D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[hawkeyefan]

From a game balance perspective, clerics have been given spells and abilities roughly on par with the other classes. Having them be able to ring up their god and to receive a get out of jail card breaks that balance for me.

Well, per the example and as I’ve pointed out, it wasn’t a get out of jail free card. The request, such as it was, was for the location of the maguffin.

Did you guys eventually find the maguffin? I don’t think you’ve come right out and said so, but it’s certainly seemed like it from what you said.

I know there could be a cost but what kind? Find a different McGuffin? Well apparently Odin knows where that one is to so why does he need any help? Kill some other mortal? Well if Odin is all powerful and ready to intervene in mortal affairs why doesn't he just point Gungnir at the mortal and declare him dead? That and any "price" the cleric had to pay would realistically have been paid by the whole group. We would have just been substituting one story arc for another.

For the cost, I said something meaningful. I don’t know why you’d suggest things you clearly feel aren’t meaningful. The only suggestion I made was comparing it to Odin sacrificing his eye. I was imagining the character having to potentially sacrifice something significant. Not to be sent on a fetch quest.

Did the character have any family or friends? Did they have anything they valued? That’d have been a good starting point.

From a game world perspective, Odin is not a "good" god, at least not any more. He's obsessed with Ragnarok and punishing Loki. He's more concerned with stirring up wars so that he has more Einherjar for the final battle. Besides, if the cleric dies in battle trying to hunt down the lich, the cleric becomes another soldier in Odin's army. Win for Odin! The fact that they were hunting down a lich doesn't really make a difference, avoiding death is Hel's problem, not his.

I didn’t envision your Odin as a “good god”. Hel is one of the key figures in Ragnarok… that’s why I made the connection between Hel and the lich and why that might bother a paranoid and Ragnarok-obsessed Odin.

Final thought? I don't see saying "No you can't do that" now and then, especially for something like asking for divine intervention when scrying attempts had been tried and failed, as a railroad.

I’m not saying that it is a railroad. There are far too many unknown factors to say. What I did was ask if someone can see how it may be classified as such.

A cleric has several powers they've gained from their god. If they want more than that, that's what divine intervention is for. Even then, it's still up to DM discretion.

Yes, I know. That discretion can include going with the player’s idea. Choosing not to do so is a choice.

There were many, many other routes for us to take. It would be like asking if I can get to work with my car and gee it would be nice if my car could fly. Yes, it would be nice but while there are several routes to where I want to go, flying in my car isn't one of them.

Except flying cars aren’t a thing in our world. But deities granting spells and miracles are in the typical D&D setting.

I don't see an issue with limitations on characters. Besides, if Odin had intervened, that just means one player dictated that the rest of the group must pursue whatever payment Odin demanded.

No it doesn’t. See above.

BTW stop being snarky if you want to have a discussion.

If you mean my reply to @Paul Farquhar and his “Hard Stare tm” stuff… then no. That deserves snark.

Otherwise, I’ve not really been snarky.

 

[pemerton]

Except flying cars aren’t a thing in our world.

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(This is an interjection, mostly to share my incredulity since I first learned about these things a few months ago.)

 

[Oofta]

The point is that other people share your desire, but adopt different approaches. So when you tend to frame those different approaches as serving different desires, that is not accurate.

Some people don't care about immersion. I was talking about what makes the game immersive to me. I don't know what makes a game immersive or enjoyable for any other specific individual. I certainly never said other people can't find different approaches immersing.

It feels like you keep looking for a ways of accusing me of being dismissive of other people's preferences. I'm not.

 

[pemerton]

For the cost, I said something meaningful. I don’t know why you’d suggest things you clearly feel aren’t meaningful. The only suggestion I made was comparing it to Odin sacrificing his eye. I was imagining the character having to potentially sacrifice something significant. Not to be sent on a fetch quest.

Did the character have any family or friends? Did they have anything they valued? That’d have been a good starting point.

I think that many GMs - and I include myself here - can sometimes be too hesitant about pushing for meaningful stakes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Some people don't care about immersion. I was talking about what makes the game immersive to me. I don't know what makes a game immersive or enjoyable for any other specific individual. I certainly never said other people can't find different approaches immersing.

It feels like you keep looking for a ways of accusing me of being dismissive of other people's preferences. I'm not.

To be fair, I think we have a pretty good idea what makes a game immersive or enjoyable to @pemerton .

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think that many GMs - and I include myself here - can sometimes be too hesitant about pushing for meaningful stakes.

Yeah, this is something that can be difficult unless the rules help support it. Like in Blades in the Dark, I have no problem being brutal because the game empowers the player to have say about what consequences they face.

In D&D, that kind of stuff is almost entirely absent. Which is why, in the cleric of Odin example, I’d have put the idea of cost on the table, but would also kind of push it to the player to see what they had in mind. If I just had Odin immediately go directly to the most brutal possibility… that’s a bit extreme.

I think that this is the kind of thing where being familiar with other games has helped me realize how to handle such situations better in D&D.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, this is something that can be difficult unless the rules help support it. Like in Blades in the Dark, I have no problem being brutal because the game empowers the player to have say about what consequences they face.

In D&D, that kind of stuff is almost entirely absent. Which is why, in the cleric of Odin example, I’d have put the idea of cost on the table, but would also kind of push it to the player to see what they had in mind. If I just had Odin immediately go directly to the most brutal possibility… that’s a bit extreme.

I think that this is the kind of thing where being familiar with other games has helped me realize how to handle such situations better in D&D.

I found just reading rulebooks for other games - for me, it was Maelstrom Storytelling, Robin Laws's HeroWars/Quest, and of course Burning Wheel - really helped me with 4e D&D.

I still sometimes struggle to go in hard, though, even when I know that I should!

 

[Oofta]

To be fair, I think we have a pretty good idea what makes a game immersive or enjoyable to @pemerton .

It's fine that what @pemerton finds immersive is different than what I find immersive. If I ever implied otherwise it was just poor wording on my part. We don't have t have the same preferences, style, reason that a game is immersive or reason that we play the game.

I guess I don't really understand what the following statement is trying to say.

The point is that other people share your desire, but adopt different approaches. So when you tend to frame those different approaches as serving different desires, that is not accurate.

We both like an aspect of gaming and we get there from different directions. Why is it at all a bad thing to acknowledge that? Some people like cooked carrots, I only like them raw. We're both eating carrots.

 

[DEFCON 1]

We both like an aspect of gaming and we get there from different directions. Why is it at all a bad thing to acknowledge that? Some people like cooked carrots, I only like them raw. We're both eating carrots.

Yes, but what does WotC say about how to eat carrots? Because if their surveys told them that most players percentage-wise prefer carrots one way... then they are abandoning the other group of people if they only include the former in the books and not the latter. Thus prompting us with the need to create a 120 page thread here on EN World about how WotC is a horrible company filled with lazy carrot-cooking designers who refuse to create and publish other carrot recipes even though some people want them.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, but what does WotC say about how to eat carrots? Because if their surveys told them that most players percentage-wise prefer carrots one way... then they are abandoning the other group of people if they only include the former in the books and not the latter. Thus prompting us with the need to create a 120 page thread here on EN World about how WotC is a horrible company filled with lazy carrot-cooking designers who refuse to create and publish other carrot recipes even though some people want them.

If I'm running a Mexican restaurant I'm not going to suddenly start serving moo goo gai pan just because someone suddenly has a craving for Americanized Chinese food. If you want that go to a shopping mall food court and eat what you want! Now get off my lawn!