Extensive Character Sheets Are GM Oppression

[kigmatzomat]

Though I agree with this in general (and thought your post was well explained) I sometimes think this is used to reduce detail below the level that's desirable in games.

There is a broad sweet spot for granularity in the market where desirability drops off very quickly on either side side. Venture beyond it and you become a dreaded "niche" game. Anathema to Hasbro Inc.

I realize some people don't care, but if you want, for example, playing a fencer to feel like a fencer, you need a system that drills down a bit farther than simple rolls to hit.

As fate would have it, I was in a "historic combat fencing" club in college (sponsor was in the local SCA). One of the fencers was ranked in the top twenty nationally in foil but peaked between Olympics, much to his coach's dismay. We had video footage (vhs) of the him and the next best SCA fencer using paired epees. In one leap attack, every couple of frames one of the four epees attacked and was parried. Between them, every sword attacked at least once and there were five separate attacks/blocks in around a second. (Fwiw, I was running the camera. I am a schlub, not a 0.1% level athlete)

I have zero idea how to model that without descending into "Champions-level of complexity" action phases or getting into d&d 3e + Tome of Battle rules where a fighter can get 5 attacks each round and do stunts.

Most people don't want that, simply based on market share. Plus most people already find d&d a "slow" game once you leave tier 2. Adding more granularity will slow the game further.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think my usage is standard (as per how the word is used in other fields). Your usage deprives "abstraction" of its meaning.

I quite disagree. The usage you're applying is arbitrary and does not look at the function being made.

I can think of plenty of abstractions in RPG combat rules: RQ hit locations (the multiplicity and complexity of striking a body with a weapon is abstracted, regimented and simplified); D&D injury rules, according to which you're either uninjured or you're unconscious and possibly dying (all the other possible intermediate states are abstracted away); rules about how many character can fit in a certain space, or surround another character (which abstract away the details of particular body shapes, positioning, etc).

But turn-taking in D&D is not an abstract representation of the simultaneous interaction of the beings whose "controllers" are taking turns. It's a game play device used to work out what happens to those beings.

Then you should be able to explain why its not an abstraction, when there are specific mechanics like Readies, Delays and AoOs that are designed to patch over the limits of that abstraction. If it was a raw game structure, it wouldn't need those after all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is a broad sweet spot for granularity in the market where desirability drops off very quickly on either side side. Venture beyond it and you become a dreaded "niche" game. Anathema to Hasbro Inc.

I'm not sure for general discussion I care about that all. This thread is not about just D&D and is not in one of the D&D specific areas.

As fate would have it, I was in a "historic combat fencing" club in college (sponsor was in the local SCA). One of the fencers was ranked in the top twenty nationally in foil but peaked between Olympics, much to his coach's dismay. We had video footage (vhs) of the him and the next best SCA fencer using paired epees. In one leap attack, every couple of frames one of the four epees attacked and was parried. Between them, every sword attacked at least once and there were five separate attacks/blocks in around a second. (Fwiw, I was running the camera. I am a schlub, not a 0.1% level athlete)

I have zero idea how to model that without descending into "Champions-level of complexity" action phases or getting into d&d 3e + Tome of Battle rules where a fighter can get 5 attacks each round and do stunts.

You apparently are under the impression I consider "Champions level complexity" undersirable. When trying to get a good feel for some types of combat, in fact, I consider it one of the better choices for it.

Most people don't want that, simply based on market share. Plus most people already find d&d a "slow" game once you leave tier 2. Adding more granularity will slow the game further.

Again, I don't really consider what "most people" want particularly relevant in the context of what I was discussing. As I said, we're not just talking D&D here. D&D is fine when you want certain sorts of things. A decent combat emulation is not one of them.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

PC: I look at the broken wain. Fixing it should be easy. It clearly just needs to have some parts nailed back in place, reset this brace, and a support put here.

GM: Um, are you a wizard or a wainwright?

PC: Wizard. But my Mental score is 15. I can figure things out.

Who was I to tell the PC he's wrong? It's not my character.

