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

Lanefan said:

Thing is, a conflict-neutral or low-no stakes event now may - or may not - have all kinds of consequences down the road. And as you don't know what "down the road" is going to consist of until after you've got there and beyond, I say the default should be to play them out unless the players say not to.

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But by that assertion, literally all possible events COULD, maybe, potentially, possibly, someday, have some kind of consequence that might be relevant. If we follow that maxim, that would mean we cannot ever elide out detail--ever. Literally everything, every breath, every drink, every morsel, every poop, every step needs to be precisely counted, otherwise we might forget something. You can't have the party merely retrace their steps--they have to actually go through the motions of walking through every room, step by step by step, because maybe, possibly, something could happen! You never know!

That standard is patently ridiculous. It leads to hypergeometric explosion, where every single nuance and detail needs five minutes' time spent nailing down everything. I simply cannot believe that you (nor, indeed, anyone) plays by such a standard.

There are plenty of things we presume occur without explicitly calling them out. You do it. I do it. Everyone does it. It is simply--flatly--not true that any of us go to THAT level of detail. There are some things that all of us, even you, don't ask the players to play through, or do so in only a highly abstracted, rapid-pace kind of way (e.g. I don't imagine you have the players roll to see if their sleep is in some way interrupted for every minute of sleep!)

Lanefan said:

Haggling the merchant down such that with your last few g.p. you can get 6 torches for the usual price of 5 might seem trivial at the time.....until later when having that 6th torch makes all the difference between the party surviving or getting wiped out.

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Really? Is that really a thing? Genuinely. I just don't believe that this actually happens with anywhere near enough frequency to matter. Especially because--surprise surprise!--most merchants aren't going to be willing to haggle in the first place. It's frankly a ridiculous and EXTREMELY unversimilitudinous idea that somehow got lodged in the early-D&D culture-of-play that every merchant is actually SUPER down to haggle over every single price, every single time, over and over until Kingdom come. That's just not how merchants operate. It simply, flatly isn't. Sure, on rare occasions, you might get the opportunity to haggle--but every single time? No. That's flatly ridiculous.

If a merchant sells five torches for a silver piece, they sell five torches for a silver piece--that's legit verisimilitude. You aren't going to find a better deal because if you could, word would spread, and either the haggle-ee would go out of business because people keep demanding prices too low, or the other merchants will drop their prices to match. It's just outright ridiculous to claim that 100% of merchants will guaranteed ALWAYS be willing to even start haggling, let alone conclude doing so, let alone conclude doing so in the party's favor, let alone conclude doing so in the party's favor in a way that will make a difference umpteen-million sessions down the line maybe possibly if the stars are right and the Moon is in the House of the Wombat.

If the players WANT to make a thing of it, sure, shoot. But in the vast majority of cases, they won't get the chance; in the vast majority of cases where they get a chance, it won't make a difference; in the vast majority of cases where it makes a difference today, it will never matter later on. A remnant of a remnant of a remnant of a remnant is not a compelling case. I don't practice homeopathic GMing.

Micah Sweet said:

The rules are important, but the fiction matters more. It's not collaborative storytelling. It's a game where the rules don't take priority over how the setting is presented and interacted with. Where the fiction wins if there's a conflict.

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Can you give an example or illustration?

Because my experience is frequently the opposite, as far as D&D is concerned. For instance, when I started a thread asking about whether a D&D warrior PC could pray to heal their injured ally, many of the responses I got explained how that wasn't possible because the PC is not a cleric.

I've seen many posts arguing that the rules for jumping in 5e D&D mean that a PC with (say) 16 STR just can't make a 20-foot jump.

I've never heard of the fiction of how many spells a MU can memorise overriding the spells-by-level chart.

And as I've posted in this thread, I've never heard of the fiction (eg "My PC is tougher than any Orc") overriding the combat mechanics when it comes to working out who can best whom in melee.

So I don't really know what you have in mind.

pemerton said:

When this happened to Conan (in The Hour of the Dragon, from memory) a secret admirer - Zenobia - helped him escape.

Another time (in The Scarlet Citadel an old enemy came in to the cell to gloat, which gave Conan the opportunity to escape.

These are things that can happen in our RPGing too. In Burning Wheel, the relevant mechanic is the Circles test.

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Certainly.

But those are examples of having a cool highlight scene, rather than scrupulously following verisimilitude and scrupulously always avoiding "storytelling".

zakael19 said:

Eh, to be fair the OP was more about all the people whinging about the new art and tone and such - “you can stick with what you like without putting the new stuff down because it doesn’t feel like what you’re accustomed to” seems valid when I think it’d safe to say WOTC knew the wide audience they were appealing too. Considering that all the folks I know younger than me who I showed the books to absolutely loved the art and style changes, I think the point there was pretty laser focused.

I’m not entirely sure when or why the thread segued into whatever it’s been for about 800 pages now.

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This is one of those glorious kitchen-sink threads, where everything gets talked about at once rather than in fifteen different threads each with its own more focussed topic.

EzekielRaiden said:

But isn't that explicitly interfering with the world in order to create a better story?

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It's setting ground rules and a set of shared expectations for the campaign. I've repeatedly stated that I consider a set of clear, shared expectations to be essential to a successful game.

If you would like to define that as "interfering with the world in order to create a better story" I don't think there is anything to be gained by arguing with you about it.

