D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[Ovinomancer]

World 1. Your character is on 1 HP and the giant is barely scratched.

World 2. The giant is on 1 HP and you are barely scratched.

Proposition: These worlds are undifferentiated as to how the fiction will unfold.

For the next immediate action they are. Your character being on 1 hitpoint is a cubes consideration, not a fictional one. There is no fictional frame here -- no story that describes what this means (or only a completely arbitrary one that has no real impact). I think that you're making the assumption that players cannot make decisions based on cubes but only on fiction, so if a player decided to perform a different action, one that has fictional heft, in response to having 1 hit point that this must mean there must be some fiction attached. This is not true, though -- this decision is flowing entirely from the cubes side. In the fiction, there's no impediment or alteration to the available actions the player can have their PC take.

You're confusing a choice made based on mechanics for one made based on fiction. 5e is full of mechanically driven choice points.

 

[clearstream]

Is it? The "feels fast" bit is vague and non-conclusive. This can be used to describe a success or a failure with hidden consequences. But let's skip past this and assume that the cube result of the check was a full success and so directs back to the fiction to indicate that there is a change from no attached grapple hook to an attached grapple hook. This is a cloud to cubes to cloud situation. The cloud was "I throw the hook" the cubes is the check and result and the resultant cloud is "the hook is attached."

Yes.

Here, though, there's a huge break. Your narration of the result of the check is entirely arbitrary. There's a very wide leeway in how this event can be described, and they all generate widely different fiction.

The narration is constrained to successfully inform players of the changed fiction in order to - crucially - inform what they think, say or do next.

As I've said, instead of describing the goblin as reeling and inches from death, it's 100% okay to describe the result as the goblin narrowly escaping a killing blow with a last moment sidestep. This is a completely different fictional description. Further, your narration above is extremely vague! You describe the result only as the goblin "reeling and inches from death." I could have used that description for the goblin from the start, because it doesn't actually have any real meaning. So, in your example, you've not only provided entirely arbitrary description of the cubes result, but one that's also vague and doesn't provide any real change to the fiction.

The chosen words vary by group, but the litmus test is the same. Do players have information that rightly influences what they say next?

Look at the DW hack and slash canonical example.

And I can prove that there's not change to the fiction because regardless of how I describe the loss of hitpoints, they do not constrain any future action declarations by anyone because of that fiction. The goblin being "reeling" doesn't mean it's at any penalty or restriction on it's next action. It's not actually "reeling" in that it's 100% fully functional and can, in the next moment, attack and then evade and run away easily -- something that an actually "reeling" person cannot do. If you want to retain any narrative cohesion, in fact, you HAVE to immediately negate your narration by having the goblin recover instantly prior to doing whatever the goblin does next.

So you only care about the F if it has a G consequence, rather than a next-F consequence?

No, there's no required arrow from cubes to cloud here. Insisting that you can create an arbitrary one that has no real value in the fiction doesn't mean it's so. You spoke of modal evaluation of play above, but here you're insisting that this situation is required when it very clearly is not. At best it's possible, but even then I think you're stretching things because the oft narrated fiction has no real value or impact.

Reread PHB 6 etc.

Long to short, you seem to confuse the ability to say something descriptive but without heft as equivalent in all respects to something that has heft, descriptive or not. The grappling hook being attached has heft -- it's something I can leverage in play in future actions. The goblin reeling has no heft -- I cannot leverage this reeling to do anything differently from before.

As player, I can. My next hit might down it? Right, I bonus action flurry instead of patient defense. Fiction changes.

When you think it's not about fiction changes, you've misunderstood RPG.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In general, I'm getting the feeling that the analysis of 5e and how it does or doesn't engage between fiction and mechanics, or cloud and cubes, has become fraught due to feeling that there's some criticism of 5e happening -- a suggestion that it is lesser. This is absolutely untrue. 5e has a functional system that does things in a functional way. There's no requirement or even objective benefit to having arrows from one to the other at any given point. Preference rules this space. However, preference doesn't rule the analysis, and it's pretty easy to look at how different games work under the model and note where clouds and cubes trade arrows. That 5e doesn't have a cubes to cloud arrow at all times in every call of cubes is not a negative. It's absolutely not. It's just how it works, and I would 100% expect such things to be present in different game designs.

