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

[pemerton]

Say an L contains haggling, which leads to proposing a wager, which leads to a debt, which leads to a highlight scene. That's a chain of play that in my experience is not uncommon in sandbox. Thus there is some probability that an L contains something that won't arise unless played and will go on to infom Hs... and there are multiple Ls per H.

<snip>

I don't dislike it as a conjecture. It's interesting to think about. I just don't think one can easily show it more plausible than the alternative that the exact Hs that arise in play may be informed by the Ls that arise in play.

Of course, the more you emphasise that the "H"s must be different, the more that cuts both ways.

Situation A -- C is alive at the start, but doomed. That's the set up. What we're going to play to find out is what our H's will do in their (futile) attempt to save C. Game play is going to be located in the scenes where we see how that goes.​

​

Situation B -- C is alive at the start and after each round of player actions GM will secretly roll to see if C has been sacrificed. There's a chance that our H's can reach C before they've been sacrificed. As it happens, the dice decide that C is sacrificed before our H's get to them. Ought GM to reveal this? Will game play end when it is revealed?​

<snip>

Assessing cases like these makes me continue to wonder why it matters whether GM decides or dice decide?

Situation A is quite different from what I described, because the player knows. Whereas I was posting about a situation - quite a common one, I think - in which the GM knows that the player's action declarations are futile, but the player doesn't.

The difference between Situation B and a method of resolution where the player's roll matters is that the player can influence their roll, by committing resources. As per my example.

 

[pemerton]

Here's a piece of GM advice from In A Wicked Age (p 10):

Playing with details
Whenever you describe something - describe your character or her actions as a player, describe a scene or the weather or a building or a mob as GM - whenever, say exactly what makes sense to you, and then say at least one concrete detail. Don’t stretch for it, it doesn’t have to be startling or the coolest thing ever said, it just has to be some clear detail such as an observer might notice.

Use your senses, including senses beyond the five, like your moral sense, your sense of humor, your sense of direction. Give your observer a voice. Remember “dressed scandalously in trousers and man’s coat”? It’s a scandal because my observer has a moral sense. I might instead have said that even though she’s smaller than the horsemen, the dust and their shrouding scarves make them look all the same, giving my observer sight. Or maybe I’d’ve said that she’s hidden but sometimes in their banter you can pick out a lighter-toned voice.

When you say details like this, you make the world of your game’s fiction more intimate, more alive, and more concrete, all three.​

The "remember" refers to this on p 9:

In this wicked age, a company of desert horsemen cross their barren domain and come down to the city on the flood plain. They have with them, hidden amongst them, dressed scandalously in trousers and man’s coat, a beautiful girl . . .​

I think a lot of GMs would agree that description is important. I think the idea of a moral sense might be more controversial, though.

 

[clearstream]

Situation A is quite different from what I described, because the player knows. Whereas I was posting about a situation - quite a common one, I think - in which the GM knows that the player's action declarations are futile, but the player doesn't.

The difference between Situation B and a method of resolution where the player's roll matters is that the player can influence their roll, by committing resources. As per my example.

Yes, I agree with you on both those points. My interest was more thinking about where game play may be located, and its subjects? So C's survival might not be a subject of game play as such: that play could be located in scenes in which C's survival figures but that are about (to the extent that they are gameful) what happens in them.

 

[clearstream]

Situation A is quite different from what I described, because the player knows. Whereas I was posting about a situation - quite a common one, I think - in which the GM knows that the player's action declarations are futile, but the player doesn't.

The difference between Situation B and a method of resolution where the player's roll matters is that the player can influence their roll, by committing resources. As per my example.

Add to the list another

Situation E -- C is alive at the start and at the outset GM rolls to decide the number of rounds until C is sacrificed. GM does not look at or reveal that roll until our H's reach C. The mechanic is set up so that there is a chance but not a certainty that our H's can reach C before they've been sacrificed. Thus, on some occasions the roll decides that C is sacrificed before our H's could possibly get to them... but that is not know to anyone at the table until the end.​

​

It seems C's survival can only the subject of game play when that game play itself decides C's fate. It can otherwise be context for play, which might be impinged by any information players have about that as they play.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This pre-ordaining outcomes is an interesting topic.

