D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics

[soviet]

“Rare” is fine; it is “never” I’d have an issue with.

Show me who has said never

 

[mamba]

can't all the "jumping through the hoops" be subsumed as part of the use of the feature? Just like when a player of a wizard/MU says "I scribe a scroll, taking N days/weeks", we don't make the player play though each moment of preparing inks, preparing the writing surface, drawing all the sigils, etc.

yes, it can, entirely up to the table

If you have an audience with the king, you can also have no one talk at all and just roll some dice to get a result if you consider actually making your case jumping through hoops. Just a matter of preference

 

[mamba]

What @soviet said.

not a good excuse for poorly worded rules though

 

[mamba]

Yes, in my view railroading is bad GMing. And players who ignore their PC's fictional positioning are bad players. I don't know where you think the contradiction lies.

the contradiction is that the GM reminding them of the fictional position is what is being criticized here

 

[mamba]

Are we at a geek social fallacy here? 'Successful social interactions must be magic'

no, because no one ever said that the feature always fails, only that it doesn’t work in certain cases

 

[Bae'zel]

no, because no one ever said that the feature always fails, only that it doesn’t work in certain cases

Yeah conversation with the players during character creation is key.

If a player makes their character have the "Folk Hero" background, and explains that they have this reputation in their home country or whatever, the DM better talk with them if the campaign premise is "your characters are immediately whisked away to another place, completely unfamiliar to them". There better be a good explanation for why they'd have such a reputation in Sigil or Mordent. Maybe it COULD work (who knows, maybe the merchant that they rescued from the Ogre was actually some kind of planes-hopping super being or something?).

I'm no longer concerned about this stuff because the 2024 rules don't include these features, but still, if a level 1 PC is described as "an expert monster hunter, with many experiences and scars" but they're 16 years old and a level 1 ranger, I'll guide them towards a character concept with less jarring contradictions.

 

[hawkeyefan]

if the cobbler had gone out adventuring, he would be doing that now. There is nothing that says only the PCs can do this, everyone else would fail, so yes, just like him…

Yes, if we ignore the things that make them different, then we can say there are no differences!

it does not matter to the film, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. You treated it as if it doesn’t exist (and still do)

You know Spider-Man is pretend, right?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

yes, it can, entirely up to the table

If you have an audience with the king, you can also have no one talk at all and just roll some dice to get a result if you consider actually making your case jumping through hoops. Just a matter of preference

The players still need to tell the DM what they are trying to pursuade the king to do.

But conversations don’t need to be 1st person, 3rd person works fine.

 

[Oofta]

Huh?

Yes, in my view railroading is bad GMing. And players who ignore their PC's fictional positioning are bad players. I don't know where you think the contradiction lies.

The player uses a background feature that makes no sense in the context's fictional positioning and they're a bad player. A DM says no when the context's fictional positioning is exactly the same and suddenly it's railroading.

Do you not see how you are changing what constitutes bad behavior in your opinion based on who is determining that the background feature makes no sense? That in some cases the background feature is completely illogical?

 

[clearstream]

Especially weird in games that seem to express the idea that all the PCs, spellcasters and non-spellcasters, have unique, nearly mythical abilities but some DMs only give magic spells a free pass but “mundane” abilities more scrutiny and required fictional buy-in.

It seems that in a sense, to say that it is "magic" is to say that it needn't follow whatever "mundane" truth determinants are normal for the fiction. "Magic" obeys some "magical" set of truth determinants: which may include that when X happens in virtue of a "magical" assertion -- such as in the text for a "spell" -- then that X may happen simpliciter.

If that is roughly right, then one implication really is that "mundane" abilities should follow different scrutiny. They are made true in virtue of some set of norms other than the "magical" set. The "magical" may have requirements such as those you outline, but those ought not to be confused with and needn't stand up to mundane justifications.