D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[Thomas Shey]

I have come across catastrophist D&D DMs, but like two, ever.

This is kind a fundamental problem with this subthread. Some of us have seen plenty. And there's no good way to prove what's the more typical case. And without that its hard to say which position is more reasonable.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Much like "roleplaying not rollplaying," but thankfully this has mostly died or at least faded to a much softer murmur than it once was in online discussion.

I suspect by what I've seen that part of that is more people were willing to push the hell back at that one pretty strongly, so they couldn't be comfortably smug about it as well.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think if you don't understand the psychological difference between "The GM decides this is going to happen" and "my die roll decides this is going to happen" then you're never going to get it; the latter produces a very strong feeling of incompetence in some people, and that's just the way it is. As I've noted before, they don't see it as "This is a success with complications"; they see it as "this is a mitigated failure."

Me, I'm more tolerant of failure in the first place, and since I GM more than I play I can see some of the function it serves. I'm just unconvinced its worth the cost, and since the degree of stylization in other parts of PbtA games are often not my cuppa, there's nothing to overcome that feeling, though I do admire parts of the design in some of its more unusual expressions like Monsterhearts.

I don't see how this gets better in any way if the GM decides it instead of the dice. How does that work? The GM decides success with complication instead of the dice -- how does this feel different?

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is kind a fundamental problem with this subthread. Some of us have seen plenty. And there's no good way to prove what's the more typical case. And without that its hard to say which position is more reasonable.

Pointing to how the official adventures are run is a good bit of evidence. They strongly favor immediate negative consequences.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't see how this gets better in any way if the GM decides it instead of the dice. How does that work? The GM decides success with complication instead of the dice -- how does this feel different?

Likely "their dice; their failure."

But the thing is, a lot of systems with success with complication states also have ways to mitigate failure or boost complicated successes into full successes. In Fate, for example, you can spend a Fate point, invoke an Aspect, and get a +2 (or more) on your roll.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I... man, wow. I mean, you hear about the terribly false idea that pre-industrial peoples were stupid, but it's not often you run into it so bluntly. This is, all around, an absolutely bad take. People has always taken guard duty seriously -- it is, quite literally, often a matter of life and death. The idea that Romans were lazy at guarding things, or the Spartans, or the Huns, or the Mayans, or the Amer-Indians, or the Turks, or the Saxons, or Huns, or Vikings... just incredibly bad.

Sorry, no.

Strawman naughty word about "stupidity" (since when is laziness a sign of stupidity lol?) has nothing to do with it, and I'm not talking about "The Spartans, or the Huns, or the Mayans, or the Amer-Indians, or the Turks, or the Saxons, or Huns, or Vikings", am I? Did they exist 1300-1600 in Europe?". Were like literally looking for excluded examples to increase how wrong you were? It's working pretty hard to include the Huns TWICE lol dude, when they're significant before this period!

Strawman harder though, or maybe we can talk about the sort of people who actually had this kind of job in the sort of societies we're discussing in, say FR D&D.

The idea that most of these people were as disciplined as modern soldiers shows a profound and extreme lack of understanding of those societies. With people like the Romans you can see it in their own writing, even. A Roman Legionary is going to be a far more dedicated and disciplined guard than a lot of these groups, because they have a discipline structure, formal ways of handling various procedures and so on, but some random Saxon levy? No. Nor a random Saxon who was is being paid by another Saxon to guard a thing.

You see this in the 20th century even - many heists/robberies IRL are successful entirely because the guards are lazy and/or don't follow procedures (or even have procedures in some cases).

The issue isn't modern/ancient, the issue is "pretty the best trained soldiers (or up there) in the 21st century" being compared to random mercenaries (essentially) being paid to guard stuff in the 1500s or whenever.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Pointing to how the official adventures are run is a good bit of evidence. They strongly favor immediate negative consequences.

Do they? Facts not in evidence, frankly. Even the evidence presented so far didn't actually indicate that at all. Instead it showed that the consequences weren't specified at all, which is bad, for sure, but a different kind of bad.

 

[Manbearcat]

What I'm curious about is when this alleged Success With Complications or Fail Forward revolution came online.

It sure as hell wasn't online during the 4e era of 2008-2014. The pushback against 4e SWC and FF action resolution in Skill Challenges was nothing less than an onslaught. And those that weren't involved in that pushback either (a) didn't run Skill Challenges

It sure as hell wasn't online during the early 5e era of 2014-spring 2017 when I was posting on the 5e forums. Same goes for pretty much no one was using the Social Interaction conflict mechanics (when I posted about this on the 5e forums, damn near no one even had a clue what I was talking about!), people were sparingly using IBFTs and Inspiration, and the actual Player Fiat deployment of Background Traits was enormously controversial. I have no idea if any/all of those things are overturned at this point.

So if SWC and/or FF handling of 5e action resolution has suddenly come online, it has only come online in the Summer of 2017 to now.

I'm going to post a poll to see if we can get any actual data on the usage of this.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is kind a fundamental problem with this subthread. Some of us have seen plenty. And there's no good way to prove what's the more typical case. And without that its hard to say which position is more reasonable.

The problem is that Hussar's position (not @ ing him because he said he's out and that'd be rude) was that he had seen nothing else, and he himself ran D&D that way (this last bit was confusing, because he also suggested later it was the wrong way to run D&D... so...?!).

Say I've played with 12 D&D DMs, it's probably more but let's use that number, for me, 2 were catastrophist DMs, 1 a guy said the DM was like that, and he totally wasn't. The rest definitely didn't do "instant catastrophe" on failed rolls. Often failed rolls just lead to more attempts and maybe the situation worsening or improving based on that. D&D is, for better or worse, pretty free-form about skills.

Any, 2/12 for me. I guess if I'd been unlucky and only played in those groups, I might have the same idea re: all groups being like that.

But I get the impression that a lot of people have played with more DMs than this and I feel like the more DMs you've played with, the less likely it is you could get this impression that D&D was always bizarrely catastrophist, like where a failed disguise check of some kind means people instantly freak out and sound alarms and stuff. Or where a stealth check means the same. Does a failed Persuade check mean you're instantly thrown out of the prince's party? I'm just really skeptical about this.

Even if say 50% of D&D groups were catastrophist to the extreme levels described here, you'd be unlucky to not see one that was otherwise. if you played in more than a few.

What I'm curious about is when this alleged Success With Complications or Fail Forward revolution came online.

I've seen fail forward design discussed a lot going back into the '00s. Success with complications I didn't see get big until PtbA games got really big, so more recently, but I haven't played a single D&D game which uses Success with complications (and I don't think it's a great idea for D&D).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't see how this gets better in any way if the GM decides it instead of the dice. How does that work? The GM decides success with complication instead of the dice -- how does this feel different?

Because its not you and your character's fault. If you don't get that distinction and why it matters to some people, you don't.