D&D General Renamed Thread: "The Illusion of Agency"

[Bill Zebub]

You are welcome to believe that all gaming problems can be conveniently reduced to "jerk DMs" or "jerk players" and subsequently dismissed to irrelevancy, but your post mostly feels like you talking over what I said.


And bad explanations are bad explanations with little to no knowledge of the situation that I would prefer not seen applied to my personal experiences for your personal soap box.

Oh, ouch. I will go re-read your last post and see what I missed.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Oh, ouch. I will go re-read your last post and see what I missed.

Ok, I think I was still in the mindset of reading post #139 from @MuhVerisimilitude, and so was responding to you as if it were a continuation of his arguments.

If the issue was not that the DM shut down your Barbarian, and really was that the Barbarian itself just couldn't do cool stuff....I'm not sure what to say about that. Lots of people think (and thought then) that Barbarians were awesome to play.

And to flip it around, lots of people hated that 4E Martials were built like casters, with lots of limited use special abilities that, mechanically, are basically spells. (I may not have this exactly right; I completely skipped 4E so I'm just summarizing the type of arguments I've seen.)

But either way, I think that's getting us off-topic into how martials are designed compared to casters.

On the other hand, I see there's a connection to the argument that if you don't have explicit abilities, with explicit effects, that you can point to, then martials don't have anything worth doing that doesn't involve violence. And that brings us around to how action declarations are resolved when they don't invoke explicitly defined abilities.

And that's where I think it's about DMing style/skill/philosophy.

If I'm still not getting it, please tell me what I'm not understanding.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I mean, its one thing to have folks using the rules to their advantage in all situations, but its entirely another to have zero idea if any of the rules will be applicable at any time.

Is the bold part a way of saying, "if everything is left up to the DM's judgment"? Just trying to understand what point you are making here.

 

[payn]

Is the bold part a way of saying, "if everything is left up to the DM's judgment"? Just trying to understand what point you are making here.

Yeap. That was aimed at Bloodtide's take of tossing the rule book in the trash and just arbitrarily deciding if anything is possible on the GM's whim. I believe that take is not a popular one, or one I believe you personally hold.

 

[Aldarc]

If I'm still not getting it, please tell me what I'm not understanding.

How to respectfully listen and respond to other human beings in ways that don't try to marginalize and dismiss their negative (and now positive!) experiences with TTRPGs by reducing any problems a person may have with a tabletop roleplaying game as the result of "jerk DMs" or "jerk players." That's the bottom line.

 

[Bill Zebub]

How to respectfully listen and respond to other human beings in ways that don't try to marginalize and dismiss their negative (and now positive!) experiences with TTRPGs by reducing any problems a person may have with a tabletop roleplaying game as the result of "jerk DMs" or "jerk players." That's the bottom line.

Roger that.

I am trying to think of general reasons that a player might feel their character is useless, or even just 'not awesome'.

1. They just don't like playing that type of character. For example, I really don't enjoy playing characters with spell slots. I don't even like non-casters who have "X/day" abilities. The decision of whether I should use an ability now, or save it for an unknown event in the future, or trying to guess how much longer we go before we take a rest, is not the kind of tactical thinking I enjoy. No DMing style is going to change that.
2. Badly unbalanced rules. Yes, some games just make some character choices so bad that the statistical difference is quickly noticeable.
3. DMing Style. Although I've been saying 'jerk' this could also just be a kind, well-intentioned DM who doesn't know how to balance improvisation and rule adjudication in a way that lets everybody feel awesome.
4. Player experience/knowledge. And lastly I can see cases where a player just doesn't know how to use a character, within the system being played, in a way that feels good. (But I might still put this under #3: I think it's the DM's job to help them learn that.)

What do you think it was about that Barbarian that you didn't like? Is there something to add to that list?

 

[zakael19]

Typically, martial classes dont have sheet levers they can pull in accordance with the game’s rules to participate in a decent amount of gameplay without GM fiat. This can lead to a deeply inconsistent game experience. Combine that with spellcasrers often being able to solve problems that in classic fantasy a martial might do, and you’re left wondering when it’s time to go to combat and swing your axe again.

4e used the skill challenge system to, for those that chose to engage with it, create space for martials to be awesome in fictional terms without being overshadowed by casters - in mechanisms the game rules supported (so no need to hope for a “nice dm”).

