D&D (2024) Do players really want balance?

[Micah Sweet]

My view is that a FRPG doesn't become more realistic by using resurrection magic - which in the real world is normally regard as perhaps the most potent of miracles - rather than (say) a "will to live" mechanic, to achieve satisfactory dramatic pacing around protagonist deaths.

Resurrection magic (like all other magic) is one of those places where realism is replaced by verisimilitude.

 

[Maxperson]

That...

that was a joke.

Text and all that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My view is that a FRPG doesn't become more realistic by using resurrection magic - which in the real world is normally regard as perhaps the most potent of miracles - rather than (say) a "will to live" mechanic, to achieve satisfactory dramatic pacing around protagonist deaths.

Also, things like dramatic pacing and protagonism are not priorities for every gamer and every game.

 

[Lanefan]

Isn't it also possible that those play styles weren't what those players were exposed to because the existing players had already rejected them when starting their own games?

The designers had rejected such styles, sure, but that says nothing about the players' preferences.

The most recent editions didn't take a different tact out of nowhere after all.

I suspect my thoughts on why that is - through the entire WotC era - are considerably more cynical than yours, and involve the pursuit of profit more than anything else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, I think this is getting into deeper difference between games and stories. (One which I alluded to earlier.) A story created by an author will follow a certain narrative formula. There are the kind of stories where even if things might seem dire and uncertain we will actually know for sure that in the end the hero will foil the bad guys' plans and get the girl. But when we gamify it, we have some some tough choices to make. Do we want a system which consistently reproduce this sort of story, or do we want to emphasise the feeling of peril, uncertainty and accomplishment by actually making things uncertain?

Agreed. To me games and stories are very different things (though I love them both. Stories more than games, actually).

 

[Vaalingrade]

The designers had rejected such styles, sure, but that says nothing about the players' preferences.

I suspect my thoughts on why that is - through the entire WotC era - are considerably more cynical than yours, and involve the pursuit of profit more than anything else.

Either changing tact was to bring in more players or it was against player preferences. It can't really be both.

And I was there; there were plenty of people who were rejecting those play styles in the early 2000's at the very least.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Isn't it also possible that those play styles weren't what those players were exposed to because the existing players had already rejected them when starting their own games?

The most recent editions didn't take a different tact out of nowhere after all.

That's true, but regardless of why those players still haven't been exposed to that style of play, and therefore we can't say they wouldn't like it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That's true, but regardless of why those players still haven't been exposed to that style of play, and therefore we can't say they wouldn't like it.

People can know they don't like things by description without having to directly experience it. I know I won't like Dark Souls because I know what Dark Souls is like without having had to play it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. (Except I would have called it "colour".)

And to me this gets to the heart of it: I'm in actor stance when decisions are low- or no-stakes; but I move to author stance as soon as things start to really matter; isn't - for me - play that demonstrates a commitment to actor stance only.

Following on from what I've just posted in reply to @TwoSix:

It's not just reasons to stay together, although those are often so thin that taking it seriously as actor stance rather than author stance with a pretty light veneer of retroactive motivation.

It's the players understanding the whole structure of "plot hook", "adventure", "quest giver", "main quest", "side quest", etc - stuff that is manifestly not part of the fiction itself and not part of the way any person in the fiction would think - and then declaring actions on that basis while also inventing reasons why their PCs would make those decisions.

Ideally IMO the players are not declaring actions based on those very narrative things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People can know they don't like things by description without having to directly experience it. I know I won't like Dark Souls because I know what Dark Souls is like without having had to play it.

Sure. Do we have reason to believe the 5e players in question have received said description and rejected that style of play?