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

[Maxperson]

Did I ever say they NEVER haggle? No. I said it was ridiculous that absolutely every merchant will ALWAYS haggle, no matter what.

And now we're getting yet another thing I was told no one ever does. That no one ever expects people to roleplay through the painstakingly dull "you ride for three weeks where nothing happens" periods. Really? Are you really going to make the players play through every hour of a multiple-week span of absolutely goddamn nothing happening???


Is it though? How do you know? Like genuinely how do you know this? What is your data set for arguing that there are few periods of 'three weeks of absolutely nothing happened'? Especially since I know you (like everyone) do skip over boring bits too! You don't force the players to roleplay through every single hour of a three-week caravan ride where literally no events occur whatsoever.

Data set? It's a fact that in my game and in many other games I've played in, 3 weeks have passed with nothing terribly interesting happening. It happens.

In some 3 week periods some interesting stuff will happen. In other 3 week periods a lot of interesting stuff will happen. In yet more 3 week periods, nothing interesting will happen. What doesn't happen is only interesting stuff happening. I've never seen that in D&D games.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Absent kryptonite, Superman has about +40 in any skill you can possibly think of; and he doesn't auto-fail on a 1.

Which is part of what makes him the most boring superhero ever.

Nope! He isn't the most boring superhero ever. He is, in fact, the most popular superhero ever. So clearly, he can't be "the most boring superhero ever" if that many people are into it. Note, this is not saying he is the best, nor that popularity indicates anything other than popularity. But it is a perfectly valid argument to appeal to popularity to counter the claim that something is the most boring thing ever.

The problem is that half his writers think that the way to write him is that he has to either (a) fight other supers in direct combat (which he will always win. and which is thus boring) or (b) he will be """challenged""" by asking if he'll choose to do the right thing in a situation where he could do a very very bad thing (which he will never do, and which is thus boring).

It's actually quite simple to write stories for Superman that are frequently very interesting; you literally only need to do one of three things (there may be other options, these are just reliable ones):
(1) Put him in a situation where his moral compass tells him to do something that his allies outright oppose; no matter whether Supes or his allies are the PoV characters, you've instantly got an interesting conflict by doing this, so long as you avoid the lame stupid version of "disagreement" where it only arises from a misheard conversation or similar BS
(2) As noted above, put him in a situation where innocent bystanders and collateral damage are the concern; that way, instead of the boring and instantly-answered "can Superman fight Fluffy the Terrible???", we have the unknown and variable "can Superman protect these people AND fight Fluffy the Terrible?", because even if Superman is indestructible, humans aren't
or (3) challenge him with forces or issues that aren't vulnerable to being punched, superspeed-flummoxed, heat-vision'd, freeze-breath'd, or whatever other powers Superman has in a given context; e.g., a drug problem, or political corruption in the legitimate politics of some context, or, I dunno, a super-powerful ultra-genius businessman getting up to illegal shenanigans, where shutting down one operation does nothing to the overall conflict

You can't write superman the way you'd write Spider-Man or Batman or Daredevil or the like. He isn't like those superheroes, and the kinds of conflicts that would trip them up simply bounce off his bulletproof chest. That doesn't mean he's boring; he's only boring if you force him into stories where he doesn't fit.

The PCs, on the other hand, don't have +40 to every skill roll they ever make and thus can - and do - fail at what they try, on a fairly frequent basis. This is a great part of what makes them interesting: they're not perfect.

Superman also fails. Can you believe it? He fails!

My favorite version, the DC Animated Universe version (voiced wonderfully by Tim Daly), is a heavily flawed paragon hero. He doesn't trust other people to get things done because he's keenly aware that he is nearly invulnerable and they aren't (and he knows how much more powerful he is than them). Lex Luthor knows how to push his buttons almost flawlessly, and even though Superman is almost always right to distrust Lex, it's hard for him to actually combat what Lex does.

Superman isn't perfect. That's the thing here. He's not. The best versions of him are in fact deeply flawed men. They're just deeply flawed men with a genuine commitment to doing the right things for the right reasons, and a crapload of power--the power to act as they think right, even if the world tells them they're wrong...and sometimes, they are. Just like adventurers, once they've got some adventures under their belt.

