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

[Bedrockgames]

Having agency comparable to what we have as humans on Earth is a choice to limit player agency to the lower to middle end of the possible amount of agency in a fictional game.

Shouldn't a person's agency in life be our standard of agency ? In Hillfolk I can go well beyond what I can do in life simply by saying things. And I like that. But I would not call that agency (or at the very least I wouldnt' say that gives me more agency than someone in an open sandbox)

 

[Xamnam]

Shouldn't a person's agency in life be our standard of agency ?

Not if that's not what the game/system/table/campaign is seeking to emulate.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm there to play a character that - because it's my own invention - I in theory already know everything about that I need to know in order to play it. If there's still things to learn about the character then either the char-gen system or (more likely) my own imagination has failed me.

Which means I should, I hope, either already know whether my character is iron enough to kill or be able to decide it on the spot without help or force from game mechanics.

Okay... that's your preference, and as far as preferences go, it's fine. All anyone is saying is that others have other preferences. I personally don't want to know every detail about my character before play begins regardless of what game I'm playing.

It also doesn't correspond to the way people actually develop and grow, which considering how often you cite how things work in real life to explain your decisions about how to play, makes your choice to determined everything about a character before play a bit of an odd one.

Combat has to be abstracted because we can't do it at the table. Thinking as my character can be done at the table, though, with no abstraction (and thus no mechanics) required.

Actually, no. My friends and I could all beat the crap out of each other instead of rolling dice. But that would not necessarily have any correlation to the fiction. Just as your ability to speak to your pal about a pretend situation doesn't correlate to a diplomat negotiating a life-or-death situation.

No, we use mechanics because it's a game.

Fair comment.

What I've been trying to skate around is having to get into just how much I detest and revile the sort of introspective angsty self-reflection that some see as "character development" or "learning about one's character" and that some of these games seem to expect the players to engage in within the fiction.

I'll stop there, because if I go on I'll use lots of blue words leading to red text.

Why do you detest that such games even exist? No one is saying you have to play them. But this idea that there's something somehow wrong with such games?

No. Hawkeyefan asked what seemed like a straightforward question and even though I wasn't who was asked, I answered it anyway.

You'd think so, right? And yet those errors keep being made.

I'd say there it's more a question of, even if the players can't connect the dots in the here and now, the DM is able to explain later how the dots in fact connect and have it be consistent with the already-established fiction. A warning sign that this might not be the case is if I-as-player am too often asking "How did action A produce consequence R without us noticing it go through at least some of the intervening letters of the alphabet?"

See, I would say that the more often I have to connect the dots for players after the fact, the more problematic it may be. Not because I'm being inconsistent... but because I'm consistently keeping information from them.

 

[thefutilist]

Letting these decisions and outlook on life just kind of happen without external restrictions is part of why I play the game. Whether it has huge impact on the game or others is secondary.

I would say the external restrictions are in fact there whether you are aware of them or not. I think this is part of Abdul's critique of trad culture, the fish can no longer see the water. That being said, I'm not on a particular mission to convert trad players and I do understand the view point that this stuff can all be emergent.

 

[Maxperson]

There's not a whole lot of light between, "You agree that your character is dead," and "You agree that your character has been convinced." Being convinced is probably rather less final, as well.

I don't agree with that. For a lot of us, there's a rather marked difference between mental and physical. We wouldn't bat an eyelash at our PC being killed, or even being grappled and dragged across a room. Someone ordering the PC to cross the room and then being forced to walk across if he doesn't want to due to a failed "mind control" check, though, is a huge no no for us.

 

[TwoSix]

Shouldn't a person's agency in life be our standard of agency ? In Hillfolk I can go well beyond what I can do in life simply by saying things. And I like that. But I would not call that agency (or at the very least I wouldnt' say that gives me more agency than someone in an open sandbox)

It's a reference point, but it definitely should not be an endpoint when defining the spectrum.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do they need to break trust?

Because outright breaking trust with a single act is really quite hard. But doing something concerning? That's piss-easy.