EzekielRaiden said:

I am talking about a perfectly fiction-appropriate scenario, abandoned in a dungeon cell, where failure absolutely is not guaranteed...the problem is that nobody in the party is rolling well enough to get out. So they have to keep rolling and rolling until they get something like a nat 20.

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If there is effectively unlimited time and no consequence for failure, I don't use fail forward; I don't roll at all. This isn't a single point of failure, because failure isn't possible.

If there is a practical time limit, then we're back to either playing a game where the risk of a campaign ended imprisonment is on the cards or it isn't. If it isn't, the situation shouldn't arise in the first place and allowing it to happen is a failure of design

Faolyn said:

I hardly think having something interesting happen instead of having nothing happen is making reality bend over backwards.

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It's bending over backwards when

a) the "something interesting" is clearly contrived just for that purpose and otherwise makes no in-fiction sense, and-or
b) "interesting things" keep happening over and over again, far more often than random chance would dictate.

SableWyvern said:

It's setting ground rules and a set of shared expectations for the campaign. I've repeatedly stated that I consider a set of clear, shared expectations to be essential to a successful game.

If you would like to define that as "interfering with the world in order to create a better story" I don't think there is anything to be gained by arguing with you about it.

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I just...

Okay? Like if you're going to tell me that you refuse to participate in further discussion, I can't really demand anything of you otherwise. But it's just profoundly confusing to be told that there will never be situations where the GM controls events, and then be told that actually the GM will not allow some events and will allow other events. I simply don't understand how those things are reconciled. I can't ask you to speak any more on it, but it comes across as directly contradictory while denying that there could ever be any possible way to interpret it as contradictory.

Declaring at the start of the game that one will forbid pathways that produce an un-fun adventure, as far as I had understood it, was directly and explicitly incompatible with declaring that one is running a "traditional GM" sandbox-y campaign.

SableWyvern said:

If there is effectively unlimited time and no consequence for failure, I don't use fail forward; I don't roll at all. This isn't a single point of failure, because failure isn't possible.

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Okay. That's still something which skips over a scene for pacing reasons though. Like...sure, you've evaded "fail forward". But you've done so in a way that concedes what the example of "fail forward" was aimed at, namely, cutting out pointless non-conflict events so the game can move onward. That's still picking some "conflict-neutral" events to gloss over without any attention paid to them. If that isn't conceding the fundamental point--that most people do in fact skip over "unimportant" scenes, because doing so specifically makes the experience of play better--then I don't know what you are saying.

EzekielRaiden said:

Certainly.

But those are examples of having a cool highlight scene, rather than scrupulously following verisimilitude and scrupulously always avoiding "storytelling".

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I think it's a mistake to look at interesting fiction, and then - when thinking about how a RPG might replicate it - to bring in ideas that assume a basically D&D-esque structure of player and GM moves.

Because if that assumption is made, then - as Hickman worked out over 40 years ago - the answer will always be the way to get interesting fiction is for the GM to use their authority, even if that means overriding the normal heuristics, procedures and mechanics.

Instead, we can look at how to take the most basic feature of RPGing - the GM presents a situation in which certain characters are present, and the players, by "controlling" those characters, act out responses to the presented situation - and arrange it and guide it so that interesting things are apt to happen.

This is where principles like Make the PCs lives not boring and related moves like Provide an opportunity, with or without a cost become salient.

It's not about storytelling. It's about how to frame situations. And it's not undercutting verisimilitude. Who's to say that what happened in the tower of Cirith Ungol, when Frodo was taken prisoner there, is lacking in verisimilitude? Maybe it's just a particularly stark demonstration of a truth about Orcs in particular, and evil in general.

Hussar said:

Not quite. D&D worlds and sandboxes will be designed in such a way that the challenges in a given area will be geared for a certain level range. So this forest is for levels 1-4. That canyon is for levels 3-5. That mountain is for levels 14+. So on and so forth.

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Perhaps.

Hussar said:

In play, the DM will pretty clearly signpost this and make sure that the players don't unknowingly wander into areas they shouldn't.

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Not necessarily. In a true sandbox, the players won't know any of this until-unless they have their characters make some in-fiction inquiries. And if they don't then they very much can wander into areas far above their pay grade, and get slaughtered for it.

Hussar said:

Granted, the DM won't stop you. Fair enough. But, the DM will make it very clear that if you wander into that mountain area, your characters will die.

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If you ask, sure. If you don't ask, it ain't my problem.

Hussar said:

By the same token, your 15th level characters will never have a reason to go to that forest again. Once you've moved beyond the level range of a given area, that area will be done for the duration of the campaign, unless, of course, we start into the whole "living world" idea and then that forest will have a dangerous monster suddenly move in, because, now the party is 15th level.

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Or the PCs ask (or just tell) some lower-level acquaintances to go in and deal with it 'cause they've got more important things to see to.

Lanefan said:

It's bending over backwards when

a) the "something interesting" is clearly contrived just for that purpose and otherwise makes no in-fiction sense, and-or
b) "interesting things" keep happening over and over again, far more often than random chance would dictate.

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Lanefan said:

In which case yes, they're hosed. Roll up new characters.

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If it's agreed by a group of people that they are going to keep meeting up, on a (semi-)regular basis, to do this RPGing thing, then there is always going to be imaginary stuff happening that involves some characters.

When should those be new characters, and when the same ones? I don't see how there can be any answer to this that is not extremely context-specific. Given that just about anything can make in-fiction sense, I don't regard that as any very strong constraint in this respect.