D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[pemerton]

I might postulate from this that you've been pretty sheltered in your gaming experiences.

Perhaps.

If you are GMing with players who don't care to engage the ingame situation via their PCs, and who just "roll into town" hoping to meet with the king, what is wrong with their PCs just meeting with the king? What is the point of tryng to establish "ingame consistency" for players who don't care about it?

I don't see why no reasonable player would expect to be able to meet and influence a king.

But it may not be appropriate at all stages of their careers nor all conditions they may be in.

So you're agreeing with me, then, that it is not the case that no reasonable player would ever expect his/her PC to be able to meet and influence a king.

If the prospect of failure is so self-evident, then why is the scene even being framed? Why bring the king into the ingame situation at all if the players can't meaningfully declare PC actions in relation to him? Tell the players in advance so they can do something else worthwhile with their play time.

??? Isn't this closing off avenues and railroading?

Yes. My point is that, if you're going to close off avenues in the way that various posters have advocated for, why spend precious play time on it? Just tell the players it's not an option and move on to something that they can affect through their action declarations.

I'd rather the NPCs in the game interact with the PCs on their own in-game merits rather than their metagame ones.

<snip>

If they want to see the king, they can figure out the protocols for doing so given their current status.

The notion of "in-game merits" was used @upthread, by [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]. I find it a little bit puzzling - what are the ingame merits, independent of the mechanics whereby those are ascertained and adjudicated?

For instance, how can we tell if the PCs are clever and witty enough to talk their way into an audience with the king - certainly something that is feasible and genre-consistent - other than by framing the situation, accepting the action declarations, and letting the dice roll?

Part of the pleasure I draw from playing RPGs (as a player or GM) is in making the setting and story feel immersive by having it make sense with our normal everyday assumptions and understandings of the world around us.

I don't think this is especially unique to you. I think it is quite widespread.

The mechanics are just tools to do that in a predictable and regular manner.

This is not what I, in my game, use mechanics for. I use the mechanics to determine the outcomes of action declarations, via (i) build and framing mechanics, and (ii) resolution mechanics. Predictability and consistency with "everyday assumptions" and genre are achieved primarily via no one framing situations, or making action declarations, that violate those things.

Suppose a PC cow wanted to jump over the moon. Are you railroading him by saying he can't jump that high?

This goes back to the issue of bad faith. Is the player insincere in believing that this is feasible within the fiction? In which case, what is the underlying cause of the insincerity? But if the player is sincere, then my preference is to use the action resolution mechanics. That's what they're for.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Fine.

The players (in or out of character, matters not for this purpose) want an audience with the king. So the DM predetermines that no matter what else the party does the king will receive them and grant them an audience should the party ask for one. Maybe there's a hidden backstory where the king wants to get to know these guys so he can hire them later...or have them killed, whatever.

This, in my experience is a complete misunderstanding of what is being said. You're zooming in to the single most irrelevant level there is. Why do they PCs want their characters to have an audience with the King. Although I can imagine people whose life goal is to have an audience with the King, the players don't wan the PCs to have an audience with the King as an end, they want it as a stepping stone. They want something from the King.

But why is this *any* different than the DM pre-deciding to not give the audience: there's a hidden backstory (unknown to anyone outside the royal family) of a prophecy where the king will die at the hand of a Dwarf, of which the party has three. In this case it's the DM's decision to not give the players what they want no matter what they try.

It's also the DM's responsibility in such a case to give clues. The King is paranoid about dwarves to the point he will never see one. That's not the sort of backstory that stays entirely hidden. It's noted on - and because seeing the King is a means and not an end it is going to be something the PCs should take into account when they work out the method they want to use.

In either case the DM has predetermined the outcome and rendered the mechanics moot, though the motions may well still be gone through. That one leads to the players' desired immediate outcome and the other does not is irrelevant.

