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

hawkeyefan said:

I would say it’s more like how most movies handle it. You watch the character get into a car and pull away… then they cut to a scene of him arriving at his destination.

No one’s baffled by what happened in between.



It really doesn’t. You insist this always whenever this comes up… but it literally doesn’t happen. Many of us play this way and we are telling you, your concern is unfounded.

But you continue to make this claim despite what we say and despite any actual evidence that you’ve seen your concerns manifested.



Sure, but that can all be done quickly. It’s bookkeeping… handle it as quickly as possible and then move on. There’s not really any need to act out the transaction. Maybe a little if the vendor is an important NPC or something… obviously, there may be exceptions. But generally speaking, you can just do what’s necessary and then move on.

And this mindset can be applied more broadly. Play does not break down. All that happens is you skip out on the dull bits.

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What counts as dull varies rather a lot from one player or GM and another. And that mindset of which you are so fond can be applied as broadly or narrowly as desired. Your preference on this is not as universal as you imply.

AbdulAlhazred said:

As for pacing itself. I just find it odd that anyone would really want to RP a stakeless shopping expedition. I mean, OK, for 5 minutes, maybe? I am not denigrating anyone's fun, just saying we're here to do fantasy RPG, lets get to it! I literally start to nod off when people start into this kind of wool gathering sort of play. It just isn't compelling.

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Again I'll assume a 'to me' there, as I have players who do find it compelling; and who are left cold by the sorts of things likely figuring in "let's get to it". There are no doubt cultural (and gender and age related sub-cultural) filters at work in this.

I sometimes label narrativism as "dramatism" due to its commitment to traditional Western drama. Whether that is right or not, I decided to comment here to resist narrowly norming our list of proper subjects... which is what assertions like the closing sentence of the quoted comment seem to amount to.

clearstream said:

It sounds like you agree with me that they may be likened inasmuch as they are applications of discretion by specific participants.

EDIT I perhaps noticed something interesting here. Why would I count extrapolating as an application of discretion rather than choice? One has to remember that the application [of discretion] is to the question of whether to call for a roll. What is wanted at that point is a reasonable belief that meaningful consequences will be entrained. That chimes with how folk very often play procedures that require discerning-consequences: they call for a roll on the basis of a belief its consequences will be interesting without having chosen what those consequences are going to be. Two notions suggested in the BW Codex for how that can work are 1) GM sees that the consequences are implicit in the test, and 2) GM maintains the appropriate attitude (one liable to devise appropriate consequences.)

That job of comparing seems as you say incommensurate with a job of extrapolating. Perhaps too, many participants can more reliably perform the former than the latter, notwithstanding the necessity of the latter in fabricating our shared ongoing narratives.

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On subsequent reflection, while it remains true that a job of comparing seems incommensurate with that of extrapolating, my likening of MC and GM calls for roll was accurate.

I said that "the AW MC has the somewhat similar job of saying when a move is invoked" "...because in both cases one participant (MC, DM) has the job of saying whether to call for a roll." This was in response to a notion that a procedure that calls for a roll only if consequences are discerned "is a rule for GM-centred play: the GM decides whether or not a declared action is apt to have consequences, and on that basis calls for a roll, or doesn't" and "the only constraint is what the GM thinks will, or should, or might, happen next."

There was in that a shifting of focus that wound up comparing the MC decision to call for a roll with the GM extrapolation of consequences. The likening I claimed was between MC decision to call for a roll and GM decision to call for a roll. Both are equally capable and constrained in reliably discerning on the one hand if what player said fit with description in a rule, and on the other hand if whomever holds the right to is liable to narrate consequences. The way this is commonly played needs only the commitment to or confidence in there being consequences as the input into the exercise of discretion.

A comparison I didn't make, but that could be made, is between GM choice over what they infer or extrapolate, and player choice over what they do.

EzekielRaiden said:

It depends on whether the party HAS to get through the door or not, doesn't it? One of the reasons behind "fail forward" is specifically to teach GMs that there is a different way to deal with a "single point of failure" problem. That is, sometimes you're going to only realize something was a single point of failure too late to directly address it--or you're improvising and didn't think that far ahead, or you truly want this to be a single point of failure because that creates tension, or whatever else. But a single point of failure where the only result of failure is "the game grinds to a halt because nothing happens nor can happen" is pretty blatantly a bad thing.

Fail forward, as a rule of thumb, means that even if the party gets struck by such a thing, the pace of the experience and the enjoyment of play don't get drained away as the party sits there, waiting for one of their schemes to finally, finally, FINALLY open the stupid friggin' door.

