[4e] DMG 2: Collaborative storytelling.

[Psychic Robot]

Here are a few excerpts. (Note that "you" refers to the DM.)

Incidental Reference
This situation arises when a player makes an offhand remark, possibly as in-character dialogue, concerning a fact about the world. You then treat it as true.

If you need to adjust the idea, do not interrupt an unfolding scene to footnote the setting detail. Wait until a suitable break in the action, and then go back and clarify.

An example of this is as follows:

DM's Workshop: Champions of Honor
In this example of an incidental reference, a player named Ed responds haughtily on behalf of his character, Erekam, when challenged by the sentinels at a city gate:

"I bang vigorously on my shield, showing them the emblem of my warrior order."

Ed has never before referenced and emblem on his shield, but since it's his character, he can introduce it without any adjustment by you.

"Do you recognize this symbol?" Ed exclaims, in his deep Erekam voice. "It identifies me as a member of the Champions of Honor!" Do you not know us?"

You have never heard of the Champions of Honor. You reach for your notepad, ready to scrawl the necessary notation. In character as the indiffierent guard, you scratch your head and say, "We don't receive visitors hereabouts, stranger."

"Why, for a hundred years the Champpions of Honor have protected the good folk of this region, driving off orcs and bandits alike!"

Through this exchange, Ed establishes that this organization exists as he has described and that Erekam belongs to it. After brainstorming for a moment, you prepare a bandit encounter - now someone can spot Erekam's shield, tell him about a brigand problem, and motivate the group's trip to the wilderness to engage them.

Then we move on to this:

Descriptive Control
When you grant partial descriptive control to your players, you allow them to specify what they see and hear in a scene.

DMs might prefer to make [combat] encounters off limits for descriptive control. Allowing players to add obstacles and features might unbalance carefully planned combats. A daring DM might let the PCs play in his sandbox if he or she feels confident enough to countermand advantages that players try to sneak into the situation.

Not sure how to respond to this.

[RobbyPants]

Okay, so that first part seems pretty cool, so long as it isn't abused. If nothing else, it shows the player being interested in the game and world. He should have probably written it into his backstory, what whatever. Better late than never, right?

But yeah, I'm confused about that last part about Descriptive Control. What does that even mean? Can players just put chairs and bushes in monster's charge lanes by player fiat? I don't even get the point of this.

[Username17]

Basically what you're looking at is multiple author syndrome, where a book is written by different people and expresses different views. In this case, of course, the author arguing for more player input and control is right, and the author talking about the sandbox as if it was the property of the DM is wrong. Why? Because if Feylocks or Bards were any good, there would be a very good chance that any particular player would be a Doppelganger Feylock or Bard. And this is the entire description of the Doppelganger race in the original 3 core books:

THE CONSUMMATE SHAPECHANGER, a doppelganger can bring entire kingdoms to ruin through duplicity and subterfuge without ever drawing a sword.
Doppelgangers are much like humans in their behavior, and as such, an individual doppelganger might have any disposition imaginable.

A doppelganger might look like an eladrin wizard, a dwarf fighter, or even a dragonborn paladin. It can’t duplicate a person’s apparel or carried items, so it must dress and equip itself for the part. For this reason, it keeps several changes of clothing in its lair.

Intrigue Example:
A hobgoblin army sends doppelganger spies to infiltrate the city before the invasion.

Skill Challenge Example:
adventurers can fight a group of five foulspawn in just about any 8th- to 10th-level adventure, but a skill challenge that requires the pCs to unmask the doppelganger in the baron’s court is directly related to the particular adventure and campaign it’s set in.

Civilization Government Example:
The baron might be a rakshasa or a doppelganger.

Seriously, that's it. They have teh subtleties. Also, they can transform their appearance, but not their clothing. And um... that's it.

