Do people actually want a fantasy setting that's different?

[shadzar]

Either the DM controls the world, or he does not.
If the DM does not control the world, he is purely extraneous, and your whole scenario goes out the window.
~~~
So, again: players either wait for external conflict (i.e. for the DM to get off his ass and provide a story hook), fight another PC, or do nothing.

This isnt player-driven, but the DM telling the players a bedtime story.

[Chamomile]

Either the DM controls the world, or he does not.
If the DM does not control the world, he is purely extraneous, and your whole scenario goes out the window.
~~~
So, again: players either wait for external conflict (i.e. for the DM to get off his ass and provide a story hook), fight another PC, or do nothing.

This isnt player-driven, but the DM telling the players a bedtime story.

That's the standard model for TTRPGs. Are you saying that every GM who doesn't run a completely player-driven game is railroading them to the point where he's basically just telling them a story?

[shadzar]

Either the DM controls the world, or he does not.
If the DM does not control the world, he is purely extraneous, and your whole scenario goes out the window.
~~~
So, again: players either wait for external conflict (i.e. for the DM to get off his ass and provide a story hook), fight another PC, or do nothing.

This isnt player-driven, but the DM telling the players a bedtime story.

That's the standard model for TTRPGs. Are you saying that every GM who doesn't run a completely player-driven game is railroading them to the point where he's basically just telling them a story?

I am reading and re-reading that interview with Kuntz and thinking about D&D over the years, and how I have played and ran games compared to how others have run them and discussions on which games were "better" or more interesting to play int, and several like myself people remembered more than jsut combat, while others people only remembered combat, as nothing else really memorable happened or was of that much interest to the players.

Not that I have been doing it right and everyone else did it wrong, but that in the process, the players mostly liked having the control of the game in ANY edition, no matter how much control over the character that had based on system rules for creating characters and what was present in them.

ALL railroads as the DM telling a story, ergo why railroading is bad, unless, i repeat UNLESS, that is the want from the players to play in story X. Which D&D strove to break away form in wargames where you reenact things with miniatures.

Where this comes from is where it gets confusing.

Some DMs build the adventures based on backgrounds, others build the adventure based on current actions, some script a major plot with all sorts of turns and twists to have the players wreck them, and some build an outline of the bigger plot, and let things fall where they may in the course of the game. I fall in the last category, just because I dont like trying to create ALL NPCs, monsters, encounter, and such on the fly. (no 4th edition stupid superhero game didnt streamline it for me.)

If the goal is player-driven, they shouldnt be looking for outside interference, or "external conflict". Newtons 1st law should not apply to players of an RPG, in that "players with nothing to do will never have something to do unless acted upon by the DM to do something."

players in an RPG, should have their own goals, the reasons they are adventures, and take the first step in order to get them IF your intent is a player-driven game/setting/etc.

[hyzmarca]

Also "being part of the same team" at the start of a game doesnt work for beginning a new game with new characters. This hurdle MUST be overcome each time, and the players must figure out how to make it work

Bullshit. It isn't remotely difficult. You just tell your players that their characters are a part of an established team and they should include that in their character backgrounds, which only requires a sentence or two. If necessary you can help make sure that their character concepts and backgrounds don't conflict each other. If you can't do this then you suck at vetting characters.

In player driven- you have to respond to players. When the first Harry Potter book came out, people didnt know much about the world of Harry Potter, There was no primer for Middle Earth to prepare people for The Hobbit or LotR.

Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings are books, not games. And the writers actually knew what they were doing from the start, what the world was like, and what the general plot would be. Both were pre-planned.

Those type things are found throughout reading the books, or in the case of D&D, playing the game...the exploration or the story itself. Kuntz just said it better than I ever could have come to say it.

D&D was always meant to be a sandbox that was player driven and the DM responds to the actions taken by the players, with some general idea of what the over-arching plot MIGHT be.

You can either lead the players by the hand throughout it all, or you can teach those players after nearly 40 years of gaming, how to think for themselves.

Bullshit.

You're effectively suggesting that we should throw totally amnesiac characters who are nothing but a pile of stat into a completely blank universe and let the players make up everything. That's lazy DMing.

