Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Which leads straight to the rather ludicrous notion that, ignoring the first few steps maybe, the longer a run-up you take the less distance you can jump.
D&D (2024) Jumping
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Yup. It’s a game. Not a reality modeling engine.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
The whole point of all these rules is to try and model the in-fiction reality, so why not at least try to get it right.
Otherwise, why bother?
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I mean, that's not quite right. Most modern RPGs aren't trying "model" anything, they're trying to provide an engaging and immersive role-playing experience, often with some more game-y elements. The end result often looks very like what you expect, but it's not just "trying to model in-fiction reality". Much older games attempted that more heavily (not D&D so much, it was always very abstract), albeit very few committed entirely (Millennium's End did, for example, I'd say, but even Rolemaster didn't, with its invisible turtle fumbles and so on).
D&D has always been had significant "game" elements, which often override verisimilitude. 5E certainly does, albeit it's approach is less "tactical wargame" like 4E's game-stuff was and more Magic: The Gathering.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
I understand the draw, but I really (really) don't want to go back to having cut-and-dry rules for everything under the sun. I tried that already with previous editions, and I still have nightmares about having five different kinds of "actions" to track, and dozens of pages of rules for movement alone. I do not want to be Locutus of RAW again.
I hope that rules for jumping, etc. stay intentionally vague and subject to the DM's interpretation. It's less work for the one person at the table who has too much to do already.
I hope that rules for jumping, etc. stay intentionally vague and subject to the DM's interpretation. It's less work for the one person at the table who has too much to do already.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I don’t think that’s even remotely the point. In fact I think that's got it almost exactly backwards: the game rules are not a servant of the fiction...which will invariably lead to disappointment; they are the creators of the fiction. It is not the rules' job to model the desired narrative, it's the job of the players to narrate, or at least imagine, a reality that adheres to whatever gameplay is generated by the rules.
In the jumping case we were just discussing, it is up to the player(s) to imagine why in one case a character ran a short distance and then jumped far, and in another case ran a longer distance before jumping less far.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Yeah, I think that's a totally valid point.
Still, since it's something that comes up a lot (maybe because my combats have a lot of terrain features?) I wish I had some kind of consistent framework that included elements of risk.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Which, to use a sledgehammer term, leans considerably too far "gamist" for me; not in any capital-G Forge sense, but in the sense of overly-much putting game considerations before fiction considerations.
And sure, there's many an unavoidable instance where game-side abstractions are essential. But in cases like this (and there are a great many of them) where they are not essential and-or poorly (or don't at all) reflect the reality of the fiction, my vote is almost always to put the fiction first and if the game rules don't suit, kitbash them until they do.
This is exactly what I mean by the above. In my view this should never happen, that players have to come up with unrealistic narrations just to suit what's obviously a faulty game mechanic. Instead, IMO it's on either the DM or (preferably!) the designers to identify that it's the mechanic at issue and fix it.
That said, the jumping issue itself is caused by a series of bigger things all congregating at once: very restrictive movement limits, a too-binary succeed-fail system, and combat rounds not being long enough. Extending the combat round to 10 seconds would allow any length of jump to be a part of one's move rate and still allow a decent run-up at one end or some movement at the other; the jump distance can become part of your move and still all make in-fiction sense. Relaxing the movement limits would have much the same effect. The too-binary succeed-fail system is a bigger issue, as some other currently-ongoing threads are showing.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I can’t imagine D&D is the system that will ever give you what you are looking for.
I like my games gamist. If I’m looking for fiction I read fiction.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Not without a lot of kitbashing, but once that's done it gets close enough for rock 'n' roll.
