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

[Faolyn]

It's a common meme and a joke.

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I'm well aware of that. But whatever the bard's interests are, is it reasonable that the dragon shares them?

 

[Lanefan]

Consider: You have a world where there have never been any dragonborn (or tieflings, or firbolgs, or whatever "non-Tolkien but widely-played race" option you'd prefer I used), though there are dragons and things like dragon-blooded sorcerers. You--for the sake of this argument--don't have any strong feelings one way or the other about dragonborn, but you know that they have never previously been mentioned within the world you run. You have just had a vacancy open up at your table, because a long-time player is moving away (as I know you basically only play in-person). A prospective new player has been recommended to you by a friend. They're generally a good fit (their overall system preferences are similar to yours, your friend has never had an issue with them, they're willing to work with their GMs to come to mutually-satisfying results, etc.)--but they'd really, really like to play a dragonborn, or at least something reasonably approximating one.

Bunch of things here. First off, there ain't any dragon-blooded sorcerers. Second off, and far more relevant, is that if this prospective new player rolls in looking to play a Dragonborn (or equivalent) and nothing else, then that's already telling the rest of us that they're maybe not as "generally a good fit" into the game as we'd been led to believe.

Further, red flags immediately go up for the game's future with this player - does the gentle insistence on preference stop here, or are other things going to be requested later e.g. "I really want to play a Paladin, which means none of you can play Chaotic or Evil characters" (I've seen this one numerous times; IME the I-want-a-Paladin player almost never wins).

And, if I do allow the Dragonborn in as a one-off unique character and it turns out in play to be a one-hit wonder that dies in its second combat (a not-uncommon fate of characters here, particularly at very low level), then what?

If you run a homebrew world where it is simply, flatly not possible to ever include any mechanical nor aesthetic novelties--where it is simply not possible for new interests to get integreated into that world--then you have cut off a meaningful part of player agency. It is not player-as-character agency, but it is still player agency nonetheless.

Until you're actually in the game that'd be not-player agency, which takes a distant second priority to the agency of those already in the game.

If, instead, you run a homebrew world where there is always the external terra incognita, then you can collaborate with this new player to find a result which doesn't do anything you have a problem with, but does achieve the few minimum things they're seeking. Perhaps you don't think it makes sense for there to be a true "species" of dragon-like humanoids in this world, but you're okay with a one-off. Or, if there are dragonborn, since they've never been heard of, you want them to be from somewhere far away--so perhaps the character's parents crash-landed in a ship from across the sea, dying only just after begging the character's adoptive parents to look after their child. Or maybe you're fine with the mechanical features, it's the aesthetic ones, so something that doesn't physically look dragon-like would be fine. Or...etc., etc., etc.

Point being, by having the freedom to dip into the "beyond the horizon" unknowns, you can support the player's agency in playing what most excites their sincere, genuine enthusiasm.

In other, blunter, words: you want me-as-DM to leave blank areas on the map (which by itself is great advice) so you-as-player can lobby to slide in things that wouldn't otherwise be in the game. That's...something not good.

I don't understand why. This is one of the most powerful, and most useful, applications of this concept. Why is it so offensive to you to take time to consider what a player feels excited to play? To investigate how their enthusiasm can be supported, rather than rejected?

The setting as it is works just fine for the rest of us, why should it suddenly have to change just to support one player?

Never mind that in the specific case of bringing in a heretofore unknown PC species, if that species is thenceforth to be playable by anyone I then have to do a whole lot of work incorporating it into my rules. And if it's a unique one-off character I don't have to do all that work; but the player's hosed when it dies.

 

[Faolyn]

I used lock picking because that was what we were discussing at the time. We could recast it as something else. It wouldn't change the important elements.

And you still would have been factually incorrect because you weren't running the game the way it was meant to be run.

This is the only part of this post that gets at the core issue. And I don't think the main claim--that you don't consider success or failure until it happens--is true. When we set stakes for the roll by figuring out what the PC is doing, what that looks like in the fiction, what the position is, what the effect is, we are discussing what that looks like.

For example, consider the GM principle: "Tell them the consequences and ask". The book's example:
"Yeah, you can run the whole way but you might be exhausted when you get there. Want to roll for it and take the risk, or go slower?" explicitly sets out what success and failure entail.

And notice here that the results (and those of the second example) directly affect the only PC who made the roll, not the scene or the people around the PC. The PC wanted to know if they could run all the way there. Yes, but. The PC was facing a monster; here's the possibilities that will occur.

Or again, in the GM Bad habits section: "The consequences you inflict on a 1-3 or 4/5 roll will usually be obvious". Maybe you are not considering it actively, but if it is that obvious...we know what would have happened on those results.

Read the entire sentence: The consequence(s) you inflict on a 1-3 or 4/5 roll will usually be obvious, since the action has already been established. You deal with the consequences afterwards, not before or during. After.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So I might have skipped a few hundred pages somewhere in the middle, but believe or not, I've actually read most of this ludicrous thread.

Some random comments on a few of the things being discussed:

Is D&D simulationistic? I think it is somewhat, though there are a lot of gamism in it. Things tend to pay lip service to simulation, but main concerns are gamist, and 5.5 (unfortunately for me) seems to be going even more heavily into that direction. However, like already pointed out, how simulationistically it plays in practice, depends a lot on how the GM implements the rules. I certainly have drifted my 5e game into the direction of simulation quite a bit.

I use gritty rests and healer's kit dependency, so it easier to treat any HP loss as some sort of actual injury (albeit how severe might be a tad vague) and I also interpret high level characters to be like mythic heroes or wuxia characters rather than real world people, so them being able to do ludicrous stuff and survive implausible things is at least party diegetic in the setting.

