might do the same sort of thing as long as the GM is cool with it. Other than that, I try to interact with the other characters as much as possible, making a real effort to react to their in-game actions*. Acknowledging what their characters do and their effects on the world kind of increases immersion for everyone (responding to the team's efforts). In other words, I want everyone to have fun and make it feel like their characters MATTER as part of the world.

I know that I'll probably get a lot of flak for this but whatever, the OP asked.

* not necessarily in a confrontational way: we're a party or team and even though we may not LIKE each other we work together and cover each other's asses. At least, that's how I usually play my characters: if others at the table give no fucks then good for them.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861189There's something incredibly satisfying about predicting that somebody is going to give a bullshit answer, pointing out exactly why it's a bullshit answer, and then watching them go ahead and give the bullshit answer anyway.

It's as if they've just rebutted themselves.

I'd predict that the next thing he'll do is start telling people that they're lying about how they actually play and what they prefer, but I see he's already done that.

Never bothered to respond to your asshattery.  Now you feel the need to inject yourself again.  Whatevs.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987GM: You walk into a kitchen.
Player: I grab the atom bomb.

The GM never "bothered to determine" whether or not there were atom bombs in the kitchen, so there should be no objection when a player assumes that there is, right?

You'll argue that no "mature adult" would assert the existence of an atom bomb in a kitchen. But that's just a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, implying that you and your players are never out-of-sync with your expectations. Even if that were true 100% of the time in the general case (which is unlikely), it's essentially impossible in the specific case.

1. Exploderwizard loves using the "I game with mature adults" line.  I'ts enjoyable to use it back on him.
2. Your supposed love of GM dictating everything, doesn't stop the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
3. Why is the player not letting the GM finish describing the scene?
4. Why would the group be out-of-sync?

Perhaps you would understand it better if Bren explains it to you;

Quote from: Bren;860679[strike]I assume know that[/strike] I'm not playing with idiots or assholes - since I won't. That drastically decreases the number of other assumptions that need to be stated before play.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987For example, the assumption that one would find a knife in a kitchen is a reasonable one. But what if the GM knows that there are no knives in this particular kitchen because the NPC has a phobia of knives? And that this is, in fact, a crucial clue in figuring out what happened the night before?

But, funny how that word is used in this thread, lets take the exception and make more out of it than what it is.

Playing in a game, don't know about you, where there were no knives present in a kitchen and the GM never says anything about it until I am in need of a knife.  I'd have serious doubts about their ability to describe a scene effectively.  Furthermore if that only happens when I am assuming something about the setting, Railroad Dick DM is exposed.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987Someone has the ultimate authority for determining truth in the game world. And, barring some sort of narrative control mechanic, that authority is going to rest with the GM.

Notice how I never said they didn't.

Quote from: Bren;861211I'd imagine it's pretty easy not to be surprised when you actively ignore or willfully misinterpret anything that conflicts with your expectation.

When this goes from assuming there is a shotgun behind the bar to I grab the atom bomb....yet I am the one willfully misinterpreting?

Most likely all you can picture is
nDervish: I look out the window. What do I see?
GM: Good question. Why don't you tell me what you see?

GM: You see a group of dwarves approaching. Roll Discern Realities.
nDervish: I rolled a 10.
GM: You recognize their leader. Who is he and how do you know him?

Remember this?
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.
Add to that Krueger's Ol' Clem Johnson and Justin's knifeless kitchen.  Know the issue with both?  Exceptional based design.
Ol' Clem Johnson who owns the place is one of those rare Christians who walks the walk.
Does he?  He owns a saloon.
Granted Justin's knifeless kitchen goes no where
"For example, the assumption that one would find a knife in a kitchen is a reasonable one. But what if the GM knows that there are no knives in this particular kitchen because the NPC has a phobia of knives? And that this is, in fact, a crucial clue in figuring out what happened the night before?"
Both have what should be very obvious details, but for some reason are not.

Quote from: Bren;861161...
It's faster for me to invent a name than to look up one I already invented. ...

I'm actually OK with players being able to figure out that some NPCs just aren't that important. And on the other hand, I've had NPCs who started out as just another "Bob" and ended up being interesting or important. But I agree there is a line of metagaming in there somewhere that I'd rather the player just didn't cross.

Yeah, as I said, I've gotten quite good at making up names and even GURPS stats immediately. And yes I'm also often fine with player figuring out who's interesting or not from clues which may or may not be intentional. Unlike my newbie-GM concerns, I also usually now like it when previously-generic characters get attention and become involved in interesting ways.

I wrote about that example not because naming NPCs still concerns me, but as an early example of that "line of metagaming in there somewhere" that you mentioned. What I still try to avoid (and have much more subtle skills for doing so) is when players try to use meta-game tricks for out-of-character goals that aren't an agreed conceit of the play mode. Even my games may include some such agreed conceits, especially if it's a limited scope adventure or the focus is on only one aspect of play. However, for play modes where my intent is to provide a consistent role-playing experience, there's a class of out-of-character meta-gaming I would avoid.

QuoteWhile your motives weren't the best, I thought that sounded kind of fun in an unrealistic over-the-top pulp action kind of way. Not appropriate for a sandbox or naturalistic setting, but probably just right for something more emulative of the 1930s pulp fiction, Comic Books, a lot of action movies and TV shows, and Leverage.

Yeah, and that campaign ended up being similar to those genres in many ways. Wild excessive action, abundant goon fodder, paranoid plotting, crazy people, funky abuse of magic. I still enjoy the genre a lot. When/if we still play in it, it's still got elements like that, though now I don't just have stuff appear out of thin air, and I don't have those control-based motives. It's still wild and crazy but it also makes a lot more sense than it originally did. I came up with some funny retcon social parody elements to explain or at least be consistent about how there are so many adventurers and thugs wandering about ready for mayhem.

Again, I posted about it in this thread because of the meta-game elements I want to avoid as player and as GM. I don't want to run or play in a game where going for a crystal ball reading summons a siege weapon assassin team... Unless it's a horror nightmare game. ;-) (Or maybe if I was trying for a "holographic universe" theme, where what you were obsessed with would be what would show up in the world... which if intentional and well done could maybe be interesting.)

And yes, now I will have already thought about the availability of divination, its limits and its implications. Many meta-issues I ran into as a new GM were caused, and solved, by whether the GM had read and considered the available magic and other aspects in the setting or not. And now I'll tend to want to establish that a character has learned about any specific details of magic before I accept a player having their PC go looking to use it. No "My guy wants to find a [specific peculiar strong magic]" because the player read about it in a game book. That example was mainly about the GM (me) being unprepared and insecure and responding to it in a weird unfair unspoken "don't do that or you might get killed off" way, even if it did turn also out to be a classic memory feeding the action paranoia style of the game.

But what remains is the class of meta-game problem, which can easily be caused by not considering the possible uses of things the GM suddenly feels are not what he wants or knows how to deal with, but can happen any time the GM for whatever reason chooses to force things to happen in ways that break the play contract. In my case, I like the play contract to keep things that exist and that happen to be fairly consistent and realistic and based on in-game-world factors and not by the GM forcing things that matter "too much" for reasons of style or cool-seeming-ness or genre conventions or to avoid player upsets or whatever (ya there are grey areas).

Other players and game styles of course have different ideas about their play contracts, but I'd say the same general rule applies. That is, the difference between me not wanting the GM to teleport in assassins to prevent PC actions he dislikes, and the fellow who wants the GM to provide a shotgun behind the ol' West bar, is the (oft un-detailed) play contract. But the basic violation is the same, or opposite - the GM is forcing or not forcing things to work a certain way or not - whether it's to be rational/consistent/realistic/simulationist (me), or imaginitive/flexible/cool/genre-compliant, or whatever.

Quote from: Nexus;861163Ha! That sounds kind of fun for the right sort of game.

It actually was fun and exciting (in a terrifying way) for the player. It was my first big long-term campaign using a game system I hadn't invented myself, so we were all learning and it had many hilarious  wild elements to it which were fun.

But while the play ended up being wild and fun, as GM I was learning a lot about control - both how to keep the game from devolving into something that stopped being fun or interesting or we couldn't believe/care about because it became too inconsistent - and even more interestingly, about my own reactions out of fear of losing control to clever or depraved player schemes, and learning I don't need to control, and what interesting ways I can respond instead (and without needing to warp or abuse the reality of the game world).

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268Notice how I never said they didn't.
When this goes from assuming there is a shotgun behind the bar to I grab the atom bomb....yet I am the one willfully misinterpreting?

No you are not the only one. That doesn't make you correct though. Nor does it make everyone who disagrees with you or has a different point of view wrong.

I agree there is a huge difference between finding a shotgun behind the bar and finding a nuclear weapon.

But there is also a huge difference between finding a dishrag, clean glasses, or a bottle of whiskey behind the bar and finding a shotgun. Dishrags, glasses, and whiskey (or their equivalents) are necessary components of a bar. Shotguns (and atom bombs) are not necessary components for a bar. A shotgun is a component of a particular kind of bar.  

Anon Adderlan said his belief in the world was impaired if the bar was not the equipped with a shotgun because that's the particular kind of bar that he imagined in his own head. And if he can't have what he imagined in his own head, that ruins the fun for him. Now a lot of people found that to be a really odd and possibly selfish belief* and one that was contrary with the way a lot of people play RPGs.

Now I guess you are in the same bandwagon with Anon Adderlan since you keep wailing about that only reason people don't play games like you and AA are because they fear change, or they are mired in tradition, or some such bullshit.

QuoteRemember this?
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

Yeah. I remember. It sounded incoherent the first time. It still does the second time.

I don't care how you play let's pretend in your own time, but it is rather annoying to hear you whine over and over that the only reason other people don't agree with you is tradition or something.

Some of us just don't want to play let's pretend the same way that you play. You might try doing us the courtesy of accepting that we actually do know what we like when we play.


* Anon Adderlan didn't seem at all concerned about what kind of bar the other people at the table imagined nor whether a shotgun being behind the bar was ruining their fun. Now maybe he really is concerned about other people and just forgot to mention it, or maybe he sees RPGs as the players all together against the GM, or something. But if he did, he didn't say so. So some people thought he sounded overly entitled.

Quote from: Skarg;861276In my case, I like the play contract to keep things that exist and that happen to be fairly consistent and realistic and based on in-game-world factors and not by the GM forcing things that matter "too much" for reasons of style or cool-seeming-ness or genre conventions or to avoid player upsets or whatever (ya there are grey areas).

We are in agreement. Thanks for clarifying. If I sounded like I was picky on younger you or was too critically nitpicky, I apologize.

 

QuoteBut while the play ended up being wild and fun, as GM I was learning a lot about control - both how to keep the game from devolving into something that stopped being fun or interesting or we couldn't believe/care about because it became too inconsistent - and even more interestingly, about my own reactions out of fear of losing control to clever or depraved player schemes, and learning I don't need to control, and what interesting ways I can respond instead (and without needing to warp or abuse the reality of the game world).

Good point about fear of losing control as a reason GMs end up warping or abusing the reality of the game world.

Along similar lines, I think one thing that can lead to inelegant or ham-handed GM 'solutions' to problems that occur due to some unanticipated effect is the reluctance of some GMs to admit fault and work to get agreement on a solution. Rather than figure out some (possibly) clever way to nullify some previous error, it almost always works better to just be upfront and say something like, "Hey people, when I put that ring of 3 wishes in the treasure of that one troll, I wasn't thinking about all the ways that wishes might make the game weird, or less fun for you, or hard for me to run. Also when I let you wish for three more wishes as one of your wishes, I don't know what I was thinking. But that was a mistake and I need you to work with me to fix it."

I mostly agree with the OP: to me, "the world" should be completely under the GM's control and I really don't like the idea of Fate Points, or Narrative Points or whatever you want to call them.  I would say a kind of game where everybody gets a turn in shaping the narrative sounds to me more like a fun party game for a weekend than the kind of thing you can build into a campaign lasting for years.  You should get some degree of shaping the world in when you create your character---"I'm from a famous family of Paladins," "my dad is the best wizard in Elftown," "I'm from the Barony of Sandvichia on the Sourpuss River," whatever.  To me the idea is the GM controls the world and all the NPCs in it, including where they put their shit, and if I say there's no shotgun behind the bar then there was never a shotgun behind the bar.

Where I have to disagree is in the 'immersion' thing.  I don't think I've ever really experienced 'immersion' to the degree some people claim to, nor do I really wish to.  When I play a character, I'm doing it for the mental exercise of testing my creativity against obstacles, or even just the thrill of chance-taking.  That's not to say I don't roleplay.  Just like you wouldn't metagame "well, my last PC got roasted when he opened a door with that rune on it so I sure as hell won't do it now," part of creating a character to me is knowing their persona, figuring out what actions are reasonable to them, and then doing that.  I never confuse myself for my character or think of them as my imaginary friend or whatever the hell, tho.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268Never bothered to respond to your asshattery.

To sum up:

1. You directly quote me.
2. I reply.
3. You claim that you never "bothered to respond" to me.

That sort of blatant lie really bodes well for the intellectual content of your post.

Quote1. Exploderwizard loves using the "I game with mature adults" line.  I'ts enjoyable to use it back on him.
2. Your supposed love of GM dictating everything, doesn't stop the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
3. Why is the player not letting the GM finish describing the scene?
4. Why would the group be out-of-sync?

So, to sum up:

1. You said something you apparently don't actually agree with.
2. You admit that you're using a no true Scotsman fallacy, but couple that admission to a non sequitur.
3. This is a non sequitur.
4. You know that this question has already been answered, because you then reply to it with another non sequitur.

QuotePlaying in a game, don't know about you, where there were no knives present in a kitchen and the GM never says anything about it until I am in need of a knife. I'd have serious doubts about their ability to describe a scene effectively.

Unless your character has X-Ray vision, I don't see how they could possibly reach the conclusion that "there are no knives in this room" without searching the kitchen drawers.

But nice attempt at dodging the issue.

QuoteFurthermore if that only happens when I am assuming something about the setting,

No one is advocating that the GM should only know things about the setting when the player makes an assumption. This is yet another non sequitur.

Quote

QuoteSomeone has the ultimate authority for determining truth in the game world. And, barring some sort of narrative control mechanic, that authority is going to rest with the GM.

Notice how I never said they didn't.

Multiple personality disorder? Someone hacked your account? You're just conceding that you were wrong all along in the most back-assed way possible?

QuoteWhen this goes from assuming there is a shotgun behind the bar to I grab the atom bomb....yet I am the one willfully misinterpreting?

There's something incredibly satisfying about predicting that somebody is going to give a bullshit answer, pointing out exactly why it's a bullshit answer, and then watching them go ahead and give the bullshit answer anyway.

It's as if they've just rebutted themselves.

When they just try to repeat the same bullshit answer again in the hopes that nobody will notice the Emperor Still Has No Clothes?

