D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[hawkeyefan]

GM owns the decisions they make and their consequences, including what factors they used in that decision. But player dissatisfaction doesn’t automatically mean the decision was wrong or unjustified. That’s why the context of the decision needs to be evaluated to understand better why the player is dissatisfied in the first place.

I've been trying to avoid words like "wrong" because I don't really think there's a wrong way to play if everyone involved is on board.

"Unjustified" though? I think that's definitely relevant. Very often, what's "realistic" is an entire range of possibilities. So, when a GM chooses from among those possibilities, and he chooses one that denies information to the player instead of one that provides information to the player, the GM is deciding to deny information to the player.

 

[The Firebird]

Play what game? Twenty questions? Is this what you tend to focus on when you play?

No.

This is the kind of "conventional wisdom" that after many, many years I've come to eschew. There is no reason to hold back every shred of information as if it's a major discovery. You can indeed just narrate things like "you can tell just by the way he looks that this guy isn't going to take a bribe" or "you can just tell this guy is lying".

I don't think you're accurately describing my position. I don't think you need to "hold back every shred of information as if it's a major discovery". The players don't need to spend a whole session just to learn the guard schedule.

Personally, I want to know how the players will deal with the un-bribeable guard. I don't want to wonder how they'll even find out he's un-bribeable. I'll just share the information. I'm generous with information because I recognize the players' understanding of the situation in play is entirely dependent on my ability to describe it to them. So I share a lot. Why not? What's to be gained? A long drawn-out interaction with a guard? Why? Let's get to the good stuff.

Yeah, this is the difference in playstyle. Blades in the Dark replaces a lot of the planning and approach with the engagement roll, which is supposed to skip the boring stuff and get straight to the action.

Personally, I think the contingency planning, the approach, scoping the place out, is fun and interesting, not boring. So abstracting all this stuff doesn't work for me. It makes it feel like less of a game.

You don't have to play to discover information that the GM has already determined.

No. But I find it more enjoyable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I don't. That's the whole point! I have no idea what "I try to make my world realistic" means.

Because, to reference TVTropes, Reality Is Unrealistic. There are huge, vast, megalithic swathes of reality which people outright reject. Remember that the sounds of horses on cobblestones are almost never actual shoed horses on cobblestones, because people are so used to the clacking coconut-shells sound, and don't have any context for what actual horses sound like trotting around. It is, quite literally, a situation where what is actual reality would be rejected for being "unrealistic"!

So no, this statement says nothing. It might as well say "I try to make my world fnord". I don't know what "realistic" means--and that is what makes it a platitude, not a procedure nor a description. A "procedure" really does mean something closer to an algorithm. They aren't 100% identical, but they're pretty close siblings.

Can you accept the possibility that a statement that says nothing to you can provide still useful data to others?

 

[mamba]

If this is actually a context where trust must be earned and maintained by the GM, rather than one where the GM merely has it by the divine right of dungeon-kings, why is it such a problem to question?

I have no problem with the question, I agree that it needs to be maintained. I might disagree with the earned part in the sense that there are limits to how much can be earned before the first session.

I see trust more as given until I have reason to revoke it than something that the DM has to earn upfront. Upfront you should check if the style of game you want and the GM are compatible however, not being compatible is not the same as the DM not being trustworthy to me

Oh, and the GMs never have to earn trust. It's always something they just have, automatically and infinitely.

definitely not indefinitely, but probably initially

 

[Maxperson]

More that 10s and 20s D&D is a rejection of the conformity of 80s and 90s' expansion for money.

And that rejection returns it to something similar to 70s D&D although with different sources.

There was no conformity in the 80's and 90's. The vast majority of us house ruled our games to the point where each game was different enough to have to stop and learn how a new DM did things before we could play with a new group.

There was/is more conformity with the WotC editions due to having so many rules for everything, as well as social changes in how kids were raised, than there ever was in the TSR editions.

 

[mamba]

Yes, because those rules are, ideally, transparent and visible to the entire table.

and how do you enforce that the DM is following those rules?

 

[robertsconley]

I've been trying to avoid words like "wrong" because I don't really think there's a wrong way to play if everyone involved is on board.

"Unjustified" though? I think that's definitely relevant. Very often, what's "realistic" is an entire range of possibilities. So, when a GM chooses from among those possibilities, and he chooses one that denies information to the player instead of one that provides information to the player, the GM is deciding to deny information to the player.

