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

[Lanefan]

When you cut out the context of a sentence, you can make it sound as stupid as you like.

I was very clearly talking about constructing buildings out of pure carbon, as in bituminous coal. Hence why I spoke of the contrast between pure iron, pure carbon, and an alloy between the two. I don't think you're going to have anyone giving the excuse that they're a bloody STEEL-based lifeform anytime soon.

I'll also note that this is the second time you have dismissed an argument by exploiting (or, in this case, attempting to exploit) a loophole, instead of doing even the slightest bit of effort to actually engage with anything I said. It's very tedious to discuss things with someone who goes for quick gotchas rather than even attempting to understand what was said.

Way to ruin a joke, there...

 

[Maxperson]

Absolute power does not discuss. It declares.

Absolute power that requires discussion before anything can be done simply, flatly, is not absolute.

Absolute power MEANS no discussion. That's what it means!

You are wrong. That is not what it means.

All it means is that all the power rests in the hands of one. It does not mean he doesn't listen. It does not mean he doesn't discuss. It does not mean he just declares everything. He can in fact discuss with others and then decide to do what they want.

A dictator is LITERALLY "one who speaks". That's what the word literally means.

And yet many dictators listen to others. Friends and close advisors. They decide in the end, but they listen and can be swayed to decide as the person talking to them wants.

 

[clearstream]

And, to prove this, I would point to every single actual simulationist leaning system out there - GURPS, Warhammer Fantasy, Palladium systems, Role Master - which tell me that you are wrong. If it was perfectly fine for simulationist systems to not inform the narrative, why does every single sim system in existence disagree with you?

With apologies @Hussar, but you help yourself to an irredeemably vague label, apply it to some game texts, and ask why are those game texts in putatively fitting your label are so very different from another game you withhold that label from. Have you played GURPS Fantasy and WHFRP? The experiences are utterly different. To compare them is "constructing artificial categories and cramming games into them, not learning or finding out something true about the games themselves."

D&D is made "simulationist" (when it is) through DM as lusory-means. That vexes analysis and inevitably depends on your views as to the capacity of a DM to do so. Seeing as I have witnessed them doing so, I am convinced that they can. My point here is very specific and limited: it is about what is achievable with a certain game text. Were I asked to propose a game text or approach for "simulationist" purposes then I would want to know the desired subject and what playful experiences are really being sought (immersion? historicity? exploration? etc.)

 

[Hussar]

You're the only one I know of that insists that the simulation has to provide information on how the result was achieved. Many simulations have black boxes because those aren't the purpose of the simulation. In addition, you've personally decided that a specific range means one thing but not another. So what? Does the rock break free because it was shale? Because it was an aggregate? Was the rock slippery because it was wet, some fresh bird droppings, a dead pixie or was there a patch of unexpected ice? Your explanation still doesn't give any details. Because it can't.

Name 2.

I've named numerous sim systems that meet the criteria. So, let's see you name the ones that don't. you're the one insisting on a level of detail that I have repeatedly not talked about. So, let's see the proof shall we? Simulationist systems that are black boxes that provide no information about how the results are achieved. RPG's that players would generally look at and say, "yup, that's a good simulationist leaning game."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Except most of the time I didn't know and-or couldn't explain how I did it, I just did it. Trying to explain it or write it down would be a hopeless endeavour as doing so would throw off my train of thought.

Maybe that's why I always found essay writing to be a complete and utter waste of time.

Meh - if I understand it, that's good enough for me.

Being factually correct is enough. If someone doesn't accept it, I'm under no obligation to explain. The same evidence is available to everyone.

Do you take a similar approach to your GMing...?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You are wrong. That is not what it means.

All it means is that all the power rests in the hands of one. It does not mean he doesn't listen. It does not mean he doesn't discuss. It does not mean he just declares everything. He can in fact discuss with others and then decide to do what they want.

And yet many dictators listen to others. Friends and close advisors. They decide in the end, but they listen and can be swayed to decide as the person talking to them wants.

Sure it does.