What do they eat? What do they think of other people? What do other peoples think about them? What history do Doppelgangers have with other kingdoms? With other nations? Are they mercenaries? If so, who have they been working for in recent living memory? What the fuck? If the local lord might be a Doppelganger, does that mean he might be openly a Doppelganger, or that he might be one in disguise? Does having your Doppelganger nature revealed disqualify you for public office? Why or why not?

All that shit is going to have to be made up on the spot for the player to interact with anyone in the setting on any basis while they are playing a Dopelganger. Are they going to have to pretend to be an Eladrin all day even to their friends? There's no way to know without just making shit up.

So no. The DM can't keep the players out of the sandbox in the kind of kitchen sink game that 4e D&D has become. If the PCs can't make shit up, they can't do anything, because there's no official backstory to anything. Without continuously adding details they can't converse with NPCs about stuff. And by "stuff" I mean anything at all.

-Username17

[Red Archon]

Seems pretty indicative of the DM mentality expected in 4th ed. Seems like a sketchy Gygax impersonation, except without the balls required to be a true asshole. I think the DM is just expected to use subterfuge to roll over the players when it's vital to the story and let them experience the illusion of freedom and cooperative story telling when it's about a few insignificant rolls of the 20-sided dice. Like PR, I'm not entirely sure how to feel about that. It's just... I don't know, contradictory. Like the authors aren't sure what stand to take. Probably it's the aforementioned multiple author syndrome.

And I think Frank has developed a monster diet obsession.

[FatR]

But yeah, I'm confused about that last part about Descriptive Control. What does that even mean? Can players just put chairs and bushes in monster's charge lanes by player fiat? I don't even get the point of this.

It probably means that WotC attempts to lure people, tainted by Forge and whatever their theories are called now, in its clutches, by giving an inconsequntial nod to these theories.

[Archmage]

I'm not really sure how it's "Gygaxian" to give players control of some things and not of others--really, I think a Gygaxian mindset would've shut down the player in the example of an "incidental reference" as well. Players get no author control in Gygax-land, period.

Personally, the incidental reference bit is how I've always run my games, partially because I enjoy kitchen sink settings. I've always encouraged my players to make up certain things as they go along, with significant details being recorded for later use. If something blatantly contradicts another established fact, then I'll inform the player of how things "really are," but I'll also try to offer a suggestion as to how to make their proposition work. Details about characters, setting locations, and races that have been established by off-the-cuff references can be recorded and edited later. A campaign wiki works very well for this purpose and lets the players have control in the process of building and expanding the setting.

But I can understand not permitting players to decide the details of a specific scene. If someone asks for something plausible I'm inclined to go along with it--"is the minotaur standing on a carpet?" during an indoor battle, for example, or "is there anything obviously flammable in this room?" Most of the time, I'll say yes. But you have to draw the line somewhere--players shouldn't arbitrarily be allowed to declare that they're hiding behind previously unseen arrow slits or that there's a trapdoor in the floor between themselves and a charging enemy. I figure that as long as the players know what to expect that this is fine. Granting some player authorship during a scene that's supposed to be a challenge for the PCs is a great way to add color and cinematic flavor as long as it isn't used as an auto-win button that trivializes the encounter.

[RandomCasualty2]

Honestly, I'm generally against PCs just making crap up on the spot if it's something major about the character. I mean okay, so you've got this character whose supposedly a member of some Champions of Order or something and yet, this is the first time it's come up? If it's such a major part of his backstory why wasn't it mentioned before?

While it'd probably be okay to let him spontaneously have that symbol on his shield if he mentioned being a member before, I don't think I'd let anyone outright create a major organization mid adventure.

[Archmage]

If it's such a major part of his backstory why wasn't it mentioned before?

While it'd probably be okay to let him spontaneously have that symbol on his shield if he mentioned being a member before, I don't think I'd let anyone outright create a major organization mid adventure.

I don't expect that players are going to have decided all of the details about their character in advance of playing them at the table. Why shut them down on what might turn out to be a good character development hook just because they didn't think of it before?

