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

[clearstream]

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.

The fact a DM has chosen to supply insufficient narrative, is on them. Not the player.

 

[Ovinomancer]

"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.

So, then, the intent of the fictional description of "reeling" was to create a lever for advantage? That would be interesting, however, it's entirely unmoored from the cubes. There is no result from the cubes that requires or dictates this fictional outcome, so the GM has just inserted in the fiction side a new wrinkle. There's no arrow here. It's like describing a new bit of scenery mid-fight. The successful attack resolution on the cubes side did not cause the "reeling" to be narrated -- it was an entirely arbitrary event. That the GM introduced arbitrary fiction that is later leveraged back to the cubes doesn't show the arrow you're asserting. It's actually arguing against it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The fact a DM has chosen to supply insufficient narrative, is on them. Not the player.

What's insufficient about it? You assert that it is insufficient, so I assume you have some artifact of the system to show what is minimally required?

Rhetorical question, of course, and my answer is that there is none.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To say it is optional makes me feel you are describing groups that either haven't read the basic pattern on PHB 6, or choose not to apply it. I am speaking about the game as written.


I think you are describing hard constraints on the orc's future Fs and Gs. The orc player might not be able to say the orc runs quickly away, because of that leg. Let's look at a canonical example from DW.

GM: Jarl, you’re up to your not-inconsiderable belly in slavering goblins. They have you surrounded, knives bared. What do you do?
Jarl: I’ve had enough of this! I wallop the closest goblin with my hammer.
GM: Okay, then. This is definitely combat, you’re using hack and slash. Roll+Str.
Jarl: I got an 11. It says here that I have a choice. Fear is for the weak, let those goblins come!
GM: You smash your hammer into the nearest goblin and are rewarded by the satisfying sound of the crunching of his bones. That and a knife wound as the goblin counterattacks. He deals 4 damage to you. What do you do?

Only weapons with the forceful or stun tags do more than that. That wasn't in play here so any immediate constraints on future Fs and Gs are left up to players and DM. Maybe goblin cares that it is now close to death and acts on that, maybe not. 5th as written is identical: reduced HP ongoing is enough to have changed the fiction (compare with a miss!)


If you are playing 5e the same way many played AD&D then I can understand why you say this. If your goblins never care about being close to death - never flee or plead for their lives - then you've made empty an arrow that 5e mandates. There are many cases in 5e that expressly give you the contents of that arrow - menacing Attack is one example - where not express it is up to DM.

DM also is the sole judge of when a fictional trigger has been provided (if you aren't getting that from 5e, you need to reread the rules.) If players do the thing, DM is intended to say they do the thing. DW steps in by codifying explicit triggers. It has been robustly shown that this comes down to making it more likely - but not guaranteeing - that play by different groups will be similar. A good pattern is given, but again - it us up to DM to interpret that pattern. Look at Dworkin's concept of right answers.

An incomplete or traditional concept of 5th led to incorrect assumptions up-thread. 5th certainly allows that kind of play. DW does too. DW rightly takes more care to say exactly what is intended. 5e is less explicit, guiding folk to the play they expect.

Aside from work left up to DM (who is expressly told to do that work) 5e takes a significantly different approach to establishing fiction. I map that something like this

DW
Play Fs > DM Fs

5e
DM Fs > Play Fs

That ">" is greater than or leading to, whichever makes most sense to you. This difference is far more productive of real differences in play than the whole arrows thing. Finding myself in surprising agreement with @Ovinomancer, watching play you can't easily tell superficially between them, but it is a big deal. [And again, not all or nothing or clear cut in either system.]

I just have a rather different experience overall with RPGs than you do. What I see in terms of 5e's process is that any interchange in combat between fiction and mechanics outside of someone dies is rather toothless. Yeah, technically the GM could say "the orc hit you with an axe and did max damage, your right arm comes off!" but I guarantee that will raise some objections from the players at any real world table I've ever run! 5e also does has a fair number of things that invoke some fiction, many spells, conditions/effects of things like Battlemaster stuff, but even a lot of that is nailed down enough to be mostly 'boxes to boxes'. I also would agree that it depends a bit on exactly what sort of 5e you play HOWEVER, it still is materially different from a PbtA game, where EVERY action flows in a mandatory loop cloud to box to cloud and cannot work any other way at all.

Mostly what I would say is where we differ is in terms of what we think is likely to be actual practice in the real world of playing games. In all my decades of running D&D I have mostly seen 'boxes to boxes' play, wherever and whenever it was enabled (IE most AD&D combat for instance). I think a game is well-served by formalizing the process by which you move back and forth between fiction and mechanical process, and I further believe that good use of cues is potentially one strategy that can help with getting it right in actual play.

