D&D 5E With the Holy Trinity out, let's take stock of 5E

[pemerton]

You don't seem to wonder why D&D was made at all when a "use no rules at all and make it up game" would have sufficed.

Where does this come from? Who is talking about "use no rues at all and make it up?" Not The Forge. Not Ron Edwards. Not Paul Czege or Vinent Baker, both of whom write games full of rules. Not Luke Crane, whose best-known game, Burning Wheel, is about as crunchy as Rolemaster. Not me - I'm quoting AD&D rules to show that they differ from you theory of the game.

I don't know who you think you are replying to, or what point you think you are making/rebutting here.

The rules are not in the books. Those are guidelines for creating a code behind the screen.

<snip>

It is an answer you refuse to accept. Clearly I have answered you.

Every DM must make a map prior to play.

What do you mean by "map"?

When I read the word "map", in the context of a discussion about D&D, I think of a typical dungeon map, generally drawn on graph paper, with some loose illustration of room contents and a numbered key.

How does drawing this sort of map help answer the question "Can Morgan Ironwolf, 1st level fighter wearing mail armour and with a 16 STR and 13 DEX, jump across a 10' wide pit?" I don't see how it does. Nor does drawing a map help answer the questeion "Can that same character, using a hammer and piton, smash a winch mechanism such that a portcullis comes crashing down, thereby blocking the onrsuhing orcs?"

These are practical problems of action resolution that nearly every GM will have encountered at some stage while running a game. And the AD&D PHB and DMG do not contain rules for answering them. There are not even guidelines for answering the question about jumping (the item saving throw chart might count as guidelines for helping address the winch question - though you haven't pointed me to those, instead going off on a red herring about AC and hit points).

 

[Hussar]

This is the heart of D&D as it was designed. It's also at the heart of enabling players to game D&D as a game, not engage in a collaborative story creation. If you don't know it, that's fine. It was word of mouth when I grew up in the 80's and the expected act of play by DMs and players. It begins with understanding role playing wasn't understood as improvisation and that games weren't about improvising either. I don't believe you know your history and going off what you believe is roleplaying from the past 20 years or so. All of the countless creation of books and modules weren't published in order to make a "no pre-existing material necessary" improv game. That's a hole in design, not proof of status as an "RPG" (aka storygame).

I am providing proof to your questions. How could publishing Vampire the Masquerade be so nose snubbing to the whole hobby in 1990 when it titled its game a "storytelling game" if, as from your point of view, all games were about improvising collectively? Why was there such a collective uproar from the D&D crowd? Because playing a game isn't storytelling to begin with.

It was considered so nose snubbing because Vampire players looked at D&D players and said, "Guys, you aren't actually roleplaying - you're playing a tactical war-game". Basically, Vampire players treated D&D players pretty much the identically same way that those who don't like 4e treat 4e players. Things don't change that much.

Two or more people tell a story. It doesn't matter if these are designer storytellers, "GM" (story leader) storytellers, or player storytellers. They are necessarily in conflict (as the theory goes). A mechanic is used like dice or rock-scissors-paper to determine whose story is used in the larger story (that "game" is often used is a misnomer). The conflict is "resolved". Needless to say none of this actually occurs in a game.

These are conflict resolution - Edwards' narrative resolution mechanics. Narrative is always what is going on in his theory because he doesn't believe in games or game play, only story telling. His theory is the seemingly endless act of usurping the terms of the prior with the latter. He and his faithful are openly revolutionaries. How then can his theory be "the way everyone has always thought it was done"?

Ok, there's the likely culprit. When everyone else uses conflict resolution, we mean it as mechanics used to determine events in the game - combat mechanics are conflict resolution. A Bend Bars check to break a lock is conflict resolution. Perhaps a better term might be event resolution, but, meh, not a big deal. Again, you are picking some pretty idiosyncratic definitions and creating barriers to being understood because you are using terms significantly differently than the way they are generally understood.

Actual game mechanics are the rules realized, the pattern. Dice are rolled to realize a result inherent in their design, the odds. They do not resolve conflicts between players. They express results of a the code they are used to represent. Usually a game's code is created by a designer. In the case of D&D and Mastermind the code is created by a referee prior to play behind a screen. And yes, it must never be changed after play begins so players can actually game it.