Besides, nothing says it has to be a "major" organization. It could be a dozen knights-errant, and the PC is slightly inflating their contribution (it's true that they've protected the land, but they're not a thousand-strong group or whatever). Now, if the player wants it to be a major organization, you take some time (probably away from the table, so you're not consuming the time of the other players as well) to figure out what it is and how it fits into the campaign. You shouldn't let a player suddenly decide his character is part of a huge organization that is going to be likely to grant resources or manpower to the party, but that's a game balance issue. A game like D&D doesn't have stuff like Shadowrun contacts that you're purchasing with character resources, so it's totally fair to give away those kinds of connections "for free" as long as they don't unfairly advantage one player over the others or completely trivialize challenging adventures.

If it opens up potentially interesting adventure hooks or character development directions, and you can plausibly fit it into the game world at all, why not?

[Username17]

Honestly, I'm generally against PCs just making crap up on the spot if it's something major about the character. I mean okay, so you've got this character whose supposedly a member of some Champions of Order or something and yet, this is the first time it's come up? If it's such a major part of his backstory why wasn't it mentioned before?

Because these are 4e characters, and nothing has any fucking backstory!

You play "a Knight." Your character is 22 years old, and he fights with a sword. And um... that's it. The demographics of your kingdom do not exist. Your country's government, customs, laws, and social structures do not exist!

What you are asking of people is that they write up five hundred years of backstory, history, and political economy before their character is allowed to do anything. That is fucked up.

While it'd probably be okay to let him spontaneously have that symbol on his shield if he mentioned being a member before, I don't think I'd let anyone outright create a major organization mid adventure.

See, this is fucked up. If you're playing in a world where it is not written down where grapefruits come from, you need to be able to make that shit up or you can't interact with grapefruits. Now repeat that for absolutely fucking everything in the entire world. The baron? The goblin warg groom? The cheese on the table? The herbs on the shelf? The stuffed owl in the corner?

If players are required to introduce Chekhov's Gun before they are allowed to fire it in a kitchen sink setting, they can't do anything. Ever. Because nothing has any substance or history. So there's no place to start and build on. You have to jump in feet first, because there is no ladder or stairs to this pool.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Frank, I'm pretty sure that RC wants to write the 500 year back story for everything himself.

[Edit] Also, doesn't this sort of collaborative storytelling make bluffing difficult? [/Edit]

[Archmage]

Because these are 4e characters, and nothing has any fucking backstory!

You play "a Knight." Your character is 22 years old, and he fights with a sword. And um... that's it. The demographics of your kingdom do not exist. Your country's government, customs, laws, and social structures do not exist!

Well...that depends. Most D&D settings are pretty kitchen sinky. But I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that if you pop open the FR or Eberron campaign setting books that they lay out at least some of that setting fluff. It's possible that they lay out less setting fluff than the equivalent 3.5e books, but the fact that the FR book is the 4th ed book as opposed to the 3.5e book doesn't mean Waterdeep doesn't exist and that you aren't allowed to interact with it or be from there, assuming that the book actually defines Waterdeep and explains what's there.

Or have we decided that the published D&D settings aren't kitchen sink settings? Because I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be--Monte Cook's Ptolus handbook explicitly says that "if it's in D&D, it's in Ptolus" and you're supposed to take that and run, but the Ptolus book provides excruciating details about the city down to the names of minor side streets. I don't think the fact that there's no 4e Ptolus book is relevant here.

It's quite possible that I'm missing something. Do the 4e setting books not, I dunno, tell you things about the setting? Or are you just assuming "4e = generic points-of-light fantasy setting thingy" and going from there?

(I stand by my previous statement either way--permitting the players authorship power and giving them creative ownership of various parts of the world is a good thing and is a lot more fun than the DM stamping on your face to tell you that there are no grapefruits in this setting or whatever. Especially if it's your intent that playing D&D involve creativity and not just be a hack-and-slash minis game.)