The conclusion in the ToD Adventure Path is a series of encounters at the Well of Dragons including the final encounter where the party attempt to stop the Red Wizards and Severin from completing the ritual to summon Tiamat. Failure to stop the ritual sees the party facing off against Tiamat. The entire thing is railroaded but with no mechanical weight for the PCs arriving early or late or who their allies are - there is no timeline.

Well I put a Clock on this last chapter in the Adventure Path, whereby its purpose is to determine the adjustment to the Encounter Budget for those final planned Encounters.
i.e. the later they arrive (according to a randomised date), the greater my budget to stack enemies at the Well of Dragons.
Therefore the PCs will always arrive "on time" for the summoning of Tiamat i.e. always the most exciting moment as intended.

I made it all player-facing.

EDIT: I suppose one could use the result of Fail Forwards to do the same thing that I'm doing. The longer they adventure and delay their arrival at the Well of Dragons, they risk increasing the number of Fail Forward rolls they make. The DM could provide mechanical weight to those Fail Forwards and therefore calculate how it would affect them negatively in the AP's last chapter.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Add to the list another

Situation E -- C is alive at the start and at the outset GM rolls to decide the number of rounds until C is sacrificed. GM does not look at or reveal that roll until our H's reach C. The mechanic is set up so that there is a chance but not a certainty that our H's can reach C before they've been sacrificed. Thus, on some occasions the roll decides that C is sacrificed before our H's could possibly get to them... but that is not know to anyone at the table until the end.​

​

It seems C's survival can only the subject of game play when that game play itself decides C's fate. It can otherwise be context for play, which might be impinged by any information players have about that as they play.

Well, if I may, there are two unanswered questions here, and a subsequent slightly different conception of this same thing to see if we're paying too much attention to the upholstery without paying attention to the engine, metaphorically speaking.

Question 1: Does the player know that the amount of time they have to respond to the problem is randomly determined?

If the player doesn't even know that much, then they're going to do a lot of things that they probably wouldn't with that knowledge, and finding out afterward...well. I can't imagine I would be particularly enthused to find that out after I'd already blown resources and done other such things only to learn that the result was genuinely decided before I ever began. (And, for anyone who might respond such, yes I know real life has lots of stuff like that, but that specific part of real life is one of the things games are generally designed in opposition to, namely, designed such that you legitimately have a shot, even if it's a slim one.)

Question 2: Assuming the player does know it's random, is the random roll made such that H knows success was always at least possible, regardless of what was rolled? That is, if the absolute bare minimum rounds needed to climb the cliff is (say) 2, does the player know that that's also the minimum roll on how long until C is sacrificed?

I ask this question because if you don't know that, then that means you're taking a risk, probably a pretty sizable one, that it literally doesn't matter what you do or how you play, you're going to fail at your goal. That would seem to be pretty damaging to the gameplay of the situation.

Now, for my re-contextualization of this situation. Specifically, I'm removing the roleplay portion, and reducing this to just the gameplay elements. So, we have a setup where:

• There is a dealer/croupier/organizer/whatever
• There is a player
• The player's goal is to roll (draw cards, spin the roulette wheel, whatever) to meet or beat a known total within a limit of attempts
• The limit is unknown to both the player and the dealer/croupier/etc., generated by a random source (e.g. dice, cards, whatever)
• The player may pony up additional stake, which the house collects regardless of the result, but which could help them reach the total
• The player's efforts end when they have exhausted their resources or reached the total, whichever comes first
• Only after the player reaches the total will the random time limit be revealed
• If the player's number of rounds spent is less than or equal to the limit, the player wins; otherwise, they lose

That....doesn't sound like it has much "gameplay" at all. Sure, you can do various things, you can spend resources etc., but because the dice decided the limit in advance, a goodly portion of the time you're either simply SOL because the limit was too low to matter, or your success was always guaranteed because the limit was so high it no longer mattered. And the whole time, you have only a very limited idea of how tense things are.

