A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Aldarc]

Thank you, I'm stealing this.

Keep in mind that even David Black, the eponymous creator of Black Hack, cautions about using the Usage Die mechanic for your games.

I will likely tweak it slightly for my own use where rolling a 1-2 result on your d4 not result in you being "out," but, rather, on your last use so the PC can still decide when to use the last arrow, ration, torch, etc. But this really just changes the fiction of the UD from "determining when you are out" to "determining when you reach your final use." Though for some things, like spell charges in wands, I may still use UD as a determinate for when you are out.

Edit: And a high quality item may confer advantage on these rolls. While a low quality item - that you may find on dungeon denizens - may confer disadvantage on these rolls.

 

[pemerton]

The idea within many of these games is that the stakes of dramatic choice remain clear for players in the framing of the fiction and that these player choices will propel the narrative into a new set of dramatic frames where the process will (hopefully) repeat itself. And this will be made up of "small" dramatic decisions and larger ones.

I think the account of the action of my Traveller session falls pretty well under this description.

Maybe not all of your torches you bought are actually good working torches. Maybe a portion of your rations spoiled in the dungeon. Just because you bought 12 days of rations does not mean that all of your rations would naturally keep well in a warm, moist, moldy place. Does each attack action with a bow represent a single arrow or is the fiction more complicated? Or do all of your arrows remain intact through your dungeoneering?

<snip>

Overall, these are facets that are typically not given much attention even in the standard resource management game.

This is why I don't agree with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] that D&D-style resource tracking is more realistic. That degree of rational control over one's resources is unrealistic even for a modern bureaucracy, let alone the notional fiction of a typical fantasy RPG.

I was also struck by the irony of this:

Yeah, I'll willingly concede encumbrance is a bloody nuisance to track. Devices of Holding soon become everybody's best friend.

D&D is full of elements whose principle function is to circumvent what would otherwise - at least notionally - be an element of play: quivers of endless arrows, bags of holding, continual light spells, Magnificent Mansions, etc. And typically these are gated behind levels in some fashion (either directly for spells, or indirectly for magic items).

If tracking encumbrance is boring, then why make it (pseudo-)mandatory for the first N levels of each campaign before dropping it?

Or if choosing when to rest is meant to be an exciting, skill-testing element of play, then why introduce a game element which means, from level N onwards, it ceases to be part of the game? (How many 5e threads have I read about Rope Trick or Tiny Hut breaking the encounters-per-day paradigm of that system?)

These are games. Their contents are (or ought to be) driven by considerations of what makes for good game play: there's no obligation of reason or morality that requires them to have Magnificent Mansion spells, or encumbrance tracking, or whatever. "Eating one's vegetables" might build character in real life, but there's no need for it to be part of game design.

 

[pemerton]

On "ridiculous levels of drama that are unrleasltic" - the suggestion is nonsense, and upthread I already explained why.

How much drama occurs in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game? Let's call it D.

How much ingame time passes per unit of such drama? Let's call it T.

Taking it as a premise that the drama denstiy per unit time in Maxperson's game is realisitc - so now we know that a drama-density-per-unit-time of D/T is realistic.

Now let's call the amount of real-world time spent playing P. Suppose I spend a greater amount of real-world time on dramatic stuff than Maxperson does. I can do that, while maintaining the ratio D/T. All I have to do, if I'm increasing D, is to similarly step up T. Which I can do, by simply increasing the value of T relative to P: that is, cover more ingame time per amount of real-world time.
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seem to proceed on the assumption that the ratio of T to P is fixed in some fashion, but that assumption is baseless. For instance, in my Prince Valiant game months or even seasons pass between sessions. In my Cortex+ Heroic game, seasons pass, travel takes indeterminate amounts of time, etc.

Traveller's mechanics call for tighter time tracking (it's more "old school" in that way), but time passes at an average of around 3 weeks per session.

So as I said, this whole idea . . .

I find that sort of incessant drama to be ridiculously unrealistic.

. . . is nonsense, because from the density of drama per unit of time spent playing, absolutely nothing can be inferred about the density of drama per unit of ingame time (ie the D/T ratio), and hence nothing can be inferred about realism.

 

[Maxperson]

I do not believe that false equivalence applies here. But even if it were a false equivalence that does not make it a false or baseless comparison. I do believe that the nature of monsters (and their associated difficulty) is at least partly about outdoing previous encounters through having level-appropriate challenges for the party. Though not a sole authority, even Matt Collville, who I would say represents fairly traditional D&D play, notes how D&D generally follows a level-based sliding scale where players fight less interesting things at lower level but then fight progressively weirder, bigger badder extraplanar things at higher levels. If this was a television show, then each tier (or subtier) of D&D would most definitely be accused by audiences of attempting to outdo the previous seasons with more farfetched creatures for its foes and lower level foes who once posed problems now being portrayed as cannon fodder.

