D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[Lanefan]

So there is not a uniform system for stats. There are multiple ways given to choose stats or the DM can make up his own like I did. The DMG offers at least two other ways to do skills, and the PHB offers up one alternative. Not so uniform. Feats are optional or not, and some folks like me give a 1st level feat for free. House rules are a part of the game. If I want the base fighter class to be able to "wrongfoot" an opponent, it can.

5e is every bit as kitbashable as 1e was. 5e just gives DMs a base to start off with on many things 1e didn't.

I wouldn't go quite as far as your last line here. 5e is malleable on the surface, sure, but (as with 3e and 4e) any deep-dive kitbashing requires uprooting the unified-mechanic underpinning and replacing parts (or all) of it with discrete subsystems, a daunting task for even the most dedicated system-wrangler.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree. I think the DM's indifference can scale with the abundance of players independent of online or not. A system with fewer players in relation to DMs, would require more courting of those players by any individual DM.

I haven't, personally, DMed other systems outside of my friend group, so I can't attest to this being the case. But it makes perfect sense that it would.

Same here. I've had a long stable set of player groups (though I disconnected from one of the two not too long ago) and when I was starting up my most recent campaign, though I wanted a couple more people, both were people I already knew of that responded.

At some point here after I settle in on my current game, I may try and recruit for another non-D&D game and it'll be interested to see how it goes (the fact I'm using an uncommon VTT may complicate it further too, for all I know).

 

[Maxperson]

If, within the system, you can resolve every valid action declaration, you have a rule for everything.



Hold on a second. Whether there is a rule for an action is separate from saying there is a rule that will produce a particular result.

Say I'm playing Leverage: The RPG. The setting of this game is pretty much our own, with some exceptional information technology. Characters in this system cannot lift multiple tons.

Consider a player then stating a goal and approach as, "I want to make this guy end up smashing through several buildings like in a superhero movie, and I do it by punching him."

The goal is not attainable within the setting or ruleset - it is well outside the genre expectations. But, the system has a way to handle punching the target as hard as you can.

How do you view that, in terms of having rules for actions?

This is what was said by @pemerton , "Second, your claim is a non-sequitur. AW's rules - which provide for the resolution of any declared action - deliberately produce a certain sort of focus and play experience: the themes are scarcity, interpersonal conflict, and the ever-present threat of violence."

If my character has some iron, a location to do it, and the knowledge, I can declare that he is forging a shield for use. According to the above, the result can't just be a success. The rules say that the resolution of any declared action involves scarcity(doesn't apply), interpersonal conflict(doesn't apply) and/or some threat of violence. So I suppose the attempt to forge a shield has to involve some sort of threat of violence. But since the resolution requires it to fall into those three categories, the rules don't cover things like simply succeeding at something.

 

[Umbran]

This is what was said by @pemerton , "Second, your claim is a non-sequitur. AW's rules - which provide for the resolution of any declared action - deliberately produce a certain sort of focus and play experience: the themes are scarcity, interpersonal conflict, and the ever-present threat of violence."

If my character has some iron, a location to do it, and the knowledge, I can declare that he is forging a shield for use. According to the above, the result can't just be a success. The rules say that the resolution of any declared action involves scarcity(doesn't apply), interpersonal conflict(doesn't apply) and/or some threat of violence.

(I had to walk away from my keyboard for several hours, so maybe others have covered this)

I see a couple of issues here:

You are assuming far too much in asserting the "doesn't apply" bits. You, the person who declares the action, don't get to just flatly assert what does and does not apply.

You're making a shield, using metal and coal in a world of scarcity. Using them may mean that something else can't be made - maybe the harvest will be bad because those resources aren't used on fixing farm equipment. An important person in the community may feel it is wasteful and is willing to come into personal conflict over it bringing social consequences to bear. Or, maybe someone is going to be willing to beat you up and take your shield.

All those things can apply. And, by the sound of it, in AW, if you want the mechanical benefit of a Move, some of that has to apply. Otherwise, we just narrate that you make a shield, but you gain none of the possible mechanical benefits of any Moves.

So I suppose the attempt to forge a shield has to involve some sort of threat of violence. But since the resolution requires it to fall into those three categories, the rules don't cover things like simply succeeding at something.

Yeah, but having "simply succeed" be a possible result is not actually a requirement! The mechanics must allow you to reach your goal, but they don't have to allow you to do so without consequences or complications.

 

[Umbran]

Also, I wasn't talking about equality of action-success likelihoods in the first place; what I was getting at was a) that the claim that a game system has a rule for everything implies by extension that said game can equally well handle different playstyles and focuses from its participants

To the emphasized bit: No, it doesn't. There is no such implication. If someone stipulated that, I disagree with them.

Because, again - being able to handle an action does not mean being able to produce all imaginable results the player might try to stipulate. The player gets to say what they are trying to do. The mechanics don't actually have to be able to produce that specific result - they only have to process the attempt, and tell you if you reach the goal, or not, and what results from your attempt.

 

[Lanefan]

To the emphasized bit: No, it doesn't. There is no such implication. If someone stipulated that, I disagree with them.

Because, again - being able to handle an action does not mean being able to produce all imaginable results the player might try to stipulate. The player gets to say what they are trying to do. The mechanics don't actually have to be able to produce that specific result - they only have to process the attempt, and tell you if you reach the goal, or not.

Sorry, but I think you've misread me again.

And so I'll be clear: I'm not talking about individual action declaration and-or resolution.

I'm talking about playstyle and focus, suggesting that a game that truly does have a rule for everything would by default be agnostic to both playstyle and focus as it could - by having a rule for everything - handle any playstyle and-or any focus with equal ease.

