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

[FrogReaver]

One dreads the conversation turning toward "immersion" or "realism" but I've argued before that forward facing causality of action declaration->resolution is an underlying prerequisite off players looking for that experience.

I think there's alot of nuance there, such that painting most people into the box of only wanting forward facing causality isn't necessarily true in all circumstances for them. While some here seem fairly consistent with that, others that want that playstyle don't mind it for seemingly minor details, especially so long as those details get established before they matter in the moment to the situation at hand.

So for example: 'we left town, I didn't say I picked up my arrows. We are still on the road traveling. I feel my PC definitely would have done that even though it wasn't established.' Many groups that still have a strong desire for forward facing causality will be okay with saying I obtained the arrows before we left town. But maybe that changes for some of them if we are in the heat of battle or other circumstances where the arrows might really matter at that moment.

That said, almost no game deviates heavily from forward facing causality with most moves/abilities. You usually only see such moves come up when one is placing PC memories into the players hands (usually in some limited scope) or giving the vibe of having planned without actually needing to have planned.

EDIT: Wanted to add. I see forward facing causality more as a heuristic to help aid in creating a manageable and meaningful space for play. If you don't have it most of the time (a specific scenarios can be exceptions) then pretty much anything can happen at anytime and no one can do any actual planning in relation to dealing with the threats in the world. They are all built on sand so to speak. That's why I find forward facing causality to be necessary (a few specific exceptions not withstanding).

 

[Micah Sweet]

One dreads the conversation turning toward "immersion" or "realism" but I've argued before that forward facing causality of action declaration->resolution is an underlying prerequisite off players looking for that experience.

There are plenty of directions the conversation could turn I would dread far more than immersion or realism.

 

[FrogReaver]

When these coincidences happen every time I fail a roll, they're no longer coincidences.

Curious on how you feel about critical fumbles? Whether that’s driven by GM narrates bad outcome on a 1 or GM rolls on table when a 1 comes up?

Because I see some potential parallels there. I guess the same applies to critical as well.

 

[AlViking]

Curious on how you feel about critical fumbles? Whether that’s driven by GM narrates bad outcome on a 1 or GM rolls on table when a 1 comes up?

Because I see some potential parallels there. I guess the same applies to critical as well.

I don't care for critical fumbles primarily because the higher a fighter gets the more likely they are to fumble. Describing what happens by player or GM is fine but I don't want much more than that. I've played around with it now and then, never found a great solution.

Critical hits are a bit underwhelming in 5e but other than a bit of extra damage, nothing. Had a DM long ago who decided to use a special crit chart - but it included things like "You get stabbed in the heart and die." He used it for his monsters and he liked throwing hordes at us. Unsurprisingly the same DM that "randomly" rolled dragons for random encounters also regularly rolled "stabbed in the heart" quite frequently for my paladin.

I learned two things from that. First, sometimes you just have to drop out of a game and second, be careful with special crits that apply to characters and monsters.

 

[Morrus]

No, it works fine and your previous comment was mostly uninformed nonsense.

Your posts in this thread are becoming increasingly agitated. Please calm down.

 

[Faolyn]

If I'm in a passage that hasn't been disturbed in decades it rather strains credulity that only now does some wandering monster come by when I happen to fail my searching or pick-locks attempt.

And in every other situation? Or do your players only go to places that haven't been disturbed in ages.

Narrating outcomes is the DM's job, not the players'.

Not in every game it isn't. You can get some very interesting results if the players are "allowed" to weigh in.

Welcome to the real world.

Which you're not actually playing in. I don't think anyone signs up for a fantasy game looking to emulate every aspect of the real world.

Just because it's the PCs opening a tea shop doesn't mean it has any greater or lesser chance of succeeding than any other tea shop (though given that most PCs tend to be very wealthy relative to those around them, they're starting from a quite advantagoues position in terms of financing said shop).

You're missing the point. The players are doing something they consider interesting, whether its raiding a dungeon or opening a shop.

Having it possibly fail because of things outside their ability to influence, like fluctuations in the economy or a distant war cutting off their supplies, would be boring, and quite frankly a jerk move because as the GM you control those things. Having it fail because of things they can at least attempt to influence--an evil competitor who is using underhanded means to destroy them, monster attacks, a curse on the land--that's interesting.

That's the same as having progress stop because the players can't get past a point that you, the GM, are controlling, by setting difficulties or penalties to rolls or whatever your system uses, or because you think the players should be smart enough to think of going about it a particular way. If they're going to fail at it, it should be in an interesting way that they can at least attempt to influence, not just GM fiat.

Because this is a game, their lives should be interesting. Maybe they aren't going to be making changes to the world at large, but they are making changes in their immediate lives.

In a story about peasants it's blatantly obvious that the world they live in is bigger than they are, as they're close to if not the smallest of the small. What I'm after is that the sensation of "there's always a bigger fish" be maintained no matter how powerful the PCs eventually become; and oftentimes that bigger fish can be the setting itself.

