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

[The Firebird]

When talking about fiction-first games the fiction refers to the shared/established fictional situation the table has agreed upon. It does not include the conceptions that the GM and other players might have about the setting or their characters. Because those conceptions are not meant to be binding on play - things not revealed on screen are not meant to be binding or held on to by any participant. This is a fundamental part of the overall structure of play that needs to be understood.

This is a good description of the difference. I want to feel like things I don't know matter and have weight, because it amplifies the feeling of discovery. But I think this is a valid playstyle too.

 

[clearstream]

In the scenario I describe above? Where the paladin rolls a 1 and as a result determined by his GM, he falls to his death?

Yeah, I'd like to see that described as something other than comedy too.

Numerous people die every day of accidental causes. That doesn't seem comedic to me. It speaks to the plain tragedy of mortal existence, where we don't always get to script a dramatically satisfying end for ourselves. In that, it strikes far closer to home -- it's far more like something one could actually experience -- than the pictured heroic encounter at the top of the cliff.

I'm not saying it should seem that way to you too, nor that it's what I'm always looking for in play; only to suggest that my criticisms should withstand the most charitable take, not the least.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And this, right here, is one of the things I find extremely frustrating about discussing game design.

Note your comparison: literature. As in, you treat this as a purely creative enterprise, something that can only be critiqued in a very limited way and where analysis is (functionally) "whatever you think is true".

This completely and totally ignores the technical element of game design. There's a reason I make comparisons to things like baking, or things like automotive design. A car's design has huge influence from aesthetics and subjective value--as anyone that loves cars could tell you, and as anyone who has specific needs for what their car does. But if you design an engine that is fundamentally tearing itself apart under normal operation, that should be worthy of criticism.

Instead, it is held up as the pinnacle of awesome design, because apparently expecting every driver to also be a mechanic is a good thing.

I never said my preference is the pinnacle of awesome design, but it is my favorite of the various options, and my car drives just fine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure.

But the core point remains: even from the very foundation of the hobby, even from the moment that what most folks see as the highest height of ultra-realism, generally-respected folks recognized that overly-laborious focus on realism wasn't actually productive. That there are, in fact, times when it is NOT correct to choose greater realism and damn the consequences. That, even to people who prize realism extremely highly, it is NOT universally better to maximize realism absolutely every single time. It didn't come from some yahoo nobody knows. It didn't come from "storytelling" games. It didn't come from a newfangled thing that can be dismissed because it's just a fad. It can't be written off as merely an isolated separate preference totally unrelated to sandbox-y play or "traditional GM" games, because this was very specifically in a context everyone agrees is unequivocally sandbox-y play by the man who defined what "traditional GM" meant.

There have been many arguments, here and elsewhere, where folks have presented the thesis, often in different words, that if you have a choice where option A is more realistic and option B is less realistic, it is ALWAYS, 100% of the time, regardless of context or cost, absolutely always best to choose A, no matter what A or B might be, because A is more realistic and B is less. It is useful to me, to point to something that has none of the characteristics used to casually dismiss my arguments.

It is a useful way to show people that realism is not a cost-free choice, and that sometimes, the cost can be too high.

I think I accepted this point a while back.

 

[Enrahim]

It's...hard to make a comparison because, at least with the game I'm familiar with, that first answer would have to flow from some action on the players' part, and the Rogue's "I...attempt to pick it" is...not ideal? That is, I would expect a more in-fiction statement about the actions involved. Something like this:

Spoiler

GM: You arrive at the edge of Rookwood Manor, its gloomy gables looming off in the distance. Mantling the hedge wasn't that hard. Of course, Lilia knew the dogs that guard this area were going to be out sick tonight, so someone else wouldn't have found it quite so easy. The grounds are dark and quiet as you pass through. What do you do?
Lilia: I'm keeping my eyes sharp. Watching for any sign of light in the house, checking for a side entrance, that sort of thing. I've got hours to burn, so I take my time checking brick by brick and plank by plank.
GM: Alright, sounds like Discern Realities.
Lilia: ...well, a 9 isn't TOO bad. Let's see..."What here is useful or valuable to me?"
GM: "There is, in fact, a side entrance just as you expected--but, as you also also expected, it's locked."
Lilia: Ahh, my trusty lockpicks. I expect a servant's entrance to have a sturdy but no-nonsense lock--the kind that people trust rather more than they should, just 'cause a shim won't cut it. Picks out, I'm feeling through the tumblers, really romancing it.
GM: Well, you know what you need to do! Remember the +1 forward.
Lilia: ...oh damn, that was almost snake eyes. Thank goodness for that +1!
GM: Alright, here's the deal. Despite expecting nobody to be in the house at this hour, someone clearly IS there, and you can hear them as you're picking. Sounds like the cook might be preparing something for Mr. Rookwood's breakfast in the morning. You thought you had all the time in the world, but now you know you don't. You can get through this lock right now if you use force instead of finesse...but you're going to break something if you do. Either the lock, or the lockpick.
Lilia: ...I can't afford to leave an obvious calling card THIS early. I'll sacrifice the pick to get through now.
GM: Alright. You can still try to pick locks, but until you can get a replacement, you're working with partially improvised tools. Let's call that -1 ongoing to Tricks of the Trade until you can resupply.

