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

[Maxperson]

Hey, I know what would be great! Let's slow down play with a bunch of low stakes rolls and push off the interesting bits till next week! After all, we can't appreciate exciting play without dull as dishwater play!

Except there's no such thing. It's all a lot of fun and then sometimes there's an uber moment. I find it hard to believe that you've played our style of play if you think that's how it works.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Except there's no such thing. It's all a lot of fun and then sometimes there's an uber moment. I find it hard to believe that you've played our style of play if you think that's how it works.

I think it was a tongue-and-cheek comment, nothing serious meant by it. Besides dishwater should never be dull, if it is you need to replace it with some fresh piping soapy water. I just did two loads of dishes!
My domestic is coming to a clean kitchen for a change.

 

[Maxperson]

More seriously @SableWyvern , I don't think what I said is a criticism of the entire playstyle. And it's a criticism that can apply to just about any game. Calling for too many rolls and gating more information behind rolls is simply going to slow the game down.

That's subjective. For a lot of people, that's the normal rate at which they have fun, and how you do it is hyper fast. They don't want to play a hyper fast game.

And that's fine. You don't have to play a game that's too slow for you, and they won't play one that's too fast for them. All of you will play at the normal rate.

 

[Maxperson]

We're literally talking about whether you know how difficult a climb is. How could that possibly NOT affect play? It's literally right there (on the soup label? ), specifically about whether and how players can make decisions.

The DM says that the climb looks tough, or easy, or hard, or inconceivably difficult, or... Descriptors are plenty good enough for players to make informed decisions. They don't need to know that the DC is 12, 17, or 22774.

There must be some kind of decision procedure, because you have insisted that the GM is not being arbitrary, they aren't just doing whatever they feel like. "Realism" was given as the decision-procedure, but regardless of whether that is a useful standard (I still don't think it is, but I am leaving that aside), if realism is the decision-procedure, it cannot help the GM distinguish between doing the work to make option A realistic vs doing the work to make option B realistic. Hence, there must be something more to this decision procedure. It doesn't need to be "fixed, hard, universally applicable" anything. It just needs...something else beyond "realism", as almost anything can be made "realistic" by GM effort, doubly so when vast swathes of the world remain forever behind the black box.

That's why you keep getting told that context matters. We have to know all the details(a lot more than people share in examples here) in order to make that determination. You aren't going to get some standard procedure for how they determine realism. Context is it. That's as good as you can get outside of an actual game where the DM is explaining why as he goes along.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The DM says that the climb looks tough, or easy, or hard, or inconceivably difficult, or... Descriptors are plenty good enough for players to make informed decisions. They don't need to know that the DC is 12, 17, or 22774.

Do you also NOT tell them if the Shield spell will help prevent the opponent's attack?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I

If you consider the two different definitions of arbitrary to be indistinguishable, we have again reached an absolute impasse.

If you consider that any GM with the power to make decisions by fiat is definitionally the same as a GM making decisions on completely random whim, giving a GM the power to make decision by fiat will naturally result in an incoherent game. You seem to be saying that playing games the way some of us say we're playing the is impossible. As I mentioned quite some time ago, this makes discussion basically impossible.

I am also completely at a loss as to how I can help you understand what I mean when I say that making decisions about what happens in the game relies on the context of the situation. My usage seems essentially axiomatic to me; the amount of effort I would have to put into analysing and breaking down fundamental concepts is far, far beyond any value I could possibly obtain for the effort and, even if I did make that effort, I'm not remotely convinced I wouldn't just get the exact same response asking for yet more detail.

I am not saying they are the same.

I am saying there is no way for the player to ever, even in principle, figure out whether or not they are different, when 95%+ of the inputs are permanently concealed from them.

It's not just "you need to trust people". It's "you need to trust a person whose only answer if you ever feel unsure is 'you have to trust me because I can't reveal the truth to you, even though I promise you it's true'."

It's not just taking things on faith. It's taking things on faith....and being permanently unable to ever do anything BUT take things on faith, no matter what does or doesn't happen, other than dropping the nuclear option, departing the table entirely.

