D&D 5E (2014) DM imposed restrictions to the game (+)

[AlViking]

There's two very important words missing from this play-loop, and they make all the difference:

The second one should read: "2. The Players Describe What Their Characters Try to Do."

Without that "try to" in there, the DM can't narrate anything other than success.

We agree on this, but without that "Try to" clause in there our position falls apart.

Yeah, that's fine. I was just quoting the book so if you have an issue with the wording take it up with them.

 

[Lanefan]

Nope. Even if every decision is determined by dice roll, you as a player still have to tell the story. Expression is, I would say, central to play.

If the player's only input into the play loop is dice rolls to determine decisions, the entire story is being told by the DM's narration of what comes from those decisions.

 

[Maxperson]

This was the post where I articulated the original thing (requested by someone else, but Lanefan also responded).

This was Lanefan's first reply to said post. He replied again later to another post, much more concretely saying that no, it's perfectly fine for a GM to just shut down a thing you want to do and tell you "You have to trust me". That's where I see a great disconnect between "You have to let me play the character I created or else you're telling me what to do" and "I, the GM, can just shut down stuff you want to do and say 'you don't know why, you just have to trust me' and the player must simply accept that or leave."

These two positions seem to be directly contradictory, and I don't know how to make them compatible.

It seems contradictory, because you are overgeneralizing the two things. The DM isn't going to tell you that your PC can't sit down at the bar and shut down your declaration. However, sometimes there will be things the DM knows that the player and PC don't, that makes an action impossible.

If the player declares that action for his PC, the it is both appropriate for the DM to say, "Horkek is unable to do that. There's stuff you don't know, so you're going to have to trust me for now." and not contradictory of the having to let the player play the character without telling him what to do.

The rules don't let the player just declare that he kills Zeus and the DM has to let him or else he's denying the player his agency. The impossible is going to be impossible without denying the player his ability to play his PC.

 

[Maxperson]

What really gets me is the players who have the "rules for thee not for me" stance (not that I'm saying the person I replied to does, I don't believe they do, just that I've seen it elsewhere). That is, someone who has said things like "I want to roll to persuade the guard to let us through", but who then says "A persuasion roll can't just MAKE me believe something!" or the like.

It's almost like a weird negative application of the fundamental attribution error (which, I know, data has shown that the more robust version of that idea is probably bunk, but that there are still grains of truth to be found)--NPCs aren't really people, so they can be pushed around with mere numbers-checking, while PCs are real people (at arm's length), and thus cannot be pushed around so.

5e by RAW isn't like that, though. First, social skills don't work on PCs. Second, social skills aren't any kind of auto succeed mind control of NPCs. There will be things even your 20th level PC with +17 to persuasion will never be able to get someone to do. You only get a roll if the DM decides the outcome is in doubt.

 

[Maxperson]

And I actively disagree with this assessment. Without some kind of randomizer/resolution element, it's very unlikely for me as a player to be surprised by my character.

The DM and other PCs are randomizers, because you don't know what they are going to do and things come out of left field that will affect your character in ways you never anticipated. All without rules to dictate those things.

 

[Maxperson]

Moderation. Too much randomness doesn't produce interesting change, it just produces incoherence.

The role of randomness should be when the stakes are highest, and the consequences the most impactful to the character's conception.

Any social randomness produces incoherence. There will be times that I know that there is no way my character would or would not do something and if a rule decides otherwise due to a random roll, that's incoherent.

 

[FrogReaver]

As a fairly basic example, your mental model might be of a brave knight who will face any danger in Pendragon, which totally works until you fail a Courage check.

My understanding is that such a thing wouldn’t be a mental model you’d actually see in practice in pendragon.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don’t see it as theory versus practice. I see it as “understand the game you’re playing, and build characters accordingly.”

Understanding what concepts are appropriate for D&D is easy for us because we’ve long been immersed in its specifics. But other games, even those that are D&D adjacent in their mechanics and genre specifications, might still demand more flexibility in your character modeling.

Whatever character modeling you like to do, it has to bend to the constraints of the system and the specific table.

I would just say that’s the mechanism that explains why the theory and the practice diverge.

 

[FrogReaver]

The frightful presence is an Extraordinary ability. In 5e terms it would be considered supernatural.

A better example would be the lions roar ability. I dislike that one.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes. You misread my post and accused me of strawmanning. I have no moral obligation to explain myself further beyond the myriad of posts I've already made today, and quite frankly no desire to do so.

I don’t like calling things strawmen but I don’t really get the relevance of the 2nd level wizard and disintegrate example. That’s an external thing and the disagreement is about character internal decision making.