This is outright false. Loads and loads of games have two players rolling dice to determine the outcome of events. War-games galore have this. Simplifying D&D and RPG's down to the level of Mastermind is absurd. It's like comparing Football, with it's bajillion rules, to Dodgeball and then claiming Baseball isn't a sport because the strike zone is different depending on the umpire.

It's not the reliable expression of an underlying pattern if we need to use that expression on a map. Yes, we can see there is one. For the Jenga game on its own the retention of the tower turn to turn is enough for playing a balanced game. As a randomizer in an RPG like D&D it doesn't work.

Look at the context, the D&D faithful of course. Check your history.

Dude, I lived that history. Other people have told you that no one ever considered GURPS to be not a role playing game. I'd even go so far as to say GURPS fits your model better than D&D since GURPS mechanics are far more comprehensive, particularly if you are comparing AD&D 1e to GURPS. That was the point of GURPS. GURPS is certainly not a story game.

 

[howandwhy99]

Where does this come from? Who is talking about "use no rues at all and make it up?" Not The Forge. Not Ron Edwards. Not Paul Czege or Vinent Baker, both of whom write games full of rules. Not Luke Crane, whose best-known game, Burning Wheel, is about as crunchy as Rolemaster. Not me - I'm quoting AD&D rules to show that they differ from you theory of the game.

I don't know who you think you are replying to, or what point you think you are making/rebutting here.

This is proof of my point as to what games, RPGs, and D&D actually are. D&D, if intended to be an improv game was possibly the worst design ever. It isn't one. It's a game. A pattern recognition activity. Don't mistake it's hammer as a bicycle seat.

All of those people you quote believe in referring to "the fiction". That is what their games are meant to do. Create fictions. There is no fiction in D&D. Games don't create fictions.

What do you mean by "map"?

When I read the word "map", in the context of a discussion about D&D, I think of a typical dungeon map, generally drawn on graph paper, with some loose illustration of room contents and a numbered key.

How does drawing this sort of map help answer the question "Can Morgan Ironwolf, 1st level fighter wearing mail armour and with a 16 STR and 13 DEX, jump across a 10' wide pit?" I don't see how it does. Nor does drawing a map help answer the questeion "Can that same character, using a hammer and piton, smash a winch mechanism such that a portcullis comes crashing down, thereby blocking the onrsuhing orcs?"

A DM's map includes everything in the game. If there is a pit, jumping, mail armor, Morgan Ironwolf, smashing, hammers, pitons, winches, etc. They are on that map. They are rule designs referred to by the referee.

These are practical problems of action resolution that nearly every GM will have encountered at some stage while running a game. And the AD&D PHB and DMG do not contain rules for answering them. There are not even guidelines for answering the question about jumping (the item saving throw chart might count as guidelines for helping address the winch question - though you haven't pointed me to those, instead going off on a red herring about AC and hit points).

No RPG has action resolution. We've gone over this. Game play is the act of deciphering patterns. There are no conflicts between players to resolve. Maybe such a game may be played to gain rights to tell a story like some of the solid games coming from storygame creators, but the game system itself is not a story. It must be gameable to be a game. Imagine if someone moved the code around behind the screen when you were playing Mastermind? The game stops being playable.

 

[howandwhy99]

It was considered so nose snubbing because Vampire players looked at D&D players and said, "Guys, you aren't actually roleplaying - you're playing a tactical war-game". Basically, Vampire players treated D&D players pretty much the identically same way that those who don't like 4e treat 4e players. Things don't change that much.

The 90s were two different communities arguing over two different definitions of role playing. That Edwards and so much of the hobby has switched to Vampire's definition solely speaks volumes.

Ok, there's the likely culprit. When everyone else uses conflict resolution, we mean it as mechanics used to determine events in the game - combat mechanics are conflict resolution. A Bend Bars check to break a lock is conflict resolution. Perhaps a better term might be event resolution, but, meh, not a big deal. Again, you are picking some pretty idiosyncratic definitions and creating barriers to being understood because you are using terms significantly differently than the way they are generally understood.

You should probably give a clear definition of "the way they are generally understood". If you simply mean conflict resolution to resolve combat (a synonym), then I'm interested. But I don't see how bending bars is a conflict. It's a result of the bars stats, the creature design, strength, and other factors made into a roll of a randomizer representing the odds. Shifting those odds is most games.

This is outright false. Loads and loads of games have two players rolling dice to determine the outcome of events. War-games galore have this.

