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

Bedrockgames said:

But you have a tendency to be extremely dismissive and insulting to people who have different gaming preferences than you.

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You keep leveling this charge against [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but if memory serves you jumped in during the initial thread at the earliest opportunity by taking offense with his posts despite the fact he used the term "Mother-May-I" in quotations, following the original poster's usage, and proffered his own, less pejorative term half the time instead; and then you went on to say you had no issue with the OP's use of the term. Perhaps you are looking for offense where none is intended, particularly where pemerton is concerned? As you say in one of your posts, you believe you and he rarely see eye-to-eye, so perhaps this colors how you infer tone from his posts?

Numidius said:

Ammo in Dw is basically accounted as the number of times a Pc can fail a roll, or suffer a consequence from a failed roll, before it is gone. Clearly anytime is possible in the fiction, one replenishes it.

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OK, makes sense.

Only ever getting 5 shots seemed a bit restrictive.

Torchbearer is a strange beast. I found it difficult to grasp, and when I tried to explain it to the table... well, I failed

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I'll keep this in mind should I ever find it, and expect a heavy read.

pemerton said:

This is why I don't agree with @Lanefan and @Maxperson 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.

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Er...how is it irrational or unrealistic for me to be able to count the arrows in my quiver at any time other than the middle of a battle? I'll also each day have a pretty good idea how much food and-or water I've got left and probably at least a vague idea of how easy it might be to replenish such from the surrounding environment. If a warrior I'll also know what I have for weapons and armour, and what condition they're in; if a caster, ditto for my books and materials. If I don't have magical light available and have to rely on torches or lanterns then before going into a dark area I'll make sure I have a reasonably good idea how long my light is good for, barring unforeseen circumstances. And so on.

And all of this holds true whether I'm an explorer in the real world or acting as a PC in the game.

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

@Maxperson and @Lanefan seem to proceed on the assumption that the ratio of T to P is fixed in some fashion, but that assumption is baseless.

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I'm not looking at in-game time at all in this case. What I'm looking at is real time at the table (you call this P) and what the D/P ratio is; and suggesting that if D is kept too high too long there's a real risk of a numbing effect leading to stagnation.

I know full well that in-game time and real-world time have next to no relationship with each other*. This is true over both the short and long term; for example my current campaign this month hits the 11-year point in real time but over that span the in-game time has only advanced about 4.7 years (summer of 1082 to late winter of 1087).

* - which also means I specifically don't subscribe to the Gygax-DMG notion of a day passing in the game world for each day that passes between sessions - in fact I've always seen this as one of his dumber ideas.

pemerton said:

When you start policing tone and courtesy without discrimination (eg where is your outrage at @Maxperson calling the levels of drama in my game ridiculous?) then I might take these sorts of comments seriously.

As far as embracing my ideas is concerned, I'm very happy with the number of posters who, over the years, have acknowledged my contributions and/or thanked me for ideas that they have adapted into their games.

EDIT: I notice that @chaochou has made the same comment as I have done. Thanks chaochou!

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What I said was, "I THINK that those levels of drama are ridiculously unrealistic." The level of realism in your games is much lower than mine and I don't enjoy that sort of thing. There's a difference between that and using a pejorative to describe other styles. I mean, I could have come here and said that your kind of game play is Player May I, but I didn't.

Maxperson said:

The level of realism in your games is much lower than mine

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How do you know this? I don't think you've ever engaged with one of my actual play threads. And you've certainly never posted much actual play of your own.

Maxperson said:

What I said was, "I THINK that those levels of drama are ridiculously unrealistic."

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And so you won't be upset if I say I THINK your game is a "Mother may I" game?

Lanefan said:

how is it irrational or unrealistic for me to be able to count the arrows in my quiver at any time other than the middle of a battle?

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It's not irrational to do so. But most people for most of history haven't been as maximally rational as most contemporary wargamers tend to be.

I think playing PCs as if they're optimising contemporary accountants or logistics planners is unrealistic, because anachronistic.

Lanefan said:

I'm not looking at in-game time at all in this case. What I'm looking at is real time at the table (you call this P) and what the D/P ratio is; and suggesting that if D is kept too high too long there's a real risk of a numbing effect leading to stagnation.

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Which goes back to the issue of evidence. It seems that you don't have evidence from your table, because you run a low D/P ratio. You don't have evidence from my table, because I run a relatively higher D/P ratio but no numbing or stagnation has set in. Where is the table that actually demonstrates the phenomenon?

darkbard said:

You keep leveling this charge against [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but if memory serves you jumped in during the initial thread at the earliest opportunity by taking offense with his posts despite the fact he used the term "Mother-May-I" in quotations, following the original poster's usage, and proffered his own, less pejorative term half the time instead; and then you went on to say you had no issue with the OP's use of the term. Perhaps you are looking for offense where none is intended, particularly where pemerton is concerned? As you say in one of your posts, you believe you and he rarely see eye-to-eye, so perhaps this colors how you infer tone from his posts?

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I really, really don't want to get bogged down in this "but you said thing x that I take offense to so now the conversation needs to change from analysis of the mechanics and veracity of thing x (to prove or falsify the claim) to the legitimacy of my grievances" because I feel like this this approach happens far too often and all it does is serve to undermine any actual interesting conversation about TTRPGs (which is sort of the point of coming here to converse?).

However...

allowing for this for a moment, why isn't it helpful to examine controversial claims about aspects of all kinds of play? In my experience, there is HUGE utility in reflecting on your own play and/or games you advocate for.

I can trivially name two off the top of my head.

