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

[Manbearcat]

It seems to go without saying that my players lack discernment and that I'm a poor GM. So I'll leave that to speak for itself.

I'll expect your RPGing resignation on my desk by tomorrow morning.

Our Hobgoblin Phalanx Elite Swarm will escort quest you out of the building while our crack ninja staff sees to your books.

Good day.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yes, this is the point that I was making upthread. The system doesn't simulate the combat - the outcomes it delivers round-by-round are described in purely mechanical terms (hit point loss), and at the end of the process what you know is (i) whether or not someone is dead, and (ii) about how long it took to get them to that state. All the internal stuff (action economy, changes in hit point totals) isn't correlating to anything in particular. It just constrains narration.

That's only the case if you accept the premise that Hit Points don't correspond to anything in-game, or if you accept that an attack that hits (by the game mechanics) did not actually hit within the narrative, and so on. If Hit Points correspond to an observable state of beat-up-ed-ness, and a hit is always a hit, then the system actually does model the process of swinging your sword at a dude, and tells us what happens with some degree of precision. You could play 2E or 3E in that way. The rules supported it, or at least didn't interfere with it.

Granted, it's not as much precision as you would get in one of those other systems - it only tells you that a wound of X severity was caused by the impact, rather than specifying that it was a moderate bruise to the shield arm as a result of an improper blocking maneuver - but it's still a basic causal process where outcomes follow directly from actions by considering all of the relevant factors involved.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I thought one of your principles is that everything is modelled exactly one way. Now you have initiative and Reflex saves modelling the same thing! - namely, whether or not a character can jump out of the fireball.

It's a single outcome which relies on multiple factors, in much the same way that firing an arrow needs to account for your natural skill and experience and special training with this particular bow and distance and darkness and so on. Every single number within the game corresponds to one specific thing (or useful grouping of things) within the game world. Then, we model actions by applying mathematical formula which take into account each one of those factors, weighted by magnitude and relevance, to determine the outcome.

But on the issue of the model: at the table, we don't just stipulate "A is somewhere in this zone somewhere in this time interval". That's how 13th Age does it, but it's not how D&D does it. In 3E, 4e and default 5e we also stipulate that A moves through each particular square at a certain time. We adjudicate pit traps, oppy attacks, etc, all on the premise that A is at a particular place at a particular time in his/her movement - all while treating everyone else as stationary at that time.

The 13th Age uses larger zones (from what I recall), compared to the 25-square-foot zones that D&D uses, but that's still just down to a matter of precision. By saying that character A is in a given square, at the end of its turn, it gives us a close-enough approximation of where they are during the course of those six seconds, for the purpose of us having sufficient data by which to determine a result.

Sometimes, occasionally, the model gives weird results. It's going to happen with any model, and the less precise the model is, the more likely you are to get something weird. Most of the time, it works just fine.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Because telling a player "You see your mother in the goblin cell across from your own" precludes meaningful decision?

Yes, when you throw someone into a contrived situation, you remove the meaning of any decision which led up to that point. If the PC went out of the way to secure their mother against goblin attack, so you kidnap their nephew instead, you remove the meaning from the player's choice. If the PC does everything in their power to safeguard their loved ones, so you contrive some other situation to put them into, you remove the meaning of the player's choice.

If, no matter what they do, something compelling will happen to them, then there's no point in doing anything. They might as well just follow the path of least resistance, since doing anything else will have no meaningful impact on anything.

(Perhaps you're not familiar with the difference between pre-scripted "scenes" ie an Adventure Path, or the Alexandrian's "Node-based design" variant, and a "scene framed" game in the way that phrase is normally used.)

Having now read that article, it seems like just another variant on railroading. It honestly feels like I'm reading the back half of the FATE Core rulebook again.

As for fate and destiny: these are preeminent themes of fantasy film and literature. And you can have destiny as a very significant feature of the game without railroading: what the destiny actually is emerges via play.