And then to have your concerns met with some variation of:

1. Wow, I guess you just can't trust people, that must really suck for you
2. Don't you TRUST me, bro??? or
3. You should always trust everything the GM does, otherwise gaming is impossible

communicates that nobody is ever allowed, for any reason no matter how substantial, to ever feel concerned about anything, unless the DM so severely, so egregiously violates trust that the game is already over.


Except there are systems which make this quite doable. The assertion that it is utterly impossible is simply false.


How far does this logic go? Because Umbran's argument seems to work just as well here. Character dying isn't something players want to happen. It is almost always plausible that the character doesn't die from most threats which are at least theoretically lethal. That's where the "chunky salsa" rule comes from--if something happens that would reduce a character's cranium (or similar vital parts of their body) to proverbial chunky salsa, then the character is Just Dead. Things short of that standard, survival is still in the range that makes sense.

So why is it okay to have rules which tell you your character just dies, but not okay to have rules which (say) tell you your character thought they knew what they were doing better than they actually did? Both of those are entirely real-world events, and the latter is (thankfully!) much more common than the former.

Why is it okay to have rules which tell you your character flubbed their attempt to convince a shopkeeper to cut them a deal, but not okay to have rules which tell you your character flubbed their attempt to adhere to their (entirely mundane) oath against consuming intoxicants?

Why is it okay to have rules which tell you that your character's ability to tell if someone lied to them failed when they really needed it, but not okay to have rules which tell you that your character's courage failed when they really needed it?

All of these situations seem to follow the same exact logic, but the former is somehow acceptable because...it was what games did in the past, while the latter is unacceptable because past games didn't? I don't see why "when in Earth history this mechanic first appeared" makes any difference in the degree or nature of agency loss to these mechanics.

Yes, generally speaking the GM does have to break trust for me to distrust them; I don't go into situations assuming a problem (either malice or incompetence).

 

[The Firebird]

No, I’m not asking for certainty. I think the word “know” is tripping us up here.

What would it take for you to suspect the GM might be inconsistent? Like, what would you expect to notice first if you thought there was such an issue?

I think @Lanefan gave a very nice response to this.

The two biggest and easiest-to-see red flags:

Inconsistencies in rulings e.g. when the same situation comes up twice, making a different ruling the second time and ignoring the precedent set by the ruling he made the first time.

Inconsistencies in setting details e.g. this village had a good blacksmith when we were here a week ago but not only is there no blacksmith here now, the villagers claim there's never been one here and they've always had to go over to Dhaskati (another village) for their smithing. Done once, this can sometimes represent an adventure hook or a mystery to solve; done repeatedly it's just an inconsistent DM.

But to add my thoughts--Ime you get 90% of the way there just by asking. Not every GM wants to run a consistent world. If you ask they'll say things like "that combat seemed way too easy for you so I added a half dozen more guards". They'll tell you they value narrative or character moments first, and that they these are more important than consistency.

So really the concerns only come up if 1) they claim to be consistent but are lying or 2) they are genuinely trying to be consistent but aren't doing a great job. If (1) is the case then you've got larger problems; but it's never happened to me. If (2) is the case, then you communicate. They want to improve and the conversation will likely be productive.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't agree with that. For a lot of us, there's a rather marked difference between mental and physical. We wouldn't bat an eyelash at our PC being killed, or even being grappled and dragged across a room. Someone ordering the PC to cross the room and then being forced to walk across if he doesn't want to due to a failed "mind control" check, though, is a huge no no for us.

That's fair. I remember this concept being a pretty big sticking point in a thread a year or two back.

I, personally, don't feel the weight of it; but I can recognize that some people view it as a potent distinction.

 

[Maxperson]

A friend of mine does not like cheese. We treat it like a food restriction for him when he comes over for dinner, so we make sure there are non-cheese options for him. One time, though, he went through three servings of a rice dish, chowing down eagerly, until he realized there was cheese in there, and he suddenly retroactively didn't like it.

That sounds like my son.