D&D 5E (2014) 2 year campaign down the drain?

[Fenris-77]

Maybe take a look at the Star Wars version. Same mechanics but much less dark. That's what I'm running now and it's a riot. I might never use a different system to run SW.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It just seems to me that some of the sorts of complications that have been mentioned seem like the sorts of things the PCs should have learned about as part of their planning. Reading the SRD it seemed to talk more about the squalor of the PCs' lives and the way their lives of crime break them down than about the heists.

Anyway, as I was reading, I felt myself realizing that as a player I'd try to roll one die always and never resist anything, which was a strong message from a deep region of my brain that the game is not for me. Maybe there's something in the mechanics I'd enjoy, that I missed, but I have a suspicion I'll never know.

Unless I'm mistaken (I haven't been following the thread with 100% attention) I think Blades was brought in not to convince you to play it, but merely to illustrate narrative resolution mechanics that are very different from 5e, because it seemed like you were not totally understanding what pemerton and Ovinomancer were saying.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Maybe take a look at the Star Wars version. Same mechanics but much less dark. That's what I'm running now and it's a riot. I might never use a different system to run SW.

This was intriguing enough that I went to look for it. Are you talking about Scum and Villainy, or the "Syndicate" hack? (Or both?)

 

[prabe]

Unless I'm mistaken (I haven't been following the thread with 100% attention) I think Blades was brought in not to convince you to play it, but merely to illustrate narrative resolution mechanics that are very different from 5e, because it seemed like you were not totally understanding what pemerton and Ovinomancer were saying.

Oh, I didn't think there was any pressure applied. I was just curious. When I flipped through Blades in the Dark in a store, I was more than half-hoping to have a system new to me jump up and grab me; nothing did. Looking through the SRD, the reaction was a more-solid "no." I'm not meaning to say anyone's wrong for enjoying it, just that it's not right for me (and very probably at least as not-right for the core of the people I game with).

 

[Lanefan]

I disagree that a physical object actually adheres to a different set of rules. I will agree that some (many) act as if they do, but this is a self-imposed restriction and I'm not at all convinced it's helpful or beneficial to play.

Until and unless the PCs interact with them, physical objects in the setting are part of the setting and also sometimes are or contain adventure parameters, and thus because both the setting and the adventure parameters are under the DM's control so are they.

Thus, if a DM (via home prep or published module or whatever means) puts a bedroom in a castle and then puts a hope chest in that bedroom; and then as an adventure parameter puts the widget in the hope chest, then that's where it is.

If the players/PCs are floundering later and look like they won't find the hope chest unless it hits them in the head then some DMs would be tempted to move the widget such that the PCs will find it. That's their choice, though I very strongly advocate against it as IMO it cheapens the game by a) reducing the challenge and b) taking away the option of outright mission failure.

But the idea of Schroedinger's widget, whose location isn't known until someone opens a box and succeeds on a search check (which, given enough tries, is inevitable), just doesn't fly.

 

[pemerton]

I wasn't disagreeing about D&D, just expanding on some things I had been thinking about.

<snip>

Here's the different between the guard's reactions and the widget. The reaction or consequence to a social action has an immense range of possibilities. The GM has a lot of leeway to respond appropriately to the player's actions in a bunch of different ways, and thus has a wide range of options vis a vis narrating both success and failure. With the un-found widget, it's either there or it's not. The only option the GM really has is to move it by sleight of hand, or continue to frustrate the players. I'm not judging one of those options as better than another either, sometimes player frustration is a good thing. The range of possibilities that result from an action like I ask the guards if there is way I can get into the castle is pretty manifestly different from I search the maguffin for the widget.

The way that the D&D rules handle that is still very different from some other games though, and different GMing styles and play styles also change the stakes a lot.

I've put the two quotes side-by-side because I'm not 10% sure if, in the bit I've bolded, you're talking about D&D in particular or RPGing in general.

For the conventional way that D&D is adjudicated, I think that what you say is true, because - in the conventional way that D&D is adjudicated - the GM responds to the We search , , , action declaration by consulting his/her notes and answering either yes or no. If the GM doesn't have any notes, then the conventional approach is to extrapolate in imagination from what has been noted, and again on that basis to answer either yes or no.

Of course the same reliance on actual notes, or on "virtual notes" established by way of extrapolation, is also possible in the social context. Gygax's DMG, for instance, contemplates that the GM might have a note written about dungeon occupants that they always attack. And some monsters have similar notes in their descriptions - eg from memory, AD&D kobolds always attack gnomes. But I agree that, in general, it is less common for the outcomes of social interaction (compared to searchings for widgets) to be resolved in D&D by reliance on or extrapolation from pre-authored notes.

