Quote from: TrippyHippy;981906Absolutely. It's the group your playing with, not the system that determines your enjoyment.

An arsehole is just as capable of dominating a 'narrative' RPG as any other.

Dominating a "narrative" RPG would be much easier than an OD&D game (or similar games) with a good Ref. If the ref is the bad guy in this regard, find another game.

Quote from: Bren;981935Do does OD&D. The mechanic in OD&D and most RPGs is the DM who decides if that idea is plausible or even possible in the setting.
It adds to the feeling that the world runs on story logic rather than on a self-consistent world logic. Whether one finds that to be good or bad is a matter of what sort of setting one enjoys.

I would amend this to say: So does OD&D. The mechanic in OD&D and most RPGs is the Ref/DM who decides if that idea is plausible or even possible in the setting.It adds to the feeling that the world runs on a self-consistent world logic. Whether one finds that to be good or bad is a matter of what sort of setting one enjoys.

With the revisions I can agree with it on this basis. IMO OD&D is about self-consistent world logic and has nothing whatsoever to do with story logic.

Quote from: Crimhthan;981941I then said:
Because I agreed with Zevious Zoquis.

  I am struggling to make sense of your comment. First because it is not on topic with what Zevious Zoquis and I were talking about. Although, I suppose that it would be remotely possible for a quasi "sandbox to be "mechanistic, providence-free, ultimately purposeless universe" but that would not be a real sandbox and IMO would not be much fun for the ref to run or for the player to play.

He's a theist making an ontological joke.

Quote from: Crimhthan;981943Agree with the quote as edited by me.

It's more polite (and less confusing when trying to figure out who said what) to just make the comment yourself rather than to edit what I said in that way. You could just say

QuoteIt adds to the feeling that the world runs on a self-consistent world logic. Whether one finds that to be good or bad is a matter of what sort of setting one enjoys.

(Sorry to skip over your response, Lunamancer; that's a lot to digest and respond to usefully, in turn.)

Bren, RGrove, I think more to the point, in D&D players can suggest whatever they like, but the rules don't give them narrative control. It's not even a case of GM veto--it's not like a game where a player can say, "I'll spend a Luck point to find a Holy Avenger sword" and then there's an arbitrary escape clause for the GM to stop them.

Also, while most games I've seen that do have a mechanic for player narrative control do have a veto clause,  some treat it as no big deal--"of course the GM has final say", in effect--while others, which I would put further on SG end of the spectrum, maximize the prerogative of the players and give an impression that there are very few circumstances in which the GM should veto. Further along the spectrum perhaps are games which explicitly make the veto a limited resource (although, even then, there will likely be an out clause or safeword where the GM can say, "I'm not even going to spend a point to negate that--try again"). And finally you would have games where you really have no recourse other than pleading--Polaris is one, although it's truly GMless. In Polaris, by the formal rules, if two players can't agree what happens after going through the various resolution steps, a die roll will resolve the difference. I seem to recall that The Shab al-Hiri Roach has a similar rule.

This is quite different from D&D even though in each and every case, social interaction and even social blackmail can in theory be invoked to try to guide the course of the game. Don't like the DM? Walk. Want to keep your players? Do things they like. Or in a notionally GM-less game--a dominant personality could force the game to conform to their vision, or even railroad the storyline. But these are extreme and absurd cases, illustrating the point that whatever happens socially, the rules do distinguish games in terms of authority over the game world.

Quote from: Arminius;981955Bren, RGrove, I think more to the point, in D&D players can suggest whatever they like, but the rules don't give them narrative control. It's not even a case of GM veto--it's not like a game where a player can say, "I'll spend a Luck point to find a Holy Avenger sword" and then there's an arbitrary escape clause for the GM to stop them.

Agreed.

In some games there are rules that grant the players some authority over the game world. In OD&D and other more traditional games there was no rule that gave a player any authority over the game world outside of what actions his character could attempt. The DM/GM would then arbitrate the outcome of that action either by applying the systems rules (for combat as an example), by improvising a rule ("roll a D20, if it is less than or equal to your strength you can lift that big rock"), or by fiat ("the king says, 'No, handsome stranger, I won't abdicate my throne in favor of you").

Similarly in some narrative games there are rules that grant the player authority over how the success or failure of their action is described (Player: Yay! I roll a Mighty Success. I cut the Orc Chief in half and awed by my prowess the other Orcs all run away). Typically in traditional games the rules do not give the player that authority.

