D&D 5E Context Switching Paralysis, or Why we Will Always Have the Thief Debate

[Mercurius]

First of all, this is why I think this very important to understand the genre your are emulating.

Yes, this. The Legolas maneuver stood out because it seemed in line with the post-Matrix/Hong Kong/MCU paradigm of over-the-top superheroics, which was jarring with most of the film and the general vibe of Middle-earth. But it works better in most D&D campaigns, which are closer to that paradigm than they are to LotR/Game of Thrones, which are a bit more grounded and "mundanely heroic."

But it also depends upon the campaign - what the GM and group is trying to emulate. This is the sort of thing that is probably best discussed up front. Does everyone have buy-in to a certain style and sub-genre of fantasy? What do people want to play?

I personally tend to leave that up to the players, and let them do (or try to do) whatever they want, as far as maneuvers and such. Individual players have their own styles - some like to continually do wild and crazy things, while others just look at their sheet and pick an option, or play relatively straightforward ("I attack").

 

[overgeeked]

I think awesomeness aversion is not jest an apt phrase, it's plenty pithy, as well! Plus bonus points for alliteration.

I would slightly cabin it into different areas, however.

First, there is the "Five miles, uphill, both ways," issue- which you identify as the aversion to (inter alia) new races (Dragonborn, etc.). I think that this comes from a misunderstanding and glorification of the past- which is not just something that occurs in D&D. What you often see is the following:

Younger gamers don't fully understand how weird early D&D was, and so they attribute some sort of "Everyone just played it like Lord of the Rings, but less fun" veneer to D&D- not seeing it for the very weird amalgamation of Swords & Sorcery, Science Fiction, Horror Movies, Westerns, and all sorts of other bizarre influences (even Japanese Kaiju Toys) that it really was.

Considering how poorly even older gamers are at remembering their shared past, you can really blame younger gamers for not having a clue about the past?

Older gamers reach into the past and nostalgia, and often (instead of embracing the messiness), try to present a single unified version of what D&D "was," which is just not true. The past is never a monolith. Not to mention there is this weird reactionary impulse as you age- it's the same thing that makes people say, "My kids can't do X, Y, and Z" while conveniently forgetting what they did when they were that age.

There is such a thing as learning from your own mistakes. Parents who smoked being adamant that their kids don't start smoking as one example. Parents who didn't take school seriously wanting their kids to take school seriously. Etc.

So when it comes to issues like races, I'm not sure it's an aversion to awesomeness, as much as a variant of "Yelling at clouds."

Where I think awesomeness aversion comes in (and what the phrase evokes for me) is when a DM is afraid of making a ruling because it is awesome. It's the counterpoint to the so-called "Rule of Cool." It's when a player proposes something that is outside of the defined skills or abilities and the DM just reflexively wants to say no, because the DM is afraid of allowing things that are "awesome" that are outside of granted/enumerated abilities. Because if they do, who knows where it will stop? It's a pernicious bugbear that many DMs have in their mind- "If I allow Player X to do this awesome thing, how can I stop Player Y from demanding to do the an even awesomer thing?" Unfortunately, when a DM is in this mindset, it squelches the creativity of the players.

As an older gamer who's on the fence about the Mos Eisley Cantina Effect, I think it's less about yelling at clouds or awesomeness aversion, rather it's about a shifting baseline and the escalation effect. It ties back to the weird melange of old-school D&D being fantasy, science fiction, science fantasy, horror, kaiju, western, swords & sorcery inspired mess of influences.

It might also help to reference some other games and IPs in this. Fringe. X-Files. Men in Black. Over the Edge RPG. In Fringe, the main character starts not knowing a thing about what's going on but over time she learns what's going on. In X-Files, the main characters start wanting to believe/know and knowing it's all bunk but over time they learn what's going on. In Men in Black, one of the main characters starts not knowing while the other is a long-time pro but over time the newbie learns what's going on.

In all three, the main character starts either in the completely mundane world then learns about and engages with the weird world, or they start on the verge of entering the weird. The characters have a chance to settle in, adjust to the setting, as does the audience. Things slowly ramp up as the shows/movies progress. Then there's Over the Edge RPG. Instead of the weirdness being something the players/characters start out not knowing anything about and slowly learn about over time, they start as knee deep in ancient global conspiracies and the Island is the hot spot for every fringe movement, conspiracy theory, and pseudoscience quackery we can imagine. Things start at 11 and somehow need to go up from there...but there's nowhere to go. You can't get more crazy than all the crazy. The only place you have to go is less crazy and more mundane...which is anti-climactic.

