D&D 5E Assumptions about character creation

[Lanefan]

IME, the real difference is whether the player thinks of it like a video game but looser (these players will stick to what they can clearly see the rules allowing until they get that down pat, and then experiment) or a story game (usually someone who learned about the game form streaming - since many streams cut out the boring-to-watch playing-by-the-rules parts, they'll see the rules as unimportant and expect to just describe cool things and then cool things happen.)

Good point - I always forget the video-game angle.

Once in a while you'll get someone who come to the game expecting deadly puzzles, because they learned about the game when their uncle regaled them with nostalgia-filtered tales of actual old-school play.

An while I've never seen it in the wild, I can imagine that if you have an uncommon playstyle you might simply have gotten a lot of practice explaining your style to new players and now do so before they ask - so you subvert the issues of mixed expectations entirely.

Another good point. And nowadays I can also point to my online game logs if a new player really wants to do some serious homework...

 

[Chaosmancer]

Interesting.

I wonder if there's a difference in how we (as in all of us, not just you and I) present our games to new players, and whether that makes a difference to how those players start out.

What I mean by this is how a DM who presents the game as more 'let your imagination go, feel free to try anything, and for now let the rest of us worry about the rules', as opposed to 'here's the rules, read these before you start', might see a very different early playstyle from a new player. Put another way, does the DM come across as being rules-first or imagination-first.

I was introduced to the game via the former method, and try to do the same with any new players I bring in (though it's been a long while since I've had a truly 'new' player). Admittedly, the 'let us worry about the rules' approach is easier in an older type of system where more of the rules are DM-facing - but to me that's a benefit.

I doubt it is that, because I've seen similar hesitance in schools for years. People just don't want to give wrong answers. Even if there is no wrong answer.

Joining a new group, with a bunch of new people, in a new situation where you don't understand the rules, that is stressful and they tend to clam up.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uhh...yeah. I'd say you have a highly divergent idea of what a "long-running" game looks like. Very, very, very few people get to that point. Even getting to two years is surprising to most people.

Yeah, the two longest games I have heard about or participated in locally have been "two years" which in actual time gaming were probably closer to a year and a half. And those games were considered exceptionally long-running.

 

[Argyle King]

I have seen what Lanefan mentions: newer players attempt things, but then their creativity gets shut down by the rules. It's one of the reasons why (over time,) I've become less fond of D&D as my primary system. People attempt things from the perspective of their character and based on the the description of a situation, but play teaches that what "makes sense" (for a lack of better words) for the person to do doesn't "make sense" in the context of D&D. 5th Edition has done better at that than some other editions of played, but I believe some of the core causes for that disconnect still exist.

Other systems have quirks too, but I haven't (anecdotally) noticed the same issue occurring in games where there's a more coherent connection between fluff & crunch, as well as between how the rules say the world works and how someone imagining the situation believes the world to work.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It comes down to whether success in any given situation means getting something you want (i.e. changing the status quo for the better: I successfully climb the wall) or not getting something you don't want (i.e. the status quo is better than the alternative

..."not getting what you don't want" isn't success. It's avoiding failure. That's going to be a key point of disagreement here.

What you're proposing makes retention of the status quo an impossible result: either something happens, or something else happens; and in the fiction this isn't always going to make sense.

If the status quo is being retained, the characters aren't activating the rules. Whenever you trigger mechanics, it should be because Things Are In Doubt. Both 4e and DW work that way, for opposite reasons: DW because you only turn to the mechanics when the fiction needs it, 4e because the devs trust the DM to handle all the fiction stuff that rules just aren't good for. (Of course, its detractors called this "being only about combat" etc., in a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument--anywhere it had rules for roleplay, it was restrictive, and anywhere it didn't, it provided no support.)

Any time you engage the rules, the status quo SHOULD be in question. If the status quo ISN'T in question, the rules aren't needed. And even at times when it is in question, the rules may not be needed (as when the DM just says yes because the plan is too sensible/cool/funny not to).

This comes down to playing in character - the character has no way of knowing whether success or failure matters or not either until later, or never.

Okay...but that's not a game design element. That's what a player has to do when already playing a game designed that way. It's circular to argue this; you're presuming the thing you're defending.

I see "rule" and "law" as synonyms: breaking either has potential consequences. A rule in chess is that your rook can only move in straight lines. A guideline, on the other hand, is something - usually advice - that can be adhered to or not, as the mood strikes. A guideline in chess is that the central four squares are important in the early game. In RPGs, many things people tend to see as rules I tend to see more as guidelines.

Okay so...what about the vast excluded middle of things you generally should obey, but which you definitely shouldn't obey 100% of the time? Because, well, that's kind of where "rule" exists in literally all games. They're...conventions? Customs? Norms? Heuristics, if we want to be technical? "Rule" is the most natural word for this as far as I'm concerned, and "rules" are definitely less strict than "laws" (otherwise we would see at least some intermingling of the two terms, wouldn't we? The only use of "laws" I can think of in a D&D-like context is Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering.)