Which is why D&D rolls result in predetermined outcomes, a system design which can be gamed. Wargamers didn't think D&D was a game either. Mainly because many didn't believe the DM could predetermine all outcomes, which meant it was an incomplete system, an incomplete game. An incomplete game isn't a game. It's like playing Monopoly with half a board.

Simplifying D&D and RPG's down to the level of Mastermind is absurd.

Absurd or not it's the truth. Simplifying it down to collaborative story making is shoving all gaming history in a closet and telling everyone what's known as a Big Lie.

It's like comparing Football, with it's bajillion rules, to Dodgeball and then claiming Baseball isn't a sport because the strike zone is different depending on the umpire.

Except all those sports use patterned fields of play, pattern expressions, and pattern recognition to play them. IOW, they are actual games.

Dude, I lived that history. Other people have told you that no one ever considered GURPS to be not a role playing game. I'd even go so far as to say GURPS fits your model better than D&D since GURPS mechanics are far more comprehensive, particularly if you are comparing AD&D 1e to GURPS. That was the point of GURPS. GURPS is certainly not a story game.

GURPS is an incomplete game. It's an interesting system (code) that fails at the point when the GM has to make something up. It's an inspiring system, but we need less broken games in the hobby, not more. I would agree it's repairable and one of the many D&D imitators which didn't know the game theory underlying D&D's design. What it did best perhaps was try and be a game that emulated stories (unlike story games that where the game itself is attempted to be passed off as a story). But it was still incomplete like so many others.

 

[pemerton]

=

D&D, if intended to be an improv game was possibly the worst design ever.

I don't know what you mean by "improv game". No one in this thread has used that phrase except you. I, and others, have said that D&D is a game that from time-to-time requires the GM to improvise in order to adjudicate action declarations by players.

Mutiple examples have been given upthread - a player declaring that his/her PC throws a mug to the ground so as to break it, making a loud bang; a player declaring that his/her PC jumps across a 10' wide pit; a player declaring that his/her PC uses a hammer and piton to smash a winch mechanism so that a portcullis comes crashing down so as to block off some on-rushing orcs.

These are all permissible action declarations in D&D, but the game, as published, does not have rules for resolving them. At best, in AD&D, for two of the three, there is some guidance to be taken from the item saving throw table.

D&D rolls result in predetermined outcomes

This is true for most RPGs. (Eg its true for many of the RPGs you denounce, like Burning Wheel.) But it is completely orthogonal to the point at issue.

The point at issue is: how is the list of predetermined outcomes determined? For instance, how do we know whether, in order to have his/her PC safely jump across a 10' wide pit, Morgan Ironwolf's player needs to roll a 5, a 10 or a 15 on the d20? The rulebooks don't tell us. The GM has to make something up. Many call this act of making something up "improvisation".

All of those people you quote believe in referring to "the fiction". That is what their games are meant to do. Create fictions. There is no fiction in D&D. Games don't create fictions.

They do not use the word "fiction" in the same way that you do. You use "fiction" as a synonym for "story". They use "fiction" as a synonym for "imagined state of affairs". "Story" and "imagined state of affairs" are not synonyms.

Proof by way of thought experiment requires imagined states of affairs (eg infiinitely long train tracks with a train rushing along them at half the speed of light and an infinitely long mirror beside them). Proof by way of thought experiment does not require, and typically does not generate, story.

Playing D&D requires imagined states of affairs - the characters, the dungeon, the 10' wide pit, the portcullis, the winch mechanism, the mug - all are imaginary.

Here is an example from p 96 of Gygax's DMG:

EMPTY CEREMONIAL CHAMBER: This large place appears to be a dead end. . . [T]he vaulted ceiling dome here is fully 25' high. . . . A wooden platform . . . was placed against the south wall. . . . The only clue which still remains are socket holes in the south wall. . . . The first socket hole examined by the party will have several splinters of wood (from the platform, of course) which might prove to be another clue to thinking players.​

Notice that the room, the platform, the splinters of wood, etc have never actually existed. They are imaginary. And "thinking players" are expected to perform inferences taking the imaginary state of affairs as a starting point: for instance, they are expected to infer from the imagined existence of splinters of wood in wall sockets to the imagined existence, in an imagined past, of a wooden platform against that wall.

As a side point, I also note that there is an element here of improvisation (or "Schroedinger's wood spinters") - whichever socket is the first to be examined will contain the splinters. That is, the GM is authoring the imagined state of affairs, within certain rather constrained paramaters, as s/he goes along.

