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

[Bedrockgames]

Well, I've actually seen this sort of thing be highly contentious, even to the point of exploding a couple of games.

Ia m sure you have. It is a big world. But like I said, this is something I literally never see. I see lots of other things that can become issues. My point is this one is so easy to navigate with a bit of Q&A and people being on the same page. If others have trouble with it, I am sorry, but I don't think that means people engaged in this style have an obligation to change how they do things or justify their play style simply because others find this difficulty arises for them

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Why is it silly? More specifically, why is that silly but having the game arbitrarily decide a PC is too shaken to kill someone not silly?

It's not arbitrary, save that all game rules are somewhat arbitrary. Silly is a master of taste.

BW requires an intent and a task for action declarations, and the required roll for cold blooded murder is the Steel test. If the character passes the Steel test, the murder is done as they've described it. They get their intent. If not, they've hesitated and failed to achieve their intent. Thinking about it more, a GM could allow for the murder to happen anyhow and use the hesitation as a factor in the description -- the player gets what they want, but not quite as they intended (at the risk of being grim, after hesitating, the first stab is no good and a second stab is required, and the victim makes some loud noise, etc).

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Not really, but I'm not making my point very well and am starting to wonder if I can in this case.

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.

We can make the speaking bits correlate but we can't make the combat bits correlate; we all know how to talk or communicate but we don't all know how to proficiently wield a longsword or cast a spell or even ride a horse.

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

When we have to, yes; and there's no doubt that some elements of play absolutely need that mechanical abstraction.

Thing is, though, there's elements of play (mostly involving social encounters and roleplay) that don't need to be abstracted, and the question becomes one of whether or not to abstract them anyway. To this my answer is almost always go with non-abstraction where the choice exists.

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?

I'll just say I don't like the concept in general in any milieu and stop there.

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.

If you're keeping info from them that they should have had, that's a problem. In my A-to-R example above, if they should have known about steps C, E, and J-K-L in the chain of consequences spilling from action A and I didn't tell them, that's completely on me.

But if there's no way they could ever know in-character about consequence-chain elements B, D, G, and M through P then I'm not going to connect those dots for them until long after final consequence R has run its course. The fact that those dots are there to be connected after the fact in an out-of-game recap in the pub six months later is IMO enough.

 

[hawkeyefan]

If it is so important in every style of play: why object to strenuously to it?

I’m not. I’m pointing out that there are other reasons and those are the ones worth examining.

But people keep addressing this (including me in the last post I made). But you keep responding with the same arguments. There is no point in beating this to death, but people are going to keep invoking things like plausibility, causality and realism because they matter (and no one is saying that means 100% real world simulation).

They matter to everyone. So, let’s talk about other factors.

No one has responded to this yet so please look at the two descriptions below.

(1) A character faces a cliff that he needs to climb. The GM checks his notes and sees that the cliff is not very detailed other than a basic description and a climb DC. He has to make a ruling! He decides that the character could conceivably and plausibly determine how difficult the climb may be, and the GM then shares all the relevant game information with the player.

(2) A character faces a cliff that he needs to climb. The GM checks his notes and sees that the cliff is not very detailed other than a basic description and a climb DC. He has to make a ruling! He decides that the character would not be able to determine the difficulty of the climb just by surveying it from his vantage point. He does not share the relevant game information with the player.

Given that each of these approaches has considered the plausibility of a climber knowing how tough a climb will be, what other reasons might there be for choosing option (2) over option (1)?

But the point is the GM, at least in OSR play and in sandbox and a lot of what else is being discussed here, makes this decision based on what they think the player would know from the vantage point they have.

But they are the author of what the character would know from their vantage point.

That’s what no one is admitting. Everyone is acting like the world actually exists and is independent and exerting actual cause and effect. But the world is a bunch of decisions made by the GM. The GM makes the decision if it’s plausible for the climber to know how tough the climb will be… he can rationalize it as realistic or plausible either way he decides.

So what else should he be considering?