Priceless.

Quote from: Bren;861161It's faster for me to invent a name than to look up one I already invented. And one nice thing about the Honor+Intrigue game I'm running is that it's set mostly in 1620s France and none of us are French nor fluent in French, so names like Jean, Jacques, and Francois still sound less mundane than John or Bob, but are easy to invent on the spur of the moment. I also have name lists organized by nationality that I can quickly access.

Athos may be the name of a mountain, but Athos is also the name of a man.

Quote from: Bren;861278Now I guess you are in the same bandwagon with Anon Adderlan since you keep wailing about that only reason people don't play games like you and AA are because they fear change, or they are mired in tradition, or some such bullshit.

If I can get "nostalgia!" my Bingo card will be full.

Just popping in to say: isn't the original Traveller character generation system pretty close to 100% associated?

Possibly Harnmaster if played BTB, maybe Warhammer...basically any game where, even if you have options, they're options the character would have.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268Playing in a game, don't know about you, where there were no knives present in a kitchen and the GM never says anything about it until I am in need of a knife.  I'd have serious doubts about their ability to describe a scene effectively.

I happen to have a knife block sitting on the counter in my kitchen.  Most people I know, however, do not, instead keeping all their knives in drawers.  Thus, it is not immediately obvious when you enter their kitchens whether any knives are present or not.

Unless you mean to say that the first thing you do on entering someone's kitchen is to open all the drawers and inspect their contents?

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268Ol' Clem Johnson who owns the place is one of those rare Christians who walks the walk.
Does he?  He owns a saloon.

The Church has not consistently condemned drink, though there probably have always been those within it who do.  And don't forget that, according to the gospels, Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine.

Quote from: Harime Nui;861289I would say a kind of game where everybody gets a turn in shaping the narrative sounds to me more like a fun party game for a weekend than the kind of thing you can build into a campaign lasting for years.

That's another interesting point.  One of the other things I tend to dislike about "Forgey" games is that they're often very highly-focused on playing one specific situation or story, then ending the game once that situation/story has been resolved.  Conversely, more "traditional" games tend to at least allude to the promise of campaigns which span years or even decades or real-world time (even if, in practice, that promise is only very rarely fulfilled).

Perhaps, then, there is some connection between narrativist/forgey/storygamey/whatever-you-want-to-call-them mechanics and short-term games?  Not necessarily that one causes or requires the other, but perhaps they work better together than trying to run a long-term campaign with forgey rules?

This discussion about what is role of GM is in my view same as a role of a art director (or just about everyone in any organized activity): Ultimately someone makes the final decision on what goes. She is usually someone who is responsible for the activity. This goes to stuff like R&D and artistic creation where group works on subject. If not one person making the call, then there is some other mechanism but there is always going to be some kind of mechanism or else the group will eventually fail due lack of unified direction.

GM is simply easiest and simplest way of organizing a group play where activities are so broad no set of rules can cover them. This same method is widely used in work as well.

Quote from: Bren;861285We are in agreement. Thanks for clarifying. If I sounded like I was picky on younger you or was too critically nitpicky, I apologize.
...

No it didn't sound that way to me. And those were good ideas for ways to deal with those problems. But I wanted to make explicit that there were multiple things going on in each example, and while having good GM techniques for them is good, I meant them as examples of types of metagame gameworld-warping that I like to avoid.

On RPG StackExchange are abundant other examples of gameworld-warping even as advice praised by the crowd there, most of which would have me leave a game right away. Or players who want to say they are playing an actual game with risks but seem to actually want the GM to make them automatically win and be the cool heroes and not ever have any setbacks. And the community there seems to encourage enabling this and to discourage suggesting a game with actual risks and consequences. e.g.

Question: "How do I handle offended players as GM?" (http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/64021/how-do-i-handle-offended-players-as-gm) Synopsis: My players said they wanted a "dark, rough and dangerous" game, but when they wiped out everything in my adventure (BTW I fudged some rolls that would have killed them so they wouldn't die) and started killing their way through other areas and took on more strong enemies despite my warnings, they started sulking when some of them took some temporary hitpoint loss. "Both players were really pissed that they got wounded and lost interest in the game. They were offended and upset and the game began to stall. How do I handle such players?"

Most popular answer: (Advice on perspective very diplomatically worded and then: ) "If you must make players fail and suffer harsh consequences, you should try to minimise both how hard the failure should hit and how powerless they are as a result." ... "If they're already frustrated, you should do what you can to give them back some power." ... "rush to a conclusion: say that most of the fight goes out of the enemy as soon as the players kill the next one, or say "okay, you kill the rest of them, we don't really need to bother rolling dice, you're going to win eventually""

Another answer saying basically that "coddling" the players by not letting them lose or even take temporary damage was neither dangerous nor much of a game, and made other good points without being diplomatically worded to shield the feelings of players who might identify with these immature players, got downvoted and actually deleted by moderators.

Similar for questions about what to do when a PC dies. "Have them make a new character of equivalent power and have it show up right away." or "Let them have the character's twin appear." or "Let them get ressurrected immediately." seem to be popular options, while suggestions about serious consequences for dying tend to get a "boo hiss" especially if one expresses that one doesn't like or see the point of pretending to be in a dangerous situation in an actually-consequence-free game.

Quote from: Arminius;861363Just popping in to say: isn't the original Traveller character generation system pretty close to 100% associated? ...

I thought about that when reading that article (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer) too. I'd say so but even more so if the player could make more decisions for the character during their pre-game career, as opposed to rolling dice and taking whatever came up. IIRC the player just chooses service and whether to take multiple terms or not. But it shows how a more elaborate character generation system that was essentially a high-speed roleplayed experience would be associative, and possibly quite cool.

The Roguelike ADOM has a character gen system a little bit like that, at least superficially. You pick a gender, race and class and then it describes a number of scenarios during your childhood/adolescence, giving you options where the choices determine tweaks to your character. However they turn out to map quite simply and mechanically to various +/- adjustments and so on.

Quote from: nDervish;861425Perhaps, then, there is some connection between narrativist/forgey/storygamey/whatever-you-want-to-call-them mechanics and short-term games?  Not necessarily that one causes or requires the other, but perhaps they work better together than trying to run a long-term campaign with forgey rules?

Yeah, I think so.  Thinking of the few storygames I know off the top of my head, Dread doesn't seem meant to last longer than maybe 1-2 sessions (and usually ends with everybody dead); I've never heard of an Apocalypse World/Dungeon World type game that didn't devolve into Porky Pig in Wackyland by session 3 and run out of steam soon after.  

If you're going to create a campaign that players are gonna keep coming back to for session after session for years, you basically can't let them feel like it's their own playground.

Quote from: Skarg;861461On RPG StackExchange are abundant other examples of gameworld-warping even as advice praised by the crowd there, most of which would have me leave a game right away. Or players who want to say they are playing an actual game with risks but seem to actually want the GM to make them automatically win and be the cool heroes and not ever have any setbacks. And the community there seems to encourage enabling this and to discourage suggesting a game with actual risks and consequences. e.g...

Well that place sounds thoroughly horrible to me. Nice to know another forum where to not waste my time. We're far too incompatible to be reconcilable, it seems, and there's no use trying to make it work.

Thanks for the heads up!

Quote from: Skarg;861461No it didn't sound that way to me. And those were good ideas for ways to deal with those problems. But I wanted to make explicit that there were multiple things going on in each example, and while having good GM techniques for them is good, I meant them as examples of types of metagame gameworld-warping that I like to avoid.

On RPG StackExchange are abundant other examples of gameworld-warping even as advice praised by the crowd there, most of which would have me leave a game right away. Or players who want to say they are playing an actual game with risks but seem to actually want the GM to make them automatically win and be the cool heroes and not ever have any setbacks. And the community there seems to encourage enabling this and to discourage suggesting a game with actual risks and consequences. e.g.

Question: "How do I handle offended players as GM?" (http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/64021/how-do-i-handle-offended-players-as-gm) Synopsis: My players said they wanted a "dark, rough and dangerous" game, but when they wiped out everything in my adventure (BTW I fudged some rolls that would have killed them so they wouldn't die) and started killing their way through other areas and took on more strong enemies despite my warnings, they started sulking when some of them took some temporary hitpoint loss. "Both players were really pissed that they got wounded and lost interest in the game. They were offended and upset and the game began to stall. How do I handle such players?"

Most popular answer: (Advice on perspective very diplomatically worded and then: ) "If you must make players fail and suffer harsh consequences, you should try to minimise both how hard the failure should hit and how powerless they are as a result." ... "If they're already frustrated, you should do what you can to give them back some power." ... "rush to a conclusion: say that most of the fight goes out of the enemy as soon as the players kill the next one, or say "okay, you kill the rest of them, we don't really need to bother rolling dice, you're going to win eventually""

Another answer saying basically that "coddling" the players by not letting them lose or even take temporary damage was neither dangerous nor much of a game, and made other good points without being diplomatically worded to shield the feelings of players who might identify with these immature players, got downvoted and actually deleted by moderators.

Similar for questions about what to do when a PC dies. "Have them make a new character of equivalent power and have it show up right away." or "Let them have the character's twin appear." or "Let them get ressurrected immediately." seem to be popular options, while suggestions about serious consequences for dying tend to get a "boo hiss" especially if one expresses that one doesn't like or see the point of pretending to be in a dangerous situation in an actually-consequence-free game.

Once again, clarity of expectations.  I always say, first thing, there is no guarantee that any player character will survive even a single session.

Truthfully, some people want to be doing table top freeform RPing, not playing a game with winning and losing.  That's OK, but that's why expectations need to be clear.

Sounds a bit like the lifepath stuff in CP2020.

Quote from: Bren;861278Yeah. I remember. It sounded incoherent the first time. It still does the second time.

I don't care how you play let's pretend in your own time, but it is rather annoying to hear you whine over and over that the only reason other people don't agree with you is tradition or something.

For someone who says they don't care how someone plays let's pretend you get all bent when they don't agree with you about let's pretend.
Whine over and over?  Touched a nerve I see.

Quote from: Bren;861278You might try doing us the courtesy of accepting that we actually do know what we like when we play.

Strange that you demand this of me, but you seem to be immune to those rules.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861314To sum up:

1. You directly quote me.
2. I reply.
3. You claim that you never "bothered to respond" to me.

That sort of blatant lie really bodes well for the intellectual content of your post.

Far as I need to go, the rest in just asinine.
I referred to the hyperbolic statement.  Unless you want to claim that type of buffoonery is being realistic.

Looking at your sig, I understand, that you have a constant desire of recognition by others, but holy hell dude if you really need my referencing of your hyperbolic statement to be me responding to you by a direct quote.  By all means let it be so.

Quote from: Skarg;861107Oh geez... that would derail me too. My first thoughts are ...

You're kinder than I'd likely be, with that manner of trainwreck of a gaming style.  Depending on how much sleep I didn't get the night before, the words out of my mouth might be "What, out that window?  I see Donald Trump fellating a goat, accompanied by a kick line of emperor penguins dressed in Dallas Cowboys uniforms, while a marching band plays the Horst Wessel Song set to a disco beat.  Want me to describe the goat as well, or would you rather pick up the pengui -- err, ball, yourself?"

When I'm not GMing, I don't want to bother with narrative descriptions.  That's part of the point of being a player.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861558Strange that you demand this of me, but you seem to be immune to those rules.

Your claim is that you know why other people play in a traditional style. And your claim is that we are wrong or lying about the reasons we provided, but that you know better than we do why we like what we like. That is arrogant and discourteous.

I never claimed to know better than you why you like to play let's pretend in a group improv style. I assume you feel that group improv play is more fun for you than playing with a traditional GM.

Am I wrong?

Quote from: CRKrueger;860183I don't play in literary genres, I play in worlds that are alternate universes, that could be just as real as ours.  They have their own physics and cosmology and while some things are the same as ours, others aren't.  

How do you roleplay?

For myself, I like games that are inspired by generes, but don't necessarily try to emulate them. For example,  a game with magic is going to need to handle how magic works somehow, but that's different from emuating how magic works in Middle Earth versus how it works in He-Man.
But it's a fine line, and one I don't care to draw. But it's a guideline that's served me well enough when deciding whether to be inspired by something, or directly try to emulate it.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;861631For myself, I like games that are inspired by generes, but don't necessarily try to emulate them. For example,  a game with magic is going to need to handle how magic works somehow, but that's different from emuating how magic works in Middle Earth versus how it works in He-Man.
But it's a fine line, and one I don't care to draw. But it's a guideline that's served me well enough when deciding whether to be inspired by something, or directly try to emulate it.

It is difficult to exactly describe where the line lays but I feel the same way. I tend to adjust things to take out or mitigate the tropes and conventions that I don't like or feel are untenable in the rpg medium. Its a hazy and arbitrary line but it works for me.

Quote from: Bren;861590Your claim is that you know why other people play in a traditional style. And your claim is that we are wrong or lying about the reasons we provided, but that you know better than we do why we like what we like. That is arrogant and discourteous.

I never claimed to know better than you why you like to play let's pretend in a group improv style. I assume you feel that group improv play is more fun for you than playing with a traditional GM.

Am I wrong?

Yes.

I don't run or play group improv style.

If the GM never bothered to determine, then the player gets to determine.
I don't believe that the player needs to suggest and the Gm needs to make a call anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion. The GM already made the call on it by never bothering to determine.

As for the other part I need go no further than 'play in a traditional style'  you make my point for me.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861712Yes.

I don't run or play group improv style.

If the GM never bothered to determine, then the player gets to determine.
I don't believe that the player needs to suggest and the Gm needs to make a call anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion. The GM already made the call on it by never bothering to determine.

What do you think improv is? You have repeatedly said that anything the GM hasn't specifically defined is open to any player improvisation-ally creating whatever he wants with no ability of the GM to curate or veto the player's creation, because the GM is not allowed to step on another player's creation. This is improv!*

QuoteAs for the other part I need go no further than 'play in a traditional style'  you make my point for me.

Again you misunderstand. I think intentionally.

Traditional is a descriptive term, not a prescriptive term. It is shorthand for a long definition that includes playing in an imaginary world, treating that world as having a reality of its own, the GM as prime creator, the players taking on roles as beings existing in that world, the players affecting the world through the actions of their PCs but not through an ability to author the reality of the world during play, etc.

I call that traditional because (a) that is a much shorter thing to type and I am lazy, (b) that is how games were played by those who first played them and, in my lengthy experience, that is how the majority of people first played those games back in the day so there is a tradition behind that style of play - hence the term, and (c) most people (but apparently not you) seem to understand what is meant by the shorthand.

I play in a fairly traditional way, because I like playing that way better than the alternatives I've seen, including the "player gets to call dibs a shotgun behind the bar" style of play that you seem to love.


* Best when said in an over-the-top imitation of Gerald "This is Sparta" Butler.

