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

[TwoSix]

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.

For sure. The bulk of the issue is that a large subset of players don't like the idea that the GM is just "making things up"; they don't want to see any sort of narrative "contrivance". They want to imagine the setting exists outside of the shared playspace at the table.

Techniques that let the table see the sausage being made, as it were, and that the setting is just the GM imagining things aren't appreciated. The pain of the "quantum cook" is being reminded that the GM is just making stuff up.

 

[The Firebird]

Same thing that happens if a trad GM rolls on a table and no encounter (or a different encounter) happens. The cook was elsewhere.

It's not the same because the cooks location
does not depend on the players lockpicking skill.

 

[AlViking]

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.

::sigh:: Missing the point. I'm not looking for a reason for the cook to be there or not. I'm saying that when I DM I limit the result of a failure to what makes sense in the context of the action taken. Picking a lock makes as much noise as opening the door with a key, someone would need to be practically adjacent to hear it. How do you think it works?

If the character breaks a window because they can't open the lock, the noise of breaking glass may wake someone up. The in-world fictional result follows the action taken.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

One critique of your preference would be that if a player wanted to stealthily pick a lock, find the map in the house and get out without being seen that could easily be 4+ skill checks. An initial stealth check on entering. A lockpick check. An investigation check. A stealth check on the exit. I know from a probabilistic perspective that you've just plummeted the characters chances for full success. I'm also sure we could think of other checks to throw in there. I doubt you keep adding checks in actual play because of the probability for failure issue. Which means that you simply choose to elide certain checks, meaning anything you elided is no longer a possible failure state in the fiction. In some sense, picking the cost after a single failed check is more fair and leaves more of the possibilities on the table than your method. One major downside of the single roll and choose method (aka 'fail forward') being character bonuses aren't as straightforward to factor in IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

GM: mechanically the loud sound of knock emanates from its target, and seeing as the spell can be cast from outside the area covered by silence the wizard's plan should work. There is no passing of the verbal component into the area covered, that's erroneous.

But is your point more to contrast fiat mechanics like spells with rolled mechanics like rogue lock picking, as a commentary and possible criticism of fail-forward?

I just thought it was a funny story that portrayed Narrativist GMs as being as tyrannical as some posters seem to think traditional-leaning GMs to be.

 

[The Firebird]

For sure. The bulk of the issue is that a large subset of players don't like the idea that the GM is just "making things up"; they don't want to see any sort of narrative "contrivance". They want to imagine the setting exists outside of the shared playspace at the table.

Techniques that let the table see the sausage being made, as it were, and that the setting is just the GM imagining things aren't appreciated. The pain of the "quantum cook" is being reminded that the GM is just making stuff up.

This is not a correct criticism of my position. I don't mind that the DM is making things up. I mind if they do so in a manner which prevents my choices from being meaningful.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

What you seem to be ignoring, and I don't know why, is that fail forward does not have to open the lock. Short of a specific RPG making a rule where it does always have to open the lock like the one mentioned upthread, fail forward could be guards walking around the corner, or someone from across the street shouting down from a window, "You there! What are you doing?!" or any number of other things that get the story moving and don't involve successfully unlocking the lock.

That different set of challenges you mention could be considered fail forward, depending on what they are.

 

[FrogReaver]

For sure. The bulk of the issue is that a large subset of players don't like the idea that the GM is just "making things up"; they don't want to see any sort of narrative "contrivance". They want to imagine the setting exists outside of the shared playspace at the table.

And it actually does! Because the DM put the work in outside the playspace at the table.

Techniques that let the table see the sausage being made, as it were, and that the setting is just the GM imagining things aren't appreciated. The pain of the "quantum cook" is being reminded that the GM is just making stuff up.

I think it's silly to assert that in a game where everyone makes up everything that being reminded the GM is making stuff up would ever be an issue. Obviously something else is going on here. It's about how that stuff is being made up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is this a potential loophole in your approach?
Player: "I try to stay unnoticed when entering the house"
GM: "Ok, how?"
Player: "By picking the lock rather than breaking down the crude bamboo door"
GM: "Fine, roll me a thief tools check".
Would a valid interpretation of a failure here be that the PC enters the house, but is noticed in the process? Mind you, I do not ask what your initial gut reaction. It is more like if there are circumstances where you could see yourself narrating a noisy entry. For instance if the act of entering the house itself isn't particularly challenging (there are windows, back doors, and a gaping hole in the roof under repair), so the only thing really interesting is how the house is entered.

I have literally never had a player request a roll in that sideways manner. If someone says they want to do something that contains uncertainty, I ask them to roll for that thing. The only real debate is what the roll should have added to the total (often a point of contention where the player tries to justify the biggest bonus).

 

[Umbran]

....a sure death through radiation really puts a doom clock on your activities, providing a strong motivation to tie up loose ends.

If you can wrap them up from a hospital bed, sure. Lethal radiation exposure doesn't leave you walking around fine until you drop dead. It gives you radiation sickness that keeps getting worse until you die.