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

[AnotherGuy]

Yes, that is a real play example of my "Situation D": players are guaranteed to reach the summoning in time, so reaching the summoning in time cannot be a subject of game play. It's context for game play. (snip) Did players knowing they couldn't fail to get to the summoning on time affect their game play in any way? (This interacts with my question above.)

Just included both comments that relate to each other in the above quote.

You're 100% correct - reaching the summoning in time is not the object of game play.
The factors that are important are the allies they gain, the hindrances they incur on the Cult of the Dragon etc all of which I assigned mechanical weight to, which affects the final set of encounters.

And to answer your question, yes. I provided them a document which reflected the game's scorecard, with the mechanics of their choice of allies and decisions made affect, arriving early/late affects the final battle and even how the clock works.
I actually created an entire thread about this, but I'm not very articulate so it didn't gain much traction.

Does "according to a randomised date" mean that the budget to stack enemies is effectively randomised? Of is the lateness of players arriving something that their game play along the way to getting there decides?

So in the AP there is a spy (Cylanestriel) who provides information on the Cult's activities. She provided an estimated figure for when the Cult would be ready to summon Tiamat based on her undercover work.
In the fiction she said approximately 3 months, but in gamist terms this was translated to 90 + 2d10 days which will ONLY BE ROLLED upon the PC's arrival, if after the 90-day mark.

Player-facing Mechanic

Spoiler: CLOCK excerpt

Throughout this storyline the timeline has played an important role, but the Clock only started ticking when an injured elf ranger by the name of Cylanestrial “First Arrow”, a Harper and a cousin of Skyla Artemis, informed the Council that according to her investigation as an undercover operative at the Well of Dragons, the Cult of Dragon were approximately 3 months from realising their objective of summoning Tiamat.
In effect, the date communicated in gamist terms was 90 +2d10 days, the rolling of which will only occur upon the PCs arrival at the Well of Dragons.

Should the PCs arrive early, there are no changes to the Encounter Budget.
However, should the PCs arrive late,

(a) The Encounter Budget is increased by 5,900 XP. This addition may be added to 1 or apportioned amongst many of the abovelisted encounters.
(b) The Random Encounter probability is increased by 1 for every 2 days.

Per the DMG page 86, Random Encounters occur on an 18-20 on a 1d20, the rate of which will be every half hour in this location. Should the PCs arrive at the Well of Dragons 2 days late, the probability of a Random Encounter will increased from 18-20 to 17-20.

In short, the Clock’s only purpose is to determine the change in the Encounter Budget, the PCs will always arrive on time for the summoning of Tiamat. i.e. Always during the most exciting moment.

In F', C's survival isn't really a subject of game play even though it's decided by player actions, because players can't form any gameful intentions toward it. One difference between GM-decides and mechanics-decide is that which may be drawn between "playfulness" and "gamefulness". To the extent that GM's heuristic is not wholly known to players, they can engage with it playfully but not gamefully. The better the heuristic is known (including the less it is fluid), the more they can engage with it gamefully.

Well analysed.

Your clock seems like an example of a GM fixing and externalising their heuristic so that it can become a subject of game play.

I appreciate your clarity in this, expressing it far better than I could.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Useful in what way? Do you expect proponents of traditional games to be so influenced by GG's opinions that informing them of something he said that supports your point of view would suddenly cause the scales to fall from our eyes? You'll notice that the vast majority of the game designer quotations being thrown about in this discussion (no matter if it's Gary Gygax, Ron Edwards, or someone else) are made by the non-traditionalists. Perhaps that is because the opinions of such people simply do not hold the same weight for us that they do for you. If that is the case, I'm not sure what having a new Gygax quote is going to do for you.

No.

