antiblorb (blorb + anticanon)

Not like antivenom or antifascism, which are not venom or fascism, but like antimatter or antipaladins, which are wonky types of paladins or matter.

The blorb levels of truth are:

1. explicit GM notes, and if none exist,
   
2. procedures like random tables for generating truths flagged by the GM in advance, and if none exist,
   
3. GM fiat

Antiblorb is quite similar, actually, following the hierarchy:

1. explicit GM notes and overwise established truths, and if none exist
2. if the facts would be known to PCs, established player headcanon, and if that does not exist or is inapplicable,
   
3. if the facts would already by known to PCs, player fiat, and if that is not applicable,
4. procedures like random tables for generating truths flagged by the GM in advance, and if none exist,
5. GM fiat

Note that antiblorb is similar to blorb when PCs are literally or metaphorically "in the dungeon" investigating something outside of their zone of familiarity, allowing for the strength of blorb (genuine exploration and mystery.) When they're "in the tavern," literally or metaphorically, it's similar to and exploits the power of anticanon (making worldbuilding into a team sport.)

bad metagaming is always the GM's fault

Harsh words but I'll stand by them. 

Metagaming is when the player knowledge affects character behavior over and above what character knowledge would afford. Bad metagaming is when we don't want this, which depends on lots of things: most obviously how trad vs. storygamey we want to be, and even in very trad games there will be metagamey elements that arise, most often for the sake of smoothing things out and getting to the interesting bits:

• leaning in to cooperation with other player characters, even when the characters would have more reason to conflict
• speeding up/slowing down action because you know the IRL clock on the game session is going to end
• choosing to steal the jewels at night rather than by winning over the prince at the ball because you (the player) like heists more than social adventures

or whatever. [1]

The classical instance of bad metagaming is something like: the party are attacked by trolls, but the players have cleverly read the Monster Manual and know that trolls can't regenerate from fire, and so break out flame even though their characters are benighted innocents who are unaware of such things. [2] Players, don't beat yourself up over this; GMs, this scenario is your fault and you should have got gud. This is on you because:

1. Players don't have control over whether their own knowledge propagates into character action.
2. You DO have control over the fictional situation, and hence whether player knowledge corresponds to it. 

Within a trad or simulationist context metagaming tends to be bad because it takes people out of actor stance, but when players are "playing dumb," the damage is already done. You are the one who decided that trolls die from fire and acid damage, not the Monster Manual. The Monster Manual just suggested it to you, just like it suggested it to your players. 

Does fire and acid damage route around troll regeneration? Do trolls regenerate at all? Make those decisions in the context of the fact that the players have been suggested that this is so. The easiest assumption to make, the one that requires the least work from you and players, is that meme D&D (or whatever folk knowledge associated with the kinds of books players know you're borrowing from) is within the folk knowledge of the setting. Communicate that this is the case and that this folk knowledge is in many cases correct and in some cases incorrect. Then you can decide whether trolls regenerate and what they don't regenerate against, and when PCs encounter trolls (or creatures described similarly to them) they can start with flame as a starting hypothesis and proceed empirically from there, experiencing neither dissonance nor betrayal regardless of the result.

[1] I think most of these kinds of good trad metagaming are best thought of as costs rather than good in themselves, insofar as they take you out of an intended actor stance and into author stance, as opposed to the kind of metagaming one can do from author stance, like deciding that your character who has decided to seduce the prince also finds him absolutely revolting because you (the player) think that would be dramatic and funny.

[2] Maybe this scenario is good at your table; substitute another scenario, then.

blood, time, hunger, clean hands, and fast friends (on setting stakes)

(See also: mechanics for resource management, ICI doctrine, impact, attack the character sheet.)

Some crude steotypes you hear sometimes:

1. "OSR play is all bean-counting rations and torches and encumbrance"
2. "PbtA games are great if everyone is bringing the energy to make it sing, but if just one person is out of gas it falls flat"
3. "Modern D&D is just rolling dice until one is high enough that the DM shows you the next scene"
   

Some stereotypes are the opposite of true, but these all hint at something useful. And I think this has to do with the variety of consequences that the different styles work to make relevant. Failing forward and success at a cost are at the core of PbtA, and they lead to the "partial success" range being very fun if the player facing them has the creative energy to make them relevant. No resources is worth tracking in modern D&D other than spell slots and hit points, and you probably won't run out of hit points either.

For old-school play in the sense I care about, you don’t need death around every corner, or bean-counting encumbrance and gold, or strictly-kept time records (although I like some of those too.) But things like these allow the referee to attach costs to actions in a way that presents players with meaningful tradeoffs. Schematically, the conversational loop that undergirds play operates something like:

1. The referee describes a situation.
2. The player consider a response.
3. The referee communicates whether there is significant danger in this response, and if there is not, how long it would take and what other resources it might consume. ("Yeah, it looks like it would take about a dungeon round to hack your way through this wooden door") If there is no danger and no relevant time or resources to consume, they simply do the action.
   
