Game rules are not the physics of the game world

[JohnSnow]

And they also mean that if the fall is only from a horse, dealing 1d6 points of damage, that he WILL survive. Because he would have to be a very bizarre character indeed to be 30th level and have 6 or fewer hit points.

Unless he's just been in a bad fight and hasn't been healed. By the rules, he's not impaired in the least (no penalties) but has been whittled down to 3 hp. A nasty spill from that horse could do 4 hp in damage and plunge him to -1 hp and dying. Less than a minute later (9 rounds is 54 seconds), if he's unlucky, he's bled out from his injury. So sorry, thanks for playing, but King McStab just received a fatal injury from falling off a horse.

See, I can twist what the letter of the D&D rules means too.

They're closer to demigods. Read the link above. It's a good way to see how the rules suggest the world works.

It's a fascinating link. Of course, it's written from the perspective of someone who believes the D&D rules represent real physics, not abstractions to represent how likely HEROES are to pull things off.

In the same way, maximum damage for falling from any height is 120. Someone with 300 hit points is immune from falling. Falling from any height into a vat of lava deals 240 damage at maximum. Someone with 300 hit points is immune from falling ito a vat of lava.

They probably couldn't do it AGAIN, but that is where D&D characters differ from Superman. Their immunity runs out, sooner or later.

Well, there's also the Massive Damage Threshold to consider. More than 50 hp triggers a FORT save, which means if he sustains more than 50 hp of damage, and fails the save after falling off a cliff, he dies. So he CAN die from a single fall.

And that's the point. After the first fall, and until the character hits negative hp, he is, by the rules of the game, FINE. He's not appreciably injured or impaired in any way whatsoever. In other words, by what we know about injuries, he's not actually hurt.

After the fall plunges him to negative hp, he's dying or dead. So what, in fact, inflicted the life threatening injury? That's right, the fall. Your hypothetical 300 hp character who was fine beforehand has died from injuries sustained in a single fall.

More to the point, if he's sustained a host of minor injuries, none of which are even close to life threatening, he might also be vulnerable to that same fall. Because by the rules of the game, all that hit point loss is nothing more than a bunch of nasty scratches, and the character is not seriously hurt.

That's why I have trouble treating hit points as anything BUT an abstraction.

 

[Celebrim]

How did you get the impression we wanted the same results to occur on stage as occurred off stage?

I know what you want. I think I spent a whole thread arguing that that was a kludge fix, which would enevitably cause you problems, because the distinction between offstage and onstage can never be complete.

It was on ENWorld. I think the thread was called "Game rules are not the physics of the game world." I'll try to find you a link.

 

[pemerton]

adherence to the action-resolution system in off screen matters enhances predictability and consistency, which are two things I enjoy as a player and a DM.

My point is that setting up various plots requires the GM to stipulate dice roll results, rather than actually rolling the dice. And I wanted to know why that sort of stipulation is permitted, but other sorts are not.

 

[LostSoul]

To the rules-as-physics guys:

How would you consider the physics to look like when using the following rule:

If there is a conflict of interest between a PC and another character, roll the dice.
If there is no conflict of interest, don't roll the dice.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I know what you want. I think I spent a whole thread arguing that that was a kludge fix, which would enevitably cause you problems, because the distinction between offstage and onstage can never be complete.

It was on ENWorld. I think the thread was called "Game rules are not the physics of the game world." I'll try to find you a link.

I am hoisted on my own sarcastic petard!

No, I disagree. Not only do I not care one whit about it being inconsistent, but I think this inconsistency is good for the game. Not only because attempting to equate rules with world leads to far worse results, but because I do not accept for one second that determining the distinction between the two is at all difficult or perilous.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The players (and their characters) could know to consider these possibilities and treat it as a mystery, if the world is consistent in on and off screen resolutions. If that consistency isn't there, it's harder to subtly introduce a mystery, because strange things could just be the background.

To a certain extent, I think this is true (and someone needs to give the high-level-fighter-falling-off-his-horse example the axe, since it's not the best one out there), but I think that one can carry this line of reasoning a bit too far.

The example I always think of is that of an FR mythal. In 2e and 3e right up until Lost Empires of Faerun, a mythal was a magical effect created by long-lost elven arts that could accomplish all sorts of crazy things... things specifically good for generating non-standard adventuring environments. The why of a mythal was left to what some would call DM handwaving. LEoF then came out with detailed rules for constructing a mythal using epic spell seeds, and you know what? Those rules were insanely complicated, easily abusable if the players could access the abilities detailed therein, and pretty much useless in 99% of campaigns anyway.

*That* to my mind is where DM handwaving is superior to explaining everything "consistently" using the rules. IMO, there is no measurable gain in predictability or player enjoyment for the DM to parse out exactly how everything onstage and off happens using the rules. Should there be guidelines for player interaction with offstage events? Yes. For example, I would certainly have Spellcraft, Survival, and/or Knowledge DCs in place to give PCs the ability to understand the implications of various phenomena and events. But I don't think that a DM is gaining much in the way of consistency by forcing himself to simulate everything using codified rules.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

My point is that setting up various plots requires the GM to stipulate dice roll results, rather than actually rolling the dice. And I wanted to know why that sort of stipulation is permitted, but other sorts are not.

That's what I was trying to answer. If you go so far as determining the success or failure of a rules possible event, but not posit rules impossible events, you have a reasonable level of predictability / consistency in the setting. If you posit a rules impossible event, those elements are damaged. So, off camera stipulating of a roll result is more acceptable to me than off camera stipulating of something that would be a mechanical impossibility on camera.

