Quote from: Peregrin;360990Oh yeah.  When I want rules-lite, borderline-freeform RP, I definitely think of the indie movement...:rolleyes:

:rotfl:

When I read the bit about the fighter banging his shield and proclaiming himself part of some Order that I (the hypothetical DM) had never heard of my first thought was that he was blowing smoke up their ass and thought about whether I would have the guard fall for the bluff. I really might too if the player played it up enough... then maybe later (like next year when the PCs return to the town) have the guard act all cranky because he had learned the symbol was actually just the "signature" of the guy who made the shield. I suppose one could actually make the "Champions of Honor" a real group though.... that could work too I guess.

Quote from: Sigmund;361188When I read the bit about the fighter banging his shield and proclaiming himself part of some Order that I (the hypothetical DM) had never heard of my first thought was that he was blowing smoke up their ass and thought about whether I would have the guard fall for the bluff. I really might too if the player played it up enough... then maybe later (like next year when the PCs return to the town) have the guard act all cranky because he had learned the symbol was actually just the "signature" of the guy who made the shield. I suppose one could actually make the "Champions of Honor" a real group though.... that could work too I guess.

As a DM, I might add the Champions of Honor to my campaign, and then make sure they heard about the PC lying about being a member, and have the Champions of Honor send hit-men after him as righteous justice for defaming their name by falsely claiming membership.

Quote from: Mistwell;361192As a DM, I might add the Champions of Honor to my campaign, and then make sure they heard about the PC lying about being a member, and have the Champions of Honor send hit-men after him as righteous justice for defaming their name by falsely claiming membership.

That would be fun too.

Quote from: Sigmund;361188When I read the bit about the fighter banging his shield and proclaiming himself part of some Order that I (the hypothetical DM) had never heard of my first thought was that he was blowing smoke up their ass and thought about whether I would have the guard fall for the bluff. I really might too if the player played it up enough... then maybe later (like next year when the PCs return to the town) have the guard act all cranky because he had learned the symbol was actually just the "signature" of the guy who made the shield. I suppose one could actually make the "Champions of Honor" a real group though.... that could work too I guess.

Quote from: Mistwell;361192As a DM, I might add the Champions of Honor to my campaign, and then make sure they heard about the PC lying about being a member, and have the Champions of Honor send hit-men after him as righteous justice for defaming their name by falsely claiming membership.

Why? I mean, I know the example is laughably lame, but do these responses indicate a problem with the principle behind the example? Set this example aside. If a player were to invent some world detail in play that was actually pretty cool, or at least acceptably cool, in a similar on-the-spot manner , would you still have a desire to pervert it or undermine it like that? If so, then why?

"Do you recognize this symbol?" Ed exclaims, in his deep Erekam voice. "It identifies me as a member of the Mathematicians of Honor!" Do you not know us?"
You [the DM] have never heard of the Mathematicians of Honor. You reach for your notepad, ready to scrawl the necessary scientific notation.

Quote from: two_fishes;361246Why? I mean, I know the example is laughably lame, but do these responses indicate a problem with the principle behind the example? Set this example aside. If a player were to invent some world detail in play that was actually pretty cool, or at least acceptably cool, in a similar on-the-spot manner , would you still have a desire to pervert it or undermine it like that? If so, then why?

You are one uptight little penis dude. I never said I was or would pervert anything, I said based on past experience with my fellow players, that is the first thing that would come to my mind. Why do you feel the need to grant players narrative control? Why does the lack of such control, or apparently even the expectation or recognition of such an attempt at narrative control induce such an adversarial reaction from you? To answer your question, if a player were to earnestly put forth an idea for some sort of detail similar to the example that didn't interfere with anything already in place in the campaign I can't foresee having any objection to it at all. In fact, I myself added such a detail to a 3.x campaign I was a player in a campaign and created a group called "Dwarven Bouncers". I included a history and guidelines for an order of dwarven monks that were dedicated to keeping their fellow dwarves safe from their own tempers while engaging in heavy drinking. None of this precludes making an assumption about the provided example, humorous or otherwise.

Quote from: Sigmund;361249You are one uptight little penis dude. I never said I was or would pervert anything, I said based on past experience with my fellow players, that is the first thing that would come to my mind.

I'm honestly not trying to be adversarial. I don't know your past experience with your players, and to be fair you didn't mention it--you simply said, "My first thought..." without any reference to the hypothetical player's intent. Your response did seem to be interpreting the example speech in a way that was contrary to the hypothetical player's intent.