I also treat classes as somewhat diegetic and have NPCs (loosely) follow the PC class structures. For example arcane tricksters are known as the Spell Thieves of Shimbal, a tradition with its own history and place in the setting. This also helps in part to avoid "the issekai effect," as by choosing the basic building blocks of your character you are not just choosing arbitrary power packages, but actually something that tells us about the characters place in the world. Also spell levels, known as "eight circles of magic" are part of the lore (eight, because ninth is so rare that its existence is not generally known.)

But most "sim" part of D&D is easily the skill system. And that is exactly the sort of rules-light broad-strokes simulationism I like. There is a numerical bonus that measures the character's capability in the skill and there is a DC that measures how challenging the task is. Both are diegetic. Then from these we draw the odds of succeeding at the task. This is the level of simulation I need. I absolutely do not need seven thousand Skillmaster charts to tediously roll on.

But from here I segue into another matter that was under discussion, narrativism, fail forward, and why some implementations of these might feel unimmersive to many. I think the rune deciphering @pemerton mentioned is a perfect example of this. The character is just deciphering the runes, not in the fiction, nor in the character's understanding, does this act determine the nature of the runes. However, the player is doing something quite different. They are rolling to see whether they get to decide what the runes are. This makes the player decision space and the character decision space fundamentally disconnected. In the fiction it does not matter which character tries to decipher the runes, except perhaps a less skilled one not being able to do so as effectively. This is the reality of the characters. However to the players at the table it matters a lot. It determines which player gets to input the meaning for the runes, and it means that a less skilled character has higher chance to result the runes being something negative.

It also seems to me rather confused to derive the odds of unrelated phenomenon from things that purportedly measure the character skill and the difficulty of the task. Like why are we drawing odds of the runes being something good from the PC's skill in rune reading? This is not related, hell, obviously the skill in rune reading doesn't measure that at all, as the character will succeed in reading them regardless, it just so happens that people bad at deciphering runes for some reason more often find unfortunate messages as they just as skilfully read those runes!

So should the player play their character as the reality works how the character believes? So for example, if my character who is very curious but not so great at rune-reading happens to get to the runes first, should I play them as eagerly trying to read the runes as from their perspective there is no harm in that, even though I as a player know this not to be the case?

Similar sort of disconnect can happen also with some forms of fail forward. I certainly am quite often aware of this tension whilst playing Blades in the Dark. It is no wonder that this is something a lot of people find unimmersive, as it literally forces a disconnect between the player and the character. And to be fair, there are also things in D&D and games like it that can cause somewhat similar disconnect. Oddities caused by gamifying the combat structure is common source of this, and as a result, I tend to find combats the least immersive part of D&D play experience.

But of course none of this means that these things are bad. Rigid structure of D&D combat makes them more tactical, and a lot of people find that fun. And allowing players to affect the shared fiction in non-causal manner in narrativist games certainly opens up new possibilities to player to add to the story. It is just a question of whether you consider the trade-offs to be worth it.

Also, relating to how GM implementation affects the achieved simulation in D&D, there absolutely is nothing stopping someone from drifting it into more narrativistic direction instead. One could have absolutely ran Pemerton's rune example in D&D as an arcana skill check.

 

[AlViking]

I'm well aware of that. But whatever the bard's interests are, is it reasonable that the dragon shares them?

The meme is that in the context of the game seducing the dragon does not fit in the context of the situation, the genre, expectations of the game. If dragon seducing bards are a thing in your game on a regular basis and you're okay with it, fine. I was just pointing out that sometimes the GM should say no if they want to maintain the style of the game everyone other than the bard's player wants.

 

[Lanefan]

So...
Imagine two action declarations:

1) I want to quietly pick the lock, by using my lockpicks.
2) I want to enter the kitchen unnoticed, by quietly picking the lock.

The first is an action declaration.

The second is two action declarations - "pick the lock" and "enter the kitchen unnoticed" - mushed into one.

Thus, unless the second one is split out into its component parts, they can't really be compared.

Absent a specific rules system, both of these are cogent enough action declarations. Both have goal and approach, understandable cause and effect.

The cook is said to be nonsensical for the first declaration. But it isn't for the second.

But also, technically, the first doesn't actually get you in the kitchen. It gets you an unlocked door. It must be followed by opening the door to get in the building.

To get parity for the two cases, ewe need to include the step of entering the kitchen to the first case. At which point, we'd say that the cook is a rational "bad luck" result on entering, instead of lockpicking.

My take is that to get parity we need to split the second one out into two discrete parts. If nothing else, it allows for the IME common scenario where one character picks the lock then stands back while someone else goes in the door.

 

[Lanefan]

What I want to know is what happens if a PC has been told that there are runes of importance to him in the ruined castle, but he keeps failing the rolls. Do more and more runes keep showing up until he eventually succeeds and finds the ones that say what he hopes they will say?

Fail forward - the player will be told what the runes say anyway and then some complication will happen...

 

[Lanefan]

So, there are two different things that could happen here.

1) Disallowing the action -the PC cannot even attempt it.
2) Allowing the PC to attempt the action, but noting that the DC (or mechanical equvalent) is so high that the PC cannot succeed.

Note that the resulting narrative is different between these. One has no attempt made, the other has an attempt that fails. That means the resulting fictional position is different.

In what cases should the GM choose 1 instead of 2?

IMO, never.

No matter how hopeless an action is, you can always go through the motions of trying it anyway.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's passive aggressive to say there is no one true way?

Nope.

 

[Lanefan]

But then they roll a 20, have expertise and a high mod and get over a 30. When I tell them it still doesn't work I get the "Then why did you have me roll?"

Answer: "Because had you rolled a 2 you'd have failed without realizing what you were attempting was beyond your skill".