But I expect that this will be a meaningful argument from within their own space that over-occupation with realism is not as productive a goal as some hold it up to be. There are a lot of people who uphold realism as being unequivocally the highest goal, that is, always higher than any other goal no matter what. I have, already, discussed this with you and you were quite gracious about agreeing that that doesn't accurately describe your true beliefs, though this absolutely should not be interpreted as meaning that realism isn't still your highest goal. It's just not higher to the extent that it always overwhelms any other goal; there may be circumstances, albeit unusual ones, where the small benefit of a tiny bit more realism isn't worth potential steep costs to other valuable things.

The point is not to say "hah, you're wrong to like realism because Gygax said so", mostly because that would be pretty pointlessly stupid.

Instead, the point is to note that a respected figure, whose work is specifically respected for creating and fostering an attention to realism that even many current-day sandbox-y "traditional GM" types wouldn't necessarily support, did in fact hold that realism wasn't the only good worth seeking. Coming from Gygax, we can't accuse it of being "modern", of coming from a "storytelling" source. No one can accuse it of using newfangled jargon nobody recognizes, "word salad" or other tedious characterizations. This whole ridiculous tangent about whether it's reasonable to reference Crane would never happen with Gygax, since I don't think anyone in this thread would deny Gygax's importance to developing what "a sandbox campaign" means. We have, in relatively plain and straightfoward prose, an argument free of those issues, yet still hitting essentially all the same notes.

That is, very much, useful to me. It's not an argument that will make people play the games I want to play (I would not want such an argument even if I believed such a thing existed!) It's an argument which soundly refutes a number of distracting and unproductive tangents and thus calls for serious engagement with the points themselves, which I find much, much more interesting than "well your position about X is irrelevant because <it came from story games/it was written by a person whose prose I dislike/it defines terms in a way I dislike/etc.>, so I'm not even going to talk about X".

 

[Micah Sweet]

No.

But I expect that this will be a meaningful argument from within their own space that over-occupation with realism is not as productive a goal as some hold it up to be. There are a lot of people who uphold realism as being unequivocally the highest goal, that is, always higher than any other goal no matter what. I have, already, discussed this with you and you were quite gracious about agreeing that that doesn't accurately describe your true beliefs, though this absolutely should not be interpreted as meaning that realism isn't still your highest goal. It's just not higher to the extent that it always overwhelms any other goal; there may be circumstances, albeit unusual ones, where the small benefit of a tiny bit more realism isn't worth potential steep costs to other valuable things.

The point is not to say "hah, you're wrong to like realism because Gygax said so", mostly because that would be pretty pointlessly stupid.

Instead, the point is to note that a respected figure, whose work is specifically respected for creating and fostering an attention to realism that even many current-day sandbox-y "traditional GM" types wouldn't necessarily support, did in fact hold that realism wasn't the only good worth seeking. Coming from Gygax, we can't accuse it of being "modern", of coming from a "storytelling" source. No one can accuse it of using newfangled jargon nobody recognizes, "word salad" or other tedious characterizations. This whole ridiculous tangent about whether it's reasonable to reference Crane would never happen with Gygax, since I don't think anyone in this thread would deny Gygax's importance to developing what "a sandbox campaign" means. We have, in relatively plain and straightfoward prose, an argument free of those issues, yet still hitting essentially all the same notes.

That is, very much, useful to me. It's not an argument that will make people play the games I want to play (I would not want such an argument even if I believed such a thing existed!) It's an argument which soundly refutes a number of distracting and unproductive tangents and thus calls for serious engagement with the points themselves, which I find much, much more interesting than "well your position about X is irrelevant because <it came from story games/it was written by a person whose prose I dislike/it defines terms in a way I dislike/etc.>, so I'm not even going to talk about X".

If it makes you feel any better, I don't treat any game designer as important to agree with based on their authority in the hobby, no matter who they are. It's all about whether or not I agree with the opinion in question. I suppose I trust that they understand their own system, but that's about it as far as blind agreement goes. Heck, in the literary world plenty of people don't just accept an author's opinions about their own work, let alone works influenced by it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Got it. The chain from #10,425 made it appear to be connected. Also, am I misreading some hedging in your above ("is always" seems to imply "sometimes is")?