 

[Faolyn]

Why are we evaluating the Burning Wheel Steel mechanic in terms of the sorts of fiction D&D is utilized to play. No one has suggested importing it. Burning Wheel is not a game designed for the sort of action-adventure heroics being discussed. It's rather brutal combat and healing mechanics would also be a rather poor fit.

Because the idea was put forth that Burning Wheel allows for player-driven gaming, while D&D is by nature GM-driven, requires too much prep to be used for certain types of gaming, can't be done as improv, isn't very good for gaming personal drama, and so on. Which led to pemerton linking to a play report of one of their games that involved what I described here, which used the Steel mechanic in a way that sounds really weird to me.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll be honest, if my character is climbing a cliff, I 100% expect to get enough information to know the odds. "You failed a Perception check, so you have a secret -10 penalty to successfully climb the cliff because you didn't notice the rock is crumbling" is play that can get right out of here.

Why?

Serious question. Why does your character have to have exact knowledge, including unrealistic knowledge of secret information, of the odds before trying something?

Or put another way, why can't your character screw up due to something it didn't notice or know about?

 

[Faolyn]

It's not arbitrary, save that all game rules are somewhat arbitrary. Silly is a master of taste.

Well, ask @AbdulAlhazred why a roll to determine if one sort of autonomic reflex functions is silly but not a roll to determine why a different type of reflex isn't.

 

[Maxperson]

It isn't a strange attitude; I simply find it a regrettable one.

One of my groups, as an example, has tried two very different versions of 5e, Troika!, Mork Borg, Dolmenwood, Honey Heist, Uncharted Worlds (a sci-fi PBTA), Monster of the Week, and one or two other games I can't remember, all in the last 3 years. It's a ton of fun, and I wish more tables were like that.

I find that I enjoy a lot of RPGs as one shots or played every now and then, but only a few have gripped me enough to want to play them as a campaign.

 

[Maxperson]

I have 4 tables. In my ideal world, one of them would be D&D focused and the other three open to variable games (a "flex table"). Right now, I have three "D&D tables" and one "flex table".

So it absolutely does affect me.

I wish I was closer. Your PBP game was really fun, but it just didn't move fast enough for ADHD me to keep on top of it.

 

[AlViking]

I’m not. I’m pointing out that there are other reasons and those are the ones worth examining.



They matter to everyone. So, let’s talk about other factors.

No one has responded to this yet so please look at the two descriptions below.

(1) A character faces a cliff that he needs to climb. The GM checks his notes and sees that the cliff is not very detailed other than a basic description and a climb DC. He has to make a ruling! He decides that the character could conceivably and plausibly determine how difficult the climb may be, and the GM then shares all the relevant game information with the player.

(2) A character faces a cliff that he needs to climb. The GM checks his notes and sees that the cliff is not very detailed other than a basic description and a climb DC. He has to make a ruling! He decides that the character would not be able to determine the difficulty of the climb just by surveying it from his vantage point. He does not share the relevant game information with the player.

Given that each of these approaches has considered the plausibility of a climber knowing how tough a climb will be, what other reasons might there be for choosing option (2) over option (1)?



But they are the author of what the character would know from their vantage point.

That’s what no one is admitting. Everyone is acting like the world actually exists and is independent and exerting actual cause and effect. But the world is a bunch of decisions made by the GM. The GM makes the decision if it’s plausible for the climber to know how tough the climb will be… he can rationalize it as realistic or plausible either way he decides.

So what else should he be considering?

Knowledge is not automatic. In my experience, sometimes you can't tell how easy or difficult it is to climb a cliff so I have no issue with the idea that it might not be apparent to a character. Yes, I'm the author of this scenario and I may tell the player that they can't tell for many reasons. But it's become apparent that no explanation or reason on my part will matter.

All that really matters is that as a DM I'm making decisions all the time so that the players have a fun and engaging world to interact with. Sometimes that includes not knowing exact details on how hard or easy it will be to overcome an obstacle. If they decide to climb that metaphorical cliff it may work and it may not. It adds tension to the game which, used in moderation, is fun. It's worked well for me and my players for decades now.