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

[TwoSix]

It's railroading. The players choices are invalidated and no matter where they go or what they choose, they will encounter that ogre. Part of being a traditional DM is having prep that doesn't get used.

Outside of thinking of some cool monsters and scenes, this is exactly why I don't prep.

 

[Maxperson]

Outside of thinking of some cool monsters and scenes, this is exactly why I don't prep.

Whereas I don't mind if I prep some stuff and the group uses a teleport scroll that I forgot they had to bypass a chunk of it. As long as we are all having fun, that's the important part to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And that is the point.
Things happen.
If they are going to happen, the question is how much one is willing to embrace Things Happening.

Games or tables that use Fail Forward or Success at a Cost techniques, or that generate Complications (using generic terms - each game can have different names for these) embrace that Things Happen to the point of making them part of the process of play.

Which I think is an important point - these are not the GM doing something outside the scope of their role - they are adopted into the role, explicitly.

Well, I'd much rather that Things Happen situations be exceptions handled on a non-systematic, case-by-case basis.

 

[The Firebird]

I'll be honest, I find interactions with people who aren't curious about new things and prefer to stick to and defend the status quo to be inevitably exhausting in pretty much every phase of life. It's not wrong; it's a completely common psychological profile and almost certainly necessary for broader social cohesion.

But you know...several of us here are curious about new things. I've played narrative games. I've run campaigns using them.

And anyone who is still in this thread has stuck around for a while discussing these systems. This also doesn't read as a lack of curiosity.

Maybe there are a bunch of gamers out there who are just reflexively conservative in this regard, but they aren't in this thread.

 

[TwoSix]

But...it's a leisure activity. Why should you have to be interested in a leisure activity that isn't fun for you? It still reads to me as, "your side is wrong because you're not interested in things you don't like".

I don't know what to tell you. If your opinions on RPGs are based on "For 35 years, I've played D&D, and occasionally we've branched out and tried games that are 99% like D&D", I just don't find your opinion compelling.

Like you said, it's preference. It's not preference on games; it's preference about my choices as to whose viewpoints I find the most valid.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hmm, I'm not sure where this is going. I guess if you go to a big book of random tables and pull out "forest" and use that for your game, that's ok with me. Is that procedural generation? What if you roll d3 to pick from three separate books? Like I guess that doesn't bother me so much. It doesn't seem as good as hand crafting them and I don't know what it's trying to accomplish.

I’m not sure where it’s going either yet as it depends on your answers. It’s more of an inquisitive discussion from my perspective.

So you are good with tables being procedurally generated so long as the thing the basis for the generation is preestablished. Books 1-3 in this case.

There’s 2 question then that come to my mind.

1) Does it matter when the procedural generation occurs? Can it be at the moment it’s needed. Must it be some time in advance?

2) Are you okay with the table being procedurally generated from content established during play? As an example say the players have some reoccurring villains. This is sandboxy play so their choices determined who the villians were. Can the DM create a table of their current villains and make a roll against it to see which villains are randomly encountered?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But you know...several of us here are curious about new things. I've played narrative games. I've run campaigns using them.

And anyone who is still in this thread has stuck around for a while discussing these systems. This also doesn't read as a lack of curiosity.

Maybe there are a bunch of gamers out there who are just reflexively conservative in this regard, but they aren't in this thread.

I am curious about other styles of games, I've just come to the conclusion after years of discussing them in threads like these that the subjective drawbacks outweighs the subjective benefits for me. That doesn't mean they're not great games for other people. Heck, I still want to run Star Trek Adventures some day (and plan to play it at Gencon this year), a game with a number of Narrativist influences, because I love Star Trek. But I would be doing so despite not caring for the mechanics.

 

[TwoSix]

But you know...several of us here are curious about new things. I've played narrative games. I've run campaigns using them.

And anyone who is still in this thread has stuck around for a while discussing these systems. This also doesn't read as a lack of curiosity.

Maybe there are a bunch of gamers out there who are just reflexively conservative in this regard, but they aren't in this thread.

Then I guess I'm not irritated by anyone here!

 

[The Firebird]

1) Does it matter when the procedural generation occurs? Can it be at the moment it’s needed. Must it be some time in advance?

I don't think it matters when generation occurs as long as the rule used for generation is established beforehand. For example, the "cook is encountered on 2-in-6", it's fine for the roll to take place when the players would first see signs of the cooks presence.

2) Are you okay with the table being procedurally generated from content established during play? As an example say the players have some reoccurring villains. This is sandboxy play so their choices determined who the villians were. Can the DM create a table of their current villains and make a roll against it to see which villains are randomly encountered?

Yes, this seems ok to me at least broadly. Although I can imagine there are specific cases where I would dislike it.

 

[Gimby]

I don't like any method where the ogre's location is rolled after the players make their choice. If the path is random, because the ogre wanders and could be on either path, that roll should happen before the players get to the fork in the road and have to pick a path. That way their choice means something. Either they will 100% encounter the ogre or they will 100% avoid it, depending on the path picked.

I don't think this is really true.

Let's say we have a scenario where there are two paths through a wood. One passes by a cave where an Ogre lairs and the other passes by a stream where the Ogre fishes sometimes. The party is informed by a reliable local that the Ogre is normally found near it's lair, but sometimes goes down to the stream to fish, but the Ogre doesn't appear to do it on any particular schedule.

Behind the scenes, let's say there's a 75% chance the Ogre will be at their cave and a 25% chance it'll be at the stream. The party decides to head along to the stream.

I don't think it's true that if the DM rolls for where the Ogre is 5 seconds before they make that choice it means something and if they roll 5 seconds later it doesn't. The characters had actionable, if probabilistic intelligence to act upon and the probability of encountering the Ogre is identical either way. As long as the players get to declare actions before encountering the Ogre and that's informed by where the Ogre is determined to be, the precise timing of the roll is pretty irrelevant.