A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[lowkey13]

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[pemerton]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], what's your point? Are you denying that there are many RPG tables where GMs roll dice like everyone else, for the table to see? Or that there are many table playing games like DW in which the GM rolls no dice?

 

[lowkey13]

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[Bedrockgames]

What "most"? Fate, PbtA, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel, 4e D&D - these are just some of the RPGs I know of which don't fit your description - they have resolution systems for non-combat action declarations which aren't exhausted by "The GM decides". Even AD&D gestured towards this with the NWPs in Oriental Adventures, although there are obvious weaknesses in the mechanical implementation.

Pemerton, I wasn't particularly concerned with 'most' in this case. I was acknowledging the point the poster made, and responding by saying something to the effect of 'sure it is true that'. But I don't know whether it is most, a majority of games, or just a substantial number of mainstream games. But clearly there are RPGs where this is the case, because it is possible for it to be the case in the medium. That was my only. I don't know why you want to dig into every corner of a statement in order to point score.

 

[Lanefan]

No one thinks that, if a GM narrates a room with a door but no windows, the action declaration "I climb through the window" is going to have a chance of success.

I search for a secret window?

If a group of players were playing PCs who had no magical attack forms, and the GM framed those PCs into a situation which (i) very clearly invited a violent resopnse, and (ii) involved a being able to be hurt only by magical attack forms, then in my view that would be an instance of exactly what [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] is talking about.

Unless the challenge being put is actually for the players/PCs to look beyond the obviously-invited violent response, think outside the box a bit, and go to plan B; be it negotiation, flight, bribery, surrender, or whatever. And this can come before or after the PCs realize their weapons can't harm the Knight.

As for whatever chaochou might have said, I didn't see it as I think s/he has me blocked.

In D&D, being told your fear effect doesn't affect the Death Kinght doesn't end the resolution process for fighting a death knight.

Of course not*. It's just one of many little resolutions that add up to the overall resolution of the combat.

* - unless you're the last PC standing and the fear effect is your last-ditch desperation move in certain knowledge that if it fails you won't last out the round.

 

[pemerton]

Well, you said that Sadras was making assumptions about play practices.

I think that his assumptions are somewhat well-founded.

I am sure that there are some tables that play diceless games.

I am sure that there are some tables that play games with dice with no fudging.

I think based on the available evidence that Sadras's questions about fudging do, in fact, "extend to many RPG tables."

Sure. There are many restaurant tables at which meat is eaten. There are also many restaurant tables at which meat is not eaten. Hence an assumption that eating at a restaurant entails eating meat will not be true at many restaurant tables. The fact that there are many other tables at which the assumption holds is beside the point.

There are many tables to which [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]'s assumptions do not extend. That is quite compatible with there being many to which they do extend. Given that I'm pretty confident that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] would characterise the tables to which they do extend as "Mother May I", I don't see how Sadras thinks that pointing to them undermines chaochou's analysis.

 

[lowkey13]

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[AbdulAlhazred]

No RPG can enforce a certain mode of play, but how the game is constructed can make it more trouble than it's worth to retool it. 4e was like that for me. I found myself having to re-write so many rules to make it playable by me that I just gave up and went back to 3e. D&D is only mildly DM facing, because it's very, very easy to retool it to fit just about any playstyle.

You are of course welcome to your opinion. IMHO 'classic' D&D is a pretty rigid game which really only works as what it was designed to be, an FRPG with a DM entirely in charge of content, and with a steep power curve and a lot of fairly gonzo kitchen-sink fantasy elements. It can bend a bit in higher or lower magic directions, slightly, but its not a real flexible game.

Note how TSR never attempted to use D&D as an engine for other games. The closest was Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World, but even there the game is VERY different in several important particulars (PCs have MUCH more hit points for example, and level advancement is practically non-existent, there are no classes, etc.). That's it, every other TSR game uses entirely different mechanics (of many sorts, they never did seemingly believe in a generic system, unless you count Alternity, and that was a minor blip at the end of TSR).

Nor does classic D&D have a lot of the subsystems you really NEED to even run most types of game. It has very little in the way of explicit character elements, nothing you can really use for a meta-game resource, and doesn't even have a skill or 'power' type of system that grants characters something they can use to make checks or carry out actions. Some classes have 'stuff' that KINDA does that, but you have to go to after 1986 to find generally applicable skill systems, and they're not even really workable until 3e, which is hardly classic.

EDIT: In fact, 3e is a very informative edition in terms of indicating what WotC thought the limitations of 2e were. Lack of a generic skill system and common resolution system! Overly rigid class system, etc. D20 Modern and the 'D20 System' in general takes this even further, finally ACTUALLY giving us a modestly generic system based on a rule set which can trace its descent from classic Gygax D&D in a fairly straight path. It is a LOT different from Gygax, and yet STILL suffered from enough of the same limitations that it never really took off (I mean, there was a rush of D20-ized game books that came out, and then they all rapidly faded away as designers and players quickly found out it wasn't a great idea).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In all those non D&D games are there monsters which are immune to certain effects or damage types?
For instance, in 5e, Death Knights are immune to exhaustion, being frightened and poison.

Does the table decide if these monsters may be immune? Can bennies be spent to overcome the immunity? If not, I suggest those games be included under your MMI label because the players' mechanical resolution includes some hard No's if particular damage is deemed irrelevant. To argue otherwise is nonsense.

I would argue that there are other ways to defeat these monsters. It may be a bit of a puzzle, but 2 things make it not MMI. First you can reason about this, everyone knows, or can learn, that Shambling Mounds and lightning are a bad mix! Once you know this, they're not hard to defeat. Heck, you might not even stumble upon this at all! When the DM says "no, you can't find a way through obstacle X, period." that's a LOT harder constraint.

I'd say that monster immunities COULD become something abusive, if they are presented in specific ways (IE by the nature of the situation they are bound to make fighting the monsters basically impossible). Its not a perfectly black and white thing.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You seem very wedded to your opinion. I would point out that arguing from the specific to the general is rarely accurate. For instance, samurai were largely a very polite and rigidly structured society, especially based as it was on martial power and obligation. The example of Musashi, whom you point out fought many duels, is a goid example of this. Dueling in feudal Japan was part of the social rituals avoiding widespread violence and were formal affairs that where largely non-lethal. Duels that were lethal avoided larger violence. Your characterization is very shallow and dismissive of a complex society.

Gentlemen's Peace's, as you note, do not avoid violence. They channel it and limit it's scope. For someone that just said there are muktiple factors, you seem very eager to dismiss complex interactions on the basis of a few examples.

I would instead argue that they perpetuate violence because they undermine the means and the habit of coming to mutually beneficial and acceptable arrangements. Arming oneself is fundamentally a statement "I will kill you rather than deal with the issues which create hostility." I argue this is a fundamental issue in contemporary society, though I think we should not pursue that discussion here, it would be best taken elsewhere.