D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics

[Micah Sweet]

By fiction, you mean the events and shared imaginings of play, right?

Or do you mean the stuff that I imagined last February that doesn't actually impact play except that it is making me say "NO" at times?

If you write it into the setting, as far as I'm concerned it's part of the game, whether the PCs have encountered it yet or not.

 

[pemerton]

I wouldn't call someone who wants to use a PC ability that the rules grant them a bad player.

Nor did @soviet. The "bad player" was the character who declares an action for their PC even when they believe that their fictional position makes the declared action nonsensical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I swear, they should just say that every non-spell ability can include fortuitous happenstance magic by way of the force so we can move past the v-tude crowd's willing lack of imagination for how an ability could work. Abilities not working because of DM fiat should occur as often as anti magic zones do (so... next to never).

D&D works a lot better when you don't sit with your arms crossed going "I DARE you to make me buy in!" It's shared fiction, not a real world, unless you're rolling to make sure each PC doesn't slip and fall and die in the shower, come down with ALS, or die from a brain aneurysm, all things that happen to real people but I'm willing to bet the sim crowd never does. By virtue of the players being characters who gain levels rather than dirt farmers who die to a house cat's claw/claw/bite, its a game about extraordinary people doing amazing things. Roll with the coincidence.

If you want to put the shoe on the other foot, I can poke holes in your adventure setups all day long.

All this talk about why the guy with contacts as a character trait can't have contacts reminds me of people grumbling about how they didnt show how Batman got from the pit to Gotham in Dark Knight Rises.

I rather wish they had, or at least threw out a line about it. That sort of thing bugs me all the time.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

OK, but then most of the rules seem unnecessary. Why roll dice and apply complicated rules to see whether characters succeed, why not just let the players to decide? That way they can choose what makes most interesting story for them.

Getting a contact is hardly an auto win. Han's player pulled Lando as a contact out of his butt, and I don't think anyone would necessarily agree it was an auto win.

Peasant Hero lets you seek shelter. It doesn't prevent the despot from, say, executing 10 peasants every hour until you turn yourself in or are found.

 

[pemerton]

By fiction, you mean the events and shared imaginings of play, right?

Yes. I believe I was one of the first posters on these boards to use the term "the fiction" or "the shared fiction" to describe the imagined stuff of play.

Or do you mean the stuff that I imagined last February that doesn't actually impact play except that it is making me say "NO" at times?

I don't think players can be expected to care about that. They're not mind-readers. And even if they were, why should they prioritise your imagining about caravan guards over their own, when the rulebook expressly says that it is the player's imagining that is to prevail in this particular context?

 

[Pedantic]

That's the interesting question, isn't it? I DO like D&D. I like mechanics, I like fiddling around with character builds, even though actual challenge at the table isn't a major priority. I like plenty of games MORE, but D&D is fairly easy and has a lot of material, which is fun.

It helps that more of my tables are slowly converting away from 5e, so it doesn't feel quite as overwhelming.

But yea, 5e has some solidity to it, which is nice, but it's still easy to reskin and get into a form I want, which makes it good for shambolic hangout games I end up in quite a bit. And everyone already knows it.

That's sort of the problem though, isn't it? Without agreement on the fundamental purpose of the game, some set of player's attempts to improve it will necessarily make it worse for other people.

There are many different playstyles, gritty is only one of them. 5e is fragile in the tweaking the rules for a playstyle shift causes cascading problems across the system in ways other editions did not.

To your specific comments on gritty play, your commnets are so wrong it's hard to address them.

1. Taking away deaths saves isn't more gritty. It's just killing characters. This is one of the most common missrepresentations people make about that playstyle. It's not about killing characters (though you may), it's about emphasising the risk proportion of risk/reward in game design.

2. The rules for gritty play in the DMG aren't gritty play. Telling characters they only get a long rest once a week doesn't change anything except game pacing. You could do the same by throwing a weeks worth of encounters at a party in a single day. It has nothign to do with gritty play, it just changes the pace of the game and encounters.

The fact that people don't understand this, and that the game itself doesn't offer actual solutions to other playstyles is one of the strongest examples of how fragile 5e is in terms of play style.

Gritty rests are insufficient, but directionally correct. Long rests shouldn't be 1/week, they should require 1 week off. The next step is tracking in-game time such that taking a week to rest is risky (requires a safe location to retreat to or risks interruption) and allows negative events to unfold, so it has an associated (potential) cost. That's mostly a matter of scenario design, and requires more DM advice to build up appropriately.

 

[soviet]

There's actually no reason combat can't be free-formed too. (As I think someone already said upthread - maybe @soviet?)

Yep, that was me.

 

[Oofta]

Nor did @soviet. The "bad player" was the character who declares an action for their PC even when they believe that their fictional position makes the declared action nonsensical.

So if a player says they want to use a feature when it's nonsensical, they're bad players. But with the exact same situation arises and the DM says that it's nonsensical and that it doesn't work, they're bad DMs.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Magic is not "merely" fluff in my games. It is consistent and follows rules. One of the rules it follows is that it allows effects to occur that would be impossible without it (or some equivalent technology, usually unavailable in a fantasy game). I know a lot of folks seem to hate the idea that magic has any advantage over not-magic, but IMO it just does (sorry).

Now, a fair magic system balances that ability with restrictions. In my ideal fantasy games those restriction are real and make in actual play. It's not my fault that WotC decided more people give them money if most of those restrictions went away.

If magic is just better than why are there non-magical loser classes who are just less than?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. I believe I was one of the first posters on these boards to use the term "the fiction" or "the shared fiction" to describe the imagined stuff of play.

I don't think players can be expected to care about that. They're not mind-readers. And even if they were, why should they prioritise your imagining about caravan guards over their own, when the rulebook expressly says that it is the player's imagining that is to prevail in this particular context?

Because it's pretty much the only place where imagination outside the PC prioritizes the player over the DM, in the whole book, and apparently it was sufficiently jarring that they threw it out when they published a new edition.