Over at my forum The Ruins of Murkhill on proboards, my Admin (El Borak) started a thread titled The Gaming Philosophy of The Perilous Dreamer - a thread that I need to do some posting in when I have time, hopefully soon. *But more on that later.
The interesting thing for me was the link to a thread/post over at theRPGsite titled The 2019 annual Christmas Game - D&D is not a shared storytelling game!
Here is the post that was made at The Ruins by the Admin. He said:
A pre-existing "story" would be a novel or a script and such a thing would by its very presence constitute at the very least some railroading and most likely a lot of railroading. Such preexisting "story" would also limit the actions and decisions of the players and it has been my observation that it also creates parts of the game world (and NPCs) which cannot be touched.
The original design of D&D and particularly OD&D is an open-ended sandbox. A sandbox is filled with content, but no limits are placed on the players, they can go off the prepared map and new content is created on the fly, improvisation is a Referee's friend and primary toolkit. Also, importantly, in a sandbox the PCs can "wreck the world". This is crucial to the concept of "player agency."
The whole concept of "wrecking the world" is a used as a pejorative by the railroaders against the standard paradigm of an OD&D sandbox game world, but in a sandbox there is no such thing as "wrecking the world", it does not exist as a concept for the simple reason that the world was created for the players to explore and since there is no script to follow the players can do anything they want within what is physically and magically possible for that specific game world.
The second thing I noticed about the thread at theRPGsite is that over 36 hours after it was posted no one else has posted in the thread. It is being studiously ignored. Meanwhile the threads both before and after it are quite active.
The third thing of course is I do not find this surprising given the emphasis placed on "story" these days.
*I said I would get back to the subject of posting in the thread on the forum later. On Twitter I found two different posts with a list of questions, one of which is in the form of a 30 day challenge. It is my intention to begin soon, maybe even next week on the first and then start the 30 day challenge on on New Years Day on the second. I plan to talk about them in the thread and also post about them here on the blog. So that will be a long series of posts that should run about 45 days once I get started on it.
The interesting thing for me was the link to a thread/post over at theRPGsite titled The 2019 annual Christmas Game - D&D is not a shared storytelling game!
Here is the post that was made at The Ruins by the Admin. He said:
The Perilous Dreamer I was surprised to see this over at theRPGsite The 2019 annual Christmas Game - D&D is not a shared storytelling game!.
thedungeondelver wrote:
[Quote] The stories of D&D are not character backgrounds or elaborate plots created by the DM. They're the memories we create when we play, whether meta-game or within the game, they're the "Remember the time Bob cast invisibility on himself, and tied the Giant's shoelaces together as the giant slept?" moments.
Snip
It's memories like that, which are the "story" of D&D games.[/Quote]
This sounds just like what you have been preaching for years.So a few points, one is that agreement with my long standing stance on "story" and from this particular source was quite unexpected. I have always said that "story" in D&D and specifically in OD&D does not exist prior to the start of game play and further it is not something that the Referee introduces to the players at the table. "Story" is the shared memories created through play at the game table as the players interact with the Referees campaign world.
A pre-existing "story" would be a novel or a script and such a thing would by its very presence constitute at the very least some railroading and most likely a lot of railroading. Such preexisting "story" would also limit the actions and decisions of the players and it has been my observation that it also creates parts of the game world (and NPCs) which cannot be touched.
The original design of D&D and particularly OD&D is an open-ended sandbox. A sandbox is filled with content, but no limits are placed on the players, they can go off the prepared map and new content is created on the fly, improvisation is a Referee's friend and primary toolkit. Also, importantly, in a sandbox the PCs can "wreck the world". This is crucial to the concept of "player agency."
The whole concept of "wrecking the world" is a used as a pejorative by the railroaders against the standard paradigm of an OD&D sandbox game world, but in a sandbox there is no such thing as "wrecking the world", it does not exist as a concept for the simple reason that the world was created for the players to explore and since there is no script to follow the players can do anything they want within what is physically and magically possible for that specific game world.
The second thing I noticed about the thread at theRPGsite is that over 36 hours after it was posted no one else has posted in the thread. It is being studiously ignored. Meanwhile the threads both before and after it are quite active.
The third thing of course is I do not find this surprising given the emphasis placed on "story" these days.
*I said I would get back to the subject of posting in the thread on the forum later. On Twitter I found two different posts with a list of questions, one of which is in the form of a 30 day challenge. It is my intention to begin soon, maybe even next week on the first and then start the 30 day challenge on on New Years Day on the second. I plan to talk about them in the thread and also post about them here on the blog. So that will be a long series of posts that should run about 45 days once I get started on it.
You are right.
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