The "rules" of writing are not laws. Again, as I have repeatedly and explicitly said, you SHOULD break them literally 100% of the time that doing so would improve your work. Which might sound like a really useless rule ("what, you use it only when it's good, and not when it's bad?"), but the point of the rule is that it usually is good to follow it. It usually is good to write your English sentences as subject-verb-object, but we break that rule all the time in poetry. It usually is good to end chord progressions with a perfect or plagal cadence, but plenty of songs use some other kind of cadence or intentionally leave a feeling of suspense and unresolved emotion.

I put point buy into the all-the-same category. Sure it allows for much more variety than fixed array, but you're still starting from the same overall base. Further, in neither system can you have anything less than an 8 unless the DM overwrites the rule, and sometimes having something below 8 is what makes a character work.

I mean, you're allowed to call them that if you like, but surely you see that that's a disparagement that many would disagree with? The stats simply are not the same. There may be less variability than you like, but there's also (far) more choice, which is its own form of non-sameness.

Hmmm...you don't like it when I use anecdotes as evidence, and you don't like it when I use actual numbers as evidence. This makes things tricky...

I mean, yes? It doesn't help that your evidence, even if it were flawless, does not actually address the point I keep explicitly making: these rules, these conventions/customs/norms/heuristics/WHATEVER term you need so that you don't read it and think "oh, if I break this, horrible things happen 100% of the time," are USEFUL, as are higher stats as opposed to lower stats. That you can give me examples, logic, even statistics to show that they aren't REQUIRED does not actually defeat my point. You would need a hell of a lot more statistical evidence to show that the thing is NOT useful, when all I need to do is point to the very simple probability: having a +4 modifier instead of a +2 modifier means succeeding, on average, 10% more, and so by the law of averages, we would expect that about 10% more characters with said higher modifiers survive. (In practice it will be less because not every modifier is 2 higher, but the point stands.) You're going to need something pretty strong to counter that!

Not in these parts...

See above. I'm not alone in thinking this.

I, meanwhile, would have to strip 4e right down to the floor and rebuild it from scratch to get it even vaguely close to anything I'd want to touch

Have you ever heard of Fourthcore? You might be seriously surprised. That IS running 4e in "hard mode." (Well, was, the official community is defunct now.)

Not sure I understand the example. Removing THAC0 (or, in my case, never using it in the first place) is easy, as to me THAC0 is an obstacle in that it adds a needless step to a process which otherwise arrives at the same result.

...you have to completely re-do the math. Recalculating the AC and attack of each creature, checking bonuses to make sure they're all properly labelled (not that 2e was ever consistent with how attack bonuses or penalties were labelled). You consider this an easy task? I just...I literally have no idea how to respond to this fact. You talk about a variety of easy tasks as though they are insanely difficult, and then talk about a variety of seriously difficult tasks as though they are trivial. I have no idea what "easy" and "hard" even means to you anymore.

Ask any DM who has placed homebrew restrictions on the game (e.g. no Elves in this setting; or expansion-book XYZ will not be used in this campaign), as to how players often react. Speed limits on roads - no driver ever complains when the speed limit is raised, but they sure do when it's lowered.

It's simply easier to start with the most restrictive situation and ease it off than to do the reverse.

That's...

Okay, Lanefan. We need to hash out here what we're talking about. Are we talking about design, which means things that happen before the game even begins, or are we talking about at-table play, which is after design is already complete?

Because you keep slipping back and forth between the two and it's really really hard to have a conversation about either one when you do that. Obviously, design affects at-table play, but focusing on design means the at-table play experience is up in the air, while focusing on the at-table play experience means design should be largely settled. (Even in playtesting, you need to have a consistent ruleset for long enough to, y'know, actually test the play experience, otherwise you don't learn anything.)

Other systems have quirks too, but I haven't (anecdotally) noticed the same issue occurring in games where there's a more coherent connection between fluff & crunch, as well as between how the rules say the world works and how someone imagining the situation believes the world to work.

Out of curiosity: How often do you play these non-D&D systems with people who are truly new to RPGs?

 

[Argyle King]

Out of curiosity: How often do you play these non-D&D systems with people who are truly new to RPGs?

Fairly often.

Some of my usual gaming group has children who are now at the age where they're taking an interest in gaming.

Anecdotally, I have had a rather easy time teaching them how to play systems which many D&D players consider to be complicated. My belief is that is because there is less of a barrier between what they (new players) imagine and what plays out at the table; in contrast, I think D&D players are mentally trained to see things from a context which mostly only makes sense while playing D&D or a D&D-derived game.

In no way am I saying this makes one way better or worse. It's simply an anecdotal observation (and an accompanying guess at what that observation might mean) of teaching games to people.

Note: I started out as a D&D player too. For a long time, I accepted things as being how they were because it made sense and because I assumed that's how all games handled things. I didn't start to notice that what was in my head wasn't syncing up with the game until I started DMing and world-building. Even then, I didn't consider other ways of doing things until 4th Edition came out.

I started with 3.0/3.5. 4th was different enough that I had the epiphany of "well, maybe other games do things more differently than I assumed." Ironically, despite the fact that I've complained about 4th in the past, what prompted me to check out other games was what (I felt) 4th Edition did right, not what (I felt) 4th Edition did wrong.