It's been a long thread...

I consider it a viable way to do so, at least under some circumstances. I've mentioned the way research and knowledge skills operate in Chill 3e seemed quite good, especially for an investigation-focused game, and those skills were very much fail-forward (i.e. you never got nothing from a roll; even fumbles gave you information, just mixed with red herrings).

I just don't think that means its always the best way to address single-points-of-failure; sometimes I think using it to patch over those is lazy.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Why would you assume hunting and foraging in a game where food and water can be created and rations purchased. Those things are not automatic when traveling.

Because why not? The characters are traveling. We should assume all sorts of things they do while traveling. Foraging and hunting would be logical things to expect.

It is a Red Herring because "pretending" is a distraction away from the real point, which is timing.

No, pretending is an acknowledgment of the similarity to the two things, versus timing which is the only difference.

Problem solved.
Except that didn't solve it

I never said I was doing it “like you do”.
You said the method I’m talking about won’t allow for herb gathering. I showed how it can allow for herb gathering.

Problem solved.

Which in the context of the above discussion is about you failing to do what we did, which is find herbs in the moment. Your "solution" did not accomplish finding it in the moment, because it couldn't. It still wasn't about a "problem," because there was no problem in the first place.

I don’t care about “in the moment”. That’s not what the problem was. We’re talking about two different methods. You said one could not do what the other did. I showed you how it could.

Now you’re trying to say that doesn’t matter because it wasn’t the same method. I mean… of course it’s not!

And you are still wrong. Searching in real time and setting the fiction in stone is FAR different from reconning things later to add in having searched for herbs, or bought herbs, or had a fairy drop off herbs, or saw herbs on the head of a passing cow, or... in the past.

I mean… there certainly seems to he far more in common between the two, but okay, Max.

 

[FrogReaver]

An appeal to authority is fallacious in the case where the authority isn't a credible responder to the question being asked.

The reason those experts are questioned is to allow the jury or judge to make a considered decision on the relative credibility of each witness. If calling expert witnesses was entirely fallacious, it wouldn't keep happening!

The key words - ‘the judge and jury make a considered decision on their relative credibility’. Sounds to me like this statement contradicts the notion that we should simply rely on testimony coming from a supposed expert.

 

[FrogReaver]

So now you're claiming that Appeal to Authority isn't a fallacy? Why, because you know better than everyone else?

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy, because it doesn't show the rightness or wrongness of the argument, so appealing to it to show rightness or wrongness is fallacious. This happens regardless of your knowledge level or IQ, or how much you rely on authorities.

Hell, as a lawyer you should be extremely aware of the dueling experts situations that happen routinely in courtrooms, where authorities get paid to contradict each other over the same set of facts.

Right. It’s not so much that experts aren’t useful. It’s that experts can be wrong. Which is why appeal to authority is a fallacy in the first place - being an expert/authority doesn’t mean you are correct.

The second issue is, who decides what makes a person an expert/authority?

 

[Eric V]

High stakes are a value for some people. I'd certainly not say people playing RuneQuest think they're playing a board game and you can absolutely lose a character at the wrong time from a crit and a bad hit location roll.

Character death due to arbitrary roll is not high-stakes, though; it's random crap. In fact, character death is the least imaginative of stakes to be high.

 

[Eric V]

Because the chances of falling to your death are legitimately less than 1 in 20, and because I'm playing a game with people whom I don't want throwing things at me. G still matters, even if I value RP more.

Still more than 1 in 100 though...which is pretty high, considering the character dies otherwise. In the real world, would you engage in a particular activity for money (gold in the RPG) if you knew you had a 3% chance to die by doing so? It's just weird to me that the G matters somewhere between 5% and 2%; "you can't throw things at me for you being really unlucky, though I suppose you can if you are merely pedestrian-unlucky."

 

[Eric V]

So what you're saying is...you have a preference? Excellent!

For sure. My first post indicated that I am sure there are players that love it when their characters die this way.