Actually, a bunch of amnesiacs thrown together in a tavern in the middle of an empty void would make an interesting game. That would provide a great mystery for the players to solve. It's the make everything up that's the problem.

But "sandbox" doesn't mean the setting version of a magical tea party. There are these things called "locations" and "NPCs" and it's generally the duty of the DM to create them, not that of the players.

Generally, the players are restricted from pulling plot-important NPCs from their asses by both the rules and the DM. Restricting the players, providing structure for the game, is the point of both. If you're going to have a totally blank-slate setting with all the details filled in by the players there is no reason for either.

I added some information to my earlier post via edit, probably after you started writing your response, about a sandbox game I did play in. Players have to understand the relationship between their characters and the rest of the setting. If they don't then they'll have no clue what to do. This necessitated that you, as the DM, actually create a setting and give the players information about it and their characters' place in it. This isn't hard. It only requires a couple of paragraphs, really. If you want to get intricately detailed you can, but a broad outline is generally sufficient.

If you do that then you're setting will be totally demolished in no time, and you can be happy about it.

I still like to have an outline of things in the overarching concept, but it doesnt have to follow that linear path always...sometimes would be nice and need to to get key points in somehow so they arent missed or placed in improper locations for the sake of the world that is being cooperatively designed.

So we're actually in total agreement.

But the player should understand the world before he creates his character. Unless his character is a total amnesiac, has been living under a rock, is from an alternate universe, or was born yesterday then he has years of knowledge and experience and should possess a general understanding of the world around him.

If the character had a life before the game stated then he should automatically know a lot of things and the player should also know those things, at least in a general sense. Denying that information to the player is just annoying.

[shadzar]

@hyzmarca

taking your responses in numbered form...

1. if the players of an RPG never want to figure out how to "get together" to form the party, then odds are they wont likely care to stay together. it isnt the job of the DM, no matter how hard or difficult it is to make the party a party.. the DM can and it works, but the bonds of the characters become stronger, through the players doing it themselves...and that makes for better gaming and depth of characters within, as well better players.

2. Harry Potter, was unknown tot he reader, which is the player in this example. Likewsie JKR tells the parts about the world as time passes and the reader learns them through the story and likewise, the players of an RPG can learn these things through play. Not saying the characters dont know a thing about their own fictional world...but the players dont. The characters ALWAYS know more about themselves than the players, such as that things are learned through playing.

IE:

DM: there are some old books here that sem to be maps.
players: we take a look at them
~DM slips player A a note~
player A: hey i recognize this places name!

the character knew the place, but the player didnt know it, as the reader of a book doesnt know anything with the first book in a brand new series is made.

3. again the characters know...but the players dont, and the players are the ones exploring/shaping the story as the characters are exploring the world.

structure is NOT rails....if the goal is player-driven gaming...is that no longer the goal?

I saw your edit and responded in the next post. look for the tongue emote following "grr edits"on the previous page, if you have not yet found that post.

EDIT: oi see you found it.

But the player should understand the world before he creates his character. Unless his character is a total amnesiac, has been living under a rock, is from an alternate universe, or was born yesterday then he has years of knowledge and experience and should possess a general understanding of the world around him.

If the character had a life before the game stated then he should automatically know a lot of things and the player should also know those things, at least in a general sense. Denying that information to the player is just annoying.

the player need not know everything the character knows, as that can be explorer through the game and learned there.

Did you remember everything you knew and did and learned and saw at the age of 16~18? this is the time character start adventuring if human, and much older in some editions if other races....

This can be forgotten by the characters, so this exploration method of the world, leaves nothing out no matter who writes the characters background.

if the problem is the character background, there are 2 ways to do this....

-give a world premise the characters exist in (seems to be your method)...
-give rules of things NOT to include such as nobility/etc and figure out how to use them...

... IF you use background rather than leave them in the background

[hyzmarca]

This is a failure of players to use the explorative nature and "adventure" into the world and their surroundings. The matter could have been done...MILLIONS of other ways to extrapolate thate information thorough play, rather than a handout or saying "you are in Waterdeep". What if the player used ANY of these responses....