Quote from: Bren;861734What do you think improv is? You have repeatedly said that anything the GM hasn't specifically defined is open to any player improvisation-ally creating whatever he wants with no ability of the GM to curate or veto the player's creation, because the GM is not allowed to step on another player's creation. This is improv!*

Again you misunderstand, looks like intentionally.

When a player "talks in character" and a GM responds by "talking in character"  is that improv?  If it's not what is it?  More of this tradition you speak of?

There are restraints to what a player is capable of doing.  I wouldn't think, still don't, that this has to be completely laid out here, I seem to be wrong.
Setting/genre trumps player.  This is what Justin's "no true scotsman" fails hard at.
Perhaps the issue is you think this
nDervish: I look out the window. What do I see?
GM: Good question. Why don't you tell me what you see?
I've never once said this or even implied this.  I have quoted what I was talking about every time "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
See if it was
If the GM knows there is a shotgun there, then it's there.
If the GM knows there is no shotgun there, then it's not there.
No issues from me at all, up to a point.  If you are going against tropes give the players something.  

Quote from: Bren;861734Again you misunderstand. I think intentionally.

Really?  
Really?
Let's cut through the bullshit  You got your pussy are hurt because I said "It's either "because that's the way I learned to play" or it's hyperbole. Which hasn't surprised me in the slightest."
Remember that?  You keep whining about it.
Then
what
the
fuck
is

Quote from: Bren;861734I call that traditional because (a) that is a much shorter thing to type and I am lazy, (b) that is how games were played by those who first played them and, in my lengthy experience, that is how the majority of people first played those games back in the day so there is a tradition behind that style of play - hence the term, and (c) most people (but apparently not you) seem to understand what is meant by the shorthand.

that
Yeah I'm the one that misunderstands. :rolleyes:

Quote from: Sommerjon;861791Again you misunderstand, looks like intentionally.

Really? Let's look at what you said.

QuoteThere are restraints to what a player is capable of doing.  I wouldn't think, still don't, that this has to be completely laid out here, I seem to be wrong
Setting/genre trumps player.  This is what Justin's "no true scotsman" fails hard at.
Perhaps the issue is you think this
nDervish: I look out the window. What do I see?
GM: Good question. Why don't you tell me what you see?
I've never once said this or even implied this.  I have quoted what I was talking about every time "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."

While you say there are restraints on what the player can create, is that restraint something the GM does? Earlier you said.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268Remember this?
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

Here you said you no longer believe that it is the GM's call.

So which is it? Does the GM's call always trump the player's invention in a setting or doesn't it?

Once you decide which it is, get back to me.

QuoteLet's cut through the bullshit  You got your pussy are hurt because I said "It's either "because that's the way I learned to play" or it's hyperbole. Which hasn't surprised me in the slightest."

Remember that?  You keep whining about it.

Yes I remember that. This was the explanation of where the name for a certain style of play comes from. It wasn't the definition of the style of play, nor was it a justification for that style. No justification is necessary beyond, someone saying that's how their group likes to play.

You skipped the definition since it contradicts your contention that other people in this thread, and most particularly me, have claimed the reason we play games a certain way is because of tradition. That is categorically wrong. The reason we play games a certain way is that's how we enjoy them.

The reason we call that way of playing traditional is because, DUH! It is the traditional way that people played.

Here's the entire definition including the important part that you skipped.

Quote from: Bren;861734Traditional is a descriptive term, not a prescriptive term. It is shorthand for a long definition that includes playing in an imaginary world, treating that world as having a reality of its own, the GM as prime creator, the players taking on roles as beings existing in that world, the players affecting the world through the actions of their PCs but not through an ability to author the reality of the world during play, etc.

I call that traditional because (a) that is a much shorter thing to type and I am lazy, (b) that is how games were played by those who first played them and, in my lengthy experience, that is how the majority of people first played those games back in the day so there is a tradition behind that style of play - hence the term, and (c) most people (but apparently not you) seem to understand what is meant by the shorthand.

I play in a fairly traditional way, because I like playing that way better than the alternatives I've seen, including the "player gets to call dibs a shotgun behind the bar" style of play that you seem to love.

If you read all the words this time and think about what they mean, you might notice that the definition of the style of play does not refer to how people used to play, to tradition, or to nostalgia anywhere in the definition. It simply defines a style of gaming where the GM is the prime creator and curator of the setting. Now if it helps you to understand what that style of play is, then in this conversation we can call it "GM curated gaming" instead of "traditional gaming" for all I care. It doesn't affect the style of play. And it doesn't affect my reason for playing in that style.

Maybe a definition that doesn't use the t-word that you dislike so much will help you to understand what I am saying.
   GM curated gaming is a descriptive term, not a prescriptive term. It is shorthand for a long definition that includes playing in an imaginary world, treating that world as having a reality of its own, the GM as prime creator and curator of the setting, the players taking on roles as beings existing in that world, the players affecting the world through the actions of their PCs but not through an ability to author the reality of the world during play, etc.

QuoteYeah I'm the one that misunderstands.

Exactly.

I'm not hiding anything. I like the GM to be in control. I like the GM to curate the invention of the players to maintain the consistency of the setting. I think that is best done by one person, not by a committee. So do lots of other people.

It's ok that you want to make up stuff as the player. It's OK that you don't want the GM to have a veto over what you create that the GM hasn't already excluded. It's just not the way I want to play. It is the way that people who want to share the creation of a story or setting want to play. Many people call that improv gaming. Some call it story gaming. Whatever one wants to call it, that is what you have repeatedly said you prefer just as you have repeatedly said you are opposed to other ways to play, like GM curated gaming.

Quote from: SommerjonThis is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore.

What is the 'that' you don't believe? Or, going the other way, which is it you do believe? That it IS, or that it is NOT, the GM's call?

Quote from: Bren;861813Really? Let's look at what you said.....

Yeah let's look, it's not like I haven't posted enough times, yet you still seem to be not reading what is there.
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.
Have you not noticed the underlined words? GM's call. Always.
You do understand the definition of always?

Quote from: Bren;861813You skipped the definition...

I'm saying why, you keep giving how.

Quote from: Bren;861813"GM curated gaming" instead of "traditional gaming" for all I care...

It is tradition gaming.  Own it.  It is an established pattern of play that you are accustom to, handing down this pattern of play to others and/or younger generations.  That is the very definition of tradition.  It has nothing to do with how you are doing it, it is why you are doing it.

Case in point, when I was first taught how to play monopoly I was taught you had to go around the board one time before you start buying properties.  I enjoyed playing that way, I always played that way, I never knew any different until another couple pointed out that there was no rule for that in the game.

Quote from: Bren;861813It's ok that you want to make up stuff as the player. It's OK that you don't want the GM to have a veto over what you create that the GM hasn't already excluded. It's just not the way I want to play. It is the way that people who want to share the creation of a story or setting want to play. Many people call that improv gaming. Some call it story gaming. Whatever one wants to call it, that is what you have repeatedly said you prefer just as you have repeatedly said you are opposed to other ways to play, like GM curated gaming.

I call it what it is roleplaying.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861558holy hell dude if you really need my referencing of your hyperbolic statement to be me responding to you by a direct quote.  By all means let it be so.

It's not so much a need. It's just what English words mean. But obviously you think you know better than the dictionary, too.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861712I don't run or play group improv style.

If the GM never bothered to determine, then the player gets to determine.

Case in point.

"I don't play group improv style, I just play the style where the group improvs."

Quote from: Sommerjon;861852Yeah let's look, it's not like I haven't posted enough times, yet you still seem to be not reading what is there.
This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.
Have you not noticed the underlined words? GM's call. Always.
You do understand the definition of always?

Now that we understand that you aren't actually using English words or syntax in accordance with their common meaning or practice, I think we can finally untangle what you mean:

What Sommerjon is saying is that it's always the GM's call whether or not he's going to make a call, which means it is not always the GM's call.

And if that makes your brain hurt, that's OK. That's because you're a rational person who exists in a Euclidean world. Sommerjon is posting from Rl'yeh with a mind reflected back upon itself. (If it helps, you just need to realize that the "GM's call" in the first half of the sentence is not referring to the same thing as the "GM's call" in the second half of the sentence. However, the second "GM's call" is referring to the same call as the "call" just before the comma.)

Quote from: Arminius;861363Just popping in to say: isn't the original Traveller character generation system pretty close to 100% associated?

Traveller is why I say that character creation is only ALMOST always dissociated. Similarly, RQ-style skill improvement is an example of associated character advancement.

They do crop up. They're just exceptionally rare.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861852Yeah let's look, it's not like I haven't posted enough times, yet you still seem to be not reading what is there.

I don’t know how else to tell you this Sommerjon. What you wrote is unclear.

Here is you.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861791I have quoted what I was talking about every time "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."

You say that it is the “GM’s call. Always.” Is that what you meant? Well it’s what you said here, so maybe. Except earlier you said something different.
 

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

So now you dislike the statement you quoted in another place without disagreement. But what is it you dislike? And what is it you disagree with? You use the pronoun “that” but it isn’t at all clear what noun "that" is supposed to refer to. The first sentence? The second sentence? Both sentences?

   1) Do you dislike “If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion.”?
2) Do you disagree that “If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion.”?
3) Do you dislike “GM's call. Always."?
4) Do you disagree with “GM's call. Always."?
5) Maybe it’s a bit of both. Do you dislike “If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion,” and you disagree with “GM's call. Always."?

I’m not the only one who has asked you to clarify what you wrote because it was unclear.

Quote from: Phillip;861817

Quote from: Sommerjon;861268This is why I dislike "If the GM never bothered to determine, then there's nothing wrong with the player's implicit suggestion. GM's call. Always."
I don't believe that anymore. Hanging around here helped me reach that conclusion.

What is the 'that' you don't believe? Or, going the other way, which is it you do believe? That it IS, or that it is NOT, the GM's call?

Why not answer Phillip’s question if you can’t or won’t answer mine?

Just state your preference clearly and positively. Just answer the question.

Quote from: Bren;861813Does the GM’s call always trump the player’s invention in a setting or doesn’t it?

Quote from: Sommerjon;861852I'm saying why, you keep giving how.

Yes I know you keep telling me why I play with the rules I use.

Doing so is arrogant, patronizing, and stupid. And you are wrong about why. I told you why I play with the rules I use. You just refuse to accept the answer. Do you think you are Kresge the amazing Internet Mind Reader?

The why is really very, very simple. A setting created by the GM and curated by the GM is more fun for me as a player. So that’s how I play and run RPGs.

QuoteCase in point, when I was first taught how to play monopoly I was taught you had to go around the board one time before you start buying properties.  I enjoyed playing that way, I always played that way, I never knew any different until another couple pointed out that there was no rule for that in the game.

It is not a big surprise to me that you learned some wacky version of a game by not reading the rules. Many people have done that. Unlike you, I learned to play the game by reading the rules. I did not learn the game by being taught by some moron who didn’t read and understand the rules. And that holds true for both Monopoly and for RPGs.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861869They do crop up. They're just exceptionally rare.

I wouldn't call Traveller, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and the other BRP offshoots exceptionally rare.

Quote from: Sommerjon;861852I call it what it is roleplaying.

When you create setting elements on the fly what role are you playing?

Hint: unless your character has these powers in the game world that role isn't an inhabitant of a fictional world.

The role in this case is one of co-storyteller. There are quite a few games designed to work like this.

:popcorn:

Quote from: Bren;861871I wouldn't call Traveller, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and the other BRP offshoots exceptionally rare.

I tend to agree with you, but it also may be that we are just old and out of touch with what younger players are doing. I have to admit it has been getting harder and harder to recruit people for CoC (whereas in the 90s and even early 00s we used to run one-shots at least once a month or so). I still know some die-hard traveller players.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;861915I tend to agree with you, but it also may be that we are just old and out of touch with what younger players are doing. I have to admit it has been getting harder and harder to recruit people for CoC (whereas in the 90s and even early 00s we used to run one-shots at least once a month or so). I still know some die-hard traveller players.

Not old. Older. ;)

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861868...
And if that makes your brain hurt, that's OK. That's because you're a rational person who exists in a Euclidean world. Sommerjon is posting from Rl'yeh with a mind reflected back upon itself. (If it helps, you just need to realize that the "GM's call" in the first half of the sentence is not referring to the same thing as the "GM's call" in the second half of the sentence. However, the second "GM's call" is referring to the same call as the "call" just before the comma.)

LOL! OMG you just made me cry with laughter in public! ... So, how does these calls relate to the "call of Cthulu"?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861869Traveller is why I say that character creation is only ALMOST always dissociated. Similarly, RQ-style skill improvement is an example of associated character advancement.
They do crop up. They're just exceptionally rare.

Actually you said character creation never does, not that it's extremely rare ;-)
 

Quote from: Justin Alexander;861189Character creation never features associated mechanics and character advancement rarely does,

Actually, I don't see that OD&D character creation (3d6 roll in order, choose a class) is dissociated either!

I have noticed that some games have options during character advancement that make no sense to the character and are just numbers on a character sheet, which is something I'd like to avoid.

Sommerjon's just happy he's got a live one on the line as it makes him feel vicariously relevant.

Or in SJWese: he's role'splaining from his position of dominant paradigm privilege and gaslightin' you to make himself out to be the victim.

Have fun you guys! :p

Quote from: Opaopajr;861940Or in SJWese: he's role'splaining from his position of dominant paradigm privilege and gaslightin' you to make himself out to be the victim.

:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;861981:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

Well, I started at the beginning and gotten to here. Color me baffled; I'll be in my crypt, if you need me. Knock on the coffin's lid three times, and have the digestive biscuits ready. MacVitte and Price, if at all possible. And hot cocoa, please.

I genuinely am not following what's happening here. I mean, I'm fascinated, but this is all quite outside my RPG-playing experience.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;861997Well, I started at the beginning and gotten to here. Color me baffled; I'll be in my crypt, if you need me. Knock on the coffin's lid three times, and have the digestive biscuits ready. MacVitte and Price, if at all possible. And hot cocoa, please.

Absolutely possible; the local supermarket has a section for Irish expats that includes them.

Me, I think I want to borrow some of that popcorn, only not to eat, to throw.

Quote from: Bren;861871I wouldn't call Traveller, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, and the other BRP offshoots exceptionally rare.

Sure. But you've just named a grand total of two systems, only one of which features both associated character creation and associated character advancement. (BRP has character advancement which is mostly associated, but still has dissociated character creation.)

These aren't the only examples of the same, but I don't think anyone can credibly say that out of the thousands of RPGs which have been created in the past 40 years that associated character creation and character advancement are anything other than extremely rare.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;861935Actually, I don't see that OD&D character creation (3d6 roll in order, choose a class) is dissociated either!

You pick your race.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;861935Actually you said character creation never does, not that it's extremely rare ;-)

You're right. I got sloppy with my phrasing there. Usually I add "except for Traveller" when I write that, but did not in this case.

