The image shown is from p. 8 of 4th Edition's DMG, How to be a DM. Please forgive the change in format; after reworking yesterday's post, I decided this was cleaner.
Rating: vaguely true
This isn't really a thing, of course. I've indulged in this myself, with my book How to Run; it's natural to try to categorize players in order to explain their motivation. People relate to categories and examples help. I think the writers have missed their mark here; even at that, the title is wrong. The industry term ought to be "hex crawlers."
Anyone can be a hex crawler; everyone wants new experiences and everyone likes discovering a lost item. Atmosphere, not being defined here, is a useless term; combat is not divorced from story. Nor do I understand the point about being willing to move ever on. I don't know of any player who wants to sit in the mud and stop the adventure from progressing.
Still, the publishers are trying to define people who are enthusiastic and involved, without casting these people as special. Eager and keen players are the bread and butter of a DM's campaign and woah, yes, a DM can definitely identify them almost immediately. Without their passion, interest and approval, D&D is a deadly dry game; when recognizing one of these gems in the group, it is almost impossible not to design the adventure—and especially the most pivotal parts of the adventure—around knowing that they'll seize the moment when it needs seizing.
"Atmosphere," I think, defines the intrinsic sense of being in a game and having control over the character's actions. Whereas some players hold themselves aloof, or question every detail, or expect that the bad thing is going to pop out and grab them without warning, in some twisted unfair manner, enthusiastic players aren't concerned about "what ifs?", but "what now?" This has nothing to do with "exploring," but getting their hands dirty and searching around is certainly one of the more evident signs of a player ready to engage with the game.
Let's look at those two things I'm to be I don't do as a DM: letting the player use their knowledge and keeping down their thirst for detail.
What?
No, seriously. What?
I wonder what sort of absurd place a writer, a publisher and a game player has to be in to consider the player's knowledge of the game world as something that shouldn't be used in game play. Try reading that using a different activity. Be sure that quarterbacks don't use their knowledge of the gridiron to their own advantage. Be sure that chess players don't use the knowledge of the board and pieces to their own advantage. Be sure that doctors don't use their knowledge of the body to their own advantage. Be sure that lawyers don't use their knowledge of the law to their own advantage.
In other words, take steps to make sure players aren't allowed allowed an advantage through the use of their brains.
Maybe this isn't what the prescription was meant to say. This is what it does say, but I suspect there is some cultural implication at work here, where the words aren't included. Don't let the player act to their own advantage over the welfare of other players? Don't let the player remember details about the world so that the DM has to adhere to things said in the past? Not trying to make strawmen here; I just don't know what the fuck this direction is meant to accomplish. Maybe we don't mean "the game world;" maybe we mean the game's rules. I still don't see that as a problem. Please name a game, any game, where knowing the rules or knowing the boundaries of the game is considered something that needs to be suppressed. I'll wait.
I present my game world expecting players to learn it, use it to their advantage and accomplish amazing things through that acquisition of knowledge. This is a good thing. If my player knows the game rules, all the better.
I just feel that somehow I'm be actively told by the company to kick my player in the teeth, jack them when they try to get ahead and argue that the book told me to do it. Thus, demonstrating that it's my right. That is just really fucked up.
Okay, the other one. Be sure the explorer doesn't bore the other players or exhaust me with a thirst for detail.
Hm.
Usually the problem is ... reversed. Players don't ask for enough. A player that asks for detail is a good thing; but sure, I can think of some cases where the player wants me to give them the whole history of the region from geologic times to the present, or asks about the lineage of the royal line, or wants me to describe every brick in a dungeon wall. However, I don't know what this has to do with "exploring." It's a phenomenon I've only ever encountered in online games; I've never had a face-to-face player act this way and there might be a reason for that: seeing my face, and the faces of other players, would probably wake the player up to the fact that they're within arm's reach.
What I'm saying is that players who ask for excessive detail are not explorers, they're trolls. One favorite troll tactic is to ask questions, then sit back and amuse themselves while the victim spends time writing out an answer. I don't know why this pleases these scumbag deplorables, but somehow there's a pleasure to be hand in forcing a victim to make themselves a puppet on a string, answering with hundreds of words while the troll punches out five or six in the form of a question.
In real life, while the question is being answered, the troll can't turn back to their video game or the questions they're asking other victims. They can't get a cup of coffee and chat with a neighbour, getting back around to the chat when they please. At a live game, they have to sit, and look interested, and nod their heads, while I explain in painful detail that first the movement of the plates caused an emergence of igneous rocks, that were folded atop themselves until metaphormosing, prior to weathering and other forces that eventually produced a sedimentary form that collected via rivers towards the sea, etcetera. Because if someone really wants to troll me in my home, I know just how to pepper them back with questions and when to begin mocking the player so everyone can appreciate the show. It's only on the internet that this is a problem.