But if one is talking about RPGing in general, then I don't think that the range of possibilities is different in each case. A check made to resolve searching might (if successful) result in the thing being found. In a "success with complication" system or a "fail foward" system, it might result in finding the thing sought but (eg) not quite in the nick of time, or in a damage condition, or . . . . On a failed check, there is the possibility of simply not finding it, of finding something else instead that is not desired or is a sign of trouble, of having the search interrupted before the thing is found (so maye the widget is in the place being searched, if ony the interruption can b dealt with), etc.

As I said, we may be ad idem on this. I've made this further post about it mostly because it is directly relevant to the discussion about BitD adjudication.

I don't see how having a reduced frequency of unmitigated success can be described as "competence."

The fact that the PCs are rarely going to succeed without screwing something up in some way is a different thing, and that seems pretty clearly to be the case.

It just seems to me that some of the sorts of complications that have been mentioned seem like the sorts of things the PCs should have learned about as part of their planning.

your criminal-as-a-lifestyle character either overreached his competency or didn't adequately plan for something. Even your example with the opponent in the knife fight kinda bespeaks something other than full competency (slash, not stab, hold the knife so it won't come out of hour hand, go for the quick kill).

If the fighter's failure to one-shot the beholder directly caused him damage of some sort, or resulted in his being prone at the feet of the beholder's ogre minions, that'd be a fairer comparison.

I've bolded what I think is quite wrong.

I'll explain why, using a D&D example.

Some people play 3E D&D using a "players roll all the combat dice" variant. I think it might even have been expressly spelled out in the DMG, or perhaps in a WotC supplement. In one version of this variant (there are varioius mathematically-equivalent ways of setting it up), instead of the GM rolling to see if a monster or NPC hits a PC, by making a d20 roll, adding the monster's/NPC's to hit bonus, and then comparing that to the PC's AC, the player rolls a d20, adds his/her PC's AC, and if the result is less than the monster's NPC's to hit bonus + 22 then the PC is hit by the monster/NPC.

I have never heard anyone suggest that, if a player in a D&D game fails a defence roll, and hence suffers damage from a monster/NPC, this shows that the PC is not competent or has screwed something up. A failed defence roll doesn't mean that, in the fiction, the PC directly caused him-/herself damge eg by hurling herself onto an enemy's blade. It means that, in the fiction, in that particular exchange of blows, the PC failed to so dominate the exchange that the monster/NPC was completely unable to wear the PC down.

Now in a system where the players roll all the dice, you could combine the attack and defence roll into one roll, resolved on a table (as a traditional wargame would) or via a spread of probabilities. This would not change the fiction. It would just reduce the number of dice rolled. In D&D, and moving beyond the realm of combat resolution, 4e skill challengs are something of an example of this: the players roll all the dice, and failure on a given check may indicate that the PC did something wrong, or that some other actor (a monster/NPC, the environment, etc) did something which hindered or even set back the PCs' efforts. The overall question of whether the PCs succeed or fail in what they are trying to achieve is not known until all the checks have been made.

In BitD, or other PbtA systems that use the "7 to 9" result, the move that the GM makes when the "partial success"/"success with complication" result occurs may reflect that the PC did something less than perfectly, or that some other actor did something which hindered or even set back the PC's efforts, or simply that the circumstances were not as propitious as the PC had hoped when the conflict started unfolding. The notion that, because the player is rolling the dice, it must be the case that the PC directly caused some problem for him-/herself is completely without foundation. And a GM who adjudicated a PbtA game in that fashion would make the game suck even worse then a GM in a players-roll-all-the-combat-dice 3E game who narrated every failed defence check as Sorry, Redgar, you've impaled yourself on the hapless orc's spears once again. And that latter would itself suck pretty badly.

As far as the suggestion, specific to BitD as a heist-oriented game, that some of the sorts of complications that have been mentioned seem like the sorts of things the PCs should have learned about as part of their planning, I'm pretty sure that BitD has "flashback" and other planning-oriented mechanics that deal precisely with this issue - allowing the players to spend resources to reduce what might otherwise be the severity and impact of GM-narrated consequences.