(Other than Traveller I'm honestly unfamiliar with any RPG that features totally associated character creation. Although I would love to hear about some.)

I found Traveller skill generation oddly random, but I guess that -- like going to college being an 'advanced' and unusual option -- can be taken as the way things really work in the far-future world. I approach it "in character" most of the time, but sometimes I reverse engineer from the results.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862085You pick your race.

Whether that's dissociated or not is arguable (you're choosing to play an Elf, not choosing to make yourself into an Elf). We could look for an OD&D clone where you can only play humans (I've found one with a quick google). Similarly we could discuss whether choosing your character's name is dissociated (or whether it has no mechanical bearing on the game so is not a mechanic, or whether your character could change their name so its their choice). On a similar track we could discuss whether purely random character generation is dissociated or not. I'm sure I could argue either way with each of them, but I think my choice is influenced by not wishing to change my initial stance.

I think it's an interesting to consider the types of choices made in creation and advancement, but I don't think dissociated is best suited. Perhaps one for deeper thought or another thread.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862085Sure. But you've just named a grand total of two systems...

This is like saying that D&D is only one system.

Quote from: Bren;862131This is like saying that D&D is only one system.

... and I'm officially done playing silly semantic games with you. Are you seriously claiming that 100% associated character creation and character advancement mechanics aren't a tiny, tiny minority of RPG systems? Or are you just faffing about?

Quote from: JoeNuttall;862111Whether that's dissociated or not is arguable (you're choosing to play an Elf, not choosing to make yourself into an Elf).

It might be arguable, but based on your parenthetical statement you're arguing that it IS dissociated.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862188It might be arguable, but based on your parenthetical statement you're arguing that it IS dissociated.

No, I am arguing that it's a decision made before you have a character, so it can't be dissociated, or associated. It's a decision like which game am I going to play. But, as I said, it's not a profitable argument.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862188... and I'm officially done playing silly semantic games with you. Are you seriously claiming that 100% associated character creation and character advancement mechanics aren't a tiny, tiny minority of RPG systems? Or are you just faffing about?

Well that would be a wonderful change. After all you started the silly semantic games by claiming that associated character advancement and generation are "extremely rare" when they aren't. To make that claim you have to ignore several of the best known, most played, and longest existing RPGs. Games that are foundational in the move away from D&D-like level-based games. But rather than just admit you were wrong, you want to count the various Chaosium series of popular games as one system, while presumably counting OD&D and all it's various versions, flavors, and emulators among your unnamed cast of thousands of RPGs to try and rescue your silly point by turning this into a rigged counting contest. How many of those thousands of games are as well known among gamers as the games I mentioned? Five? Ten?

.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862188... and I'm officially done playing silly semantic games with you. Are you seriously claiming that 100% associated character creation and character advancement mechanics aren't a tiny, tiny minority of RPG systems?

No, I am seriously claiming that nobody gives a fuck about "associated" mechanics, whatever the fuck they are.  That reads like the worst excesses of forgespeak.

It's become a common word; the concept behind it shouldn't be too hard to someone who's gone to seminary. I would have chosen "simulative", but Justin wrote a web page and his term gained currency.

It just means that the mechanics represent things that the character would perceive in the game-world, and the player's understanding and relationship to those mechanics are analogous to the character's. E.g., while you can choose where you want to go to college, you aren't guaranteed admittance. So an associated mechanic for a character's education might involve picking a school, then rolling dice modified by personal traits (say, intelligence and willpower, for how good a student you are) and socioeconomic class to see if you are admitted. A dissociated mechanic might involve paying an abstract token (that represents nothing discernible to a character in the game world) out of a limited pool.

Or in a wargame, suppose you wanted to spice things up with odd events like a probing attack being stalled because the soldiers ran into swarm of angry bees. An associated mechanic might handle random events by rolling on a table and applying whatever comes up. A dissociated mechanic might let each player draw cards into a hand and play them--the beehive will appear not because it happened to be in a place that neither side would have foreseen, but because one player or the other strategically "activated" it, at a time & place of their choosing, and with foreknowledge that it would be available since it was in their hand.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862188It might be arguable, but based on your parenthetical statement you're arguing that it IS dissociated.

If choosing your race in D&D is dissociated, then Mongoose Traveller character generation (and possible also other Travellers; MgT is the only one I have handy) is at least somewhat dissociated:

"To determine your character's characteristics, roll 2d6 six times and allocate them to the six basic characteristics in any order." (p.6)

"If you came from a planet already established by Traveller books or by the Referee, then consult those sources for the planet's description. Otherwise, just note down what traits you chose for your homeworld" (p.6)

Why does anyone care about "dissociated" character creation?  This is the kind of circlejerk nonsense that made the Forge and r.g.f.misc useless in the end.  There really aren't enough players who are worried about this kind of crapola to make a gaming group.

Usually because certain instances of dissociated mechanics are often used as the thin edge of the wedge to try to "prove" that disliking dissociated mechanics in play is irrational.

Not that I think it happened here--it seems the thread started with an open question as to why it isn't irrational.

Quote from: Arminius;862300Usually because certain instances of dissociated mechanics are often used as the thin edge of the wedge to try to "prove" that disliking dissociated mechanics in play is irrational.

Describing play preferences as "rational" or "irrational" seems to entirely miss the point that they are preferences.

I wouldn't expect preferences about what kind of game someone likes to be a matter of reason, anymore than I would expect reason to determine whether someone likes or dislikes the taste of Tutti-Frutti ice cream. Someone using the term "rational" starts out as if they think they will be able to argue someone else into changing their taste or preference. And that's not happening.

Yeah, but it does happen--the arguing not the convincing.

I'd say, though that a preference can be analyzed and articulated, probably with some profit. That's criticism in a useful sense.

Quote from: Arminius;862325Yeah, but it does happen--the arguing not the convincing.

Oh yeah it happens all the fricking time. I was just pointing out the futility of the attempt.

QuoteI'd say, though that a preference can be analyzed and articulated, probably with some profit. That's criticism in a useful sense.

Sure it's useful to know that heavy on the hops makes the beer taste a way I don't fancy. But that's only useful because there are other beers that taste in a way I do fancy. Coconut, on the other  hand, doesn't need analysis. There isn't anyway in which the taste or texture ever appeals to me. So the utility for any given person likely depends on whether narrative techniques and play style is more like one's personal version of beer or of coconut.

Quote from: Bren;862200Well that would be a wonderful change. After all you started the silly semantic games by claiming that associated character advancement and generation are "extremely rare" when they aren't. To make that claim you have to ignore several of the best known, most played, and longest existing RPGs.

I told you I was done playing your silly semantic games. Your refusal to provide a straightforward answer to the question actually under discussion only serves to confirm that you are deliberately faffing about.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;862257Why does anyone care about "dissociated" character creation?

Prior to this thread I would have said absolutely no one (which was, in fact, my point). But apparently Bren cares a lot. On the other hand, Bren also apparently believes that the only reason BRP-based games don't make up a significant percentage of published RPGs is because people are trying to "rig" things by counting multiple editions of D&D as being different games.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;862257Why does anyone care about "dissociated" character creation?  This is the kind of circlejerk nonsense that made the Forge and r.g.f.misc useless in the end.  There really aren't enough players who are worried about this kind of crapola to make a gaming group.

Yes. The question of associated or disassociated game mechanics is essentially irrelevant and a case of watching individual trees rather than the forest. The whole point of game's mechanics should always be looked at as whole. There is a lot of different game mechanics that you can employ and selecting those to use should always be thought as whole and design goal of whole game in mind.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862356I told you I was done playing your silly semantic games.

And yet you just keep nattering on, and on, and on....

Can't help but notice that 'associated' here seems as a rule to mean close enough to 'random'. It's darned simple to let the dice decide whatever one wishes not to decide for oneself!

The really fundamental problem is fools who insist on making this or that actually a binding rule on themselves and then complaining that "the game" is this or that. They actually have themselves to blame, and can fix their self-inflicted problem in an instant; I find it hard therefore to take the complaint seriously.

Not necessarily. Chaosium Runequest II had training rules that basically let you improve skills (to a point) by paying money and spending time in school. No dice roll required. There's nothing random about that, although it's a little bit simplified and abstract. And it's much more obviously associated than either automatically going up levels based on gaining experience points, or (especially) "spending" experience points on a la carte improvements.

Quote from: Phillip;862422Can't help but notice that 'associated' here seems as a rule to mean close enough to 'random'.

No. Traveller, for example, gives you control over which careers you'll attempt. And RQ's advancement mechanics are based on the skills you choose to use.

There are also random components to those mechanics, but you could easily imagine versions which no random elements.

Quote from: Phillip;862422Can't help but notice that 'associated' here seems as a rule to mean close enough to 'random'. It's darned simple to let the dice decide whatever one wishes not to decide for oneself!

I wouldn't say "random" so much as "those factors outside of the character's control are random".  In Traveller and in RL, you can choose whether you want to join the army or become a merchant, but you can't choose whether the army or the merchants want you.  In RQ and in RL, you can choose whether to practice a given skill or not, but you can't choose whether you're born naturally strong or naturally sociable.  Etc.

Quote from: nDervish;862528I wouldn't say "random" so much as "those factors outside of the character's control are random".  In Traveller and in RL, you can choose whether you want to join the army or become a merchant, but you can't choose whether the army or the merchants want you.  In RQ and in RL, you can choose whether to practice a given skill or not, but you can't choose whether you're born naturally strong or naturally sociable.  Etc.

There is no "cannot" except what you choose. Since you can choose otherwise, there really is no "cannot" at all. Understand this fact of hobby games, and you will understand that there is nobody to blame but yourself. If you're complaining, then it's because complaining is your idea of fun; so really you have nothing to complain about.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;862524No. Traveller, for example, gives you control over which careers you'll attempt. And RQ's advancement mechanics are based on the skills you choose to use.

But that's not what people were pointing to. Repeatedly, the dichotomy was 'associated' randomness vs. 'dissociated' choice.

It goes both ways, too: just because Joe Blow writes in a book that we should toss dice to see whether a character is male or female doesn't mean we can't choose.

Grow a gonad (either kind) and get on with playing.

Quote from: Phillip;862667It goes both ways, too: just because Joe Blow writes in a book that we should toss dice to see whether a character is male or female doesn't mean we can't choose.

[get off my lawn rant]
The understanding  that the Rules as Written are not some kind of magical contract sealed in blood and broken only at peril to one's immortal soul does seem to be increasingly rare these days.
[/get off my lawn rant]

Quote from: Phillip;862666But that's not what people were pointing to. Repeatedly, the dichotomy was 'associated' randomness vs. 'dissociated' choice.

You may or may not have noticed some correlation in examples in this thread, but I assure you associated mechanics is unrelated to randomness.

Huh? Nobody's complaining. If you want to have your character do something or be something, whether the rules say you can or can't, of course you can if you feel like it and it's acceptable to everyone else involved.

Same thing for character creation/development applies to defeating a trap or slaying a dragon. Go wild.

The idea of "associated" in all cases is that the player's control over what happens is the same that the character would have, with the same abilities and constraints, and that the control is intelligible to the character.

I think it's reasonable to say that, in the real world, you don't choose your race, biological sex, genotype, parents, socioeconomic background, etc. In fact, you don't choose to exist at all, nor do you choose to be an intelligent, sentient being as opposed to a water molecule, a bacterium, or redwood tree. So obviously there is some element of shall we say "constructive voluntary choice" in deciding to play an RPG, deciding which RPG to play, and consciously or unconsciously not deciding to expand the rules to create a random ontogeny for each player character.

So obviously there is some degree to which the variation in "being" and "nature" is circumscribed when it comes to the entities that are "played" by players. But is it necessary to do any more than note this and move on? If you prefer to see the idea of dissociation vs. association in character creation as an imponderable, I won't press the point too hard.

On the other hand if you have character development mechanics that give free rein to adding features in the form of skills, advantages (feats, etc.), ability scores, etc., without reference to the game environment or past history--other than accumulation of abstract "experience points", then if the game-world is supposed to operate something like the real world, the mechanics aren't associated. For example if I can choose to spend my experience points (or my new ability slots from leveling up) on either "two handed smash" or "devious feint", that basically implies I'm decided to study and practice one combat technique or another. If so, why do I need to go out and get experience before I study? Or if instead we're pretending that the character learned the technique in the course of engaging in fights during the adventures that yielded the experience points, then why does the player have an option--shouldn't the technique learned be a direct consequence of details of those combats?

Or perhaps one simply prefers things more abstract.  Abstract is not necessarily unrealistic or "disassociated" as you use the term, but it focuses on different things.

You're not the first person to suggest that dissociation and abstraction are the same (in some or all cases), or that an apparent dissociation is really abstraction. In the example of character development I gave, though, in order for the mechanic not to be dissociated, you'd need to explain why, from the character's perspective, things work the way they do. Not saying you can't, but I think the most straightforward explanations for how & why improvement happens in game world terms don't match up well with the mechanics.

Dissociation isn't a death sentence or a mortal sin--the impact on someone's enjoyment of the game depends on a lot of specifics about the game and the person. E.g. as suggested by this thread I think people in general are more comfortable with dissociated chargen and advancement/development than they are by dissociated task resolution. In fact I think a lot of people really enjoy the type of advancement that amounts to picking from a menu of options.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;862671You may or may not have noticed some correlation in examples in this thread, but I assure you associated mechanics is unrelated to randomness.

It's not that we don't understand, but that when we give a shit about something so fucking trivial as tossing a die or picking a number we simply take care of it and move along.

Now even I can't follow this discussion *_*, and I'm starting to wonder if Bren actually read my post before replying to it.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860618No, one does not have to rely on a genre conventions to establish the laws of a fictional reality. The rules alone can provide that.

The rules do not reflect the fictional reality, but provide an interface players can use to interact with it. Do Hit Points exist in the fictional reality? Do combat turns? Do die modifiers?

And when the rules do not support genre expectations, or worse contradict them, they create cognitive dissonance for the players. In these cases the GM will almost always go with the latter, so if the rules say you have enough HP to survive a jump off a cliff, too bad, because that just doesn't make sense in the setting.

Unless it's Vampire the Masquerade, in which case you get The Matrix.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;860618Surprise, your question wasn't loaded!

Actually...

"A loaded question or complex question fallacy is a question that contains a controversial or unjustified assumption"

First they came for the begging questions, and I did nothing. Next they came for the loaded questions, but I thought they were safe because they were armed.

Quote from: Bren;860624You say, "especially if you're the GM" as if somehow the GM's changes are more disruptive that a players. Why "especially" the GM?

Because the GM holds the 'Ur' world, and any contradictions are ultimately resolved by what is 'true' there.