Edit, on bluffing: Not really. Player says his character is part of a knightly order. DM asks, "is that so?" "No, not really, I'm just saying that to get past the guard." "Gotcha, roll bluff."

[RobbyPants]

Frank, isn't that level of detail the purview of campaign settings, and not the core rules? Isn't it the same way in 3.x?

Maybe I'm missing something else about 4.0 (I've never played it).

[Username17]

Frank, isn't that level of detail the purview of campaign settings, and not the core rules? Isn't it the same way in 3.x?

Maybe I'm missing something else about 4.0 (I've never played it).

4e takes it a step beyond. For example, let's take the 3.5 Doppelganger from the Monster Manual. Bear in mind, it's not even a PC race in 3.5:

This gaunt, gray-skinned humanoid has long, gangly limbs and a bulbous head with large, octopoid eyes. Its face is otherwise blank and featureless.

Doppelgangers are strange beings that are able o take on the shape of those they encounter. In its natural form, the creature looks more or less humanoid, but slender and frail, with gnarly limbs and half-formed features. The flesh is pale and hairless. Its large, bulging eyes are yellow with slitted pupils.

A doppelganger's appearance is deceiving even when it's in its true form. A doppelganger is hardy, with natural agility not in keeping with its frail appearance.

Because they can take the shape of any humanoid between 4 feet tall and 8 feet tall, doppelgangers are natural spies and assassins. They can sneak past sentries, slip into secured places, and fool even lovers and friends. They are cunning and patient, willing to wait until an opportunity presents itself instead of attacking rashly.

Doppelgangers make excellent use of their natural mimicry to stage ambushes, bait traps, and infiltrate humanoid society. Although not usually evil, they are interested only in themselves and regard all others as playthings to be manipulated and deceived.
In its natural form a doppelganger is about 5-1/2 feet tall and weighs 150 pounds.

Also, you get a picture of a naked doppelganger, which is a lot more useful than a picture of a doppelganer swirling a heavy black cloak. But the take home is that just in that fluff description you get a description of their physical attributes like limb size, weight, and eye shape. And you get a description of how they normally interact with society (apparently as sociopathic serial fraudsters). And that's for a race that players aren't even expected to use.

4e has a longer list of playable races, and each one gets less description and world placement even than the 3.5 monsters do. It cranks the 3.5 "Seriously what the fuck is going on?" factor right up to 11.

---

But I realize that I'm dancing around your point: Yes. It is the setting's job to give you an idea of how things fit together so that you can make up plausible interactions between things in the world. And it is the job of the rules to tell you what exactly the things in the setting actually are.

4e books do neither. The only thing you really learn about how the Forgotten Realms holds together in 4e is that blue fucking fire came down a generation or so back and moved the map around, killed an arbitrary and unspecified number of powerful spellcasters, and altered space and time. And now there are tribes and kingdoms of dragonborn and tieflings around when there didn't used to be and you can't rely on maps or place descriptions from previous editions.

Seriously.

The 4e FRCS book is basically an A-Z on popular places, people, and events from the Forgotten Realms and a litany of reasons why they could have been replaced with fucking anything, the stats and descriptions from previous editions don't apply, and everything you thought you knew is wrong. That's it. By reading the 4e FRCS you actually know less about the FRCS than you did by just sort of half remembering a brief perusal of the 3e version of the book you did back in 2002 to try to find the place with evil Venetian Gnomes who worship Mask.

That's not an exaggeration. Thay has a giant mountain sticking up through their capital city that did not used to be there. For specifically "no reason."

So you open the rules, and it doesn't tell you what any of the pieces look like or do. Then you open the setting book and it doesn't tell you how anything fits together or give you any particular seeds to write your own backstory to tie the events together because it doesn't even tell you what the events were that need ties.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Bashing on the FR book doesn't do anything other than point out that the setting is dumb. It was dumb in 3e too. No game tells you where grapefruit comes from. Or stuffed owls. You make that shit up and move along. The GM does if he's fast, the players do if they're more motivated and the GM allows that kind of narrative interaction.

