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

[zakael19]

I spent years writing about the weakening of agency skill challenges represented, precisely because there are so few tools available for players to force their desired outcomes, and when 5e came on the scene, I saw it's skill model of 5 generic DCs as simply moving further in that direction. I don't see see how setting the number of skill checks to get to a negotiated outcome is a sea change over negotiating check by check, or after an unknown number. The actual player levers to pull are still sharply limited.

I don't think those are the ends of the spectrum. If anything, they feel pretty close to one end, with an objective, action-by-action specified, skill system on the other.

To be fair, the "convince the Baron to help you" or whatever it is in the 4e DMG is probably the weakest example SC WOTC produced by far, and most counter productive.

However, I just cannot comprehend (given an open-skill SC using the Skills Compendium or DMG..2? rules) how "player makes a fictional statement and chooses a skill to progress towards their clearly defined goal" is lower in agency around goals of play unless we're back at the "I have more agency if I don't have any outside the character knowledge" stuff. Maybe it's because all the examples of SCs I've seen are the stuff @pemerton and ManBearCat ran for me where it's a mechanism to do Story Now play in D&D in a super satisfying manner.

 

[Lanefan]

What is it "meta" in relation to? How is playing the game, including building my character, "meta"? And how is the GM following the rules "meta"?

Every scene is to be framed having reference to player-determined priorities for their PCs. So as long as you actually get to play your PC, there won't be an issue.

You answer your own questions from the first paragraph with your first sentence in the second.

The fact that "every scene is to be framed having reference to player-determined priorities for their PCs" hands meta-agency to the players on a plate: they get to determine what scenes, or what sort of scenes, the GM has to frame by what they state as their PCs' priorities, before they've even declared a single action for their characters.

The rules give players that meta-agency, which in my view makes them bad rules. Obviously, your opinion will differ.

 

[robertsconley]

I'm curious what @Bedrockgames and @robertsconley have to say about your description of it.

I tried following your part of the thread but it is so chopped up with quotes and replies it was hard to follow. So if @Maxperson or yourself could provide a summary I will be glad to comment.

Second, as I've explained, this scenario with the gnolls would be something that would already be "in motion". This would happen over sessions of play if the players chose not to interact with those elements of play. It could be very easily summarized like this:

1. Gnolls are raiding caravans along the western road
2. Emboldened, the gnolls have begun to attack homesteads and farms not far from town
3. The gnolls use their pillaged funds to hire a couple of giant mercenaries to bolster their force
4. The gnolls attack the town

As a GM, you'd track these events and mark the progression from one step to the next, provided that the players don't get involved in some way. If the players do get involved, then you'd determine the impact that involvement would have on this track of events.

This leapt out at me. Also this is probably not related why you asked for my opinion.

Going from Step 1 to Step 4 the way you described only works if the changes caused by the PCs’ actions don’t ripple out and affect the Gnolls, the Caravans, the Western Road, the Farms, or the Giant Mercenaries. And I’m not just talking about direct impact, consequences that flow from other consequences will have indirect effects as well.

That’s why, after each session, I sit down with my notes and extrapolate again, because those ripples interfere with each other in complex ways. What would persist in your example is the gnolls’ plan to hire the giant mercenaries to advance their goals. At some point, they decided it was a good idea and are simply waiting until they have the resources. So if the PCs, even indirectly, disrupt their ability to gather enough pillaged wealth, the gnolls will undoubtedly pivot and try something else to get those mercenaries on their side.

This is why mechanics like clocks don't work as well for me. Outside of the PCs "social area of effect" sure clocks would work or any other method of tracking factions goals and plans. Or even just plain notes.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, but you're missing the key point here, real world examples are irrelevant. This is not the real world, it is some fiction invented by another person. There's no causality, and there is an agenda (whatever that is, I'm not judging those) as well as game related and other constraints. Arguing about how reality works is just category error.

So are you trying to throw out in-fiction causality entirely?

Also, there's no good reason why the fiction invented by another person (or by me) can't try its best to reflect reality except when fantastic elements dictate otherwise.

 

[Faolyn]

Once again you attribute to me things that I didn't say.

What I actually said was that agreeing to play a dungeon crawl, where - inherent to the nature of the game - the action starts at the entrance to the dungeon - is not railroading.

Yeah it is. That the players are OK with it, or even wanted it, is irrelevant. Having an adventure where there is only one option to take, and if you don't take it, game over, is railroading.

And as I said before, sometimes, railroading is OK, because sometimes players want it. Railroading is not 100% bad all the time under every circumstance. If people agree to play the adventure of the Monster-Filled Cave, then that's fine!

But think of it this way: Imagine we were playing together, and I was the GM, and I didn't tell you that I was running the Adventure of the Monster-Filled Cave, just that we were playing a medieval fantasy game. I put forth the hook and you didn't bite. You decided your character would rather go into the Darkleaf Forests than the Monster-Filled Cave. It's how you built your character and their background and personality--their beliefs and instincts, if you will.

And I tell you that the options are the Cave or no game at all. No forests for you.

I'm pretty sure you would consider that to be a bad thing, maybe even bad enough to make you want to leave the game entirely.

So you (hopefully) see, it's railroading in both examples; it's just that in one example, the railroading was acceptable to the group.