 

[IanB]

Maybe Superman doesn't die of cancer, but I think Captain Marvel (not the DC Shazam guy, the Marvel Comics one) did. My recollection is that he definitely falls into the "heroic" category based on his powers and such.

Clearly there is literary precedent for Heroic-with-a-capital-H beings dying in ways that are not implemented (or not implemented well) in the D&D rules. Really this even happens in D&D novels themselves - how many clearly-not-first-level guys does Drizzt skewer in a single round?

I thought I was in the middle on this argument but I guess I'm clearly not; I can't approach designing a D&D campaign as if the rules dictate how the setting should look and behave, and having things like level atrophy rules and such is just a bunch of extra work for no real gain it seems to me.

 

[Celebrim]

But whether this is the best way to play is up for grabs. On the narrativist reading of D&D rules, NPC hit points aren't plot protection for those NPCs, but adversity regulation for when they engage with the PCs.

Which in turn creates certain reasonable expectations on the part of the PC's on how the mechanics regulate adversity when they aren't direct participants. If they for example are defeated in a contest of arms by the Kings champion, and then learn that the King's champion was killed in battle by a kobold, they are going to have reasonable expectations about that kobold and it isn't going to be 'The DM just decided Sir Reginald died from a single stab wound of a kobold'.

If there is any interaction between on stage and off stage, this is unavoidable. It's just a question of when and where you are going to hit these sorts of stumbling blocks. And if there is no interaction between on stage and off stage, then for all practical purposes the off stage stuff didn't happen except in the play ground of the DM's mind.

1) Looks like a case where the Lois Lane rules should have been invoked - the problem is that the GM has improperly exercised narrative control.

Yes, but the narrative control would have been excercised much more properly if it fit the player's expectations about the world described by the rules - that is to say - if it fit the established setting.

Perhaps (and others have made this point earlier, including KM). But it depends very much on what the play group understands to be the scope of the action resolution mechanics.

Again, unless you are willing to forgo the expectation of consitancy on stage, you have to be consistant off stage as well because there will be points of contact.

3) I still think this is absurd, as I said above. The GM could have stipulated that King Thumble died in combat with a kobold after the kobold struck many lucky blows, while King Thumble's luck completely ran out (Kobold rolled all 20s, Thumble all 1s) and the players (and their PCs) would not therefore become completely scared of horses. They'd just figure that the King had got very unlucky.

That is strictly true, but in brief, suspension of disbelief. By invoking that much luck (or unluck), you are making it clear that you are making no consession to consistancy. You are putting an unnecessary stumbling block in front of your players because they are unable to draw conclusions about the world you describe.

This also looks like a case of conflict within the group about what the rules and playstyle are.

Don't the players have a reasonable expectation that the rules will inform the playstyle? And in particular, isn't it rather unavoidable that the action-resolution mechanics have a very large role in creating the playstyle? How can you expect anything but conflict over what the playstyle is or is supposed to be when the players are forever recieving mixed signals from you because you are using two completely different sets of rules in what is unavoidably a somewhat arbritrary fashion?

Of course there are always stories that can be told within the framework of the action resolution mechanics. Sometimes, however, one wants to have the gameworld evolve a different way. Is it obligatory, at that point, to go down the RM route and create action resolution mechanics that allow it to happen to the PCs too?

I don't think it is obligatory. But if you do create two different game worlds, the one in which the PC's live which works according to one set of rules, and another one that the PC's can only hear about or perhaps catch glimpses of which clearly works by a different set of rules, then I think you are creating unnecessary problems for yourself.

It is certainly not obligatory to go down the RM route. The RM root comes from thinking that the universe being simulated must in some fashion have everything in it that exists in the real universe, plus ironically, a bit more that doesn't. Trying to simulate everything in the real world by having formal resolution systems can be an exercise in futility, especially if you also want the story universe to work by different rules as well on a case by case basis. Abstraction is your friend. Use it.

On-stage, of course, no PC will die from falling off a horse (because the PC enjoys hit-point plot protection). But this does not contradict the physics of the gameworld (in which people can die from falling off horses). That something never happens to the PCs doesn't show it couldn't have happened.

The last sentence is so vague as to have no real meaning. I made a point of listing some of the ways that a sentence like that could become a red herring earlier.

Look, all I can say is that if you insist that you are happy with a game universe in which the PC's must be signalled that this event or the other is a 'cut scene' occuring outside of game context and that inferences about game state can't really be drawn from it, then fine. I think however that you are making alot of trouble for yourself for no real reason given how easily you can make the story fit the universe. Likewise, I can't imagine how you think you are making the universe fit the story if in fact you aren't shaping its physics, you are merely implying that you have.

 

[JohnSnow]

I know what you want. I think I spent a whole thread arguing that that was a kludge fix, which would enevitably cause you problems, because the distinction between offstage and onstage can never be complete.

It was on ENWorld. I think the thread was called "Game rules are not the physics of the game world." I'll try to find you a link.

I am hoisted on my own sarcastic petard!

No, I disagree. Not only do I not care one whit about it being inconsistent, but I think this inconsistency is good for the game. Not only because attempting to equate rules with world leads to far worse results, but because I do not accept for one second that determining the distinction between the two is at all difficult or perilous.

Emphasis mine.

Folks, we're never going to agree. The only thing that's actually "fraught with peril" in this discussion is each side attempting to convince the other that their preferred interpretation is "better," "more accurate," or "how D&D ought to be played."

Neither is. And I think you two have just successfully (and amusingly) proved that we're doing nothing but going in circles at this point.

Perhaps it's time we bring this discussion to a close?