D&D General Hot Take: Uncertainty Makes D&D Better

[bloodtide]

It would be helpful to know which "'story' games" and "cinematic type storytelling games" are being described here.

When I think of "story games", or non-trad-type games, I think of Prince Valiant, Cthulhu Dark, Wuthering Heights, Burning Wheel, Torchbearer, Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic, Agon, In A Wicked Age . . . and none of them (at least in my experience) remotely fits these descriptions.

I think this is borne out by my actual play posts.

I'm not talking about any named game. I'm talking about a Set Play St lye. A way the game is played, beyond the rules.

Like I said, it's when the DM or one or many or all the players wish to play out a set story. So they will alter the game reality to make that happen.

 

[overgeeked]

This is getting into weird semantics so I am guessing some of my group’s games would not be alien to you. But then again who knows?

If you don’t even consider levels and challenges—-ever—-plunking a low level character in a super high level module will have consequences.

If you consider level of party and challenges, you are putting your finger on the scales and it’s probably in the favor of characters. If not, I have not tried that experiment.

I run sandboxes, not modules. I prep the area and whatever random stuff is there is what’s there. If they encounter a wandering dragon, then that’s what happens. If they think they should run or bargain or fight, that’s up to them. I place dungeons in the sandbox and if the players end up there, that’s up to them. The world is not level appropriate to the characters. In my last game the 1st-level characters encountered the following wandering monsters: an orc warband, a T-Rex, a zombie horde, and a group of Tucker’s kobolds. How they responded was 100% up to them. They hid, watched from afar, ran, and tried to fight before being lured into a trap…then ran.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm not talking about any named game. I'm talking about a Set Play St lye. A way the game is played, beyond the rules.

Google finds precisely zero hits for "Set Play St lye". Could you explain further please?

Like I said, it's when the DM or one or many or all the players wish to play out a set story. So they will alter the game reality to make that happen.

In my experience this is always the DM claiming that because they are the DM (or, far more commonly by proportion The Storyteller) and the rulebook gives them the right they should fudge andm use deus ex machina. I've never seen a player do this.

 

[Lanefan]

This is getting into weird semantics so I am guessing some of my group’s games would not be alien to you. But then again who knows?

If you don’t even consider levels and challenges—-ever—-plunking a low level character in a super high level module will have consequences.

If you consider level of party and challenges, you are putting your finger on the scales and it’s probably in the favor of characters. If not, I have not tried that experiment.

While I get what you're saying, it isn't always so cut-and-dried.

Sometimes a (let's say mid-level) party might inquire as to what adventuring possibilities exist in the region and get three or four answers, maybe something like:

"A while ago some villagers up north asked for help in finding some vanished people, a group of adventurers who went up in response have now disappeared as well"
"Strange lights have recently been reported around Belekka Ruins" (the ruins are a well-known landmark some days west of town)
"There's a skull-shaped castle on the north coast that's always had a well-earned foul reputation, someone ought to go in and clear it out"
"It's springtime, which inevitably means Orcs are raiding out of the Andalusian Hills again"

Now I-as-DM know what's behind each of these and which one is vaguely suited for what level of party, but the players/PCs don't; and if they just pick one and go without making any inquiries (or even paying attention to the minor clues contained in those write-ups!) they could soon find themselves wading through something trivially easy, or stuck in something way above their pay grade, or dealing with something more or less suited to them.

But if they make some inquiries and-or pay attention they could quickly realize that raiding Orcs might be something best left for lower-level adventurers to deal with, the skull-shaped castle has its reputation because over many years nobody - includng some pretty powerful people - has been able to clear it out (in other words, it's way above the PCs' pay grade), the missing adventurers were a slightly smaller and lower-level crew than the PC party, and nobody knows anything about the lights at Belekka other than they first appeared about three weeks ago.

End result: they still have a viable choice as to whether to investigate goings-on at Belekka or try to find the missing people-plus-party (or to go elsewhere and do something completely different; or to try and do both in sequence); and I'll have an adventure in hand for each option in full knowledge some of them might not see play.

