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

clearstream said:

5e also codifies it. In 2014 in the DMG with the rule* not to roll unless there are consequences, which was brought into the PHB in 2024.

*The 2014 DMG contains "variant" rules, "optional" rules and just rules; such as the text on page 237.

At the same time, I have heard @Thomas Shey's comment elsewhere and experienced something like it myself, so something is going on there.

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DinoInDisguise said:

I think this is a misunderstanding here. Even in games that aren’t focused on coherent narrative, the core point still applies. This is because pacing matters in any playstyle.

Just because a game isn’t telling a structured story doesn’t mean it’s doing nothing. There’s still player engagement, tension, momentum; and those all benefit from good pacing.

So even in your example, every roll should have meaning. Rolls that do nothing, are, in my opinion, wasting time. The presence of a narrative is kind of irrelevant to the larger principle, good pacing matters.

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I think the way this is to be interpreted is very different in the two playstyles though. In the narativistic context something new should be introduced. The common result of failing in trad is however often the oposite - a posibility that was once there is now no longer pressent. Both are consequences that changes the situation. However one is a complication while the other is in one way a "simplification". The complication is of course much more "engaging" and "interesting". But the removal of the obvious options through failures could foster more creative problem solving.

Take opening a door trough lockpicking. The trad way would be failure - you recognize this lock is beyond your abilities. This is a consequence, as you just learned something new about the situation - the situation has changed, and the pacing are still moving forward. The problem is still the same, but less desireable options like noisy breaking down the door, trying to find a way around, knocking on the door hoping anyone on the other side gets curious and opens it, or maybe expend a spell slot to put the door on fire are suddently things that should be considered more carefully.

In a narativistic game a failure is generally introducing some new complications - the classic being guards rounding the corner while lockpicking. This also causes the situation to change. However suddently the problem isn't the door but the guards. The entire focus of the scene has shifted. This is definitely more dramatic, but much more conductive to fun reactivity than contemplative proaction.

So again this might seem like a common principle, but claiming it is just "codified" in PbtA and similar games is missing the point. Those games codifies it, but in a way that is very spesific to the kind of experience they seek to produce.

Umbran said:

Unless you engage in play in which effect does not follow cause, or characters don't have even half-cogent reasons for their actions, the result is coherent narrative. "Coherent," doesn't mean, "esthetically pleasing," or something. It just means that it makes some basic sense as a series of events.

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My issue is suggesting that the purpose of RPG play is the generation of coherent, dramatically pleasing narrative, not that such a thing might or even probably will happen.

Micah Sweet said:

My issue is suggesting that the purpose of RPG play is the generation of coherent, dramatically pleasing narrative, not that such a thing might or even probably will happen.

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Yes Micah, we know that you're also extremely conservative.

Like seriously folks: if you're not playing a TTRPG to tell some sort of interesting story; and also not in teh OSR skilled play / problem solving culture, you're deeply outside of the dominant D&D play culture. Sure, that's not really a new trend; but the constant trend back around towards dramatic/cinematic play a la Critical Role that places an emphasis on characters-as-complex-heroes, along with their backstories and dramatic arcs is what basically everybody I see looking for games wants.

Edit: again, many of you have been playing TTRPGs (and apparently with the same people??!?!) longer then most of the players these days (including me) have been alive.

Pedantic said:

This is the most effective summary of the divide I've read, on both points. Tying complication to mechanical interaction, instead of originating outside of interaction is the baseline point of incompatibility, and the point about competence is a good articulation of how I've always felt engaging with those systems. It's particularly frustrating, because they nearly always go out of their way to write down a presumption of PC competence, which feels like a violated promise in play.

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Its a perceptual gap; in many respects PbtA games are trying to represent cinematic fiction, and in cinematic fiction things go at least slightly wrong all the time at least until the denouement. But often, perhaps usually, you're still dealing with characters that are avowedly (and usually by evidence) very capable.

Its just that the combination of many players not viewing their characters from an actor POV, and baking it into the die rolls made by the players means that's not how it feels to them. There's no real bridging it, and for people who those two issues does not interfere with the overall result produced, its going to seem perverse to avoid having the system force things forwards in an interesting fashion.

(This is another one of those cases where the fact I play from multiple stances and perspectives makes it easier for me to understand what's going on, I think).

zakael19 said:

Yes Micah, we know that you're also extremely conservative.

Like seriously folks: if you're not playing a TTRPG to tell some sort of interesting story; and also not in teh OSR skilled play / problem solving culture, you're deeply outside of the dominant D&D play culture. Sure, that's not really a new trend; but the constant trend back around towards dramatic/cinematic play a la Critical Role that places an emphasis on characters-as-complex-heroes, along with their backstories and dramatic arcs is what basically everybody I see looking for games wants.

Edit: again, many of you have been playing TTRPGs (and apparently with the same people??!?!) longer then most of the players these days (including me) have been alive.

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Is there a point to applying a term to my preferences that is clearly taken by many people, including the OP, as a negative? For all intents and purposes that's just a put down. Is it a problem for you that I have a long gaming history, or that dramatic/cinematic play is not my top priority?

This is just a long-winded way to tell me to "get with the times".

DinoInDisguise said:

Feel free to push back on this, but I want to offer a slightly different view.

What you're describing as a systemic feature of PbtA games, like Monster of the Week, strikes me more as a GMing principle than something that should be system-bound.