1) 4e's "skip the (implied 'boring') gate guards and get to the fun." My personal reflection of this (in a game I advocate for) has me of the position that (a) they meant something else (eg the indie axioms of "cut to the action" and "at every moment, drive play toward conflict") and (b) this clumsy iteration of (a) (much like Mearls statement in the 5e playtest of "shouting arms back on") served only to undermine the edition in both (i) needlessly turning a segment of gamers off to no good end and (ii) not actually being REMOTELY as clear as just recapitulate the indie axioms themselves (which are abundantly clear!).

So this is bad. Don't do this again.

2) 4e detractors' position that 4e's roles and mechanics are just artificial video games in disguise. They're obviously not. But what do they actually resemble? Magic Decks. MtG is WotC's primary bread-winner so of course that group consulted on 4e's design.

So these two things above (along with other things such as noncombat conflict resolution, keyword architecture being fundamental, and focused themes/premise) combined lead me to (correctly) frame the game design as an action adventure game primarily inspired by indie games and Magic the Gathering. From that, I'm better able to explain all manner of things to people who don't grok the game or who are trying to learn the game.


Sum total, there is enormous utility in provocative positions (even...or perhaps especially...wrong ones) that beg analysis if you're just willing to engage with the ideas (and try to falsify them or be willing to be convinced by them) rather than trying to instead reframe the entirety of the conversation around your offense.

pemerton said:

How do you know this? I don't think you've ever engaged with one of my actual play threads. And you've certainly never posted much actual play of your own.

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From your descriptions your games can't be.

And so you won't be upset if I say I THINK your game is a "Mother may I" game?

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You've said worse about them in previous threads with your various attacks on my playstyle.

Maxperson said:

pemerton said:

Maxperson said:

The level of realism in your games is much lower than mine

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How do you know this? I don't think you've ever engaged with one of my actual play threads. And you've certainly never posted much actual play of your own.

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From your descriptions your games can't be.

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Maxperson, I hereby assert - quite sincerely - that I am confident my Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant games are more realistic than any fantasy game you have GMed.

I'm less confident to assert the same of my Traveller game and your sci-fi games, but am still inclined to believe so. Likewise for the session of Cthulhu Dark I ran last year, compared to any modern-day/contemporary RPG you might have run.

You'll see that I'm not mentioning D&D 4e and Cortex+ Heroic. That's not because I think my games using these systems are less realistic than your fantasy and supers games, but I'm not confident that they are more realistic. (When it comes to cosmic fantasy like D&D 4e, or Marvel-style supers, I'm also not at all sure what even counts as realistic.)

pemerton said:

(When it comes to cosmic fantasy like D&D 4e, or Marvel-style supers, I'm also not at all sure what even counts as realistic.)

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Max isn't, either, or, at least, he hasn't been able to articulate it clearly.

Someone mentioned it earlier, it might have been Bedrockgames, where D&D needs to be able to appeal to a wider market, so for those:

1. Wanting to track coin, rations, ammunition, light sources and the like, it is possible;
2. Wanting to have a detailed system regarding carrying capacity/encumbrance, it is possible;
3. Wanting to have a low-magic game, it is possible;
4. Wanting to experience a high-powered wuxia game, it is possible;
5. Wanting to experience a greater degree of co-authoring, it is possible (use the plot point device);
...etc

It may not be the best at any one of those, but D&D is such that it encourages customisation and add-ons so with some creativity one is able to homebrew or borrow ideas from other games. That is one of its appealing qualities.

For me the realism debate, is a non-issue. If a mechanic appeals to me, it becomes another tool to use at the table.

For instance, I like encumbrance and when it is necessary for the fiction I might ask for a rough estimate of carrying capacity for each player, otherwise for ease (and since we have done some measuring in the past), most adventurers with their gear are encumbered. The rule at our table everyone's movement is affected as if encumbered, but during a combat, 5e allows one as a free action to drop something. So that free action is used (in the first round of combat) for one to drop their gear pack, freeing a PC to move their full complement of movement unhindered and again that is only if I break out the grid. In ToM that doesn't even enter play. And we do a lot of ToM. Should a player want to declare their character is not encumbered then they need to keep track and update where necessary. This rules seems to work for our table.

Is it more real to keep 100% track of encumbrance? I don't believe so.
Does it require more bookkeeping to measure encumbrance continuously? Of course yes.
Does the above solution I use take into account the effects of encumbrance sufficiently enough for my table? Yes.

For coin, time, inspiration and rests - I keep track of it on our shared online page. We use the average daily spend as listed in the PHB. Using the average spend means, meals, drinks, replacement/mending of clothes, maintenance of weapons/armour, purchasing of medi-kits, ammunition, light sources, paying for stabling, board and the like are all taken care of. So when adventuring characters are always at maximum in terms of medikits and ammunition (unless it becomes important to track, like for an extended time away from possible supplies).

Would it be more real to keep track of these more accurately? I do not think so.
Would it require more bookkeeping? For sure.
Does the average daily spend sufficiently cover our table's conception of general adventuring costs? Yes

Whether one keeps an accurate record/s or one doesn't is not an indication of what is more real or not.

However having said that, I do agree realism can lie on a spectrum, so @Lanefan's table which attempts to account for equipment being damaged due to AoE attacks and environment damage (water, falling)...etc does seem to lean to towards a sounder internal consistency.

I might use/allow equipment to be damaged as a possible stake, bargaining chip or even damage replacement.
As an example: Player failed their roll for the character's attempt to leap onto beast's back. As DM I might offer Success with Complication. They succeeded, using their masterwork shortsword to grip into the beast's flesh - and hanging on, but the blade broke from the shaft in the struggle. So they still succeeded, but now they have lost their masterwork weapon. The player is free to refuse the fiction offered and just accept the standard fail.

The above is certainly a real possibility for the fiction, but that might never happen in say @Maxperson's game depending on the system and homebrew rules he may use. That does not mean his game is any less real than mine though.