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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 9384406" data-attributes="member: 6801228">This is a deeply problematic thing for me. You cannot make informed choices if you do not know the rules. You cannot make informed choices if the DM might change how things work at the drop of a hat. And when you are no longer making informed decisions, then it doesn't really matter. You end up disconnected from the events, because you cannot do anything about them, because you lack the knowledge to act. Sure, players can still declare actions, but with no knowledge of how those actions translate into the game, they can't be informed about their decisions.But again, you seem to miss the point. It doesn't matter what "good" players or actors are attempting to do, it is about the disconnect. If I'm playing a Wood Elf who has spent 300 years in the forest, and I'm a druid with a deep abiding knowledge of nature, then I should be able to identify most plants and animals. They have studied this. IRL I can barely identify poison ivy, and I only know a handful of incredibly iconic plants. Limiting my elf to my IRL knowledge means that my elf who should be a wellspring of knowledge about animals and plants and nature... comes off as a city boy who has rarely stepped foot outside, let alone been in a forest. They aren't able to be the role, because I don't have that knowledge. My knowledge of plants should not limit my Druid, and while sure I could download a bunch of survival guides and study them... I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't be required to go studying different subjects to play my character in a game I'm playing for fun. I don't care if it would be "Hard Fun" for you, for me it is a just another log on the stack of things I need to accomplish, and I'm stressed enough about that stack.And millions of other people agree with me.Redefining your term does not mean I agree with it, or your usage of it. I also challenge you on the second example, because I played some pretty difficult levels of Candy Crush (and was nowhere near the end of the game) and I've seen more incredibly easy crossword puzzles than hard ones. And I'm sure that it is harder to play baseball without mitts, but that doesn't make it more fun to play baseball barehanded. Bet it would be a lot harder to play soccer with a bowling ball. Doesn't mean it would be more fun.And sure, you might be able to find people that lack common sense in all sorts of places... but it is particularly notable when one side of the conversation keeps claiming that THEIR side has common sense, you know, as a baseline.You keep claiming that "New School" is constantly just telling the player the answer to the puzzle. I'm pointing out I have literally only done that once, and it was in a scenario where the puzzle in question was unplanned, do to the players having a very clever use of a spell. So, if my style of play does this constantly... why only once in 10 years has that ACTUALLY happened, and it wasn't planned?Puzzles are an easy example to use. And it doesn't apply to the entire game all the time. I keep pointing that out to you, but you keep brushing it off. In most old school games (maybe you are an exception) this style of game stops happening with attack rolls and spells. And how did I give them a "pass"? Because I said it was close enough? Tell me, what are the tenants of Estana that allow for the proper reversal of a desecration of her image? And how does the Goddess's own opinion factor into that? It is also kind of funny, you want to claim that "giving players a pass" is something that New School DMs do... yet you also want to claim that Old School DMs follow no rules except for their heart, and will make rulings based on whatever they feel like. So wouldn't a "you know what, that's close enough to work" be a very Old School thing to do?Right, so what? When a new player comes asking to join the table they need to solve four logic puzzles correctly before being allowed to join? Or after the game has started because you didn't do that, you kick them for not playing to a high enough standard for you? This starts to sound incredibly elitist with the idea that a player's worthiness to play your game of dungeons and dragons is going to depend on how well they can spot the difference on this picture of two flowers.Right, Old School is constantly obsessed with details. And often, from discussions I have had with people advocating for old school play, it is to absolve themselves of any blame from the players when things go wrong. And, take a step back for a moment. Let us say that you have the players tracking water by the gallon. Well, as the DM, you don't trust them to do that accurately, so you track their water by the gallon too. But if everyone does it correctly... then it never matters. If you properly track and buy and deal with the water... it never matters. But you and the players but have entire reams of paper tracking these details, ready to pull out your notes and point to your records the moment there is a discrepancy. For what? You'll call it "Hard Fun" but unlike jigsaw puzzles or crossword puzzles or poker... tracking the gasoline in my car by the gallon to compare to the mile... isn't fun. It is just some tedious math whose end goal is to change nothing but keep a record.See, this is the thing. You call