D&D 1E 5e Play, 1e Play, and the Immersive Experience

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] , I just read your bottom sentence (I skimmed your response due to time). That hooks into my (1) above.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Bawylie]

You ever feel ... like you're repeating yourself? Sort of an ouroboros?





Anyway, I'm with you on the modern neuroscience. I just disagree as to the meaning. Acknowledging that we have, for example, an amazing specialized part of our brain that only recognizes human faces (and that this is a "hard" task for computers) doesn't mean that average people are very good at explaining human facial recognition, nor are they very good at combating biases in our innate facial recognition (as every study involving false identification in jurisprudence will tell you).

Same with this- just because we have innate abilities and subsystems to process signals and allow our motor functions and eyes to coordinate such that we can catch a ball, does not really shed much light on our ability to perform complex mathematics that require (for lack of a better word) "thought."

I don’t think that’s the argument they’re making.

But speaking for myself, the numerical bonuses serve as an abstraction of the adventurer’s experience, judgment, intuition, training, and luck.

I’m not arguing that Tordek calculates hit probabilities in 5% increments - I’m suggesting he has a sense of how well he can fight and how protective are the various armors or hides he’s swinging at.

He’s not going “I have a +6 to hit, and my opponent’s thick hides provide him an AC 16, so I have a 55% chance to land a telling blow: I’d better use inspiration.” But Tordek does have some understanding, conscious or unconscious, of his efficacy in particular circumstances and that understanding can be modeled by his player weighing the various bonuses against the target numbers.

Nobody’s adventurers are performing calculus and no player is either. But for some, the numbers can have more meaning than for others.

Except paladins. They don’t need calculus because they’re blessed by their deities.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You want to see the world through your character's eyes, and that's great; but you also want to have your character be able to think rationally and consider odds and percentages and so forth in a situation where the character's most likely (realistically) response is to panic...and that's not so great.

I'm not talking about exact percentages. I'm talking about trends. If wearing armor is not a factor when swimming, then the character would know that, because they live in that world and they've had some bare minimum of experience around water (notwithstanding exceptional backgrounds where it wouldn't be the case).

If the DM says no, that the swimming rules in the book are dumb and it's impossible to swim while wearing full plate, then the character would be tangentially aware of whatever procedure the DM is actually using to adjudicate those circumstances. Any observation that the character makes must necessarily be consistent with the true reality of the game world.

That being said, if the DM does tell you the exact percentages involved, that shouldn't really break immersion either; because the first thing people do, when hearing a percentage, is to convert that to a gut chance of likely or unlikely (which is exactly where the character was to begin with, sizing up a wall and getting a general sense of possibility). If the DM tells you that you have a 70% chance of climbing a wall, and you fail (which will happen three times out of ten), then you might feel betrayed by your gut because people are bad at understanding probabilities; knowing the exact number does not really change anything.

 

[Lanefan]

Why? How is it immersive to imagine that every single 1st level character has the exact same level of knowledge? None of them have heard about zombies or trolls? None have seen some in action (even if they were unable to do anything about it)?

So Falstaff and Redgar are the same in every way and this helps you with immersion?

Unless something in its background indicates this particular character is more world-wise than the average recruit then I'd rather see each character go through the learning process at least to some extent.

"My Uncle Milo told me you have to burn trolls! Get the torches ready!!!!" Simple.

"Yeah? Well my Aunt Kayla told me to freeze 'em! And she knows - she once fought some!" Suddenly not so simple.

The character not knowing something is perfectly fine at times. But at others, it's just silly. Because the issue is that no matter what you do, the player is acting on the knowledge that trolls die by fire.

In one game, player knowledge is simply accepted and so if the encounter has nothing more to it than "guess the monster's weakness" then it can mercifully end early. The knowledge can be justified through any means such as the uncle example given above.

In the other game, the players actively engage with their meta-knowledge, but in a reverse way. They try to imagine how quickly their characters would draw the conclusion that trolls die by fire. So every round, they clumsily plod through an encounter that they know the trick of, but which they pretend not to. Metagaming is so much more involved in this scenario. At what point is it "okay" for the characters to somehow discover the secret?

A quick way to analyse this would be for the DM to throw some non-standard creatures at a party - creatures, let's say, that can only be destroyed by cold iron (non-enchanted) or by cold-based damage - and see how long it takes the players/PCs to figure it out.

One is peeling a band-aid off quickly, and the other is slooooowly peeling it away so that you feel.....every.....single......bit.

