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

[Micah Sweet]

See the title of this thread up there? Yeah, here's some of that right there.

So having that opinion making you "conservative" and "exhausting"?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't recall anyone else presenting their opinions (and those of others) as stridently extreme as you have been.

Have we read the same thread? Seriously?

You and others have presented opinions far more strident than mine. Often, folks have done so while explicitly recognizing that they haven't even read the text in question!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not literally. It's a cultural reference. Enough so that there's ascii art for it.
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The point is that "bear it until you just have to leave" is... short sighted and immature.

Adults talk things through before they become unbearable or crises, if at all possible.

I completely agree!

But when I asked for discussion for HOW one does this, for how one should go about trying to fix a smaller breakdown of the table's function, you know what I was told, repeatedly, by several different people?

Some variation of "you just HAVE to trust me[/the GM]." Which, as I said at the time, is precisely the opposite of helping someone get over their concerns. "I recognize that you are concerned and simply demand that you trust that what I'm doing is right" simply will not ever be the correct response to a person being concerned about your behavior. It won't ever!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is not correct. The DM can still be wrong by...

1. Violating the social contract.
2. Abusing his power and authority.

Say your 1st level group is walking down the road and the DM says, "An ancient red dragon swoops down on you and breathes fire on all of you." Does the DM have the power and authority to make that a game reality? Yes. Is it an abuse of authority and the DM being a jerk to have an ancient red dragon just swoop down without warning and do 26d6 fire damage to a group of 1st level PCs? 100%. Should the players get up and leave that game? They should have been packed up and walking out the door before the damage dice stopped rolling.

Just because the DM represents the reality of the game outside of the PCs, doesn't make him correct in everything he does. There can in fact be something else and it is not the end of the discussion.

My sense of what @Emerikol was saying is that sometimes agreement doesn't happen and the DM has to make a ruling or the game just stops. I don't think he was saying that players couldn't make a case for themselves and the DM wouldn't ever listen, so they have to suck it up.

Emerikol, have there been times when you said something happens in the game(made a ruling) that the player(s) disagreed with and after a minute or two they persuaded you to change your mind? Has there been an instance where you didn't change your mind during the game, but they came to you after the game and with a longer conversation you realized that they were right and changed the ruling moving forward?

How can one abuse authority that is absolute? Absolute authority permits you to do anything. That is what makes it absolute!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Words?

But the GM is beholden to no one. Why would words achieve anything? The GM does what she wants. Words are irrelevant.

 

[Hussar]

You have yet to explain how a TTRPG could accurately simulate the risks of climbing a cliff.

Because you are the one insisting on things that I am not saying. “Accurately”? Show me a time I said anything about that.

But systems can inform narrative. That’s how you make them a simulation. Fail by x and it’s the character’s mistake. Fail by Y and its environmental. Poof. Instant simulation. The system now provides some guidance for the narration.

Third time posting this btw. So please stop telling me that I’m not providing solutions.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The problem with that is by the time that after-game discussion takes place you've already made the bad ruling and moved on. Overturning the bad ruling later means having to retcon everything that happened afterwards. Not overturning it later means you've set a precedent for the rest of the campaign.

Whcih means, even if it takes an in-game discussion or argument, getting it right (as far as you can) the first time is paramount.

While I agree with you that a discussion during the game is generally fine, I don’t think that in a case where it may make sense to make a ruling and then move on, that you can’t change your mind afterwards. There’s no reason to retcon anything… just, going forward you follow the new ruling.

 

[AlViking]

Because you are the one insisting on things that I am not saying. “Accurately”? Show me a time I said anything about that.

But systems can inform narrative. That’s how you make them a simulation. Fail by x and it’s the character’s mistake. Fail by Y and its environmental. Poof. Instant simulation. The system now provides some guidance for the narration.

Third time posting this btw. So please stop telling me that I’m not providing solutions.

Which is an incredibly arbitrary definition you alone have created. If that works for you, great.

 

[Hussar]

If that were true, you would be unable to add your stat bonus or proficiency bonus to the roll, because those represent personal ability, not pixie helpfulness.

Skills represent personal effort and personal failure, not outside sources. Even the one example in the climb skill where a creature is trying to knock you off, success means you used your personal skill to succeed despite the attempt to knock you off, and failure represents the failure of your personal skill to remain on the cliff.

At no point does a failure on a climb check mean that a pixie shows up to knock you off just because you rolled low. That would invalidate any personal ability of yours and place the entire failure on the pixie.

The pixie example also violates the order of play rules.

1. The DM describes the fiction(there's a rough cliff that's 37.313 feet high).
2. The players declare their actions(We climb to the top. Then success or failure is rolled).
3. The DM narrates the result of their actions.(A pixie appearing is not the result of their declared action to climb the cliff).

A pixie might appear, but only because the DM has a preplanned, chose for one to appear, or rolled a random encounter in which one appeared. Those falls into the first part of the order of play rules. It's the DM describing what is happening in the fiction.

What does the die roll represent if not everything other than the PC’s skill. It’s virtually guaranteed in DnD you only succeed by rolling high enough. That’s why you are rolling. You have a chance to fail.

So if ability plus skill is the pc, what is the die roll? If the die roll can change the environment then it can do so on a fail or success.

 

[Hussar]

The difference is the fiction. Because the actual game exists only in the imagination, it's up to us to justify why anything works the way it does. In a sim game that justification was done by the writers who created a table or otherwise listed why something acts or doesn't act the way it does. In a narrative game, the justification is made by the players at the table.

Why did you succeed? Is it purely skill, or is it because the cliff was really easy to climb that lowered the DC? Or is it because you had a bonus to your roll from some other source? Or was it pure chance? If the DC is 15 and you rolled a 16 before any modifiers, your skill had nothing to do with the climb. Unless you're sitting down and figuring out how much you beat the target number by every time you roll--assuming you even know it--you'll never know, meaning the game world is being changed by any roll, success or failure.

So since you don't know, you're making up the fiction that you climbed the cliff purely because of your skill when it could really be any of several other reasons.

You might want to address this to @Maxperson who disagrees with you.