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

[pemerton]

The player knows that, but the PC does not. If the player has the PC act as if he knows he can't be killed by a single attack, that is in my opinion poor roleplaying.

My whole point is that the player knows that, although the PC doesn't. Because the player - not unreasonably - knows the rules of the game.

As for the notion that it is poor play for a player to act on that rules knowledge - almost the whole of D&D play depends on this! If players didn't act on this information, they wouldn't have their PCs make the sorts of decisions that are absolutely typical of D&D play.

For instance, in D&D play the players having regard to their hit points remaining is just a basic part of their decision-making about how to handle risk.

 

[pemerton]

Combat has more rules, because it's a complex part of the game. I don't think it has that many rules because of uncertainty. Unless you are saying that the complexity of combat creates confusion which also means uncertainty, and so the combat rules are needed. That I can agree with.

This is circular - the only reason combat in D&D is complex is because of its rules. Which are inherited from a wargaming tradition.

It can be made as simple as you like, and other areas of play as complex as you like.

And combat can also be resolved via GM decision-making just as easily as anything else.

Eg the GM has a notation "Big bruiser, long reach" and tells the player "The NPC is big, with long and muscled arms." The player says, "OK, I charge in!" And the GM narrates "He grabs you and hurls you aside!"

That is, the approach to the blacksmith that @The Firebird and @SableWyvern have set out upthread can be applied just as easily to combat.

EDIT: Just to acknowledge that @hawkeyefan already said all this!

 

[pemerton]

I think sometimes that Dogs might've been a better text to read first.

I've read DitV, but not as closely as HeroWars/Quest or Burning Wheel.

The most important idea I've seen in DitV (and I'm not saying it's the most important idea - just the one that has stood out to me) is to actively reveal the setting/situation in play.

I think a lot of the discussion in this thread about the bribing of guards, the climbing of cliffs, etc is really about whether the GM should be actively revealing the situation, or being more coy about it.

 

[pemerton]

The argument takes place all the time with respect to skills. I'm not sure why you think it is odd for social encounters.

But I never see it for combat.

Which is why I infer that the argument rests on a typically unspoken premise - namely, that the way classic D&D carves up the play space (wargaming for combat; largely free narration for everything else) is the way of doing RPGing.

EDIT: This post from upthread expresses the same idea, I think, but more clearly connects it to the aesthetics of play:

I think which sorts of fictional situations you choose to have rules for is an aesthetic choice, not built out of necessity. We can handle any situation solely through fictional positioning. In fact, we had a whole session last night in our Blades game where to dig into some character history in the runup to the last few scores of our game we simply talked things out without any fortune mechanics, violent conflicts, physical conflicts and social conflicts were all part of it.

<snip>

There's nothing special about any particular fictional situation where one needs rules for one or one does not need rules for another. I believe claims to the contrary are basically attempting to establish a default or "natural" RPG experience instead of simply seeing the way they do things as one possible way.

 

[The Firebird]

That is, the approach to the blacksmith that @The Firebird and @SableWyvern have set out upthread can be applied just as easily to combat.

EDIT: Just to acknowledge that @hawkeyefan already said all this!

As did I, below.

I think there's a deeper point to @AlViking's post. It brought to my mind the Rules Elide essay, which has gotten some discussion.

To summarize, the main idea is that rules elide (or avoid) parts of the world that we don't want to or can't deal with otherwise. For example, it isn't fun to talk through how exactly a player would pick a lock--what they are feeling for, where they put pressure, etc. So we include a rule like "roll for X". Likewise, we don't describe precisely what we are doing in combat, like "I advance two steps, feint with a sword thrust, then move to an overhead chop". Instead we roll to hit.

Adding narrative mechanics is saying that we don't want to deal with the blow-by-blow of simulation. E.g., we don't want to have to decide exactly why the innkeeper is responding this way in context; we just roll and discover. We don't want to have to decide how many guards the Crows put on duty; we make a Prowl check and find out.

This is good because making these simulationist decisions is hard, especially for the DM to do impartially.

But it's bad because it makes the creative actions a player make less meaningful. Going back to the combat case, my choice to 'feint' is meaningless when the only resolution mechanism is roll to hit. If my character doesn't have a way to do that specified by the rules, then it doesn't matter how I say it.

I think people rejecting the more narrativist approach are reacting against this perceived lack of agency.

 

[pemerton]

A demonstration of the problem with D&D style hit points

That seems a matter of taste.