Point being, the bigger you go, the higher your baseline becomes, and the less room you have to maneuver. If you start at 1, you can go up to 10. If you start at 10...you have nowhere to go but down, which is anti-climactic. Unless yours goes to 11, which is a funny reference, but not helpful.

When you start with a mostly human party, running into a robot in an otherwise explicitly fantasy game is a big deal. There's a "wow" reaction. It's also why Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a higher level module. You don't want to go that gonzo too early. You have to establish a baseline before you can escalate. When you start with a party that includes a robot, running into a bunch of robots is meh at best...because the presence of the robot in your group tells you the setting is science fantasy. So there's no reveal, no surprise. When everyone's playing some wild fantasy race, the baseline starts at 10 and you have nowhere to go.

You can see the escalation problem in the history of horror movies, action-adventure franchises, and superheroes. Every new entry has to be bigger, better, bolder, bloodier, more action-packed, more thrilling, more more more than the last...otherwise it's no longer exciting. Superman single-handedly saving the world or the universe on a weekly basis is where we are...but Superman started by stopping bank robbers. Thinking of Superman stopping bank robbers now isn't much of a story, it's more a silly prologue or throwback, but there's certainly no dramatic tension there.

 

[MGibster]

And I see it as "What does it harm to let Legolas do this, other than possibly offending Celebrim's sensibilities?" See, it's not my scene the player is trying to "cheese" with "unnecessary showboating." It is, or should be, all of ours at the table. If Legolas is trying to get around the mechanics (like, trying to move farther in one round than his movement would normally allow), then I might disallow it because it wouldn't be fair to the other players. But otherwise, again: what's the harm?

As of late, I've adopted a new philosophy. Is the player trying to do something that actually matters? And I define matter as whether or not something interesting will happen depending on the roll. If the answer is that it doesn't matter, I usually just let the player do it and move on.

 

[Lord Shark]

It makes the transcript of the play dumber. And well, my sensibilities count for that. One of the reasons we have rules is to share the sensibilities of story construction in a way that you don't have when you pass around a notebook and take turns adding to the story - a process that if you have done then you know it almost always goes wrong as people begin to offend each others sensibilities and take story in directions that they don't like. Rules are what help us share the story by defining a set of sensibilities we agree to share.

Sorry, I'm not hearing what harm it does other than it's not to your taste. And you're not at my table, so you don't get a vote.

But that's the opposite of when I would allow it. If Legolas's player found himself in a situation where the only way he could do the scene and accomplish the goal was jump on a shield and start sledding, that's precisely when I would err on the side of allowing it. (I mean, technically, I'd allow it at any point it's just that in the example scene my allowing it would look a lot like punishing the player for trying the stunt, since it would actually make the scene harder while giving the player no advantage.) For example, if the scene was, "300 yards below down the mountain, you see part of the orc warband is in the village, and amidst the chaos you see one of the orcs is dragging Lady Delia by the hair toward one of their wagons", and the player responds, "I jump my shield and start sledding down the icy mountain slopes, firing off arrows at the orcs that try to stop me!" then that is is "AWESOME!" and we definitely are doing that scene.

Will it be easy? Probably not. But it there is a clear purpose and logic to the stunt, and while it isn't easy it's probably easier than accomplishing the purpose in any other way. Hopefully the character has the skills to attempt such a feat of daring, because I'm wanting him to succeed and not face plant unheroically as he goes down the slope.

To me, that doesn't look like punishing the player for trying the stunt, it is punishing the player for trying the stunt. Especially depending on how high you set the difficulty. If Legolas needs a natural 20 to do this and ends up face planting and Lady Delia is never seen again, the player is going to learn there's no point in trying stunts. That way lies players who only go down stairs with a safety line clipped onto the banister and poking every step with a 10' pole for five minutes before stepping down.

And I don't really understand why shield-sliding down stairs is bad but shield-sliding down a mountainside is acceptable.

 

[Celebrim]

Point being, the bigger you go, the higher your baseline becomes, and the less room you have to maneuver. If you start at 1, you can go up to 10. If you start at 10...you have nowhere to go but down, which is anti-climactic. Unless yours goes to 11, which is a funny reference, but not helpful.

Very good post.

