D&D General Why the resistance to D&D being a game?

[Umbran]

But I don't let the limitations of the game rules get in the way of the vision and fictional archetype I envision for my fighter. I want a character that straps on armor, grabs their weapons of choice and goes to face down giants. Is that realistic? Well, giants are not physically possible because of the square cube law. On the other hand in the words of Dutch from Predator, "If it bleeds we can kill it".

So, do we all get that the line between exactly what non-realistic things we will accept, and what we won't, is a matter or personal preference, and broadly could be treated as arbitrary?

You are okay with a mundane person taking on a physically impossible giant, but not okay with a guy in a bar fight goading a bunch of folks to bum rush him? Fine.

I am okay with that mundane person doing both those things. Also fine. I'm good with different people having different desires.

One game consistently supporting both of us with the exact same rules? That's the thing that's not a realistic expectation.

 

[billd91]

I’m not sure what you have in mind here, but if you have in mind “Fighters can defeat lions 1v1 in martial combat with their bare hands,” then the only feasible answer is “fighters must become superhuman in at least the ways lions are superhuman.”

Everything about lions makes them not just marginally more capable than us in physical combat, but truly staggeringly so. Beyond strength, burst explosiveness in every direction, top speed:

* Their reaction speed to visual stimuli is like 3-4 times faster than ours.

* Their epidermis makes them much more durable, more resistant to catastrophic injury.

* Their spines have freakish flexion that gives them body control and mobility that we can’t come close to mustering.

* They play and train, cradle to grave, for martial arts to develop and adapt techniques to engage, disable, and disengage large varieties of prey. They’re like kids and Muay Thai in Thailand.


They’re so beyond humans that the conversation requires a complete compartmentalization to even have it. The kind of compartmentalization that just arbitrarily excuses D&D’s Gamist, genre soup with these strange incoherencies. The only “happy medium to resolve these incoherencies means “blatant superhero.” We aren’t talking about someone who might beat 1 lion in 10. THAT individual would be a superhero. We’re talking about someone who lines up lions like bowling pins and flushes strike after strike after strike. Wash/rinse/repeat. Vegas takes the D&D Fighter vs Lion odds off the table because it kills the house.

If that D&D Fighter…when compared to a lion…isn’t significantly more explosive and durable, with significantly more trunk flexion, balance, proprioception, and reaction time, and with a collection of answers born from a cradle to grave regime of training?

Well…that foundational piece of the D&D puzzle (the Fighter’s mysterious physical prowess) is a killshot to any pretense to realism.

I think I'd agree that fighters have always been quite super-human when comparing what they can regularly do with reality as we understand it. That's a position I've pretty much always held in the inevitable "fighters don't get nice things", "fighters are mundane", whatever debates. But even if people were to accept that truth, it just kicks the can down the road a bit. Just how supernatural should they be? Aragorn? Conan? Hawkeye? Daredevil? Gawaine? Captain America? Beowulf? Hercules?

I think part of the issue stems from a US pop culture full of references to action heroes in both movies and literature that have character doing very much larger than life things without being significantly supernatural. Robin Hood, Arthur's knights, John McClane, James Bond, John Wick, Fafhrd, even Conan. They're fantastically good at what they do, but they don't warp and redefine reality like magic does. And that's what a lot of people want in their martial characters. A relatively limited scope or portfolio of realty warp.

And aside from a few references in US pop culture like Beowulf, Hercules, and Cú Chulainn, martial-oriented character exceeding those kinds of limits tend to occupy a related but separate genre - superhero media (Hercules, of course, bleeds over). And there, of course, all limits have the potential to come off. But that genre really isn't D&D and never really has been. And, ultimately, I don't think it should be, while some players seem to think it should. And that's a fundamental difference of opinion that I'm not sure can be easily bridged.

 

[billd91]

Any game balance mechanic will sometimes make demands on setting issues. That's why some people hate them. They're a tradeoff, and one some people are not willing to make (and other people don't care about at all).

It's been a design issue since the very beginning of 1e when people started ignoring demihuman level limits.
I'd argue it goes well beyond things that are game balancing mechanics as well - see the debates over race-based stat bonuses. A lot of people hate trade-offs in general if they get in their way.

 

[mamba]

One game consistently supporting both of us with the exact same rules? That's the thing that's not a realistic expectation.

and that is why different people want to drag it in different directions

 

[FrogReaver]

I think I'd agree that fighters have always been quite super-human when comparing what they can regularly do with reality as we understand it. That's a position I've pretty much always held in the inevitable "fighters don't get nice things", "fighters are mundane", whatever debates. But even if people were to accept that truth, it just kicks the can down the road a bit. Just how supernatural should they be? Aragorn? Conan? Hawkeye? Daredevil? Gawaine? Captain America? Beowulf? Hercules?

I think part of the issue stems from a US pop culture full of references to action heroes in both movies and literature that have character doing very much larger than life things without being significantly supernatural. Robin Hood, Arthur's knights, John McClane, James Bond, John Wick, Fafhrd, even Conan. They're fantastically good at what they do, but they don't warp and redefine reality like magic does. And that's what a lot of people want in their martial characters. A relatively limited scope or portfolio of realty warp.

