Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="grickherder" data-source="post: 4426249" data-attributes="member: 68043">You're demonstrating that you're not understanding my point here.  I'm talking about what is accepted by the participants in the game as a credible statement of fact about the shared story.  3.x heavily encouraged the participants to rely on the system, it's formulas and the results of die rolls to determine what is true in the game world.  4e does as well, but not quite to the same extreme.  3e's system disempowered the DM and empowered the players by giving their input traction through system results.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a departure from previous editions of D&D.  4e restores some of the feel of pre-3.x D&D in this regard, but still not anywhere to the degree of the old red box game, for example.In order to do what you claim is "so obvious", one needs to effectively ignore the 3.x rules.  That's cool if the players are right there with you, but at that point, someone could say you're not actually playing 3.x but some version of it where you've replaced system results with freeform gaming and DM fiat.  In order to do what is "so obvious" one has to effectively break the rules of the game, or set them aside completely.A fictional example:"I rolled a 32 on my jump check.  Let's see, that means I jumped all the way to there (points to a spot on the map).""No, you fell in the pit you're trying to jump over.""Umm.  I just jumped 13 feet further than the edge of the pit.  See, it's right here under the skill description.  I got a 32, so I jumped this far.""That doesn't matter.  The roll wasn't high enough.  You fell in.""So these rules we claim to be using... this game we claim to be playing... are we?"A real life example of this would be on a post I saw on story-games.com.  The player (in a 3.5 game) said "I attack the scout!" and picked up his d20 to roll.  To which the DM responded, before the player could roll, "You cut him down and he falls beneath your blade gasping his last breath" (or somesuch).  The player was looking to use the combat system to give credibility to his intent to attack and kill his enemy.  The DM, having no real stake in the scout continuing to live, just had the scout die.  The player was really ticked over this.  3.x (and to a lesser extent 4e) encourage the type of play the player was looking for.  OD&D, encouraged the type of play the DM was giving.If it really is the group that determines how much this is the case, then they're not playing any of the games they claim to be.  They're choosing instead, to set certain parts of it aside in favor of their own game rules. To play their own bastardized edition of the rules which they claim is the real thing.Which statements are accepted as credible facts in the shared story and which are not is not just "so obvious".  It's an incredibly complex issue that is at the heart of what type of play is produced by a given set of rules.If anyone is looking for a means to see this solidly in actual play that they participate in, I'd recommend giving a session of Donjon or The Pool a go (both can be found for free with a web search).  Those rules explicitly empower different participants and different times with the rights to decide what is a credible statement of fact about the shared story.  After giving one of those games a go, break out red box, play that and compare and contrast.I guess I just figured the distinction between how different games handle this issue to be so obvious that I didn't think anyone would need it spelled out to them.  My bad.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />  I guess it's only natural that people will miss it when all they do is ignore the rules and play every game the same.</blockquote>

Verification