A DM's map includes everything in the game. If there is a pit, jumping, mail armor, Morgan Ironwolf, smashing, hammers, pitons, winches, etc. They are on that map. They are rule designs referred to by the referee.

This is not anything like a standard usage of the word "map". For instance, I challenge you to post a photograph or link me to any RPGing map which contains pitons on it. Pitons figure on equipment lists - both generic lists of things that can be bought, and particularised lists on individual character sheets. They do not figure on maps.

Even moreso is this the case for mugs, which typically figure only as part of the flavour text in GM dungeon/room notes.

No RPG has action resolution.

<snip>

Game play is the act of deciphering patterns. There are no conflicts between players to resolve.

I don't see what conflicts have to do with anything. Action resolution mechanics are mechanics for resolving (= "determining the outcome of") player action declarations.

Gygax, in his DMG, refers repreatedly to the need to determine such things (ie to resolve them): see, for instance, p 61: "Determine if either or both paties are SURPRISED . . . Determine distance . . . Determine the results of whatever actions are decided upon", etc.

It's also simply not true that all game play is the act of deciphering patterns. For instance, when a player declares thats/he has rolled a 6 on the initiative die, what pattern is being deciphered?

In any event, you still haven't told me how to resolve any of the contentious action declarations that have been mentioned (by me and others) upthread.

Here's another one:

Gygax's DMG tells me that "simming during winds above 35 miles per hour will be almost impossible, and there is a 75% chance of drowning" (page 55). What if the character in question has 18/50 STR, has found him-/herself in the water due to his/her ship breaking up in the storm, and declares that s/he holds onto a large piece of the ship's timber to help stay afloat? What is the chance to drown now? What if the storm lasts 1 further hour? Or 1 further day? And how is the GM to decide how long that the storm lasts, anyway? (There are no random weather tables in the DMG.)

 

[pemerton]

The idea that football is primarily about pattern recognition is bizarre.

Perhaps in American football the best players are also excellent mathematicians - I don't know the game very well.

But in the versions of football with which I'm reasonably familiar - soccer, rugby and especially Australian Rules - the best players are typically mediocre mathematicians but are remarkable athletes. They are fast, strong, able to jump both high and long, and have excellent endurance.

And the gameplay is primarily about spotting openings and - far more importantly - having the athletic skills to exploit them. It is not primarily about "decoding". It bears no resemblance to the play of Chess, or Mastermind, or D&D.

 

[guachi]

For your amusement,
Playing it -> The game of D&D
does so -> gives resistance
like sports have designs....

The sentence is still a mess of words. And in any case, your conflating your gaming in your circle to the whole of gaming and clearly the responses in this thread should tell you that your experiences were not at all the same as those experienced by many of us in this thread. And many of us in this thread started gaming 30 or more years ago. We didn't just start with 5e. Your description of how to play D&D or an RPG doesn't compare with any experience I've had with any gaming group since I started playing.

 

[Schmoe]

The idea that football is primarily about pattern recognition is bizarre.

Perhaps in American football the best players are also excellent mathematicians - I don't know the game very well.

But in the versions of football with which I'm reasonably familiar - soccer, rugby and especially Australian Rules - the best players are typically mediocre mathematicians but are remarkable athletes. They are fast, strong, able to jump both high and long, and have excellent endurance.

And the gameplay is primarily about spotting openings and - far more importantly - having the athletic skills to exploit them. It is not primarily about "decoding". It bears no resemblance to the play of Chess, or Mastermind, or D&D.

On the contrary, it is all about pattern recognition.

As the middle linebacker, I key off the guard. If he steps back at the snap of the ball, the play is probably a pass, so I move to my coverage assignment while being alert for a potential draw. If the guard blocks down on the nosetackle, I know its a trap play, so I move forward to fill the gap and shed the block of the off-side tackle coming down the line. If the guard steps out at me for a block, I need to step up and shed the block. Every position has it's own responsibilities, it's own set of keys and reactions and assignments, and the whole game is is about recognizing those patterns and taking the appropriate actions and having the physical talents to make sure your are able to enforce your assignments correctly.

 

[Parmandur]

So, one time, my ten year old brother-in-law decided he would have a better chance of winning Battleship if he moved his ship between turns.

That was like the Mastermind example; a DM making new rulings based on novel player actions is completely unrelated.

 

[Parmandur]

American football is not about math, but it certainly based on sound tactical thinking, on an individual and team basis.