D&D General A glimpse at WoTC's current view of Rule 0

[TiQuinn]

Just saying someone can view it that way without being a troublemaker. If it bothers them it bothers them; what you should care about is whether they impose that bother on others.

Yes, absolutely. And to clarify, because again I still don’t think of it in terms of zero sum, I don’t like BitD overall but that doesn’t mean I can’t still find a way to have fun. I like the group I play with, I’m a good player, and I know how to create my own fun within pretty much any game system. If those didn’t apply, I’d excuse myself.

But getting back to the overall point, I don’t expect a rule in a book to have to tell me that’s the way to act.

 

[Clint_L]

Indeed.

And yet whenever one brings up the idea of adding level drain, forced aging, and other similar major mechanical setbacks back into the game as possible "loss conditions" alongside death the responding chorus of "Noes, noes, that's not fun, not ever!" is loud, long, and persistent.

By and large most TTRPGS have voted with their feet against level drain, but that really means nothing. The only consensus that matters is your group. Fun is relevant, so all that matters it what works for each group. Given how long you guys have been playing together, I'd say you've cracked the code for what works for all of you. Can't really criticize it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this is an analogous case though. A social contract isn’t actually a legal agreement, but we call it a contract to emphasize that it is similar to a legal agreement in a meaningful sense. That sense being, from my perspective, that by choosing to play, you are choosing to abide by the game’s rules. That’s why, to me, anyone who plays in a game where the rules has been changed is tacitly agreeing to those changes.

The difference is, to me, there's a certain all-or-nothing quality to most legal agreements in that once you agree, you've agreed in the legal sense, but with rules acceptance, its entirely possible you're doing so with the thought of revisiting the issue in the future while not being a giant pill right then. As I referenced earlier, I've had cases I accepted rules decisions I thought were outright bad because I contextually assumed they wouldn't come up much (and usually they didn't) but I wouldn't claim I was going to be particularly positive about them; I'd just endure them (if unavoidable) or avoid them (if they involved elements of a system that weren't mandatory for every player to engage with, say avoiding building a stealth based character in a game where I thought the stealth houserules in use were obnoxious). To use a metaphor from elsewhere in this site, its like accepting everyone is going to have pineapple on the pizza and just picking the pieces off; you're not going to stop everyone else from ordering it, but to the degree you can you'll avoid it (though olives would be a better one there, since pineapple juice tends to work its way into the pizze).

 

[Charlaquin]

Kind of gets back to the old "no gaming is better than bad gaming", where the problem is different people's definition of "bad" here can be considerably varied. I've definitely had cases of campaigns I participated in where its possible I could have found another game I'd have gotten more out of--or could have just not found a game, and still got something out of the imperfect one I was in.

Oh, no doubt. I mean, I’m currently a player in a campaign that is falling just to one side of that line. I really don’t care for a lot of things about the way the DM runs the game, but I do care very deeply for the DM and all the other players in the group. I continue playing in the game because I like spending time with the people in it, whatever the activity may be, and we’ll rotate DMs eventually. It also helps that the parts I dislike about her DMing are mostly results of her being pretty inexperienced as a DM, not a conflict of gameplay preferences.

 

[Clint_L]

The designers of modern D&D, however, don't seem to agree with either of us; in that they've stripped out most of the loss conditions and make the remaining few rather difficult to achoeve.

I see this as a criticism of modern D&D. A lot. "Kids these days...in my day we had to fight orcs uphill. In the snow. Both ways!"

I think contemporary D&D makes it harder for an inexperienced D&D to wipe out a party by accident, and I think that's a good thing. I don't think it makes it harder for an experienced DM to challenge a party. I can build a challenging encounter no problem. So I think that contemporary D&D gives the DM more control over the difficulty level, and that's a good thing.

That said, I had the same main character for all of my AD&D years, as did most of my friends, so I also think the lethality of the game "back in the day" is overstated. Modern parties aren't festooned with 10' poles and disposable hirelings.

Also, I don't see level drain as making the game particularly harder, I just see it as making the game more annoying while adding a mechanism that makes no narrative sense.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I suspect part of that turns on the fact there's some profound disagreements in the hobby about what degree the efforts of a GM are or aren't symmetrical with a players', and what that means in terms of rights and duties.

Oh absolutely.

Did you ever have a friend who offered to do you a favor… and then they bring it up every chance they get like you’re meant to owe them?

That’s how I view DM’s who feel put upon by the amount of effort they put in. Especially when the venn diagram between such DMs and ones who say they love world-building and game prep shows considerable overlap.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Modern parties aren't festooned with 10' poles and disposable hirelings.

I mean, unless you have a 10' pole, caltrops, holy water, and two weeks of iron rations written down on your character sheet, are you really playing D&D?

I kid. But we should bring back the 10' pole. It's perfect for a bard roast. No, not the Tom Brady kind. More of a luau.

 

[Charlaquin]

The difference is, to me, there's a certain all-or-nothing quality to most legal agreements in that once you agree, you've agreed in the legal sense, but with rules acceptance, its entirely possible you're doing so with the thought of revisiting the issue in the future while not being a giant pill right then. As I referenced earlier, I've had cases I accepted rules decisions I thought were outright bad because I contextually assumed they wouldn't come up much (and usually they didn't) but I wouldn't claim I was going to be particularly positive about them; I'd just endure them (if unavoidable) or avoid them (if they involved elements of a system that weren't mandatory for every player to engage with, say avoiding building a stealth based character in a game where I thought the stealth houserules in use were obnoxious).

Sure, I just don’t think you have to be positive about them to be said to have agreed to them.

To use a metaphor from elsewhere in this site, its like accepting everyone is going to have pineapple on the pizza and just picking the pieces off; you're not going to stop everyone else from ordering it, but to the degree you can you'll avoid it (though olives would be a better one there, since pineapple juice tends to work its way into the pizze).

Oh, yeah, that’s a much better analogy than the legal contract, thanks for bringing it up! I would absolutely say that in that scenario you agreed to order a pineapple (or olive) pizza. Especially if the group is splitting the cost on it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh, no doubt. I mean, I’m currently a player in a campaign that is falling just to one side of that line. I really don’t care for a lot of things about the way the DM runs the game, but I do care very deeply for the DM and all the other players in the group. I continue playing in the game because I like spending time with the people in it, whatever the activity may be, and we’ll rotate DMs eventually. It also helps that the parts I dislike about her DMing are mostly results of her being pretty inexperienced as a DM, not a conflict of gameplay preferences.

I had an experience like this with the final Mutants and Masterminds game I participated in; I'd concluded that the combat mechanics really weren't very good, but only arrived at that conclusion (I'd played in two other campaigns using the system and run two others) with certainty early on in the campaign. I was enjoying the game despite those flawed mechanics (and to be clear, my tastes are such that in a superhero game bad combat mechanics are not a small thing to me) because the GM (who I happen to be married to) was doing a good job with other elements of the campaign. It was a distinctly flawed gaming experience, but I think I'd hesitate to refer to it overall as "bad".

 

[Charlaquin]

I mean, unless you have a 10' pole, caltrops, holy water, and two weeks of iron rations written down on your character sheet, are you really playing D&D?

I kid. But we should bring back the 10' pole. It's perfect for a bard roast. No, not the Tom Brady kind. More of a luau.

Also a great way to make money. Buy a 10-foot ladder, break all the rungs off, and sell the two resulting 10-foot polls for a tidy profit.