The PC already knows he's in Waterdeep. It's where he lives. He grew up in Waterdeep. He's been in this tavern practically every day for most of his life. Why the hell should he not know this? The player should know what the PC knows. Denying the player the same knowledge as his character is just asinine.

@hyzmarca

taking your responses in numbered form...

1. if the players of an RPG never want to figure out how to "get together" to form the party, then odds are they wont likely care to stay together. it isnt the job of the DM, no matter how hard or difficult it is to make the party a party.. the DM can and it works, but the bonds of the characters become stronger, through the players doing it themselves...and that makes for better gaming and depth of characters within, as well better players.

There is a difference between the players and the characters. Ideally, players should coordinate with each other when they create their characters. This isn't always possible, though, and it's the GM's job to help out when it isn't. It's also his job to make sure that the characters fit the setting. You wouldn't allow ray-gun toting buck rogers in a generic low-fantasy setting, after all. And Conan the Barbarian is kind of out of place in the 24th and a half century.

2. Harry Potter, was unknown tot he reader, which is the player in this example. Likewsie JKR tells the parts about the world as time passes and the reader learns them through the story and likewise, the players of an RPG can learn these things through play. Not saying the characters dont know a thing about their own fictional world...but the players dont. The characters ALWAYS know more about themselves than the players, such as that things are learned through playing.

Your analogy fails in that the player is not a reader, he's a co-author. And what you're suggesting is a horrible degree of railroading.

3. again the characters know...but the players dont, and the players are the ones exploring/shaping the story as the characters are exploring the world.

This totally removes player agency and does so in an asinine way. It is worse than railroading. At least railroading is honest.

The point of a sandbox game is that players should be able to make informed decisions. Keeping vital information from the players completely defeats this purpose. It also forces them to play characters who are incompetent. No one likes being forced to play an incompetent character.

structure is NOT rails....if the goal is player-driven gaming...is that no longer the goal?

Structure is the box. Boxes have edges. Those edges are well defined. Between them is a huge space. The players get to frolicking in that huge space.

I saw your edit and responded in the next post. look for the tongue emote following "grr edits"on the previous page, if you have not yet found that post.

Sorry about that. I'm used to posting in forums that frown on double-posts.

Did you remember everything you knew and did and learned and saw at the age of 16~18? this is the time character start adventuring if human, and much older in some editions if other races....

I remember where I live. I remember who the President is. I'm not talking abount pointless details, here. I'm talking about vital common knowledge.

[Chamomile]

Actually, "you're all amnesiacs, you come to in a strange tavern" might be a decent plot hook for a sandbox game. You can still totally do it the normal way where you just tell your players things their characters would know whenever they ask for the information (i.e. if a player asks who runs the city, the answer is not going to be "roll for Gather Information," it's going to be "Baron von Evilstein" or whatever), but the amnesiac thing has the advantage of not having to tell the players anything in advance when they're building their characters. It also gives them an easy reason to stick together, so long as they meet each other and figure out they're all amnesiacs before leaving the tavern.

[shadzar]

I saw your edit and responded in the next post. look for the tongue emote following "grr edits"on the previous page, if you have not yet found that post.

Sorry about that. I'm used to posting in forums that frown on double-posts.

Did you remember everything you knew and did and learned and saw at the age of 16~18? this is the time character start adventuring if human, and much older in some editions if other races....

I remember where I live. I remember who the President is. I'm not talking abount pointless details, here. I'm talking about vital common knowledge.

i call those shitty forums as NEVER does anyone know or put into effect a "texting/tweet" limit on the number of characters the database can hold per post. i dont know if such a limit is here, but if posting to different responses, it is easier for the individuals to quote your response to them if they are separate is my belief... so nothing to be sorry for. and sicne we ALL can type long posts here cause we say things, i will jsut make anothe post, cause i doubt we are filling up the database, and Z would be told to do something about it, should TGD run out of storage space and we would all here about it...so until told otherwise i assume things work good, and this not being vBulletin, can even handle necroed threads without causing the forum to become corrupt as those are often apt to do.