The real issue is narrative control over setting elements, not DnD4e, and that issue is going to come up as a negotiated understanding with the players based on what the GM has in mind for their setting backdrop regardless of the system.


...


Personally I don't mind if a character makes up an organization. They get instant contacts and I get instant hooks. It's kind of cool and fleshes out things in areas that I might not have paid enough attention to. The problem is adjudicating how much power and renown the organization has; I wouldn't be comfortable with a player whole-cloth creating a major organization on the fly. I have a setting, I like it, I have a loose grasp on things enough to allow new stuff but writing yourself a powerful ally that fucks with my setting isn't good.

It's one thing to have friends to call on and a fringe order that might have some pull or can dish out some perks here and there, but to just be able to say, "I'm with the Knights of Light and they saved reality a century ago and everyone knows that" on the fly is more narrative control over the setting than I'm comfortable with because it's not just writing, it's over-writing what's already there. If a player wants to be part of a badass group there's an expectation that this is a major part of the character's background and it should've been spelled out at the start so I can incorporate that in the stories.

[RandomCasualty2]

Because these are 4e characters, and nothing has any fucking backstory!

You can totally write a background for your character when you make him. If you wanted to be a knight or a member of an order, that kinda should be something you'd put in your background...

See, this is fucked up. If you're playing in a world where it is not written down where grapefruits come from, you need to be able to make that shit up or you can't interact with grapefruits. Now repeat that for absolutely fucking everything in the entire world. The baron? The goblin warg groom? The cheese on the table? The herbs on the shelf? The stuffed owl in the corner?

You could ask the DM... Couldn't you?

This is the sorta thing that knowledge skills are for. Otherwise you might as well not bother having knowlege (arcana) or knowledge (nobility) because you can just go ahead and make it up. Then you totally don't even need knowledge skills.

Not to mention you can basically trump everything you want by just making up random shit.

DM: "The duke seems very angry with you for barging into his meeting."
PC: "Nah, the duke is my friend, I've known him for years, and my character always barges in like that. He's cool with it."

DM: "The king asks you to get the herb Jandiar to complete the cure to the disease. It grows in the distant mounta- "
PC: "Nah, we don't need that, there's another herb called Pullouttamiass that works just as well. It grows in the forest 5 minutes from here."

DM: "The great red dragon pulls back to breathe fire."
PC: "I whip out a carrot and toss it at the dragon. As of 2 seconds ago, red dragons are deathly allergic to carrots and the irritation prevents them from using their breath weapon. Also 1 round later, the dragon dies. "

[Archmage]

RC, does the "doesn't totally trivialize challenges" clause mean nothing to you?

[RandomCasualty2]

RC, does the "doesn't totally trivialize challenges" clause mean nothing to you?

The example given about the guy making up a knightly order was basically trivializing the diplomatic challenge of getting in the gates.

While it's certainly okay I think to make up random details that don't affect the game like "My character likes fish" or "I'm wearing an orange cape." Once you start inventing something on the spot to solve an encounter, you've stepped into another area.

[Username17]

When the question is "Why should we let you in the gates?" then you have t come up with some historical reason. Which means that you have to make up a historical reason, because there isn't any real history.

If RC won't let people do that, no wonder he won't let characters into towns.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

Not to mention you can basically trump everything you want by just making up random shit.

DM: "The duke seems very angry with you for barging into his meeting."
PC: "Nah, the duke is my friend, I've known him for years, and my character always barges in like that. He's cool with it."

This game has a name which I can't recall (something to do with Baron Munchausen) and it is awesome. If you want rules other than "Cool stuff flies, dumb stuff flops," doing that is a Diplomacy or Knowledge (nobility) or background check.