And we're then told the game in question was designed with intention of seeking/promoting a somewhat specific playstyle and focus, which doesn't square.

======
Unrelated to your quote above:

I should point out that a game that truly has a rule for everything doesn't have to have a bajillion micro-granular rules in order to accomplish this end. The extreme example: "Anything goes, there are no rules" is a single macro-rule that in fact does cover everything.

 

[John Lloyd1]

Fate does a nice job of accounting for the impact of a more flexible system by splitting it into golden & silver rules

I am just reading Fate Condensed and it has introduced the 'rule of bogus'. Fate Condensed assumes that the characters can do anything the player says, but if another player (including the GM) calls bogus the table should discuss it. This basically establishes what is possible in the particular setting.

 

[deleuzian_kernel]

If my character has some iron, a location to do it, and the knowledge, I can declare that he is forging a shield for use. According to the above, the result can't just be a success. The rules say that the resolution of any declared action involves scarcity(doesn't apply), interpersonal conflict(doesn't apply) and/or some threat of violence. So I suppose the attempt to forge a shield has to involve some sort of threat of violence. But since the resolution requires it to fall into those three categories, the rules don't cover things like simply succeeding at something.

Well...

An MC granting your intent with the single requirement "it's going to take hours of work" (realistically, how could it be less?), while following their principle "Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards" (the in-context reward being, maybe, a response to previous fiction establishing you had already earned that time away from pressure), looking to fulfill all or a subset of their three agendas (and in particular Make Apocalypse World seem real, basically agreeing with you that your envisioned outcome is a reasonable fictional outcome at the time), gives clear mechanical support for the exact scenario you paint. It's super contextual though, same as with any example.

The BIG difference in AW is that the outcome does not depend on a dice roll or a naked mechanical procedure. It's not up to the dice to decide whether you can or not craft your shield, and how it goes. The full fictional, and most importantly, NARRATIVE outcome comes from a particular orientation towards fiction that gets codified as game mechanics which rely on principled decision-making, and not exclusively on declarative applications of written rules (although sometimes, for some moves, these mechanisms also participate alongside).

 

[pemerton]

So there is not a uniform system for stats.

There's a table that tells me what the bonus is from a stat. It's the same for all stats, and all rolls. And all those rolls are on a d20.

This is nothing like classic D&D.

5e is every bit as kitbashable as 1e was. 5e just gives DMs a base to start off with on many things 1e didn't.

I express no view on whether 5e D&D is "kitbashable". I don't even really know what that is supposed to mean - how is any game ever immune to variation?

My comment was that I don't see any resemblance to the classic D&D approach of ad hoc subystems, ad hoc new classes, etc.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton said that the AW rules focus resolutions into three categories, which means that those rules don't cover action focusing into other categories than those three. They may have a rule that covers every action, but they don't have a rule for everything.

If there are 50 possible resolutions for an action, but the rule only covers 3 of them, even though the rule technically does cover that action, there still is no rule for the other 47 resolutions.

I don't understand what this means. And I wish people would stop saying that I said things that I didn't.

I said that AW has a rule to resolve every action declaration. This is true.

I don't know what 47 possible results of declared actions you think are precluded by AW's rules: given that on a 6- the GM can make as hard and direct a move as they like, it's not clear what examples you would have in mind.

I didn't say that AW focuses resolution into three categories (of what?). I did say that the rules "produce a certain sort of focus and play experience: the themes are scarcity, interpersonal conflict, and the ever-present threat of violence".

You and @Oofta seem to have an a priori belief that no system can be more "universal" in its capacity to handle action resolution than 5e D&D. I think if you actually had a look at how some other systems handle action resolution so as to have a clear rule for how to resolve any declared action, you might find it interesting.

True to your name, you're being pedantic when I'm talking generalities. All games have rules and goals of play.

Call them moves, call them actions, call them kerfluggles, I don't care. One of the people at the table does something and there are rules about what the result is. Results can take many forms including a random factor like rolling a 7+.

Is the flow and reactions the same as D&D or any other D20 game? No. Of course not. But there has never been a TTRPG that explicitly tells you the result of everything every person at the table does or could possibly do.

I did not assert that AW tells you the result of every declared action. How could it?

What I said, and what is true, is that it has a rule for determining the result of every declared action. The actual result will follow from the application of the relevant rule. And it depends upon both elements of the fiction leading up to that moment of play, and elements of what has happened at the table leading up to that moment of play.

Suppose someone tries to jump across a really wide crevasse. I think it's well-known that 5e D&D can handle this easily in some contexts - eg the character is under a Jump spell, or has a STR score that is numerically greater than the width of the crevasse in feet. I think it's also well-known that there are other contexts - like the character attempting an unaided running jump - where there is a wide difference of opinion over what the proper resolution method is.

One reason for this is - despite your dismissal of "kerfluggles" - 5e D&D doesn't have a system of GM moves, nor a framework for making them.

This difference of AW compared to 5e D&D is part of how it is able to have a resolution procedure for any declared action.

It's systems aren't inherently better, it doesn't have any more answers than D&D, it just takes a different approach.

I didn't say it's better. I said it's different. One of the difference is that, unlike 5e D&D, it has a resolution procedure for any declared action.

you claimed the game has rules for everything back in post 305. It can't. At least not defined rules to any significant level of granularity. I watched some PbtA intro to DW streams a while back, the game just has a different approach.

I don't know what you mean by "defined rules to any significant level of granularity". I've told you what the rules are. They tell everyone at the table whose job it is to say what happens next, in response to any action being declared, and they also establish the parameters that constraint what it is that can be said.

That seems granular enough to me - it tells us who gets to speak, and it guides them in what they may or may not say.