The increase in monster difficulty isn't about outdoing prior levels, or even tiers. That's not the goal, unlike with a drama series where if you don't outdo the prior season you lose ratings. It just doesn't make sense for a demon lord to be as easy to kill as a goblin, or a troll to be as easy to kill as an orc. Being level based is just to give the players a sense of progression, and there are monsters from lore that fall all over the spectrum of power, so they are used to challenge PCs at various levels. "Outdoing" prior levels is incidental, not the purpose.

The point being that "unsustainable drama" is generally not one of the most commonly listed reasons for most cancellations, so I don't think that we can say with confidence that this is why dramas are routinely cancelled. My own inclination is to approach that particular topic from a perspective critical of its capitalistic context and surrounding market forces, though YMMV.

The reason given is loss of viewership, which is directly caused by the unsustainability of drama. When you have to keep topping yourself, you are eventually going to tip past the point of the audience's ability to suspend disbelief and they will tune into other shows. Similarly, if you do not keep topping the prior season's drama level, the show stagnates and you lose viewership.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, I get that, and I've seen the game (Dw or else) tightens when resources are nearly gone, be they arrows or hp.

Now, though, I wonder if you simulate also which of those arrows are still intact after being thrown

Egads! If you're throwing arrows you might as well not even have them!

Serious answer. In those games where the DM has had us track ammo, and only about half of the DMs I've played with do, yes we check to see which arrows break and which don't. I also save the arrowheads and fletching if possible from the broken arrows just in case I need to try and make more arrows later.

 

[pemerton]

Further to my post just upthread about resource tracking, there's this weird dynamic: Gygax and crew are developing their game, evolving their play processes as they go - encumbrance getting boring for someone? introduce the Bag of Holding - but then that same sequence of game design and improvisation is built into everyone's D&D play experience as if that's what it means to play D&D.

It's like playing D&D has to be a cargo-cult homage to the experience of designing D&D.

 

[Aldarc]

The increase in monster difficulty isn't about outdoing prior levels, or even tiers. That's not the goal, unlike with a drama series where if you don't outdo the prior season you lose ratings. It just doesn't make sense for a demon lord to be as easy to kill as a goblin, or a troll to be as easy to kill as an orc. Being level based is just to give the players a sense of progression, and there are monsters from lore that fall all over the spectrum of power, so they are used to challenge PCs at various levels. "Outdoing" prior levels is incidental, not the purpose.

I think you are turning a blind eye to the degree of overlap.

The reason given is loss of viewership, which is directly caused by the unsustainability of drama.

Correlation is not causation. And you would need to prove a causal relationship here between the loss of viewership and the dramatic output, which you have not yet done at all. Need I remind you?

In your opinion. You shouldn't be presenting your opinion as if it were fact, because it's not.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's like playing D&D has to be a cargo-cult homage to the experience of designing D&D.

You keep projecting these pejorative onto peoples’ Preferences. Is it any wonder they don’t embrace your ideas?

I think this is a caricature of the real thing. What a lot of people in the OSR are doing us simply saying don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. But if you look at what folks are doing they are finding the stuff that works well for them and using it. Lots of people ignore the things they don’t like. And there is another group of players interested in the original experience they had playing, so they go back to the old books (or just keep using them because they have never stopped). There is nothing wrong with that. Like I said, I don’t really play much D&D anymore but I don’t think that makes me better than people who do, or people who like stuff like bag of holding or encumbrance. How they evolved isn’t as important as whether people find them fun to use.

 

[Numidius]

I do believe that the nature of monsters (and their associated difficulty) is at least partly about outdoing previous encounters through having level-appropriate challenges for the party. Though not a sole authority, even Matt Collville, who I would say represents fairly traditional D&D play, notes how D&D generally follows a level-based sliding scale where players fight less interesting things at lower level but then fight progressively weirder, bigger badder extraplanar things at higher levels. If this was a television show, then each tier (or subtier) of D&D would most definitely be accused by audiences of attempting to outdo the previous seasons with more farfetched creatures for its foes and lower level foes who once posed problems now being portrayed as cannon fodder.

See also: Dragonball series

 

[Aldarc]

See also: Dragonball series

With no small measure of irony, I will note that had I cut out of my original drafting of this post a season by season list of how this played out in Dragonball Z.