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

[Eric V]

I received a response that took me seriously, and I meant it seriously, so I'm going with "yes".

So, with my 4 free hours of game time available per month, I have invested in this character, and rolling a 1 trying to scale the cliff causes her to die, because other people in the real world have done so.
You would seriously rule it that way? Because if so, what a bloody waste of time it's been investing in that character.

 

[pemerton]

So what? I consider myself a fairly traditionally-minded GM, but I don't play or own D&D 5.5 and disagree with its stated design philosophies.

My post pointing out the issue wasn't directed to you in particular.

I thought it was interesting to mention, given that in this thread there have been multiple posts talking about the perspective from which players should declare actions for their PCs.

 

[pemerton]

None of which really appeal to me. Does the fact that it influenced the creation of other games mean I have to follow its lead on RPG discussion and terms?

I don't understand what you're talking about here. Are you and @AlViking the same person? If not, why are you responding to my posts to AlViking as if they're directed at you?

EDIT: Here is a post where you seem to take some random website more seriously than the actual designers and players of the games which pioneered "fail forward":

Are you saying the quantum cook wouldn't happen? It's right there in the example.

As I've already posted, I don't regard that website as having any authority. I know what Luke Crane was trying to achieve via "fail forward", because I've read and played the RPG that gives effect to the idea.

I've posted examples of the play of that game in this thread, but you and others seem to think that some random webiste is a better indication of what Luke Crane had in mind then the rulebooks he wrote and actual examples of play that follows those rules.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why wouldn't it? Where is it laid up in RPG heaven that passion and motivation are things that don't matter in RPG action resolution?

In the games you play, they do. In the games I play they (by and large) do not. Both games are fine choices, but they are quite different in many ways.

 

[The Firebird]

You're taking that passage a bit out of context.

There's a house that the PC is sneaking into. You, as the GM, have an idea of who or what should be in that house, even if you didn't establish a list of inhabitants beforehand. So if the PC fails and startles someone, it's someone who you would consider a logical resident of that house. It's not that a cook materializes out of nowhere; it's that you have decided that sure, it's logical that this house has a cook.

It's no different than if the PC goes into a bar and wants to know if there's a barmaid. Did you actually figure out every single employee of that location? Maybe, but probably not. If you hadn't, would you say "there's no barmaid here" or would you say "sure" and grab a random name generator? Does that count as a quantum barmaid to you, simply because you hadn't established ahead of time?

To me, the ability to say "sure, there's a barmaid" or "you startle a cook" is the type of improvisational thinking that GMs are supposed to do when players do things that the GM didn't expect.

This is well stated and true, to some extent. But I think there is a difference between the GM saying the bar has a barmaid because they are trying to describe the world and because they are specifically generating a complication.

If an aspect of the world can frustrate the players plans, then it is better to be fixed beforehand, because then the players can do more to plan around it. Their choices become more meaningful.

The barmaid probably is not subject to many interesting choices, so it isn't as big a deal to improvise.

That said, I can imagine cases where this would change and it isn't a clear boundary.

Which mucks up forward-facing causality: things which occur now (on A's turn) have effects in the past (ie from the start of B's turn).

Even if we grant this, I think there is a clear difference between this minor sort of concession to playability and modifying actions which took place hours or days before. To the extent initiative breaks causality, it is a failure of the system. And if we can avoid it we should.

 

[Micah Sweet]

What are you trying to contribute here? If you want to know what @AlViking meant when referring to The Forge, you can ask that poster.

You asked me why they would respond to your post. I speculated.

 

[FrogReaver]

Which mucks up forward-facing causality: things which occur now (on A's turn) have effects in the past (ie from the start of B's turn).

No it doesn’t. If they occurred on A’s turn then they occurred before anything that happened on B’s turn.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not the way I play. I guess I have different "purposes of the game" than you do. For me "does it happen?" is always worth considering.

So are you rolling for coronaries every time someone gets stressed? After all, that's happened to young athletes on occasion.

So I'm going to say that "does it happen" is not "always worth considering" and you're writing off some events as too unlikely to be worth factoring in.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is the post that I was responding to:
Given that most moves/abilities in 5e D&D pertain to combat, and that combat in 5e D&D departs heavily from forward-facing causality, I think the post is mistaken.

Yet you were still talking about it in the context of addressing a non-combat event. So while I agree the post you were responding to was focused on the one part of the game where their statement is untrue, I don't think its particularly relevant to the main point, either.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, with my 4 free hours of game time available per month, I have invested in this character, and rolling a 1 trying to scale the cliff causes her to die, because other people in the real world have done so.
You would seriously rule it that way? Because if so, what a bloody waste of time it's been investing in that character.

You'd likely get to make a save if you roll that 1 to catch yourself, maybe for less damage, but yes, the change to fall and potentially die, however small, is there, provided the fall is from a fatal height.