On the other hand the "No you do not get to see the King" is being actively advocated by people. The "You always get to see the King even if you are mortal enemies who he has sworn to have killed" is a misunderstanding of what is being advocated.

Absolutely. But in situations where the mechanics are meaningless, auto-'no' and auto-'yes' are in effect the same thing. And in neither case do the players (in or out of character) have any specific right to know why.

On the other hand when something that through their visualisation of the world should have worked doesn't you've just harmed both their agency and their immersion. There are times the PCs shouldn't know what is going on and things they expect don't happen. But these should be rare because each actively harms the player experience in a way things being easier than expected doesn't.

 

[pemerton]

what I find is that my players do not try things when they do not make sense with their assumptions. Which means that by not giving something the players think is plausible a chance to work (barring massive secrets they are blundering across) I am making the story feel less immersive by ensuring that it does not make sense with the normal everyday assumptions my players have of the world around them even where such conflict with mine.

I agree with this - with both parts of it - ie (i) that the players' action declarations reflect their sense of what is consistent with and viable within the session, and (ii) that blocking those delcarations, rather than engaging the mechanics to resolve them, undermines the players' immersion in the game.

The players (in or out of character, matters not for this purpose) want an audience with the king. So the DM predetermines that no matter what else the party does the king will receive them and grant them an audience should the party ask for one.

<snip>

why is this *any* different than the DM pre-deciding to not give the audience

<snip>

In either case the DM has predetermined the outcome and rendered the mechanics moot

The difference is that (i) the GM has not "pre-decided" - s/he has decided in response to a player action declaration or expression of desire - and (ii) the player is getting what s/he wants, and the game is progressing in accordance with the player's conception of what s/he wants his/her PC to be doing.

a series of fetch-quests and bureaucratic hoop jumping should not be the only way

I could not think of anything more tedious. The whole notion of side-quests, fetch-quests etc is just horrible. I want the game to be focused on what the players think matters to their characters, not busywork invented by the GM.

there's a hidden backstory (unknown to anyone outside the royal family) of a prophecy where the king will die at the hand of a Dwarf, of which the party has three. In this case it's the DM's decision to not give the players what they want no matter what they try.

<snip>

in situations where the mechanics are meaningless, auto-'no' and auto-'yes' are in effect the same thing. And in neither case do the players (in or out of character) have any specific right to know why.

When we're talking about the range of feasible approaches to RPGing, I don't think the notion of "right" is very helpful. The players don't have a "right" to anything. But for different groups of players, different sorts of approaches might be more or less enjoyable.

In my own case, the decision to say yes will be based not on secret backstory, but upon what, in my judgement, will best conduce to getting play focused on something interesting. This is relative to what the players want. It's also relative to what I can do as a GM. (For instance, I have at least on player who would really enjoy mass combats in the game, but I don't give them to him, because I can't run them very well. I'm not much of a wargamer.)

Conversely, if the dwarven prophecy thing was part of my game, then it would come out during the course of the action resolution of the PCs trying to obtain their audience - and success in the skill challenge would turn, in part, on whether or not they were able to work around it. ("These aren't the dwarves you're looking for" or "Here's a counter-prophecy" or even "They're not dwarves at all - they're gnomish agents in disguise and on a secret mission!")

 

[billd91]

If you are GMing with players who don't care to engage the ingame situation via their PCs, and who just "roll into town" hoping to meet with the king, what is wrong with their PCs just meeting with the king? What is the point of tryng to establish "ingame consistency" for players who don't care about it?

In some cases, this may be how they are learning about the campaign's in-game values. In other cases, showing up to town covered in orc blood and reeking of owlbear urine will get them in to see someone - like the barbarian chieftain. You're making an assumption (wild guess, really) PCs showing up unready to meet the king don't care about in-game consistency but that may not be true.

So you're agreeing with me, then, that it is not the case that no reasonable player would ever expect his/her PC to be able to meet and influence a king.