 

[Campbell]

It is a convention of D&D (and many other roleplaying games) that players author their characters (for the most part) and GMs (for the most part) author the setting. It is also a convention that only magical social influence is allowed to have teeth. But these conventions of play are not some natural form, inherent to the medium or intrinsic to the act of roleplaying. It's just one possible arrangement for how we choose to organize this thing we're doing.

What makes zero sense is to evaluate a game operating under different conventions and address discrete mechanics as if they were operating under the conventions you are used to. Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition gives the GM some rules limited shared authorship of the player characters to inflict strife, to determine when anxieties apply and has options for binding social conflicts. These things are not mind-control. It just operates off different conventions than D&D 5e does. You might not like these conventions, but attempting to describe it in terms of your normative conventions does no work and only results in poor communication.

You prefer games with a different set of conventions. That's fine, but it's just a preference. And games get to set the conventions they operate off of.

 

[AlViking]

First I've heard of (or noticed) the bolded bit - I thought he just wanted some blood from the guy.

You still haven't* directly answered my question from upthread about whether in-character prep ahead of time (i.e. always carrying a belt pouch containing an empty vial, sponge, and scalpel) would or could have solved this for the PC without a roll.

* - or if you have, I missed it.

The answer was, as I understand it, that the character was very poor so therefore didn't have a container. Which I call after-the-fact justification, but it was the answer. At a certain point though the approaches to the game are so different I don't think there really is a comparison.

 

[Pedantic]

To be fair, the "convince the Baron to help you" or whatever it is in the 4e DMG is probably the weakest example SC WOTC produced by far, and most counter productive.

However, I just cannot comprehend (given an open-skill SC using the Skills Compendium or DMG..2? rules) how "player makes a fictional statement and chooses a skill to progress towards their clearly defined goal" is lower in agency around goals of play unless we're back at the "I have more agency if I don't have any outside the character knowledge" stuff. Maybe it's because all the examples of SCs I've seen are the stuff @pemerton and ManBearCat ran for me where it's a mechanism to do Story Now play in D&D in a super satisfying manner.

No one needs me to rant about skill challenges again. I was going to go get some representative samples of my point to link to, but then I ran into literally you and I having this same discussion:

Post in thread 'What makes an TTRPG a "Narrative Game" (Daggerheart Discussion)'

Apr 29, 2024

You can probably approximate some of that via deep GM thought and work, and you can grab the "soft moves" that PBTA leans on and use them in a 5e game too, but as soon as things go to player ideations, "moves" the differences separate out. Hacking in skill challenges from 4e helps, but the math doesn't work as well (expertise breaks it) and the 5e skills are just not set up for the breath of player actions. So then you're back to a player looking at the DM for permission.

I didn't want to derail this discussion, but there's a bit of an excluded middle between 5e's skill system and...

• Pedantic

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Below are some more times I lay it out if you care, but my point is the same as above. The choice is not between "DM makes up resolution mechanics" and "let's do an iterated 70%ish roll to determine what happens." The highest agency state is one where the player can make specific action calls that are better/worse at achieving the state they want than some other set of distinct actions. Skill challenges cut that off from the jump.

D&D General Post in thread 'New Interview with Rob Heinsoo About 4E'

May 24, 2024

You said it was gone. It wasn't. It works differently, I certainly grant you that...but you do realize that this was this way because you could use Diplomacy to manipulate others' behavior, right? Skills are very powerful in 4e. Much moreso than 3e. (It still baffles me that 5e uses skill rules more similar to 4e, but almost everyone runs them like the limited, weak 3e skill rules, where doing anything remotely useful has a sky-high DC or is impossible because no defined DC exists.)

And one example does not "lots of stuff" make. If dismissal because of lack of citations for...

• Pedantic

D&D General Post in thread 'Chris Perkins and Stan! - previous D&D edition thoughts'

Feb 7, 2025

The skill points are not alike, yes. But actually using the system? Far more like 3e than any other system--including 4e, the one that the rules actually did get more-or-less copied from. I have no idea why people choose to run 5e's system as if it were 3e. But they do, much to 5e's detriment. Its skill system, especially if they hadn't utterly jettisoned Skill Challenges, could've actually been good.

This is completely untrue. 5e's skill system looks nothing like 3e, setting aside the question of skill points entirely. 3e skill entries start with a...

• Pedantic

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D&D (2024) Post in thread 'Should Bounded Accuracy apply to skill checks? Thoughts on an old Alexandrian article'

Nov 10, 2024

Let's also remember the real point of all of this-- these checks are not the game unto and of itself. Their entire point is to vary the speed in which players acquire narrative advancement in the story they are participating in.

The entire game is a story that is happening at the table. That's why every single mechanic in the game has a narrative description layered on top of it-- so the players can imagine an interesting meaning for what these numbers represent that we are adding together all the time. A player rolling a twenty-sided die and then adding two numbers to it to...

• Pedantic

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[AlViking]

So are you trying to throw out in-fiction causality entirely?

Also, there's no good reason why the fiction invented by another person (or by me) can't try its best to reflect reality except when fantastic elements dictate otherwise.

It's the appeals to extremes fallacy. Your causality can't be 100% accurate so therefore it's pointless.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There was no "for me" in their statement. People on this forum (and maybe the internet in general) are really goddarn fond of absolute statements on subjective topics. I try my best to avoid them and talk instead from my personal POV or how I understand things because that's how I was taught to have constructive conversations.

I get it. That bothers me too.