D&D 5E Do NPCs in your game have PHB classes?

[The Crimson Binome]

That is false. It is absolutely in fitting with the reality of all D&D worlds that I have ever heard of that the DM, doing the thing the DM exists to do, say "Your character has fallen to their death." No die rolls. No odds.

Sure, if your DM is cheating, or house-ruling the game into being a different game. In the reality described by the rules, which all of the players have agreed to by virtue of choosing to play D&D, you need to roll that damage out.

If you disregard those rules, then you have violated the duty of fairness as required by the station of DM, and you should expect your players to walk out on you, as surely as if you had said, "rocks fall, everybody dies". It's the epitome of bad, unfair DMing.

 

[S'mon]

That's a very Gygax/Moldvay take!

Yeah.
In my default GM mode, the rules are there to aid my impartial adjudication - to help me decide what happens. I don't think the rules emulate or simulate the in-game universe in most respects, and most of my adjudication is rules-free, but the rules provide handy tools and a somewhat detailed combat resolution system.
I do 4e a bit differently of course, more Pemertonian , and my 5e GMing arguably has some aspects of 4e style here and there, but generally I run 5e closer to my Classic game. I can for instance uses 5e NPC stats for NPC-world interaction if I wish, which doesn't really work in 4e - 4e NPC stats are only
there to interact with the PCs.

Edit: Actually there's a player in my Classic D&D game who uses control of her PC's background to take a degree of authorial control over the game. It's a negotiated process, and so far has worked well to inject an
increased dramatic element into the game without harming player immersion.

 

[S'mon]

Not sure that I agree with the argument that going to the Abyss or to Hell (for example) needs to be "artificially" increased in difficulty by decreasing the plus of your weapon.

That seems like a stretch.

The author of Queen of the Demonweb Pits seemed to think so. I never thought it was a good idea.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's zero fun being Harry Dresden sitting around his apartment. Without the story, the role has no meaning.

Fortunately for us, Mister Dresden lives in an interesting world, and he has bills to pay. He also has friends and enemies, who complicate things for him.

But everything that happens to him, it's just a result of him acting like himself, and everyone else acting like themselves. It is their world, playing itself out, without the intervention of outside entities. If there was ever a case where Harry was stuck in a tight jam, and the author reached into the world to solve his problems for him (or the reverse, and the author reaches in to paint a monster in his path where there was none before), then we would all mark that as the point where the series had truly jumped the shark; nobody would care about what happens to him if we know there's a deus ex machina contriving things around him.

Players (and Game-Masters) can influence the game world, but only through the agency possessed by their characters (where background elements are a type of character that is controlled by the GM). That is the central tenet of what an RPG is - that we are all playing characters, and the decisions which we make as those characters matter because there's no omnipotent outsider surreptitiously warping reality around them.

 

[S'mon]

In the reality described by the rules, which all of the players have agreed to by virtue of choosing to play D&D, you need to roll that damage out. .

In the reality of the game world, there are no dice and there's no rolling.

The at-table social contract may require rolling. The GM can always say "Fall onto jagged rocks, per 1e DSG/WSG that doubles damage to 40d6... You go splat".

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Sure, if your DM is cheating, or house-ruling the game into being a different game. In the reality described by the rules, which all of the players have agreed to by virtue of choosing to play D&D, you need to roll that damage out.

If you disregard those rules, then you have violated the duty of fairness as required by the station of DM, and you should expect your players to walk out on you, as surely as if you had said, "rocks fall, everybody dies". It's the epitome of bad, unfair DMing.

It is not cheating to narrate believable and expected results of fictional circumstances going on during a game, such as a terminal velocity collision with the ground resulting in death, in any version of D&D (or any other RPG I've read).

It is also not "house-ruling", nor is it making the game at the table into one that is noticeably different from the one written in the book - because the book has always included the rule that the DM should not slavishly adhere to the mechanics, even in the versions of D&D that actually tried to function as reality simulators.

That you have equated "You fell to your death because people die from such a fall as you took" with "rocks fall, everybody dies" is genuinely spectacular.

However, that's getting caught up on the specific example and missing the general point that RPG rules need not be intended for use as reality simulators.

 

[Hussar]

/snip and the decisions which we make as those characters matter because there's no omnipotent outsider surreptitiously warping reality around them.

Umm, that's the definition of a DM. An omnipotent outsider surreptitiously warping reality around them. That's a DM's job. Some games share that power out to the players as well, granting the players the ability to warp reality as well.

By your definition of an RPG, Microsoft Flight Simulator is a better role playing game than any tabletop RPG. Sorry, not buying it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, that's a highly contentious claim. It's not one that I accept. It's certainly not universal, nor even especially widespread, among RPG designers. It wasn't accepted by Gygax, who was one of the inventors of the game-form (he tended to accept the impartiality idea, but not the "objective description" one - see eg his discussions of hp, saving throws, XP and combat resolution in his DMG).

As tends to be the case, the RPG form wasn't perfected - or even really understood - until a while after its nominal invention. The thing which Gygax called an RPG does not qualify as such by the more-rigorous standards of the late eighties, although it would certain fit into a broader category of game that also include such outliers as FATE and D&D 4E.

If you want to say that all of those games are RPGs, and actual role-playing-based games are a different subcategory within that, then that's certainly an argument that you could make, though it sidesteps the relevant point.

I don't understand what constraint you think the last sentence imposes.

The important thing is that the integrity of the world comes first, and what you do with it is a secondary consideration. If there's a dragon because it makes sense for there to be a dragon, then that's fine; if there's a dragon because it would be cool if the party fought a dragon, then that's shenanigans.

I assume you're familiar with the practice of a GM asking a player, "Are you sure that's what your character would do?" It's probably not something that you do in your own games, but it's common advice in Palladium games, and has appeared in some media depicting the hobby. Setting aside how the question can be abused by bad GMs, the point of asking is to get players to really think about their characters, and to encourage them to role-play honestly (instead of being side-tracked by other concerns).

Well, the same thing can be used as a tool to help a GM better role-play their setting. Whenever there's doubt about whether to include a setting element (a friendly priest in town, a wooden crate, the Tarrasque, etc), the GM should stop and ask themself "Am I sure that this thing should really be there?" And if they can honestly answer yes, then it's safe to include; but if they can't honestly answer yes, then including it anyway would be a violation of their obligations to impartiality.

If I think it would be fun for the PCs to meet the tarrasque (and I do) then I can trivially come up with a reason why they might

This is rationalization. It is a logical fallacy aimed toward disguising your true intentions (to other players, or to yourself). If your real reason for including an encounter is that it would be interesting for the players, then it doesn't matter how cleverly you go back and make it fit, because it already didn't originate from your honest presentation of the world.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In the reality of the game world, there are no dice and there's no rolling.

In the reality which the players agreed to play within, a character so resilient that its mechanical representation has 120+ HP would survive the impact of any fall.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Umm, that's the definition of a DM. An omnipotent outsider surreptitiously warping reality around them. That's a DM's job.

And the conceit of an RPG is that you are really a bunch of elves who actually live within that world, and that there isn't such an outside force. You play the game by pretending to be your characters, rather than by acting as omnipotent outsiders. If you actually use any of your omnipotent powers, then you've violated the conceit, and there's no point in even playing.