4. If there is significant danger, then the referee either communicates that danger ("so you'll all be scaling this cliff in the storm, I'll have you roll a check at DC 20 each; for each failure you'll have to drop a backpack, and if everybody fails you fall to your doooooms") or notes where mysterious danger at least might be relevant ("okay, so to be clear, you're reading aloud from the tome, even though you don't know what it means, right?")
5. Players decide to go through with the action or consider another.
6. If they go through, referee describes consequences and hence the new situation.

Something (for instance, time) can't be a cost if it doesn't matter. The same applies to every other type of consequence:

• injury and risk of death
• encumbrance
• money
  
• rations 
• stress and mental health
  
• relationship with your patron deity
• relationship with various factions
• "are we the baddies?"
  

These don't necessarily need to be tracked quantitatively, and indeed many suffer from this. If PCs' moral status is supposed to matter, I don't think it requires a Humanity track like in Vampire and may often suffer for it (though I think in that particular game it works for it, in that it simply forces you to make a note of it when you hurt people, and the threshold for making that note of it gets more extreme as you descend further into being a monster.) But it does require that characters care about being good, and that they're thrown into situations that demand either compromise or lateral thinking. "Task: punch one million Nazis" might be an interesting challenge in any number of ways, but it's not morally interesting. 

People sometimes associate aspects of WotC-era D&D they don't like with streaming, but while to be fair tracking gold and encumbrance makes for extremely bad radio, I can think of at least one game that makes for great radio because of how obvious the risks and tradeoffs are when players face a decision: Delta Green. In DG agents have to worry about

• time (bad shit is going to keep happening or get worse without your solving it, otherwise you wouldn't have been called in)
• injury and death
• mental stress, especially how exposure to certain kinds of otherwise useful information
• the affect of all this on their relationships
• whether any particular pretty fucked-up action is morally justified by the harms they're trying to prevent

is Delta Green old-school? Whatever, it's dramatic because of (when played right) tough decision density.

Advice I'd consider generalizable: 

1. have a couple of different things you can reliably count on as a relevant cost, and keep track of it at the level of granularity and using the tools that make sense
   
2. vary up a bit what costs are relevant for any given session; give play variety by putting players in situations where time is suddenly rich where they're used to it being tight, or where rations suddenly matter even if they weren't worth tracking before
3. get your players primed to point out costs; this can align with their moment-to-moment interests if they know that you'll sometimes let them succeed at something they otherwise failed at if they propose a cost that makes sense.
   

 

veiled rolls and diegetic reasoning

First, some terminology.

Open rolls are what we already call them. Someone makes a roll and the result is announced.

Veiled rolls are rolled, but not announced. However, anybody who wishes to do so could choose to inspect the roll.This is very easy to implement over Discord - just dedicate a channel to it, and maybe sblock the results - but can also be done in analog games.

Secret rolls are not announced and cannot be inspected. This is the classic "roll behind the GM's screen." However, everyone else knows that a roll of some kind is being made. This allows for the tacky possibility of the faux roll, where the GM conspicuously makes a mysterious roll that does nothing.

Personal rolls are made without anyone knowing they are rolled. Rolls made on random tables on prep for inspiration are a classic example.

Generalizing this to the broader class of procedures is left as an exercise for the reader. 

In praise of the veiled roll

A lot of GMing discussions center around the choice between open and secret rolls made by the referee. Even amongst OSR discussions, you have a pretty wide spectrum between "players make all rolls" and "the players shouldn't even know the rules." The former clearly signals that you're not engaging in railroading or illusionism; the latter allows them not pay attention to rules. 

These are, I think, competing tradeoffs to the same end. If we're engaged in a style of play that asks players to "play the world" and use diegetic reasoning, then "if this were a real situation this, but the rules say that" or "if this were a real situation this, but my GM would want to force that" are obstacles. 

What the veiled roll does is both of these:

• If players want to immerse themselves, they can just not look!
• If players want to peek behind the curtain, they can!
  

But best of all, they can just not look, knowing that the threat of peeping is there to keep you honest. Both sides are satisfied. 

How I roll

Here's my current philosophy, going forward.

If the result is something the characters would know, have the players roll it in the open. E.g., "she attacks you for 1d6 damage."

If the characters wouldn't know the results, but you're following a procedure - "does the wizard's magical alarm system alert him of your presence?" - make it veiled. E.g., truth level 2 in blorb philosophy.

Truth level 1 in blorb - the stuff you're artisinally hand-crafting and maybe use a table for inspo - is personal. If you'd reject a roll, it's private. Corresponds to truth level 1 in blorb.