QuoteWhy do you feel the need to grant players narrative control? Why does the lack of such control, or apparently even the expectation or recognition of such an attempt at narrative control induce such an adversarial reaction from you?

I'm primarily a player. I GM occasionally, but mostly play. The most intensely enjoyable play I've had were sessions where there was a great deal of collaboration and players were encouraged to invent setting details if they were so inspired and riff off of each others' additions. So that's part of it.

The other part of it is that I often see a very patronizing attitude toward players in gaming culture. It's frequently found in gaming texts, and I often see it when talking to other gamers, especially more traditional GMs. It bothers me whenever I see it. An adversarial spirit of undermining player input in subtle and not-so-subtle ways is a part of that and something I've seen in play.

Quote from: two_fishes;361251I'm honestly not trying to be adversarial. I don't know your past experience with your players, and to be fair you didn't mention it--you simply said, "My first thought..." without any reference to the hypothetical player's intent. Your response did seem to be interpreting the example speech in a way that was contrary to the hypothetical player's intent.

It might have been contrary to the hypothetical player's intent, but the damn player is hypothetical, so who fuckin cares?

QuoteI'm primarily a player. I GM occasionally, but mostly play. The most intensely enjoyable play I've had were sessions where there was a great deal of collaboration and players were encouraged to invent setting details if they were so inspired and riff off of each others' additions. So that's part of it.

The other part of it is that I often see a very patronizing attitude toward players in gaming culture. It's frequently found in gaming texts, and I often see it when talking to other gamers, especially more traditional GMs. It bothers me whenever I see it. An adversarial spirit of undermining player input in subtle and not-so-subtle ways is a part of that and something I've seen in play.

I, also, am primarily a player. I have GMed in the past, and intend to do so, perhaps more than before even, in the future. In the past though I have played in a great many more games than I've GMed. Oddly enough, once again, my experience has been different in that I have seen almost no patronizing attitudes towards players anywhere. I have a very low tolerance for that kind of attitude, so I think I'd pick up on it right away. I hate to say it but I had been subjected to some of the attitudes and behaviors that ya'all have described, I'd most likely have quit RPGing completely. My other geeky hobbies of computers, photography, and bicycling are more than enough to keep me busy and happy, not to mention my girlfriend, her kids, my kid, and possible college in my near future. I would survive without it. That I have gamed with great people who are fun to hang out with and get to know is what keeps me coming back to the hobby. My GMs are people I like and trust to handle the game in a way that is fair and enjoyable for all, or I don't game with them.... simple as that. My advice to ya'all would be to find people to game with that are nice and decent people.

Quote from: Sigmund;361249... I was a player in a campaign and created a group called "Dwarven Bouncers".

So Champions of Honor is silly, but Dwarven Bouncers is divine?

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;361346So Champions of Honor is silly, but Dwarven Bouncers is divine?

Seanchai

People do this all the time- they come up with little details about their pre-campaign character's life- ("my character used to be a part of a mercenary company" or "back when my character was still learning magic..") in every single campaign of every edition I've ever played. So I guess the offensive part is supposed to be the suggestion that the DM is encouraged to incorporate those details whenever possible. In Basic, AD&D, and 3rd Edition I routinely allowed the PCs to create their own home countries for the campaign, and add as much (or as little) detail as they liked in the process of filling out the map. It's a great way to get creative player buy-in to the campaign.

I've only ever seen it treated so vehemently in cases where it's an attempt to justify a lot of fake outrage against the edition itself.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;361362People do this all the time- they come up with little details about their pre-campaign character's life- ("my character used to be a part of a mercenary company" or "back when my character was still learning magic..") in every single campaign of every edition I've ever played.

Yeah. I'm just...amused by the folks who snicker at Champion of Honor and then produce ridiculous contributions themselves. That's the trouble with pointing and laughing at someone else's ideas - you'd better be damn sure you can do better.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;361371Yeah. I'm just...amused by the folks who snicker at Champion of Honor and then produce ridiculous contributions themselves. That's the trouble with pointing and laughing at someone else's ideas - you'd better be damn sure you can do better.

Seanchai

I agree here.  I think that people are more up in arms with the way it's brought up in game to try to garner some kind of immediate benefit when there was no prior knowledge of it.  If the player had created the Champions of Honor organization during character creation and let the GM know about it, then I think that most GMs would be fine with it and actually incorporate into their games.  In the latter case, I think that a GM would be more willing to give the player some kind of in game benefit on the fly since he's already familiar with the concept of this organization.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;361362I've only ever seen it treated so vehemently in cases where it's an attempt to justify a lot of fake outrage against the edition itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I don't mean this as a rhetorical gesture), but this is the first time that what's here called "Incidental Reference" is brought to a core rulebook in D&D. Point the first. Point the second: I'm not sure I've ever seen that technique in any D&D gaming group I've frequented, ever. I surely lack the many years that others have on this site playing D&D, but playing D&D and incidental reference are antithetical to me, and that's even before I try to rationalize it.