 

[clearstream]

In general, I'm getting the feeling that the analysis of 5e and how it does or doesn't engage between fiction and mechanics, or cloud and cubes, has become fraught due to feeling that there's some criticism of 5e happening -- a suggestion that it is lesser. This is absolutely untrue. 5e has a functional system that does things in a functional way. There's no requirement or even objective benefit to having arrows from one to the other at any given point. Preference rules this space. However, preference doesn't rule the analysis, and it's pretty easy to look at how different games work under the model and note where clouds and cubes trade arrows. That 5e doesn't have a cubes to cloud arrow at all times in every call of cubes is not a negative. It's absolutely not. It's just how it works, and I would 100% expect such things to be present in different game designs.

That's worthwhile context: I don't take you to be denigrating 5e. I do feel you assume something about 5e play that may have been true of previous editions, but that has evolved.

5e RAW has a cubes to clouds arrow in the basic pattern that applies everywhere. It also has many expressly defined cubes to clouds arrows. Ability checks. Almost all maneuvers. Many spells. Some feats. Many features.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes.


The narration is constrained to successfully inform players of the changed fiction in order to - crucially - inform what they think, say or do next.

This can be on the cubes side only, though. There's no need for an arrow from cubes to clouds to pass information to players. You can have a cubes to cubes interaction do this, and, crucially, 5e is full of these things. So are other systems, in different places (or the same places, depending)!

The chosen words vary by group, but the litmus test is the same. Do players have information that rightly influences what they say next?

Look at the DW hack and slash canonical example.

Where the goblin counterattacks? I mean, you put this up against a 5e attack, where a successful hit in 5e reduces hp on the goblin (same) and then is done (not same)? Here, the attack did damage, but also generated a cubes to cloud arrow in that the goblin counterattacks!

A better example for you would be choosing the other option for the 10+ Hack and Slash, where the player is making the choice on the cubes side to prevent any cubes to clouds arrows being generated that are unfavorable to the player. The attack could, at this point, roll minimum damage and not kill a goblin, and so, yes, here the result in DW would remain on the cubes side.

So you only care about the F if it has a G consequence, rather than a next-F consequence?

The exact opposite.

Reread PHB 6 etc.

I'm 100% familiar with it. It says "narrate the outcome." Since it's not written in terms of this model, it doesn't make clear that narration is a fictional thing. I can easily narrate, "okay, goblin takes 4 damage, still there. Turn done? Okay, Bob you're up." You're asserting that this is in error, and against how the game tells you to play. Okay, even going with this, then what we have is that the GM's narration is inconsequential. The GM narrates that the goblin is reeling, but this cannot be leveraged for any future actions at all -- there's no available action declaration that can take advantage of the goblin reeling.

As player, I can. My next hit might down it? Right, I bonus action flurry instead of patient defense. Fiction changes.

This isn't a fictional thing, though. Declaring a flurry is a cubes thing. You don't have to engage any fiction to flurry, you just announce it. You "press the button" and it happens.

This also doesn't take any fictional advantage from the goblin being described as "reeling." You could have been told that the goblin has 2 hp left and make the same decision.

When you think it's not about fiction changes, you've misunderstood RPG.

I haven't, at all. We're not at a high level. We're in the weeds. We're looking at a specific loop of play and analyzing how it interacts. It's ridiculous to insist that every moment of an RPG be about the fiction. It cannot be -- there has to be some mechanism to resolve disputes at a bare minimum (I'd also argue for more minimums, but this is sufficient for the current point). And that mechanism cannot be part of the fiction because we, in the real world, are using it to determine who gets the say. It could be cards, dice, roshambo, coin flips, asking Bob to say, whatever. We can also build systems that stack these non-fictional elements -- like how a successful attack roll leads directly into a damage roll and that leads directly into applying damage to hp totals and then if hp total is reduced to zero is an arrow to cloud mandated. That mandate is important, because it's identifying when a system is telling you that an arrow must be generated. You can add other arrows whenever, but they'll be arbitrary and quite possibly of no impact.

Here's an example to play with. Your 5e PC is facing a goblin. You just performed an attack and the goblin is described as "reeling from your blow." What can you do with this fiction? You have no other information, here -- you do not know how much damage you did, or how many hitpoints a goblin might have or how many it has left. You're a complete neophyte. The goblin is reeling, what does this allow you do to in the fiction that you could not do before?

 

[Cadence]

Here's an example to play with. Your 5e PC is facing a goblin. You just performed an attack and the goblin is described as "reeling from your blow." What can you do with this fiction? You have no other information, here -- you do not know how much damage you did, or how many hitpoints a goblin might have or how many it has left. You're a complete neophyte. The goblin is reeling, what does this allow you do to in the fiction that you could not do before?

