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

[The Firebird]

Here’s what @Maxperson said:


I then offered my solution to this “problem”. The solution I offered works for me and my players.

It seems to me that I’m being told it doesn’t work.

The key part of that post seems to me "you can't go off into the trees to look for herbs the way we can". Retconning is different, for reasons @Lanefan and others explained. In my game, if you go look for herbs there's a chance you can get a random encounter. That encounter could be major. Maybe you encounter The Willowman, a powerful fae creature (Cursed Scroll #1 in Shadowdark).

Maybe you choose violence and it goes poorly, resulting in character death. Maybe it goes well and The Willowman becomes your patron, and you gain a new quest that makes you not want to go to the city.

Either of those breaks continuity.

Again, I'm sure it works for you in making it feel like you can make these minor decisions. But for me it doesn't achieve the same thing as it would without retconning.

 

[The Firebird]

Similar how? I think this is something that’s being expressed, but I’m just not grasping it. Why will “interesting things happen” make “things feel too similar”? Wouldn’t the interesting things happening be related to the events of play?

Aren’t interesting things happening in your game, too? How is it that you avoid this problem of “things feel too similar”?

The background knowledge that interesting things are always going to happen makes the test outcomes feel more similar. It matters less what actions I declare, because I know that on a bad roll there will be a bad ('interesting') consequence. Whereas in a fixed game, if I declare the right action even a bad roll can lead to a result of 'nothing happens'.

In the fixed game the results feel more different based on what actions I declare. In a 'something happens' game all action declarations are going to lead similarly good or bad results, because the number I roll determines these.

Imo.

 

[Maxperson]

Here’s what @Maxperson said:


I then offered my solution to this “problem”. The solution I offered works for me and my players.

It seems to me that I’m being told it doesn’t work.

You aren't being told it doesn't work. You're being told that it's very different. The only thing about your posts that I said didn't work was your claim that your very different method was the same as what I do. It's not.

 

[Faolyn]

This completely fails (sorry) to address my concerns about failure being turned into success.

Remember, the task at hand that's being rolled for is to climb the cliff. That's it. Any concerns about anything at the top of the cliff have to wait to see if you even get there.

Is the task at hand climbing the cliff, or is it saving the friend at the top of the cliff? Because if the important thing in this scene is the friend, then that's what's being rolled for.

But if the task truly is just climbing the cliff, then a truly bad roll (say, a critical failure in D&D) could be a complete failure to do so--along with a logical injury from falling part of the way--but a lesser failure could be that they get there, but it takes a really long time, they lose their supplies, the rope breaks so their compatriots can't follow unless the climber has a spare on them, they get injured on the way, or anything similar.

If both things are equally important, than they would be resolved separately. But if the cliff is really just a prelude to saving the friend, then it's just an obstacle.

 

[Eric V]

That is an explanation of a playstyle preference. It's good if moving action along and making "progress" is a major priority for your play.

For sure. Some players like it when their characters fail a climbing check and then fall to their deaths.

 

[Faolyn]

Hold up, you're conflating two different things here. Novel stuff, like encounters, creatures, situations, traps, all that, is not the same as an unknown result to an action declaration. I'm all about all about knowledge checks, perception all that (and have argued before they should generally be treated as defenses and used in a passive process) and think players should generally be given or have routes to get information about stuff, but that's orthogonal to my point.

My point is that player action declarations should have knowable impacts on the board state for all possible outcome cases; the lock will be picked and open or not based on the outcome of my declared action, there are no other possible outcomes that are inherent to my action declaration itself. Other elements of the established gamestate that I could in some way assay might affect what happens next. If there are guards on the other side of the door, and hearing them playing dice is contingent on my investment in Perception, or perhaps something like burning a charge on a Ring of X-ray Vision, I might have access to that information and change my action declaration to mitigate the risk, probably bringing in whatever the stealth rules are, or finding another way around, or perhaps I don't successfully employ whatever mechanic governs knowing that, and we're in consequence town.

But if the possibility of guards reacting is contingent entirely on my declaring an action in the first place, I've lost a whole avenue of gameplay. I can't have gotten the information ahead of time, and I can't have picked a different action.

OK, this is still what I was talking about. The player can still try to hear or see through the door. They may or may not have to roll for it, depending on the game, but they can still do it. Because once they have done such a thing, those guards exist (It's Schrodinger's dungeon). And if you use this type of rolling in a game where GM prep is normal or that otherwise lets you populate an area with encounters, they could also have always been there, too, just like in a trad game.

And if the player doesn't listen at the door, then whether those guards exist or not depends on whether the GM uses that (there are guards in the next room who hear you pick the lock) as the result of a bad roll or not.

I mean, what if instead of guards throwing dice, they're reading quietly or sleeping but not snoring, and their position isn't obvious from the door's location? The PCs can listen as much as they like, but they're not going to hear soft breathing, and if they don't have a ring of X-ray vision then they're SoL anyway, no matter the system.