In any case, the correct answers are, "You don't know" and "These are the only details that matter." It's a fingersnap of a solution and it applies to every character at the table, not just this one type. In any case, it really doesn't describe hex crawlers, who just want to get to the next place, or enthusiasts, who are more interested in what they do than what they see. I have no idea how this bit of advice came into existence but I'm fairly sure the writers couldn't think of anything better and the space needed to be filled.
If you find yourself doing a bit of writing someday, be wary of the format that's shown on the page above. At the outset, it will feel like a good idea to create headings like what a thing does, how to engage it and how to manage it. But having created that straightjacket, often you'll find that while it really applied to one thing, it really doesn't apply very well to others. Somewhere along the line you'll find yourself looking at a category you haven't defined very well, that you're not really clear on yourself, and yet now you have to provide concrete details about, because you provided those same details for something else.
Trust me. This blog is littered with examples of me pushing myself into this trap. This series is an example of it. I've set myself to write comments and explain elements of each of these pages, patiently writing 2-3 posts per page, when I have no idea if I can maintain this process or not. Every once in awhile, I find myself looking at a passage and thinking, "Okay, what in hell am I going to write about this?" I'm definitely trapped, because I already wrote about the ten passages before this one, and surely if I skip this one it's going to be noticed. As a result, I hem and haw and piece it together, finally writing something and hoping it doesn't look like a faceplant. Been here fifty times with this blog.
That doesn't describe this post, however. The reader can tell because it has been written just one day since the last post. When I'm stuck, it takes two or three days, sometimes more, to suss it out.
The reason I jump in and try is because I know A LOT about D&D, and rule-making, and what DMs and players should do in given situations, and how to tell bullshit from truth. I possess no compulsion to hesitate in calling out the former, because all my heroes are people who screamed bullshit when they saw it. Watching these amateurs from the WOTC write this section of this book, when it's clear it wasn't written by people who have had a lot of experience directly and personally running games, particularly games that didn't depend on modules and such, makes this series a cake-walk. At least, so far. Once in awhile, they hit on something smart. Once in awhile, they've painted themselves into a corner and thrown out a real boner. I don't believe anyone responsible for this book really meant that players shouldn't be allowed to play the game well or use their knowledge to their advantage. But time, confusion, bad editing, chance, a misunderstanding and probably a feeling that the "gist" of it would be understood by DMs who were afraid of rules lawyers and some such, caused the sentence to be written in a fashion that has no trouble jumping over the Fred Snodgrass bar. Snodgrass was an unfortunate who made a boner. I'm sure the participants here were also unfortunates ... though probably, most of them haven't read this passage since it was published and probably, most other people have never read it.
We can call that "exploring" ... because sometimes, digging this material out and really looking at it, I feel like I'm going to a place no one has gone before.
This series continues with The Place Where Rebellion & Incompetence Meet
I always loved it when my players thought to apply some rule that screwed up whatever cunning plan I had in wait for them. That was a group that took turns DMing.
ReplyDeleteThis series of posts has gotten me thinking "how would Edmond Hoyle introduce this game?" Here's my take:
ReplyDeleteAs with most parlor games, little special equipment is required; pencils and paper, and some dice. A number of embellishments might be considered as suggested later.
Players: Two or more. One participant in the game must act as the referee while the remainder of the participants are considered the players. The players each create and control a character. The referee creates and controls the setting in which the players’ characters operate.
Play: The game is often played in a series of installments, but sometimes a single evening’s session is considered a complete game. Each game’s specific objective is mutually agreed amongst the players, sometimes not before one or more sessions of play are completed.
Once the players have created their characters, the referee describes the setting in which the player’s characters find themselves. The players discuss the situation, decide a course of action and describe to the referee their characters’ action. The referee then applies those actions to the setting and describes the setting’s changes to the players. This process is repeated until the game session ends.
Some character actions have consequences which are clearly obvious to the referee who can simply relate them to the players, while other actions initiate sub-games which must be played through in order to fully determine the consequences of the characters’ action...
That all makes sense to me, Sterling. But would it to a noob?
