D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

[Oofta]

Isn't the whole point of fantasy not having to think too hard?

I kid. A bit. But it is true that fantasy doesn't tend to ask tough questions the way sci-fi does. You certainly don't want to think too hard about D&D settings because non of them make any sense.

The real world doesn't make sense half the time, doesn't mean we can't try to figure out how it works. I don't get the assertion that sci-fi is any more realistic. Sci-fi breaks all sorts of rules of physics and logic left and right. They just hide it behind pseudo science babble, but it's just different fluff to explain the impossible. Star Trek is chock full of BS.

What can I say? I want my campaign world to make sense. It makes more sense if I try to figure out consequences of magic and monsters being real. I'm not saying my way is better. But don't pretend that Warp Drive, humans having children with alien species, teleporters or being able to breath the same atmosphere and eat the same food is any more "realistic". It's not, and I say that as a fan of sci-fi.

Both science fiction and fantasy simply come up with explanations for the stories they want to tell. Some try to be more realistic than others, all fall short.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

On your reference to novels - is A Connecticut Yankee the first in that genre?

Could be! It's certainly the easiest early example to come up with, though I suspect there were probably novels or short stories with a similar formula before.

I haven't read enough of The Dying Earth to have the same confidence you do in talking about it. I do agree that it is not in the same genre as Bard, St George or Beowulf. I'm not sure I feel it's quite as sci-fi-ish either. There does seem to be a fairy-tale element to some of it.

I obviously haven't read all of it, so I may be missing something, but I didn't detect any fairy-tale-ness beyond the fact that a significant proportion of far future/post-apocalyptic SF in the midcentury through mid 1970s had a weirdly fairy-tale-ish vibe at times (c.f. Zardoz for a very obvious example, but a huge amount of it does, even things like The Triffids kind of do), which sometimes seems conscious and sometimes not. I would separate it from, say, The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe, which has a consciously fairy-tale/morality play approach at times caused by the (deeply unreliable*) narrator choosing to present certain events that way (and is from the '80s, by which point that approach had largely faded).

I agree with you that D&D can struggle, to an extent, with fairy-tale or fantasy logic - this is one reason why 4e D&D, which is an exception in this respect and doesn't struggle at all, is my favourite version.

Yes I very much liked that about 4E too. Fortunately there's no lack of TTRPGs now which can handle that, but it's a pity 5E didn't learn more there.

* = Not going to argue that, Severian contradicts himself a bunch, recontextualizes and revises events, and so on, but I've never come across an unreliable narrator somebody wasn't absolutely certain was utterly reliable and that's a separate discussion lol.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Both science fiction and fantasy simply come up with explanations for the stories they want to tell. Some try to be more realistic than others, all fall short.

There is a real difference in what we're talking about here though.

With science fiction, problems tend to get solved by Facts and Logic, backed by some amount of personal bravery and often genius logical leaps.

With fantasy, problems tend to get solved with Courage/Heart/Perseverance and Self-Sacrifice. Facts and logic rarely come into it.

Sure there's significant and increasing crossover, and SF often also has courage and sacrifice, but the classic example of the clash is "Why didn't the Eagles just fly the Hobbits to Mt. Doom?!". Whilst there are a bunch of decent reasons that people can dig up, the real reason is that fantasy, and Tolkien aren't about "facts, logic, optimization, doing it right" or the like, but about the people, and who they are, and what they believe, and how they act and so on. Doing an illogical/suboptimal-but-self-sacrificing thing is often the right thing in fantasy (which annoys the hell out of some people, for semi-understandable reasons - when I was younger it used to annoy the heck out of me).

I'm we're generalizing a lot here but there really are different approaches.

I'd also add that the "Owned by Facts and Logic" stories are often actually not very realistic. Even if they stick to relatively hard SF, the portrayal of the behaviour of humans or how the world works in a lot of that kind of sci-fi is often pretty bad and more about wish-fulfilment than how people really operate.