Allows me to know that the attack was capable of damaging it? If it was narrated that the goblin didn't seem to notice (or something similar) the my reaction would be very different.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's worthwhile context: I don't take you to be denigrating 5e. I do feel you assume something about 5e play that may have been true of previous editions, but that has evolved.

Nope. This supposes that I'm not looking at or playing 5e correctly and that I'm failing to understand how it plays. Given I've been one of the louder voices about how 5e differs from previous editions, and tell people often that they're bringing in experience from older editions that isn't relative, this seems like a large and incorrect assumption on your part.

5e RAW has a cubes to clouds arrow in the basic pattern that applies everywhere. It also has many expressly defined cubes to clouds arrows. Ability checks. Almost all maneuvers. Many spells. Some feats. Many features.

No, it absolutely is not! For one, the basic loop of play wasn't written to be precisely conforming to the clouds and cubes model, and insisting that it's loop precisely defines how it operates in this model is an error. Secondly, the insistence that "narrates" be a solely fictional result should be obviously false. The GM is free to narrate a null in many cases, and is actually encouraged to do so in some officially supported modes of play. Take a perception check to try and find something. The fiction here is that your PC doesn't know where the thing is and so declares an action to look for it. The cubes take over, a check is made and failed. The GM is perfectly fine to say "you don't see anything" which is exactly the same fictional state as prior to the check. There's no change to the fiction here. This loop clearly puts paid to the claim that the basic loop requires changes to fictional state for any interaction.

 

[clearstream]

How close does the shared picture even need to be? I'm guessing those reading the same novel often have very different impressions of some scenes, but the novel is still telling a story?

DW calls out listening. Focus must be on things that matter to the players and the play. Ideally, what a player-character thinks, says, or does next is something you can say "yes" or "roll" to. When they wind up in trouble, that should never be because they didn't know what was going on.

Remembering the Lumpley Principle: so long as players agree on and can continue agreeing on the events they sat down to imagine, the picture is sufficient. The authors are at the table: if a detail is in doubt, they can agree on what it is and continue the conversation. There's also usually very little motive to punish desynchs - "Oh, you thought you were still by the door? Okay."

It's not like a book, where if I understand Frodo to be the villain I might be confused later. Tolkien is at the table: "Frodo? Good heavens no, everything you've seen has been decidedly unvillainous. And Gandalf vouched for him!"

[The picture must be good enough that when PCs get in trouble, they breathe a collective sigh and know in their hearts it is on them.]

 

[Ovinomancer]

Allows me to know that the attack was capable of damaging it? If it was narrated that the goblin didn't seem to notice (or something similar) the my reaction would be very different.

This is sidestepping the question because you're assuming information not present. The goblin is reeling is what you have. Does this mean your attack damaged it? I don't know, I can't tell, and I don't have experience (in this example) to know that this kind of description correlates to that information. I can assumed, but that's on me.

But, the goblin is reeling. What can I do with this? I'd suggest looking at it from a purely fictional perspective first. If fiction, then I would absolutely try to press the goblin to keep it off balance and make sure that I can take advantage of it reeling! Great! Let's 5e this -- there's no way to do this. I can't operationalize this in 5e to do anything about it. In fact, when the next person goes, the goblin instantly recovers from this reeling -- it's 100% transitory.

 

[clearstream]

Here's an example to play with. Your 5e PC is facing a goblin. You just performed an attack and the goblin is described as "reeling from your blow." What can you do with this fiction? You have no other information, here -- you do not know how much damage you did, or how many hitpoints a goblin might have or how many it has left. You're a complete neophyte. The goblin is reeling, what does this allow you do to in the fiction that you could not do before?

"The DM can also decide that circumstances
influence a roll in one direction or the other and grant advantage or impose disadvantage as a result."

Player Reeling? I quickly follow up with a flurry. Focusing my ki and really pressing forward here.
DM Roll with advantage.

"Players often ask how hurt a monster looks. Don't ever feel as though you need to reveal exact hit points, but if a monster is below half its hit point maximum, it's fair to say that it has visible wounds and appears beaten down. You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as bloodied, giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities."

G to F to next-F to next-G

Player Barely scratched, eh? We're not going to drop this thing quickly. Change of plan, you keep shooting and I'll dodge. Maybe it's not smart enough to change targets.
Player 2 So, ah... I'm already retreating.