D&D 5E A case where the 'can try everything' dogma could be a problem

[Tony Vargas]

The disagreement is in the degree to which the narrative is shaped by the mechanics. I say that the mechanics are generally sufficient to tell you what happened in the narrative, and Pemerton says that the mechanics don't give enough information to tell us anything, such that they require the GM to supply additional information in order to construct any sort of meaningful narrative.

He's right, doubly so in the case of 5e checks, since most of the mechanics are not sufficient, in themselves, to complete resolution without DM rulings, let alone lead to some narrative consequence without the DM and/or players exerting their imaginations.

In the relevant example, regarding a player looking to bypass an enemy's armor, Pemerton would have the quality of that armor be determined by the result of a Perception check made on behalf of the PC looking for it; I view this as improper procedure - not in keeping with the purpose of the rules in an RPG - because the quality of an object must exist independently from observations made of that object

Two small problems with that comparison:

1) I'm not aware of any precedent for actually doing that sort of thing in D&D. Obviously, the DM can do whatever he wants, but that, alone, removes it from the sort of determinism you seem to be championing.

2) No real armor, and no armor stated or implied in D&D (even the Invulnerable Coat or Arnd in 1e, though literally impenetrable, didn't cover the wearer completely), has the quality that it can't be bypassed in the manner you two seem to be discussing.

The inherent meaning of a Perception check (I purport) is that it relates information about what something already is, rather than itself determining the nature of that object.

Nothing in an imaginary world is, 'already' or otherwise, so it's a moot point. Specifically in 5e, the player would declare his action - trying to find a way to 'bypass' armor (and, what, ignore that part of the target's AC for his next attack?) - and the DM would decide how to resolve it (for instance: "just roll to hit, everyone's always trying to bypass armor" or "You fail"). "Decide how to resolve it" might include deciding whether the armor the enemy in question is wearing is better than the Invulnerable Coat of Arnd or not (but I kinda doubt it).

Pemerton seems to be of the opinion that, since this is all just make-believe anyway, there's no difference between discovering some truth about the fictional reality and defining a truth about that fictional reality.

He's right, in an absolute sense, as there is nothing to 'discover' about things that don't exist. More reasonably, it's up to the DM whether to decide any given quality in advance, at the moment it becomes relevant, or leave it to a die roll. You're right in the sense that the DM can give a player the illusion of 'discovering' something with a 'successful check': even though all he's discovering is what the DM made up, the player can't know whether he made it up well in advance or on the fly or left it to chance.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

He's right, in an absolute sense, as there is nothing to 'discover' about things that don't exist. More reasonably, it's up to the DM whether to decide any given quality in advance, at the moment it becomes relevant, or leave it to a die roll. You're right in the sense that the DM can give a player the illusion of 'discovering' something with a 'successful check': even though all he's discovering is what the DM made up, the player can't know whether he made it up well in advance or on the fly or left it to chance.

Which goes against the premise of any sort of Simulationist/ immersive RPG, where the whole point is that we're pretending this stuff does exist in some objective configuration before we discover it, and the PCs aren't just characters in some story. To play the game is to buy into that illusion, and that's presumably what everyone has signed up for.

This differs from a Narrativist/ storytelling RPG, where the point is just to tell a story, and there's no pretense of immersion or of anything existing beyond its relevance to the plot.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, yeah, I know, they're not games they're 'simulations' or 'narratives' depending on who you ask, and how they're trying to explain why a game doesn't/does suck (for them), in spite of actually sucking (or not) as a an actual game.

I managed to make it sound like you're both right there for a second, that's best I can do.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yeah, yeah, I know, they're not games they're 'simulations' or 'narratives' depending on who you ask, and how they're trying to explain why a game doesn't/does suck (for them), in spite of actually sucking (or not) as a an actual game.

It's also possible for either to be a good game. From what I understand, 4E was a decent game, in addition to promoting Narrativist play. And something like Shadowrun can also be a decent game, in spite of its focus on creating an immersive setting.

It's hard to get all three with the same system, though, and the distance between Sim and Narrative seems the hardest to bridge.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's also possible for either to be a good game.

Whether a game is good or bad is something that seems quite independent of the 'Narativist's or 'Simulationist's ability to argue that it's bad or good.