I never said they couldn't. I said there may be times in which it is a foregone conclusion that they can't use diplomacy to get past the chamberlain to see the king. There may be other times in which it is not impossible. There may be other avenues to get in to see the king or obtain an audience. There may be ways to blackmail or bribe the chamberlain into setting up the audience. But those methods may take a little research and work on the PCs' part.

Yes. My point is that, if you're going to close off avenues in the way that various posters have advocated for, why spend precious play time on it? Just tell the players it's not an option and move on to something that they can affect through their action declarations.

Because I would rather the PC's choose to do what they want to do, even if impossible, and play through the encounter than brush them off it. Plus, they may learn something from it.

The notion of "in-game merits" was used @upthread, by [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]. I find it a little bit puzzling - what are the ingame merits, independent of the mechanics whereby those are ascertained and adjudicated?

Personality. Accomplishments. Reputation. Backstory. They stuff that goes beyond mechanics and makes a character come to life.

For instance, how can we tell if the PCs are clever and witty enough to talk their way into an audience with the king - certainly something that is feasible and genre-consistent - other than by framing the situation, accepting the action declarations, and letting the dice roll?

There are a lot of things we don't bother using dice for. They play out what they want to to, I play out the response, and we go from there. Maybe there's a die roll involved, but many times there isn't.

This is not what I, in my game, use mechanics for. I use the mechanics to determine the outcomes of action declarations, via (i) build and framing mechanics, and (ii) resolution mechanics. Predictability and consistency with "everyday assumptions" and genre are achieved primarily via no one framing situations, or making action declarations, that violate those things.

"Those things" that shouldn't be violated, in your statement above, are the framing and resolution mechanics? If that's the case, we seem to approach the game from the opposite perspectives. I couldn't care if the action declarations violate the framing/building mechanics or resolution mechanics. I care more that the action doesn't violate our notions of reality save where the genre violates them - then fit the best mechanic to them. In-character perspective first - mechanics last.

This goes back to the issue of bad faith. Is the player insincere in believing that this is feasible within the fiction? In which case, what is the underlying cause of the insincerity? But if the player is sincere, then my preference is to use the action resolution mechanics. That's what they're for.

But the players don't always know the full fiction. They don't know, without interacting with him, that the chamberlain is a particularly effete snob. Or that the king has recently been threatened with a secretive assassination attempt. Or that he has be prophesied to be murdered by a dwarf. So they don't know that the blood-covered dwarf assassin in the party is going to scotch the attempt to convince the chamberlain to let them in. Yet. Once they do meet with him, they may be able to figure that out and that gives them more tools to use in removing that obstacle or bypassing it.

 

[Ratskinner]

I agree that hit point mechanics don't give us narratively meaningful wounds. This is why I prefer them as a "momentum marker", and in 4e you do get consequences and narration within the fiction (eg second winding rather than attacking, or falling back to the inspiring leader (ie getting in range of Word of Vigour!), etc). It's not always great literature, and I'm not sure that if you were starting from scratch a hp system is the best way to achieve what 4e offers.

But I think it's not nothing.

That's part of why I keep throwing the word "traditional" in front of "HP system". Although I do think that people have a harder time narrating such momentum shifts, even if the mechanics are making it more obvious. Mostly because I think there's a big mental hurdle in the game...namely the word "hit".

I think I'd even be okay with a mostly-straight HP system if it actually triggered discrete wounds. (i.e. reach 0 HP and roll on this wound chart) I also like the idea of spells also feeding into that by doing damage that triggers special conditions (sleep, entangled, etc.)

In 4e, if you wanted to do something like Frodo's suffering at the hands of the Witch King or Shelob, you'd absolutely have to use a disease/curse track in some fashion.

I can't say I disagree. I might also suggest that the shift to HP-as-momentum is why 4e relatively more focus on the other dimensions of combat mechanics (conditions and positioning). Doing so allows a bit more narrative interest to be added into the mix (even if it is rather tightly constrained compared to freeform narrative descriptors).

