"Matter of Fact" RPG & OSR play vs. 'Sly Flourish' illusionism (Stream edit) 

Interesting video on an interesting topic! You caught me ego-surfing! I have a couple of points I'd offer. First, this concept hardly started with me and I don't think I'm even the top champion for the idea of tweaking stuff behind the scenes for the greater enjoyment of the game. This was around long before I started writing about it (I think back to the days of Dragon Magazine). I think you're giving me too much credit for these ideas. Second, for the most part I agree with you. You'll notice that step 1 of the encounter benchmark guide is to consider what monsters make sense for the story. I think that's close to the idea of "matter of fact" DMing. I discuss and often reinforce the idea that we should start and end thinking about what makes sense in the fiction. Step two of the encounter benchmark is designed to make it easier to determine if a fight might be inadvertantly deadly. That doesn't mean changing it, necessarily, but it means the DM can help telegraph that deadliness if it is, in fact, deadly. Really it's just an easier way of benchmarking encounters than what the 5e DMG offers. Regarding the topic overall I think we're creating a binary dichotomy where we need not have one. This isn't "illusionism" vs "matter of fact". Both are clearly important to our game. The world needs to feel real. It doesn't bend itself to the level of the character. I'm totally with that idea. On the same side, though, we want the game to be fun for our players. I think we should focus on the "matter of fact" up to the point where it's not going to be fun for the table. No one will care if we stayed true to the game if they had a lousy time. As an example, in many many organized play games I've played in, the DMs were determined to run adventures as written and then cut out major scenes because we ran out of time. We'd painstakingly go through mid-adventure filler battles only to entirely skip the boss fight because we ran out of time. That was "matter of fact" to a fault. There's no reason the DM couldn't have skipped those battles or reduced the hit points of monsters so we'd get through it quicker and get to the good parts of the adventure. I think, whenever we can, we should start with the story and stay in the "matter of fact" until it falls flat at the table. When it does, go ahead and tweak thinks for the sake of fun. This doesn't mean completely making up arbitrary hit points for every monster but it might mean letting the last hit kill the monster so we can get on with the cool parts again. I do agree that such tweaks should have in-world reasons. In my monster dials article I describe ogres setting their clubs on fire or the difference between an ogre champion and an ogre mook. There clearly is variance in the hit points of different ogres, why not steer those hit points in the area that has the most fun at the table? In any case, I'm on board with the idea that the world should feel real and solid. We should be "matter of fact" first whenever we can. I just also propose that we, as facilitators of the game, can also steer it towards the fun of the group as well, when needed. No one will care how matter of fact our game was if they had a shitty time. Anyway, thank you for the consideration! Mike

I really like your channel so far and I agree with you. That the story dominant style of play where everything in the world can bend at once to what the players need can be good but also bad. I like it in certain games like Star Wars as you mentioned. But not in other games. And I feel like certain genres really suffer when people try to force them into this mold like horror and survival do not make sense if the world bends around what the players need in the moment because then no one has any reason to fear. And a good horror game a good portion of your players should either be dead or insane past a certain point.

It’s the difference between being a B/X Referee and a 5e Game Master. I read some of the original DM screens were wardrobe screens and you couldn’t see their face in order for full impartiality.

Matter of fact gameplay is definitely my ideal. Sometimes the reality of people, schedules and other constraints require us to “intervene” in that open, adult make believe. But it is my ideal to aim for within the constraints I have! For example, “You are all here to do x.” Is contrived in a way. But sometimes we gotta get going and get started because we’ve only got a few hours to play. Sometimes I use “clocks” like in “Blades in the Dark” which are rather player oriented. Events or times will occur based on the constraints of the schedule we have to play the game in, not as much what would be perfectly honest. Sometimes I know my friend really likes something, and I just want to let them have something fun. But “matter of fact” is the ideal for me, when it can fit at the table!

The kitchen contains whatever the tavern kitchen would contain whether the PC's existed or not. The presence of the PC's makes zero difference.

I really like index card rpg’s difficulty number that sits on the table for everyone to see, so the difficulty isn’t really managed, though the GM can make tasks harder and easier depending on the situation.

I'm neurodiverse too and I have very similar thoughts to yours. What you call your third eye I call my 4th Wall... And Illusionism in gaming, what I will call how Sly Flourish GMs based on his articles, breaks my 4th Wall and takes me out of the game. I much prefer Matter of Fact. Roll dice out in the open... Don't do any Quantum Ogre shenanigans, that just tells me the GM is lazy... Don't ask me as a player to describe part of the world, that's on the GM... Don't fudge the dice, the dice represent the world character and the fickle nature of life and reality... I like to role play in plausible, fictional worlds that has a consistency to that world.

This is your best video I have watched. Probably one of my favorites in the genre and I am on the other side from you. Just excellent meta discussion and gave me some better keywords to think about game ideas.

Every time discussion of the current 'narrative over game' mentality comes up, I'm just going to point to Sly Flourish. Seems to sum up my objections nicely.

Some video games have dynamically adjusting difficulty which means that it changes things on the fly based on player competency. I hate this. It's condescending and inhibits player growth. It's also fake which bothers me a lot. I lose my trust in the game world if it can just change under my feet at any time.

Having had some awesome combat with a dragon and some were bears last night in Chronicles of the Outlands. Script Play may be something you want to look into.

I think a lot of it is just a deciding line of when something becomes canon. In matter-of-fact play, when does it actually become fact? If it appears in the DM's notes for the adventure, is it fact or is it only fact when the audience (the players) see it? If movies and books are any judge, the canon is what happens in the final version that the audience sees, not what was in the original draft. But some DM's have a more rigid criteria that kinda raises questions. Is it okay to have the orcs in the room have half the hit points of a normal orc because they're not as well trained or they're weaker than normal? At what point do you have to establish that? If you just announce them as smaller orcs when the party enters the room, is that okay? How about if you rewrote the encounter the night before? The week before? At what point are you allowed to make an edit, or is the act of writing it down in any form in a DM note synonymous with making it an immutable aspect of your world. I think it's important to ask why the magic sword is a magic sword and not an axe. Is this an already established legend or is this some random item you just made up? If there's actual lore to this thing, like it's the sword of Sturm Brightblade who fought in the War of the Lance, then yeah, by all means, it's established as a sword and it should stay that way. But if you just created it for the upcoming adventure and it's just popping into existence now, why not make it more compatible with what your players want, after all it's only a sword because you arbitrarily decided to make it a sword. I get that some players prefer the sense of having things have that randomized feel, as opposed to a placed feel, but if you've come up with the idea to place legendary weapon there, does the weapon type change the story in any way.

What I'm hearing here is that you prefer a simulationist style where you add genre conventions to the "physics" of the world. Going to be honest, it all sounds pretty classic to me. I'm not saying this to dismiss your predilection, it just seems that you could find yourself in good company with a lot of folks that like running & playing games in that vein and have been doing so for decades. So good news, right?