Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[pemerton]

The unexpected happens from time-to-time, but I'd say the results of combat in D&D are typically logical in that they make sense within the context of the game.

OK. But if you use action resolution to work out what happens to the characters who insult the king the same thing will be true: you'll get something that makes sense in the context of the game.

 

[MGibster]

OK. But if you use action resolution to work out what happens to the characters who insult the king the same thing will be true: you'll get something that makes sense in the context of the game.

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow what you mean. What action resolution mechanics are you referring to here?

 

[pemerton]

Most extreme case:
Pendragon: characters roll for children annually. The sex isn't portrayed in a scene, nor the childbirth. It's subsumed into the Winter Phase, which, in KAP, isn't actually written for scene gen., but to reduce the hundreds of hours of practice, the probably dozens of hours of sex, hundreds of hours of sewing, and such to a 5 to 15 minute non-scene.

I've used those Pendragon rules. It's not offscreen. The players are there, making rolls, finding out what happens to their families.

For current purposes it's functionally the same as adjudicating a Resources cycel in BW.

The time is truncated compared to (say) D&D combat, but it's not offscreeen ie the GM simply telling you afterwards what happened to your PC.

 

[pemerton]

the idea that players, out of boredom, malice or sheer bloody-minded solipsism, can't take actions or exhibit behaviors that are damaging to the table and campaign isn't a flight of someone's imagination. Of course there are players like that, and of course they can derail a campaign.

I think the number of people who turn up to chess clubs so they can flip over the table part-way through a game is pretty small.

If RPGIng has a significantly larger number of such participants, that would be a worry. But I don't see anything in the OP to suggest that that is what is happening here.

There seems at least to be a difference in expectations at the table. There are players taking seriously that they need to tiptoe around the Mad Tyrant, expecting a game (or at least a mini-game) of negotiation; there is at least one other who is expecting a game where violence is the universal solvent, and out of boredom is blowing up the negotiation mini-game.

If A is bored by B's play, and therefore takes steps to make things interesting, without knowing more I have to treat it as an open question whether it's the proactive A or the boring B who is "in the wrong". But in any event that's not what I saw in the OP: a player, presuably playing his PC is frustrated by the Mad Tyrant and verbalises that frustration, then the GM narrates more stuff which includes an escalation to violence, and then another player has his PC respond in kind:

{A PC] yell[ed] out something to the effect of "you're crazy and don't deserve leadership here." For this affront, the ruler yelled for his guards to come and arrest that character. In response, another party member tried (and failed) to grapple the ruler and put a knife to his throat​

That's the GM, not any player, who treated violence as the universal solvent.

The PCs antagonized the Mad Tyrant. That was handled via the game's resolution mechanics. As a result, the PCs are executed.

They knew the Mad Tyrant was, well, a mad tyrant, and they attacked him (first verbally, then physically). Action, meet consequence.

First, as with @chaochou I'm curious about what the resolution method is that was used to make the move from PC yells out to Mad Tyrant takes it badly to Mad Tyrant calls for guards to guards arrive and follow his order to arrest PC. At every point I can see a different possibility: the Mad Tyrant laughs off the insult; the Mad Tyrant personally challenges the affronting PC to a duel of honour; the guards are all drunk and don't come when called; the guard captain agrees with the PC that the Mad Tyrant doesn't deserve to rule, and seeing now a chance to strike against the tyrant takes up that chance. And I came up with those possibilities in the time it took me to type them up.

Second, the Mad Tyrant isn't a natural phenomenon. It's an element of the fiction in a RPG, presumably intended to serve some purpose for RPGing. What's that purpose? To create a puzzle for the players, where if they don't guess the right thing their PCs die? (This is @Nagol's analogy to the trapped door.) To allow the GM to tell the players what their PCs should do on pain of dying? A chance for the players to show off their ability to follow the GM's lead? Something else?

 

[pemerton]

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow what you mean. What action resolution mechanics are you referring to here?

