How Visible To players Should The Rules Be?

[Micah Sweet]

So do you stop the players from knowing the stats of their PCs?

Way to ignore the whole "It's a spectrum" concept!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Just a few quick comments on automaticity, muscle memory, repetition, and extremely short interval windows for processing & activating (we're talking fractions of a second).

My current understanding of the research is that in various sports/athletics/martial arts there is a combination of prefrontal cortex that governs active decision-tree work and subcortical brain region where automaticity resides. Things like reliably "slipping a punch" and "hitting a baseball (at expert to world class level)" would fall into that latter category (and require enormous amounts of successful repping, and of course a sufficient base substrate of genetics, in order to get there) because the processing & activating window is well below that of how our prefrontal cortex resolves decisions and deploys the body to act.

But in the abundance of activities, you would deploy both (and there would even be some likely overlap). But, as it pertains to this thread, both modes would (a) be reliant upon profound onboarding and operationalizing of spatial geometry and (b) that means that high level operators (baseball players, fighters, etc) 100 % process their environment with a perception and computation model that isn't just "uh...kinda good, really good...really super duper good." You don't reliably and consistently operate at extreme proficiency in those obscenely tiny processing & activation windows with just derpy qualitative evaluations.

And its really beside the point because that is just the "realism" component of things. We're playing games. Games require a language commensurate to transmit and receive "what is happening in the imagined space" onto "what is happening in the corresponding actual game layer" in order to generate (if you're a GM) and in order to process and resolve (if you're a player) a compelling game-related decision-space. If that language isn't sufficient, then the generation of the decision space (GM's job) or processing and resolving (player's job) is going to suffer for it. "Suffer" here is a continuum where "holy crap this is awesome and compelling as an actual game" lies on one end and "what am I even doing...or...why don't you just play the game for me GM because what you're giving me to work with is basically the total absence of gameplay" lies on the other end (with a huge chunk in between).

QUICK EDIT: @pemerton and my partner are two of a few handfuls of people I know who are marathon runner capable and have massive cycling mileage under their belts. I would absolutely defer to pemerton on the subject. My partner basically had this to say on marathon running and long distance cycling (she is also a degreed chemist and biologist); all of this tracks with my intuition on the subject (for what that is worth). The significant chunk of cycling and marathon running involves the engagement of active processing. However, once resources become extremely depleted and systems taxed, there is definitely a "handing off" to automaticity in marathon (or marathon+) running and at some point, overwhelmingly so (the threshold for this is individual-based). The threshold for this in cycling (where she hasn't experienced this depletion and taxation because the, presumed, mileage required to do so) has to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaay up there when contrasted with running.

The realism component of things is what I care about the most.

 

[Manbearcat]

The realism component of things is what I care about the most.

Then you should be advocating for information dense decision-spaces. In D&D that means numbers/values + transparent procedures.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then you should be advocating for information dense decision-spaces. In D&D that means numbers/values + transparent procedures.

Says you. To be more clear, giving numbers to PCs in narration as a nod to realism is your opinion. Nothing more or less.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think anybody is disputing that.

What's in dispute are two things:

The poster I was replying to essentially asked, "Does it matter?" So I answered.

1 - the point in the fiction (and therefore at the table) at which the quality of said opponent becomes apparent, in situations where it's not blatantly obvious. Before a combat begins? After a round or two of combat? Only after the fact, in hindsight?
2 - the degree of specificity to which the players (in and out of character) can ultimately determine the quality of said opponent. In vague terms only? In not-vague but also non-numeric terms? In terms of full knowledge of the foe's numeric stats?

A side dispute lies around how accurately and-or quickly the PCs can assess their foes. A second side dispute (and IMO the key question that drives all these other disputes) lies around whether or not players should be given info their characters don't have.

This ignores the base question which I've presented repeatedly of how good a job GMs do of conveying the answers non-numerically. Most of the rest of it doesn't matter if the GM is going to present it in a way that doesn't convey anything useful.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I find it hard to believe that it is rote, or subconscious, in the sense that the fighter is thinking about other things while fighting and just acting "automatically".

I think I'd describe it as "preconscious" (as in much of it is muscle memory and assessment that you don't really have time to process to an upper level before you have to make a decision) but that doesn't make it "rote". There are some elements that may be, but they're in the context of assessing what your opponent is doing and adjusting to it, and it starts pretty much as soon as you see your opponents posture or watch them move. Its a little less with people who have a technique that has proven (to them) to work well against 95% of opponents, but even they (unless they've gotten really complacent) are always watching for the 5%.

 

[Reynard]

Then you should be advocating for information dense decision-spaces. In D&D that means numbers/values + transparent procedures.

It is hard to tell how good a fighter someone is until they start punching you in the face. You only know how good you are, so when you take a swing and they block or duck, you suddenly have a clue as to their skill. When they hit you, you learn more.

The idea that you can precisely assess an opponent outside of watching them fight or actually fighting them is laughable.

Source: wrestling, martial arts, and being a dumb kid in the Army in the 90s.

 

[Corinnguard]

It is hard to tell how good a fighter someone is until they start punching you in the face. You only know how good you are, so when you take a swing and they block or duck, you suddenly have a clue as to their skill. When they hit you, you learn more.

The idea that you can precisely assess an opponent outside of watching them fight or actually fighting them is laughable.

Source: wrestling, martial arts, and being a dumb kid in the Army in the 90s.

It's the same story regarding a spellcaster. It's hard to tell how good a spellcaster is until they lob a spell at you. You know what spells you are capable of casting, but you don't know how powerful another spellcaster is until they cast their own.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It is hard to tell how good a fighter someone is until they start punching you in the face. You only know how good you are, so when you take a swing and they block or duck, you suddenly have a clue as to their skill. When they hit you, you learn more.

The idea that you can precisely assess an opponent outside of watching them fight or actually fighting them is laughable.

Source: wrestling, martial arts, and being a dumb kid in the Army in the 90s.

Yes, but at the point you need to know their AC you’re fighting them.

 

[Corinnguard]

Yes, but at the point you need to know their AC you’re fighting them.

If it's any consolation to you, they're trying to know your AC as well.