If your destiny is to do whatever you end up doing, then you don't actually have a destiny.

 

[pemerton]

I thought we'd established that you don't override the consequences of your players' choices the way Iluvatar overrides Frodo's/Aragorn's/etc. You said something about how your players shape fate at the metagame level. Presumably at your table, Gollum's involuntary sacrifice would have been player-instigated and not DM-arranged. Ergo, Saelorn isn't aiming at you with his remarks on railroading.

Do I misunderstand your style?

I don't think you misunderstand my style. I think that [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] does, though.

Your example with the mirror, or the mother in a goblin cell, is a bit different because you're using offscreen actions to CREATE problems instead of solving them. Tolkien was solving problems through Providence instead of creating them. One of these things is much more railroady/agency-killing than the other, to the point of being advised against even in novels much less games.

An example from my game:

In the default 4e cosmology, Ygorl - the Slaad Lord of Entropy - came into being at the end of the universe, and is travelling back through time towards its beginning.

When the PCs encountered Ygorl, they couldn't work out a way to defeat him, because he had the following ability that recharged when reduced to zero hp:

Already witnessed (no action, when damaged by an attack or subjected to an effect): cancel the attack/effect and teleport 10 sq​

Eventually, they came up with a plan to grapple Ygorl (thereby immobilising him without recharing his ability by dropping him to zero hp) and trap him in the Crystal of the Ebon Flame (details here). When this succeeded, it gave rise to the conjecture that the Crystal of Ebon Flame is integral in the end of the world, and that Ygorl is the Crystal, or an emanation of it, that came into being at the precise moment before being trapped by the PCs and then commenced his trajectory into the past.

I think this shows the universe unfolding in a non-random/arbitrary fashion: Ygorl's coming into being is explained, and the significance of the Crystal affirmed, as well as the role of the PCs as central players in relation to the impending Dusk War. It gives the game a sense of providential events (the PCs were meant to find the Crystal, so that they could have it ready to hand at the moment that Ygorl came into being and commenced his backwards journey through time).

But it doesn't require railroading, or any particular GM force at all, and the players don't have to do anything but play their PCs.

 

[pemerton]

That's only the case if you accept the premise that Hit Points don't correspond to anything in-game

It's enought for me that hit points don't force any such correlation.

In systems that actually use process-sim mechanics (Runequest, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel in part, HARP, Classic Traveller, etc) you don't have the option to accept that premise. Resolving the mechanics tells you (at varying levels of abstraction) what is actually happening in the fiction. You don't have to make it up.

As I've said, I don't have a horse in the race - I've spent nearly 20 years GMing RM, I'm currently running BW as well as 4e, and the two systems I've probably played the most other than those ones are RQ (and its various offshoots) and Traveller.

But I do know that if the system doesn't tell me what causal process is unfolding in the fiction unless I introduce some sort of stipulation of my own, it's not process sim out of the box.

 

[pemerton]

The 13th Age uses larger zones (from what I recall), compared to the 25-square-foot zones that D&D uses, but that's still just down to a matter of precision.

No. 13th Age doesn't purport to dictate that first you were in this square, then this square, then this square, sequentially within a 6 second period, but we can't tell you at what time you moved from one square to the next.

So in 13th Age, working out whether or not you fell into a pit trap would be resolves just as an attack against Reflex or something similar; it wouldn't depend up on plotting out a notional path through the squares. That's the thing that undoes any simulationist pretensions of 3E/4e turn-based resolution (though I don't read 4e as having any such pretensions).

 

[pemerton]

Having now read that article, it seems like just another variant on railroading.

If you mean The Alexandrian's blog on node-based design, then yes, it is a form of railroading. "Scene-framed" RPGing, in these conventional sense of that term, has nothing in common with node-based design or APs.

If your destiny is to do whatever you end up doing, then you don't actually have a destiny.

