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

[robertsconley]

Winning all the time? That’s boring!

An observation on this: in many campaigns, regardless of play style, the issue isn’t whether the players win, but how they win.

Eventually, players become skilled enough to handle all but the most dangerous threats. But even then, challenges remain. The nature of the complications shifts, leading to new kinds of adventures. They’re no longer scrambling to survive—they’re navigating consequences.

A classic example is the powerful warrior who becomes a ruler. In combat, they’re unmatched—able to defeat nearly any opponent and turn the tide of battle. But as a ruler, they face problems that can’t be solved with a sword: politics, diplomacy, resource management, and moral dilemmas. As one of my players once put it, “Somehow I’m able to kill anything that moves, yet I still have complications.”

The fundamental question players must eventually confront is: Now that I have all this power, what do I do with it? If that question isn’t asked, boredom, just as you mentioned, is almost inevitable.

This same principle applies when characters are not as skilled and prone to failure, like not picking a lock. Some are interested in not only working out the implications of success, but also the implications of failure. They like to figure out what to do when the character fails to pick the lock.

 

[TwoSix]

You think wrong.

Things going badly for the characters is what makes things interesting for the players.

Winning all the time? That’s boring!

@hawkeyefan is completely obviously using "lows" to mean "periods of boredom", not "periods of failure".

 

[zakael19]

I don't agree with that at all. I think that we should be trying to make play as interesting as we can at all times. This doesn't mean that it has to be non-stop action... it means that whatever we're doing, the GM should be pushing the players to make interesting decisions.

A quiet moment where a character brings another one a cup of tea they made just for them, and has a little chat about not being afraid of these new powers is interesting, even if it's very non-action!

I posted over in the Daggerheart(+) thread about how the list of "types of questions" to ask that Blades presents under the larger heading of "Ask Questions" is probably one of the single most useful bits of GMing advice I've personally taken onboard. Like, I'd just never thought to ask players a lot of those things about their characters as we went about play. Half the delight is how open-ended stuff like that is, toss a question out there and get surprised and delighted by where people take it.

 

[Pedantic]

Because I've seen seen plenty of people treat it as so? That doesn't mean they're going to go to the trouble of addressing it, or don't think its serving other purposes. But I can promise I've never seen and rarely heard of people who think repeated failed search rolls are are either interesting or worthwhile.

Right, we should be able to do better than "this isn't a problem" and "this is the solution to problem" as our only points of discussion. Take 10/Take 20 is a perfect example, or you could turn knowledge/investigation/perception into defenses that hidden stuff/information is rolled against.

Less to my taste, but I've also seen a strict "one roll per approach" method, so players are essentially working through a hierarchy of preferred solutions.

My issue with the whole fail forward framework is that it deals so casually with causality, and makes player planning much harder. You can alleviate some of that by pre specifying failure (or partial failure or incomplete success or whatever) conditions ahead of time, but that quickly shifts the gameplay into negotiation and can get unwieldy if players are actually using that information to discriminate between different courses of action. That, and it undermines gameplay around risk mitigation.

You know what I haven't seen that might prove an interesting synthesis? Using some roll based prompt to introduce complications more sparingly. My experience of Blades in the Dark (for example) was mostly wishing I was allowed to stop and deal with the problems that had come up without risking new ones. I can imagine a system that telegraphs rolls that can introduce complications and makes them more sparing. Maybe something like Daggerheart's Fear currency, with strict threshold on how much has to be accumulated and expended by the GM.

 

[zakael19]

My experience of Blades in the Dark (for example) was mostly wishing I was allowed to stop and deal with the problems that had come up without risking new ones. I can imagine a system that telegraphs rolls that can introduce complications and makes them more sparing.

This is more or less how the Threat Roll in Blades Deep Cuts works. You're going along, stating what your character is doing. Like Blades was always supposed to do, where an obstacle is telegraphed or evident the GM states what you'll get (Effect); but then also clearly states what the Risk is. Player says how they'll deal with the risk (Threat), and that's what you're resolving: how well do you avoid the badness.

This significantly reduces the consequence snowball beyond what's already stated, and emphasizes the cost of achieving your goals as the primary test of play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, not at all. It's not something I disagree with. It should be applied to every game, I'd say. I just can't support the "highs are nothing without lows" argument that's been made in this thread and many others. It's an argument for boring play.



Haven't I already explained? Do I need to do so again?

Claiming that some element of playstyle is objectively best like this is going to get pushback. At least from me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

After reading up on Burning Wheel and talking to friends who’ve played it extensively since release, I’d describe it more precisely as a game that challenges a character’s beliefs and motivations in dramatic ways. How those challenges play out can vary significantly, often depending on player choices and table culture.

In that regard, it’s not so different from most traditional play styles. Even in my Living World sandbox, players can choose to engage with situations that test their characters' ideals. For example, a paladin caught in a civil war where both factions commit atrocities, each believing their cause is just, faces a moral dilemma that divine guidance alone may not resolve.

The key difference I gathered from those conversations is that Burning Wheel is designed to focus campaigns around such challenges. In contrast, in my Living World sandbox, that sort of narrative is one of many that might emerge, depending on where the players go and what they engage with.

And just to clarify for @pemerton: I’m reporting what came out of those conversations. The friends in question are long-time Burning Wheel players and are also familiar with how my sandbox campaigns work. It became clear they have a different take on the system than the one you’ve presented here.

The difference to me is that in traditional games focusing on character motivations is a choice made during play. With Narrativist games that choice is locked in when you decide to play at all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You also don't have to throw a fit to have a problem with it. In this case its less the mechanic than the results it produces that sometimes causes people to roll their eyes, and that's sometimes a consequence of the variety of things "failure" ends up producing.

Then there's no way to know either way, which means nothing objective can be said about it.

 

[Campbell]

Claiming that some element of playstyle is objectively best like this is going to get pushback. At least from me.

It's not about the playstyle. It's about the argument because it almost frames exploration as the equivalent of eating your vegetables so you can eat desert. When the reason you play or run a game that involves these low stake scenes should be because you enjoy those scenes. The idea that people who do not enjoy those scenes are missing out in the scenes they enjoy because they are not playing through exploration scenes they do not want to play is silly.

Furthermore, there are going to be highs and lows to any play experience. We do not always bring it equally to every situation. There will be high points and low points regardless. There's no need to actively aim for them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Nothing you're saying has anything to do with what I was talking about.

"Lows" and "highs" in the context of this part of the discussion is now about failures and successes. It's about exciting play only being possible (highs) when there are bits of unexciting play (lows) to which we can compare.

I don't agree with that at all. I think that we should be trying to make play as interesting as we can at all times. This doesn't mean that it has to be non-stop action... it means that whatever we're doing, the GM should be pushing the players to make interesting decisions.



All I said was that you should give it a try. I said nothing about whether you'd like it or why you might or might not. Just... give it a try and decide for yourself.

I mean, this is like one of the most basic bits of advice anyone could give.

Whereas I feel the GM should be allowing the players to make whatever decisions they want, interesting or otherwise, that are within the power of their PCs to make.