what you remember and what you call "pointless" might actually be the crucial things. even those people playing IN Waterdeep, idnt know about it to begin with.. someone had to learn it first...and that was done through exploration.

Just curious about your gaming background a bit... if mentioning only D&D, which edition did you start and was it DM created or published adventures?

Those 2 factors can often color the rest of your gaming as is human nature to compare to first experiences.

[hyzmarca]

Just curious about your gaming background a bit... if mentioning only D&D, which edition did you start and was it DM created or published adventures?

Those 2 factors can often color the rest of your gaming as is human nature to compare to first experiences.

Started with plain old magical tea party. Then Basic D&D. Then Shadowrun. Never played a published adventure except for video games. I've read a few. Most suck. The only one I have much respect for is the original Tomb of Horrors, if only as an example of soul-crushing insanity in game form.

what you remember and what you call "pointless" might actually be the crucial things. even those people playing IN Waterdeep, idnt know about it to begin with.. someone had to learn it first...and that was done through exploration.

Perhaps, but the big things that are common knowledge in the setting shouldn't be hidden from the players. At the very least, the basic geopolitics should be well established from the beginning.

But I favor bit take over the world plots in my fantasy sandboxes, which necessitate that the players understand the setting's political structure from the beginning.

[shadzar]

so it is jsut a matter of taste then... you like to know the setting in advance, as opposed to learning through play.. that fits with one of the examples of how things happens i mentioned earlier...nothing wrong with that, but it doesnt mean it only works that way right?

[TheFlatline]

I look at it in a basic way. Unless I have a reason why the party knows each other, or some other hook that leads straight into the story (not unreasonable), then I figure I'm creating the world, the stories, the bit players, the enemies, the loot, the pacing, and all the rules arbitration.

It's not too much to ask the players to figure out a way that they know each other if it doesn't matter to the game ultimately.

I mean, if the players can't do that, I'm expecting them at that point to need help wiping their ass, because they clearly aren't particularly capable.

I tend to prefer an "in media res" introduction to my games anyway. We kind of hand-wave or murmur why they are a party, throw them into over the top action, and take off from there. I have to have a troll in my gaming group to have them ever stop and question party dynamics or character motivation. It also helps to set tone, power level, humor level, etc... before getting into the story proper.

If there's always some scene or another where James Bond kicks a lot of ass before the credits, why can't my PCs get to do that to get them distracted just long enough to forget that they were never really a party to begin with?

[Swordslinger]

Some people go way overboard on what constitutes railroading. Sandbox games don't mean you never have quests. Look at GTA, fallout, Oblivion or any other sandbox game. You get quests and jobs to do and you get money or other rewards for doing them.

The only thing sandbox means is that you can choose your quest. It doesn't mean some random bullshit that your PCs may just up and abandon the quest for no apparently reason and travel across the world. That's not sandboxing, that's just being a douchebag trying to undermine the game and annoy your DM.

We all know the DM has to prepare an adventure. If he's nice, he'll give you input on what kind of quest you'd like to do and prepare one in accordance with people's wishes.

In any RPG it's terrible table manners to totally disregard a quest your DM has prepared for the night. He put a lot of work into making that and you better have a damn good reason for having your character outright refuse it.

[hyzmarca]

It's not too much to ask the players to figure out a way that they know each other if it doesn't matter to the game ultimately.

I mean, if the players can't do that, I'm expecting them at that point to need help wiping their ass, because they clearly aren't particularly capable.

Players can't always get together before the game day and discuss these things. It's easy enough to just throw down a single sentence like "You're all members of the Order of Sogian" at the beginning of the week before they stark making their characters. And such a simple justification can save a lot of time on game day.

[shadzar]

It's not too much to ask the players to figure out a way that they know each other if it doesn't matter to the game ultimately.

I mean, if the players can't do that, I'm expecting them at that point to need help wiping their ass, because they clearly aren't particularly capable.

Players can't always get together before the game day and discuss these things. It's easy enough to just throw down a single sentence like "You're all members of the Order of Sogian" at the beginning of the week before they stark making their characters. And such a simple justification can save a lot of time on game day.

2 questions will come to mind...

