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

[pemerton]

If you want a very unsatisfying and boring combat, sure, you can flip a coin. If you want enjoyable combat, you need quite a bit more for rules.

I've had combats resolved by simple opposed tests - they weren't unsatisfying and boring!

 

[Hussar]

This kind of thing is part of the reason why I don't find any appeal at all in the idea of playing RPGs with strangers.

That's not intended as a judgement on anyone who does game with lots of different people and I understand that, for some people, meeting lots of different people is actually part of the appeal of the hobby. I also believe it's probably possible to game with a lot of different people and avoid any significant issues. It's just that this has never been the way I've interacted with the hobby, and the fact that so many people seem to talk about all these problems they encounter (to the point that some people refuse to believe those problems can be avoided) only serves to reinforce for me that sticking to gaming being something I do with existing friends is absolutely the right call for me.

It's not a question of playing RPG's with strangers particularly though.

I've been gaming for forty years. I've lived in a lot of different places. I've completely lost count of the number of groups I've belonged to over the years. No idea, other than lots. Real life happens. The "played together for thirty years" group is very, very much the outlier and not the norm. "Played together for 18 months" is probably closer to the longest most people have a stable group.

The longer you play, the more DM's you're going to have. That's just natural. I mean, sure, if you're lucky enough that you and the friends you game with are all living in the same area for decades at a time, fantastic. One of my players, I've gamed with since about 2004. The others? Four or five years is the absolute longest I've gamed with anyone, other than that one player. And, frankly, I imagine that's true for most of us.

Which goes a LONG way to explaining why we might be talking past each other though. Our experiences are just so different that while we might both be in the same hobby, we very much aren't playing the same game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

...until Snardly XII succeeds where all before him have failed, and goes on to become a superstar...

Er...no. That's just...not really true.

Seeing one person succeed after many, many, many, many failures is not going to make everyone think success is just one lucky roll of the dice away. Humans are, in general, by nature, risk-averse--because risk aversion is a good survival strategy. As I know I've told you before. Humans respond to "you have a 1% risk of instant death" with "ah, so I should never, ever do that thing, gotcha" in the vast majority of cases.

Perhaps you have a group of people who all think like speculative investors, where the thrill of never knowing whether you'll go bankrupt tomorrow is valuable to them. The vast majority of people do not think like that.

 

[Lanefan]

I disagree with this. The difference between the "Good DM" and "Bad DM" is that the Good DM will tell the players why the guard is unbribable. This may be in character where the guard says something like "I am a member of the temple guard! Our honor is beyond reproach!" or "Do you have any idea what the punishment is for a guard who takes a bribe?" Or possibly another NPC says "Don't even try bribing the guards--they don't take bribes, and they get real creative with the idiots who try." Or this may even be out of character--one of my GMs likes to tell us their reasoning behind their rulings or why they have NPCs that act in various ways.

I'll do that for NPCs sometimes too, but never in the moment while the interaction is still ongoing or might potentially resume. Afterwards, once the interaction is long over and the NPC is highly unlikely to be or become relevant again, then sure.

Rulings I'll always try to explain and I don't mind taking a bit of time for discussion if it's contentious, if only because once made those rulings are set in stone as precedent and so I'd better get 'em right.

 

[Hussar]

I disagree with this. The difference between the "Good DM" and "Bad DM" is that the Good DM will tell the players why the guard is unbribable. This may be in character where the guard says something like "I am a member of the temple guard! Our honor is beyond reproach!" or "Do you have any idea what the punishment is for a guard who takes a bribe?" Or possibly another NPC says "Don't even try bribing the guards--they don't take bribes, and they get real creative with the idiots who try." Or this may even be out of character--one of my GMs likes to tell us their reasoning behind their rulings or why they have NPCs that act in various ways.

Whereas the Bad DM won't because they don't have a reason for it beyond railroading. Or if they do give a reason, it will be a bad one ("the guard and all their loved family will go to hell if they take a bribe" ), or inconsistent with established fiction ("wait, the temple guards don't take bribes? But you let us bribe the last two temple guards. What gives?").
/snip

See, but the Bad DM knows that the players will not like railroading, so, he covers his railroading by saying that the guard is a member of the temple guard. See, you're thinking that the Bad DM is stupid. He or she most certainly is not. See, the Bad DM doesn't think they are a Bad DM. They think they are a Good DM. And they know what Good DM's will do, because they see advice like this. So, again, from the player's POV, a lot of times Good and Bad look exactly the same.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's if-when the GM says...

3) Oh, I dunno - <shrug> - I'll make something up at the time depending what I feel like.

...that the red flags fly and the feet start looking for the door.

Is...

Is that not how your style works?

Because that's how I had understood it this entire time.

 

[Hussar]

No GM will ever be perfect but it typically becomes pretty obvious when the GM is just making decisions to direct play. On the other hand if they're open about it that we're playing a linear campaign? It doesn't bother me.

I know your a big fan of the procedural approach, I just don't think that approach, or narrative, or story first, or any other approach is going to always lead to a better game. So celebrate what you enjoy but I don't see a reason to tell others their style is flawed.

Sigh. It would help SO much if you'd stop making this personal.

I have repeatedly stated that I'm running an Out of the Abyss 5e game. And I even posted exactly how I was doing exploration, which showed that nothing I was doing was proceedurally generated. It is possible to like more than one style of game. I know that's hard to believe, but, honest, it does happen.

The thing is, no, it doesn't become "pretty obvious". It really doesn't. Because very often both DM's make exactly the same calls. Just for different reasons. But, since the players cannot ever know the reasons, then the whole thing is far more similar looking than people think.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I fail to see a problem with this.

Having a standard everyone can understand and learn is extraordinarily important for all sorts of things.

Having to fundamentally re-learn the game--having to play the DM rather than play the game--is a real bummer for a LOT of people.

I'm not saying nobody should ever make judgment calls. But it's quite clear that we are way, way, WAY closer to what you call "the kitbash-happy 1e days" than we are to anything like 3.x, in terms of culture-of-play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Let's be...erm...realistic here for a moment: the players have access to most of the information already. Whether they actually read and-or remember much of it is another question entirely.

And as far as I'm concerned, this is...really not true. Like at all.

As far as I'm concerned, the DM is relying on a mountain of evidence they'll never actually be telling the PCs, because it's all in their prewritten setting bible sitting over in their office (or wherever they keep their stuff), which "justifies" everything they do, but can't be read by players because that would be the spoiler to end all spoilers. (And, to be clear, I wouldn't want to read it! I don't want spoilers! But it's a bit hard to swallow "you just have to trust me, it's in my notes that I can't show you".)

The vast majority of things DMs think in their heads and describe in their notes never actually appear before the players directly--and thus never get talked about in more than extremely oblique ways. But all of it can still affect (or even "determine"!) DM decision-making.

The players only hear what the DM says out loud. But the DM thinks a million things that never escape their lips--and write a million more that likewise never get heard by players.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

It's a question of vague vs precise. "It looks easy" is IMO far more vague than a precise "The DC is 7"; and most of the time the PC in the fiction wouldn't do any better than the vague estimate of whether something like climbing a cliff* is trivial, easy, tricky, hard, very hard, or good luck with that.

The vague-form descriptor also allows for the possibility of the observer flat-out getting it wrong. If I say "The DC is 7" then as DM I've just committed to that DC and it can't be any more or less than 7; but if I just say "It looks easy" I've left open the possibility that looks can be deceiving and for some reason it's actually considerably trickier than it looks (say, DC 13).

* - other than the bottom eight feet or so if at the bottom or the top three feet or so if at the top, which the climber can examine up-close and carefully before starting.