As a GM, it isn't my character, but it is my wain. Maybe fixing the wain it is an easy repair within the ability of someone with a Mental score of 15 but no special wainwright skill or fixing-things talent. Maybe it isn't. It's my call as GM, either to how the brokenness of the wain maps to whatever crunchy repair rules are in play or a pure GM ruling if there the system in use lacks crunch on this point.

That's a GM's dilemma, right? None of the PCs are our characters. So I can't say something like, "sorry, you spent your whole youth locked up in a cell, with only spellbooks, food, and a chamber pot going in and out." Maybe his mother was a wainwright. Maybe he actually learned to be a wizard on a magic truck (see: food truck). I don't know. Not my character.

And maybe he was the despair of his wainwright mother, and went into wizardry because he was hopeless at mundane wainwright work.

My usual style is that a character has the default Everyman level of ability in anything not noted as his being unusually good at (or unusually clueless about), possibly modified by stated general character background so that he might have Everynoble or Everyfarmlad levels of ability in various things.

Now there is such a thing as "Develop In Play." I'm willing to accommodate that if the player's style runs strongly in that direction, but I also normally expect players to be advocates for their PCs, so I'm going to attach strings to that accommodation. It would be a game well out of my wheelhouse, with players more as co-GMs running PCs who are more like player-run NPCs, for me to not attach those strings.

So one way or another, someone has to say, on occasion, "Actually, this PC is bad at wainwright work and will only attempt it out of desperation and/or a grossly inflated idea of his (lack of) skill."

I'm also pretty insistent on consistency.

PC: My mother was a wainwright.
Me: Last session, you said your mother was a mason.
PC: That was last session. This session she's a wainwright.
Me: Nope!

Finally, I see it as a virtue to have good mapping between the prose character conception/description and and the game-stat version of the character on the character sheet. I hates it when the two disagree. Yes I do, my precious. Hates it!

 

[Hex08]

Hit points aren’t about how much "damage" a person can "take" or "absorb". They're a count-down to defeat. Any given ablation of hit points can correspond to a parry, a nick or scratch, or some other way in which a combatant is set back.

The hit point number on a sheet tells you how much it will take to defeat the character; but it doesn't represent, even abstractly, a property of the character. For instance, a character who has 20 hp left doesn't know that no blow struck at them by a longsword will kill them, although the character's player, who can see the hp total, does know that.

Regardless of how you or I define hit points they don't really exist outside of the rules, hence why I say they, among other things in the game, are abstractions of what would actually happen in real life. Those abstractions, as defined by the rules, are what make the game playable but don't really exist outside of the game.

I feel like we are just talking past each other. I know that I have explained more than once in this thread since I first mentioned the rules being abstractions what I mean by the rules being abstractions, although maybe not clearly since we still seem to be at loggerheads. If we can't even agree on the meaning of a word then I don't think the conversation can move forward productively so I will just bow out.

 

[innerdude]

There are all kinds of things we can rationally/intelligently determine or surmise in context that we are not even remotely prepared, educated, or trained to address.

Nearly anyone with basic knowledge of electrical wiring can walk through a house and figure out how wire in an additional outlet panel box.

But knowing how to understand various wiring load limits, how to connect central wiring to the fuse box, how to safely place/mount/string wiring, various termination techniques, etc., would all require specialty training.

A 15 INT wizard may very well be able to look at a wain and say, "Oh, it looks like I could easily handle repairs by doing such and such with so and so."

Great. But is the wizard capable of cutting and shaping the wood to meet the need without multiple trials and errors? Does he know how to shape the joints? Does he know the secrets that by inserting component A into slot B first, he can save many hours of trouble?

There's technique, knack, know-how, tips-and-tricks, etc., that just go along with background and experience.

There's probably lots of things in a medieval society that we, as a generally educated populace, could go back in time and immediately start tackling, but we wouldn't be good at it immediately without practice.

But hey, what's to stop someone from enjoying the irrational confidence of the incompetent from the Dunning-Kruger effect?

 

[rmcoen]

I'm basically with @Edgar Ironpelt .... if it's on your sheet, you have it. If it's not on your sheet, and you decide to have it, I'm probably okay with it... and now make a note of it on your sheet. Yesterday we didn't have a reason to know your mom was a Wainwright, today we do, how convenient -- but you've just filled some of that unknown/blankspace in your history.

