D&D 5E Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)

[Crazy Jerome]

This is an example of "diff'rent strokes", I think, since this is almost precisely what I don't want, and the reason is simple. "Common sense" isn't. The idea that an instantaneous ball of flame can set things alight seems "obvious" to some people. But - and bear in mind that I have studied chemical plant explosions as part of my job in the past - it's not actually that common.

The circumstance that more or less ended my "naive simulation" phase was when I realized that common sense wasn't all that common. Right up until that moment, I still thought that a game could model the physics of the game world, and would then just work to produce what people wanted.

Edit: Then later I realized that most good game authors typically lean too heavily towards left-brain to ever do a bang-up job of game physics, even if they were so inclined. So what you actually get in play of most simulation games is the DM's version of common sense based on the game author's version of common sense with a fair amount of genre and real-world stuff drug into the mix depending upon interests.

One of the reasons that Runequest manages to produce good simulation games within its niche is that the RQ world is different enough that the sim-inclined DM is forced to face up to some assumptions right off the bat.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The circumstance that more or less ended my "naive simulation" phase was when I realized that common sense wasn't all that common. Right up until that moment, I still thought that a game could model the physics of the game world, and would then just work to produce what people wanted.

For me it isn't about doing what is literally the most realistic (I mean If belabor is present I would certainly defer to his knowledge of chemical explosions) but what feels real or likely.

 

[Ratskinner]

Mall I meant is it encompasses several styles and genres. If you tailor it to one in particular or force one set of sub genre conventions (or front load it with narrative mechanics) I think it will drive a lot of players away.

Ahhh...I disagree. D&D may have started as a fantasy hodge-podge, but its developed its own little sub-genre of fantasy. Although your larger point of a game being to narrow seems accurate, and is in tune with one of my gripes about 4e.

 

[Ratskinner]

i wouldn't mind a James Bond campaign but if we were playing our standard gritty counter terrorism game and it suddenly became what you describe I would find it jarring. It is all about knowing what the expectations are.

Right. I'm asking if "having your expectations met" takes away from the surprise/fun of "exploring a world". I mean, if you think about it, the characters in a movie usually don't know that they are in a horror, action, or scifi scenario. Its just their everyday world until an alien bursts out of a co-worker's chest.

I'm asking because it seems like my most successful D&D campaigns have been rather sandboxey. I'm looking to refine the whys and wherefores.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Right. I'm asking if "having your expectations met" takes away from the surprise/fun of "exploring a world". I mean, if you think about it, the characters in a movie usually don't know that they are in a horror, action, or scifi scenario. Its just their everyday world until an alien bursts out of a co-worker's chest.
.

No. For me it doesn't take away from the fun.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Right. I'm asking if "having your expectations met" takes away from the surprise/fun of "exploring a world". I mean, if you think about it, the characters in a movie usually don't know that they are in a horror, action, or scifi scenario. Its just their everyday world until an alien bursts out of a co-worker's chest.

I'm asking because it seems like my most successful D&D campaigns have been rather sandboxey. I'm looking to refine the whys and wherefores.

A campaign where thematic expectations are absent--or where they are present and then deliberately broken--is certainly possible. Never done it myself, though, and no doubt it would take a certain type of group to pull it off. Spoony Experiment had a video recently that mulled over an idea of this sort.

The problem is that thematic expectations are like cuisine types at restaurants. It's certainly possible to have a "world cuisine" or "world fusion" restaurant--but that's an expectation in and of itself, isn't it? And it's certainly possible to tell your friends that they're going to a Mexican restaurant and then jump out and yell "Surprise! It's actually Vietnamese!" but it's also possible that not everyone would enjoy this.

As far as I can tell, thematic expectations are independent of playstyle preferences: that is, I don't think that preferring sandbox play (as I very much do) makes a person more likely to prefer a thematically flexible style of play. But it's an interesting question, and not one that I've thought very much about.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I am still optimistic as we haven't seen the entire system or the modular options yet (until I see those, I wont really be able to say one way or the other how well they did). If they produce three core books, and with those books you can play something like 4E, 3E or something like AD&D, then I would say they are not favoring one approach. You may have a simple basic game that, but as long as there are those advanced books to give me what I want, I won't view it as a problem if the basic book doesn't address my style. The jury is still out of course. If they release the core books, and they don't contain a viable way to arrive at something the 4E crowd is after, then yes they would have repeated the same mistake I feel they made when 4E was released.