 

[Faolyn]

They go all over the place; I was merely trying to posit an example of a situation where "nothing happens" is the most plausible result.

And I think we probably both agree that's a very rare situation.

Boring perhaps, but by no means a jerk move.

Very much a jerk move, because it's entirely GM fiat. They have no ability to do anything about it.

Depending on the fiction already established, inflicting oen of these on the PCs' attempts might be much more - and much more obvious - of a jerk move than your previous examples.

No more than any other adventure. The PCs can attempt to fight against a rival (either physically, socially, or legally), fight the monsters, or cleanse the land. They can't do anything about a war you decided was going on way over there that cut off their supply. At best, they have to hope you're willing to let them know of another distributor--and if you decided to cut them off in the first place, then that would be either highly unlikely or you railroading them into dealing with someone else of your choosing.

II'm not as concerned about wrapping the narrative around the PCs as you seem to be. The PCs do what they do (I can only assume by the fact they're doing it that the players find it interesting) and I-as-DM react to that in ways that more or less make sense with established fiction, perhaps informed by a random roll to allow for something bizarre to happen on rare occasions.

They can control their own lives as much as we can in the real world plus what their fantastical abilities allow.

Well, that's definitely where I'd leave the game. It would feel that the GM doesn't care about the characters.

 

[hawkeyefan]

No.

How does this jibe with the below?

If there's no time pressure and no chance of damage if I fall or if it's so easy I can't fail then there's no need for a roll.

This is precisely my point. If there are no stakes… no time pressure, no chance of damage, etc… then why roll?

I’m proceeding with the idea that if we are making a roll, it’s because something’s at stake. The climb matters in some way.

If that’s the case, then why wouldn’t something happen on a failure? Why are you saying that all the roll tells us is if the character climbs the cliff?

When it happens repeatedly that there are consequences to a failed roll other than that I failed the specific task I was attempting it doesn't work for me. You don't get to decide for me what I can or cannot imagine.

I’m not trying to decide anything for you.

I’m trying to understand your perception of fail forward and the idea of only roll when there are interesting results because they seem off to me.

What was at stake was whether I could climb the cliff. That's all. There may be some separate pressure that's unrelated.

But if there’s a related pressure, wouldn’t that connect to the roll?

If there is a ticking clock the players will typically be aware of it before declaring any actions. If they know their friend is in imminent mortal danger and they could fail climbing a cliff, perhaps they'll use some limited resource or take a different approach.

Sure and what I’m saying is that fail forward type techniques tend to use what’s going on in the game. The GM looks at the situation and comes up with a sensible, related consequence other than outright failure.

 

[AlViking]

How does this jibe with the below?



This is precisely my point. If there are no stakes… no time pressure, no chance of damage, etc… then why roll?

I’m proceeding with the idea that if we are making a roll, it’s because something’s at stake. The climb matters in some way.

If that’s the case, then why wouldn’t something happen on a failure? Why are you saying that all the roll tells us is if the character climbs the cliff?



I’m not trying to decide anything for you.

I’m trying to understand your perception of fail forward and the idea of only roll when there are interesting results because they seem off to me.



But if there’s a related pressure, wouldn’t that connect to the roll?



Sure and what I’m saying is that fail forward type techniques tend to use what’s going on in the game. The GM looks at the situation and comes up with a sensible, related consequence other than outright failure.

A roll for climbing is called for when I DM if and only if failure costs time and there is some predefined time pressure, failure means falling and taking damage, or some combination of the two.

 

[hawkeyefan]

the way we can

I suppose I’m not quite sure what that means. The player asks if their character can find herbs, and then maybe a roll happens to see, right?

What more is there to “the way”?

Retconning is different

Again, I don’t think it’s retconning. It’s something unestablished that then becomes established.

Do you consider every success you make with any kind of knowledge check to be retconning? Do you consider details of your backstory that are introduced into play to be retconning?

Maybe you choose violence and it goes poorly, resulting in character death. Maybe it goes well and The Willowman becomes your patron, and you gain a new quest that makes you not want to go to the city.

Either of those breaks continuity

But why would you do that? I’m not advocating for taking steps that would lead to nonsensical results.

The background knowledge that interesting things are always going to happen makes the test outcomes feel more similar. It matters less what actions I declare, because I know that on a bad roll there will be a bad ('interesting') consequence. Whereas in a fixed game, if I declare the right action even a bad roll can lead to a result of 'nothing happens'.

What does “the right action” mean?

In the fixed game the results feel more different based on what actions I declare. In a 'something happens' game all action declarations are going to lead similarly good or bad results, because the number I roll determines these.

Imo.

So it feels more different for nothing to happen repeatedly than for something unique to each situation to happen?

I’m definitely not getting this.