A monarch that has to actually listen to their vassals isn't an absolute monarch. That's literally why we have the distinction between an "absolute monarchy", where the monarch rules by pure divine right (or whatever other theory) and their vassals must simply obey. Absolute monarchy was relatively rare in the medieval period, but began to appear more frequently in the late Renaissance, and reached its zenith in the 16th and 17th century, typified by rulers like Louis XIV of France. Even feudalism actually did have restrictions on the monarch's power; they were not absolute rulers, but rather had a contractual arrangement between themselves and their vassals. Louis XIV and others like him rejected this notion and claimed truly absolute authority, unbound by any restrictions.

This is actually historical fact. Absolute power means being unconstrained by anything, doing whatever you want, whenever you want, because you want it and for no other reason. Indeed, there are even historians who question whether any monarch--even ol' Louie 14--was truly absolute or not, because they note that even monarchs who openly ascribed to such a theory often could not actually extract the wealth they needed for their programs, and this inability demonstrated that their power wasn't actually absolute.

"Absolute power" means you never need to discuss. You just declare.

That very specific thing is precisely why I spent so much time, easily half a dozen posts, trying to convince you otherwise. Trying to get you to accept anything else, anything less than "absolute power". But you insisted! You would not accept anything less. Now you have to deal with the consequences of that choice.

 

[clearstream]

I've named numerous sim systems that meet the criteria. So, let's see you name the ones that don't. you're the one insisting on a level of detail that I have repeatedly not talked about. So, let's see the proof shall we? Simulationist systems that are black boxes that provide no information about how the results are achieved. RPG's that players would generally look at and say, "yup, that's a good simulationist leaning game."

I continue to feel doubts that you've adequately explained what you mean by "how the results are achieved". Can you extract a specific mechanic from one of those games and point to the parts that are telling you that?

 

[clearstream]

@Hussar For instance, in WHFRP 2nd ed there is a skill

AnImal TraInIng​

Skill Type: Advanced.​

Characteristic: Fellowship.​

Description: Use this skill to train animals to perform tricks and obey simple commands. The most commonly trained animals are​

dogs, horses, and hawks, though more unusual animals may be trained with the GM’s permission. Properly training an animal​

takes some time. Skill Tests should be made once a week during training. A simple trick can be learned with one successful test,​

a moderately difficult trick can be learned with three successful tests, and a difficult trick can be learned with ten successful tests.​

Related Talents: None.​

The roll for an advanced skill is against your characteristic (here it is fellowship) which is a percentile (e.g. 55%), modified by a task difficulty (e.g. +10%). Unlike basic skills you cannot roll for an advanced skill if you don't have it on your character sheet. It wouldn't be unusual to have say a 65% chance of success. The game text on skills reads in part "For the majority of tests, it is enough to know whether or not you succeeded or failed."

D&D has

Animal Handling Wisdom​

Calm or train an animal, or get an animal to behave in a certain way.​

The roll for a skill like is d20 + ability modifier + proficiency against a difficulty threshold. It wouldn't be unusual to have a 65% chance of success. The game text reads in part "The DM and the rules often call for an ability check when a creature attempts something other than an attack that has a chance of meaningful failure. When the outcome is uncertain and narratively interesting, the dice determine the result."

EDIT the latest version of RuneQuest has

Herd (05)​

Herd represents the ability to bring individual animals together into a herd, maintain the herd, and move the herd from place to place. It includes the ability to identify good pasture, and tell if a herd animal is in good health. It also includes the ability to train and use dogs or shadowcats to aid in herding. Common herd animals in Dragon Pass include cattle, sheep, bison, sable antelopes, impala, and high llamas. The Pure Horse People of the Grazelands herd horses exclusively. Goats are not herded by the Heortlings because they are viewed as unclean, but other peoples herd them.​

The "05" is the base chance, a percentage to which is added training and modifiers for INT and POW. A starting PC who focused on it could have around a 50% chance which can sometimes be augmented by various affinities. The text reads in part "in stressful situations the gamemaster may call for skill rolls to see if an adventurer can successfully use a specific skill to perform a desired activity or achieve a desired goal."