But if you feel compromise itself is not going to work, what is the solution?

Well, Mike has said flat out in no uncertain terms there will be no modules with alternate class mechanics. For instance nothing like a different magic system or AEDU fighters or something like that, period. The modules WotC is providing AFAIK from careful reading and study of everything that has been said and not trying to be overly pedantic or idiotic about how I read it, that much like 2e there will be a series of parts of the game, modules, which will be optional. They will be organized into a Basic (IE all the non-optional parts), a Standard (some optional parts), and an Advanced game (all the optional parts). Obviously individual tables will probably not stick EXACTLY to one of these 3 games, you are expected to say play Basic and maybe add in some specific modules you like. NEVER has WotC ever suggested that they will provide more than one alternative, such as 2 skill systems, etc. to pick from. This new L&L seems to be saying that the focus is not going to be on producing tons of products full of rules. Now, given that ANY supplement is always optional one would kinda have to consider supplements to be "books full of modules" (at least the crunch part, if there is any).

I don't rule out the possibility that SOME DAY WotC might decide to make alternative modules, but given the "low crunch" statement and the previous "modules aren't choices of alternate systems" statements, and given the characteristics of DDN as it is now... Yeah, basically I am not getting my preferred play style of out it. I know people are going to tell me to wait and see, and I won't refuse to look at it of course, but are you all going to dredge this back up in 18 months when its dead on? Probably not. So color me EXTREMELY skeptical and IMHO entirely warranted in that skepticism.

It isn't a matter of if a compromise is possible or not. WotC WILL NOT PROVIDE US BOTH WITH WHAT WE WANT. No doubt they would be happy to, but either they fail to even vaguely understand what I want, even after I and others told them again and again, or they simply don't really believe their own rhetoric, or they are just in such a disasterously bad position that all they can do is throw some portion of the fan base a life-preserver game and the talk of a 'big tent' was a fond wish. I have no idea which of these, or something else, is the case. I just know what's happening.

 

[pemerton]

Right, so there is also a camp of 4e advocates who are militant about the rules being applied EXACTLY as written all the time without regard to narrative circumstance.

<snip>

I think the danger though is if you were to adopt overly neutral language then the game comes across as stripped of any character at all. You've removed the problem of people fixating on prone and having an issue with prone oozes, but you've also left them ENTIRELY to their own means to imagine what the authors of the game had in mind when they created the "overextended" condition.

<snip>

I guess maybe the rules could go into some detail about complications, so a given power might provoke disadvantage but also 'knock prone', which then invokes another set of rules. Or the rules could simply make it explicit that while the condition is 'prone' that even if a creature can't logically be knocked prone it still gets the disadvantage.

My compromise on "prone", "free descriptors" and circumstances with the fiction is to allow oozes etc to be knocked "prone" (ie they are not immune to that suite of player resources that generate that complication), but they don't grant a -2 penalty to non-adjacent archery (because their visible profile hasn't significantly changed).

At the very least it means that there has to be rich flavor text somewhere to supply the narrative with some material to work on

In the case of MHRP, I think this is a shared sense of Marvel superheroics. In D&D, I don't know that there is as much of a common source text, but I would expect most tables to be able to sort this out.

 

[pemerton]

Your efforts to use genre convention, and my efforts to keep it grounded in reality, are going to conflict.

they can at times align, but I think its really hard to have both occupy the same space. I may be narrow sighted here, but if the GM or the system is producing results based on what is good for the story or what is good for the genre, that is going to trump realism i believe.

As with [MENTION=98255]Nemesis Destiny[/MENTION], I don't fully feel the force of this. Unless "grounded in reality" just means a particular (gritty) genre.

 

[Balesir]

My compromise on "prone", "free descriptors" and circumstances with the fiction is to allow oozes etc to be knocked "prone" (ie they are not immune to that suite of player resources that generate that complication), but they don't grant a -2 penalty to non-adjacent archery (because their visible profile hasn't significantly changed).

Just out of FYI-dom, we keep the -2 and I think of it as the ooze morphing about (effectively dodging) as it tries to regain its cohesion. Basically, it's been turned into a "splat" and needs to reform (but maybe not as extreme as that makes it sound), so it writhes about, re-coalescing.