Again, I am just not seeing how other forms of analysis are helping that much. Whether a rule is constitutive or restrictive doesn't seem to tell me whether or not fiction is 'in the loop'. I'm concerned with fiction's place in play because I'm concerned with the process of story evolution as a principle concern. D&D, as originally conceived, was much more about what characters did to advance in power, which is a purely mechanical concept even if it has some attached fictional significance. I think even 5e is still utilizing fundamentally an allocation of roles at the table and a process of interaction of fiction and mechanics which was built for that purpose. It just doesn't do 'story now' as well.

Anyway, in terms of actually building specific RPGs which do specific things it IS useful to discuss the nature of these systems. That is, I'm sure I have a slightly better handle on design concepts and what works than I did even a year ago.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Additionally consider under formalist and non-formalist views. Suppose you accept my contention that 5e rules require

F -> G
G -> G + G -> F

You (might) say that it is formally the case that some arrows are empty, because you interpret that no rules fill them. You add that such voids include triggers for fiction to cubes, and any consequences for cubes to fiction.

I can say that it is formally the case that those arrows are not empty because as a matter of fact there are rules throughout 5e that fill them, and a super-rule that requires and empowers DM to do so in their absence. I add that you draw an invalid distinction between impaired novement and reduced HP ongoing, because both are intended to matter. DM F > Play F.

As a non-formalist I say that we may both be right according to how we interpret the constituting rules. Where the constituting rules are in doubt, the game is in doubt. You could rightly ask why on Earth we would want the game to be in doubt!? I could mutter "rulings not rules" and point to popularity.

If we have a feeling that Play F > DM F is best, then empowering DM sufficiently to do as 5e as written requires might defeat the form of play we have chosen to value. There needn't be any conflict, however, if DM uses their powers according to the best way.


So to you, narrates means say something empty of meaning? Inconsequential?

What I would say as an observation on this is that the DW rules are VASTLY, like 100x, more clear, explicit, and up front about what is to happen, why, and how. Yes, 5e has here and there, in amongst all the various subsystem rules and whatnot some statements which CAN be interpreted to mean "the fiction really should be important", but it is not really at all clear how seriously committed the GAME part of 5e is to this, since it works in a lot of cases without much fiction input. DW on the other hand utterly grinds to a halt if you try to play it in any sort of 'mechanics to mechanics' way, it isn't even structured such that this is really meaningful, and you have to do violence to all the very explicitly stated principles and processes of play to even come close. 5e sort of just rolls over and lets you do it, and its my position that 5e is designed to allow you to ignore most of the fiction ON PURPOSE, and this is part of the real agenda of the game's designers, to be very noncommittal on all of this.

I don't like covert kind of wimpy things where the creators couldn't stand up and declare their real position, and instead don't stand for anything. It lacks ambition and it lacks commitment.

Most charitably, I think DW just does a much better job of explaining things. I'm pretty sure if you read its rules you see what it is about. Sure, people can manage to botch implementing that, or drift it into something a bit different, but its hard to argue about what it IS. 5e is really opaque in this sense. People are clearly reading it and getting vastly different things out of the text, and it seems like either none or all of them are justifiable. That doesn't speak well to me of clarity and purpose.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Here you wrongly narrate reduced HP ongoing as inconsequential. The next blow could easily kill the goblin, or the blow barely marked the golem. How will players respond to that? What difference will you narrate between barely marked and one hit from death?

5e
Player I've got to get into that compound. Lucky I came prepared! I fling a grappling hook up so that I'll be able to climb the slippery wall.
DM Sure thing, roll dice.
Player I get 19, good enough?
DM Good enough. The metal makes a clank as it hooks something up there. Feels fast.
Next F is meaningfully informed by G

How is this not equivalent:
Player: the wall is slippery? What is the DC to climb it?
GM: It is going to be hard to climb, DC20 (here we have an inquiry in which the GM reveals how the fiction will impact the mechanics)
Player: OK, I will throw up a grappling hook on a line (knowing that the GM will likely grant a bonus/advantage if he shifts the situation in his favor, the fiction is supplying 'position', that is bounding the types of acceptable mechanical responses that will produce a positive result).
GM: OK, that is feasible (here the GM is probably extrapolating the situation to decide that the hook is likely to find some purchase, we can't say if it references already established fiction or not, but it is likely to be mostly based on "it is fair to allow this kind of thing" vs actual reasoning about the fiction, which is likely too vaguely formed to be useful in that respect).
Player: I got a 19.
GM: OK, good enough, the hook catches and seems to be secure, you can take advantage on your climb check because you have a rope to hang onto. (I'd note here that it is perfectly likely that the 'because' part is unstated and it is exactly equivalent to the alternative formulation "assistance gives you advantage" which is perfectly mechanical in nature).

