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

[Maxperson]

All of that checks out for me. I followed that exact procedure a few days ago while prepping for my Thursday A5e game.

I find it far better to roll the wandering monsters in advance, because if there is one then I can figure out how best to fit that encounter into the fiction seamlessly and realistically. It also generally makes for a more enjoyable encounter for everyone, since it's not rushed.

 

[TwoSix]

But it isn't perfect imo because the existence of the cook is still predicated on failure. In this case, if the players succeeded and then entered the adjacent rooms, they would not find a cook.

I mean, if your requirement is that NPCs are always pregenerated into a fictional space beforehand, than any mechanic that doesn't assume that is going to be flawed from that perspective.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes. I'm looking at the moment of the picking of the lock and opening the door to the kitchen. In that moment in one method the cook is there or not there determined by a roll, and in the other method the cook is pre-established to be there or not and the roll to open doesn't matter.

Yea. I think the keyword there is 'in that moment'. Though I do think it's interesting that it still occurs for the DM.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Which is fine if the lockpick fails and they decide to bust the door down. But picking a lock? That's not loud. It also doesn't matter whether or not the check is successful - it might actually be less noisy if they fail because if it's a deadbolt type lock the deadbolt isn't sliding.

There might be any number of reasons why a failed roll to pick a lock might be heard by someone in the room next to the kitchen.

You’re choosing to conclude that it wouldn’t be heard, to the extent that you’re arguing that a failure would be less noisy because it MIGHT be a deadbolt.

If you are actively looking for reasons why an example might fail, you’ll never find reasons why it will succeed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, that's fair. I was mostly trying to create an example that was distinct from the "save my friend about to be sacrificed" thing, that would still demonstrate a similar experience of "wait so all that hard work I did was for nothing the entire time???" feeling that, even if it wouldn't be felt by everyone, would still be a pretty likely stumbling block for at least someone in most gaming groups.

Other possible examples:

• Questing to get resources to save the kingdom from an invasion, but the actual amount of time until the invasion arrives is variable and could be far less than would ever be enough to complete the original quest, making the effort look pointless and unnecessarily punitive
• Trying to get the cure (or curse-breaker or exorcism tool or what-have-you) for an ally NPC, only to return home (successful or not) to find out that they've been dead/corrupted/whatever for most of that time
• Competing with a rival or an antagonist in something that has at least a significant (if not absolute) element of skill, e.g. some kind of game of strategy even if it includes some random elements, only to learn that you had to have beaten them within a tiny number of rounds, otherwise whatever you were competing for is lost to you anyway
• Engaging in a negotiation process to acquire something valuable, only to learn that the negotiator you were working with hadn't been informed that the purchase was already completed by someone else on the second day (or w/e)

More or less, just...things where it's possible to be already a "loser" when you think you're still participating, and thus every choice made after that hard-coded (even if randomly-determined) result was completely pointless and possibly outright harmful.

All of those things could happen, and they don't lessen the experience of the campaign and the journey to me. I was part of a magnificent campaign that cumulated in a brawl between the PCs and their alternative universe counterparts, and then between the OCs themselves, for control of an artifact that could change the fundamental laws of the universe. My PC, a necromancer bent on world domination, got very close to defeating the others but was defeated by the unforseen consequences of his own wicked actions from several sessions previous. In the end another PC won the challenge and the rest of us died, but we all had an amazing time and count that among the best gaming experiences of our careers.

 

[FrogReaver]

I mean, if your requirement is that NPCs are always pregenerated into a fictional space beforehand, than any mechanic that doesn't assume that is going to be flawed from that perspective.

I mean that's essentially what the complaint boils down to. The cook isn't pregenerated and that lack of pregeneration impacts play in these ways, some good and some bad. The complaint obviously focuses on the bad.

 

[AlViking]

That's why it's a playstyle choice. Some folks have no issue with it and want to play that way. Some folks don't. And as I've pointed out, fail forward never has to include success at the task at hand. Only that the STORY moves forward.

In one of the examples given, the rogue failed to open the lock, but an alarm spell/trap went off and now the player has to decide what to do next based on people waking up and coming to look to see what's happening. Is what's inside important enough that you try again and see if you can take it by force? Do you run your rear off immediately to avoid guards or witnesses? What do you do?

Of course it's all preference and what kind of game you're running. I don't care for narrative games and prefer a more simulationist approach. I want the result of any attempted action to be self-contained and any consequences to be directly tied to the action itself. Because I'm not a story-teller when I'm DMing, I'm facilitating play.

Which is all it really goes back to. The GM decides that because it works better for a story to open the lock it happens, but because it was a failure there has to be a cost. My preference is that if the check to open the lock doesn't work the door is still locked and now the characters face a different set of challenges because the easy way in didn't work.

