D&D 5E Combat as war, sport, or ??

[EzekielRaiden]

Eh?

Do you, as a player in a game, actually look at the statblock of every monster that shows up each time you play?

 

[S'mon]

Do you, as a player in a game, actually look at the statblock of every monster that shows up each time you play?

No.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No.

So, if the DM ensures that all narrative (story, meaning, relevance) and ecology (physiology, environmental context, relationships between creatures) remains faithfully represented to you, how could you know whether the statblock remained perfectly identical every single time the creature appeared?

 

[S'mon]

So, if the DM ensures that all narrative (story, meaning, relevance) and ecology (physiology, environmental context, relationships between creatures) remains faithfully represented to you, how could you know whether the statblock remained perfectly identical every single time the creature appeared?

I think you're engaging in some kind of straw man argument? Sorry, I have flu, can't really engage.

 

[Lanefan]

First off, cool write up about the time dragons! I might just have to swipe a bit of that...

Why does the mechanical representation need to be a direct, 1:1 correspondence with the fictional reality underneath?

Because that's what the mechanics are there for: to take the underlying fiction and quantify it for gameplay purposes; and from what you say below I think we even agree on that much.

It's not like players are staring at these statblocks. They only see the qualitative, not the quantitative. If the quantitative is structured so that it produces the desired gameplay experience, what more does one need?

Consistency, and consistency. Two different variants, here explained.

Consistency 1 - Grog the Ogre is Grog the Ogre, whether he's raiding a village full of peasants or getting slaughtered by a bunch of 16th-level adventurers or just happily going about his day in the forest. His mechanics should reflect what he actually is, without regard for external concerns. If his mechanics are, however, set only by the way others perceive him, then there's a consistency problem.

For example, if Grog is terrorizing a village full of peasants as an 85 h.p. elite and then three 14th-level knights come riding in who see him as little more than a 1 h.p. minion (and his mechanics correspondingly change to reflect this), does that mean the next peasant to lay a scratch on Grog kills him? It shouldn't; and that's where the consistency issue arises. Put another way, 6 points of damage from a peasant should count exactly the same against Grog as six points of damage from a 14th-level knight, both mechanically at the table and narratively in the fiction.

Consistency 2 - if I'm a 4th-level Cleric with x-amount of spells per day and 32 h.p., it doesn't matter whether I'm facing a single unarmed peasant bandit or a bloody great big nasty dragon or just puttering about in my temple: my own mechanics don't change. I still have 32 h.p. and the same number of spells regardless of my surroundings. If it works this way for me - that my mechanics remain static in any situation - it should work this way for every other inhabitant of the setting; that it doesn't is consistency problem number 2.

Worth noting here that the PCs are not the only inhabitants of the setting whose perception matters.

I'm going to stop you there and reiterate the previous question. Why? What value is gained from this? The players don't see the numbers. They see the fantasy. Fantasy is comprised of two things. First, the narrative: the meaning, story, and substance of the creature, aka "why does this matter to us?" Second, the ecology: the environment, ambience, and interconnections. Neither of these things are mechanics. They are, in fact, completely disconnected from mechanics. So I am deeply confused when you refer to them as "mechanics" in literally any way whatsoever. There is nothing mechanical about any of this.

The mechanics are there to - consistently, one hopes! - reflect the fictional reality, not the fictional perception of reality. Your way is trying to mechanize the perception, which becomes a hopeless task the moment you have multiple entities in the same scene who would perceive that scene differently (e.g. how the knights and peasants perceive Grog). Yes the players don't see the stat blocks, but the DM does; and the DM needs something concrete to work with.

Mechanics are the numbers, the statistics, the conditions

Yes.

and how they interact with one another.

No. The rules are how they interact with one another.

They are things which can be enumerated, as opposed to things which only admit qualitative description.

Particularly in combat, the narration describes those interactions and, sometimes, also puts the mechanics into non-mechanical words. But note: the narration only describes those interactions, it doesn't (or shouldn't) materially affect them; much like a play-by-play commentator can only use words to describe what's happening on the field while being unable to materially affect those events.

Here the to-hit roll is the event, and the DM's reaction to that roll ("you hit" or "you miss", often in more flowery terms) is the play by play.