Now if you wrote me a 15-page backstory, because you're That Guy (and, to be fair, I tend to be That Guy), and Wainwright isn't mentioned anywhere, then you aren't doing anything more difficult than "everyman" level work.

And here's where 5e both succeeds and fails. You can try anything with an attribute check. There's no "Forensics" or "Ogre Anatomy" skills, but we can finagle a check with INT and maybe a bonus for proficiency in Medicine. Hurrah! But there's also no line drawn - read "5e requires GM ruling here" - for who can attempt something. i.e. what's the "Everyman" level of skill. Anyone can try to hide, but it takes skill to hide behind something small, and more to do so during combat; the Grandmaster can supposedly hide in his own shadow! Likewise, anyone can look at a corpse, blood splatter, and the obvious wounds and make a guess at cause of death (INT check); maybe only someone with proficiency in Medicine can even try to roll, though, to note that the person died moments before the sword strike? And, further, it would take time and a high roll to suss out that they died of psychic damage before the wound. And no, untrained INT 20 wizard, I don't care that you got a nat20 - you don't have the knowledge necessary to look at the corpse and even think "I should autopsy the brain matter". [Although, maybe because of the nat20 and result of "25", I take pity and tell you there's something fishy about the bloody sword wound... and you should get someone with training to get involved.]

Here, Pathfinder both fails and succeeds. They have broken skills down into "everyman", and various levels of training. Cool, I can look at that and know my Basic training in Stealth means I can hide in trees, but not behind them. It doesn't say I can hide behind big creatures though, soooo.... I guess I won't try?

 

[GMMichael]

My usual style is that a character has the default Everyman level of ability in anything not noted as his being unusually good at (or unusually clueless about), possibly modified by stated general character background so that he might have Everynoble or Everyfarmlad levels of ability in various things.

I lean this way, too. If it's not on your sheet, it's not that you can't do it, but you'd be about as good as the Average Person.

So one way or another, someone has to say, on occasion, "Actually, this PC is bad at wainwright work and will only attempt it out of desperation and/or a grossly inflated idea of his (lack of) skill."

And I try to reward these situations. Characters are more fun when they screw things up / are bad at things.

Finally, I see it as a virtue to have good mapping between the prose character conception/description and and the game-stat version of the character on the character sheet. I hates it when the two disagree. Yes I do, my precious. Hates it!

Your time with the One Ring is showing...

Here, Pathfinder both fails and succeeds. They have broken skills down into "everyman", and various levels of training. Cool, I can look at that and know my Basic training in Stealth means I can hide in trees, but not behind them. It doesn't say I can hide behind big creatures though, soooo.... I guess I won't try?

I know this ties to the rule book, but it seems like the extensive-character-sheet-problem, and the big pitfall that GMs should try to avoid: the more that's on the character sheet is the less you can do.

It's like "the more I know is the more I realize I don't know."

 

[Umbran]

Though I agree with this in general (and thought your post was well explained) I sometimes think this is used to reduce detail below the level that's desirable in games.

There is no single level of detail desirable in games. Games come in a wide variety of levels of detail in their various aspects to meet a wide variety of desires

I realize some people don't care, but if you want, for example, playing a fencer to feel like a fencer, you need a system that drills down a bit farther than simple rolls to hit.

Do you?

Because, fencing sure looks like it is made of extremely fast paced action, and drilling down in rules systems... isn't. I don't think detailed rules would FEEL like fencing much at all.

It might model the action better, but "more accurate simulation of the detailed action of fencing" is not "more accurate evocation of the feeling of fencing"

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is no single level of detail desirable in games. Games come in a wide variety of levels of detail in their various aspects to meet a wide variety of desires

Which is why I said "sometimes".

Do you?

Yes.

Because, fencing sure looks like it is made of extremely fast paced action, and drilling down in rules systems... isn't. I don't think detailed rules would FEEL like fencing much at all.

I'm an ex-fencer, and if its so fast paced I can't make any of the decisions I'd make when doing so, then the speed is not worth the cost.

It might model the action better, but "more accurate simulation of the detailed action of fencing" is not "more accurate evocation of the feeling of fencing"

As you can see, I disagree. Speed is a virtue, but its not the only virtue, even here.