That has nothing to do with the individual's own story. Unless the point of the game is that the players are nothing but powerless pawns who can't even control their own lives--and I can't imagine how that's even remotely fun.

Also, characters aren't permanent*. They come, they go, they die, they retire, they wander off, and so on. The setting, however, is permanent; and even if they trash it it'll still outlast them all.

In your games. Maybe in a lot of games, but at my table, unless they're running in an "official" world (the Realms, Ravenloft, etc.), a new setting is made for each new game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And in every other situation? Or do your players only go to places that haven't been disturbed in ages.


Not in every game it isn't. You can get some very interesting results if the players are "allowed" to weigh in.


Which you're not actually playing in. I don't think anyone signs up for a fantasy game looking to emulate every aspect of the real world.


You're missing the point. The players are doing something they consider interesting, whether its raiding a dungeon or opening a shop.

Having it possibly fail because of things outside their ability to influence, like fluctuations in the economy or a distant war cutting off their supplies, would be boring, and quite frankly a jerk move because as the GM you control those things. Having it fail because of things they can at least attempt to influence--an evil competitor who is using underhanded means to destroy them, monster attacks, a curse on the land--that's interesting.

That's the same as having progress stop because the players can't get past a point that you, the GM, are controlling, by setting difficulties or penalties to rolls or whatever your system uses, or because you think the players should be smart enough to think of going about it a particular way. If they're going to fail at it, it should be in an interesting way that they can at least attempt to influence, not just GM fiat.

Because this is a game, their lives should be interesting. Maybe they aren't going to be making changes to the world at large, but they are making changes in their immediate lives.


That has nothing to do with the individual's own story. Unless the point of the game is that the players are nothing but powerless pawns who can't even control their own lives--and I can't imagine how that's even remotely fun.


In your games. Maybe in a lot of games, but at my table, unless they're running in an "official" world (the Realms, Ravenloft, etc.), a new setting is made for each new game.

This is all preference. All of it. The two of you just like different things. What we shouldn't be doing IMO is assuming anyone's preference are better for any unit larger then ourselves (no matter how more or less popular any preference might be).

 

[Faolyn]

What some of us find implausible (not impossible) is that something interesting happens every time you roll the dice. We can also find it jarring that the interesting thing doesn't necessarily seem connected to the event that triggered the die roll. Sometimes "nothing much happens or changes" feels like the most likely thing, and if that not only doesn't happen this time, but never happens, that can start to stretch credulity.

You may not find it so implausible, and that's OK too.

What you should realize is that "interesting" doesn't mean ZOMG EXCITING!!1!. It means "not nothing." Because nothing is, well, nothing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It might feel different to you (and that's perfectly valid), but to me the fact is if you have a built-in, acceptable way to opt out of an obligation, then it's not an obligation.

It's not just feeling different.

As a child, I was obligated to chew fluoride tablets, unless I opted out. That is still an obligation. It is, in fact, VERY different from "we have fluoride tablets, you may take one each day".

"We will do X each time, unless you tell me no" is not, not logically and not practically, the same as "we can do X any time someone wants to". The former is, explicitly, an obligation to participate unless someone opts out.

Oh, how about this? "We will collect your personal information and sell it, unless you opt out" is legally completely different from "you can offer your personal information if you wish to". The two are VERY different, and European law explicitly rejected the idea that opt-out data collection was acceptable. That's why most every website now has a "what info do you want to share?" thinger, because they need it to comply with European law. You must opt in to data collection before it can happen, not opting out of data collection that is presumed until you say "no".

 

[Pedantic]

What you should realize is that "interesting" doesn't mean ZOMG EXCITING!!1!. It means "not nothing." Because nothing is, well, nothing.

It seems to me that there's at least 2 lines of argument against a fail forward model, which I'm categorizing as "the argument from naturalism" and "the argument from gameplay."

I'm frankly less attached to the argument from naturalism, at best I think it can serve to make the game state more understandable to the player and avoid negotiation. The idea is that the situation should unfold according to prior inputs and not be causal to a new board state of the result of an action is reasonable just the status quo prevailing. I agree largely with what you're laying out here, that nothing happening is nothing happening as a rebuttal; I don't think naturalism is it's own defense. There should be a gameplay purpose and the only reason I think you'd want a status quo result is to ensure it's understandable to the player. That is, a player can't necessarily map consequences from "I try to pick the lock" to a fail forward result like "the guards hear you and open the door to see what's happening" unless they're explicitly told ahead of time this will happen.

Which brings us to the argument from gameplay, as that immediately creates the grounds for negotiation of either that specific consequence, or for the player to propose a different action to get a different consequence. Negotiation is the death of gameplay, because it subsumes all other mechanics. It always has the potential to be more effective or to overturn any other kind of mechanical interaction, so if it's allowed to creep in, it becomes the gameplay loop immediately.

The negotiation issue aside, fail forward runs the risk of removing tactical agency. If you make players commit to actions without knowable consequences, they lose much ability to discriminate between risks in the first place and it's not necessarily clear that they should prefer picking the lock to having down to the door in the first place.