Whichever ones are available. In D&D that might be a reaction roll table - first to see how the tyrant responds to the insult, then (if that is adverse) to see if the guards answer the call, then (if they do) to see how the guards respond to the situation of the tyrant being under attack.

 

[Umbran]

I disagree. There isn't a long roleplaying session dealing with the trapped door where you have to continuously show deference to the trap or it goes off...

True story...

In a campaign I joined for its latter half, upon introduction of my character, I was told about a previous exploit of one of the characters, to explain their approach to the Universe to me. They'd been going through a wizard's lair, and had been opening doors - three door handles in a row were trapped to explode with fire. The PC reached for the handle of the fourth door, and one of the PCs cried at them to stop.

"Why?" the PC said, "It isn't like they can ALL be tra-- BOOM!"

 

[billd91]

If A is bored by B's play, and therefore takes steps to make things interesting, without knowing more I have to treat it as an open question whether it's the proactive A or the boring B who is "in the wrong". But in any event that's not what I saw in the OP: a player, presuably playing his PC is frustrated by the Mad Tyrant and verbalises that frustration, then the GM narrates more stuff which includes an escalation to violence, and then another player has his PC respond in kind:

{A PC] yell[ed] out something to the effect of "you're crazy and don't deserve leadership here." For this affront, the ruler yelled for his guards to come and arrest that character. In response, another party member tried (and failed) to grapple the ruler and put a knife to his throat​

That's the GM, not any player, who treated violence as the universal solvent.


First, as with @chaochou I'm curious about what the resolution method is that was used to make the move from PC yells out to Mad Tyrant takes it badly to Mad Tyrant calls for guards to guards arrive and follow his order to arrest PC. At every point I can see a different possibility: the Mad Tyrant laughs off the insult; the Mad Tyrant personally challenges the affronting PC to a duel of honour; the guards are all drunk and don't come when called; the guard captain agrees with the PC that the Mad Tyrant doesn't deserve to rule, and seeing now a chance to strike against the tyrant takes up that chance. And I came up with those possibilities in the time it took me to type them up.

Second, the Mad Tyrant isn't a natural phenomenon. It's an element of the fiction in a RPG, presumably intended to serve some purpose for RPGing. What's that purpose? To create a puzzle for the players, where if they don't guess the right thing their PCs die? (This is @Nagol's analogy to the trapped door.) To allow the GM to tell the players what their PCs should do on pain of dying? A chance for the players to show off their ability to follow the GM's lead? Something else?

Huh, chaochou is complaining about the whim of the DM but apparently you'd rather submit to the whim of the dice? I dunno - which is more predictable to the players giving them a chance to make meaningful choices? Playing the mad tyrant according to his well-known personality quirks of being thin-skinned and arresting malcontents or rolling against a list that might make him play completely against personality or include things not at all causally related to the players' decisions like guards being drunk? How are the PCs going to guess anything rational if that's the alternative.

And no, having the guards arrest an insolent PC isn't the start of violence in this scenario. The PC could have gone along quietly and plotted a daring escape, but like a lot of players do, they overreact when faced with their PCs losing any sense of their physical freedom (even temporarily) and whip their weapons out, escalating the situation further like they were in a Knights of the Dinner Table story.

 

[Bohandas]

This sounds like a good opportunity for a prison break adventure.

Just because someone's sentenced to death doesn't necessarily mean they die.

 

[Hriston]

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow what you mean. What action resolution mechanics are you referring to here?

Whichever ones are available. In D&D that might be a reaction roll table - first to see how the tyrant responds to the insult, then (if that is adverse) to see if the guards answer the call, then (if they do) to see how the guards respond to the situation of the tyrant being under attack.

Or presumably, an ability check to influence any one of those NPCs.

 

[chaochou]

Huh, chaochou is complaining about the whim of the DM but apparently you'd rather submit to the whim of the dice?

Dice don‘t have whims.