 

[Ratskinner]

I think it just falls below the resolution allowed by the abstraction.

The resolution of the abstraction has gotten increasingly finer over the course of the game's editions. What you're suggesting might be fine under minute-long combat rounds, but...at least since 3e, and for some of my 2e DMs back in the 90's, things haven't been very abstract for quite some time.

I mean, you can narrate one hit to the right arm, so the hero switches her weapon to her other hand, and the mechanics don't change at all. It's not a perfect mirror, where you take damage to the arm and so you would suffer a penalty to hit, and thus choose to cast a spell instead, because that would make for a fairly complicated system.

Honestly, it doesn't have to. Fate's system works quite well, and isn't very hard or complicated at all. Apocalypse World has another system of interest (which doesn't look very complicated, but I have not used). MHRP's system is simple. I do not feel that the whole "HP are the simplest solution" argument is actually very well founded, at least on the PC side of things. Its not like the only two alternatives are HP system or detailed hit-location charts with medically-relevant consequences in three appendices. Sure, when you had a bunch of ships to keep track of, HP made some sense. But, when you've got a single PC to play, not so much.

I was saying that, in my games, HP are mostly bruises and battering; but it's all physical-ish stuff that the PCs can see and understand.

While I have no doubt that that's how you play it in your games, that wasn't actually what you were saying. You were saying that it would be consistent with the mechanics to narrate the majority of a PC's HP loss as non-physical-ish stuff; luck, divine favor, etc. Now, you have previously in this thread indicated your belief that the game mechanics effectively act as the laws of physics for the characters and that they would be aware of them. If so, how is it that they make sense of a world where what we would consider substantial physical injury is indistinguishable from the non-physical-ish stuff?

The system isn't fine-fine-fine-dead, though; it's fine-mostlyfine-almostdead-dead. When you're about to go down from the next hit, and you're aware of that fact, you do act differently. As per the "cautious" factor mentioned above.

I find the idea that all heroes are always (or even usually) aware of when they are about to down from the next hit....odd and counterintuitive. Additionally...what exactly does mostly-fine or almost-dead mean here? The mostly-fine hero will function exactly as well as the fine hero in every way easily measured by his comrades (jump as far, fight as well, hit as hard...etc.) If as you claim above, the level of abstraction is very high, then the hero certainly cannot make any such judgement about the next hit or not. At best, the hero might be able to declare something as vague as "I won't last much longer here." However, absent his ability to sense his own rapidly-reddening energy bar, we have no reason to believe or understand how he knows this.

Now, to bring this back to the thread's question, this can be fine. In a Gamist/Gamey game, where the fictional details are mostly for color, its perfectly acceptable or maybe even preferable. However, I don't think it does very well outside of that context. If D&D 5e holds strongly to its HP heritage, then it should definitely lean towards the Game end of things and away from the Simulation end of things.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You were saying that it would be consistent with the mechanics to narrate the majority of a PC's HP loss as non-physical-ish stuff; luck, divine favor, etc. Now, you have previously in this thread indicated your belief that the game mechanics effectively act as the laws of physics for the characters and that they would be aware of them. If so, how is it that they make sense of a world where what we would consider substantial physical injury is indistinguishable from the non-physical-ish stuff?

It would be consistent to narrate Hit Points as such, if you were inclined to do so. All Hit Points are always plot armor, and any injury sustained is precisely cosmetic with no correlation to Hit Points whatsoever.

Personally, it doesn't make sense to me to have physical and non-physical Hit Points that act the same. Personally, I don't see how a character could be aware of quantized luck, divine favor, etc. while it is critical to the game that characters are aware of the information which corresponds to Hit Points (or else they'd have to behave the same at 1/60 as they do at 59/60). That's why I explain all Hit Point loss as physical in my own games.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree with this - with both parts of it - ie (i) that the players' action declarations reflect their sense of what is consistent with and viable within the session, and (ii) that blocking those delcarations, rather than engaging the mechanics to resolve them, undermines the players' immersion in the game.