ReplyDeleteMaybe not. He did not coddle his readers. Yet I think he gave a thinking reader enough to try it out.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Hoyle did not. I consider it an excellent definition of D&D, perhaps the best I've read and better than any attempt I've made.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of Hoyle just yesterday, after reading a quote from Charlie Ebbets (of Ebbets' Field). It doesn't apply to your point, Sterling. I include it only because of the coincidence; Ebbets is discribing the spitball around 1917:
"I'll tell you why it is poor sportsmanship. In the first place, it gives the illegal ball pitcher an advantage over a rival pitcher who does not apply a foreign substance to the ball. In the second place it handicaps the batter. The batter is compelled to confine himself to a space at the plate. He cannot rub a foreign substance like resin on his bat, nor can he put lead in it, nor have a spring in the grip. The use of anything that savours of trickery to help him make base hits is denied the batsman. He must play the game according to Hoyle, while the pitcher can get by with whatever he elects in the line of unfair methods. Common sense shows how wrong this is and why pitchers should be required to depend solely on their natural skill to win games."
I wanted to use this in the above post, but I was unsure how.
"According to Hoyle" has become synonymous with "by the book" in many contexts I think because his writing was the authoritative word on how games were played for so long recently. As I complete that sentence I notice my definition of "recently" and simultaneously smile and cringe.
ReplyDeleteHow this quotation essentially about sportsmanship might be applied to this context is past me, too, I'm afraid.
It could be an example of the concern the writers of 4e had regarding players who would "use the game rules" in a twisted way, such as there not being an express rule regarding the use of spit on the ball at the time. There's something to players who cry, "It's not specifically listed as against the rules," being an entitlement to do anything.
ReplyDeleteBut, alas, I thought I was stretching the point, so I didn't include it.
I mean, the root of that is one post ago.
ReplyDeleteIt ties back to acting.
A policy has risen up of what does your CHARACTER know as a cultural phenomena that players have to dance around. I've seen it in multiple groups and every time we have to be like... "oh yeah fireball is my best spell damage for spell slot, that's how I hit the troll with fire even though my character doesn't know about trolls".
And depending on the DM, it can be used as a fuck you, or the DM could literally leave clues in the environment so that uh... characters can pick up on the weaknesses.
It is a bit tiring to be honest. I feel like at least the basics of regional/iconic monsters might be trained in during your what... 15+ years of training to become a levelled character.
Oddbit,
ReplyDeleteThat's a take I've vaguely heard of but hadn't considered. However, as the headings (Actor, Explorer, Instigator) come under the rubric, PLAYER motivations, then we're definitely not talking about a character explorer.
In which case we're back to the boneheads not being able to tell the difference between a player and a character in their outline. In any case, I've still never heard of a game -- even a story telling game, and especially not in the theatre -- where the player or performer isn't intended to use their whole brain to think.
What a hideous thing those games must be, considering that the DM is the fool who begins by emasculating the player's knowledge of what game world elements they're entitled to know.
Somewhat late, but I assume what is being hedged against is that the GM is running their game in an existing and published setting and the explorer player, having read more of the setting than the GM, is using this knowledge to strongarm the GM. Alternatively, perhaps the perceived problem is the player making use of their superior knowledge of the published setting with every character, which in games where player and character knowledge differ, might be considered an unfair advantage. The last possibility I can think of, which is somewhat contrived, is that in games that rely heavily on published adventurers, the fear that the explorer player has read the adventure and is making use of hidden, GM facing knowledge.
ReplyDeleteUnilaterally, I don't believe there can be such a thing as knowledge being an "unfair" advantage. DMs who argue such things do so because they are dependent on their modules, which depend in turn on player ignorance, which is foiled because anyone can look at the module and does. Solution: DON'T RUN PURCHASED MODULES.
ReplyDeleteSecond solution: be a better DM. The player has little enough power at the table to create the setting, where as the DM has complete power in this respect. A DM that's wallowing because the player is pushing the game around, is a DM that isn't doing the necessary work, or isn't adopting the necessary attitude, to use the tools necessary to manage such a player.
I have, myself, booted players who have a great deal of knowledge, who use it to jack the other players and the setting. This isn't a question of them having "unfair" knowledge, but about them using perfectly fair knowledge in a negative, abusive fashion. That is what the line in the 4e book is referring to: players who see knowledge as a means to ruin the game for other people. Solving this is not a matter of "being sure he doesn't use the knowledge," but rather, "Be sure the fucker isn't invited to the game."
I have also played with many extremely sharp players who had a great deal of knowledge, who liked to spar with me, and yet their positivity to the game and the group experience made them loads of fun to play with. It certainly raised the quality of the game.