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

[hawkeyefan]

Because it's a wizard's tower and the first floor is for entertaining guests, not living. Remember, it's her, the apprentice and the wizard.

Yes. That's exactly what I said. Early MORNING, not middle of the night. Waking up at 4 or 5am should be sufficient for all of that.

It doesn't work because I would have to re-write the fictional reality to accommodate the changes to the structure of the tower and alter the memories of all the inhabitants.

You may not pre-establish stuff, but I do and that stuff isn't going to be altered by a pick lock roll.

Wizard’s tower? I don’t know where that came from. I’ve been talking about the example that was linked with the cook and the kitchen.

 

[Hussar]

It's not quantum. It's entirely irrelevant whether or not it's quantum to me. Once the encounter is established, it can't be quantum to the PCs. The monster is established to be in a very specific area.

So, if the PC's didn't go to that exact location, that random encounter would not happen?

 

[Hussar]

Wizard’s tower? I don’t know where that came from. I’ve been talking about the example that was linked with the cook and the kitchen.

No, you're playing the game wrong. When your argument gets shown to be without merit, instead of accepting that your argument was without merit, you simply change the example. Thus we go from "it's not quantum" to "I don't care if it's quantum".

Thus the exhausting element of these discussions.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In my experience, it almost never plays out that way. More likely it will go something like...
<snip>
While I have been in a few games over the years where we were blindsided by things we didn't know about and made what we were trying to do a failure, those were much rarer than something along the lines of the above.

Whether it is like that or not in-play is not necessarily relevant. Someone, upthread, used a specific example from earlier (the "save a person at the top of the cliff") to examine different gradations of "gameplay" in a situation. I was simply providing additional descriptive examples, showing how this described by another user situation, of [you have an unknown time limit that could render all your efforts meaningless], would be quite liable to inducing a less-than-desirable experience for a goodly chunk of people, even those who might otherwise very much enjoy a sandbox-y game.

I mean, the game is about enjoying the roleplaying and even if the result was failure over something we didn't know, we still had fun making the attempt and roleplaying things out. That's far from pointless, let alone actually harmful(which seems like hyperbole to me).

Roleplaying is one component of the experience, yes, I agree--but it is one component, not the ONLY component. That doesn't mean it's in any way lesser--indeed, I very much believe it shares first place, tied with the other primary component. That being, y'know, gameplay. It can, I agree, be fun to roleplay through a situation where you end up losing, and one reason to include the dice is to allow for degrees of success or failure over the course of a complicated process (like a "quest", understood in the "traditional GM" perspective, e.g. the party wants to find the cure for the king's infertility to claim the huge reward.)

But let us not pretend that the fact that the roleplay can be really good thus means it never ever feels pretty awful to fail on something in the game that you cared about a lot. Even for folks who have a negative attitude toward mechanics overall (something I find lamentably common on this board), loss will still sometimes genuinely sting--and if it was in a moment that really mattered to you, it'll sting all the more. Now imagine if you felt such a sting...not because you made any mistakes, nor because you failed to account for all of the information you could possibly know...but simply because dice decided you had already 100% guaranteed lost before you even started. I believe it was @clearstream who wanted to analyze this concept further to tease out possible nuance.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As you say, radiation works that way, and I would value that setting logic more than the "thrill" to which you refer. In response to your desire for drama though, a sure death through radiation really puts a doom clock on your activities, providing a strong motivation to tie up loose ends.

Okay...but the point was that you could not EVEN IN THEORY know that you'd gotten too much. There is no rhyme nor reason to who lasts, say, X/2 amount of time, and who lasts X amount of time. Totally, completely random, in a way that even the GM does not know.

Like that's the key sticking point here. That's NOT how radiation works. Yes, there are subtle differences between two people so that even two who get identical doses, some will live and some will die. But it ain't "completely random with equal likelihood of death at any number of <time units> between 2 and 11" or what-have-you.