the player just following the flow of the game "very lite and casual". But, frankly, why should they have to constantly remind the DM of their magic item? Why should EVERY party and EVERY drink and EVERY situation involve mentioning this? And yeah, I see the paranoia. The OS player is going to announce that they sit down, that they put on their magic ring, that they pull out their test vial of poison, that they feed the poison to a rat to make sure it is still poison and not something else, wait for the rat to die, make sure the ring is glowing, then take their drink and drink it... for EVERY SINGLE DRINK THEY EVER TAKE. Sure, I can do that. I can give you that level of extreme paranoia... but then you throw in at the end that it won't even matter, because the poison might be undetectable. So, end of the day, the real question is... Did the OS DM decide to poison the player's today, yes or no? Because if they did, nothing I do is going to stop it. And if they don't, then my entire ritual to prevent it is pointless. So why should I bother doing something that isn't fun? It isn't fun to pull out my notebook of ten thousand standard operating procedures and read "fancy party #3"s list of twenty steps to attempt to avoid poisoning. And even if I do, it won't matter.I find it telling that you point out "anything might be a trap or worse" because it highlights again for me what this is. Paranoia. OS games seem to constantly be about always expecting every single event, every single item, every single everything, to be a deadly trap that will kill them. Note that your OS group had no indication that anything was wrong... and yet went looking for a plot against them. Like the idea of being invited to a party by a nearby Baron is so unusual that it must be a trap. And out of everyone in the barony, only three people will know the truth, so the PCs will need to somehow figure out who the Baron would trust, and then IRL interrogate them... which requires being in the seat of the guys power and if you are that convinced it is a trap... just don't go. On the New School side, I think you start off with something fairly reasonable. The Players ask "hey, what do we know about this guy?". That is a completely reasonable question. And, if the player rolls well, and the DM has plans in place for the Baron to be evil... then yeah, that's going to come up. You didn't give any details on this "old foe" but if they are an old opponent of the players, then they would know a lot about them... and so yeah, I might not even need to hint at the connection directly. I might be able to simply name the military school they went to, and the players will go "Wait, isn't that the same place XXX went? Did they go during the same year?" and they have made the connection. One thing I think many advocates of OS miss about this process, is that they often seem to imagine that PCs appeared fully formed in the Tavern, with no past or history. You can't seem to imagine that a PC might have heard about a nearby noble, so it seems completely out-of-left field for the Player to ask "hey, do I know anything about this" and get an answer. And yeah, if the players just go blissfully along, might throw another hint or two at them about the plot. Why? Because it is more fun if they have a chance to discover it. Also, it builds trust. Instead of being paranoid and investigating every single event I ever try and get them to go to, they can trust that if nothing seems strange or out of the ordinary... that they don't need to swab test their poison and anti-poison vials to see if some invisible thief swapped them as part of a conspiracy to take them out. But you treat this with derision. Like they aren't REALLY playing the game, they don't REALLY care, because they aren't constantly looking for threats everywhere. They aren't constantly working every angle to see if I'm out to get them. But mostly... we just find doing that utterly exhausting.No, the worst thing that can happen in a game is spontaneous PVP that leaves hard feelings and breaks up a group of friends. Somewhere in the top five worst things is the DM showing favortism to a significant other, and ruining everyone else's fun.They aren't even everybodies. They are mushrooms. And yeah, when I spend 208 hours following the same group of people, then the time devoted to those people tends to revolve around those people. Especially when I've been thinking about those people, thinking about how those people react, thinking about how other people will react to those people, designing environments and traps to challenge those people, considering how monsters might fight and approach those people... it often feels like those people are the focus of what I am doing. New School players are also limited to their senses... we just tend to give context to their senses. "Hey, that smells like rotten eggs" gets a bit of detail added "And you know that unless there is a trash pit nearby, that usually means a demonic prescence". It is adding to the mentality of the Character, because the player's are not actually in the world. I don't get the luxury of actually knowing the full political situation in a fantasy land over the last 100 years... I'm busy with my real life 99% of the time. That's why it is appreciated when we get a "and your character would know what that means"</blockquote>

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