From what I understand, 4E was a decent game

If you're going to judge it as a game, rather than an edition of D&D, sure.

in addition to promoting Narrativist play.

Not so much. It was an RPG. RPGs lend themselves to producing narratives. Has more to do with the RP than the G.

It's hard to get all three with the same system, though, and the distance between Sim and Narrative seems the hardest to bridge.

But they're really stylistic differences. Not the game, so much as how you play it. You can make any RPG into a perfect simulation by pretending the rules are the 'laws of physics' for the game world (which will likely go all Terry Pratchet on you). You can use any RPG as a a medium to construct a story (but the players are going to have input).

OTOH, I also feel like those 'agendas' can dovetail, since if a game does a good job simulating a genre, it can be very useful for constructing a narrative of that genre.

(Edit: Apologies to any purists out there for using the terms 'wrong,' but I think the literal meaning is worth thinking about sometimes, too. )

 

[pemerton]

The disagreement is in the inherent meaning contained within game mechanics.

In the relevant example, regarding a player looking to bypass an enemy's armor, Pemerton would have the quality of that armor be determined by the result of a Perception check made on behalf of the PC looking for it; I view this as improper procedure - not in keeping with the purpose of the rules in an RPG - because the quality of an object must exist independently from observations made of that object

Upthread we agreed that the gameworld is causally independent of the real world.

But your description here of "proper procedure" seems to violate that independence, because you are saying that the meaning of a Perception check (a real world event, involving rolling dice and adding up numbers and perhaps looking at DC charts, etc) is somehow embedded in or causally connected to an ingame event, concerning something that "already exists" ie something in the gameworld.

I take it as obvious that, within the gameworld, armour either has a chink or it doesn't. And, within the gameworld, when a character looks hard to try to discern such a chink s/he either sees an existent check, fails to see an existent chink, or sees no chink because there is no chink to see.

But that fact about the gameworld doesn't settle any real-world question of who gets to author the gameworld, and how is that determined. In AD&D, and at least as far as I interpret the system in d20 D&D also, a player's atttack roll can determine whether or not an NPC parries successfully, at least to the extent that if the attack roll is a hit, then it follows that there was no successful parry (contrast with, say, Runequest or Burning Wheel, where the player of the defending character is entitled to a parry roll to prevent the successful attack roll actually amounting to a hit).

I think that the player authoring of defender parries in AD&D and d20 is obviously a fairly weak sort of non-simulationist authorship. The example I gave from BW, of rolling Perception to make it the case that a character spots a chink in the defender's armour, is more elaborate than rolling an attack to make it the case that the defender's parry fails. But I content that they are processes on the same spectrum. And that D&D has always had combat processes at various points on this spectrum (it was precisely in reaction against these features of D&D that games like RQ, and a few years later Rolemaster, were designed).

Pemerton seems to be of the opinion that, since this is all just make-believe anyway, there's no difference between discovering some truth about the fictional reality and defining a truth about that fictional reality.

I'm of the opinion that, because it's all make believe, someone has to write it. And because it's a game, there have to be procedures (rules and guidelines) to regulate that authorship.

A player might discover the truth about something the GM wrote. Or a player might declare that s/he wishes something to be true in the fiction, and then roll dice to see if it's true. And that roll might be modified by choices that the player made in building his/her PC. In AD&D, choosing to play a fighter rather than a thief makes it more likely that your opponents will be ineffective at parrying; that's a modest example of the same phenomenon.

Which goes against the premise of any sort of Simulationist/ immersive RPG, where the whole point is that we're pretending this stuff does exist in some objective configuration before we discover it, and the PCs aren't just characters in some story. To play the game is to buy into that illusion, and that's presumably what everyone has signed up for.

This differs from a Narrativist/ storytelling RPG, where the point is just to tell a story

You are misdescribing the point of narrativist RPGing. If the point was to tell a story, we wouldn't use RPG devices like assigning each player a character as a distinctive vehicle for engaging with the game and the shared fiction.

The point of narrativist RPGing - at the risk of being oversimplistic - is story now but within the framework of RPGing. That is, that play will generate, in the moment of play, a story in which these characters are protagonists. Part of the function of the game rules is to bring this about without the participants actually having to work at creating a story. Good narrativist RPG mechanics will facilitate the emergence of a story organically, with the individual participants not having to do anything beyond their distinctive jobs as GMs and players.

