D&D (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Vaalingrade]

Because you're a person embedded in your body living a life.

Your PC is an imaginary being you are authoring.

Also, I do think about my story and how poorly written and absolutely boring it would be to watch or play.

I imagine how much 'fun' it would be to roll to make sure I'm mute throughout the entire meaningless meeting I'm on and the absolute thrill of making Excel rolls.

I would kill for an eldritch demon who controls my life to spend a healing surge to make my bones stop hurting.

 

[Lanefan]

The thing I bolded is what group storytelling is. Each participant fitting their part together with the whole. Just because it's collaborated and lacks a premade plot doesn't mean it isn't storytelling. It's just collaborative and serialized. Lots and lots of stories are collaborative and serialized.

It's not at all dodgy unless you insert the assumption (which I have pretty soundly rejected multiple times in this thread) that your contributions are irrefutable and absolute. Collaboration requires real dialogue, give-and-take, reciprocity. You're cooperating with others, not shouting commands at them.

The Warlord in the corner would like a word...

Nobody can expect their stuff to be automatically irrefutable. But, by that same token, everyone should quite validly expect to have a hand in "the story the campaign is going to eventually tell." They're going to have something they're interested in seeing, and that something is what will drive their decisions like "would this character swallow their pride this time, or would it get the better of them yet again, despite what they've learned?" and "now that the rage and vengeance that drove this character is gone, what does drive them now?"

Those are questions characters cannot just "answer", even if we grant a much more robust idea of "independently existing" characters than I am normally willing to grant--because the whole point is that the character doesn't know. But those are questions worth answering, and the answers could very easily change as a result of play. That--that right there--the story of finding out how the group and the adventure and the world change this person, and how this person changes the group and the adventure and the world, IS the awesome story I'm talking about.

It's still a story. It's just a story that results from multiple people working together to find out what happens.

And that's all good and fair. Your post to which I was replying seemed to have a different tone - more about "my" story than the group's story - and that's what made me curious.

 

[Lanefan]

The issue with "That's what my character would do" is when people use it as an excuse for being an (bleep). You might be making character-appropriate choices, but you designed that character to be an (bleep), so your characters (bleep)-ness is your fault. Of course that doesn't mean your character has to integrate completely without friction into the party – some friction is fun! But any disruptiveness on part of your character is your responsibility.

I dissociate the playing of a [bleep] character from being a [bleep] at the table and somewhat expect others to do likewise.

I mean, an exchange like this is, for me, excellent:

Player 1, shrieking as Celesta (PC): "You stole my wand! Prepare to die, thief!" <loads up for a killing spell>
Player 2, yelling as Dodger (PC): "Cast that [bleep] at me, will ya? Not bloody likely!" <throws dagger at Celesta, hitting and interrupting her spell>
Player 1, out of character: "Hey, try some of these new-flavour chips, they're great!"
Player 2, out of character: "Thanks. How's your beer doing?"
Player 1, shrieking as Celesta (PC): "Gaaah! Now interrupt this!" <pulls out another wand and aims it at Dodger>
... etc.

Meanwhile Players 3 and 4, probably laughing their damn-fool heads off out-of-character, have their characters react accordingly in-character even if such reaction consists merely of diving for cover. And the DM sits back, puts his feet up, and other than refereeing the mechanical bits, enjoys the show.

 

[Lanefan]

And that's fine, but I've never run it that way, even going back to 2nd edition. I always narrated spellcasters as being aware of their diminishing magical reserves, but not to the level of knowing how many spell slots they had left. Inserting game mechanics into the fiction like that ("I have two webs left and a magic missile!"), to 1990s me, always seemed vaguely munchkin.

Wouldn't the mage know what she'd memorized that morning and be able to subtract what she'd cast during the day to know what she has left?

That said, for a "wild-card" caster who doesn't pre-mem specific spells but just has x slots of y level, your point is valid.

 

[James Gasik]

But the post you replied to was about a good established character.

It might say good on their character sheet, but when the chips are down, many player characters have proven to be Chaotic Neutral in disguise over the years.

 

[FrogReaver]

Because you're a person embedded in your body living a life.

Your PC is an imaginary being you are authoring.

I keep hearing this same kind of refrain you make here and yet it’s never been about whether one is authoring their Pc under some definition of author. Of course one is.

Instead what’s really trying to be said, to be brought to light is HOW one authors the PC. (The process and techniques used, etc). Not whether one is authoring the PC.

Why the seeming insistence that all methods of authoring a character are the same and make for the same experience when they are not and do not?

 

[pemerton]

"Fiction oriented" is just how I think about it. We wouldn't want to bring jargon into it.

"Diegetic" means occurring within the context of the story and able to be heard by the characters. So when I read "the rules elements become diegetic" I think of the Order of the Stick.

Whereas I prefer a less silly game.

 

[pemerton]

We all care about the fiction though. I just want the rules to be aligned with it whilst you don't care about that much. In fact, the reason I want the rules to be aligned with the fiction, is because then I can only think about the fiction, and the rules will follow. But if you disassociate them, then you end up thinking about the rules more

This is an empirical conjecture. I deny it.

the decisions about the rules become disconnected from the decisions of the character so you need to do them separately.

This isn't true of the RPGs I play.

 

[TwoSix]

Wouldn't the mage know what she'd memorized that morning and be able to subtract what she'd cast during the day to know what she has left?

That would have been the "munchkin" part.

 

[pemerton]

I think with good description, and especially in social situations where there are no much rules involved you can do it really well. Like I've said many times my roleplaying informed by my LARP experience, and LARPs tend to operate on "being the chracter" principle.

I've done freeform RP.

RPing a mother whose child was suffering wasn't the same as being a parent whose child is suffering. At least in my experience of those two things.