And aside from a few references in US pop culture like Beowulf, Hercules, and Cú Chulainn, martial-oriented character exceeding those kinds of limits tend to occupy a related but separate genre - superhero media (Hercules, of course, bleeds over). And there, of course, all limits have the potential to come off. But that genre really isn't D&D and never really has been. And, ultimately, I don't think it should be, while some players seem to think it should. And that's a fundamental difference of opinion that I'm not sure can be easily bridged.

100% this

 

[Manbearcat]

I think I'd agree that fighters have always been quite super-human when comparing what they can regularly do with reality as we understand it. That's a position I've pretty much always held in the inevitable "fighters don't get nice things", "fighters are mundane", whatever debates. But even if people were to accept that truth, it just kicks the can down the road a bit. Just how supernatural should they be? Aragorn? Conan? Hawkeye? Daredevil? Gawaine? Captain America? Beowulf? Hercules?

I think part of the issue stems from a US pop culture full of references to action heroes in both movies and literature that have character doing very much larger than life things without being significantly supernatural. Robin Hood, Arthur's knights, John McClane, James Bond, John Wick, Fafhrd, even Conan. They're fantastically good at what they do, but they don't warp and redefine reality like magic does. And that's what a lot of people want in their martial characters. A relatively limited scope or portfolio of realty warp.

And aside from a few references in US pop culture like Beowulf, Hercules, and Cú Chulainn, martial-oriented character exceeding those kinds of limits tend to occupy a related but separate genre - superhero media (Hercules, of course, bleeds over). And there, of course, all limits have the potential to come off. But that genre really isn't D&D and never really has been. And, ultimately, I don't think it should be, while some players seem to think it should. And that's a fundamental difference of opinion that I'm not sure can be easily bridged.

Really good post I agree that we have a combination of genre logic and realism thresholds and game playability stew that is just sort of being mashed together and where/how you stress one parameter vs another is going to be an important factor (along with tenure within that mental model) in where you land in these discussions.

And in the end, that makes this conversation mostly intractable.

 

[Lord Shark]

You are okay with a mundane person taking on a physically impossible giant, but not okay with a guy in a bar fight goading a bunch of folks to bum rush him? Fine.

In 5E, the mundane fighter can kill a giant by, essentially, sticking it repeatedly in the shin with a needle, but cannot trip the giant or force it to move. Realism!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm sure that there are more casual players than there are hardcore players. Not everyone makes a game their lifestyle.

Doesn't make my point any less true. Popularity and value are not connected in any way beyond money.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I think I'd agree that fighters have always been quite super-human when comparing what they can regularly do with reality as we understand it. That's a position I've pretty much always held in the inevitable "fighters don't get nice things", "fighters are mundane", whatever debates. But even if people were to accept that truth, it just kicks the can down the road a bit. Just how supernatural should they be? Aragorn? Conan? Hawkeye? Daredevil? Gawaine? Captain America? Beowulf? Hercules?

I think part of the issue stems from a US pop culture full of references to action heroes in both movies and literature that have character doing very much larger than life things without being significantly supernatural. Robin Hood, Arthur's knights, John McClane, James Bond, John Wick, Fafhrd, even Conan. They're fantastically good at what they do, but they don't warp and redefine reality like magic does. And that's what a lot of people want in their martial characters. A relatively limited scope or portfolio of realty warp.

And aside from a few references in US pop culture like Beowulf, Hercules, and Cú Chulainn, martial-oriented character exceeding those kinds of limits tend to occupy a related but separate genre - superhero media (Hercules, of course, bleeds over). And there, of course, all limits have the potential to come off. But that genre really isn't D&D and never really has been. And, ultimately, I don't think it should be, while some players seem to think it should. And that's a fundamental difference of opinion that I'm not sure can be easily bridged.

Certainly this seems like a gap that would be difficult to bridge.

The piece I'm relentlessly confused by is how James Bond, John Wick, Robin Hood, and John McClane are viewed as "appropriate D&D archetypes" while superhero media is a "separate but related genre"

What lense do we have to watch Die Hard through to envision a fantasy hero engaging in direct melee combat with giant mystical beasts?

I've asked this question a bunch of times. I don't recall ever getting an answer.

 

[Bill Zebub]

So, do we all get that the line between exactly what non-realistic things we will accept, and what we won't, is a matter or personal preference, and broadly could be treated as arbitrary?

You are okay with a mundane person taking on a physically impossible giant, but not okay with a guy in a bar fight goading a bunch of folks to bum rush him? Fine.

I am okay with that mundane person doing both those things. Also fine. I'm good with different people having different desires.

One game consistently supporting both of us with the exact same rules? That's the thing that's not a realistic expectation.

That's great, but in order to win the internet all others must be flogged into accepting one's opinions as fact, and one's preferences as superior.