1. will this order be around for long after the game starts or is it destroyed leaving the PCs to need a reason to remain together?

2. how much control over the PCs actions will this order have as the game progresses?

if the PCs are adventurers, then why cant they meet new people and come up with a reason to do things?

again viable to jsut say, you have known each other for years...but that can remove a LOT of play form the game, and lot of setting and even player-driven can get into some linear story, and which of these people that new each other is and has always been the leader, and which other player feels left out when his preferred quest isnt ever explored?

[tzor]

One of the things that need to happen with the old "you meet at a bar" is the trigger that causes the characters to get involved with something that brings them together. I've seen a lot of DM's do this and I've done it myself. Sometimes, shit just happens.

The key with the trigger is that the DM knows all the PCs involved. The trigger needs to have somehting to trigger each of the PCs and each of the players as well. Ideally there should have been some coordination among the players as well, but mostly for technical party balance conditions. Still having one person play a drow and the other person play a drow killer is a non starter from the get go.

[TheFlatline]

It's not too much to ask the players to figure out a way that they know each other if it doesn't matter to the game ultimately.

I mean, if the players can't do that, I'm expecting them at that point to need help wiping their ass, because they clearly aren't particularly capable.

Players can't always get together before the game day and discuss these things. It's easy enough to just throw down a single sentence like "You're all members of the Order of Sogian" at the beginning of the week before they stark making their characters. And such a simple justification can save a lot of time on game day.

Ah yes player entitlement. This is the shit I'm talking about.

As the MC, I'm only putting in 3-4 hours prep time for a really good session, not counting all the time I put into learning the rulseset because my players are just too busy to bother reading 20 pages in a book. Asking the players to talk for 10 minutes and figure out how they all know each other is just asking too, too much from the poor, stressed players. Better to just expect the MC to do that too.

Do you need someone to wipe your ass too when you just don't have the time to do it yourself?

[Gx1080]

You know, is stuff like that why *I* prefer established settings rather than a homebrew, on the former is easier to make sure that all the players and the DM are on the same basis to start the adventure, because the source material is available to everyone to see.

Unless your homebrew has enough notes available to the players, in which case do w/e. Unfortunately, most homebrews tend to have a case of "DM making shit up as he goes along".

[shadzar]

^^^Which is what the DM should be able to properly do, as Kuntz said, but so many one-true-way prewritten adventures have clouded the ability and shut down the creativity of DMs and players alike because they rely on the published adventures, and the exact method of play held within them.

Going to the MEarls mention of things form GenConm the devs arent always right, it isnt there game, and they dont always know whats best and you dont have to do it their way. Ergo, why Mearls is striving to get back customer trust but not wanting to force this misconceptions that only WotC knows how to play D&D even so far as writing adventures.

Meaning likely new settings, if any, that are published, or adventures might be freelanced form outside sources like the things found in Dungeon of long ago. Maybe even a new "Expedition to Barrier Peaks" type adventure will come from it.

One of the things that need to happen with the old "you meet at a bar" is the trigger that causes the characters to get involved with something that brings them together. I've seen a lot of DM's do this and I've done it myself. Sometimes, shit just happens.

While there CAN be a trigger, it doesnt have to be. the players can start exploring inside or outside the tavern, talk to people, etc. IF you are going for player-driven...

[tzor]

One of the things that need to happen with the old "you meet at a bar" is the trigger that causes the characters to get involved with something that brings them together. I've seen a lot of DM's do this and I've done it myself. Sometimes, shit just happens.

While there CAN be a trigger, it doesnt have to be. the players can start exploring inside or outside the tavern, talk to people, etc. IF you are going for player-driven...

But in a sense the bar doesn't exist (in the minds of the players) until the DM describes the bar. That description, in and of itself, can be a multiple number of "triggers." The two mingols standing at the bar drinking their fermented mare's milk. The Ilthmart in the corner table talking to a priest of the Rat God.

I'm not looking, per se to make ths less player driven as much as I am looking for an easy way to keep this from becomming 4 to 6 parallel mini games, because it's easy to handle the actions of a group than 4 to 6 separate and marginally related parallel actions.