The assumption here - and it's not always correct - is that the players' sense of what is consistent and viable at least vaguely atches that of the DM.

The difference is that (i) the GM has not "pre-decided" - s/he has decided in response to a player action declaration or expression of desire

Not necessarily. The DM's decision could have been made long before the player declared anything, while thinking through the what-ifs ahead of time. What if the party bails on the adventure and goes to town - what sort of encounters might they hit en route? (a band of ogres will stumble on them unless they're being very watchful) What if, once in town, they try to go straight to the king with the tales of what they've found in the dungeon - how's that going to play out? (not a chance unless they leave all their Dwarves behind; and that ain't likely) What if the party keeps going in the dungeon in their current weakened state - is there a plausible way to not wipe them out? (I'll make sure they hear big-monster noises ahead if they bother to listen, and hope they take heed)

I could not think of anything more tedious. The whole notion of side-quests, fetch-quests etc is just horrible. I want the game to be focused on what the players think matters to their characters, not busywork invented by the GM.

Again, you're making assumptions. The players shouldn't be able to tell the difference between a side quest and the real plot, if the DM is doing it right; and sometimes the side quests spawn stories and plots of their own (or can be used to introduce plot elements) that can later be interwoven into the bigger picture. Or, the players could side-quest themselves - a story from a game last year:
- party get planted deep in enemy territory as spies and saboteurs, we check around the various mercenaries' guilds "looking for adventures" (in fact, just trying to find out what's happening where), we find a notice that we (wrongly) guess to be meant for us, and half of us follow up on it. The DM has no idea we're going to do this, so he makes a mini-adventure up on the fly - essentially the recruitment notice is there to lead adventurers into a trap in a city. This backfires when we get there, spring the trap, escape, and annihilate the place.
- the point of the story is that we as players had no idea this wasn't the real adventure until after we'd done it. And that's been true for much of that campaign - most of the time we're not sure if we're on plot or not; we just take the hooks we notice (and miss most of them outright, from what I gather) and fly at 'er.

Conversely, if the dwarven prophecy thing was part of my game, then it would come out during the course of the action resolution of the PCs trying to obtain their audience - and success in the skill challenge would turn, in part, on whether or not they were able to work around it. ("These aren't the dwarves you're looking for" or "Here's a counter-prophecy" or even "They're not dwarves at all - they're gnomish agents in disguise and on a secret mission!")

Where I quite likely wouldn't have it come out then at all, but there'd be ways for the party to find out later (or much later) - maybe somewhere in a future adventure they find a copy of the prophecy, or something hinting at it, for example.

Lan-"this isn't the king you're looking for"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

On the other hand the "No you do not get to see the King" is being actively advocated by people. The "You always get to see the King even if you are mortal enemies who he has sworn to have killed" is a misunderstanding of what is being advocated.

All I'm trying to point out is that auto-yes and auto-no are the same thing - the pre-determination of an outcome by the DM - and am further trying to point out the hypocracy of justifying auto-yes as desireable while at the same time slamming auto-no. To me both are perfectly valid and reasonable depending on the situation, while at other times the answer is uncertain and needs to be determined by mechanics or roleplay.

On the other hand when something that through their visualisation of the world should have worked doesn't you've just harmed both their agency and their immersion. There are times the PCs shouldn't know what is going on and things they expect don't happen. But these should be rare because each actively harms the player experience in a way things being easier than expected doesn't.

These times should be fairly common when the party is dealing with something for the first time, or with something that is often subject to change.

If something doesn't work where the players think it should they're going to do one of two things:
- find out why, leading at some point to whatever backstory you've cooked up (or at least to an adventure!)
- do nothing more, forget about it, and move on to something else
Neither of these options should hurt their immersion provided what happened was at least somewhat plausible. And sometimes the specific intent of something not working when it should is to get the players-as-characters to ask why.