Equally, however, a heist-oriented game in which nothing ever developed in an unforeseen way would probably suck. Think of Sean Connery in The Great Train Robbery - he hadn't factored in that the soot from the smoke would soil his clothes as he walked along the top of the carriages, necessitating him borrowing Donald Sutherland's jacket which in turn results in him being apprehended.

 

[Fenris-77]

This was intriguing enough that I went to look for it. Are you talking about Scum and Villainy, or the "Syndicate" hack? (Or both?)

Scum and Villainy. I didn't find the conversion over to actual SW to be too much work. I even reused the books systems and planets to fill in the SW system map around Tatooine.

 

[pemerton]

To be clear, you are combining the action and the consequences together and calling that an event? If so I agree.

Yes. Here is the OP from the other thread I mentioned, which explains my thinking in this respect:

The function of players in RPGing is often described as deciding what their PCs do. But this can be quite ambiguous.

A classic article on the analysis of actions (Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963)) gives the following example:

I flip the switch, turn on the light, and illuminate the room. Unbeknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home. Here I need not have done four things, but only one, of which four descriptions have been given.​

In RPGing, I think it's a big deal who gets to decide what descriptions of the PCs' actions are true, and how.

For instance, suppose that my ability to decide what descriptions are true of my PC's actions is confined to very "thin" descriptions focused on the character's bodily movements, like I attack the orc with my sword or I wink at the maiden. Playing that game will produce a very different experience from one in which I can decide that the following description is true of my PC's actions: I kill the orc with my sword or I soften the heart of the maiden with a wink.

The same point can be made in relation to success on checks: if succeeding at a check makes a description such as I find what I was looking for in the safe true, that game will produce a different experience from one in which it makes true only a description such as I open the safe, with the description of my action in terms of I find X in the safe remaining something for someone else - eg the GM - to decide.

This example shows how it is possible (i) for it to be true that the players choose what their PCs do - under a certain, fairly thin or confined sort of description - and (ii) for there to be fudge-free checks and yet (iii) for it also to be the case that the GM decides everything significant that happens - ie it is the GM who gets to establish the richer, wider, consequence-laden descriptions of what the PCs do.

I think that a failure to recognise this point makes a lot of discussions of railroading, "player agency" less productive or insightful than they might be.

What do others think about who does, or should, get to establish the truth of descriptions of PC actions, and how?

 

[Fenris-77]

Yes. Here is the OP from the other thread I mentioned, which explains my thinking in this respect:

Ok, good, we're on the same page. Simply put, I am suggesting that the player input serves to help frame the range of outputs considered by the DM, which are the two 'components' of the event. Not in every instance, but in some. An argument in favor of a somewhat broader reading of player agency on fictional outcomes in D&D than is usual.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok, good, we're on the same page. Simply put, I am suggesting that the player input serves to help frame the range of outputs considered by the DM, which are the two 'components' of the event. Not in every instance, but in some. An argument in favor of a somewhat broader reading of player agency on fictional outcomes in D&D than is usual.

I, again, disagree, but I'll add the other bits that might help understand my disagreement. I think that the GM allowing player action declarations to curtail their resolution is a good thing, but it's not in the realm of authority. The players still have no authority in this situation -- everything is up to the GM. Labeling this as a mild authority gifted to the players fails, again, in any situation where the GM has prescripted an NPC or preplaced an item. An authority that exists at the grace of the GM is no authority at all.

Rather, if the GM plays in way that includes constraining outcomes to the player's action declarations, then they've established a principle of play, which is not an authority, but an added layer the constrains how an authority is used. In this case, the GM could establish principled play by restricting outcomes to those that flow naturally from player action declarations. I think this is a normal thing for 5e (and many other games), but it's usually unspoken and implied. That makes in no less of a principle of play, though. Play principles layer on top of authorities, and act as constraints to authorities, but they do not alter authorities. Authorities are fixed things defined by who has the final, binding say. Principles are agreements, unspoken or codified, that modify authorities by providing rails, so to speak.

I think it's an important distinction in discussing games, largely to avoid the confusion of a voluntarily adopted constrain being a sharing of authority, when it really isn't, or a permissive use of authority being confused with a sharing or transfer of authority. These things aren't actual movements of authority, but rather principles of play affecting how an authority is wielded in practice at a given table. Some of these principles are widespread, and common, some are idiosyncratic. None actually change the authorities in the game, regardless of game. D&D is still a GM decides game even if the GM occasionally lets a player decide something.

As a further note, principles must be coherent and at least largely consistent. Anything else is just ad hoc, and doesn't really interact with authorities in any meaningful way.