 

[pemerton]

I see it as the difference between constructing a believable world and telling a story. I don't construct my campaign as a story, I try to extrapolate what it could be like if magic and dragons were real.

For me, that last "I try . . ." makes no sense. If magic and dragons were real, what basis would there be for extrapolation? Because all the common sense and technical knowledge that guide extrapolation are already ruled out of bounds by the supposition that magic and dragons are real!

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I would think these questions about dragon slaying and the behavior of civilians, along with the existence of magic weapons that slay dragons to be squarely in the purview of the DM.

If I were in a campaign in which the populace raised an army to fight a dragon, I would just go with it as a player.

If I played in a campaign in which the people are scared and cowered and sought adventurers to do it because they could not to be in the realm of “ok, that happened.”

I would imagine some DMs would make either decision and I would not bat an eye as a player.

 

[Clint_L]

[deleted - way off topic]

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In AD&D there is an Arrow of Dragon Slaying.

In 4e D&D there is a skill challenge to turn the dragon into a minion (ie in the fiction, to set up the fatal shot).

Given that 5e claims to be a game of unlimited imagination like its predecessors, I assume that it too has a way of handling this. Not too far upthread, @AbdulAlhazred suggested that that would be getting the GM to agree. I don't know the system well enough to know what other ways there might be.

Well, I assume there is ALSO some sort of fiction that said GM will either invent or at least approve of. However, I am of the opinion that 5e doesn't specifically have a subsystem (like 4e's skill challenges and minions) that would model it in a rules sense. Obviously the GM can invent something, and its not HARD to do so, but it is certainly a 'ruling' and not a 'rule' in 5e parlance. Given that these rulings can be ANYTHING, one can simply fall back on "the GM can do anything" as an argument for infinite system flexibility. I think that kind of argument is not terribly useful in terms of discussing elements of 5e (or other RPGs) design. I'd note that in games that are, say, PbtA-based, like DW, there is more of a middle ground, but fundamentally the questions there are more like what we really ask in 4e, which is more "did the PCs achieve their intent, and what does that look like in fictional terms?" I'd think if there was a prophesy about a dragon slaying, first of all it would involve a PC as the slayer, and there would be some setup, similar to the whole 'Bard, arrow, thrush' thing in The Hobbit, perhaps.

 

[pemerton]

the questions there are more like what we really ask in 4e, which is more "did the PCs achieve their intent, and what does that look like in fictional terms?" I'd think if there was a prophesy about a dragon slaying, first of all it would involve a PC as the slayer, and there would be some setup, similar to the whole 'Bard, arrow, thrush' thing in The Hobbit, perhaps.

Right. Minion-ising a dragon seems like a complexity 4 or 5 skill challenge (given a dragon is a solo), which could involve everything from Bluff (to get it to leave its lair without ensuring every last vulnerable point is covered) to Nature (to speak to the thrushes who know the dragon's secret weak point) to History or Arcana (to know the true mystery and power of the Black Arrow).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Unfortunately, minion rules didn't make it into 5e.

Thank heavens, a dragon minionizing skills challenge did not make it into 5e rules...

Minions are not really needed in 5e thanks to bounded accuracy.

Instead of minions, I'd rather have a minion rule that you deal double weapon damage against enemies that are of CR < Level - 5 or so. Should always have been this way.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Right. Minion-ising a dragon seems like a complexity 4 or 5 skill challenge (given a dragon is a solo), which could involve everything from Bluff (to get it to leave its lair without ensuring every last vulnerable point is covered) to Nature (to speak to the thrushes who know the dragon's secret weak point) to History or Arcana (to know the true mystery and power of the Black Arrow).

While that sounds like a good idea, it does not need minionizing. You can attribute the instant kill on the black arrow and vulnarability in that certain spot.
Question is: how do you treat the attack roll? Is it harder to aim on tge weak spot? Seems totally anticlimatic to win the skill challenge just to miss with the arrow...

Help action? Inspiration? Bard*ic inspiration?
Or just leacer the to hit roll out? This would turn the dragon fight in just a story.