Only if you assume the process to be painful. Ignorance, remember, can also be bliss...

I'm not necessarily saying that it's a good thing. More that it's simply unavoidable, so it's better to harness it and put it to use in ways that you can, just like anything else that's in the DM's toolbox.

Where possible - and obviously it's not always possible, but where it is - I'd rather use my tools to suppress metagaming rather than encourage it, which "harness it and put it to use" would quickly lead to.

Based on that description, she can certainly narrow it down. A wight is intelligent and typically armed. It wouldn't be shuffling and moaning.

Or it might, if it's intelligent enough to try and trick the PCs into thinking it's a mere zombie. In 1e wights aren't typically armed, that's a later development I guess.

And the DM may also allow some kind of knowledge check (usually a Religion check) to try and determine what the creature is. However, I don't think that this should be a major obstacle for even a novice cleric. "A shambling, animated corpse" is pretty much the exact description of a zombie. The player likely knows what it is based solely on the description. Why make that different for their character? Isn't it preferable for immersion's sake to have the player and the character "thinking" along the same lines?

Where player knowledge and character knowledge are the same then yes it is; but where player knowledge and character knowledge are different (in either direction - sometimes the character might 'know' more than the player about something) the question becomes whether player knowledge or character knowledge should take precedence, and my answer is character knowledge.

So you ban actions based on things that happen outside the game? That's the very definition of metagaming, isn't it?

Yep; an extreme measure to combat what was at the time a big headache. Not something I wanted to do, but something I felt I had to do. And - for the most part - it worked.

As for another player giving advice....meh. Can't the PC in question think "I wonder what Falstaff would do in this situaiton..."?

Sure she can - but if Falstaff isn't in a position to give an answer then Falstaff's player had better keep quiet.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Bawylie]

I'm pretty sure Paladins know calculus. They derive the rest of us crazy.

Go on, take your damn internet point.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So, if a story doesn't follow consistent laws, it becomes... part of an ancient and immensely popular genre which exercises the imagination and wonder of audiences precisely by challenging mundane rule-based thinking, and into which the father of modern fantasy has categorized modern fantasy?

I do not think you are effectively selling your position that consistent laws are a "minimum consideration".

According to your link, at a quick glance, Tolkien is arguing that "through the use of fantasy, which he equates with imagination, the author can bring the reader to experience a world which is consistent and rational, under rules other than those of the normal world."

That sounds to me like he's talking about fictional worlds which follow consistent laws, rather than nonsense worlds where things just happen because magic (with no further explanation behind it). It's exactly what I was trying to say, though perhaps I chose the wrong label for it. (From what I can gather by the article, I think he would categorize the latter as more of a "dream story".)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

1. The rules of the game are the rules of the world. This is, perhaps, the biggest one. Now, I (and I assume most people?) do not believe that the rules of the game are necessarily the actual real physics/existence of this imaginary world. Instead, we have approximations for things that happen in the word, with an emphasis on "fun" and "doing cool stuff" and playing a game we enjoy.

Agreed. The rules in the book aren't actually the laws of the alternate world, but they do approximate those laws. It's not true that every human in the game world literally runs exactly 60 feet in six seconds; but if we treat that as the case under typical adventuring conditions, then the end result will probably be close enough for whatever purpose we need it for; if the basic assumptions don't apply, because we're actually doing a foot race where nobody is wearing armor or dodging fireballs, then it's no longer a reasonable approximation, so we should probably figure out some other rules which better model the situation at hand.

To make this more clear, and to use the falling example (because it's easy):
I don't think that this fantasy world has special physics that (1) has a constant rate of acceleration -d6 damage every 10 ft! and (2) has terminal velocity as 200 feet (is the atmosphere more viscous?). I mean, just think what that would do to arrows .... or ballistae! Instead, I think that the falling rules were just a quick and dirty approximation for playing purposes- not the "actual way" this make believe universe works.

Well, we know that there are alternative physics in effect here, because we have things like giants, and dragons that can fly through an antimagic field. We don't really know the specifics of those alternate physics, except where they intersect with typical adventuring conditions, when we can see the types of game rules which are deemed reasonable approximations of those physics. Whatever is going on with the atmospheric density, the net result is such that a fall from 210 feet is not more lethal than a fall from 200 feet, at least as far as adventurers are involved. If falling from 1000 feet was more dangerous than falling from 200 feet, then the rules in the book would not be a reasonable approximation.