When I say things like, "Sometimes less is more.", this is exactly what I'm thinking about. There is a point when you go bigger that you don't make more of an emotional impact, you make of less of one. For me one of these points is when things seem to happen because of power of plot and not because of internal logic of the setting. Like for me, Oliphants maybe a little bit larger than Columbian Mammoths would have been sufficient. When they are like 60' high at the shoulder, the hero killing one seems less of a feat than it would have been if they were smaller and more grounded in reality because the scene would have felt more grounded in reality and less in movie logic and things happen just because plot. It's the same problem as it's very hard for Superman to have a real moment of awesomeness because his powers are always limited to power of plot anyway that when he does something it's always pretty ho hum, of course he did.

 

[Mercurius]

There is such a thing as learning from your own mistakes. Parents who smoked being adamant that their kids don't start smoking as one example. Parents who didn't take school seriously wanting their kids to take school seriously. Etc.

Yes, although with the caveat that as a general rule, at least at certain stages of adolescent development, the best way to get your kids to do something you don't want them to do, is tell them they can't do it - and in reverse . Like the old joke about if you don't want your daughter to date a certain guy, tell her how much you like him.

As an older gamer who's on the fence about the Mos Eisley Cantina Effect, I think it's less about yelling at clouds or awesomeness aversion, rather it's about a shifting baseline and the escalation effect. It ties back to the weird melange of old-school D&D being fantasy, science fiction, science fantasy, horror, kaiju, western, swords & sorcery inspired mess of influences.

My dislike of certain D&D races is less about the range and diversity of races, and more about the aesthetics of the specific races that I don't like, and/or how they fit within (or don't) the campaign setting and tone I'm wanting to set.

For example, I love Talislanta - which is about as Mos Eisley-esque as you can get. I think most of the races are very interesting, both aesthetically and culturally. But for whatever reason, I dislike many of the more "non-traditional" D&D races: dragonborn, ardlings, etc - at least within the context of my own D&D settings (as a general rule). Some of that is due to simply not liking them on an aesthetic level, and some of that is because they don't fit in with the tone of a specific setting.

But I hear you about escalation, though I don't think it is inherently from "mundane vanilla fantasy to crazy gonzo, techno-fantasy" (or whatever). In a similar sense that most songs don't develop into all sounds happening at once, which is total chaos. A campaign is like a jazz suite: It develops along certain lines and limitations, both through the initial themes set down and through the improvisation of the players. But only the rare avant garde piece ends up in all-sounds-at-once, and even then, most of them come back down to earth.

 

[Mercurius]

To me, that doesn't look like punishing the player for trying the stunt, it is punishing the player for trying the stunt. Especially depending on how high you set the difficulty. If Legolas needs a natural 20 to do this and ends up face planting and Lady Delia is never seen again, the player is going to learn there's no point in trying stunts. That way lies players who only go down stairs with a safety line clipped onto the banister and poking every step with a 10' pole for five minutes before stepping down.

This seems a tad hyperbolic. I mean, DCs are set based upon the difficulty of a task; some tasks should require a natural 20, no? Not everything that is hard, of course, but for extremely difficult tasks, a natural 20 still means that a player can do almost anything with at least a 5% of success. There are plenty of things imaginable, even within a superheroic game genre, that should only have a 5% chance of success, imo.

Now of course if a player is constantly wanting to do things that the GM is putting out of reach (and requiring a natural 20 on), it might mean the GM is being too restrictive; but it also could mean that the player needs to re-calibrate a bit towards the context of the game that is being run - the level, genre, themes, etc.

 

[Celebrim]

Sorry, I'm not hearing what harm it does other than it's not to your taste. And you're not at my table, so you don't get a vote.

Of course, at your own table you can decide what is cool and rule accordingly. But all I'm trying to show is why if you are at my table, rule of cool doesn't resolve the real conflict here.

I think what you are asking when you ask, "I'm not hearing what harm it does other than it's not to your taste", is something like, "If the player gains no advantage from it, why can't you add it is color as part of the adjudication of success?" And sure, I could arbitrarily adjust the difficulty of sledding down stairs to be the same as the difficulty of running down stairs simply because I want the player to succeed here. Or I could even simply add the sledding down stairs part into the narration as part of the resolution narration, even if the character didn't explicitly propose it.

But I don't either one at my table, and ironically I'll cite the Rule of Cool as to why. Because I don't think it's cool. I'm not the part of the audience cheering at that scene. I'm not the part of the audience laughing at that scene. I'm the part of the audience groaning at that scene because it isn't cool. Sorry that my aesthetics aren't the same as yours, but as you noted, you aren't at my table.

