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

[Maxperson]

Let me restate my point, then:

The 2024 rules tell players to declare actions for their PCs having regard to the social desirability of going along with the GM's adventure. (There is even a heading about "social contract".)

I think that is an interesting thing.

I note that there is no such rule or advice in Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World.

They actually tell the DM that, not the players. The quote is in the DMG, not the PHB. And the way the wrote is was reminiscent of bad Gygax advice to not let players get away with stuff.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To my reading your discussion touches on many of the relevant aspects. Hopefully we can agree that games of chance and those with hidden information are properly counted among what we mean by games.

There can be fair and unfair versions of your game. In fair versions, players know what range the limit can fall within and its expected distribution over that range, and same for their rolls. Skilled play means "playing the odds" i.e. ponying up every time doing so will most likely mean success. In a fair game the payout fairly compensates for the odds so that the odds themselves are not at issue, but rather player's ability to calculate and respond to them.

I think the consequences of that are different from what you propose. If it's indeed a guessing game, that implies you are discussing an unfair version of your game; but sharing even partial information still leads to game play. It just means that player ability to work with probabilities and hidden information becomes part of the skill of play.

Examples of this sort of thing are sometimes seen in skirmish minigames when the outcome is tight. A player (Jo, say) has a choice to retreat saving their own skin, or make an attack roll against a heavily wounded final opponent. Unfortunately Jo is also heavily wounded and the attack back could be a killer. When should Jo stand their ground? Players can make both playful and gameful decisions about that.

The problem with this answer is that the limits are actually known, and the only random component is whether the actions will reach the win condition before they reach the loss condition. You know what your HP are, and even folks like Lanefan or Maxperson who very specifically don't tell their players HP do still give descriptions which are meant to be understood as corresponding, at least to proportions of HP. They know that both victory and loss are so close, a single roll could make the difference.

With limits that are completely invisible to the player, you don't have one axis of randomness, you have two, and the player can only know or address one. It would be like having the fight you describe, except that whether or not Jo succeeds at defeating that last heavily wounded opponent, they might still die anyway because they spent one to many rounds in a poisonous cave and now they've taken in too much.

 

[AlViking]

I think stop motion is the valid critique here and that your 6 seconds in the past rewinds per turn doesn’t hold up to any kind of actual scrutiny. (See the death critique).

But I think there’s a third option.

Players can actively avoid declaring any actions or making any interpretations of the fiction that would contradict the forward facing causality. This limits their tactical space in order to preserve forward facing causality - which is what we actually observe at tables.

For example, no one 30ft from an orc ever declares I run to meet the orc in the middle of the battlefield because they know they can close the distance and attack if first or they know the orc will do the same if he’s first. Since that action is never declared we don’t have to worry about how it fits causally into the fiction.

It's also like describing (American) football as stop action. The quarterback throws the ball, the receiver catches it and then gets tackled. Why couldn't the defense tackle the receiver earlier? Why didn't the defensive team just act simultaneously to the receiver and block the pass, or better yet intercept it? They're going at the same time, aren't they?

We could certainly break the time spent on actions of individuals in combat into smaller units but I think there are diminishing returns. Of course we could also just avoid all of that by abstracting it out to an even higher level and then just describing what happens after you roll your d6s. If you want simultaneous combat you need a video game. It's a game. It's not perfect and they've added reactions to allow a creature to interrupt other's actions. It will always be a compromise between fun, simplicity, tactical complexity and will never be perfect. Except for the nebulous "other system" that works so much better but for which we are never given examples or rules.

 

[pemerton]

An appeal to authority is a logical fallacy for a reason

Huh? It's not fallacious to appeal to authority. Given that most of us are not geniuses, we rely on authorities for most of our knowledge.

If you can show text where Mr. Crane gave a clear example even better. I have searched for documentation on what he said, I can't find it.

I've linked to the rules for Burning Wheel probably a dozen or more times in this thread.

And have quoted them.

From p 32:

Failure Complicates the Matter
When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. . . .The GM must present the players with varied, twisted, occult and bizarre ramifications of their decisions.​

 

[pemerton]

They actually tell the DM that, not the players. The quote is in the DMG, not the PHB. And the way the wrote is was reminiscent of bad Gygax advice to not let players get away with stuff.