 

[Lanefan]

Google finds precisely zero hits for "Set Play St lye". Could you explain further please?

My guess is that it's an auto-correct mangling of "set playstyle".

Did I mention that autocorrect is evil incarnate?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

D&D (as was mentioned earlier in the thread) massively mitigates the swinginess thanks to things like hit points and being an action resolution rather than task resolution system, meaning that you need multiple rolls to succeed. Oh, and that spells basically always succeed unless they are trying to affect a foe. I wouldn't say it does farce very well; I'd far rather use something actually swingy like Cortex Plus or something Forged in the Dark.

Uh-huh.

And that's an extremely ineffective and badly-designed form of mitigation. At lower levels, HP aren't sufficient in any edition except 4E to truly meaningfully mitigate the issues the swinginess creates. The action resolution vs task resolution point is largely meaningless as the same is true of many less swingy systems. Spells always succeeding causes far more problems than it solves. Indeed, it's absolutely at the core of literally everything that's wrong with D&D.

I didn't say it did farce well - instead it just pushes everything towards farce by produce a high volume of silly results, like combat rounds where literally everyone misses, dumpstat characters often rolling highest on checks and so on.

Also Cortex Prime is definitely not swingier than D&D. That'd be a wild thing to say. Maybe Plus was though? I loathe FitD so can't speak to that, but PtbA designs are typically less swingy than D&D.

 

[bloodtide]

Google finds precisely zero hits for "Set Play St lye". Could you explain further please?

In my experience this is always the DM claiming that because they are the DM (or, far more commonly by proportion The Storyteller) and the rulebook gives them the right they should fudge andm use deus ex machina. I've never seen a player do this.

Ok, the easy one for you to understand is the Internet myth Railroad DM. The DM has written a RPG Novel, and the players will play through the novel exactly the way the DM wants. The players "have no agency".

The next one is where the Players TELL the DM to do this: you see this quite often with Adventure Paths or Official Modules. The players want to not just "win" the adventure, but they want to "win" it in the best way possible. So, no matter what goofy slapstick stuff the players do, things in the game will always work out for them 100%. And even if the players ignore all the clues, randomly do things and really don't play the game at all...all the characters will live and they will finish the adventure perfectly.

Next is the individual player ones. The player has written a backstory how their spacial character is the secret son of the king of the world, then they TELL the DM what the story plot will be. Often like "my character will effortlessly just be come king of the world". Then the DM will make sure that happens: no character death, no character problems, the kingdom is always sitting there perfectly waiting for the character to rule it.

So the DM or the Players, in many ways, have a Set Play Style to make a story happen.

Take the example of the kidnapped princess. So the story is the characters must track down and find the princess. Rescue her. Then get her safety back to her kingdom. This is a standard classic adventure.

In The Set Play Style, the above will automatically happen: you only "play" the game to see how it will automatically happen. In the uncertain style.....anything can happen.

So the characters have the princess and are almost back to her kingdom...and get attacked by trolls and goblins. Arrows fly all over the area. In the Set Play Style the princess will NEVER be hit and KILLED by an arrow: The characters will bring her home save and sound no matter what. In the uncertain game...THUNK..arrows (might) hit the princess and she dies. BOOM. Major story movement...NOW what happens?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Uh-huh.

And that's an extremely ineffective and badly-designed form of mitigation. At lower levels, HP aren't sufficient in any edition except 4E to truly meaningfully mitigate the issues the swinginess creates. The action resolution vs task resolution point is largely meaningless as the same is true of many less swingy systems. Spells always succeeding causes far more problems than it solves. Indeed, it's absolutely at the core of literally everything that's wrong with D&D.

I didn't say it did farce well - instead it just pushes everything towards farce by produce a high volume of silly results, like combat rounds where literally everyone misses, dumpstat characters often rolling highest on checks and so on.

