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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6676724" data-attributes="member: 42582">"Creative use of spells" has always been an element of D&D. And I seem to recall that the 3E rulebooks talked about various sorts of ad hoc use of Turn Undead in order to channel positive energy so as to achieve magical effects like closing Abyssal portals.Moldvay Basic had guidelines for the adjudication of action declarations that the rules don't cover.There may have been some D&Ders - and it seems that you are one - who treated the formal action resolution algorithms as exhausting the space of permissible action declarations, but the rulebooks that I am familiar with have never asserted this, nor even implied it.This is implausible even for a 6-second combat round - is human motion in the D&D world quantised into discrete 6-second periods? (Although even that doesn't quite work, because the stop motion aspect of resolution in 3E and onward makes things like peasant railguns possible.)For a 1 minute round, which was the AD&D standard, it's completely implausible. That's why Gygax explained it in these terms (DMG, p 61):One-minute rounds are devised to offer the maximum of choice with a minimum of complication. This allows the DM and the players the best of both worlds. The system assumes much activity during the course of each round. Envision, if you will, a fencing, boxing, or karate match. During the course of one minute of such competition there are numerous attacks which are unsuccessful, feints, maneuvering, and so forth. During a one minute melee round many attacks are made, but some are mere feints, while some are blocked or parried. One, or possibly several, have the chance to actually score damage. For such chances, the dice are rolled, and if the"to hit" number is equalled or exceeded, the attack was successful, but otherwise it too was avoided, blocked, parried, or whatever. Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections. With respect to most monsters such damage is, in fact, more physically substantial although as with adjustments in armor class rating for speed and agility, there are also similar additions in hit points. So while a round of combat is not a continuous series of attacks, it is neither just a single blow and counter-blow affair. The opponents spar and move, seeking the opportunity to engage when on opening in the enemy's guard presents itself.Notice particularly how the abstraction of the action economy and the abstraction of hit points interact - part of the reason why we don't need to decompose the events of the one minute round into the detail of actual manoeuvres, strikes, parries etc performed is because we are assuming that what is being achieved is the wearing down of one's enemy, until the final decisive blow is struck.The six-second round is, in my understanding of it, no different. The reason for breaking down to 6 rather than 60 seconds is rather to allow for tactical movement in a context where distances are meaningful but feasible for adjudication on a table-top grid, and to allow for turn-by-turn rather than simultaneous and/or continuous resolution without the stop motion effect getting wildly out of control.When I think of RPG systems that try to actually model the striking of each blow, the making of each parry, etc, they have an inherent tendency to shorten and shorten the round so that what you claim - namely, that the action economy models causal possibilities - becomes plausible. Thus, many highly simulationist combat resolution systems have 1 or 2 second "rounds" (GURPS, HARP, Burning Wheel, various Rolemaster options, RQ's "strike ranks", etc).This may well be so. But if so, it follows that AD&D combat is not simulationist, and nor is d20 stop-motion combat. You need to look at systems that aim for simultaneous and/or (near-)continuous resolution, like some of those I mentioned above.You are describing some possibilities, but not all of them. Classic D&D does not permit retries on various thief skills, but there is no implication that this is because of a lack of knowledge on the part of the thief. (Similarly, there are no retries for detecting traps or secret doors, no matter how hard the players say their PCs are looking.)That is because, in these respect, classic D&D is not using it's skill checks solely to model ingame effort. It is also using them to ration various outcomes - opening of doors, disabling of traps, learning backstory, etc.The point becomes even clearer if we focus on an instance of "no retries" from AD&D that is not a thief skill and not about cognition at all: the reason why only one attempt ever is permitted to force a magically held door, or to bend bars or lift gates, isn't because failure indicates a lack of knowledge! Failure just indicates that the PC is not up to the task.In all these cases, the player can describe his/her PC as continuing to try, but the GM doesn't have to grant another roll - the action declaration has already been resolved. The GM can narrate the failure of retries pretty simply: "The door still doesn't budge", "You still don't find anything," "You still can't open the lock," etc. It's understood that, in such cases, the PC has simply failed and can't succeed until the relevant condition is met (eg gaining a level).There are some actions where retries are expressly permitted: opening (non-magically held or locked) doors by brute strength, and listening at doors, are the two main ones I can think of. In these cases, the only resource cost is time (and hence wandering monster rolls).I don't find it hard at all.When my students engage in roleplay activities - say, mooting, or mediation exercises - they are not trying to achieve some particular inner state of "immersion". They are pretending to occupy a certain professional role - barrister, mediator - and they are practising their exercise of the skills that are germane to that role, while also accepting the constraints upon action that come with occupying that role (eg appropriate court manner). The point is to develop skills.Likewise in Gygaxian D&D, where occupying a role - defined, as per my quotes upthread, primarily by class - both confers a permission, in the game, to make certain moves, and also imposes certain limits on permissible moves. Player skill consists in identifying those moves, becoming familiar with them, deploying them cleverly, while avoiding or negating the adverse consequences of the limits.In both the professional roleplays that students undertake, and in a RPG of the sort Gygax invented, certain experiences - eg immersion - may be byproducts or side-effects, but they are not the aim of the activity.It is worth noting that even though "roleplaying" in this sense is no synonymous with "playing a role" in the thespian sense. An actor is not trying to identify and deploy certain moves made possible by the role s/he pretends to instantiate. It is probably also worth noting that even an actor's main aim it not to immerse, but to give a performance. Some schools of acting use a type of immersion in the role as a means to that end, but they don't achieve the immersion by playing the role - rather, they cultivate the immersion as a precursor to playing the role. I don't think that an actor who gave no conscious thought to how the fiction should be performed, and who played his/her role purely in response to in-fiction cues generated by the other performers - that is to say, who approached the task within the constraints that you say are exhaustive of roleplaying -would be doing his/her job.</blockquote>

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