For instance, if a player could just declare at will that his/her PC finds a chink in the enemy's armour, we wouldn't get a story (in any non-degenerate sense) because there would be no failure, no rising action etc.

Because narrativist RPGing is RPGing, it does not differ from simulationist RPGing in respect of the convention that you mention: namely, that everyone at the table is pretending the fiction is real; and it is wrong to play the PCs simply as if they were fictional characters (rather, the player's job is to inhabit and advocate for the PC). Where it does differ from simulationist play is in the constraints upon and rationale of authorship.

the distance between Sim and Narrative seems the hardest to bridge.

In playstyle, perhaps. Not in mechanical design. I've run narrativist RM, though I don't think that's what the original designers of that system had in mind. I'm sure there are plenty of 4e players who have run the game essentially as sim (though not necessarily tight process-sim), with the players exploring/discovering the GM's pre-authored world and plotline.

An early example of sim-to-narrativist drift would be relationships of various sorts in Champions - these are introduced to model superheroic genre conventions, but then the participants discover that they also serve as player flags to the GM, which permit the GM to author backstory and frame situations in a way that speaks to the PC as protagonist and not simply gameworld inhabitant. Before you know it, its Story Now!

I've had the same thing happen GMing an all-thief party in AD&D (thieves, like paladins, monks and perhaps druids, are AD&D classes with strong thematic hooks built in), and also in Oriental Adventures - in the latter case, relationship mechanics (ancestry, senseis, etc) designed to serve a sim function in fact end up serving a flag-flying function, much as I described for Champions.

 

[pemerton]

In this Darths & Droids episode, which person at the table got to engage the mechanical process that resulted in the narration of the various gates, and their status as shut?

From a retelling of the infiction events, you can't tell. From knowing that the table consisted of some players with their PCs, plus a GM, you can't tell. Even if you know that Luke's player made a Perception (or Architecture, or whatever) check, you still can't tell.

That's why I said, upthread, that the difference in play approaches here isn't about the "objectivity" of the gameworld, nor the correlation of skill checks with in-fiction efforts/activities by the character. It's about processes for generating the shared fiction.

In my Burning Wheel game on the weekend, the PCs were negotiating with a naga to gain access to the pool of water it was guarding (the only water source they knew of in the desert they were stuck in). The naga declared that "only the worthy" might drink from its pool; and it had killed several unworthy orcs who had tried to get to the water.

The PCs wanted to know whether or not they were worthy. One of the players asked to make a History check, to recall stories of whom the worthy might have been in the past. I was happy to allow a History check, but insisted that the player tell me what he hoped the worthy might have been in the past. In other words, I was not going to dictate whether or not the PCs exemplified what had been worthy in the past - in effect, decide whether they are winners or losers, and then have the History check determine whether or not they know themselves to be winners or losers.

The player explained what he hoped the history was - which (i) framed the PCs as winners rather than losers, and (ii) touched upon various topics that would give him a bonus to his check (eg because his hoped-for history involved a past threat of apocalypse, he got to add a bonus from his "Apocalypse-wise" skill). The dice were then rolled, and the check was a success - so that was the history. Had it failed, as GM I would have had to dictate the true history, which would have been some sort of departure from or variant on the desired history that left the PCs in a compromised or complicated situation.

There's no lack of pretence that the gameworld is objective. It's about techniques of authoring and dispensing backstory.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But your description here of "proper procedure" seems to violate that independence, because you are saying that the meaning of a Perception check (a real world event, involving rolling dice and adding up numbers and perhaps looking at DC charts, etc) is somehow embedded in or causally connected to an ingame event, concerning something that "already exists" ie something in the gameworld.

If the thing exists, then a Perception check can find it. If the thing doesn't exist, then no amount of success on a Perception check can possibly find it. Whether that thing exists (and can be found) or doesn't exist (and thus cannot be found) should have been determined by the GM prior to the player character searching for that thing; it can't causally depend on whether or not the character is looking for it.

But that fact about the gameworld doesn't settle any real-world question of who gets to author the gameworld, and how is that determined. In AD&D, and at least as far as I interpret the system in d20 D&D also, a player's atttack roll can determine whether or not an NPC parries successfully, at least to the extent that if the attack roll is a hit, then it follows that there was no successful parry (contrast with, say, Runequest or Burning Wheel, where the player of the defending character is entitled to a parry roll to prevent the successful attack roll actually amounting to a hit).