Quote from: Bren;981949He's a theist making an ontological joke.

Apparently I did not see any humor in it.

Quote from: Bren;981951It's more polite (and less confusing when trying to figure out who said what) to just make the comment yourself rather than to edit what I said in that way. You could just say

QuoteIt adds to the feeling that the world runs on a self-consistent world logic. Whether one finds that to be good or bad is a matter of what sort of setting one enjoys.

Point taken. I went back and edited my post, please take a look.

Quote from: Bren;981949He's a theist making an ontological joke.

  Partially a joke, partially an attempt to highlight that the 'living world sandbox' promoted so often here does carry with it certain assumptions about the world and the people in it that may not suit all genres and flavors of game/world.

Quote from: rgrove0172;981917Id have to disagree. In my experience Ive had some great games with assholes because.. well it was a good game, whereas a crappy game is just crappy no matter who you play with.

My experience is just the opposite.  As Kyle Aaron says, "People first."

Quote from: rgrove0172;981902From the very beginnings back in 74' or so I recall playing sessions including comments like this from players...

"Oh, you know what would be cool? What if the Inn is really a beached old pirate ship and the retired captain is now the Inn Keeper!"

To which the GM might reply "Yeah, cool idea sure!" or maybe "Nah, neat idea though."

We didnt even know what a "story game" was but the idea of everyone having the potential for adding elements to the game at times didnt seem like heresy. At least some of these games mentioned have a mechanic for controllling it. Personally as GM I kind of resist players monkeying with my setting but dont take issue with them having a bit of narrative control over minor elements. (ie. the shop keeper is working late and will open even at the late hour, it begins to rain and helps cover their tracks, the barmaid happens to recognize one of the PCs from when she worked in a nearby town etc.)

The PCs are heroes afterall and throughout endless examples from fiction we find that good things happen to heroes - they are must lucky, fated or what have you. I think that sort of things adds to the experience of playing, in moderation. I dont hold it against anyone for feeling differently though, to either extreme.

1) The difference is between suggestion and mandate.  "Does it rain to cover our tracks?" vs "It does rain to cover our tracks!"  In Greyhawk I was the first person to actually come up with a name for a temple instead of "the Lawful temple."  Gary liked it, so "First Church of Crom, Scientist" stuck.  But it was not my right to insist on it.

2)  As soon as the world starts reacting as a storyland instead of "this is what would rationally happen," I'm out the door.  NOTHING will turn me off faster than "making a cool story" meaning something illogical happens.  Mileage et cetera.

Yeah, and the "making a cool story" issue can extend beyond "is this rational/plausible?"

It's been argued many times (e.g. back in the day when people were arguing about Theatrix on Usenet) that patterns of events can drift into story time even if they're individually plausible. Yes, a courier can lose the secret plans at an inn, but it's not something that happens every day. A series of events that are possible, plausible, yet unlikely, will arouse suspicion. Similar for events that could happen but seem to happen all too conveniently in a manner that steers the action along a predictable plot line, or even along a distinguishable arc of tension and pacing. In theory you can't prove the GM is doing it or not doing it, but in reality, I'm pretty sure I've seen it. Not least because it appears in many GMing manuals and guidelines.

I'm not sure I always dislike story conventions but they can be a bait and switch if you go into the game expecting to deal with the situation from the PC's POV and find instead that dramatic concerns are what are really steering the action. (Same for games where every situation leads to a finely-balanced fight. But that's taking us back to Usenet circa 1995.)

You can talk agendas and techniques forever, but in the end, you'll get nowhere because to differentiate between different types of games, you have to look at game mechanics.  You can have a table that every player and GM are working towards creating a story while playing, it doesn't make the game they are playing a storygame.

Damn, Arminius, why did you have to remind me about Theatrix and r.g.f.advocacy? I had successfully repressed that knowledge ...

Quote from: Arminius;982064I'm not sure I always dislike story conventions but they can be a bait and switch if you go into the game expecting to deal with the situation from the PC's POV and find instead that dramatic concerns are what are really steering the action. (Same for games where every situation leads to a finely-balanced fight. But that's taking us back to Usenet circa 1995.)

Actually, I think it takes us back to 1980, with these theories about Power Gaming, Role-Playing, Wargaming, and Story Telling - and the conflicts between them.

http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/blacow.html