Can you explain how the WHFRP or RuneQuest skills texts are giving you more information that you must have to narrate simulatively, compared to D&D? Is it that Animal Training in WHFRP tells you how many skill tests to teach a trick, and you know that it is realistic that animals take one, three or ten successful week long efforts to train, and have never seen a DM make a judgement that feels equally realistic in play unaided? Equally you're confident that play will yield no situations in which DM will have to decide that pasture is good or bad, or what aiding in herding should amount to? So that the text fully explains those things and RQ GM will never need to exert a simulative capacity.

I do also find myself wondering what is going to count as a "trick" seeing as it's not defined in the text. If you believe that DMs can't make simulative judgements, then there's no lusory-means in the game to decide that. It'd also be puzzling how the group will know what a "moderately difficult" trick is going to be compared to a "difficult" one, supposing that same lack of capacity.

 

[Enrahim]

And "agree to disagree" is useful when we are, for example, talking on a forum. (Though I fail to see how that is at all comparable to an "invisible rulebook" type thing? That's an explicit statement of, or request for, action.) "Agree to disagree" doesn't work when we are playing a game, because the game-state requires that we be on the same page about all of the salient details. If I think my character is conscious and wounded and you think my character is unconscious and dying, that cannot be smoothed over in this way.

As stated, I don't choose to play at tables that feature this kind of "traditional GM" role, so I don't personally have very many lived-through examples of this kind of disagreement when it comes to D&D. I do, however, have some examples when it comes to playing other games, even with friends. For example, a former friend and I played a lot of strategy games. Unfortunately, they had (presumably still have) very different ideas about what that meant, so despite our "gentleman's agreement" about various things, we ended up having some problem disagreements that required a lengthy conversation to resolve. Or a different group of friends, with whom I played some other games, where we had three different ideas of what those games were "for", and because of it, we almost had a major falling out until we finally dragged all of it into the light and actually TALKED about what we wanted rather than just presuming everyone understood us.

Invisible rulebooks, presumption of common thinking, "going with the flow" while suppressing your own interests, has consistently been a cause of problems in my life. Conversely, open, forthright, specific communication has never led me astray--and by having rules that we can actually read, and thus see and ask about, all those conversations happen well in advance of a disagreement occurring. Instead of suffering in silence or getting upset when a contradiction rears its ugly head, we actually develop real understanding of one another, not the hollow presumption of understanding.


See above. I see this as "bandaid after bandaid" until finally something happens that rips all the wounds wide open, and now we've got a giant festering gash where before we had thirteen paper-cuts we could've just treated by actually talking.

Ok. I agree you shouldn't let problems fester. You seem to agree that problems can be patched up until after session. I guess we are in full agreement here?

Howso? There are only finitely many rules. That's the nature of games. I am, of course, quite partial to rules that exploit the utility of abstraction to cover a broader swathe, but that's a separate thing. If the rules are written out, and we actually do read them, that does double duty, clearly specifying what is known, and providing opportunity to ask about things that weren't specified already. That might result in new rules, or it might result in explicit agreement rather than presumed tacit agreement, but either way, it promotes, rather than degrades, the ability to achieve a real understanding of where each of us stands.

Silence doesn't communicate. Communication does. And written communication lasts.

And yet we have the entire field of law trying to cover all the really ugly conflicts humans might get into with limited success. My point was that trying to avoid all kinds of interpersonal trouble through up front rules is seemingly a fools errand. You have to accept to some times have to do the dirty work of resolving your own interpersonal challenges.

No. Because the words of "A" don't actually communicate what they're saying. It's all bound up in the presumptions that go unsaid.

I never said that rules couldn't be of bad quality. Obviously they can! But if they're of bad quality, we can actually SEE it. How can we see that an invisible thing is badly-formed? It's not possible for us to look at it until it goes wrong.


Strong opinions built on the false assumption of tacit agreement are one of the greatest sources of conflict in human relationships.

If you want to talk about false assumptions rather than actual unwritten rules of a community we are having a completely different conversation. False assumptions is everywhere, and indeed something I think everyone agree is awful and would be nice to have good ways to limit.

And how to seperate (assumed) unwritten rules from false assumptions you ask? Good question! This is a framing I would realy like to see for a deep conversation.