5e
Player I want to attack the goblin
DM It's ready for you, sounds like you take the Attack action right?
Player That's it. Rolls. 19 hit? Okay it's 9 damage
DM It's reeling and inches from death, might even be about to flee.
Player Let's go for it then! I use my bonus action to make an off-hand attack.
Next F was meaningfully informed by G

or again:
Player: I attack the goblin
DM: OK, you take the attack action, you need a 14 to hit
Player: I rolled a 19! OK, it takes 9 damage
DM: The goblin is still up
Player: I use my bonus action to make an off-hand attack

at most my version lacks a prompt to the player giving some information about the goblin's remaining hit points. However I would argue this is not super revelatory, as the hit points of goblins are pretty well known. It might be more useful info in other cases, but the GM could as easily say "it has 4 hit points left." There's really nothing in 5e's process which suggests that I NEED to know the fiction.

YMMV

[Any connection between F and G is only about agreement at the table based on patterns as they interpret them. Or you are smuggling G -> G in.]

Who's smuggling anything? Its all right there in front of us. I'd note that I don't really feel good about your 'canonical' goblin fight example either. It seems to me that a situation where the PC is surrounded by hostile knife-wielding enemies (some are presumably behind him, etc.) is quite nasty. While I don't have an argument with the initial hack and slash, isn't the INEVITABLE consequence that 5 or however many goblins are now all going to shiv the PC at once? How can he possibly, given the move he made, avoid being turned into an analogue of Julius Ceasar? I will say there's a question of 'tone' here, maybe the dwarf is so bad-assed that he can just shrug off half-a-dozen goblins, and that's a perfectly cromulent way to play things, if you are consistent about it. I'd however note that such a case probably doesn't warrant considering the fight to be anything beyond color though! Personally if it was me my hard move in response wouldn't be "you take 4 damage" it would be more like "6 goblins pile on you with murderous intent from all directions, what do you do?" and presumably whatever the answer to that is, it will be some sort of DD check. Yes, the dwarf is almost surely going to take some damage, regardless, lets see if he can think of a way out! I think my main point is, your example feels a bit 'mechanical' for me. When I run DW, and especially if there's combat, there is a LOT of fiction, and outcomes are largely shaped by it, with the various rolls telling us whether things got better or worse for the PC(s).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Right, as a D&D history aside there was an old school technique, the 'everything is hidden' technique. Its most extreme form would have the GM do ALL the bookkeeping of anything that meta-game whatsoever, including the PC's hit points and perhaps even the exact values of their ability scores, AC, etc. The purpose of this technique is VERY CLEAR, it serves to force the players and the GM back to the fiction, making it impossible for a player to live purely in the world of the mechanics, or even carry out any reasoning on the basis of mechanics at all! This is very well explained via the 'cloud and boxes' model. When this technique is employed the GM MUST provide a usable fictional description of each change in the game state, because the players can ONLY formulate their responses based on that, since the boxes are hidden from them. This causes the fiction to subsume the role of representing the state of the world to the players, so the typical combat with notations of the results of rolls and hits and damage and such gains necessary leftward arrows as the GM must describe the effect of the hit on the goblin in enough detail that the player can make some useful judgment of what options he should choose on his next turn.

I'd also note that this type of play was particularly espoused by those wanting 'more role-play', though more limited forms of it also have had adherents wanting to use it to shut down informational side-channels (in this case it usually takes the form of hidden rolls). In any case the point is to shift more to the cloud as the source of information and thus enrich the fiction, or at least encourage it or make it more plausible in some sense.