It's like being in a "race" where the finish line is actually invisible to the players, and nobody knows how long the race is. That's not much of a race anymore, and looks a lot more like a mere guessing game.

 

[clearstream]

This pre-ordaining outcomes is an interesting topic.

The conclusion in the ToD Adventure Path is a series of encounters at the Well of Dragons including the final encounter where the party attempt to stop the Red Wizards and Severin from completing the ritual to summon Tiamat. Failure to stop the ritual sees the party facing off against Tiamat. The entire thing is railroaded but with no mechanical weight for the PCs arriving early or late or who their allies are - there is no timeline.

Well I put a Clock on this last chapter in the Adventure Path, whereby its purpose is to determine the adjustment to the Encounter Budget for those final planned Encounters.
i.e. the later they arrive (according to a randomised date), the greater my budget to stack enemies at the Well of Dragons.
Therefore the PCs will always arrive "on time" for the summoning of Tiamat i.e. always the most exciting moment as intended.

Yes, that is a real play example of my "Situation D": players are guaranteed to reach the summoning in time, so reaching the summoning in time cannot be a subject of game play. It's context for game play.

Does "according to a randomised date" mean that the budget to stack enemies is effectively randomised? Of is the lateness of players arriving something that their game play along the way to getting there decides?

I made it all player-facing.

Did players knowing they couldn't fail to get to the summoning on time affect their game play in any way? (This interacts with my question above.)

EDIT: I suppose one could use the result of Fail Forwards to do the same thing that I'm doing. The longer they adventure and delay their arrival at the Well of Dragons, they risk increasing the number of Fail Forward rolls they make. The DM could provide mechanical weight to those Fail Forwards and therefore calculate how it would affect them negatively in the AP's last chapter.

Exactly! This is the case where C's survival / budget for enemies is properly a subject of game play. I didn't write a separate situation for it as it'd been covered, but

Situation F -- C is alive at the start and the results of player actions on their way to C will decide if C is sacrificed before they get there.​

Variants of F include whether players know 1:1 the weight of their results in the scale, or if GM further processes them somehow (as I believe you imply.) I think game play is normally taken to be an intentional activity, so that what players know could change how this F interpreted. I'll sketch one case to explain this

Situation F' -- C is alive at the start and the results of player actions on their way to C will decide if C is sacrificed before they get there. However, players have no information as to which actions will have such results (including lacking observations to infer that from.)
​

In F', C's survival isn't really a subject of game play even though it's decided by player actions, because players can't form any gameful intentions toward it. One difference between GM-decides and mechanics-decide is that which may be drawn between "playfulness" and "gamefulness". To the extent that GM's heuristic is not wholly known to players, they can engage with it playfully but not gamefully. The better the heuristic is known (including the less it is fluid), the more they can engage with it gamefully. Your clock seems like an example of a GM fixing and externalising their heuristic so that it can become a subject of game play.

 

[FrogReaver]

And I think we probably both agree that's a very rare situation.


Very much a jerk move, because it's entirely GM fiat. They have no ability to do anything about it.


No more than any other adventure. The PCs can attempt to fight against a rival (either physically, socially, or legally), fight the monsters, or cleanse the land. They can't do anything about a war you decided was going on way over there that cut off their supply. At best, they have to hope you're willing to let them know of another distributor--and if you decided to cut them off in the first place, then that would be either highly unlikely or you railroading them into dealing with someone else of your choosing.


Well, that's definitely where I'd leave the game. It would feel that the GM doesn't care about the characters.

I’ve never understood this and it’s from 2 perspectives.

1. You advocate for a technique where any 1 of hundreds of die rolls could just as easily allow the DM to create the consequence of ‘your supply is cut off’.

Can you explain why you are okay with that but not a GM generating similar fiction absent a fail forward consequence?