How can that be so when everyone has a complete lack of evidence?

But that's not what I said. I said there is a lack of evidence showing that they are wrong. That's quite a bit different from saying there's no evidence that they might, possibly, be right.

You claimed they were impossible to refute. I commented I didn't see how they could be harder to refute than someone with loads of evidence. You replied that they couldn't be refuted trough providing a stronger counter claim. My reply to that was meant to point out that coming with a stronger counter claim is but one way of doing a refutation. You might not be able to show they are wrong, but you are able to reasonably dismiss their truth claim from further consideration in terms of whatever conflict you try to resolve.

Really? I don't think that's the case at all--at least if we're understanding "relevant ambiguity" the same. A relevant ambiguity is, at least as I understand it, something where (a) we care about what it resolves to, (b) any particular result will do something interesting (e.g. in DW terms, both success and failure are interesting), and (c) there is meaningful impact. I draw a distinction between (a) and (c) here because the former is about whether the players are interested in it, while the latter is about whether it affects the game or not. There are plenty of things that are ambiguous that we'd like to resolve...but which won't actually affect the game one way or another, and thus don't need rules, even if some groups might opt to use them. (Naturally, it is possible for something to not matter for a while and then begin to matter later, but that's just the nature of the beast.)

I agree to your a and c, and b if the "interesting thing" can be simply that the other thing that would be interesting didn't happen. Actually I did write a paragraph acknowledging c spesifically for my previous post, but that didn't make the cut. So this is an unstated assumption I had in my previous post.

However if you use this as a definition for game relevant ambiguity then I think "what is in the next room?" is a game relevant ambiguity that is in very many games resolved trough simply "participant declares". The key exceptions I can see is map and key and in flight random generation. I don't think I have seen you argue heavily for those techniques? (Of course "participant declares" is a hard, written rule that resolves the ambiguity, but I got the impression that was not sufficient to satisfy your desire to avoid unwritten rules)

(Edit: I had a caveat further down I edited out, but realised I should re-add here. This is assuming there is no unstated assumptions about the meaning of "care about" or "interesting" that do some heavy lifting. For instance i do not particularly care about or find interesting the outcome of a roll in snakes and ladders, but I certanly consider the ambiguity of where the piece will end up after the turn game relevant)

Keep in mind, as mentioned above, I prefer rules that exploit the utility of abstraction: namely, that the same resolution structure can be applied in whole classes of situations, not just singular ones. Games that strive to have an individual, specific rule for every instance will inevitably fail in their endeavor (and become massively over-bloated as a result; one of 3rd edition's weakest characteristics was that it tried for encyclopedic coverage.) Of course, excessive abstraction is also a risk, and thus we shouldn't abstract willy-nilly--but we shouldn't hate or fear abstraction simply because it is abstract. It's a tool to be used.

Armed with what I call "extensible framework rules"--e.g. things like group checks, skill challenges, my proposed/hypothetical "skirmish" concept (read: "lite" combat; "skirmishes" are to full combats more-or-less as group checks are to skill challenges), etc.--we can use a relatively small number of rules to cover vast swathes of gameplay, or if you prefer, all or nearly all classes of relevant ambiguity for a given game. I recognize that there might still be very rare, limited edge cases, but I'm confident that they would be rare enough to not be a significant concern.

Ref the above - "Player declares all ambiguities regarding their character's actions. GM declares all other ambiguities." Is a structure that covers all situations in just two simple written rules. An absolute triumph of abstraction? Or, I guess that gets i to your excessive abstraction bucket. This is indeed a delicate balancing act. Almost as if design was a complex art with no right answers.

Certainly not. Ironsworn, at the very least, is a TTRPG I've played that doesn't. It has rules for pure GM-less play where the rules tell you how to resolve ambiguities, including answering questions. If you aren't sure what to do, you "Ask the Oracle"--you consult an extensive series of tables with various questions, which may be yes-or-no, or rolling off a list. The one and only element of player judgment involved is, for some of the yes-or-no questions, you should determine how likely or unlikely a "yes" answer would be on that question....and if you aren't sure of that, either, you can just take the basic 50/50, or you can roll to determine what likelihood "yes" should have (and thus, obviously, what likelihood "no" has, since those are the only options).


