Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6261008" data-attributes="member: 2067">'s why I specified "at the very least." Plenty of games use XP for more than timekeeping. Overcoming the challenges that give you XP is totally an ingame process. And your character overcoming those challenges is totally a process in the fiction. I've got no problem acknowledging that there's multiple ways to interpret it (while noting that the 4e example is totally debatable). That's kind of my point. When you say this:...it is dismissive of *plenty* of playstyles. Lots of people think that XP does represent something in the fiction. Plenty of people imagine that initiative scores represent something in the fiction. It's not an insignificant minority that view HP damage as a thing that happens in the fiction of the world. It's not insane to hold that view, and it's a view that arises naturally from how many people actually play the game. Which means it's not a "problem" like the OP posits, anymore than not liking One Direction is a problem. It's not WRONG to play the game like this, it's not a flaw in need of fixing, it's a way the game is used and it shouldn't be ignored or dismissed as a mistake that needs to be fixed. That's my intent when I point out that XP and initiative and HP and whatever can totally be a representatoin of something in-world. It doesn't NEED to be metagame. Is it "better" if it is? That's something that's debatable in the specifics. But it should be clear that it's not a thing that is required, so this changes the conversation from "Is this the problem?" to "Why might someone think it is a problem at all?" Again, no, it needn't be. In my mind, those 6-second rounds are happening basically simultaneously (we essentially play through them in very slow-motion). One attack roll in a round represents what happens when one character performs their stated action over the course of their ~6 seconds, at a fairly high level of abstraction. If that stated action is "I try to cut off the orc's head!" then the attack roll helps me adjudicate if that attempt is successful. Initiative represents the fact that the player (with Init 16) got to seize the moment to try that before the orc (with Init 9) could react. Again, that's not to say that it must be this way, either, just that you're wrong to presume that it must not be. So lets have a conversation about relative merits and not about who is even allowed to come to the table. The process is that if all these things are happening at the same time, who has the speed and wherewithal to be a little faster at trying to achieve their goal than someone else? Initiative is a mechanic that resolves the question of: "If everyone tries to do their thing at once, who gets to go a little faster than others?"I'm not particularly interested in jargony labels, really. I'm not here under the tribal banner of "process-sim" (whatever the Ron that means), trying to lay claim to rulebooks as my territory. I'm just articulating why the playstyle that I use is worthy of consideration for 5e, and, in fact, may be a style well-suited to being a default 5e playstyle. Not a "problem." I'll leave it up to experts in the terms to determine if this falls under that umbrella, but given the OP, it seems like it might. I'm confused here. What mechanics are in play before the attack die is rolled that would even tell you that much?I don't think the mechanics need to tell you what your actions are. You tell the mechanics what your actions are, and the mechanics work out what that means. You say to the dice, "I'm going to try and hit that orc with my sword, you tell me if that works." It's the specific thing that helps the players see the action in their head. Also, by "beat this orc," you must mean "beat the AC of this orc," which uses a value (AC) that explicitly represents how hard it is to physically hit the orc with a weapon. So there's a pretty obvious tie in the mechanics to actually injuring the orc with your weapon if you beat the AC with your weapon, and not injuring the orc with your weapon if you do not. They also tell you that the reason you didn't land a lethal blow was because you failed to beat the enemy's defenses when you tried to land that lethal blow. And before you even used the mechanics, you knew that you were attempting to land a lethal blow. Since that HP damage came as a result of beating the enemy's defenses (AC) with your attempted lethal attack (attack roll), the mechanics are pretty much spelling out you that you injured, but failed to kill, the target when you tried to land that lethal blow. I'm not sure I was looking for permission. You're free to determine action from result, too, but that's not going to determine what WotC should presume in the default game. (and if you narrate an orc at 2 hp as a severed arm, you're looking at a narration that's totally OK with one-armed orcs who fight as fiercely as two-armed orcs)Without an action, there is no conflict. Conflict doesn't exist in an unconnected vacuum from the events that precipitate it. There is no agon without a struggle, and a struggle comes out of a verb, a change, a dynamism, something happens, and then there is a result. A conflict is a process. Might as well work through it how causality does. Might as well say that the precipitating event that causes the conflict happens, and use the mechanics to help describe the fallout from that event. Clearly, it isn't necessary. You can describe a conflict abstractly, without a need to reference what is driving it. You can look at a struggle in reverse chronology the way historians and archeologists do, in terms of figuring out how a certain condition came to be. Some might even prefer that for the flexibility it offers in terms of the story you tell (anything that arrives at the endpoint is a valid narration!). It sounds confusing and dull and dis-empowering to me, but I'm not the arbiter of how everyone has fun. But is it better for default D&D to be a game where people declare actions and drive the game forward than where they abstractly resolve nebulous conflicts and figure out what happened to bring them to their present state? I'd certainly argue so. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily true, but I think there's a strong, strong argument in favor of it.Why not? Two opposed dice certainly can represent two individuals each trying to wound the other, or someone defending as another attacks. "Engaging the goblin in melee combat" is what, specifically? What does that look like? What is different about it when Mary's character does it vs. when Billy's character does it? What are they trying to DO when they do that? Give me something concrete, so that I can imagine the world in my head, and believe in this this world of elves and orcs because things are happening in it. I think it may be better for the game to presume that players are saying that their characters do specific things. I'd bet that creates a more rewarding experience at more tables than abstract waffling. Which is still viable for those that have no issue with it. I mean, characters have been getting petrified by basilisks and killed by poison and grabbed by ropers since OD&D. I'm not sure I appreciate the distinction you're making here. Attack rolls are explicitly attacks. It's what it says on the tin. Like I said above, I'm demonstrating that this reading of things is merely valid and important -- not a "problem." I would go on to argue that it's probably a better way for default D&D to go, but I haven't really launched into that yet. That's not really what I'm telling you. I mentioned in the "let us meat and morale come together under one HP model!" thread that all 5e needs to do to satisfy both camps at once is avoid default rules that can only be modeled one way or the other (injury mechanics, and morale-based healing, for two). Which isn't to say at all that everyone needs to envision these things the same way. What I'm really telling you is that specificity and causality are really quite important factors to an enjoyable game for what I'd wager is a great plurality of players (if not a majority), and so to describe those things as "problems" is to miss the plot.</blockquote>

Verification