Quote from: Bren;860624It's not clear that you recognize that what you want conflicts with what some other people want.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592There's a whole collection of helpful techniques, but none of them are universal. Some players find 'combat mode' breaks their immersion, despite being perhaps the least ambiguous communication channel in play. I find playing the equivalent of '20 questions' with the GM to establish every (what perhaps only I believe to be) relevant detail breaks mine, but others rely on it to support theirs.

Did you actually read my post?

Quote from: Bren;860624Play-toe, po-tay-toe, po-ta-toe.

It's the difference between conscious and subconscious thinking.

Quote from: Bren;860624Generally I don't imagine the color. I spend more of my imagination and mental energy considering what detail has been provided than in inventing wall colors or other gap filling details. The color of the wall is seldom relevant to me in seeing the scene.

This is so alien to my experience that I simply assumed otherwise, but obviously I was wrong. Finding things out like this is exactly why we have these discussions.

Quote from: Bren;860624People fill in different amounts and kinds of detail. I have had one player who has the problem you describe. And when that comes up, I frequently find their imagination of the scene does not align with that of anyone else. Not mine as the GM and not any of the other players at the table. So other than catering to that one player's imagination over and above that of the others at the table, there isn't much that can be done by me as the GM.

You seem to resent the people who imagine differently than you and hold them in high disdain. Perhaps you as the GM aren't communicating clearly enough and lack the proper understanding of that player's background to do so. After all, you don't play with idiots or assholes.

Quote from: Bren;860624Often what is strange is not that there are no tapestries, but that one person thinks that there should be tapestries in the poor peasant's cottage. I find that often when players do that it is because they missed prior setting clues that would indicate an absence of tapestries as the most likely scene to imagine.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Again, perhaps the GM isn't communicating clearly enough. Also again, did you actually read my post?

Quote from: Bren;860624For the game to occur there needs to be sufficient consistency so that actions make sense. The GM bears the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining consistency.

And that's why the GM's inner world is the most important when it comes to resolving contradictions.

Quote from: Bren;860624Any change made for Player A may well invalidate the imagining of Players B and C in addition to the imagination of the GM himself. And once again we are back to utilitarian ethics.

...

Axiomatically it is simpler for one person to hold a consistent vision than for four people to do so.

No argument there, which is why we have rules/GMs in the first place.

However, I think even as players we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree, as without that I tend to see folks engage in an encapsulated manner, waiting their turn, only engaging with the GM, unconcerned with other player PoVs.

Quote from: Bren;860624Joint creation by the group is incompatible with exploring an apparently existent world.

Only if the things the players want to explore are also the things the players have the power to determine. That's the key, and RPGs can differ on which things they make which.

Quote from: Bren;860624One technique that games seldom mention is for the players to exert some self-control over their imagination to prevent themselves from imagining the equivalent of red walls and golden tapestries in the hut of a humble farmer. Now it's hyperbole, because I suspect that controlling imagination is pretty difficult in general and very difficult for some specific people.

And yet that's exactly what the rules do. Do players imagine automatically hitting the bad guy in D&D? No, because the rules explicitly state that that's something determined my the mechanics.

Quote from: Bren;860624No game setting can be 100% consistent. That doesn't mean we can't aim for consistency though.

Of course no game setting can be 100% consistent. In fact, inconsistency is the default. We must aim for consistency for anything to work at all. And the reason we have rules, GMs, and assorted play techniques is to enforce consistency.

Nobody is arguing otherwise. Nobody is not aiming for consistency.

Quote from: Bren;860624The other reason is that part of what we do as players, or at least what we should do, is to try to intuit and understand how the GM sees the scene. This is a skill that takes effort and practice and that improves with experience. Its related to other social skills humans have developed in predicting social interactions. And it can be improved both by experience in general, but most particularly by experience with one particular GM.

No argument there either.

My gaming experience drastically improved once I figured out you had to play to the GM, and yet I've never found a single RPG which explains how to do this and why. And for many it's cheating, not the reason they play, or requires a skill set they're poorly equipped for.

Quote from: Bren;860624Now when we allow Player A to insert some new element into the scene that does not accord with our current understanding, that new element is probably more unexpected and more distracting because it is coming from an unexpected and unanticipated direction. And if I, as a player, try to anticipate that new element I then need to intuit not just how the GM sees the scene but also how each of my fellow players sees the scene. That calls for spreading my available concentration across everyone at the table which means that I will be less effective at the intuition process than if I can safely limit the bulk of my attention and anticipation towards understanding and intuiting the GM's perspective.

It's definitely an additional cognitive load, but again I believe even as a player, the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun. And if your immersion depends primarily on the GM, then why have all these other potential disruptions (ie, players) involved?

This is a skill that takes effort and practice and that improves with experience. Its related to other social skills humans have developed in predicting social interactions. And it can be improved both by experience in general, but most particularly by experience with one particular group of players.

Quote from: Phillip;860643The notion that the laws of the world must be overturned just because I wish they were otherwise is untenable, because there is no criterion privileging my fancy; the laws would spin as often as another player with another whim spoke.

Nobody is trying to overturn the laws of the world, only rely on reasonable expectations.

Quote from: Bren;860679I assume that I'm not playing with idiots or assholes - since I won't. That drastically decreases the number of other assumptions that need to be stated before play.

You seem to assume that any misunderstanding is rooted in bad faith participation. Has anyone else been paying attention to how destructive this attitude is yet?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987GM: You walk into a kitchen.
Player: I grab the atom bomb.

The GM never "bothered to determine" whether or not there were atom bombs in the kitchen, so there should be no objection when a player assumes that there is, right?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592It was immersion breaking because neither the genre nor the character established such a possibility beforehand. It's examples like these which lead folks to think 'storygames' are like some Lucky Charms commercial where you just declare there's a balloon and fly away. But that's actually the kind of play they're designed to prevent, because the goal is to enable multiple participants to construct a coherent ongoing narrative which makes sense in the setting.

Probably should have read my post.

An atom bomb being in the kitchen is neither part of anyone's common experience, nor a part of any genre. There is no reason to expect an atom bomb in the kitchen, and if there was (such as following a geiger counter), then declaring it would not be disruptive.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;860987For example, the assumption that one would find a knife in a kitchen is a reasonable one. But what if the GM knows that there are no knives in this particular kitchen because the NPC has a phobia of knives? And that this is, in fact, a crucial clue in figuring out what happened the night before?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Definitely should have read my post.

Quote from: Bren;861020It is intentionally systematic. It wasn't written for you. It was written for the person who says that congruence between the imagining of the player and the GM is always impossible.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592But a major problem in these discussions is that people also tend to assume absolute positions as opposed to ideals at different ends of a spectrum.

No really, did you actually read my post?

Quote from: nDervish;861069The last game I was a (non-GM) player in was Dungeon World.  It was a lot of fun in general.  There were some things I didn't really care for.  But you know what the one thing was that utterly killed the game for me every time it happened?

nDervish:  I look out the window.  What do I see?
GM:  Good question.  Why don't you tell me what you see?

GM:  You see a group of dwarves approaching.  Roll Discern Realities.
nDervish:  I rolled a 10.
GM:  You recognize their leader.  Who is he and how do you know him?

Yes. Not only can this context breach disrupt play all on its own, but it can also be a huge unanticipated cognitive load which disrupts play even more. And while I'm not necessarily a fan of it, I've learned to shift gears well enough that I can get past it, unless the cognitive load is too much.

But the infection has spread, as even Wil Wheton was doing this kind of thing while running Titansgrave.

Quote

Quote from: Bren;861278Anon Adderlan said his belief in the world was impaired if the bar was not the equipped with a shotgun because that's the particular kind of bar that he imagined in his own head. And if he can't have what he imagined in his own head, that ruins the fun for him. Now a lot of people found that to be a really odd and possibly selfish belief* and one that was contrary with the way a lot of people play RPGs.

Quote from: Bren;861278Now I guess you are in the same bandwagon with Anon Adderlan since you keep wailing about that only reason people don't play games like you and AA are because they fear change, or they are mired in tradition, or some such bullshit.

Dear readers, is it worth even engaging past this point? It's obvious Bren feels I am participating in bad faith, despite everything I've actually said.

Quote from: Bren;861278You might try doing us the courtesy of accepting that we actually do know what we like when we play.

I accept you know what you like, but I do not necessarily accept you know why.

Quote from: Bren;861278Anon Adderlan didn't seem at all concerned about what kind of bar the other people at the table imagined nor whether a shotgun being behind the bar was ruining their fun. Now maybe he really is concerned about other people and just forgot to mention it, or maybe he sees RPGs as the players all together against the GM, or something. But if he did, he didn't say so. So some people thought he sounded overly entitled.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592If anything, I specifically look for opportunities to work off and acknowledge the contributions of other players, which may not be the most immersive thing in the world, but I'm willing to make that concession because of how much better the experience becomes for everyone in the long run.

Did you actually re... oh fuck it.

And how would me declaring there's a shotgun behind the bar none of the players have any knowledge of ruin their fun unless they assumed there wasn't one. How would they know, and why would they think that?

Quote from: Skarg;861461On RPG StackExchange

I've found RPG StackExchange to be a horrible place for advice, but a great litmus test as to what the general public thinks when it comes to the hobby.

Quote from: Bren;861734What do you think improv is? You have repeatedly said that anything the GM hasn't specifically defined is open to any player improvisation-ally creating whatever he wants with no ability of the GM to curate or veto the player's creation, because the GM is not allowed to step on another player's creation.

The difference is the GM hasn't necessarily identified the elements they've defined to the players yet.

Quote from: Bren;861734Again you misunderstand. I think intentionally.

Then why do you continue to engage them?

Quote from: Bren;862336Sure it's useful to know that heavy on the hops makes the beer taste a way I don't fancy. But that's only useful because there are other beers that taste in a way I do fancy. Coconut, on the other  hand, doesn't need analysis. There isn't anyway in which the taste or texture ever appeals to me.

Guess you're not a fan of Ballast Point's Victory at Sea then. But if you're a fan of hops, I'd highly recommend Newburg's HopDrop, which is the single best IPA I've ever had.

Quote from: Phillip;862931It's not that we don't understand, but that when we give a shit about something so fucking trivial as tossing a die or picking a number we simply take care of it and move along.

Well I'm happy to say that I don't have a clue what on earth you're talking about now.

Quote from: Anon AdderlanNobody is trying to overturn the laws of the world, only rely on reasonable expectations.

Who is the privileged judge, the final word on what is or is not reasonable? I prefer to leave that to the GM. Others prefer to create some sort of bidding or dice-tossing type of mechanism to settle conflict among players. Others yet put it to a vote.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;863001Well I'm happy to say that I don't have a clue what on earth you're talking about now.

I'm talking about the old understanding -- usually explicitly stated in the old days -- that, having picked up a handbook, I am now in charge of my own game. Something I can change easy as a snap ain't worth the sturm und drang people invest in that shit these days (which seems like some wacky kind of pretentious).

Quote from: CRKrueger;860194I guess the thing is, I never say "I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun." because I'm not immersing in the assumptions in my head.  I say "I jump behind the bar, and look for a weapon." because my character doesn't know whether there is one or not, he hopes there is, but I'm immersed in the reality of the setting, which is not subject to my whims.

Same here. As mentioned in the other threads. For me someone just grabbing a weapon out of the blue is very immersion breaking because we don't know there is a weapon there.

All my players are the same. They key off of area descriptions and tend to scope out a locale as needed or ask me for more details as they focus on something. Once we know some baser details we know it is safe to assume that some things are present even if not stated every single time.

Same when I am the player and gaming with the girls. For example once we know a dungeon is a little crumbly or in disrepair. We can safely assume that there are rocks and debris here and there that make make for emergency sling ammo. But if the place is well kept then we know we will not and so do not. So we are not "editing" the word. We are playing off known factors.

Quote from: Phillip;863092I'm talking about the old understanding -- usually explicitly stated in the old days -- that, having picked up a handbook, I am now in charge of my own game. Something I can change easy as a snap ain't worth the sturm und drang people invest in that shit these days (which seems like some wacky kind of pretentious).

?? That doesn't relate at all to the post of mine you were quoting.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;862679Or perhaps one simply prefers things more abstract.  Abstract is not necessarily unrealistic or "disassociated" as you use the term, but it focuses on different things.

Agreed. Once I got the idea of "rulings not rules" I was able to run my OD&D Majestic Wilderlands games with a similar feel to the GURPS Majestic Wilderlands. OD&D is more abstract however in the way I narrated the results and handle my rulings made the the different campaigns feel similar.

I dunno folks, it seem simple to me. RPGs about pen & paper virtual realities. When it is not obvious what happens when a character interacts with the setting you need to make ruling or look up a rule. But the setting defines what the character can and can not do not the rules.

Quote from: estar;863171I dunno folks, it seem simple to me. RPGs about pen & paper virtual realities. When it is not obvious what happens when a character interacts with the setting you need to make ruling or look up a rule. But the setting defines what the character can and can not do not the rules.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. If the setting and not the rules defines what the character can and cannot do, why are you looking up a rule in the first place?

Quote from: Bren;863182You seem to be contradicting yourself. If the setting and not the rules defines what the character can and cannot do, why are you looking up a rule in the first place?

To help me adjudicate an uncertain results in a consistent manner. Like whether six seconds of combat will result in damage to one or both of the combatant.

You probably thinking that I am avoiding answering your point. Let me be precise, the setting includes how physics work. Physics can be stated as simply as "It works like our world unless stated otherwise like the existence of magic."

Or it could be stated "It works like Saturday Morning Action Cartoons.", "It works like a Punisher style comic book." "It works like it does in Chinese Legends"  and so on.

All that is part of the setting, the world of the campaign existing as if it was it's own reality. Not everything a character can do is certain, when it is not certain you need to adjudicate the result based on the circumstances and make ruling. For RPGs, the rules are a set of codified rulings.

The point of traditional games is to play the game by the rules. But that not the focus of RPGs. The focus of an RPG is the campaign. A campaign has a setting. The players do things as their characters in the setting. Those things need adjudicating. Adjudication can be done with a on the spot ruling or a rule can be looked up and interpreted. Either way works.  

So the point of RPGs is to experience a setting within the context of a campaign. Not to play a set of rules like it is for a traditional game. Rules are perhaps least important part in all of this.

What this has to the various points raised about abstraction. Well it is the referee's choice to as what level of details goes into a ruling. Is the quality of the metal of the weapon important to adjudicate a medieval combat for a particular campaign? Some people think so as well as other detailed factors. So you have a bunch of players use the detailed rules of GURPS + GURPS Martial Arts.

Some people say fuck all that and just boil it down to a simple d20 roll with the experience of the character and the what armor the target is wearing as the main factors.

Neither way is better than the other. But the former may be more fun and interesting to some than the latter method. However because it takes more time to learn and remember, the detailed approach of GURPS isn't as popular as the more abstract approach of D&D.