2. Why would this be a jerk move if the players have aprior agreed to the move in order to play a specific game. Something I’m sure @Lanefan’s players have done.

 

[AlViking]

So what? I consider myself a fairly traditionally-minded GM, but I don't play or own D&D 5.5 and disagree with its stated design philosophies.

It's also taken out of context for what it's worth. On the other hand if I join a campaign and the DM is clear that it's a module or a linear campaign, I don't expect a sandbox.

 

[clearstream]

Well, if I may, there are two unanswered questions here, and a subsequent slightly different conception of this same thing to see if we're paying too much attention to the upholstery without paying attention to the engine, metaphorically speaking.

Question 1: Does the player know that the amount of time they have to respond to the problem is randomly determined?

If the player doesn't even know that much, then they're going to do a lot of things that they probably wouldn't with that knowledge, and finding out afterward...well. I can't imagine I would be particularly enthused to find that out after I'd already blown resources and done other such things only to learn that the result was genuinely decided before I ever began. (And, for anyone who might respond such, yes I know real life has lots of stuff like that, but that specific part of real life is one of the things games are generally designed in opposition to, namely, designed such that you legitimately have a shot, even if it's a slim one.)

Question 2: Assuming the player does know it's random, is the random roll made such that H knows success was always at least possible, regardless of what was rolled? That is, if the absolute bare minimum rounds needed to climb the cliff is (say) 2, does the player know that that's also the minimum roll on how long until C is sacrificed?

I ask this question because if you don't know that, then that means you're taking a risk, probably a pretty sizable one, that it literally doesn't matter what you do or how you play, you're going to fail at your goal. That would seem to be pretty damaging to the gameplay of the situation.

Now, for my re-contextualization of this situation. Specifically, I'm removing the roleplay portion, and reducing this to just the gameplay elements. So, we have a setup where:

• There is a dealer/croupier/organizer/whatever
• There is a player
• The player's goal is to roll (draw cards, spin the roulette wheel, whatever) to meet or beat a known total within a limit of attempts
• The limit is unknown to both the player and the dealer/croupier/etc., generated by a random source (e.g. dice, cards, whatever)
• The player may pony up additional stake, which the house collects regardless of the result, but which could help them reach the total
• The player's efforts end when they have exhausted their resources or reached the total, whichever comes first
• Only after the player reaches the total will the random time limit be revealed
• If the player's number of rounds spent is less than or equal to the limit, the player wins; otherwise, they lose

That....doesn't sound like it has much "gameplay" at all. Sure, you can do various things, you can spend resources etc., but because the dice decided the limit in advance, a goodly portion of the time you're either simply SOL because the limit was too low to matter, or your success was always guaranteed because the limit was so high it no longer mattered. And the whole time, you have only a very limited idea of how tense things are.

It's like being in a "race" where the finish line is actually invisible to the players, and nobody knows how long the race is. That's not much of a race anymore, and looks a lot more like a mere guessing game.

To my reading your discussion touches on many of the relevant aspects. Hopefully we can agree that games of chance and those with hidden information are properly counted among what we mean by games.

There can be fair and unfair versions of your game. In fair versions, players know what range the limit can fall within and its expected distribution over that range, and same for their rolls. Skilled play means "playing the odds" i.e. ponying up every time doing so will most likely mean success. In a fair game the payout fairly compensates for the odds so that the odds themselves are not at issue, but rather player's ability to calculate and respond to them.

I think the consequences of that are different from what you propose. If it's indeed a "mere guessing game" that implies you are discussing an unfair version of your game, because sharing even partial information can still lead to valid game play. It just means that player ability to work with probabilities and hidden information becomes part of the skill of play.

Examples of this sort of thing are sometimes seen in skirmish minigames when the outcome is tight. A player (Jo, say) has a choice to retreat saving their own skin, or make an attack roll against a heavily wounded final opponent. Unfortunately Jo is also heavily wounded and the attack back could be a killer. When should Jo stand their ground? Players can make both playful and gameful decisions about that.