Creative choices like using realism or consistency as guiding principles are certainly worth discussing, but that’s not the central issue of why I replied to you. My point is that dissatisfaction doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If we don’t look at the full situation, we’re just reacting to the outcome, not understanding what led to it.

With that understanding in place, we can determine the right approach to address the player’s dissatisfaction.

 

[AlViking]

It wasn't a devil contract though. It was literally just the (religious) belief that drinking any amount of alcohol would eternally damn both the drinker and their family.


Given that's literally what I said in response to it--that you do yourself no favors with such an example--it's nice that we've finally reached agreement.


Really? There was nothing hyperbolic in the thing you were responding to. The person you responded to was speaking about how you as GM decided that's what this character would believe, so appealing to "realism" isn't a defense. As was said just a bit upthread, "realism" isn't causing that character to have that belief. The GM is causing it.


Would it help to tell you I don't think that?

Instead, I think that GMs need to EARN trust. Nobody deserves trust. It must be earned. One of the most effective and efficient means to gain trust is to be cooperative, straightforward, and forthright. Playing by rules, and making those rules clear and check-able by all participants is another highly effective means to gain trust. Conversely, being secretive, exercising power without possibility of oversight, and rejecting rules as "too confining" is...not how one gains trust. Worse, doing those things and then saying, "Well why don't you just trust me?"--because then you've made the very act of asking for accountability and openness an offense, and you've staked the requirement that the player always and infinitely trust the GM no matter what actions they might take.


Er...how, exactly? I laid out in very specific terms why this temptation is there, what incentives motivate it, and why GMs would be likely to overlook the (extreme) deleterious consequences. That isn't in any way "vague platitudes" like "I try to run a realistic setting".

I get that for you a hyperbolic response to hyperbolic situation is apparently the equivalent of winning the lottery. I made up something on the fly I have never used in a real game. But if I did, so what? The example given? "We will kill you and your family if you do not take a drink"? How much more ridiculous can it get? At that point I would assume that there was poison in the drink and that there is no reason to believe the person forcing it is to be trusted anyway.

On the other hand it's a fantasy game where devils are real, signing a contract with small print in order to f*** over the person signing the contract is par for the course. Right now there are people risk their lives and the lives of their families to stand up for what they believe in.

The most likely reason someone would refuse a drink in my campaign would be because the NPC doesn't know who the characters are and does not trust them. I may also base it on a random roll, there are plenty of people who don't drink for a wide variety of reasons. I rarely drink and if someone offers me a drink and I politely decline and they keep on insisting that I have a drink, I'm probably going to dig in my heels and refuse. Of course nobody's ever put a gun to my head to force me to drink because that would never happen under normal circumstances.

 

[Maxperson]

Is such a deity part of "realistic" worlds?

Because, again, if that's what we're allowing as "realistic", the term is meaningless. Nearly anything is "realistic" then--and so we're right back at square one, where the GM is doing whatever they feel like doing, because they can make anything they feel like doing "realistic".

You're making the classic mistake of conflating real world realism with fantasy realism. When people talk about realistic in fantasy settings, that realism includes fantasy realism. Magic is realistic, because in a fantasy system, magic is part of the fantasy reality. It has been established to be that way.

Things like falling 20,000 feet and getting up and walking away have not been established as part of the fantasy reality like magic has. The game's mechanics just result in that being the case, which is why a lot of people find that to be unrealistic. If there was some sort of setting lore where there was a god whose whole job was to ensure that nobody broke any bones and a lot of people managed to walk away from a 20,000 foot fall if they were skilled enough, such survival would be realistic for that setting.

So yes, such a deity is part of "realisitic" worlds, and no allowing that as "realistic" does not render the term meaningless. You just need to understand the difference between real world realism and fantasy realism, instead of conflating the two.

 

[robertsconley]

and how do you enforce that the DM is following those rules?

Joe: Hey, Rob, why was there a dragon in that meadow?

Rob: I felt like there ought to be one.

Joe: But the nearest dragon lair is 200 miles away across the Westwall Mountains.

Rob: I just it would be cool for a dragon to fly in to fight you guys.

Joe: Rob you are being an a*h**. That was b*s*.

Rob's Note: I do have a friend that I game with named Joe, and that's how the exchange would go if I tried to do something like this.