Yes there is some point where something is so abstract that the feel that your character is living in that setting is lost. But that event that differ from individual to individual. Which is why We don't just have D&D and just have GURPS but a spectrum of games between the two. And we have games that are even more abstract than D&D and games that are far more detailed than GURPS.

Now for me I have successfully made the Majestic Wilderlands campaigns that I adjudicate using the OD&D rules for adjudication feel like the same world that I ran when I used GURPS to adjudicate what the players did.

For example characters still had advantages and disadvantage but they were written as part of the background as the character. Wait! What about Blindness! Combat Reflexies! various advantages and disadvantage that conferred important benefits and limitation on GURPS characters.

Let me clue you in something about GURPS, in twenty years I can count onthe number of players who took a severe physical disadvantage on one hand. Just about every characters who was going to do a lot of melee fighting took Combat Reflexes. Over the a number of GURPS campaigns certain patterns emerged.  So when I wrote up my Majestic Wilderlands supplement to use with OD&D, those patterns were preserve.

And for the other advantages and disads players took the one that dealt with a character's social status or personality. Something that easy just written up in a paragraph on the OD&D character sheet.

My philosophy of abstract vs specific is why I am able to run the same setting for 30 years throughout multiple system and make each of those campaign feel like they exist as part of the same world.

Now if you make yourself a slave to the rules then Vreeg's Corollary about rules and setting will come into full play. Your setting will become the setting as defined in the rules you chose. However if you reverse it, do the work of making the rules reflect your world first. Then that will not apply.

Quote from: estar;863198You probably thinking that I am avoiding answering your point.

Not really. I think your earlier statement was not well worded and thus appears contradictory. However your longer explanation clarified your position and I don't see a contradiction in that fuller explanation, so the earlier statement isn't particularly relevant to me at this point. Thanks for clarifying.

How do I roleplay?  According to some, completely wrong.

I make up some shit I think will be fun.
I run the game.
If not fun, I make up some other shit I think will be fun.
I run the game.
Repeat until fun.

In other words, I'm not afraid to make a mistake or say "Well, that sucked."

If I could change ONE thing about this hobby, it would be to remove all ... and I mean ALL ... the hand-wringing.

Trying to respond to the quotes, nested quotes, and double nested quotes is time consuming and probably dull as shit for almost anyone else to read. So before responding to any of Anon Adderlan's comments, let me lay out the points I was making in one place rather than having them scattered across multiple posts and responses to posts. Full disclosure, this is kind of long.

I play RPGs to explore an existent, imaginary world. The more the world seems, feels, and behaves like an actual world the easier it is to do that. Because we play games for fun, those worlds usually are not our world and they may set in the distant past or the far future. The world may include faster-than-light travel, alien races, magic, or horrible secrets humanity was not meant to know. But the world should still seem like a world that is real, at least in an imaginary sense. Because of this, and for other reasons, consistency in the world setting is crucial for my long term enjoyment of the game, whether as a player or as a GM.

The ability of other players to create elements of the world or setting as we play can, and often does, negatively impact the consistency of the setting as well as the feel of an existent imaginary world. So I'm not too keen on including bennies, rules, or conventions that foster or facilitate that sort of player creation of the setting. I want the GM to create the setting. I want the GM to curate and maintain the setting. I want that so that the setting will be explorable and so that it will feel like it has existence while it is being explored. I don't want the feeling that ordinary, mundane shops and houses are plywood flats and behind them are the tumbleweeds of a vacant Republic films lot. Players creating new elements of the setting give me the feeling that the setting is being created after the shop door is opened.

Worse still, creations made by multiple people tend towards inconsistency. Anyone who has watched a long running (often even a short running) television series while paying attention to continuity will find multiple areas of failure. And that is in an activity with paid professionals and that includes someone whose job, possibly their full time job, is trying to maintain continuity. That's why long running series will have "continuity bibles" that outline setting continuity for the various writers. In a leisure activity like an RPG, expecting that level of effort is unreasonable. This means that realistically, plausibly, including uncurated player creations will cause significant setting discontinuities. Some people don't care about that. The preference for kitchen-sink, gonzo settings shows that some people actually prefer inconsistency in their gaming. And that's great if that's what everyone wants. I just don't happen to be one of those people.

That is my fundamental problem with the player who says, "I grab the [nonexistent until this moment] shotgun from behind the bar." In my experience, more often than not, a player doing that causes a discontinuity in the setting for multiple people at the table. So from a utilitarian calculus the fun that one person gets from the shotgun they imagined is outweighed by the lack of fun for the other people at the table who are left with a variety of responses ranging from frustration, confusion, and irritation through approval and outright keep up with the Jones' emulation. If that's what you want in your gaming, great. I don't.

And since it is time consuming to discuss and adjudicate such attempts at player creation during play, in general, I prefer to avoid a style of play or a set of rules that encourages doing that.

Now it must be said that it is possible, even likely, that the GM will create discontinuities by failing to adequately communicating the setting to the players. Nothing is perfect; humans are fallible. But assuming that all such failures are due solely or even mainly to the GM flies in the face of my experience playing and running RPGs. It also flies in the face of every course or workshop in communication that I have ever taken. But blaming the GM is a popular thing to do and say on online forums, especially it seems, when one wants to foster a style of play that gives greater creative input (like the creation of tapestries and shotguns) to the players. Let's not kid ourselves; giving the players that input will change the feel of play. If it changes for the better for your group, that's great. But it doesn't, it can't do that for every group. And, as the saying goes, anyone who tells you that it can is selling something.

On to the exciting, fascinating quote wars. Feel free to skip to the next post.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624You say, "especially if you're the GM" as if somehow the GM's changes are more disruptive that a players. Why "especially" the GM?

Because the GM holds the 'Ur' world, and any contradictions are ultimately resolved by what is 'true' there.

Are the GM's changes any more disruptive than a players? If not, your statement "yet still must be careful to avoid unintentionally contradicting their unstated assumptions and breaking their immersion, especially if you're" a player would be equally applicable. Which is why I asked why you used the word "especially."

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624It's not clear that you recognize that what you want conflicts with what some other people want. Or that if you get your preference that increases the effort, time, and difficulty for those other players to immerse or to "reengage."

Did you actually read my post?

Yes. Which is why I said that it seems you don't recognize that what you want increases the difficulty for other people. You wrote this: "However, I think even as players we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree."

That doesn't include a caveat that maybe we shouldn't support the imagination of other people at the table because that sort of invention in the moment that you seem to advocate conflicts with a desire to explore an imaginary world or to envision that imaginary world as having an existence outside of the imagination of the individual player.  Which is, again, why I said that you don't seem to grasp the fact that what you want is in fundamental and possibly irresolvable conflict with what some other people want. That doesn't make what you want bad. It just makes it incompatible with what other people, me for example, happen to want.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971It's the difference between conscious and subconscious thinking.

Maybe you should think more consciously then?

The difference between creation and revelation is not subconscious vs. conscious but between existence in a single, solipsistic imaginary reality and building and sharing an imaginary reality with others. I don't care whether the problem for you occurs in your head before you articulate it or once you articulate what is in your head to the others at the table. Once what you imagine conflicts with the imagining of anyone at the table it is a potential issue. Once you want your imagining to be privileged over that of the others at the table you have become the problem. If you aren't actually advocating for that, than, respectfully, despite your occasional caveat you aren't doing a very good job of communicating your intent.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Generally I don't imagine the color. I spend more of my imagination and mental energy considering what detail has been provided than in inventing wall colors or other gap filling details. The color of the wall is seldom relevant to me in seeing the scene. And when it is relevant, it's almost always because the GM described it for some reason—possibly because they thought the color relevant. So ignoring it works well for me. I accept that it probably doesn't work so well for you though.

This is so alien to my experience that I simply assumed otherwise, but obviously I was wrong. Finding things out like this is exactly why we have these discussions.

Well that's some progress.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624People fill in different amounts and kinds of detail. I have had one player who has the problem you describe. And when that comes up, I frequently find their imagination of the scene does not align with that of anyone else. Not mine as the GM and not any of the other players at the table. So other than catering to that one player's imagination over and above that of the others at the table, there isn't much that can be done by me as the GM.

You seem to resent the people who imagine differently than you and hold them in high disdain. Perhaps you as the GM aren't communicating clearly enough and lack the proper understanding of that player's background to do so. After all, you don't play with idiots or assholes.

Resent or disdain? No. Frustrated by? Sometimes.
 
While some find it fashionable to blame the GM for all problems at the table, communication is a two way street. If everyone else at the table comes to the same basic understanding of the scene except that one person, the odds seem good that the outlier is at least in part responsible for the misunderstanding.

You seem focused on the GM side of communication regardless of the situation. That or, as you say, you aren't reading what I wrote.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Often what is strange is not that there are no tapestries, but that one person thinks that there should be tapestries in the poor peasant's cottage. I find that often when players do that it is because they missed prior setting clues that would indicate an absence of tapestries as the most likely scene to imagine. And often the other players noticed those clues and imagined a hut without tapestries. So putting the tapestry in to make room consistent with A's imagining of the room necessarily makes the room inconsistent with the imaginings of B, C, and G. Here I default to utilitarian ethics in saying that it's better for A to have to reconcile the lack of tapestries in the scene than for everyone else to reconcile the insertion.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;860592So if they assume there's a tapestry to hide behind, why not just go with it, unless the lack of tapestries has already been established or is a relevant detail?

Again, perhaps the GM isn't communicating clearly enough. Also again, did you actually read my post?

To answer your question inside the quote the reason I didn't "just go with it" was in the part of my post you didn't quote. It's the part in bold that I put back in.

Of course the GM may not have communicated clearly. Or the player wasn't listening. Communication isn't a one way street. Active listening helps. People who are busy imagining a lot of details often, in my experience, aren't actively listening. So they miss stuff. Stuff that the other players who are paying attention do notice. Which was the point I was making.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624For the game to occur there needs to be sufficient consistency so that actions make sense. The GM bears the primary responsibility for creating and maintaining consistency.

And that's why the GM's inner world is the most important when it comes to resolving contradictions.

Which is why I found your comment that the GM should be more flexible than the players odd. It seems far more reasonable for the players to aim at being flexible. The GM needs to balance the imaginations of everyone at the table, not just the guy who imagines a shotgun behind the bar

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971However, I think even as players we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree, as without that I tend to see folks engage in an encapsulated manner, waiting their turn, only engaging with the GM, unconcerned with other player PoVs.

Saying that "we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree" doesn't really say much though does it?

Support how? To what degree? What happens when the POVs conflict?

I don't think anyone in this thread has suggested that the GM shouldn't ever support a player's POV, but that such support must be balanced against other factors and that many of us are not looking for and don't want the player in a world creation role because it makes something we do enjoy more difficult or even impossible.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Joint creation by the group is incompatible with exploring an apparently existent world.

Only if the things the players want to explore are also the things the players have the power to determine. That's the key, and RPGs can differ on which things they make which.

I was talking about exploring the world. You were talking about players creating elements of the world. Those aims conflict.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624One technique that games seldom mention is for the players to exert some self-control over their imagination to prevent themselves from imagining the equivalent of red walls and golden tapestries in the hut of a humble farmer. Now it's hyperbole, because I suspect that controlling imagination is pretty difficult in general and very difficult for some specific people.

And yet that's exactly what the rules do. Do players imagine automatically hitting the bad guy in D&D? No, because the rules explicitly state that that's something determined my the mechanics.

Some players do imagine automatically hitting the bad guy. I've seen that many times, especially with players who come to RPGs without a background in war games. Understanding that such is not within their control is something those players need to learn to play the game. Perhaps the same might be true for their creation of red walls and golden tapestries.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624No game setting can be 100% consistent. That doesn't mean we can't aim for consistency though.

Of course no game setting can be 100% consistent. In fact, inconsistency is the default. We must aim for consistency for anything to work at all. And the reason we have rules, GMs, and assorted play techniques is to enforce consistency.

Nobody is arguing otherwise. Nobody is not aiming for consistency.

You seem to  prioritize supporting the imagination and world creation of everyone at the table.  That is one possible goal when gaming. However, if that is your first priority in the game you will end up with a less consistent setting than if you place consistency as a higher priority. Which is the point I was making.  

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971My gaming experience drastically improved once I figured out you had to play to the GM, and yet I've never found a single RPG which explains how to do this and why. And for many it's cheating, not the reason they play, or requires a skill set they're poorly equipped for.

"Play to the GM" sounds like mother-may-I to me. I don't know if that was your intent, but I have zero interest in debating mother-may-I as a caricature of a play style that focuses on exploring a world or simulating an imaginary reality.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

Quote from: Bren;860624Now when we allow Player A to insert some new element into the scene that does not accord with our current understanding, that new element is probably more unexpected and more distracting because it is coming from an unexpected and unanticipated direction. And if I, as a player, try to anticipate that new element I then need to intuit not just how the GM sees the scene but also how each of my fellow players sees the scene. That calls for spreading my available concentration across everyone at the table which means that I will be less effective at the intuition process than if I can safely limit the bulk of my attention and anticipation towards understanding and intuiting the GM's perspective.

It's definitely an additional cognitive load, but again I believe even as a player, the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun. And if your immersion depends primarily on the GM, then why have all these other potential disruptions (ie, players) involved?

Why?

Because sometimes other people add to the experience. Because sometimes other social issues dictate including other people.

And of course sometimes I don't include other players. I've done lots of duet playing and GMing.

Spending some time, on occasion, considering the POV of other players seems reasonable and courteous. But we are already doing that. So far as I can tell no one here has suggested that the GM (or any other player) should always ignore the POVs of the other people at the table. So if that is what you are arguing against, I'll happily help you set fire to your strawman.

That said, whether spending more time considering the POV of everyone else at the table is actually the best use of everyone's finite time and attention is still an open question. Your statement presumes you possess a universal answer to that question. Obviously, I think you are incorrect.  

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971You seem to assume that any misunderstanding is rooted in bad faith participation. Has anyone else been paying attention to how destructive this attitude is yet?

No I don't. But, unlike you, I don't assume that all such misunderstandings are rooted in the GM's failure to communicate clearly. I assign responsibility to all parties at the table. Blaming the GM for everything is a common position for some players, especially players who are unwilling or unable to consider their own contribution to the problem.

You have continually put forth the idea that we are not reading what you wrote. You appear to mistake understanding what you post with agreeing with what you post.

If your point has been that the GM is the arbiter of consistency, that players should align their expectations with the setting that was created by the GM, and that the players shouldn't expect to be able to change or create the world to suit their expectations, than you did a piss poor job of saying that.

If your point was, as it seemed to be, that the GM is to blame for any misunderstanding, that everyone else at the table should accommodate as much as possible the POV of any player, e.g. your imagined tapestry or shotgun, unless it was clearly communicated in a way that everyone at the table, was able to understand it, then your position is far more absolute that you are trying to now make it seem.