Again, Ironsworn neatly rejects this claim. There is no need for a GM, the rules themselves handily address that. In truth, the one and only component of judgment that must be exercised by the players is whether they, collectively, feel a given state of affairs (or a given change to the current state of affairs) is reasonable. That's....it, really. Everything else is, in fact, handled by the rules. It was a pretty cool way of doing things and I'm honestly kinda looking forward to continuing with it someday.

My abstract notion was that there are game relevant ambiguities that must be resolved trough participant declaration. I gave an example where the ambiguity happened after a hard rules resolution. Ironsworn is an example where these ambiguities are resolved before the hard rules resolution. More spesifically for ironsworn's case: What question to ask?

You keep painting this as "limitation". I don't see it as such--or, at least, I don't see "limitation" as this terrible bugbear you're presnting it to be. I have criticized others in the past who use the inaccurate platitude, "Limitation breeds creativity." The correct statement is, "Good limitations breed creativity." Naturally, it is quite possible to create bad limitations; one can usually come up with trivial examples without much effort, e.g. my example of spontaneously replacing D&D's initiative rules with "whoever can stand on one foot the longest goes first". But with a reasonable amount of design effort, there's nothing preventing one from achieving really quite good limitations.

One of the first precepts for creating good limitations is to avoid things that seem like choices, but aren't--which excludes both the extreme of bad-by-uniformity faux-"balance" that is simply "everything is the same", and the extreme of bad-by-broken faux-"choice" that is simply "oh there are options, but you can calculate the correct answer". Between the two, you have asymmetrical balance: truly distinct choices, where calculation cannot determine greater value, and thus the players must use qualitative, not quantitative, reasoning to make their choices. Testing is needed to make sure you don't accidentally fall to one side or the other, of course, but it's not some impossible unachievable thing.

Wich limitation are you refering to? I acknowledged I can like TTRPGs that provide limitations ref even really enjoying a lot of board games. That is hardly painting limiting rules as a terrible bugbear.

I also tried to say something about how you appear to be limiting yourself. And this might also be completely fine - you'll never get me on board an open air adult roller caster

(This is the reverse side of why the whole "tactical infinity" concept leaves me cold. If you actually did achieve tactical infinity, then there would necessarily be one objectively correct answer to any given situation--one answer which actually does produce the best results. That deadens, not enlivens, choice. The obverse side is that I don't believe any GM actually does achieve tactical infinity to begin with. Human minds aren't that supple. We can't confine them in a singular, universal box, but that doesn't mean they're infinite.)

(What are you talking about? What sort of optimum are guaranteed to exist in tactical infinity that do not also exist in finite space selection? I am not aware of any theorem indicating the need for there to be a pareto optimal solution in infinite space for instance? And multiple points with the same utility for a given utility function can exist just as much in infinite space as in finite space..

And the clarification "limited only by imagination" is the well known answer to pedantic notions regarding infinity)

 

[gban007]

Sure it does.

A monarch that has to actually listen to their vassals isn't an absolute monarch. That's literally why we have the distinction between an "absolute monarchy", where the monarch rules by pure divine right (or whatever other theory) and their vassals must simply obey. Absolute monarchy was relatively rare in the medieval period, but began to appear more frequently in the late Renaissance, and reached its zenith in the 16th and 17th century, typified by rulers like Louis XIV of France.

"Absolute power" means you never need to discuss. You just declare.

That very specific thing is precisely why I spent so much time, easily half a dozen posts, trying to convince you otherwise. Trying to get you to accept anything else, anything less than "absolute power". But you insisted! You would not accept anything less. Now you have to deal with the consequences of that choice.

I think if two people are using two different definitions of a word, then I'm not sure can say they have to deal with consequences of their choice, if in their mind they are defining absolute power differently to you.

Louis XIV had a number of key advisers, as I believe most absolute monarchs and dictators did. While I agree someone with absolute power doesn't need to discuss, that doesn't mean that someone with absolute power never discusses, they can still choose to do so, and often did.