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

[TwoSix]

Who is the audience for the illusion? The players? Well, not if they know how the game works, which after 40+ years they probably do. The GM? What is the point of the GM fooling themself?

Not sure. I think there's a divergence in this thread about the relative utility of tools that are used a majority of the time but can be overruled by fiat. If you accept the result of the roll 80% of the time, does the tool still have utility? What about 90%? 99%? Or does that fact that the rule has the capacity to be overruled by fiat at all remove its utility?

I can certainly imagine a table where the fact that the DM uses the rolled encounter more often than not is enough to engender a general feeling of verisimilitude. Sometimes there's immersive value in the ritual of rolling and consulting the table.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not. I made a simple point about a particular game (Apocalypse World): namely, that its rules govern the resolution of any declared action.

Okay. Then I would say that D&D's rules also govern the resolution of any declared action. It's just not handled the way that AW would do it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People forget that encounters don’t necessarily mean combat. If you roll a dragon for a random encounter, the encounter could consist of the players sighting the dragon in flight moving towards or away from them. Most tables I’ve seen give zero context to the encounter, leaving that completely within the DM’s control.

The reaction roll rules helped with this a lot too. Often you can negotiate.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Perhaps not to you. To me, it is.

And the way people actually talk about this stuff? It's a HELL of a lot more than "one in a million." It's "this monster isn't doing what I want, I'm going to change its stats." It's "I don't want this boss to die before it gets to attack." It's "the players have already figured out the mystery, I'm going to change who is guilty." It's quantum ogres and "invisible rails" that guide an entire game.


But are you saying fudging is the same sort of thing as that? Because as soon as you do, then your argument falls apart. I genuinely do not understand the difference between "lie to your players about what a roll's result was" and "decide that you don't have to make a hard move, even though the rules permit it, a soft move is adequate". The former is very clearly "dispense with the rules, they don't matter." The latter is literally obeying the explicit, direct rules text about how to respond to moves: you can always choose to make a soft move if doing so fits the fiction.

Or do you genuinely mean to say that the rules of 5e are explicitly saying, "You can ignore a player's die roll at any time if that suits what you intend to do"? Because that would sound rather like a concession of my point, not a refutation thereof.


How can they not know? It literally is whatever happens next! Like...that's how DW works. "Begin and end with the fiction." It's literally right there.

It's ok if you don't like D&D (other than 4e I know), but if you're trying to get people interested in DW and similar games I'm not sure this is the best method.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not. I made a simple point about a particular game (Apocalypse World): namely, that its rules govern the resolution of any declared action.

Do DW and Monster of the Week (to name two other PbtA I'm familiar with) do this differently? They seem pretty similar to me at least on a surface level.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I answered your question not far upthread with reference to four different RPGs (Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic RP and 4e D&D). There are many other RPGs that are relevantly similar to these.

I do a fair bit of GMing. I'm not an illusionist. And I play systems that don't require me to break or ignore the rules in order to introduce interesting fiction. A RPG that (i) is intended to generate interesting fiction, and (ii) that requires the GM or players to suspend or break the rules in order to do that, is a badly designed RPG.

(Point (i) matters, because some RPGs are intended for things other than interesting fiction - eg Moldvay Basic is more about wargaming (broadly construed) and puzzle-solving than about interesting fiction. The fact that people still use techniques from that game, like wandering monster tables, even though they have completely abandoned its goals of play, is one of the more curious feature of RPGing as a hobby.)

My goal of play is to create and adjudicate a realistic seeming imaginary world with verisimilitude, that the players can explore through their characters.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, but sometimes your options are just bad and that's all there is to it, and the kind of terrain you have to deal with locally doesn't allow you to avoid that. As long as things outspeed you or have ranged weapons, and you don't have really long abstracted turns, you're going to have a problem in the environments I mentioned, and there are parts of the world where those environments are more common than not.

Yup, that's a tough spot. You may have to de as @Lanefan says and make a break for it, hoping at least one of you makes it out and lives to adventure another day.

 

[Remathilis]

The reaction roll rules helped with this a lot too. Often you can negotiate.

So this might open up a huge can of worms...

Let's argue for the sake of this thought that the DM is a neutral arbiter AND that he will roll fairly and abide all results. He rolls that ancient red dragon encounter (or any creature that outguns the PCs). So now we're going to negotiate.

How are we handling this? The fair arbiter says some sort of reaction roll/charisma check is best (removing any bias from the DM) but that's a sterile approach to a role playing situation. Can the encounter just be RP'ed though and if so, how does the DM adjudicate that fairly without bias? A player with good speaking skills could theoretically outtalk the DM and win such encounters. A player who is not good at oratory might not. Regardless, the DM is applying a form of Cool (how persuasive is the players/characters words) to the scenario. Perhaps a mixture of both? Well, that could create a scenario where a player can give an impassioned speech or negotiation and fumble the die roll. Likewise, the player can give a terrible performance and crit the reaction roll. Either way, the two parts (roll and role) have little impact on each other unless the DM is again making a judgement call all awarding the player a bonus (or penalty) for good/bad RP.

