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

hawkeyefan said:

See… this is you ignoring what I am saying and insisting on viewing things solely from your view. You’re not willing or able, it seems, to accept that “encounters” aren’t so foundational to all games. Not as they’re described in D&D, and not how the term has been influenced by that concept.

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Ackully, this is you not accepting that these games use a lot of the same elements, just with different terms used. So there.

Seriously, at what point did I ever say D&D-style encounters were the norm? In fact, by repeatly talking about social encounters, and to a lesser degree exploration encounters, I by default am moving away from D&D, which uses the term primarily to mean combat.

hawkeyefan said:

Except the games I’m thinking of don’t have “encounters” by any name. This is why the term sheds no real light on broader RPG play, and why it may cause confusion.

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Only to people who can’t compare and contrast different game elements.

hawkeyefan said:

You’re just insisting that you’re right and that everyone view it as you do, and some of us are saying “but that’s not how I view it” and you say “but that’s the only way to view it”.

And then you wonder why we’re not getting anywhere.

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I imagine a lot of it is because you lot are making assumptions about the way I and other people game.

As a simple test of logic…(don’t got all philosophy 101 on me…please, for Pelor’s sake)…

A lot of people seem to have fun playing D&D. And many of them play things differently.

By what standard are they wrong? For me this is a space to talk about how you do it—-what your group likes…

How can people, so many people be having fun but be so wrong?

Do it how you want but there are no “truths” to be found other than the game seems to be run for many. However wrong their opinions.

Stuff gets weird sometimes.

Not enough agency, too much agency, too much creative control, not enough…turn the f-ing dials to fun…for you.

Example: my pals and I have played for nearly 40 years and 36 or so as a group. We count arrows, sometimes die, have good and evil and us alignment…have half races and multiclass and use feats…and…

Now our kids play and think this is fun too.

One DM railroads “more” another not at all and me a little. Somehow friendship and friendship have made this so satisfying.

When I DM I use minis and terrain; my buddy has files on a computer displayed on a TV…the other likes online. Another is theater of the mind. We all play and dm…with a few other full time players and kids.

I know for a fact we love rolling d20s and laugh and have shared stories. Some are forgettable maybe others epic.

Go back to arguing by all means I am on the sidelines reading for fun. But realize fun is the thing. Kid someone else gets there differently whatever. Be flexible if you can and the captain of your soul…er, fun.

Play on and enjoy this great part of life! I might even have the honor of playing your crappy (kidding) game at a con some day!

EzekielRaiden said:

So...you can assume everything is standard, except that assumption may be undercut at any time?

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At any time sounds deceptively common. It's really quite rare.

EzekielRaiden said:

That doesn't sound like a solid foundation to me. It sounds like building on sand.

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It's not. It's more akin to getting a brand new house and discovering one very small dent in the wall of one of the rooms. It's still a very solid, very new house, but there was one small thing that was a little off.

Warpiglet-7 said:

As a simple test of logic…(don’t got all philosophy 101 on me…please, for Pelor’s sake)…

A lot of people seem to have fun playing D&D. And many of them play things differently.

By what standard are they wrong? For me this is a space to talk about how you do it—-what your group likes…

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Not the criteria all of us are using. I'm often talking about what I believe is probably beneficial to the majority of players. I never assume the groups I play with are particularly typical (in fact I have reasons to believe they often aren't).

Thomas Shey said:

Not the criteria all of us are using. I'm often talking about what I believe is probably beneficial to the majority of players. I never assume the groups I play with are particularly typical (in fact I have reasons to believe they often aren't).

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May not apply to you…but read the formula broadly and I suspect you will see what I am talking about.

Warpiglet-7 said:

May not apply to you…but read the formula broadly and I suspect you will see what I am talking about.

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The problem is, I don't believe all groups are good at actually communicating what they want as long as the GM is treated as the main authority. So "Do what's fun" is kind of a useless principal when used alone.

Thomas Shey said:

The problem is, I don't believe all groups are good at actually communicating what they want as long as the GM is treated as the main authority. So "Do what's fun" is kind of a useless principal when used alone.

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If the group does not communicate or get along, no other recommendation matters much: in which case imploring people to find matters little.

I am saying find the guns nd group you like. If you do, you will avoid poor communication and dashed expectations.

Find your fun. Find your group. Give up on getting people to change much.

YMMV

Faolyn said:

And we’ve been talking about D&D which, and specifically about XP versus milestone. And D&D doesn’t do XP for social encounters—except possibly with some optional rule tucked away somewhere in the DMG that I can’t remember right now—and I can’t remember what the rules for XP are for resolving hostile situations peacefully because I don’t use them. But both you and @zakael19 made some big assumptions about how I play without asking me first, and got it wrong.

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I’ve been trying very hard to talk about how I’ve experienced play, designs, and GMing methodology based on my personal experiences and understanding of texts. I don’t believe I was assuming anything about your play, but making statements at most about how I’ve perceived the play culture based on what I see around social media and GM focused spaces that aren’t here.

clearstream said:

This made me wonder what folks' thoughts are on game designer prep? A case in point being the 500+ pages of The Wider World for Stonetop. Or the 200+ pages Griffin Mountain for Runequest as I outlined up thread. Those can supply strong resources for a sandbox play style.

Is game designer prep equivalent to GM prep? If not, what separates it?

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I’ve stated many times that Stonetop Book 2 is my new litmus for “game which gives me so many answers while still asking plenty of questions to ‘play to find out’ within the scope of the premise.” You absolutely have to buy into the designer vision to get a good game out of Stonetop, but if you do the cognitive load is so low because of all the work put in that’s usable on the fly without just making stuff up.

EzekielRaiden said:

People have been so quick to jump on the slightest whiff of perceived accusation that GMs might act in bad faith.

Yet here we have the exact same in the other direction. Direct accusations that players will ruthlessly exploit things. Instant assumption that, because there isn't special extra reward for playing the game, people will exploit others to get their benefits while participating in bad faith.

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I've been in that game and played with those players and lost characters because of it. I know of what I speak.

The other nice thing individual xp does is trend play a bit more toward high-risk high-reward, and away from low-event plodding. Nothing extreme, but it does move the needle.

EzekielRaiden said:

Why should I take seriously all these arguments demanding I only ever presume good faith from GMs when players are always assumed to be dirty money-grubbing exploitative jerks who will use and abuse their fellow players at every opportunity?

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It's the same as a typical refereed sport such as hockey or football: the players have to trust the referee to act in good faith while the referee has to assume the players will do their best to get away with stuff until-unless said referee does his job and they're caught.