To me, that doesn't look like punishing the player for trying the stunt, it is punishing the player for trying the stunt. Especially depending on how high you set the difficulty.

No, it isn't. It may look like it, but it isn't. This is very important. That the difficulty of sledding down stairs is higher than the difficulty of running down stairs isn't an arbitrary decision, but a decision based not just on how I want this scene to play out, but how I want all my stories to play out. That is to say in a very real sense I'm not deciding it then at the point that it came up, but I pre-decided it before we ever started play. It is part of my demographics, logic, and physics of the world that I'll appeal to to figure out what I should rule when I don't have something already written down.

UPDATE: Let me add to that by talking about how I would decide how hard it is to slide down stairs on a shield. So confronted by this question, my thoughts would probably first turn to tic tock and stupid people stunts or those "people are awesome" videos where some person has practiced some trick over and over and then records his success. Sliding down stairs on something is on the lower end of that that doesn't require a world class athlete, but it is still something you probably don't want to try to do until you are pretty proficient "board slider". So I'd probably think something like, "Well, this is probably something a second or third level character with decent DEX has a decent chance of pulling off without breaking their face.", and I'd set the difficulty accordingly. What I never would be doing was going, "What do I want to have the outcome be?"

UPDATE #2: Let me further add that if you are at player at my table, and you think it is cool to slide down shields to no purpose, and I don't, then the rules provide for you to gain that narrative power that you want and override my taste preferences. If you are playing a medium to high level character with high DEX and you take something like my Poetry in Motion feat, you can have your character showboat sliding down shields til your heart is content while I the GM roll my eyes and laugh "unable to do anything to stop you" because you are using my rules "against me". (Rules that in fact I created to provide players the ability to do that sort of thing if they really want to.) But notably, that isn't relying on "Rule of Cool".

If Legolas needs a natural 20 to do this and ends up face planting and Lady Delia is never seen again, the player is going to learn there's no point in trying stunts. That way lies players who only go down stairs with a safety line clipped onto the banister and poking every step with a 10' pole for five minutes before stepping down.

See at this point it reads like you are spittle flinging rage as you type at your computer.

And I don't really understand why shield-sliding down stairs is bad but shield-sliding down a mountainside is acceptable.

Yes, but your lack of understanding is your problem and not mine. The fact that you don't understand shouldn't provoke you to assume I don't have a sound reason for my preferences. It should provoke you to question how much understanding you actually have.

The reason why shield-sliding down stair is bad but shield-sliding down a mountain side is awesome is in real life we do one of those things because it actually makes sense to do it. We don't normally slide on a board down stairs for any practical reason because sliding on a board down stairs is impractical and generally accomplishes not a whole lot. But we do normally slide on a mountain on a board, and we call those boards sleds and skis and snowboards, because at the root of that sliding down a mountain on a "board" is in fact a very practical thing to do. Real world militaries operating in arctic conditions still use and train with "boards" on ice and now precisely because they can then move with greater ease than those that aren't proficient "board sliders".

So in one case the character is leaning into the fictional setting and engaging with it in a practical manner that conforms to the setting tropes. And in the other case the player is leaning out of the fictional setting, disengaging from it, doing nothing practical, and ignoring the setting tropes. Which do you imagine I think is awesome?

 

[CreamCloud0]

And I don't really understand why shield-sliding down stairs is bad but shield-sliding down a mountainside is acceptable.

Sliding down the stairs seems like it’s just making things more awkward than walking down them the ordinary way, sliding down the mountain on the other hand seems like an efficient and possibility the only currently available way to travel such a great distance quickly in the circumstances

 

[overgeeked]

Sliding down the stairs seems like it’s just making things more awkward than walking down them the ordinary way, sliding down the mountain on the other hand seems like an efficient and possibility the only currently available way to travel such a great distance quickly in the circumstances

The way I see things like that is it’s the player saying they want to add descriptive flourish to their otherwise mundane action. No real difference between that and getting flowery with an attack. No need to make them roll extra dice and reduce their chance if success for describing their character doing a thing in a cool way. The mechanics aren’t a physics simulation, they’re a poor abstraction at best.

If it’s a low-level character, with not great DEX, and no athletics or acrobatics, I’d make them roll for it. If the character has a few levels, decent DEX, and athletics or acrobatics, no roll required. Because it’s a descriptive flourish that is in line with the character.