 

[Lanefan]

I think such a hard stance is hard to justify, for a variety of reasons. Someone can be doing roleplay, and "staying entirely in-character", despite acting on out-of-character motivations. (Essentially, this is the PC mirror image of the "the DM can build justification to make nearly anything 'realistic' so the standard fails to guide decision-making"; a player can craft an in-character response because of out-of-character motivations.)

But entirely separately, I present you one of the greatest threats to such a stance: Me.

Not because I would be intentionally acting against the interests of the campaign. Far from it! I try very hard to be a constructive player. (I assume Hussar's group has tolerated me for that exact reason.)

There's something missing here, I think - did you delete a bit by mistake?

I ask because you say you'd be a great threat to the stance that in-character roleplay is never wasted time but don't say why or how that is.

I mean, it's not an arbitrary meta-rule. Folks adopt it specifically because internal group strife:

• Very often--as in, not quite always, but damned close--does in fact escalate the way you describe. Given such a risk is sky-high and has extreme deleterious consequences if it actually manifests, up to and including total group dissolution, it's no surprise folks have rules against it. It's like fire safety laws forbidding various fireworks. Even if only 10% of Californians use fireworks, and only 0.1% of those do so unsafely, that's still ~40Mx0.1x0.001 = ~4000 people each individually taking extreme risks, each and every one of which could start a devastating wildfire with permanent costs to everyone.
• Is rarely, if ever, actually productive to the ongoing process of play. That is, in the end, you still have to talk out whatever the problem was, it just might be talking it out where one person no longer has any leverage and thus is forced to accept a situation they really don't like. Even for a group that is infinitely chill and never gets worked up about such disagreements, nothing really happens from them except...coming to a decision. If the one and only result is "we come to a decision and move on", anything beyond a more-or-less respectful conversation doesn't really do anything the players weren't already doing anyway.
• Brings down the mood. Even if we assume all the people at the table are infinitely chill and thus cannot even in principle get upset over in-character strife, it's quite likely that instead of being uproarious happy funtimes, it's just going to make things tense, and in the process distract from the experience the players are trying to have. Even if that isn't a concrete, visible thing-you-can-point-at as a problem, it still is a problem to disrupt the experience so. Same reason why many DMs have strong rules about not using smartphones at the table, or being...exacting...about out-of-character chatter (IMO, it's more like "ridiculously punitive of even the tiniest problems" but that's my decidedly not-old-school perspective talking, apparently.)

"Arbitrary" means it's done capriciously, without regard for cost or impact. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of groups which have such a rule have it because internal strife is so disruptive of the experience, whether in theory or in practice, that it is less of a sacrifice to at least reduce it than it would be to permit it.

If-when playing with strangers, I can see this all making sense. Well, except the no-phones-at-the-table piece; they (or tablets) are somewhat essential when a lot of the rules etc. are kept online, as ours are. But even there, once you've run with each other for a few months worth of sessions and got to know each other as real-world people maybe the reins can be loosened a bit.

But when playing with friends where "what happens in character stays in character" is the only meta-rule that matters, I say let 'er rip. Some of our most fondly-remembered and laughed-about sessions over the last 40+ years have been those where the party threw down on each other in one way or another and chaos reigned supreme, and I think the game in general would have been greatly lessened without those moments.

I'm also a "do what the character would do" purist; even if it means the character leaves the party or whatever, I can always roll up another one and bring the first one back later in a different party in the same campaign. Failing that, maybe I've just roleplayed myself out of the game - wouldn't be the first time - simply by being true to my character.

 

[SableWyvern]

I am not saying they are the same.

I am saying there is no way for the player to ever, even in principle, figure out whether or not they are different, when 95%+ of the inputs are permanently concealed from them.

It's not just "you need to trust people". It's "you need to trust a person whose only answer if you ever feel unsure is 'you have to trust me because I can't reveal the truth to you, even though I promise you it's true'."

It's not just taking things on faith. It's taking things on faith....and being permanently unable to ever do anything BUT take things on faith, no matter what does or doesn't happen, other than dropping the nuclear option, departing the table entirely.