In the end, aren't we stuck again with "rule of cool" vs "slave to the dice"? The DM putting his thumb on the scale or being completely impartial? I'm not sure how to square that.

 

[bloodtide]

But if every rule is "...unless the DM secretly decides to do otherwise," you cannot ever learn what you're doing. Every single action's consequences are branded with the caveat "...but what happens might only be what the DM decided to do."

The thing here is many RPGs are both complex and/or the players do not know everything about everything in the game. So you can have a rule right in front of you....but in an RPG there is always an exception...but as a player you might not know that.

You have a highly unwarranted confidence that the players are so easily fooled.

It does take talent and skill.

the GM is bound by the results of the dice at all points

I get there are games like this. And there are tons of fans, players, that just love wearing the above line like a badge and using against the DM 24/7.

And i get that there are enough people that look at that and say "wow, it would be so great to DM this game".

I just don't see why so many people can't see past this. Sure page 11 says that....but then a DM can just do whatever they want anyway. Or even better alter game reality before the dice are even rolled. Or sure "do" what the dice say...with some spin.

But I guess as the rules don't say a DM can do that, so no DM ever does that type of thing...

why have a human DM at all? He's as powerless as the players to change the result. Having empathy or human reasoning is meaningless if they cannot use them to alter the game for the better.

I'm a big advocate of this. Though most games only want to look at the bad side....the horror DM stories. The ones the fill up places like Reddit. So many gamers want a hard rule...even a computer program AI...type DM that just does what is on page 11 of the rules.

But if you accept a DM might change or control or frame or set up something....well, you have to accept that you many not like or approve of everything.

Remember we started this discussion on the notion of a DM using the Rule of Cool to break other rules to further the game. Implicit in that statement is the fact that DM does in fact have that power. The notion that the DM cannot bend said rules, even in order to better the game, is baffling to me.

Me too.

The advantage of a human DM is threefold. They can react to situations that a computer cannot understand because it's not part of its coding. They can read a room and decide if the current path the game is heading down is going to be the most fun for everyone involved, and they can alter results to achieve more enjoyable experiences. To limit these abilities to just the first (making the DM a living computer who can interpret rules but not break them) is to remove the actual humanity from the GM, and once AI gets sufficiently advanced to interpret player intentions correctly, it would be trivially easy to remove the need for a human DM at all.

I'm not sure AI can ever get there.

So put me down on the side of DM Magic if it means creating a better experience. A good director does not reveal all their camera tricks, no magician gives away all their secrets, and no DM should fail to keep an ace up their sleeve and use it when the game stutters. It's all part of the show.

I often compare being a DM to being a magician. It's a lot of the same job. Also throw in writers and directors, and even actors. And the 'hidden' word is: manipulation. In a movie/tv show/book did you ever feel or care about a character? Well....that did not just randomly happen by chance.

And in a game...I see the frustration...the sadness...the depression...or worse.....when a player, all locked in a cage of the rules, The look at the endless rules: the monster is too far away. My character only has plus one. My character can only to the seven actions listed on page 11. So the player has the character do nothing. Vs the player that just says "ok, So my character will jump off the cliff and try to lasso the dragon as it flies by". And the DM just says "roll a d20".

 

[Oofta]

So this might open up a huge can of worms...

Let's argue for the sake of this thought that the DM is a neutral arbiter AND that he will roll fairly and abide all results. He rolls that ancient red dragon encounter (or any creature that outguns the PCs). So now we're going to negotiate.

How are we handling this? The fair arbiter says some sort of reaction roll/charisma check is best (removing any bias from the DM) but that's a sterile approach to a role playing situation. Can the encounter just be RP'ed though and if so, how does the DM adjudicate that fairly without bias? A player with good speaking skills could theoretically outtalk the DM and win such encounters. A player who is not good at oratory might not. Regardless, the DM is applying a form of Cool (how persuasive is the players/characters words) to the scenario. Perhaps a mixture of both? Well, that could create a scenario where a player can give an impassioned speech or negotiation and fumble the die roll. Likewise, the player can give a terrible performance and crit the reaction roll. Either way, the two parts (roll and role) have little impact on each other unless the DM is again making a judgement call all awarding the player a bonus (or penalty) for good/bad RP.

In the end, aren't we stuck again with "rule of cool" vs "slave to the dice"? The DM putting his thumb on the scale or being completely impartial? I'm not sure how to square that.

Well, this is sort of covered in The Role of the Dice in the DMG. It's answer is "yes". Basically do whatever makes sense for your group.

For me, I want people to feel like they can play any class and I want their ability score choices to matter. So in a social encounter I pay attention to the content of what is being said, not the how. Based on the content of what is said, potentially along with what the PCs have done in the past (for good or ill) and adjust the target DC. The target may also have their own modifiers depending on their goals and motivations

Sometimes it means there's no reason to roll, in other cases I hope you have a really, really higher modifier and roll well. It's still down to a judgement call of course because I'm modifying target DC based on various factors.