D&D General Why the Great Thief Debate Will Always Be With Us

[MichaelSomething]

FKR! FKR! FKR!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

FKR! FKR! FKR!

Naw. I've learned my lesson.

It's the only thing that unites the "D&D faction" and the "PbTA/BiTD faction" here- they both reflexively hate on FKR.

thinking...

So I guess I'm, like, the great uniter! Woot!

 

[abirdcall]

I feel like the codified actions are gonna make play smoother for shy players who find it easier to say "Bob does X, y, and z", but I do worry that they may pull some people out of the game space. I already notice a difference with my two groups: one is real good about saying what they want to do or try to do, while the other group often words things like "I roll persuasion".

I noticed new players really like using their proficient skills and tend to speak that way. I wonder how they'd take to it if the rules favored that style over freeform.

It took, I think, 6 months for my 3e players to stop saying they are making rolls when we switched to 5e.

I put it this way to them: Just say what you are doing and most of the time you will succeed without even making a roll. If you roll all the time then you're just going to fail more.

I've only done a session 0 so far but my plan when random resolution needs to be called on is to ask everyone in the party what they are going to do when faced with the challenge.

So let's say they are talking to an NPC and it becomes clear there will be a point of contention. I will stop and ask everyone and they might say:

P1: I use my insight to study their body language
P2: I try to recall what I know about their religious symbols so I can learn how to show them respect
P3: I use my persuasion
P4: I also use my persuasion

The way I explained it to the group in the session 0 was that it is okay for the character with +0 in persuasion as well as the one with +10 to both attempt it.

Then for resolution I resolve each check in a sequence that will be narratively satisfying and give them a chance to say something to the NPC (or the other way around).

It is a codified resolution system but what happens depends heavily on what the characters are actually saying to the NPC. So I think it will retain both flavours. Or hoping so at any rate.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I agree in principle, although all the attempts I've seen at equating social mechanics with combat mechanics (admittedly not that many: mainly Exalted 2e and Infinity) have fallen pretty flat. I think this is because the social format that most closely resembles combat is the debate, and in a debate you have two parties seeking the approval of a third. You're almost certainly not going to convince your opponent that you are right, instead your goal is to convince the presumably non-committed audience that you are.

The second-closest is the negotiation, but negotiation is rarely about browbeating your negotiation partner into submission, but to come to a mutually agreeable resolution. And combat-like rules aren't very good for that.

(Just to clarify: I am for social mechanics, ideally of various detail levels that can cover both a quick intimidation attempt and tense negotiations. I just don't want them to look like combat mechanics.)

Oh yeah I don’t mean social combat-combat

I think I remember seeing in a YT vid one time about how there are actually social rules in the DMG, something about a character’s relationship to the character(friendly, neutral, hostile) and their disposition to doing the thing(eagre, inclined, neutral, disinclined, objecting) both affecting how likely and how much they would help you, it also tied into using insight to pick up on BITF, if you pressed a character BITF in the right way it’d shift their position and make the CHA check easier/give better results.

 

[Maxperson]

Good post, personally i fall more on the gygaxian side of things, give me social combat, don’t let players talk their way out of their character’s conversations, why do we have a CHA score if not for social checks.

We have it for difficult social checks. My feeling is that sometimes we don't need to roll and sometimes we do.

 

[sevenbastard]

Edit: Wish Aero Hobbies was still around in Santa Monica - would have been great to visit.

I didn't know it closed till I read this. I went a few times when I lived in Venice but left LA back in 18. Boooooo

 

[I'm A Banana]

RPGs (especially D&D) have always provided for the push and pull between rules codification and allowing the negative space for play within the world.

There's something that seems off about this statement to me.

If we go back to the example on swinging a sword vs. the talky bits, both seem to me to hinge on one shared rule: "Pretend to be your character."

In certain circumstances, pretending to be your character means doing something with a chance of failure, and that's when we roll a die. Swinging a sword - at an enemy in combat - is one of the common times we roll a die. But to get to that position in the first place, you're just applying the more fundamental rule - "Pretend to be your character." You wouldn't be swinging your sword if it wasn't something Bill the Dwarf wouldn't do.

We don't always use dice when swinging our sword, though. Like, you can hack through underbrush without rolling a die. Or cut a rope. Or, idk, shave.

So this doesn't feel like a push/pull between two forces to me. It feels more like...if the base rule is "pretend to be your character," then when do we want to add complexity? Why is making an attack something we roll dice for, anyway? In a game where we've killed and questioned every sacred cow, why is 1d20 still worth preserving? Like, functionally?

Turning this question around in my head, there's a lot of potential answers. In the lens of game design and player experience, rolling dice to attack is an attractive element, something that is quite fun to do. Luck and uncertainty make for a nice player tension, and that mirrors the character's own tension ("pretend to be your character"). It's a situation where chance would play a meaningful role. It's entertaining.

That also helps reveal why we don't do much of that in the social role, though. It makes less sense that chance, luck, and uncertainty would play a meaningful role there. Like, sure, you can make some excuses, but if I am pretending to be my character, and I make a case as that character that would be persuasive to the other characters hearing it....why am I rolling? Why add complexity to something that was already pretty difficult? My character said what they said, either that's persuasive or it isn't, people's minds aren't so disconnected from what's going on around them that randomness plays a big part in it. It's a binary result based on the dispositions of the characters and the words said, none of which is random. (Though in modern D&D we tend to randomize some of that disposition or some of those words when we roll a Persuasion check). This isn't to say that there isn't a case for more roll-based social junk, just that there's an explanation for why it's been pretty minimal overall: no need to roll, most of the time.