Well I found it on DnD Beyond, and I didn't have to speak a special DM password to get access to it.

 

[AlViking]

Huh? It's not fallacious to appeal to authority. Given that most of us are not geniuses, we rely on authorities for most of our knowledge.

I've linked to the rules for Burning Wheel probably a dozen or more times in this thread.

And have quoted them.

From p 32:

Failure Complicates the Matter​

When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. . . .The GM must present the players with varied, twisted, occult and bizarre ramifications of their decisions.​

The complication is introduced after the failure and the complication only exists because of the failure. Which matches up to the example I provided and my understanding of how it works.

Thank you for confirming that I understand the process. I still don't like it, if you do then I suggest you play games that use it.

 

[Campbell]

Fail Forward isn't one consistent thing. Different games have different implementations and often different conceptions of it in their text. The original context of it being brought into the discussion was for Burning Wheel play. In that context, the text of game is definitive of how it works for the game in question.

 

[Eric V]

I'm not going to speak for Micah, but I will note there are games that explicitly have falls as the consequence of fumbles. They may or may not give you an opportunity to try and recover, but without belaying ropes, free climbing in those systems at high heights can indeed lead to death.

As I referenced, I think these days that's not serving either simulation (because the probabilities are too high) or other purposes, but its absolutely a thing.

I mean, I know GMs used to be that way back in the day, but...if a bad roll or two is all it takes to wipe out months of investing in a character's story, actually engaging with the world, then what the hell are we doing? If it's that disposable, then it's better suited to a board game.

It's one thing if PC death happens because of player decision, but if I happen to roll a 1 on the check* (and then a 2 on the saving throw, I guess), my character dies, it means investing in the game was a waste of time.

*Especially if one has a GM that calls for checks every 30 feet or so...at that point, your chance of death is quite high; even if it's only 1 check, assuming one only fails on <4, it's a 15% chance of instant death, about 2% with a similar save.

 

[Eric V]

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.

Why do you offer a save?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you have a different web site that explains it better please provide it. If you can show text where Mr. Crane gave a clear example even better. I have searched for documentation on what he said, I can't find it. An appeal to authority is a logical fallacy for a reason, an appeal to an authority that no one else can find doubly so.

"Appeal to authority" is only a fallacy if the authority is unsubstantiated. AKA, if I were to site Joseph Schmoe on the subject of double jeopardy in the United States and whether a mistrial will thus result in functional acquittal (due to the constitutional restriction against double jeopardy) or in a retrial (due to the Supreme Court's stated understanding that the right to not being tried for the same offense requires some deference to getting a speedy and fair trial), that would be an appeal to authority fallacy.

But if I were to cite Justice Brennan, in United States v. Lanza, that would not be an appeal to authority fallacy--it would be an appeal to a legitimate authority on the subject, particularly since Lanza established that it is not double jeopardy to be tried by a state court, and then subsequently tried in federal court, and indeed is the reason we have the "double sovereignty" doctrine in the first place.

Now, obviously that's an unequivocal example since Brennan himself wrote the opinion which established this precedent. But it's not like Luke Crane is some no-context nobody. You may or may not like his conclusions. You may find his diction or his style or his approach awesome or terrible or mediocre or whatever else. But let us not pretend that he is an irrelevancy. He is, for all intents and purposes, one of the foremost voices on the study of roleplaying game design. You may argue that his opinions are wrong, that's perfectly within your rights. But saying that it's an appeal to authority fallacy to reference his body of work? No. That's not valid. Just because you don't accept a person as being an authority, doesn't mean you can then assert anyone else doing so is automatically committing a fallacy.

(Nor, it's worth noting, is it valid to conclude that because an argument used a fallacious line of reasoning, it must therefore be wrong. That's the fallacy fallacy. "Whales have hair; Mammals have hair; Therefore, whales are mammals" is a fallacious argument, even though the premises and the conclusion are all true. It's just that the truth of the conclusion does not follow from the truth of the premises.)