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

[Maxperson]

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.

Maybe I'm not understanding then. The example I gave was of an unknown time limit that could(not would) render all those efforts null. I won't use the term meaningless, because it can still very much have meaning.

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.

Sure, it can be disappointing to fail. But disappointment doesn't mean that the game is ruined or that the journey was meaningless. The loss of a character, even one that died a heroic death that you chose to engage in, can still genuinely sting.

One of the things I love about roleplaying is that it can generate any emotion, including negative ones like sadness, fear and anger. The game wouldn't feel right to me if all it could do is generate the positive emotions.

 

[Yaarel]

That raises a good question. Is there any way to procedurally generate content that won’t make a traditional oriented player feel like only the rolls matter?

The skills are useful. Say there is a preestablished obstacle that "must" be overcome. There can be more than one way to overcome it. Players describe how they interact with the obstacle. The DM decides "yes-no-maybe". If it seems, yeah, that idea would autowin the obstacle, then done, the obstacle is overcome. If it seems in this situation it would be impossible for that effort to succeed, then no. If maybe, then the DM and players decide which skill proficiencies might apply. Unlike combat mechanics, including spells, the DM has almost total control over resolving skills. For several reasons, the 5e skill system is old school. On a successful skill check, the DM can decide that the skill has overcome an aspect of the obstacle, but other aspects of the obstacle remain, that require the players to make more efforts.

This narrative adjudication style resolves a number of game difficulties, and encourages immersion in the description of the encounter. The emphasis is on player ingenuity, and there can be more than one roll.

 

[AnotherGuy]

That raises a good question. Is there any way to procedurally generate content that won’t make a traditional oriented player feel like only the rolls matter?

That is a worthwhile question for trying to bridge the two playstyles.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, yea? If you want to pre-establish stuff, then fail forward techniques might be less useful because you have less freedom to make up new things.

That’s exactly why I don’t generally pre-establish stuff. Whatever you’re gaining from pre-establishing stuff doesn’t do anything for me.

And we're back to preference. Seriously, is there anyone here who is unclear about the idea being discussed, or all we all just advocating for our point of view? What's the point of that?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Whether you like or not, 4e was as much a traditional D&D game as AD&D or BECMI. Fail-forward is not an optional rule in either DMGs I mentioned: it is DM advice.

As for the rest, you are just stating your previous unsupported point, only with more emphasis. It’s not particularly more convincing.

Disagree. 4e was explicitly less traditional than any official D&D game before or since, both mechanically and in the lore. It wouldn't be so divisive otherwise.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

I've been in those situations several times over the decades. They're pretty rare. That said, 100% of the time the DMs told us, if you are still here in X rounds, your character will die.

If the DM will put PCs into positions like that and not inform the players of the time limit, that needs to be said to them during Session 0. If the players still opt to play in that game, they have agreed to that risk and should be prepared for that to happen at some point.

 

[TwoSix]

I realize I've been shuffled into a 3rd rail, but I don't think that's quite fair. As you pointed out, everyone is fundamentally concerned with making player input matter and presenting novel events and things to interact with.

The precise nature of what "matter" means and the exact restrictions on what novelty is permissable are the underlying conflict. I feel like I'm showing my work on the first point, and everyone else is overindexed on the second.

That, and if I'm taking the fundamentally "gamist" position here, a lot of people have been using the word wrong.

I mean, if I've been reading your posts correctly (and I've been trying!), your core position is to minimize player-DM negotiation over narrative context and positioning to as close to zero as possible, and have every fictional position presented by the DM having obvious mechanical linkages to player-side invokable mechanics. With the goal of every presented fictional position being inherently "solvable" or at least optimizable by some combination of player invokable mechanics (although the players may not have all the tools required because of choices made during earlier fictional positions.)

I'm sure I'm not stating all the nuances clearly, but am I at least in the right vicinity?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm right there with you on the giving up part. I've finally realized how divergent the definitions of fail forward are ... and as far as I can tell people still refuse to accept that their definition of fail forward is not the only one. Even though the "let a failure succeed and add something to the fiction that wouldn't have be there on a successful check" is by far the most typical example I find when I look outside of this thread. Along with endless "But why couldn't you?" Why is "Because I don't want to" never good enough?

I get that narrative games have different beats, different goals, different approach. I don't happen to like what they do, I prefer a more simulationist approach where the players drive the game forward and the GM just makes sure there's interesting stuff to interact with. No, I will never make a perfect living world, no I will never be 100% objective, yes on rare occasions I will add to the fiction on the fly (just not as complication to a failed roll that is unrelated to the action taken).

For some reason there are folks who can't just accept the idea of different strokes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't have a problem with what you do. Totally fine.

But "where the players drive the game forward and the GM just makes sure there's interesting stuff to interact with" is exactly what I do without any sort of simulationism or prep, so it's kinda a crap description of what you're doing differently than me. I'm mostly just against descriptions that aren't useful.

But "I like simulation and prep" is part of the preference. You have to accept the whole thing as a preference, not pick it apart because some parts are like your preference and other parts aren't.

 

[Yaarel]

I mean, if I've been reading your posts correctly (and I've been trying!), your core position is to minimize player-DM negotiation over narrative context and positioning to as close to zero as possible, and have every fictional position presented by the DM having obvious mechanical linkages to player-side invokable mechanics. With the goal of every presented fictional position being inherently "solvable" or at least optimizable by some combination of player invokable mechanics (although the players may not have all the tools required because of choices made during earlier fictional positions.)

I'm sure I'm not stating all the nuances clearly, but am I at least in the right vicinity?

If I understand your position correctly, you are describing the attempt to translate a narrative table-top RPG into a computer game experience. Where all of the possible interactions (or most of the typical ones) are written as mathematical functions within a computer code. In other words, the DM narrative interpretation is being removed from the equations that determine outcomes.