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General Tabletop Discussion
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Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7760367" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Returning to the contest/footrace discussion:</p><p></p><p>My interpretive intuitions run strongly the other way: the idea that "the DM . . . decides the difficulty" encompasses calling for checks which result in the difficulty being decided by a player-side process seems strained to me, especially when the same page of the rules sets out an alternative framework which (i) involves exactly that, and (ii) is described as being for <em>contests</em>, which a footrace certainly counts as.</p><p></p><p>And conversely, given that we've already seen that "remains the same" can't be taken literally - even in the ring case, a tied result to reach the ring surely doesn't mean, or at least doesn't have to mean, that no one even took a step towards it - taking it to encompass the outcome of a race in which people both cross the finish line but neither has been established as a winner of a race (so what <em>remains the same</em> is their relative status as competitors) seems fine to me.</p><p></p><p>Especially as I think the distinction between <em>mechanical outcome</em> and <em>how we picture the scene</em> is always potentially unstable in a RPG, and doubly so in the context of a mechanic like 5e ability/skill checks which seem intended to directly engage the fiction. (Which contrasts with the combat mechanics, as per an earlier debate upthread!)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7760367, member: 42582"] Returning to the contest/footrace discussion: My interpretive intuitions run strongly the other way: the idea that "the DM . . . decides the difficulty" encompasses calling for checks which result in the difficulty being decided by a player-side process seems strained to me, especially when the same page of the rules sets out an alternative framework which (i) involves exactly that, and (ii) is described as being for [I]contests[/I], which a footrace certainly counts as. And conversely, given that we've already seen that "remains the same" can't be taken literally - even in the ring case, a tied result to reach the ring surely doesn't mean, or at least doesn't have to mean, that no one even took a step towards it - taking it to encompass the outcome of a race in which people both cross the finish line but neither has been established as a winner of a race (so what [I]remains the same[/I] is their relative status as competitors) seems fine to me. Especially as I think the distinction between [I]mechanical outcome[/I] and [I]how we picture the scene[/I] is always potentially unstable in a RPG, and doubly so in the context of a mechanic like 5e ability/skill checks which seem intended to directly engage the fiction. (Which contrasts with the combat mechanics, as per an earlier debate upthread!) [/QUOTE]
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