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I am a bit confused. Are you arguing that a procedure that someone claims are not good for them most of the time should be applied universally anyway as it might be good to use if you royally screw up at some point? Wouldn't it be a much better to just have it in the toolbox and when you find yourself painted i to a corner you can say "I made a woopsie, let us try fail forward here, ok?"

Enrahim said:

I am a bit confused. Are you arguing that a procedure that someone claims are not good for them most of the time should be applied universally anyway as it might be good to use if you royally screw up at some point? Wouldn't it be a much better to just have it in the toolbox and when you find yourself painted i to a corner you can say "I made a woopsie, let us try fail forward here, ok?"

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Personally, I generally just don't run games where single point of failure is a concept that makes sense on a campaign level. No one ever has to keep going "forward", so fail forward will never be necessary.

SableWyvern said:

Personally, I generally just don't run games where single point of failure is a concept that makes sense on a campaign level. No one ever has to keep going "forward", so fail forward will never be necessary.

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Exactly, that is what I think is the case for most that are not very into fail forward in this thread. Hence the label "royal" I could imagine for instance there being some pit trap everyone fell into and the characters are out of all obvious resouces they normally would have had to get out of it. Then it would be at least for me very tempting to fail-forward the low-on-hp rogue's final climb attempt somehow. (Like he gets up, but triggers the pit trap to slam shut with no obvious way to reopen)

Enrahim said:

Exactly, that is what I think is the case for most that are not very into fail forward in this thread. Hence the label "royal" I could imagine for instance there being some pit trap everyone fell into and the characters are out of all obvious resouces they normally would have had to get out of it. Then it would be at least for me very tempting to fail-forward the low-on-hp rogue's final climb attempt somehow. (Like he gets up, but triggers the pit trap to slam shut with no obvious way to reopen)

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If I had made a boo-boo and included a trap that can result in a TPK, in a game where a trap causing a TPK was not an acceptable outcome, I still wouldn't implement fail forward to fix it.

I would instead say, "Hey, guys, I didn't think this trap through and it shouldn't have worked this way. Assuming we're not all happy with just saying everyone dies in the pit, lets recon this a bit. Sorry about that."

I don't need to implement a new dice mechanic to fudge my way out of the situation, I'd just own up and be clear about what happened. [Note: using fail forward in a game where fail forward is already an established part of play would not, IMO, count as fudging. Using it to fix a problem when it's not a normal and agreed part of play would, IMO. I'd rather just admit my mistake and fix it, than pretend it's the dice doing it.]

Edit to add: And perhaps this actually goes back to the crux of the ongoing disagreement. I don't need a formal mechanic or rule to fall back on to fix the problem, because my wide-ranging and mostly unlimited GM powers already include the ability to just say, "Hey guys, I messed up, let sort this out."

Reflecting a bit more on the question of the existence of game world I'm going to draw a rough working distinction between it and shared ongoing narrative, supposing arguendo that

Sandbox worries about and takes care to establish the former independent of the latter. That means that game world can exist even when shared ongoing narrative doesn't exist. This has been commented on many times, such as observations and concerns about fiction that players don't know about. There are often rules in sandbox game designs that haven't anything to do with structuring the shared ongoing narrative (observably contrasting with 'storynow' designs, which worry more about structuring the shared ongoing narrative.)

clearstream said:

Sandbox worries about and takes care to establish the former independent of the latter.

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Traditional, living world sandbox, as advocated for by the trad gaming crew in this thread, worries about and takes care to establish the former independent of the latter.

With that clarification, everything else in your post seems to be clear and reasonable to me.

One of the early points of contention, which I think we've long since moved past, was the idea that Narrative and sandbox are incompatible (I think we've all since agreed that's not the case).

SableWyvern said:

Traditional, living world sandbox, as advocated for by the trad gaming crew in this thread, worries about and takes care to establish the former independent of the latter.

With that clarification, everything else in your post seems to be clear and reasonable to me.

One of the early points of contention, which I think we've long since moved past, was the idea that Narrative and sandbox are incompatible (I think we've all since agreed that's not the case).

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I should have added that I reserve the label neo-sandbox for what you describe. The neo-sandbox conceptual 'project' is the compatibility of narrative and sandbox.* What my post seems to me to suggest (relevant to your criticism) is that work is needed to sustain something integral to the mode... you can see that the 'project' faces interesting problems as to how that works out.

*So that we can have neo-trad, neo-sim, and neo-sandbox as terms to describe designers integrating discoveries by the avant-garde into longer-standing or classical modes of play. Consciously motivated often by the relevant philosophies of play.

EDIT @SableWyvern I mean that I agree with your closing thought. They are compatible. I point out only present differences in structuring and to concerns that neo-sandbox will have that sandbox may not have. Which you also identified.