This is why others have said it's about trust. I would not play in a group where we weren't implicitly comfortable trusting each other with stuff like this.

If I want to know which version of arbitrary my GM is being, I expect to be able to ask them and receive an honest answer. Worrying that they may be mistaken or lying just isn't a consideration, any more than I worry that they may be a secret arsonist plotting to burn my house down (which is something else I also can't ever know, I just have to take it on faith).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not just taking things on faith. It's taking things on faith....and being permanently unable to ever do anything BUT take things on faith

Err yeah, that’s how faith works (and why
Babel fish are such a threat).

Joking aside, it’s something humans do all the time. It’s how they build relationships, and from those, societies. There is always a risk that someone is lying to you, will betray you, will let you down, but people take the risk anyway. Because if they don’t they are in the jungle, naked and alone, and likely to be eaten by wild animals.

 

[Lanefan]

@Lanefan, somewhere upthread you mentioned you're not interested so much in introspection and the personal development of the characters.

To be clear, it's the introspective angst I've no time for. A character's personal development IMO doesn't need this in order to occur; it can for example be brought on by a series of external factors unintentionally defining a path that the character then adopts and follows, that was never in the plan to begin with.

Example (hopefully, brief): in 3e I had a chaacter who started out as a tank Ranger - my attempt to replicate 1e's "heavy Ranger" in 3e. The heavy-Ranger idea didn't go so well because the 3e system fought me hard on it, no big deal. However, something odd happened during that character's career: to begin with he was a typical forest-y Ranger with no ties at all to the sea, but as play went on it seemed whenever there was a random element that arose involving anything marine - a deity, a magic item, an adventure, etc. - it always worked out in my Ranger's favour. No idea why, it certainly wasn't something I-as-player ever had in mind and it wasn't anything the DM was doing (I asked, more than once!). And so eventually the character just went with it, turned himself into something of a marine-based Ranger, and picked up Cleric as a second class to a Poseidon-equivalent deity.

Granted D&D (even 5e) does not have the mechanics and reward systems of games built with these goals in mind but the little way in which our table has incorporated the traits/ideals/bonds/flaws system is as follows - I'll list two easy enough examples you may find it useful (or not):

Character was trying to shield their mind from a Detect Thoughts spell to some pertinent information.
One of his Flaws being I can barely keep a secret.
So I offered him an XP (valuable in our game) if he leaned into the flaw and let the Detect Thoughts spell glean the information he was trying to hide.

In your game, are XP a metacurrency of some sort, as opposed to their usual function?

Character was meant to attend a rather important meeting with certain influential persons to discuss the attack on Tiamat and her forces. His absence to such a meeting would put his party on the back foot with social rolls (mechanics) and would also incur difficulty with him persuading them on items in the immediate future.
He decided to skip the meeting and lean into his Flaw Unlocking an ancient mystery is worth the price of a civilisation (earning the 1 XP) to gain access to information (in Elminster's abode) that would take a step closer to realise his personal desires. The window of opportunity for obtaining that information was during the same time as the meeting as Elminster was attending the meeting, and it was Elminster's ward who was secretly giving him access to that information.

This one's cool; and I bet the party were some hacked off at him when they met again.

In our games PCs start with the base 4 (1 x Trait, Bond, Flaw, Ideal) and may gain an additional 1 every 2 levels. They are also welcome to change them due to in-game fiction which affects their character. The table, not the DM, is allowed to make a judgment call if they feel something done is NOT worthy of the XP. It is shared fiction afterall and XPs are a big deal. I trust the table to make the best decision for our campaign.

There are other creative ways I have incorporated TBIF but they're not pertinent to character development.

I tried running a few of my characters using the Trait-Bond-Flaw-Ideal system on an informal basis, to see if they could help inform my roleplaying, and found them mostly to be annoying; when rolling up a character there's no way of knowing what situations it's going to get into and whether those elements are just going to get in the way. Part of my issue was that it forced me to choose some specific things up front that I'd rather have develop over time during play, for example instead of having "Unlocking an ancient mystery is worth the price of a civilization" as a baked-in character element from square one, I'd rather see if that situation ever comes up in play and make that decision then.