Or to put it another way, either you are talking about what I would see as ordinary courtesy which many of us are just assuming because we play with our friends who aren't assholes or you are advocating a different way of playing than what many of us use. It's difficult to tell which since every time anyone disagrees with something you said, you pull another quote that includes caveats and softening language and trot out "did you read what I said?"

Yeah I did read what you said. Either you are advocating for a departure from the way we play, which is understandably controversial, or you are just mouthing some trite and uncontroversial platitudes equivalent to saying it is nice to play nice with others and one can always try harder to communicate. I honestly can't tell which.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971Dear readers, is it worth even engaging past this point? It's obvious Bren feels I am participating in bad faith, despite everything I've actually said.

Yeah I am kind of getting that impression from you. Though it isn't despite everything you have actually said, but because of what you have actually said.
 

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteYou might try doing us the courtesy of accepting that we actually do know what we like when we play.

I accept you know what you like, but I do not necessarily accept you know why.

When you make a statement like "the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun" you are making a universal statement. Which certainly seems as if you think you do know best what would be fun for me and for others. Which is why I suggested you might show us the courtesy of accepting we already know what we like.

I don't claim my preferences are universal, but they do exist and they are poorly served by promoting player statements like "I grab the [heretofore nonexistent] shotgun from behind the bar."

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971And how would me declaring there's a shotgun behind the bar none of the players have any knowledge of ruin their fun unless they assumed there wasn't one. How would they know, and why would they think that?

Do you think you are the only person in the game? You don't know what they assumed until you announce "I grab the shotgun behind the bar." The responses I would expect will range along a continuum something like this.

• Frustration: "This is a bar in the uptown part of town. There shouldn't be a damn shotgun behind the bar."

• Confusion: "There's a shotgun. Damn I don't remember the GM saying that. Oh well, I must have missed something again."

• Irritation: "Anon has a shotgun. Well no point in me bothering to intimidate the bruisers like I planned. Yet another opportunity ruined by his creative additions."

• Relief: "Great! Anon got a shotgun, we are saved."

• Emulation: "And I grab the .44 magnum in the cash register. Let's rock and roll baby!"

Some of these responses will never be articulated and may even, for various social reasons, be minimized or hidden by the players affected so you may never know the negative impact you had on their fun. That you think you already know best, makes it even less likely you will notice any conflicting data.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteWhat do you think improv is? You have repeatedly said that anything the GM hasn't specifically defined is open to any player improvisation-ally creating whatever he wants with no ability of the GM to curate or veto the player's creation, because the GM is not allowed to step on another player's creation.

The difference is the GM hasn't necessarily identified the elements they've defined to the players yet.

What does this sentence purport to even say? How can elements that are not identified possibly have been defined to the players? Is this a definition without words? Charades? You have completely lost me here.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteAgain you misunderstand. I think intentionally.

Then why do you continue to engage them?

Perhaps for the same reason you appeal to the "dear readers"?

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;862971

QuoteSure it's useful to know that heavy on the hops makes the beer taste a way I don't fancy. But that's only useful because there are other beers that taste in a way I do fancy. Coconut, on the other hand, doesn't need analysis. There isn't anyway in which the taste or texture ever appeals to me.

Guess you're not a fan of Ballast Point's Victory at Sea then. But if you're a fan of hops, I'd highly recommend Newburg's HopDrop, which is the single best IPA I've ever had.

Although my mimicry of Brit understatement probably didn't make it clear, I'm not an IPA fan. They tend to all fall into the category of what I label as "too hoppy."

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863252In other words, I'm not afraid to make a mistake or say "Well, that sucked."

If I could change ONE thing about this hobby, it would be to remove all ... and I mean ALL ... the hand-wringing.

Yes wouldn't that be nice. It's a leisure activity and an extremely safe one at that. It isn't skiing the double black diamonds in a blizzard or solo climbing K2. Nor is it rocket surgery or brain science. It's just an RPG.

Assume we are playing "Old West Like In 50s Movies".

PLAYER:  I jump behind the bar and grab the shotgun.

ME:  * roll roll * 4... sorry, no shotgun.

If the player's answer is something other than "Shit, better think of something else," they aren't welcome at my table.

Now, if I'd rolled an 8 or higher, "Yeah, the barkeep parks his sawedoff 12 ga there."

I'm not going to build every last detail of the entire fucking world, and in an ambiguous situation I'm going to make a judgement, with a dice roll thrown in because Dame Fortune is a fickle bitch.  (q.v. "The Seven Geases" by C.A. Smith)

Just like yes, the blacksmith's wife's brother's sister-in-law's uncle's cousin's dog has a name, but I haven't bothered to figure it out.

And unless it is somehow directly relevant to the play of the moment, any player who presses too hard will be told that the dog's name is "FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHAT THE DOG'S NAME IS!"

Quote from: Bren;863255Although my mimicry of Brit understatement probably didn't make it clear, I'm not an IPA fan. They tend to all fall into the category of what I label as "too hoppy."

It was entirely clear to those actually paying attention.

Quote from: Bren;863255If your point has been that the GM is the arbiter of consistency, that players should align their expectations with the setting that was created by the GM, and that the players shouldn't expect to be able to change or create the world to suit their expectations, than you did a piss poor job of saying that.

If your point was, as it seemed to be, that the GM is to blame for any misunderstanding, that everyone else at the table should accommodate as much as possible the POV of any player, e.g. your imagined tapestry or shotgun, unless it was clearly communicated in a way that everyone at the table, was able to understand it, then your position is far more absolute that you are trying to now make it seem.

Aaaaand here we have most of this thread summed up in two short paragraphs.

Quote from: Bren;863255I play RPGs to explore an existent, imaginary world. The more the world seems, feels, and behaves like an actual world the easier it is to do that. Because we play games for fun, those worlds usually are not our world and they may set in the distant past or the far future. The world may include faster-than-light travel, alien races, magic, or horrible secrets humanity was not meant to know. But the world should still seem like a world that is real, at least in an imaginary sense. Because of this, and for other reasons, consistency in the world setting is crucial for my long term enjoyment of the game, whether as a player or as a GM.

The ability of other players to create elements of the world or setting as we play can, and often does, negatively impact the consistency of the setting as well as the feel of an existent imaginary world. So I'm not too keen on including bennies, rules, or conventions that foster or facilitate that sort of player creation of the setting. I want the GM to create the setting. I want the GM to curate and maintain the setting. I want that so that the setting will be explorable and so that it will feel like it has existence while it is being explored. I don't want the feeling that ordinary, mundane shops and houses are plywood flats and behind them are the tumbleweeds of a vacant Republic films lot. Players creating new elements of the setting give me the feeling that the setting is being created after the shop door is opened.

I have a similar feeling but from a different direction.

Simply put, for me there is a huge difference between imaginative creating and imaginative exploring.  For me the explicit fun of playing, as opposed to running, an RPG is the exploration and the surprise that can result therefrom.  As a referee the fun is in the creating and the surprise is generated when the players interact with my creation, with the dice throwing some chaos in there.  Helping to create the world as a player flies directly in the face of the fun I want as a player... the fun of SURPRISE.

It's the one thing I hated about Dungeon World.

"Who is the First Paladin of the Temple of Cuthbert?"
"You tell me who it is."
"FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, YOU'RE THE REFEREE!!!"

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863262And unless it is somehow directly relevant to the play of the moment, any player who presses too hard will be told that the dog's name is "FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHAT THE DOG'S NAME IS!"

Players bugged me, again, about a random ship docked at a station.
Ships name: Damfino. Liner class. Constructed at Keaton Shipyards. :hatsoff:

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863265"Who is the First Paladin of the Temple of Cuthbert?"
"You tell me who it is."
"FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, YOU'RE THE REFEREE!!!"

This needs to be added to the Dungeon World list of possible responses database.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863265

Quote from: Bren;863255I play RPGs to explore an existent, imaginary world. The more the world seems, feels, and behaves like an actual world the easier it is to do that. Because we play games for fun, those worlds usually are not our world and they may set in the distant past or the far future. The world may include faster-than-light travel, alien races, magic, or horrible secrets humanity was not meant to know. But the world should still seem like a world that is real, at least in an imaginary sense. Because of this, and for other reasons, consistency in the world setting is crucial for my long term enjoyment of the game, whether as a player or as a GM.

The ability of other players to create elements of the world or setting as we play can, and often does, negatively impact the consistency of the setting as well as the feel of an existent imaginary world. So I'm not too keen on including bennies, rules, or conventions that foster or facilitate that sort of player creation of the setting. I want the GM to create the setting. I want the GM to curate and maintain the setting. I want that so that the setting will be explorable and so that it will feel like it has existence while it is being explored. I don't want the feeling that ordinary, mundane shops and houses are plywood flats and behind them are the tumbleweeds of a vacant Republic films lot. Players creating new elements of the setting give me the feeling that the setting is being created after the shop door is opened.

I have a similar feeling but from a different direction.

Simply put, for me there is a huge difference between imaginative creating and imaginative exploring.  For me the explicit fun of playing, as opposed to running, an RPG is the exploration and the surprise that can result therefrom.  As a referee the fun is in the creating and the surprise is generated when the players interact with my creation, with the dice throwing some chaos in there.  Helping to create the world as a player flies directly in the face of the fun I want as a player... the fun of SURPRISE.

Double quoting since it sums up my thoughts too.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863264

QuoteOriginally Posted by Bren View Post
If your point has been that the GM is the arbiter of consistency, that players should align their expectations with the setting that was created by the GM, and that the players shouldn't expect to be able to change or create the world to suit their expectations, than you did a piss poor job of saying that.

If your point was, as it seemed to be, that the GM is to blame for any misunderstanding, that everyone else at the table should accommodate as much as possible the POV of any player, e.g. your imagined tapestry or shotgun, unless it was clearly communicated in a way that everyone at the table, was able to understand it, then your position is far more absolute that you are trying to now make it seem.

Aaaaand here we have most of this thread summed up in two short paragraphs.

Yup.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863265I have a similar feeling but from a different direction.

Simply put, for me there is a huge difference between imaginative creating and imaginative exploring.  For me the explicit fun of playing, as opposed to running, an RPG is the exploration and the surprise that can result therefrom.  As a referee the fun is in the creating and the surprise is generated when the players interact with my creation, with the dice throwing some chaos in there.  Helping to create the world as a player flies directly in the face of the fun I want as a player... the fun of SURPRISE.

Yes. And for me, the fun of being in a situation and working with that situation as it is represented, in ways that make sense. Where the situation is consistent and trying to be realistic, not "it's more fun if swords shoot lazers" nor "it's no fun if there's a chance I might get killed by one of the enemy soldiers I'm fighting - they aren't as special as my PC!" nor "hey I suddenly have a cool-sounding idea, let's make it suddenly exist", etc. etc, etc.

QuoteIt's the one thing I hated about Dungeon World.

"Who is the First Paladin of the Temple of Cuthbert?"
"You tell me who it is."
"FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, YOU'RE THE REFEREE!!!"

LOL! Ya, or really, "Oh crap, I'm in the wrong... er... game? Excuse me while I go find another game."

In my view the role of player set as a GM is that she serves as a gatekeeper to fictional game universe. In essence her job is to make sure the new ideas conform to existing game/setting. I started to ponder this issue a bit more last night and the question of whether players should be able to invent more "reality of setting" and my conclusion is that they should be able to suggest ideas but not dictate it. In essence GM should listen but always have the last word.

My logic comes from brainstorming technique which we use extensively in creative arts and business. In the brainstorming wild ideas ("sharks shooting lasers from their eyes") are accepted to list of ideas of things to evaluate but ultimately the evaluation decides what is accepted and what is not. The key here is that ideas need to be acceptable by fitting to theme or subject in hand.

In typical creative group (in my own experience in technology R&D, game design and corporate planning for doing it professionally) the evaluation and thus deciding what is accepted is always done by someone who is personally responsible for results. In typical RPG group that someone is GM who also has best idea what the setting and situation is.

Thus in my view the best method for making things is for GM to listen for ideas but decide on her own what to keep and what to employ from ideas brought forwards by other players. The key to achieve this is open communication between everyone in the table.

Quote from: Bren;863182You seem to be contradicting yourself. If the setting and not the rules defines what the character can and cannot do, why are you looking up a rule in the first place?

I'm usually not, because I have the rule internalized. The reason for a formal statement that does need to be looked up is that it's quicker than looking up and processing all over the mass of data that the simple algorithm consolidates.

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, we can get on with our chariot race.

Quote from: BrenDo you think you are the only person in the game? You don’t know what they assumed until you announce “I grab the shotgun behind the bar.” The responses I would expect will range along a continuum something like this.

    Frustration: “This is a bar in the uptown part of town. There shouldn’t be a damn shotgun behind the bar.”

    Confusion: “There’s a shotgun. Damn I don’t remember the GM saying that. Oh well, I must have missed something again.”

    Irritation: “Anon has a shotgun. Well no point in me bothering to intimidate the bruisers like I planned. Yet another opportunity ruined by his creative additions.”

    Relief: “Great! Anon got a shotgun, we are saved.”

    Emulation: “And I grab the .44 magnum in the cash register. Let’s rock and roll baby!”

Some of these responses will never be articulated and may even, for various social reasons, be minimized or hidden by the players affected so you may never know the negative impact you had on their fun. That you think you already know best, makes it even less likely you will notice any conflicting data.

If that extended example doesn't jar the dude's solipsism, it's probably hopeless. If he really wants to play with himself, he's missing the point of the game.

Quote from: Omega;863150For me someone just grabbing a weapon out of the blue is very immersion breaking because we don't know there is a weapon there.

All my players are the same. They key off of area descriptions and tend to scope out a locale as needed or ask me for more details as they focus on something. Once we know some baser details we know it is safe to assume that some things are present even if not stated every single time.

Same when I am the player and gaming with the girls. For example once we know a dungeon is a little crumbly or in disrepair. We can safely assume that there are rocks and debris here and there that make make for emergency sling ammo. But if the place is well kept then we know we will not and so do not. So we are not "editing" the word. We are playing off known factors.

This is my point in a nutshell.

If declaring the existence of a thing validates expectations, then it's great. If it fits within expectations, then it's good. But if it clashes with expectations, then it's bad. Every group is different, and my issue is that too many people seem to believe these expectations are universal.

For example...

Quote from: estar;863198the setting includes how physics work.

Quote from: Skarg;863307And for me, the fun of being in a situation and working with that situation as it is represented, in ways that make sense. Where the situation is consistent and trying to be realistic

Quote from: Bren;863255The more the world seems, feels, and behaves like an actual world the easier it is to do that.

Quote from: Bren;863255But the world should still seem like a world that is real, at least in an imaginary sense.

...can we say for certain these people have the same idea of what 'real' is?

Quote from: estar;863198Not everything a character can do is certain, when it is not certain you need to adjudicate the result based on the circumstances and make ruling. For RPGs, the rules are a set of codified rulings.

