D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[EzekielRaiden]

It's a failure completely unrelated to the failed climb check. That's the whole issue here. I want a game where if you failed the climb check the only result is that you don't climb the cliff. The only possible negative to that failed check is that you may take damage as a result of falling.

If the friend dies because I didn't get to them in time, it was not caused by us not getting to them in time. They died because there was some kind of ticking clock that the players may or may not have been aware of. The friend was killed by the cultists, succumbed to poison, disease or something else. If the character had successfully climbed the cliff they may have had time to prevent the friend's death but the death was in no way caused by the character's actions or failure to climb the cliff. The attempt to save the friend's life would have been a completely different set of actions and decisions.

This is a pretty fundamental difference to approach and what we want out of the game. I do not run a game that is focused on the narrative, I run a game that is focused on simulation of characters in a fantasy world. Of course I put things in that will be interesting and usually level appropriate because it is still a game. But if there is failure or success the results will follow the fiction of the world, not what moves the story forward or not.

So the reason is "because I want every single check to have a single specific defined success result and a single specific defined failure result"?

How is that actually any kind of criticism against fail forward then? You're projecting a specific mechanical design and acting like that design is what all games ever should be.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Events have occurred in the fiction. Roleplaying has happened in this roleplaying game. Maybe a beloved shopkeeper NPC is introduced. Who knows? The point is that the players are playing this out because they want to, and I have no right (and no desire, really) to make them stop. I'm sorry if that's not exciting enough for you personally, but you don't sit at my metaphorical table.

No.

The point was, very specifically, that the players must play this out, unless they explicitly say they don't want to.

Because my standard, which I set out before this, was that I'm happy to do it if the players want to, but won't make a thing out of it unless they express interest.

 

[AlViking]

It's not about getting the terms correct. It's about accurately representing how we do the damn thing. You not liking the way a particular games does something or how it's structured does not give you carte blanche to misrepresent (whether through ignorance, carelessness or willful misrepresentation). It also does not give you free reign to not receive pushback when you combine multiple non-conventional play structures into some sort of "narrative game" mess.

It also does not give you carte blanche to make general statements about how stuff works based solely on conjecture without receiving pushback or correction.

At the end of the day if I called 5e restrictive because it got in the way when I tried to run it using more Narrativist play methodologies (I can talk more about this experience if anyone has questions) I would receive all sorts of pushback, correctly, because it was never designed for that. Just like someone coming from more conventional play norms would be wrong to call Daggerheart restrictive because it hasn't a different set of play conventions.

The reason I said your commentary was disrespectful was because through your conjectures you are implying that playing Apocalypse World is somehow more mechanistic and rules bound. Beyond being inaccurate it shows a view that denies the creative efforts of everyone involved. It disrespects the craft of people like the people I have played with that have decades of experience playing and running these games. I would never make such an implication of anyone else's play. I respect your craft and I would expect you to respect mine in kind.

I'm not trying to sell you on anything or get you to try anything. If other people are please respond to them. The only way I see you as conservative is that you frame everything solely through your play preferences and desires and the way you draw conclusions about how other people's play must work in the most unflattering way possible. You seem entitled to having everything suit solely your desires and seem unable to show respect to other playstyles. That's what is conservative to me.

I respect everyone's right to play in the way the want. I also think we are responsible to try to understand and accurately portray how other people play and show respect for their craft.

This is not fundamentally different than a discussion of software development methodologies. One would hope if we discussed the circumstances of our projects and why we each opt for how our organizations organize their work that we would be able to respect why each made the decisions they made and how it serves our different purposes instead of you talking ad nauseum about how methodology my organization utilizes would never work for you and running roughshod over the way I do things.

So in other words just more "You're wrong but I won't try to explain or understand why you have a mistaken perspective. I'm just going to take offense because you're not using the proper terms."

Then you wonder why we get frustrated with the endless "Narrative games are awesome" that continually pop up.

Maybe try explaining for once? Not just "I explained it 150 pages ago and I'd rather spend my time telling you that you're wrong but not specific examples of how it does work."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Then fail-forward doesn't work in many traditional games where rolls often determine much more specific things than in Dungeon World. Your definition of failure works best if the roll is much more general than is usually the case in, for example, D&D.

Is it that fail forward doesn't work there?

Or is it that there are multiple ways to view failure even in that context, and thus it is only in the way you choose to run D&D that induces such an issue?

Because I know for a fact that plenty of D&D games use this concept quite effectively.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Important to the game. Not important to the die roll.

Again: Why not? You're asserting this like it's a universal truth, something self-evident. It isn't. Not even in old-school D&D.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I try to be very careful that what I say about my play is about my play. I may agree with other posters on some things, especially in a broad fashion, but not everything. Are you always in lockstep with the other Narrativist fans?

I for bloody sure agree WAY WAY WAY WAY more than "well we say there's a style but really there's 7000 almost totally unique people who just happen to claim that there is a style in common between them"!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The DM is more of a repair man in those situations. The vast majority of the time, nothing is broken so the DM just reacts to the players. Sometimes, things break and the DM has to step in to fix things, usually rules issues. When the DM steps in as repair man, he's ultimately the one decides how the repairs are made, though the customers(players) can discuss with the DM and offer up advice on how they think it should be done.

And if the repairman's work is inadequate?

Because that's a thing that happens IRL. A lot. I would know.

 

[AlViking]

So the reason is "because I want every single check to have a single specific defined success result and a single specific defined failure result"?

How is that actually any kind of criticism against fail forward then? You're projecting a specific mechanical design and acting like that design is what all games ever should be.

I said I don't want to play a game that uses fail forward in the way you describe with a cost that is not directly caused by the failure. It's a preference, I don't care if anyone else shares that preference.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes and no. Yes they encounter kings, monsters, and situations of note at FAR greater rates than the average Joe. In that regard chance is skewed tremendously. However, that doesn't mean that they don't haggle with merchants, walk for weeks down roads with no interesting encounters, etc. It far from ALL interesting things.

Did I ever say they NEVER haggle? No. I said it was ridiculous that absolutely every merchant will ALWAYS haggle, no matter what.

And now we're getting yet another thing I was told no one ever does. That no one ever expects people to roleplay through the painstakingly dull "you ride for three weeks where nothing happens" periods. Really? Are you really going to make the players play through every hour of a multiple-week span of absolutely goddamn nothing happening???

That style of play isn't for everyone and some just want to skip those parts, because they find them boring. So everything that happens in the game is interesting in some way. Even for adventurers that's far more than chance would dictate in a game like D&D.

Is it though? How do you know? Like genuinely how do you know this? What is your data set for arguing that there are few periods of 'three weeks of absolutely nothing happened'? Especially since I know you (like everyone) do skip over boring bits too! You don't force the players to roleplay through every single hour of a three-week caravan ride where literally no events occur whatsoever.

 

[AlViking]

There is a reason the phrase "Are you SURE you want to do that?" is a mantra in D&D.

DM control is as much about saving players from themselves as it is anything else. Few DM'S relish a TPK, but players try to off themselves with surprising regularity.

Also why "Run away!!!" is often heard from adventuring parties.