The GM determines everything that happened with the past of the game-world, aside from personal details of a PC which the player negotiates with the GM prior to play beginning. Once the game starts, the player (in most editions of D&D, and many similar games) has zero authorship power beyond the in-game-world capabilities of the PC.

Moreover, from a Sim/RP standpoint, the player doesn't want authorship power over any part of the world's history. The world is something which the GM (or world designer) creates, which the players explore and interact with via their characters. Asking a player to assume the author-stance detracts from in-character immersion. Asking a strong simulationist player to repeatedly assume the author-stance is effectively asking that player to leave the table, because this game isn't for them.

I think that the player authoring of defender parries in AD&D and d20 is obviously a fairly weak sort of non-simulationist authorship. The example I gave from BW, of rolling Perception to make it the case that a character spots a chink in the defender's armour, is more elaborate than rolling an attack to make it the case that the defender's parry fails. But I content that they are processes on the same spectrum.

And I strongly disagree. Whether the defender parries is something that happens right now, and is a direct reflection of something that is within the power of the character. The player doesn't author anything. The player makes decisions on behalf of the character, but it's entirely the character who successfully manages to control the outcome of an action.

And if the character fails to hit, then it's the opposing character who succeeded in parrying or dodging or whatever. The fact that the rules (in D&D) give the defender a static AC of 10 + bonuses, rather than asking the defender to roll d20 + bonuses, is irrelevant to the fact that the defending character is actively defending. That +3 bonus to AC from high Dexterity is the defender exerting control within the game world.

To contrast, any detail of the enemy's armor would have been determined long before this combat ever started, and is not something that the character has any control over (unless the PC actually had the opportunity to sabotage the opponent's armor at some earlier point). That fact of the game world is beyond the agency of the character, and is thus something that only the GM can determine, and which should have been determined prior to the check being made.

Because narrativist RPGing is RPGing, it does not differ from simulationist RPGing in respect of the convention that you mention: namely, that everyone at the table is pretending the fiction is real; and it is wrong to play the PCs simply as if they were fictional characters (rather, the player's job is to inhabit and advocate for the PC). Where it does differ from simulationist play is in the constraints upon and rationale of authorship.

Yeah, that's kind of the point. In a simulationist game, the players have no agency beyond that of their characters. Everything that happened within the game world, prior to the game actually starting, is a matter for the GM to determine. Everything that happens after the game starts is determined by the GM and the player characters.

And it's not entirely a binary state, either. Games can be more or less simulationist, but the more you slide along the spectrum toward narrativism, the further away from simulation you end up.

 

[Agamon]

If the thing exists, then a Perception check can find it. If the thing doesn't exist, then no amount of success on a Perception check can possibly find it. Whether that thing exists (and can be found) or doesn't exist (and thus cannot be found) should have been determined by the GM prior to the player character searching for that thing; it can't causally depend on whether or not the character is looking for it.

So, a GM has to have the answer to each and every possible question and situation figured out beforehand? I hope it's quite obvious how impossible that is. So what happens when a PC does something that a GM hasn't yet considered?

If the GM makes up the answer based on what he knows about the situation, it's not much of a stretch for the player to do the same.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So, a GM has to have the answer to each and every possible question and situation figured out beforehand? I hope it's quite obvious how impossible that is. So what happens when a PC does something that a GM hasn't yet considered?

The GM should determine the answer to the best of his or her ability, with a focus on maintaining the illusion that this is a real world and not some cheap novel. The GM is expected to be fair in making this determination, and may opt to rule dice to represent areas of uncertainty. If a third of the back alleys in a particular city contain dumpsters, but the GM hasn't decided beforehand whether this one does or does not, then a roll of 1 or 2 on a d6 would mean that this alley does.

Or the GM could ask the player to roll, of course, but the outcome would depend on external circumstances (the nature of the city) rather than how well the character searches the alley. Dice are just a randomizer, and don't confer any power to the one making the roll.

If the GM makes up the answer based on what he knows about the situation, it's not much of a stretch for the player to do the same.

The GM has authorship power within the world. The player does not.