To me, the idea that any GM, in any system, would ask for a roll that doesn't move the narrative forward feels off. One of the GM’s most important responsibilities is pacing. Calling for rolls that don’t affect the story is, in my view, an unforced error. It wastes time and often creates drag on the momentum of play. It's textbook poor pacing.

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I think you're not quite understanding what I'm talking about.

Most rolls in most games can, and probably with at least some of its output, move the narrative forward.

in PbtA games it absolutely will. Very rarely is a roll allowed to simply say the status quo hasn't changed.

Let me give an example.

In many traditional games, if you attempt to pick a lock, a variety of different results can happen. I'm going to generically say there are four of them, depending on the system. You might get a crit, that picks the locks the lock and provides some extra benefit in the process of doing so (say, does so very quickly therefor not using up time that may matter for other reason); you might get a success, that picks the lock; you might get a failure, that uses up time but otherwise doesn't change matters (and that time loss may or may not be particularly relevant depending on other elements of the situation); and you could get a fumble which both fails and makes the situation worse in some fashion (say, making noise that attracts attention you may not want). Some otherwise traditional games with a bit of a leg in a narrative camp might have one or two other cases: success that has a cost besides the time expenditures (takes extra time, say) or failure that still gets you somewhere (makes a successive attempt more likely to work).

PbtA will very rarely leave things at the status quo (I want to say never, but I seem to recall one or two Moves in MotW that might have had a failure without other cost, usually because simply attempting the Move would move things just by trying). In addition, the greatest likelyhood with most Moves is that there will be some sort of complication from attempting the Move, whether successful or not (you can push up your area of heaviest focus where unmixed success may be the likeliest case, but the others will still be fairly common).


This sort of pattern is not routinely the case with most trad games; in most trad games complications added to the situation if viewed as a failure state, just potentially a mixed one if the game is nuanced more. With PbtA games its the expected result, success or not, and that's very much offputting to many people.

DinoInDisguise said:

So while I do agree that PbtA enforces this structurally, I’m not sure the difference you're highlighting really exists in a well-run game with a GM who understands good pacing. “Every roll should matter and move things forward” is a hallmark of strong GMing across the board. PbtA just happens to codify it.

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I think this is a case where the devil is in the details. What "failure" and "success" means matters, and the frequency matters. To a large extent, structurally PbtA doesn't much care whether you succeed or fail, just that something happens (and to the degree it does, it actually considers at least some degree of failure a virtue) and I'm going to suggest that's miles away from what most trad games do and what many, probably most players want.

Micah Sweet said:

My issue is suggesting that the purpose of RPG play is the generation of coherent, dramatically pleasing narrative, not that such a thing might or even probably will happen.

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Sure.
But, go ahead and try to play a session that doesn't generate a coherent narrative.
I think you'll find that not producing a coherent narrative is, in fact, a failure state.

Umbran said:

Sure.
But, go ahead and try to play a session that doesn't generate a coherent narrative.
I think you'll find that not producing a coherent narrative is, in fact, a failure state.

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Again, that's not the purpose of play for me and for all RPGs, it is a consequence of how the game works.

clearstream said:

5e also codifies it. In 2014 in the DMG with the rule* not to roll unless there are consequences, which was brought into the PHB in 2024.

*The 2014 DMG contains "variant" rules, "optional" rules and just rules; such as the text on page 237.

At the same time, I have heard @Thomas Shey's comment elsewhere and experienced something like it myself, so something is going on there.

Click to expand...

Well, part of the problem is that sometimes there's process where failure is providing information that may be desirable for changing your approach, but you don't want acquiring it to make the situation worse.

Say you're climbing something; a not-uncommon pattern in a trad game is for a success to make progress (but not necessarily resolve the whole thing), a crit makes faster progress, a failure makes no progress and a fumble creates a potential fall (you usually don't want it to automatically do so if there's multiple rolls involved because of the way maths work in those situations). If you get more than one failure, it may be there to tell you you need to try to do something different (perhaps move sideways to a different part of the face) similar to how failure to strike and do damage in combat may tell you that a different tactic is needed.

Its still serving a purpose, but its not, per se, advancing things. But the ability to do so effects pace-of-resolution in a way that does not enforce partial or complete failure the way "any roll has consequences" does if full success is not made (and as I noted, probabilities of each and how they're framed matter; PbtA games tend to frame "success with a cost" as part of success, which is not how at least some people see it, and embody it as a component of its "success" probability range which is very much not how at least some players will see it).

zakael19 said:

Yes Micah, we know that you're also extremely conservative.

Like seriously folks: if you're not playing a TTRPG to tell some sort of interesting story; and also not in teh OSR skilled play / problem solving culture, you're deeply outside of the dominant D&D play culture. Sure, that's not really a new trend; but the constant trend back around towards dramatic/cinematic play a la Critical Role that places an emphasis on characters-as-complex-heroes, along with their backstories and dramatic arcs is what basically everybody I see looking for games wants.

Edit: again, many of you have been playing TTRPGs (and apparently with the same people??!?!) longer then most of the players these days (including me) have been alive.

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I'm with @Micah Sweet on this one. I don't set out to tell an interesting story, I set out to play an interesting and engaging game that both my players and I can enjoy. The story that emerges does not concern me one bit, did the players have fun interacting with my NPCs? Did they enjoy solving the mystery and were the challenges both combat and non-combat challenging but not to the point of frustration? Depending on the group were there emotional moments or something else? Did we laugh and have fun? If I can say yes to that, and I almost always can, then I've done my job as GM.

A story emerges from play, but that's not the goal of play. I also don't think it's old fashioned to frame my games that way just because other games do so.