So, here, the failure has nothing to do with whether someone is or isn't there--it's rather in what kind of cost Lilia the Thief is willing to take. There IS someone there, regardless, but they'd be blissfully unaware if the Thief had gotten a full success. With a partial success, they had to accept either "suspicion" (a broken lock is sure to raise concerns that someone has broken in) or cost (breaking the lockpick to get through; which here, this GM went with a relatively gentle cost that might snowball many times over, but it could just be "you can't pick locks until you buy new lockpicks" if they preferred.)

Beyond the very flowery language, what is the key difference between your example and the exchange you replied to? I do not see any mention of the cook before the key roll. Indeed I do not see any thing before that roll that appear to inform the decission about the consequence of that roll? Rather the oposite, as there has been established that the grounds are "dark and quiet" which seem to cause consistency challenges with a cook creating breakfast nearby. The negotiation of consequence/stakes happens after the roll, a phenomenom that I have often experienced in trad play as well (most commonly on a crit)

 

[Micah Sweet]

And how can players distinguish that?


Perhaps. As noted, you are insulated from a lot of things because your group has remained functionally unchanged for decades. Even on this site, which leans older, "traditional", and GM-centric, your experience is quite far from typical. Plenty of players will now have personal experience with GMs that would pull shenanigans like this. That might not affect YOU. But it does affect plenty of people who might want to heed your advice.


No. What I'm saying is, you have not really done anything particularly meaningful or noteworthy by only revealing secrets that are now, functionally, irrelevant. Like finding out after you quit a previous job because you got a better offer, that there were free snacks in the break room that you never knew about, or that all those weird tasks that came down from on high were actually part of a hush-hush government contract all along, and thus there were specific rules for why certain tasks were assigned, or that all the times you got a promotion and someone else didn't (or vice-versa) there were actually well-defined and specific procedures which were sensible, just complicated. Like...you no longer care. It no longer matters why those things were ABC and not XYZ, because...it literally doesn't affect you anymore. Knowing how to advance in a workplace you don't work at (and almost certainly won't work at again) is useless information. It's nice to know that they weren't yanking your chain, but other than letting you know that they weren't doing that, there's nothing really gained from this information.

Again, I'm not saying it's bad, and I definitely didn't say that EVERYTHING FOREVER should be revealed. (It's worth noting, this is an example of inserting an extreme view I never said nor even implied. Folks on the "traditional GM" side of this discussion have been quite prone to call out ascribing extreme views to them. If that's a problem, I'd appreciate that that expectation apply to all.)

What I am saying, is that there's a lot more meaning to communicating the rules, or at least some of the rules, when that information still has a meaningful (NOT guaranteed, just meaningful) chance of mattering. That's a gesture with weight to it, because the rules are public knowledge. A failure to abide by them is visible. As I said (repeatedly), that kind of reveal means you as GM have skin in the game. There's no cost to you, no risk, no weight when you as GM already know that it almost certainly won't ever matter. There is some cost, some risk, some weight if you have good reason to believe it will matter again, even if not right away.

Hence why I said it wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good either. It's null information, because the impact of the reveal is largely null.


Separately from the above: Why does there need to be mystery in it? You say this as though it's axiomatic that every rule should be mysterious until it doesn't matter anymore. This is far from established (to say nothing at all about whether it is even true).

First of all, the players, if they want to know how I arrive at my decisions and don't trust that I'm doing it fairly, they can ask and I'll tell them I have a table upon which I roll.

Second of all, IMO things the players have no reason to know about should be mysterious until that condition of knowledge changes. If it changes in game it should do so for an in-fiction reason.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, we can let him die and ressurrect him later. Your words.

Also a possibility. It's really up to the players what they do. Kinda the whole point, for me at least.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is strawman crap.

Can you imagine a situation where, "the story we've been making together is ruined" is not really the concern at the table? That there are people who have other priorities in their play?

 

[pemerton]

IMO. What would be more helpful would be an example of breaking into the house and what would be the minimum requirements to narrate the cook screaming for help.

Why don't you or someone else run that scenario in the system of your choice and tell us how it goes.

 

[AnotherGuy]

But this of course simply kicks the bias up to a higher plane of abstraction: assigning the odds. Which is already a significant domain of bias anyway.

If you want to go to that level then assigning a DC reflects bias, right?

I'm not sure I follow. You mention "2 techniques" but I only see one: GM deciding what the odds should be. Which, as stated above, is simply putting the GM's bias at the level of odds-deciding rather than outcome-deciding. (And it's not like odds-deciding isn't taking quite a swipe at outcome-deciding either! The two are deeply related.)

I was referring to Fail Forward and Success with a Complication.

Is it "mixing fictions"? I'm not sure I entirely accept that.

Okay, you're welcome to not accept that, but that is how Trad GMs see it which is the entire purpose of my post to reflect how the fiction in a game of Trad D&D leads to the check, how there is no negotiation, no additional stakes, no player-facing mechanics to inform the player of additional fiction, how the rest of the fiction is not involved in that single check.

It's...hard to make a comparison because, at least with the game I'm familiar with, that first answer would have to flow from some action on the players' part, and the Rogue's "I...attempt to pick it" is...not ideal? That is, I would expect a more in-fiction statement about the actions involved.

Thank you for the example. I like it because of the multitude decision points and because of the way the fiction flows.