Lanefan

 

[Neonchameleon]

In some cases, this may be how they are learning about the campaign's in-game values. In other cases, showing up to town covered in orc blood and reeking of owlbear urine will get them in to see someone - like the barbarian chieftain. You're making an assumption (wild guess, really) PCs showing up unready to meet the king don't care about in-game consistency but that may not be true.

No. You are here assuming two things.
1: Players who care about game world consistency will have characters who don't.
2: There is no such thing as a difficulty modifier.

Is it harder for characters showing up at town covered in blood and piss to see the King? Much. This doesn't mean that it's impossible.

Because I would rather the PC's choose to do what they want to do, even if impossible, and play through the encounter than brush them off it. Plus, they may learn something from it.

And I think the word "impossible" should be reserved for things that are actually impossible. "You can not get in to see the King because the King is not there".

Personality. Accomplishments. Reputation. Backstory. They stuff that goes beyond mechanics and makes a character come to life.

You mean the stuff that should also be reflected in mechanics but D&D doesn't do?

But the players don't always know the full fiction. They don't know, without interacting with him, that the chamberlain is a particularly effete snob.

Penalty. Not impossible.

Or that the king has recently been threatened with a secretive assassination attempt. Or that he has be prophesied to be murdered by a dwarf. So they don't know that the blood-covered dwarf assassin in the party is going to scotch the attempt to convince the chamberlain to let them in. Yet. Once they do meet with him, they may be able to figure that out and that gives them more tools to use in removing that obstacle or bypassing it.

And this is cross purposes. I don't think that anyone is advocating getting through by a single roll.

The assumption here - and it's not always correct - is that the players' sense of what is consistent and viable at least vaguely atches that of the DM.

No. The assumption is that where the player's sense of what is consistent and viable does not match the DM's it is because the DM has failed to communicate the world clearly. As such this is either secret information or a straight up failure on the DM's part. As such the DM can do three things.
1: Go with what they communicated rather than what they planned. Canon is what exists in the game world. This enhances immersion and adds richness to the gameworld.
2: Continue with what they were doing. As such they should accept that they have failed and have a post-mortem as to why they screwed things up to the point they needed to undermine the consistency of the game world (which is an entity distinct from their notes) and the players' immersion.
3: Split the difference. Tell the players what they should know but the limited communication has prevented them realising. This is a softer version of 2.

Not necessarily. The DM's decision could have been made long before the player declared anything, while thinking through the what-ifs ahead of time. What if the party bails on the adventure and goes to town - what sort of encounters might they hit en route? (a band of ogres will stumble on them unless they're being very watchful) What if, once in town, they try to go straight to the king with the tales of what they've found in the dungeon - how's that going to play out?

If you already know how it's going to play out there's no point in playing it out. If the DM has already decided how it is going to play out they should then kill their darling, put that section of the notes through the paper shredder, and let the players get on with roleplaying.

All I'm trying to point out is that auto-yes and auto-no are the same thing - the pre-determination of an outcome by the DM - and am further trying to point out the hypocracy of justifying auto-yes as desireable while at the same time slamming auto-no. To me both are perfectly valid and reasonable depending on the situation, while at other times the answer is uncertain and needs to be determined by mechanics or roleplay.

This is true in exactly the same way that stabbing a knife into a side of beef on the plate is exactly the same thing as stabbing a knife into several hundred pounds of at least soon to be angry bull. One is something people should do every day to eat and the other is dangerous enough to be a spectator sport.

And auto-yes is something that rarely happens; PCs are very good at messing things up.

If something doesn't work where the players think it should they're going to do one of two things:
- find out why, leading at some point to whatever backstory you've cooked up (or at least to an adventure!)
- do nothing more, forget about it, and move on to something else

That depends how and why you have said no. See Hussar's example. And how arbitrarily you said no.