 

[Ovinomancer]

How is this not equivalent:
Player: the wall is slippery? What is the DC to climb it?
GM: It is going to be hard to climb, DC20 (here we have an inquiry in which the GM reveals how the fiction will impact the mechanics)
Player: OK, I will throw up a grappling hook on a line (knowing that the GM will likely grant a bonus/advantage if he shifts the situation in his favor, the fiction is supplying 'position', that is bounding the types of acceptable mechanical responses that will produce a positive result).
GM: OK, that is feasible (here the GM is probably extrapolating the situation to decide that the hook is likely to find some purchase, we can't say if it references already established fiction or not, but it is likely to be mostly based on "it is fair to allow this kind of thing" vs actual reasoning about the fiction, which is likely too vaguely formed to be useful in that respect).
Player: I got a 19.
GM: OK, good enough, the hook catches and seems to be secure, you can take advantage on your climb check because you have a rope to hang onto. (I'd note here that it is perfectly likely that the 'because' part is unstated and it is exactly equivalent to the alternative formulation "assistance gives you advantage" which is perfectly mechanical in nature).

or again:
Player: I attack the goblin
DM: OK, you take the attack action, you need a 14 to hit
Player: I rolled a 19! OK, it takes 9 damage
DM: The goblin is still up
Player: I use my bonus action to make an off-hand attack

at most my version lacks a prompt to the player giving some information about the goblin's remaining hit points. However I would argue this is not super revelatory, as the hit points of goblins are pretty well known. It might be more useful info in other cases, but the GM could as easily say "it has 4 hit points left." There's really nothing in 5e's process which suggests that I NEED to know the fiction.

Who's smuggling anything? Its all right there in front of us. I'd note that I don't really feel good about your 'canonical' goblin fight example either. It seems to me that a situation where the PC is surrounded by hostile knife-wielding enemies (some are presumably behind him, etc.) is quite nasty. While I don't have an argument with the initial hack and slash, isn't the INEVITABLE consequence that 5 or however many goblins are now all going to shiv the PC at once? How can he possibly, given the move he made, avoid being turned into an analogue of Julius Ceasar? I will say there's a question of 'tone' here, maybe the dwarf is so bad-assed that he can just shrug off half-a-dozen goblins, and that's a perfectly cromulent way to play things, if you are consistent about it. I'd however note that such a case probably doesn't warrant considering the fight to be anything beyond color though! Personally if it was me my hard move in response wouldn't be "you take 4 damage" it would be more like "6 goblins pile on you with murderous intent from all directions, what do you do?" and presumably whatever the answer to that is, it will be some sort of DD check. Yes, the dwarf is almost surely going to take some damage, regardless, lets see if he can think of a way out! I think my main point is, your example feels a bit 'mechanical' for me. When I run DW, and especially if there's combat, there is a LOT of fiction, and outcomes are largely shaped by it, with the various rolls telling us whether things got better or worse for the PC(s).

It's an example provided in the DW SRD. My first read of it was "you're surrounded by goblins, why aren't you having to defy danger to do anything?" But that's more a style question, I think. Regardless, it is an "official" example.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Right, as a D&D history aside there was an old school technique, the 'everything is hidden' technique. Its most extreme form would have the GM do ALL the bookkeeping of anything that meta-game whatsoever, including the PC's hit points and perhaps even the exact values of their ability scores, AC, etc. The purpose of this technique is VERY CLEAR, it serves to force the players and the GM back to the fiction, making it impossible for a player to live purely in the world of the mechanics, or even carry out any reasoning on the basis of mechanics at all! This is very well explained via the 'cloud and boxes' model. When this technique is employed the GM MUST provide a usable fictional description of each change in the game state, because the players can ONLY formulate their responses based on that, since the boxes are hidden from them. This causes the fiction to subsume the role of representing the state of the world to the players, so the typical combat with notations of the results of rolls and hits and damage and such gains necessary leftward arrows as the GM must describe the effect of the hit on the goblin in enough detail that the player can make some useful judgment of what options he should choose on his next turn.

I'd also note that this type of play was particularly espoused by those wanting 'more role-play', though more limited forms of it also have had adherents wanting to use it to shut down informational side-channels (in this case it usually takes the form of hidden rolls). In any case the point is to shift more to the cloud as the source of information and thus enrich the fiction, or at least encourage it or make it more plausible in some sense.

I played that way a few time, back in the dim days. Never really worked out as "in the fiction" because mechanics didn't have strong arrows from cubes to cloud so it was mostly arbitrary stuff like what's been proposed here. The system didn't support the intent, so execution was ad hoc and eventually folded on itself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

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.

Right, and we can quite profitably contrast that with systems that DO close that loop, like DW where a 6- result on a DR check still has to result in SOME SORT of fiction, because the player will need that fiction to base their next move on. It is quite likely the GM will frame another scene, or at least introduce some change in the fiction immediately at that point "You don't see anything useful here, and the guards just turned the corner! They will spot you any second, what do you do?"