[Starmaker]

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen

[RandomCasualty2]

When the question is "Why should we let you in the gates?" then you have t come up with some historical reason. Which means that you have to make up a historical reason, because there isn't any real history.

I don't mind people coming up with historical reasons, but that's what player backgrounds are for so you can approve that stuff before the game happens if the character wants to be a member of a knightly order or something. You just can't let them make that shit up on the spot, otherwise you run into the character who is somehow a member of every guild and organization the characters run into.

[Archmage]

The example given about the guy making up a knightly order was basically trivializing the diplomatic challenge of getting in the gates.

It doesn't, though. You can still make the guy roll diplomacy to see if he's convincing--the strength of the organization's name might not be enough. Maybe the gate guard has a personal beef with the order. Whatever. Furthermore, if "enter the city" and "kill a dragon" are considered to be challenges worthy of comparison in your mind, I'm at a loss.

You just can't let them make that shit up on the spot, otherwise you run into the character who is somehow a member of every guild and organization the characters run into.

Why not? As the DM, all this does is give you character hooks. For every advantage to being a member of an organization, there's usually some drawback or cost. Organizations are going to want you to do stuff for them in exchange for the benefits, and characters can only be obligated to so many people before they're overburdened with responsibilities to different people and can't do everything.

Also, the point is that these are generally organizations introduced by the player--not the player declaring they're a member of every organization the GM introduces by whatever mechanism.

[RandomCasualty2]

It doesn't, though. You can still make the guy roll diplomacy to see if he's convincing--the strength of the organization's name might not be enough. Maybe the gate guard has a personal beef with the order. Whatever. Furthermore, if "enter the city" and "kill a dragon" are considered to be challenges worthy of comparison in your mind, I'm at a loss.

Honestly, they are challenges I'd compare. Proving to people that you're their friend is a diplomatic challenge and can be every bit as important as slaying a dragon.

Why not? As the DM, all this does is give you character hooks. For every advantage to being a member of an organization, there's usually some drawback or cost. Organizations are going to want you to do stuff for them in exchange for the benefits, and characters can only be obligated to so many people before they're overburdened with responsibilities to different people and can't do everything.

The problem is this... Who says what this organization does or how they operate? The player.

He can pretty much set the organization to be as lax as possible as far as what they want him to do. I mean hell, he could create an organization explicitly just to serve him.

"Did I mention I have my own cult? They think I'm a god and do exactly what I say."

or

"I'm a member of a special order of bankers. They give me loans and stuff, and I don't have to pay them back until 5 years. But since that's long after the campaign will be over, I basically get free money."

And when it comes down to wondering what the knights of Nee expects the PC to do, you have to ask the player, and he can easily just respond with some random bullshit or something.

This is why you want to hammer out those details before the session starts. Creating a new organization in your campaign is a major event and not something that should just be throw out there on the spot by a PC without first taking some time as a DM to think about the effects on the world (and the campaign itself). There's no problem necessarily with a player making up an organization, but you want that shit to be known before the game starts, not as some random detail the guy drops in play. Hell, I wouldn't even advise a DM to create an organization on the fly, let alone letting a PC do that.

[Koumei]

Furthermore, if "enter the city" and "kill a dragon" are considered to be challenges worthy of comparison in your mind, I'm at a loss.

This is RC, entering towns is an epic level challenge in his world.

[A Man In Black]

He can pretty much set the organization to be as lax as possible as far as what they want him to do. I mean hell, he could create an organization explicitly just to serve him.

dumb ideas

Are you seriously saying you can't filter out this bullshit on the fly?

Yes, if you concede authorship to the players, they might abuse it. You're going to need a group social contract to deal with this, either by allowing someone to veto stupid bullshit or to add appropriate drawbacks or exceptions to stupid bullshit, and there are a lot of ways to do either. It's a lot simpler to make that social contract with everyone and then use it than to try to hammer out every single background detail beforehand, especially when the players won't necessarily know where things are going.