Same is true when narrating a monster. I can narrate Grog any way I want but my narration doesn't and shouldn't materially affect his underlying mechanics, which were already there before the PCs ever saw him.

 

[Micah Sweet]

First off, cool write up about the time dragons! I might just have to swipe a bit of that...

Because that's what the mechanics are there for: to take the underlying fiction and quantify it for gameplay purposes; and from what you say below I think we even agree on that much.

Consistency, and consistency. Two different variants, here explained.

Consistency 1 - Grog the Ogre is Grog the Ogre, whether he's raiding a village full of peasants or getting slaughtered by a bunch of 16th-level adventurers or just happily going about his day in the forest. His mechanics should reflect what he actually is, without regard for external concerns. If his mechanics are, however, set only by the way others perceive him, then there's a consistency problem.

For example, if Grog is terrorizing a village full of peasants as an 85 h.p. elite and then three 14th-level knights come riding in who see him as little more than a 1 h.p. minion (and his mechanics correspondingly change to reflect this), does that mean the next peasant to lay a scratch on Grog kills him? It shouldn't; and that's where the consistency issue arises. Put another way, 6 points of damage from a peasant should count exactly the same against Grog as six points of damage from a 14th-level knight, both mechanically at the table and narratively in the fiction.

Consistency 2 - if I'm a 4th-level Cleric with x-amount of spells per day and 32 h.p., it doesn't matter whether I'm facing a single unarmed peasant bandit or a bloody great big nasty dragon or just puttering about in my temple: my own mechanics don't change. I still have 32 h.p. and the same number of spells regardless of my surroundings. If it works this way for me - that my mechanics remain static in any situation - it should work this way for every other inhabitant of the setting; that it doesn't is consistency problem number 2.

Worth noting here that the PCs are not the only inhabitants of the setting whose perception matters.

The mechanics are there to - consistently, one hopes! - reflect the fictional reality, not the fictional perception of reality. Your way is trying to mechanize the perception, which becomes a hopeless task the moment you have multiple entities in the same scene who would perceive that scene differently (e.g. how the knights and peasants perceive Grog). Yes the players don't see the stat blocks, but the DM does; and the DM needs something concrete to work with.

Yes.

No. The rules are how they interact with one another.

Particularly in combat, the narration describes those interactions and, sometimes, also puts the mechanics into non-mechanical words. But note: the narration only describes those interactions, it doesn't (or shouldn't) materially affect them; much like a play-by-play commentator can only use words to describe what's happening on the field while being unable to materially affect those events.

Here the to-hit roll is the event, and the DM's reaction to that roll ("you hit" or "you miss", often in more flowery terms) is the play by play.

Same is true when narrating a monster. I can narrate Grog any way I want but my narration doesn't and shouldn't materially affect his underlying mechanics, which were already there before the PCs ever saw him.

This was the core of my problem with 4e. As a DM, playing it the way they intended felt like the world was a holodeck and the PCs were the only real people.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This was the core of my problem with 4e. As a DM, playing it the way they intended felt like the world was a holodeck and the PCs were the only real people.

Oooooooor the world was a story being told, and thus the beings in it are filtered through the lens of what is actually relevant to the people participating in that story.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oooooooor the world was a story being told, and thus the beings in it are filtered through the lens of what is actually relevant to the people participating in that story.

I don't see my game as the Story of the PCs. I want as little "lens" as possible, so the elements of the world are what they are regardless of who is looking at them at the moment.

I know you feel differently, and that's ok.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't see my game as the Story of the PCs. I want as little "lens" as possible, so the elements of the world are what they are regardless of who is looking at them at the moment.

I know you feel differently, and that's ok.

I mean, it's literally not possible to do that. You cannot not tell the story from the perspective of the people experiencing it.

Especially if you ever engage in even the smallest forms of illusionism, which I know is quite a popular technique around here. Like...how is illusionism okay but this stuff isn't?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, it's literally not possible to do that. You cannot not tell the story from the perspective of the people experiencing it.

Especially if you ever engage in even the smallest forms of illusionism, which I know is quite a popular technique around here. Like...how is illusionism okay but this stuff isn't?

And yet many people engage in a more simulation-oriented style of play, and prefer that the setting exist independently of the PCs. How are they able to do that?