Because otherwise .... I mean, people get better at skills by killing more stuff (because that's how I think, for example, a Wizard would get better at magic ... by killing stuff?) and when they get better at stuff, they get more plot armor, I mean, hit points, which allows them to fall greater heights ... again, I don't think that these are general statements about how this fantasy world "works" so much as they are gamist approximations for, um, fun. But I would be curious to find out what it really means to you that this is the "reality" of their universe?

The basic assumption is that adventurers are constantly using their skills, and constantly getting into (and avoiding) fights, over the course of an adventure. Experience Points from killing monsters, or overcoming challenges in general, are a convenient metric for how much the character is able to learn along the course of adventure.

It can get pretty silly, if you slaughter a thousand boars and suddenly get better at playing the lute, but that's a degenerate case where the basic assumption no longer holds. That's the equivalent of using combat movement to judge a foot race. The DM should do their best to prevent that from happening, or come up with appropriate rules to handle it when it does.

As for HP and falling, it is objectively true that a high-level character can survive a fall from any height without dying. That's weird, sure, and I wouldn't normally assume it to be the case for any given fantasy setting; but given that it is objectively true in that world, my options are either to accept it, or to live in denial. You can't claim that it isn't actually true, if you then use the rules in the book to adjudicate it, where the rules say that it actually is true. If it's true, and all observations are consistent with it being true, then denying it would be like being an atheist in Discworld. If you think it's too silly, and you aren't willing to suspend your disbelief that far, then you should work up some house rules to address it (for example, any fall from over 1000' is automatically lethal).

2. The people within the world necessarily understand the math. This is an especially big leap for me, as I've tried to explain. This is a world that doesn't have printing presses or widespread dissemination of information (most likely- I don't know about your campaign), and is likely lacking high-end math and statistics. Yet the assumption that the people of this world will know minute differences of 5% (1 in 20) because .... I don't get that? We don't get that. In this world, with great statistics and easy-to-use resources, WE DON'T DO THIS very well. Which leads to the third premise I don't understand ...

I hope I've explained this sufficiently by now, but the exact numbers aren't important, as long as the underlying trends are knowable. Saying that something is a 70% chance is not terribly meaningful, except in that I understand it will probably be successful (but I shouldn't be too surprised if it happens to fail), which is the same qualitative assessment that the character could reasonably make from their observations. If physical strength is a factor, or encumbrance, then the character would be aware of those facts; especially given that the system only has 5% granularity, which means it only accounts for factors which are large enough to really matter.

As an aside, one of my annoyances with the Pathfinder (1E) ruleset is that it accounts for a lot of things that don't matter, and which may not reasonably be observable to the characters. I was looking in a supplement for animal companions and familiars, and they had chew toys for sale. I think it was something like 2sp, and all it did was add +1 damage to the animal's next successful bite attack.

3. That all of the players you have understand the rules of their world as you understand the rules of the game? Regardless of their intelligence, class, background, or learning?

You can certainly play a character who is more or less knowledgeable about certain things, based on various factors, but the level at which the player understands the rules is a solid baseline. That's the level at which the player processes the game, by default, so playing the character at that level of awareness would require the least amount of work. More advanced players may seek a challenge by playing characters who are disadvantaged in such a way.

And if you play with a beer & pretzel guy, does his character .... what? Is the character an in-game moron, because the character doesn't intuit the basic structure of the in-game universe?

I don't know if it will mean much to you, but around the circles I travel, most players have at least one horror story of some time they were playing with a ... let's say, "less than fully invested" player ... who tried to do something moronic because they didn't really understand the rules. Usually, someone at the table will try to explain why their proposed course of action would be ill-advised, but they push forward anyway and their character dies. Those players tend to not last long.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

According to your link, at a quick glance, Tolkien is arguing that "through the use of fantasy, which he equates with imagination, the author can bring the reader to experience a world which is consistent and rational, under rules other than those of the normal world."

That sounds to me like he's talking about fictional worlds which follow consistent laws, rather than nonsense worlds where things just happen because magic (with no further explanation behind it). It's exactly what I was trying to say, though perhaps I chose the wrong label for it. (From what I can gather by the article, I think he would categorize the latter as more of a "dream story".)

I was mostly bemused by your use of the label as a term of opprobrium, given Tolkien's thesis. But even if you change your terminology to "dream story" (and maintain that there is a hard distinction between fairy stories and dream stories, a point on which I differ with Tolkien)... still a lot of dream stories out there, and a lot of people who seem to enjoy them.