And yet that's the kind of consequence that (again, IIRC) clearstream wanted to examine, poke at, see what comes out. A situation where the GM has rolled but does not know the time limit, so that you might THINK yourself still fine at 5 rounds, but you're already 3 rounds too deep into "definitely 100% dead and don't know it" territory.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

All of those things could happen, and they don't lessen the experience of the campaign and the journey to me.

Wheras for me, having my efforts snatched away from me even the one time would be a pretty serious party foul, and having it happen twice would be "something better change or I'm out and I'm going to try to convince as many people as I can to go with me."

Like I genuinely consider this a MASSIVELY not-okay thing, and I don't really understand how it can be parsed as completely in keeping with the so-called "traditional GM" approach to play.

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.

Well, all I can say is, I would have no interest in participating in that. Negative interest, in fact. I don't like CVC combat.

But entirely apart from that: What if your character had won, only to realize that a random rat had already consumed the artifact on the second round without anyone noticing?

Would that not dampen your enjoyment of that experience, at least a little?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

My understanding was that the only reason Lanefan brought it up was to say, basically, "yeah, this really did have rules, and this is what those rules were." Hence why I have referred to it as "showing your work" or similar phrases. It's a demonstration of the rules-boundness of the GM; yes, the GM may make rules, but once they're made they don't change, even if the GM might like them to.

 

[AnotherGuy]

You know you've reached quality discussion when we are arguing about the location of the imaginary cook's quarters in the imaginary wizard's tower in relation to a possible Fail Forward example.

Fiction first right.

 

[Enrahim]

It turns out that there are a lot of different types of “quantum” at play in RPGs. I think it might be good for conversation to have a taxonomy of them. So here goes.

Our situation is that last session it became clear that in the next session the group is planning to move through a forest using one of the two well known paths (A and B), but they have not yet decided which. This forest is known for having a particularly ferocious Ogre roaming it. What are possible approaches to decide if the group encounters it as they move through the forest?

1: The classic locally deterministic quantum: Once the players commit to a path, the Ogre appears on that path.
2: The local evenly random quantum: Once the players commit to the path, the GM flip a coin to see if the Ogre is on that path.
3: The global evenly random quantum: Once the players commit to the path, the GM flip a coin to see which path the Ogre is currently guarding.
4: The local uneven random quantum: Once the players commit to the path, the GM rolls D20. If the players chose path A the Ogre is there on a 5 or lower, if they chose path B the ogre is there on a 15 or lower.
5: The global uneven random quantum: Once the players commit to the path, the GM rolls D20. If the result is 5 or lower, the ogre is on path A, otherwise it is on path B.
6: The oversaturated local random quantum: Once the players commit to the path, the GM rolls D20. If they chose path A the Ogre is on the path on a 15 or lower. If they chose path B the ogre is on the path on a 10 or lower.
7: The weirdly entangled local quantum: If a character is declared to “be alert” while moving through the forest, the player rolls a D20. On a 6 or higher the Ogre is on the path. If no one makes such a declaration it is not on the path.
8: The ultra local random quantum: While the party is traveling through the forest, roll D6 every hour. On a 1 they encounter the ogre.
9: The even random stocking: Before the session the GM flip a coin to determine which path the Ogre is on.
10: The uneven random stocking: Before the session the GM roll D20. On a 5 or less the Ogre is on path A, otherwise it is on path B.
11: The deterministic stocking: Before the session the GM decides where the ogre is.
and as a bonus
12: The anticlimax: There is no Ogre to encounter, as the last party passing through already has slain it, and its remains have been consumed by forest beings.

Which of these do you find acceptable? Which are unacceptable? Why?
I have quite a few thoughts about this myself, but I guess this post is long enough as is.

 

[TwoSix]

Way to tell people they don't GM hard enough for your liking.

Coming up with a narration for why a cook might be in the kitchen of a manor house late at night doesn’t require some exceptional DMing. At best, it requires you to be vaguely familiar with some medieval fantasy tropes.