The other question, that I poked at upthread but got no feedback on, is one of resolution granularity. You want "Climb the cliff to save my friend" to be all one action, I want it to be at least two discrete actions (and maybe more depending what awaits at the cliff-top) each resolved separately. For example, you could succeed easily at climbing the cliff (step 1) but then still succeed or fail on whatever it is you do to try to save your friend (step 2). But if you fail climbing the cliff you never get to your friend, who is now hosed.

But...that's...still a thing??

Just because you got to the top of the cliff doesn't mean your friend is suddenly safe! You've just gotten there in time to--possibly--do something.

I just...I don't understand. Why are you so committed to interpreting everything in the worst, most harmful, most antagonistic light? Why is it you can't give even one charitable interpretation?

 

[SableWyvern]

A) I was trying to communicate how the game I run the most tries to address those concerns/points you raised, such that it avoids situations where "nothing much happens" is really ever on the table/a likely thing when dice are picked up.

B) I honestly don't think it's implausible to assign interesting things connected to the trigger to both sides of a dice roll in just about any game. You may find it uninteresting or non-required, but I've done it in D&D. Worked fine. Followed from the fiction declared by players and established by the group. We don't have the concept of Hard Moves or a wider mechanical apparatus there, so I just framed rolls as conflicts with stakes and potential downsides and we tossed the dice.

Now, obviously, that's drifting 5e away from the sort of "resolve a task" core design and isn't to everybody's taste - by far.

It still sounds like you're trying to help me overcome my problems with your preferred mechanics.

But they're not problems in that sense. It's a non issue for me. There is no problem I have that I need your preferred mechanics or playstyle to fix.

And for the third time, I already understand that you don't feel it's implausible and I'm perfectly OK with that. You don't have to keep defending your position, because I'm not attacking it. You don't have to keep trying to convince me that it works fine for you. I believe you.

I just don't see "plausibility" as entering the conversation, so much as "I don't vibe with that."

OK, so I (and others) have repeatedly said we find it implausible, and your response is to tell me plausibility has nothing to do with it. That being the case, it sounds very much like your position is that anyone who claims they feel it is implausible is either lying or doesn't actually understand what they're really feeling. I mean, that's certainly a position you can choose to take. I don't see much point carrying on arguing with you about it, though, because if you really believe you know what I'm thinking or feeling better than I do, nothing I say is going to matter.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Show me some proof please.

Morale checks. Some saving throws, particularly those regarding mental or observational phenomena. Essentially anything social, where why you're rolling is literally always important.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Get a new repair man.

Ah, yes, because repairmen are just popping out of the woodwork.

Oh wait, no they aren't. Because there's always been a shortage of GMs.

 

[Maxperson]

I've never said it's a bad thing. A lot of posters in this thread, though, have denied that it is a thing (outside of the context of DL-ish play).

I don't recall anyone saying that. A lot of us here have said that our sandbox play is player driven, but that's a far cry from denying DM driven play isn't a thing outside of DL-ish play.

 

[Maxperson]

Wouldn't this depend, at least in part, on the rule that tells you when to roll the dice?

That rule would dictate that some or all the implausibility happens, but it wouldn't stop or reduce the implausibility of every roll resulting in something interesting.

 

[Maxperson]

Player: Hey… can I have gathered herbs while we were traveling from Luskan to Neverwinter?
GM: Sure, you’d have had plenty of time, let’s roll to see how it went.

Problem solved.

Except that didn't solve it. I already covered why what you do can't be the same as what we do. We still will have done more.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, yes, because repairmen are just popping out of the woodwork.

Oh wait, no they aren't. Because there's always been a shortage of GMs.

I'd rather not have a repairman at all than have one that is inadequate. I have better things to do than pay repair men to fail to do their job.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd rather not have a repairman at all than have one that is inadequate. I have better things to do than pay repair men to fail to do their job.

The problem, Max, is that this is a situation where the repairman has already screwed up, and now you're left with a broken mess rather than something fixed up and humming along.