Neither is right or wrong. Whether we find some ex post facto justification for the cook based on the failure or nothing happens so the players have to try something else, the game doesn't come to a halt in either case. The latter just works better for me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

More the point was that "showing your work", as it were, exclusively after "your work" no longer communicates anything, won't really affect the trust-o-meter. It won't hurt, or at least it shouldn't if the players are reasonable. But nothing is really gained or sustained in the trust department by only revealing mechanics after they've become irrelevant.

Conversely, there would be a significant potential for gain if you show the work while that work is still relevant, because then the players can see you playing by the rules you've set. It isn't perfect, paranoia can always find an excuse of course, but at least for me I would very much appreciate that gesture, whereas I really wouldn't feel much of anything (except mild curiosity) if shown a mechanic when it's been reduced to pure novelty information.


Well, I don't genrally make that kind of assumption unless there's a reason to. But even if we grant that? Probably would tell them at least the general outline after the end of their first (or second, if it seems like there will be more than two) encounter. Doesn't have to be specific numbers, just descriptive stuff. Generally, I'd try to choose effects that would leave reasonable evidence behind, e.g. something that burns leaving scorch marks where it fell, something that induces sleep having the sound of a lullaby, etc. Something beneficial might have the sound of a battle theme or feel like the gentle warmth of a campfire or the like, depending on what the effect is.

The way I see it, while learning about an obstacle is interesting up to a point, making smart decisions about information you do in fact have is almost always interesting. By informing the players while it still matters (even if it's not 100% guaranteed to be of significant importance), I'm giving them that chance to make informed decisions and even try to manipulate the situation in their favor (e.g. perhaps they come back with mirrors in the hope that they can reflect a color-flash at an enemy!) Further, that way, choices good and bad are squarely and obviously theirs.


Sure, but it doesn't then mean very much if you wait only until after the unusual thing is unequivocally never going to show up again. Further, plenty of unusual things can still be understood pretty well even without needing to be an expert on it first. A watering fountain would probably be mystifying to a neanderthal at first, but a little experimentation would have probably made him comfortable with it quickly. I find many PCs are in a similar boat, even if they don't know the precise theory they pick up the core essentials easily enough.


Ah. See, I thought this was "the players DID investigate and experiment, didn't learn anything, then the whole area was erased/destroyed and only then did I tell them the mechanics." Also it's now sounding like this was a singular event? Like they only interacted with that gem the one single time and then nothing else? I was under the impression that they had seen it and even limitedly/distantly interacted with it (e.g. not in the room itself), but despite multiple encounters nothing was really learned until after no more encounters could ever happen.

I assumed the whole reason to bring it up after the fact was to satisfy player curiosity. Otherwise I don't believe @Lanefan had any issue with how it went down.

 

[Maxperson]

Yea. I think the keyword there is 'in that moment'. Though I do think it's interesting that it still occurs for the DM.

Yeah. I've never really thought about it like that, but for the DM all possibilities are there until one of them is selected(chosen or random) and then the others disappear. From the moment the DM starts building a setting or adventure it's like that.

For the players, though, it's rarely quantum, though that does happen. I can't think of everything and sometimes the players inquire about something I hadn't thought of, but might or might not be present. Sometimes I roll on the spot to see, sometimes I let them roll if it's important. In the fiction that thing will have been there or been absent all along, but in the game play it really didn't exist until then because I hadn't considered it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not going to argue with that for any edition; though the targets of criticism will be different in each.

Thing is, what some people criticize about D&D can be the same thing(s) that other people see as its strength(s).

An example from this thread: the task-based resolution that D&D uses has been (pardon the pun but I can't resist) taken to task now and then in here, yet I see it as a strength: if you deal with resolving the individual tasks as they arise, one way or another the overarching goal will very likely take care of resolving itself.

If-when I look at other RPGs, I'm always looking at them from the stance of "What's this game got, that's better than what I already have, that I can port into my existing system?".

I don't mind the idea of fail-forward as long as it doesn't turn the outcome of the root task from a failure into a success. Every task has an immediate and obvious goal attached (e.g. reach the cliff top, open the lock, get across the chasm, find a curative herb), where 'success' on the roll means you achieved that immediate goal and 'fail' means you did not.

The success-fail result of the roll itself with regard to that root-task goal should IMO be sacrosanct. After that you can toss in complications on a narrowly-made success roll or maybe-beneficial consequences on a marrowly missed 'fail' roll. An example of the latter might be that when trying to climb the cliff, a narrow fail could mean that while you're still nowhere near the top and aren't going to get there, partway up you've stumbled onto a cleft or cave that can't be seen from the bottom...maybe there's something useful in there, or dangerous, or nothing?

If the underlying (and unspoken) idea is to just have them succeed at the root task more often, lower the DC (or system equivalent).

What if we called it, "success with complications" instead of "fail-forward"? That would remove the issue with failure being success, and also also for more than two states of play after the dice are rolled.