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

EzekielRaiden said:

And if the repairman's work is inadequate?

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Get a new repair man.

zakael19 said:

...we somehow just ticked over 40 sessions into my Monday Stonetop game, and it feels like we're barely scratching the surface of play so far.

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My Stonetop campaign went for over two years. Biweekly sessions, so probably wound up at 65ish sessions.

Great game.

EzekielRaiden said:

If you go through all the complex motions of the player insisting they want six torches instead of five, whether or not they get those torches, how has that actually changed anything about them?

As I already said, "high-stakes" things are high-stakes to the character, which may or may not have any relationship to ~world-shaking events~ or whatever. Those things absolutely, 100% matter.

But doing a shopping trip, the thing everyone keeps harping on as so vitally important that we MUST play through it to the hilt every single time unless the players specifically reject doing so? How is that not leaving the characters "entirely unchanged"? They haven't learned anything (except, perhaps, whether a certain merchant is pliable or not), they haven't grown, they haven't developed, they haven't had their beliefs challenged or reinforced or brought to light, they haven't discovered something new about themselves, they haven't found new love or lost something they cared about or raged at the heavens.

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What matters to you isn't what matters to others, and vice versa. Just because you value those things and you view those as the only way for characters to change, doesn't mean other do or that there aren't other ways to change the character.

EzekielRaiden said:

They've tried to get six torches for a silver piece instead of five. That's it. That's literally it. And yet the player is expected to do that at the general goods store, and do it again at the blacksmith, and again at the tailor, and again at the stables, ad nauseam until every single purchase they've felt like making is concluded.

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No. The player isn't expected to anything except play the game. They decide if they haggle, where and how often. Not the DM.

SableWyvern said:

I understand your example, but I am unclear what point you are trying to make with it.

I keep saying that some people don't like the way certain mechanics make them feel about the way the game world works. I also keep saying that I understand that plenty of people don't have that problem with those mechanics, and if it works for them, that's great.

At least three different people have responded with what seem like attempts to prove that the people who enjoy the mechanic are correct for liking it. I have never suggested that it's not OK to like the mechanic, nor is it necessary to prove that it works for them. This all being the case, and the fact that these comments seem to be phrased as rebuttals, makes it feel as if they're an attempt to suggest people who don't like the mechanic are wrong for not liking it. [And, to be clear, it's not even that I dislike the mechanic; for me, it has it's place, and I'm happy to use it in certain types of games. Those game just happen to not be the ones I tend to like and run the most, and I enjoy them more as an occasional change of pace.]

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You said it was it's implausible that something interesting happens every time we roll the dice. I responded with why in Stonetop, we are only rolling the dice when something interesting is at stake. Thus, something interesting should happen regardless.

Does that make more sense? Like, the design of the game itself is to get people to say interesting things such that they trigger the mechanics of the game, so that more interesting things happen.

Note that "interesting" remains in the eye of the beholder/table consensus. We do stuff in both of my Stonetop games that other of the more "crucible" focused people may not find as interesting. But it works for us, and is the goal and focus of play.

zakael19 said:

You said it was it's implausible that something interesting happens every time we roll the dice. I responded with why in Stonetop, we are only rolling the dice when something interesting is at stake. Thus, something interesting should happen regardless.

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Right. This is why, upthread, I posted this:

pemerton said:

Wouldn't this depend, at least in part, on the rule that tells you when to roll the dice?

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As you say, if the dice are only being rolled when interesting things can happen either way, it is not implausible that interesting things follow the rolling of the dice!

EzekielRaiden said:

No, it isn't.

It is literally the most important thing.

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Also no it isn't. Why? Because what is the most important thing will vary table to table, person to person. It's not the most important thing to you, but it is the most important thing to @Lanefan.

zakael19 said:

You said it was it's implausible that something interesting happens every time we roll the dice.

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No, I very specifically said "What some of us find implausible" and not, "This is implausible".

I then concluded with an acknowledgement that, "You may not find it so implausible."

I don't know how I can be any clearer that I agree it's not objectively implausible and that I understand that some people find it plausible.

If you are trying to claim that it is not only plausible to you, but that everyone should find it plausible, then you are engaging in One True Wayism. If you are simply explaining that you find it plausible -- well, I already acknowledged that you can do just that in the post you quoted, hence why I don't understand why you think my comments need to be reframed or what you're trying to convince me of that I haven't already agreed to.

zakael19 said:

Does that make more sense? Like, the design of the game itself is to get people to say interesting things such that they trigger the mechanics of the game, so that more interesting things happen.

Note that "interesting" remains in the eye of the beholder/table consensus. We do stuff in both of my Stonetop games that other of the more "crucible" focused people may not find as interesting. But it works for us, and is the goal and focus of play.

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It never didn't make sense. I just happen to generally find it makes the game feel more implausible, to me. Sometimes I'm OK with that feeling (it didn't bother me that Blades felt staged, because it was all about the crazy, escalating action, which was fun and a great change of pace from my usual games), but generally I'm not.

AlViking said:

Are you sure about there being no RPG that work like the real world?
View attachment 407805

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SableWyvern said:

No, I very specifically said "What some of us find implausible" and not, "This is implausible".

I even then finished with an acknowledgement that, "You may not find it so implausible."

I don't know how I can be any clearer that I agree it's not objectively implausible and that I understand that some people find it plausible.

If you are trying to claim that it is not only plausible to you, but that everyone should find it plausible, then you are engaging in One True Wayism. If you are simply explaining that you find it plausible -- well, I already acknowledged that you can do just that in the post you quoted, hence why I don't understand why you think my comments need to be reframed.

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A) I was trying to communicate how the game I run the most tries to address those concerns/points you raised, such that it avoids situations where "nothing much happens" is really ever on the table/a likely thing when dice are picked up.

B) I honestly don't think it's implausible to assign interesting things connected to the trigger to both sides of a dice roll in just about any game. You may find it uninteresting or non-required, but I've done it in D&D. Worked fine. Followed from the fiction declared by players and established by the group. We don't have the concept of Hard Moves or a wider mechanical apparatus there, so I just framed rolls as conflicts with stakes and potential downsides and we tossed the dice.

Now, obviously, that's drifting 5e away from the sort of "resolve a task" core design and isn't to everybody's taste - by far. I just don't see "plausibility" as entering the conversation, so much as "I don't vibe with that."

Maxperson said:

You don't, because you can't. Oh, you can skip past walking somewhere, but you can't go off into the trees to look for herbs the way we can, because you didn't show up at the next place with herbs you got during the trip, or maybe failed to get. Same with haggling and many other details.

You'd have to literally have your PCs taking every possible option at every available instant in order to be skipping past what we do. Clearly you don't do that, so what you do is just do the interesting parts and pretend you did stuff during that "skipped" time if you decide you need to say have herbs. But you still won't have done all the things that PCs do with traditional D&D. The same events will not have happened.

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Player: Hey… can I have gathered herbs while we were traveling from Luskan to Neverwinter?
GM: Sure, you’d have had plenty of time, let’s roll to see how it went.

Problem solved.