A good example of the fictional space: the Dungeon World fighter’s “bend bars, lift gates.” That’s a great ability we expect a Conan etc swords and sorcery fighter to do. How often do you see martials given the space to solve problems in 5e?

 

[Aldarc]

What do you think it was about that Barbarian that you didn't like? Is there something to add to that list?

Mages generally have more narrative control through reliable abilities that allow you to contribute in different aspects of the game that don't involve playing "mother, may I?" games with the DM. This was in contrast with my barbarian. And usually this is sometimes the part when people here would insultingly suggest that I was being an uncreative or not a good player.

Moreover, this was substantially less of an experience for me that I felt when I played 4e D&D, where I played warlords and fighters, and I had fun doing so. When I tell you that I personally had fun playing non-magical classes for the first time in 4e D&D, I'm not interested in the fact that other people hated 4e D&D; however, those toxicity of those people nearly had me walk away entirely from the hobby. What I do care about is the fact that I had fun playing martials for the first time and that it was with 4e D&D.

Let me be clear here. When I was playing the barbarian, I don't think that this was with a jerk DM or a bad DM. I have sat at many D&D tables with good, kind, skilled, and/or experienced DMs where I observed similar issues time and time again.

You may be a good DM, Bill Zebub, but I may still dislike how you DM. You may be a good DM, but I can still dislike the sort of game systems that you prefer playing. You may be a good DM, but I still may not have a fun or good experience at your table. You may be a good DM, but I can still have problems with playing a barbarian at your table. You may be a good DM, but you won't necessarily magically solve the problems I had if you had been the DM at that table. More importantly, I would personally not like to insinuate that you are a bad DM as a result of any of this.

When you make erase problems and bad experiences that people have as solely down to "bad/jerk DMs," you discourage and incriminate a lot of good DMs out there while doing little to address the experiences, preferences, or play style differences of others.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Whilst I agree that rolls where there are significant drawback for failure are more interesting, and that I definitely want the players to engage with the fiction and be creative, I still do not agree with the proposed approach. Rolls that where the "cost" is simply not improving the situation are perfectly fine in addition to rolls where there are more significant stakes for failure. That you sometimes have the former doesn't mean you couldn't have the latter too.

And here the elimination of the of many rolls leads the situation decided by GM fiat, and often by sorta railroady reasons. (Players "need" to find the clue to "progress the plot" so they do find it etc.) If such things are randomised via skill instead, then the outcome will be surprise to GM as well, and the direction of the game is not so fore-ordained. Furthermore, as the odds of success depends on the character's competence in the skill, the skill choices matter for influencing the trajectoryof the game.

To illustrate what I mean, here's an example:

We're facing a locked door. There's no time pressure to open it. No risk at getting caught. We don't care if anybody knows we've been here.

If the DM wants to let us proceed, they can let the rogue/thief/burglar succeed at picking it, maybe with some description.

And if they want us to have to figure out how to open it (is there a key to be found? a magical pass-phrase we need to learn? an alternative entrance?) then the thief fails.

"If the GM wants this to happen, if GM wants that to happen." Sounds pretty railrady to me.

How about the GM doesn't decide such things? How about the PCs can try open the lock, if they roll well, they do so. If they fail, perhaps then the PCs can look for those other options for opening the door. The trajectory of the game is determined by the actions of the characters and the results of the dice, not by what the GM wants.

But if we are given a random chance to succeed, with no cost to failure, the message is "It really doesn't matter to the story whether or not you get the door open. It's fine either way."

Presumably it matters to the characters, otherwise they would not be trying to open it in the first place. But yes, either result is fine "for the story" as there is no predetermined direction for the story.

How and I supposed to get excited about that, or be invested in the die roll?

It is a roll which in one small part determines the direction of the story.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yeah, well, the point of this thread wasn't to argue about why I like playing this way, but to ask for scenarios that would challenge this approach. And I got a few of them. The Iocaine Powder scenario was the....trickiest.

I totally get that some people do NOT want to play this way. I know @pemerton loves Torchbearer, and while it is clearly an RPG, it's not a mode of RPGing that appeals to me. We all have our preferences.

As for the whole martials vs. casters thing, I probably shouldn't have taken that bait at all. That's been a point of contention for a long time, and people are pretty passionate about it.