D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics

[TwoSix]

Too true. Nobody ever questions why the guy with the guns don't just shoot the ninja and instead run in and try to club the ninja with the butt of their pistol. Must be ninja mind tricks.

I've never seen anyone add ninjas into a setting.



Oh....

 

[TwoSix]

If I were running a game for my friends with advanced degrees in things like particle astrophysics or developmental neurobiology ...

And if they have a degree in developmental astrophysics, just run whatever they ask for.

 

[FrozenNorth]

And if they have a degree in developmental astrophysics, just run whatever they ask for.

Hey, I think it is a lot better than all those entities that don’t have degrees in developmental astrophysics and create a solar system anyway.

‘Cause that’s you get dark matter, people!

 

[AlViking]

I've never seen anyone add ninjas into a setting.



Oh....

 

[Bae'zel]

I've also come to a conclusion that's more or less the opposite of yours: The better I've gotten at GMing the way I want to GM, the less the players have done any of the things in your list--and in my 5e campaigns, they never really did them much.

To be clear, I'm not some kind of pushover. My awareness is greater for when people pull the whole "push the rules, exploit loopholes, try to surprise ME". I press pause and communicate with the player, and explain what I'm going for here, and that I do not tolerate "player vs. GM" relationships.

EDIT: also I'm more clear and obvious during session zero. I'm more discerning about who I play with too; pre-campaign discussions, as well as session 1, give me a clear picture about the chemistry in the room. I haven't suffered those experiences I mentioned in a long time.

 

[prabe]

To be clear, I'm not some kind of pushover. My awareness is greater for when people pull the whole "push the rules, exploit loopholes, try to surprise ME". I press pause and communicate with the player, and explain what I'm going for here, and that I do not tolerate "player vs. GM" relationships.

EDIT: also I'm more clear and obvious during session zero. I'm more discerning about who I play with too; pre-campaign discussions, as well as session 1, give me a clear picture about the chemistry in the room. I haven't suffered those experiences I mentioned in a long time.

Yeah, there are almost certainly feedback loops going on. My sense is that the more the players know the game is focused on their characters's goals and actions and desires and priorities and needs, the less they try to screw around with the GM (which usually carries at least a whiff of "screwing up the GM's plans," which ... I don't have really plans for the players to screw with) so the less effort I need to divert from focusing the game on the PCs ... There are friends I have gamed with I will not GM for again, though; their priorities are A) too misaligned with mine and B) too set.

 

[pemerton]

I have never built a microscope in DnD and don't see how it would matter.

<snip>

I don't care if the world works differently at a level my character can't see.

I made this same point not far upthread, with universal gravitation as my example. This is why I'm saying that physics - and more generally, scientific truths about the actual world - are not assumed parts of the D&D game world.

My point is that the default is normal world physics unless something calls it out as different.

And this is the point that I disagree with. The default is "common sense".

You could still use the scientific method to determine physics and explanations of the world even if it doesn't result in the same answers as our world.

I tend to disagree with this. I think D&D worlds are, at the core, non-rational - because of the role of the supernatural in those worlds.

If a person can sail to the edge of the world, I would mention that when setting up the fictional world.

<snip>

If the world is flat, let me know

Discovering that the world has an edge could be an exciting moment of play, I think.

 

[AlViking]

I made this same point not far upthread, with universal gravitation as my example. This is why I'm saying that physics - and more generally, scientific truths about the actual world - are not assumed parts of the D&D game world.

And this is the point that I disagree with. The default is "common sense".

I tend to disagree with this. I think D&D worlds are, at the core, non-rational - because of the role of the supernatural in those worlds.

Discovering that the world has an edge could be an exciting moment of play, I think.

I'm saying that you can still have physics in a magical world because physics is just using the scientific method and math to describe the world. If you think that means we understand everything or know how stuff really works, I suggest you read up on light slit experiments as a simple example. We know the results. We can describe them and state that they work because of x, y and z, but we don't really know or understand what's happening. We understand how gravity works but we don't have any explanation for it in the standard model of physics. Same with cosmology, how we measure how quickly the universe is expanding gives us different numbers. We have no idea why.

The world is not inherently "rational", we just accept the weirdness as normal and hypothesize and create theories about how things work. As far as finding that there's an edge of the world, there's a difference between "wow that's cool" and "geez that's stupid". Know your group before you spring that kind of surprise on them.

 

[mamba]

And this is the point that I disagree with. The default is "common sense".

is your world flat or spherical? I’d argue flat makes more common sense in that it is what we intuitively observe

I don’t think you go with purely common sense, it is a mix of widely known facts and common sense, while ignoring other widely known facts arbitrarily

 

[Crimson Longinus]

is your world flat or spherical? I’d argue flat makes more common sense in that it is what we intuitively observe

I'd argue that for vast majority of campaigns it doesn't matter which it is, nor is this necessarily even the sort of thing the characters would know.