So, bringing this around to the Great Thief Debate, we can see that the tension might not be "do I want codified rules or do I want open-ended play," but perhaps is more "does an element of luck and chance add something fun to this particular verb? Does that element help me pretend to be my character better?"

I can see that being answered differently in different contexts and at different tables. Do you need to roll dice for stealth? To solve puzzles? To play a good song on your lute? To intimidate the goblins? IDK, you don't need to roll dice to attack, necessarily. All rolls are opt-in. How much would some uncertainty add?

So I dunno about a push/pull between dice and no dice. The default mode is no dice, so the question is why do we EVER roll dice, when we NEVER have to? It seems to me like the dice are a tool you use in certain circumstances where it would add to the experience, and there's some differences between groups about when the dice actually add to the experience.

Not too surprising to me that one of those differences was, "do the thief mechanics add to the experience of stealth in D&D"? (And given how weak sauce thieves have been historically, not too surprising that a lot of people rejected the idea of having to go through this sad little class for the minimal chance to hide in a shadow when they could just put out the torches and use infravision.)

Does codifying abilities into rules help, because it provides certainty to the player? Or does codifying hurt, because it necessarily means that without the express ability, you can no longer do it, thereby limiting players?

I don't think that codifying an ability necessarily means that you can no longer "do it" without the express ability. Did the invention of the thief prevent every stealth attempt of every other party? Given that the surprise die still was around, I don't think so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Part of my problem with much of the "great thief debate" is that a lot of the anti-rules positions seem...pretty blatantly disingenuous, and @I'm A Banana asked exactly the question which pokes that hole in said positions.

That is: why is it that we should presume (to use Snarf's legal term) expressio unius est exclusio alterius?

It has always been exceedingly clear to me that, for a game like D&D, three general principles always apply.

1. If the rules make a clear statement, you should do what you can to make that statement make sense, within relatively lenient bounds of reason. E.g., a gelatinous cube falling prone sounds weird if we rigidly define the "prone" condition as falling flat. But if we take the spirit of the statement--the cube is in a weak position defensively and will need to gather what little wits it has in order to improve its defensive position--then there is clearly no problem with the cube being badly thrown off, losing full awareness of its surroundings, and not being particularly well-comported to avoid incoming attacks. We just happen to call that condition "prone." Most times, it does in fact literally mean "prone." But unless it would egregiously violate reason and sense, we should try to make sure that reasonable game effects work as they're designed to. Yes, it may take a little bit of explanation or thinking. That's okay, it's going to happen some of the time no matter what, so we should prepare for that.

2. If the rules don't explicitly say something is forbidden, and doing that thing is not clearly a violation of the spirit of the rules, you should go along with it unless and until it produces undesirable consequences. Or, to put it simply: Anything not forbidden is permitted, unless it is obviously bad or you realize later that it's bad. You see this, for example, with 4e's skill system. 4e skills were big, chunky, and intentionally open-ended. ANYTHING you could do involving Do Magical Secrets Stuff is Arcana. ANYTHING you could do involving the weird-@$$ monsters that fill dungeons in D&D? Dungeoneering. ANYTHING you could do involving knowledge of current affairs, gossip, rumor, etc., etc.? Streetwise. ANYTHING involving the past, or social structures, or practices and traditions, etc.? History. The world is your oyster, so long as you can give a reason why it falls under the associated purview. Hence why I say I'm so baffled at how people run skills in 5e. The way skills are written in 5e is actually much more similar to 4e than to any other past edition. Yet the way people run them is nearly identical to how they were run in the 3e era, which very much was "anything not permitted is forbidden."

3. A formally defined rule is simply a guaranteed way that something does work; if you successfully improvise the same solution multiple times, you should write it down as a new, formally defined rule. This is sort of the opposite side of the same coin as #2. Well-designed rules are useful patterns that were worth keeping because they produced the kind of experience the designer intended. If the players in a particular group have repeatedly improvised something for which there are no rules, and the DM has in fact actually been consistent about how that improvisation works...they really should just turn it into a new, actual rule. That way there's no "Mother May I," no guessing, no constant concern that the rug gets pulled out from under you this time because some gotcha you didn't know about suddenly pops up. Having a rule does not tell you that's how you HAVE to play. It tells you that you CAN do X thing.

 

[TiQuinn]

Anyway, I will leave with the following idea/prediction- as D&D moves further into an on-line future, with VTT and so-on, I would expect that we will see continued expansion of the Gygaxian space, and a concomitant shrinking of the Arnesonian space.

I think that’s a pretty safe prediction. The digital game pushes towards standardization. It’s clear that’s what a lot of players want. They want to know that regardless of what table they go to, the rules are applied the same. Whenever I read anything about AL games, it’s the number one topic or takeaway that I see: there is concern about how a rules change will apply to AL tables because all AL games must function the same as much as possible.

 

[abirdcall]

I think that’s a pretty safe prediction. The digital game pushes towards standardization. It’s clear that’s what a lot of players want. They want to know that regardless of what table they go to, the rules are applied the same. Whenever I read anything about AL games, it’s the number one topic or takeaway that I see: there is concern about how a rules change will apply to AL tables because all AL games must function the same as much as possible.

AL games make up a tiny amount of the player population though.

Those same players are more likely to be posting on forums so it probably seems higher.

I agree about the online implementation though, it will probably be more difficult to have more options there.