Reifying what's essentially a system convention into an in-world knowledge thing, when its essentially the player making a decision his character shouldn't be aware to make.

Who is reifying? My whole point is that this is a well-known rule where the player is able to make decisions relying on the rule without anyone fussing too much about how it relates to what the PC knows.

And hence I'm puzzled why the issue of PC uncertainty gets trotted out for other domains of decision-making.

A practical consequence of it, that I have observed, is that it pushes players in D&D towards combat as a solution, precisely because that is a domain of activity where knowledge of, and control over, outcomes becomes more feasible.

It also pushes towards the use of spells, for the same reasons.

 

[SableWyvern]

Again, I think you're conflating trust-in-intentions with trust-in-judgment. They seriously, seriously aren't the same thing. People toss up failures on the latter on occasions in all kinds of contexts, ranging from the serious to the trivial.


I'm again baffled that this is contraversial.

I agree they're not the exact same thing, but have never had either be a problem. I'm baffled that so many people have experienced issues with either, yet continue to game. I wouldn't, because if my games were like that, the hobby just wouldn't hold much appeal for me. I've seen people talk about how, if the rules are unclear, their games (with friends even) constantly devolve into arguments. It all sounds terribly unfun, to me and I'm glad both of those trust problems have always been non-issues for me.

I haven't damaged a friendship over it in a long time, but I'm not going to claim that people wanting the game to move on fast over every other problem that may crop up is going to go over well, and I don't think its an intrinsically reasonable expectation. If you do, that's your choice, but at least accept what those of us who feel otherwise are talking about and don't join the crowd that acts like we think every GM is malevolent.

I can't imagine damaging a friendship over gaming, ever. I genuinely just can't (I mean, I can imagine it, like I can imagine a fantasy world, but I can't see a way in which it could feasibly happen to me in the real world).

That said, anyone is of course welcome to game under whatever expectations they're comfortable with and can agree on with their group.

As I've said many times, all I'm doing is explaining how it works (and works very well) in my own group. When people talk about the issues they have, and I consider that these are problems I've literally never experienced, it feels relevant to point out that it's possible to game without those things being a problem, and why I feel I haven't experienced them.

If someone explicitly asks me, "But how do you deal with this?" then I'll try and answer. But all I'm doing is explaining how I deal with it (or why I feel I don't need to deal with it). I'm not telling anyone they need to have the same expectations or interests or solutions, and I can't be held accountable if the solution I use is one they feel isn't going to work for them.

 

[pemerton]

Every time you climb more than 10-20 feet you risk serious injury if you fall. Not sure why you feel compelled to diss our personal experiences.

I'm not dismissing anyone's experience.

My point is that, if all of your Scout troop survived it, then - assuming that they were not prodigies - it should pose no risk to a 5th level Barbarian PC with STR 18. Which means it can't be more than DC 5 to DC 10.

Something which is DC 25 is almost impossible for that same Barbarian (+7 has a 3 in 20 chance of success). That barbarian, who is one of the strongest people around and better trained than nearly anyone (+3 proficiency bonus; 1st level expertise is +4).

Whatever exactly that looks like, I would find it odd that the Barbarian in question can't intuit, by looking at it, that it will be pretty hard. I mean, you - AlViking - think you can do that, insofar as you're looking at a real-world climb and labelling it DC 25.

 

[pemerton]

Your point?

If a GM says, "I don't announce DCs" but then goes on to say "I give descriptions of chances of success that more-or-less correspond to DCs" then the debate seems to be about terminology used rather than the basic principle of disclosing likelihoods of success.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've always thought about insufficient knowledge being more of a concern for me when we're in a Gamist milieu. It can be really hard to make interesting, effective decisions in the play-space if the constraints on my choices aren't known sufficiently. There's few things that suck more than the feeling that I've wasted a turn or burnt a resource for lack of information about the state of the game.

For Narrativist play, I want clarity in scene-framing and descriptions, and, though I'm comfortable with knowing more than my little dude and enjoy operating from a position of dramatic irony, I can deal with partial or obscured knowledge far more easily. I can always fall back on pursuing my little dude's goals aggressively.

This precisely.

As usual, folks who don't play narrativist games (and in most cases never have!) throw out an accusation of demanding perfection etc. when nothing could be further from the truth. You DON'T know everything. In many cases, no one knows everything.

But it's terribly easy to dismiss a style one doesn't know anything about. All while, y'know, calling out others for (allegedly) doing that very same thing. Super fun, that.