Not that I can't. So here goes. I'm currently regularly playing D&D (4E and 3.5) as well as Burning Wheel. In Burning Wheel, a lot of the mechanics focus on the player bargaining with the GM over the hypothetical result of what happens when the PC fails a skill test. The sort of things that get suggested by both sides are things that make sense from a 3rd personal POV; ideally (from the designers' POV) players think about the narrative progression as much as the GM.

And that's the thing I dislike most about Burning Wheel. I'm asked by the game to switch from first personal mode where I react to in-game situations from my character's POV (and character knowledge etc. - the whole shebang) to this distanced third personal perspective, the grand narrator. I don't like these shifts. They don't make me uncomfortable, or strike me as artsy-fartsy - it's just that I don't like the ensuing game experience of being pulled out of roleplaying my character.

So when things like these get introduced to another game where I'm comfortable with, and enjoy, playing my character ever only from the 1st personal POV I react negatively. If I'm the player who brings up the "Champions of Honor" at the brink of the moment, I'm throwing a suggestion into the game which basically requires me to look at the game from this outside perspective. I'd even go so far that, as a player, I'd not idly voice a suggestion but even, with only a couple of seconds to think this over, to quickly calculate what my gains and penalties are for introducing this or taht into the game. In short, I'm playing another game alongside playing my character.

And frankly, it's not about drawing up part of the campaign map before the campaign kicks off (to use your own example) - it's about me as a player scripting setting details right in the middle of the 9th or 10th session into the campaign as a reaction to situations my character faces. At this point, the difference between the "Champions of Honors" example in DMG 2 and that of a player who averts the dangers in a dungeon by scripting an escape route for his character mid-play is no longer a difference in kind but in degree. Speaking of which, one source I didn't reference in my second post above is that the 4E DMG 2, while advising DMs to be careful to let player script details about combat terrain, includes an actual example of that in a side bar to illustrate that technique too. So we are talking about players rescripting the combats at this point.

And you know, this sort of thing raised the ire on this site aeons before 4E was even on the horizon. To quote a particularly salient response in a discussion I've bookmarked on my computer years ago, here's  a great post from clash, saying once and for all what rubs some people wrong about narrative control. It's basically the same point I make above, except with less rambling and greater punch:

Quote from: flyingmiceI consider play and story to be two separate things. Play is the immediate happenings - what is going on, who is doing what. Story is the recounting of play as a linked series of events. All play creates story - "Queen's knight takes king's bishop, king's rook takes king's bishop, checkmate" is a story where the characters are White and Black. It may be a a boring, abstract story, but it's a story nonetheless. The purpose of any game is the play, not the story that play creates. No one would argue that the purpose of playing chess is to produce that god-awful story.

Since RPGs have much more vivid characters than White and Black, the stories created from RPG play take on far more emotive power and resonance than other games, particularly with a group who enjoy the character aspect of play. Because of this, people tend to fall into the trap of thinking it's the story that's the desired end product when, like any game, it's the actuality of doing now that's vital. Aiming for story rather than play, IMO, produces better structured but not necessarily more powerful story, and interferes with some people's - I certainly know iinterferes with my - play by littering it with artificialities. You lose the sense that this is a life being lived, and replace it with the sense that this is a character being scripted, even though the scripter is yourself.

-clash

Quote from: Windjammer;361408It's basically the same point I make above, except with less rambling and greater punch:

Oh I can see that not everyone will be ok with that, but then.. so what?

My point is: we're not even actually talking about any rule in 4E-- we're just talking about a DMing technique. A matter of style. And these techniques have appeared before- you can find something similar being suggested in the Complete Book of Villians for AD&D2e. It isn't about breaking character in order to hammer out what the mechanical benefits of something, it's just a casual technique to increase participationism and detail in the campaign. So you give the guy a +2 or something on a diplomacy check. Maybe. Or you don't. Or maybe you note "hey we should totally make up that mercenary organization your character mentioned, that was pretty cool.." ...or maybe you don't.

This is not rules, but rather style.

You could use this in any RPG. It only seems to become controversial when you mention the number "4" and the letter "e" in the same paragraph.