The problem is many players assume every RPG leaves the same things uncertain, and instead of adapting or just recognizing that fact get angry and defensive about it.

Quote from: estar;863198But that event that differ from individual to individual.

Exactly.

Quote from: Bren;863255The ability of other players to create elements of the world or setting as we play can, and often does, negatively impact the consistency of the setting as well as the feel of an existent imaginary world.

Then it shouldn't be done, which is part of considering other people's expectations at the table.

Quote from: Bren;863255Players creating new elements of the setting give me the feeling that the setting is being created after the shop door is opened.

Then it shouldn't be done when you're a player. You're getting too hung up on 'creating' elements when the issue is expectation clash and suspension of disbelief. If the former conflicts with the latter, then of course it should be avoided.

Quote from: Bren;863255Worse still, creations made by multiple people tend towards inconsistency.

Quote from: Bren;863255You seem to  prioritize supporting the imagination and world creation of everyone at the table.  That is one possible goal when gaming. However, if that is your first priority in the game you will end up with a less consistent setting than if you place consistency as a higher priority.

That's why RPGs have rules and (usually) GMs. If there's anything RPGs have in common as a medium, it's that they're ultimately a product of creations made by multiple people. And while maybe a gun under the table is a bridge too far, I doubt finding beer at a bar is going to disrupt much of anything.

Quote from: Bren;863255In my experience, more often than not, a player doing that causes a discontinuity in the setting for multiple people at the table.

I'd actually like to hear more about your specific experience, preferably an actual example :)

Quote from: Bren;863255And since it is time consuming to discuss and adjudicate such attempts at player creation during play, in general, I prefer to avoid a style of play or a set of rules that encourages doing that.

Because it's time consuming? Compared to what exactly? Resolving combat? Arguments over rules interpretations?

Quote from: Bren;863255But assuming that all such failures are due solely or even mainly to the GM flies in the face of my experience playing and running RPGs.

Quote from: Bren;863255But blaming the GM is a popular thing to do and say on online forums,

Quote from: Bren;863255While some find it fashionable to blame the GM for all problems at the table, communication is a two way street.

Quote from: Bren;863255I don't assume that all such misunderstandings are rooted in the GM's failure to communicate clearly.

Quote from: Bren;863255Blaming the GM for everything is a common position for some players, especially players who are unwilling or unable to consider their own contribution to the problem.

Quote from: Bren;863255If your point was, as it seemed to be, that the GM is to blame for any misunderstanding,

Quote from: Bren;863255You seem focused on the GM side of communication regardless of the situation.

It's never solely anyone's fault in a communications problem. However, the GM is the central facilitator of communication at the table, so at the very least should recognize when a communication problem is emerging.

Quote from: Bren;863255Are the GM's changes any more disruptive than a players?

They can be, and undermining a player's character concept into unplayability is not exactly as uncommon occurrence.

Quote from: Bren;863255maybe we shouldn't support the imagination of other people at the table because that sort of invention in the moment that you seem to advocate conflicts with a desire to explore an imaginary world or to envision that imaginary world as having an existence outside of the imagination of the individual player.

Quote from: Bren;863255I was talking about exploring the world. You were talking about players creating elements of the world. Those aims conflict.

So I get that it does for you, and I'm not denying that, but as long as you're not the one creating those elements what does it matter?

Quote from: Bren;863255Once you want your imagining to be privileged over that of the others at the table you have become the problem.

And by 'problem' you mean GM :D

Quote from: Bren;863255People who are busy imagining a lot of details often, in my experience, aren't actively listening. So they miss stuff. Stuff that the other players who are paying attention do notice.

'Imagining details' isn't even in the top 10 reasons players miss stuff.

Quote from: Bren;863255Saying that "we must support the imagination of everyone at the table to some degree" doesn't really say much though does it?

Support how? To what degree? What happens when the POVs conflict?

That's a great question and one which deserves its own thread (when I have the time). It's also a question every RPG system should be answering.

Quote from: Bren;863255Some players do imagine automatically hitting the bad guy. I've seen that many times, especially with players who come to RPGs without a background in war games. Understanding that such is not within their control is something those players need to learn to play the game.

Which game? Every RPG leaves different things outside a player's control.

Quote from: Bren;863255"Play to the GM" sounds like mother-may-I to me. I don't know if that was your intent, but I have zero interest in debating mother-may-I as a caricature of a play style that focuses on exploring a world or simulating an imaginary reality.

Yeah, because asking to continually verify the fictional reality and what you can do in/to it isn't anything like that :)

Quote from: Bren;863255That said, whether spending more time considering the POV of everyone else at the table is actually the best use of everyone's finite time and attention is still an open question.

Quote from: Bren;863255When you make a statement like "the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun" you are making a universal statement. Which certainly seems as if you think you do know best what would be fun for me and for others. Which is why I suggested you might show us the courtesy of accepting we already know what we like.

Not considering the PoV of other players at the table is one of the few cases where I will accuse you of badwrongfun. Of course this may have something to due to the brain damage I suffered from too many people claiming "I'm just playing my character" to justify being a dick.

Quote from: Bren;863255You have continually put forth the idea that we are not reading what you wrote.

My only hope is I did it enough, and that somehow, SOMEHOW, the sarcasm got through.

Quote from: Bren;863255If your point has been that the GM is the arbiter of consistency,

Yes.

Quote from: Bren;863255that players should align their expectations with the setting that was created by the GM,

Yes.

Quote from: Bren;863255and that the players shouldn't expect to be able to change or create the world to suit their expectations,

Unless those changes are consistent with or support the expectations of others. Things like this are also why system matters.

Quote from: Bren;863255How can elements that are not identified possibly have been defined to the players?

The elements were defined before the players encountered them, and nothing the players could do would change that.

Quote from: Bren;863255Although my mimicry of Brit understatement probably didn't make it clear, I'm not an IPA fan. They tend to all fall into the category of what I label as "too hoppy."

#NotAllIPAs

But yeah, this one's pretty hoppy.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;883951If declaring the existence of a thing validates expectations, then it's great. If it fits within expectations, then it's good. But if it clashes with expectations, then it's bad. Every group is different, and my issue is that too many people seem to believe these expectations are universal.

For example...
 

I started out the post that you have repeatedly quoted by saying, "I play RPGs to explore an existent, imaginary world." I don't know how much more specific and less universal I can make a statement than to talk about why I play RPGs.

You then go on and quote me multiple times to point out that my preferences aren't universal. Well no duh! That's why they are my preferences. If they were universal they'd be something else – like an autonomic response. How do you get from me talking about this is what I like to me purportedly saying this is what everybody likes should like?

QuoteIf there's anything RPGs have in common as a medium, it's that they're ultimately a product of creations made by multiple people. And while maybe a gun under the table is a bridge too far, I doubt finding beer at a bar is going to disrupt much of anything.

Most of the time you would be right that beer in a bar was a reasonable expectation. Not always, but most of the time. And if it is the most reasonable expectation (like beer in most bars) then I agree that people don't tend to get too fussed about it. Nor do I think we need a special rule to prevent GMs from arbitrarily making beer disappear from the bar just to frustrate his players. That sort of behavior is best solved by a short talk and/or a short walk.

The question is what happens if this is Icetown where there is no beer* in the bars? Should the player reset his expectations to align with the setting or should the setting change to accommodate the player? I'd prefer the player realign their expectation.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;883951Because it's time consuming? Compared to what exactly?

Compared to putting the resolution in the hands of the GM by default. That's generally going to be faster than a group debate and consensus building exercise.

QuoteThey can be, and undermining a player's character concept into unplayability is not exactly as uncommon occurrence.

You say "undermining a player's character concept," I say keeping the world consistent and playing the game we agreed to play. Some character concepts just don't fit the setting or the game.

Since I don't play in open worlds where players just show up to play with brand new character concepts, whether a character concept fits the setting and the table typically gets ironed out during character creation. Absent an actual example, I can't tell if we are in disagreement about desired outcomes here. But in practice, I don't think I've ever seen a GM undermining a PC into actual unplayability. I've read some stories on the Internet, but I've never actually seen that. But I've never seen a fat bearded man play a lesbian, ninja, stripper either.** According to some, I lead a sheltered gaming existence.

Quote

QuoteOriginally Posted by Bren  
I was talking about exploring the world. You were talking about players creating elements of the world. Those aims conflict

So I get that it does for you, and I'm not denying that, but as long as you're not the one creating those elements what does it matter?

Yes it matters.  It clearly and obviously places setting creation in play rather than outside of play which makes it more difficult to imagine exploring an existent imaginary world since we all just created the element. In addition, as I've already said, multiple creators tend towards creating settings that are more of a miscellany than a consistent vision.

QuoteWhich game?

Since I started out by saying "I play RPGs to explore an existent, imaginary world"; I assumed you would understand that I was talking about the games I play or run.

Quote

QuoteOriginally Posted by Bren  
When you make a statement like "the more we consider everyone's PoVs during play, the more we maximize everyone's fun" you are making a universal statement. Which certainly seems as if you think you do know best what would be fun for me and for others. Which is why I suggested you might show us the courtesy of accepting we already know what we like.

Not considering the PoV of other players at the table is one of the few cases where I will accuse you of badwrongfun. Of course this may have something to due to the brain damage I suffered from too many people claiming "I'm just playing my character" to justify being a dick.

I didn't say one should never consider the PoV of the other people at the table, but people only have finite resources and attention. One can't spend all their time and attention considering the PoV of the other players and still play the game. Even you cannot always be considering the PoV of the other players. The  question is how much of your time and attention should be spent on considering other's PoV's instead of attending to other things like actively  listening to descriptions, looking at clues, maps, party orders, deciding what your character does, talking to other characters in game, considering your notes, making new plans, etc.

People who act like dicks (or assholes as I prefer to call them) will use all sorts of things to justify their actions. If the problem you have is someone who is acting like an asshole, you don't need to change the rules, you need to get them to stop acting like an asshole or get them to stop playing at your table. Not playing with assholes solves a lot of problems.

Quote

QuoteOriginally Posted by Bren  
Once you want your imagining to be privileged over that of the others at the table you have become the problem.

And by 'problem' you mean GM  

Yes, becoming a GM is one way to exercise one's ability to create worlds.

QuoteOriginally Posted by Bren  
People who are busy imagining a lot of details often, in my experience, aren't actively listening. So they miss stuff. Stuff that the other players who are paying attention do notice.
'Imagining details' isn't even in the top 10 reasons players miss stuff.

I'm unaware that there was a top 10 list. Not actively listening is one of the general reasons people don't understand what's been said, or so say the corporate training classes on communication.

QuoteThe elements were defined before the players encountered them, and nothing the players could do would change that.

I would expect that players can't change defined elements of the setting. On the other hand, I would expect that their characters will be able to change some elements of the setting. You seemed to be saying something other than that, but I'm still not sure what you meant. I could guess, but it would be more efficient if you clarified.


* Because the extreme cold makes it freeze, or the natives haven't mastered fermentation, or for whatever other reason the setting has bars without beers.

** The last two sentences are sarcasm, but they aren't directed at you Anon nor are they especially relevant to the topic at hand. I just couldn't resist the sarcasm.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;883951...can we say for certain these people have the same idea of what 'real' is?

Tabletop RPGs are entertainment not a deep reflection of philosophy. I know where you are going with this and it is not applicable to trying to organize a group to play a tabletop RPG campaign. Especially in a face to face game where everybody is from the same geographical region sharing the same culture.

What is important is learning effective communication techniques and talking the time to learn everybody preferences. One of the better things to do during the setup of a campaign is explain how the setting fucking works from the viewpoint of their characters. Often this incorporates saying, well it works like the real world except blah, blah, and blah.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;883951.The problem is many players assume every RPG leaves the same things uncertain, and instead of adapting or just recognizing that fact get angry and defensive about it.

The problem is lack of communication, explain what it is about and how it works in enough detail so the players can make meaningful decisions at the start of the campaign. It is that simple.

You are navel gazing trying to ponder infinite fractals. It just entertainment involving a group of people working together. If you want everybody to have a good time, just talk about it so everybody can be on the same page.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;883951...can we say for certain these people have the same idea of what 'real' is?
.

You can sit there and quibble over this detail forever, but I think the reality is most groups arrive at a rough approximation and agreement on what they think constitute a feeling of realness in the game. If people are particularly pedantic about it and need a computer model to simulate reality at the table then there isn't much that can be done. But most are looking for a general sense that the game conforms to whatever physics they expect the setting to abide by. That is something the group figures out over time. I think the key thing is if you are using the same system and have the same GM making judgements, you do tend to end up with a fairly solid sense of a real world due to the consistency of those things (what plans are feasible might vary a bit from GM to GM depending on how 'glass half full' versus 'half empty' the person is, but as long as the same GM is int he seat, the choices reflect that person's sensibilities and it feels concrete and real enough).

We play simulation style, where players are supposed to be in character and not playing from player bias, for the most part, but with occasional suggestions at player discretion, which usually aren't discussed, but may be there.

For example, players and GM's will sometimes have characters decide to do things based on what seems to lead to a more fun/interesting situation for themselves or for the players overall, rather than being strictly simulationist about it, as long as there is a plausible way to make sense of what they've decided.

If as players we want certain situations or stuff we want to play to happen, we try to insert that bias at a larger scale, such as the GM designing the setting and characters in a way that should lead to that, and players finding in-character reasons to have their PCs do things the players are interested in, that also make sense and are compelling for the PCs.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;883951...can we say for certain these people have the same idea of what 'real' is?

I've found that allot of the time when someone says realism in fiction and rpgs they often want verisimilitude, the feeling of reality and believablity that doesn't poke at their sensibilities too much but might not actually be realistic as in strictly adhering to reality.  The set up and situations in rpgs and stories are often inherently unrealistic because total realism sometimes just isn't fun or entertaining.

And reality can be pretty damn unbelievable sometimes.

Quote from: Phillip;863446If that extended example doesn't jar the dude's solipsism, it's probably hopeless. If he really wants to play with himself, he's missing the point of the game.

I DMed with this guy last year and for all intents and purposes I might as well have not said a thing as he was off in his own world and reacted to nothing I said or described, and over-wrote everything. Suffice to say I didnt RP with that fellow again. I played it through to the end just to see how long hed keep it up. All of the session.

Fuck it. Never mind. This is an older thread than I realized.

I often find that players who complain about "common sense" or "what you consider reality" or "it only makes sense for the Atom Bomb would be in the microwave..." are group-jumpers who don't get along with anyone and want the world to desperately adopt their outlook.

Kind of like every special snowflake ever that inserts {random appendage} into the {random hole} of everyone they meet.

I.E. Perpetually butt-hurt people a) make terrible friends and b) even worse players.

If the only viable communication method you can muster is whining, passive aggressive pouting, or temper-tantrums you should head back to pre-school for a social refresher. Come to think of it, there might be a market there...