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

[Snarf Zagyg]

I, too, used to enjoy suffering for my TTRPG art. Now I don't want to anymore.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is always my problem, whenever the "crazy example" comes up, it just reads as a clear design prompt to me. Does your game not have improvised weapon and object interaction rules? That feels pretty easy to resolve without particularly complicated systems. See also "swinging from chandeliers."

But it still requires some adjudication. What objects qualify as improvised weapons? And if all improvised weapons do not have same rules, (I for example might expect a frozen herring and a heavy shovel to have somewhat different rules) someone has to decide which rules each object gets. Same with the actions, some adjudication is often needed.

 

[FrogReaver]

View attachment 413189

You missed getting the 20,000th post. There’s still time to try for the 30,000th though.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You missed getting the 20,000th post. There’s still time to try for the 30,000th though.

I think we have different definitions of "missed."

As I say to bards, "How can I miss you if you won't go away?"

 

[FrogReaver]

I think we have different definitions of "missed."

As I say to bards, "How can I miss you if you won't go away?"

Hmmm. Makes me think of that show where they bardly go where no man has gone before.

Thats some inuendo if I’ve ever seen it. Very fitting for Shatner I guess. Which is also a name that could function as a verb. “I shatnered”

 

[Pedantic]

I’ve never seen a game handle improvised weapons and objects particularly well. Do you have some specific rules in mind you feel are great for this. Especially ones for swinging from the chandelier (especially ones that can cover more than a single genre convention around the difficulty of swinging from chandeliers.

I don't have an object swinging system off the top of my head, but I want to point out that I don't actually care if they perfectly fulfill a genre convention; I would rather have a player note there is a chandelier and decide not to swing on it, because that would be an ineffective move than have to devise rules to make their choice worth doing.

But it still requires some adjudication. What objects qualify as improvised weapons? And if all improvised weapons do not have same rules, (I for example might expect a frozen herring and a heavy shovel to have somewhat different rules) someone has to decide which rules each object gets. Same with the actions, some adjudication is often needed.

Sure, but that should never be read as permission to not write rules about it.

 

[Faolyn]

The player authors a fiction. The character discovers a reality. How is that hard?

Because then you would likely have to go back and rewrite all of your history to match the newly created reality. Do you, or the players at your table, do that?

Now, when the players encountered the runes, do the players also get to author their appearance? Or did you do that? Because how the sign looked should have influenced the PCs' hopes. There's an obvious difference between this:

and this

Just like there's an obvious difference between this:

and this:

If the sign was neatly written and it turns out it's an exit sign, I'd expect that means it was officially placed here--which means there should be several signs all around the place, because whoever made the dungeon wanted certain areas to be clearly marked. It indicates that the place had a specific purpose that I should see expressed in the dungeon's layout. Which means that in order to keep the immersion, you'd have to retroactively change the adventure so we'd have seen these signs before, and possibly even translated them then. Are you and the players going to do this? If not, there goes the immersion. And judging by some of the people on this thread, the immersion would be gone if you did.

If the sign was scrawled, then that brings up other possibilities. Did the writer do this to be useful for future travelers? Were they planning on coming back? Are they here now? Is this sign actually leading to a trap or trick?

For that matter, unless there was a pointer (on the scrawled sign), why would I "hope" it was an exit sign? If I "hoped" it was graffiti about gladiators/professional pit fighters (which is what the Latin sign actually is, IIRC), then that means there should be evidence of that sort of culture in the dungeon--an arena, training rooms, etc. Which means that you, as the GM, need to incorporate that into our adventure here. Have you?

And yes, as a player, if the GM didn't say whether the runes were neatly carved or scrawled, I'd ask--not as a trap, but because I want a good mental image of the place.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just to be really extra clear, I'm asking for citations so that the actual game text can be analyzed.

Which games' research rules are you thinking of?

I'd have to sit down and think, honestly. I remember seeing the sort of thing I referenced but--I'm quite old, and own quite a lot of games of the more crunchy and detailed sort.

 

[Enrahim]

Edit: I think I got the wrong context. Never mind.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure, but that should never be read as permission to not write rules about it.

Yeah, agreed. But my point is that you cannot really get fully rid of adjudication thus the rules cannot ever be "complete" in manner you described earlier.