This seems to be confusing the ingame situation and the out-of-game situation. In the real world, the players make choices. In the fiction, those choices express their destiny.

For this to be interesting - ie for the destiny to actual matter in play and emerge as some sort of theme - the choices have to pertain, in some salient way, to something the PC (and hence the player) cares about. If you play ToH or Keep on the Borderlands more-or-less as written, you probably won't achieve this. But I posted an example not far upthread in my reply to [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] showing an actual play example of how this can be done.

when you throw someone into a contrived situation, you remove the meaning of any decision which led up to that point. If the PC went out of the way to secure their mother against goblin attack, so you kidnap their nephew instead, you remove the meaning from the player's choice.

What has any of this got to do with the example I gave? Who said that the PC had secured his mother? Who said that the mother was a substitute for the nephew (or vice versa)?

Yes, if the GM frames scenes which negate the thematic and practical significance of what the PCs have done previously in the game, that will negate meaningful choice. But why would a GM do that?

If the PC does everything in their power to safeguard their loved ones, so you contrive some other situation to put them into, you remove the meaning of the player's choice.

<snip>

If, no matter what they do, something compelling will happen to them, then there's no point in doing anything.

If the game has come to an end, then yes, it has come to an end. If the game is going to keep going, though, then the PCs have to end up in some situation or other that poses a challenge to them.

They might as well just follow the path of least resistance, since doing anything else will have no meaningful impact on anything.

I don't understand this. What is "the path of least resistance"? And why does the fact that the game goes on mean that nothing mattered?

To give a concrete example: after the PCs trapped Ygorl, they defeated Lolth and sealed the Abyss. How did trapping Ygorl become meaningless because this other task presented itself?

Having sealed the Abyss (and, earlier, killed Torog), the Elemental Chaos has increased its rate of seepage into the mortal world. This has released the tarrasque. How does the emergence of this compelling situation make their choice to seal the Abyss, or to kill Torog, meaningless? For that matter, how does the fact that one of the PCs was faced with a "compelling situation" - namely, the opportunity to take up the mantle of god of imprisonment, punishment, pain and torture - make the killing of Torog meaningless. At least prima facie, it seems to affirm it as having had rather a meaningful impact.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If the game has come to an end, then yes, it has come to an end. If the game is going to keep going, though, then the PCs have to end up in some situation or other that poses a challenge to them.

Well, maybe. If you count situations which the PCs create themselves.

I wish I had a better handle on how to make players be more proactive about how they engage with/implement their goals--my players barely even do research on monster abilities--but it's a great deal of fun when it does happen, and it doesn't rely on DM-provided "scene framing."

"Here's an Arcane vault. We're going to break in and steal all the magic items and frame Cowl for it!" I will never force players to do such a thing but I enjoy it when they do. I just wish I knew why it happens so seldom, no matter how many opportunities I dangle before them. I suspect that I'm missing a game structure element, maybe something involving getaways and legal responses by the entity who was robbed, so the players avoid the area of ambiguous play. Maybe my new rules on reputation will change that. I can say, "If you rob this bank, your reputation will go up by 100 points with criminals and down to -100 points with law enforcement personnel in this kingdom, unless you manage to frame Cowl for it, in which case his reputation will suffer instead."

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But I do know that if the system doesn't tell me what causal process is unfolding in the fiction unless I introduce some sort of stipulation of my own, it's not process sim out of the box.

Which D&D is, though, at least in 2E and 3E. It's telling you that you are simulating the process of swinging a sword, by considering all of these factors and how they interact with each other, to determine whether or not you hit and how much damage you deal. There's no reason to even consider the possibility that it isn't doing so, unless you're coming at it with some prior belief from a different game.

Maybe it said something like that in Basic, and that's where you got the idea, and then failed to realize that they stopped saying that by the time 2E and 3E came around. I know that many people were guilty of the reverse, in trying to hold 4E up to the standards of 3E, even when 4E actually did declare that it wasn't the case.