Also Cortex Prime is definitely not swingier than D&D. That'd be a wild thing to say. Maybe Plus was though? I loathe FitD so can't speak to that, but PtbA designs are typically less swingy than D&D.

It depends what you mean by "swingy". D&D rolls are almost all on a pass-fail scale with no real escalating network of consequences. Anything PbtA, by contrast, has actual swings from any roll and something happens on a miss. The range of possible outcomes in PbtA is vastly greater than D&D ever gives. And I haven't played Cortex Prime or even delved into it but the hitch and botch system.

Basically if you need a 7 or higher to pass in D&D there's no difference between a 1 and a 6 on the dice or between a 7 and a 19 (and generally not between a 7 and a 20). There are only two possible outcomes and they're both pretty basic.

 

[Reynard]

Ok, the easy one for you to understand is the Internet myth Railroad DM. The DM has written a RPG Novel, and the players will play through the novel exactly the way the DM wants. The players "have no agency".

The next one is where the Players TELL the DM to do this: you see this quite often with Adventure Paths or Official Modules. The players want to not just "win" the adventure, but they want to "win" it in the best way possible. So, no matter what goofy slapstick stuff the players do, things in the game will always work out for them 100%. And even if the players ignore all the clues, randomly do things and really don't play the game at all...all the characters will live and they will finish the adventure perfectly.

Next is the individual player ones. The player has written a backstory how their spacial character is the secret son of the king of the world, then they TELL the DM what the story plot will be. Often like "my character will effortlessly just be come king of the world". Then the DM will make sure that happens: no character death, no character problems, the kingdom is always sitting there perfectly waiting for the character to rule it.

So the DM or the Players, in many ways, have a Set Play Style to make a story happen.

Take the example of the kidnapped princess. So the story is the characters must track down and find the princess. Rescue her. Then get her safety back to her kingdom. This is a standard classic adventure.

In The Set Play Style, the above will automatically happen: you only "play" the game to see how it will automatically happen. In the uncertain style.....anything can happen.

So the characters have the princess and are almost back to her kingdom...and get attacked by trolls and goblins. Arrows fly all over the area. In the Set Play Style the princess will NEVER be hit and KILLED by an arrow: The characters will bring her home save and sound no matter what. In the uncertain game...THUNK..arrows (might) hit the princess and she dies. BOOM. Major story movement...NOW what happens?

^^^This.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

While I get what you're saying, it isn't always so cut-and-dried.

Sometimes a (let's say mid-level) party might inquire as to what adventuring possibilities exist in the region and get three or four answers, maybe something like:

"A while ago some villagers up north asked for help in finding some vanished people, a group of adventurers who went up in response have now disappeared as well"
"Strange lights have recently been reported around Belekka Ruins" (the ruins are a well-known landmark some days west of town)
"There's a skull-shaped castle on the north coast that's always had a well-earned foul reputation, someone ought to go in and clear it out"
"It's springtime, which inevitably means Orcs are raiding out of the Andalusian Hills again"

Now I-as-DM know what's behind each of these and which one is vaguely suited for what level of party, but the players/PCs don't; and if they just pick one and go without making any inquiries (or even paying attention to the minor clues contained in those write-ups!) they could soon find themselves wading through something trivially easy, or stuck in something way above their pay grade, or dealing with something more or less suited to them.

But if they make some inquiries and-or pay attention they could quickly realize that raiding Orcs might be something best left for lower-level adventurers to deal with, the skull-shaped castle has its reputation because over many years nobody - includng some pretty powerful people - has been able to clear it out (in other words, it's way above the PCs' pay grade), the missing adventurers were a slightly smaller and lower-level crew than the PC party, and nobody knows anything about the lights at Belekka other than they first appeared about three weeks ago.

End result: they still have a viable choice as to whether to investigate goings-on at Belekka or try to find the missing people-plus-party (or to go elsewhere and do something completely different; or to try and do both in sequence); and I'll have an adventure in hand for each option in full knowledge some of them might not see play.

Sure…not always cut and dried. We play with risk: you can die. You can interact with foes that you can’t beat.