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

[Faolyn]

It's taken a whole lot o' practice, to be sure, but these days I rarely goof up when reading or paraphrasing notes unless the notes themselves throw me off (e.g. the module notes don't agree with the map, or - all too often - I can't read my own writing).

Sure, OK--but do you think that's the case for everyone? The adventures I write have contradictory or missing points because I don't write them in one go, and forgot points in between writing sessions. Or because the characters are doing something at this point in my notes and I forgot I wrote something important or useful about it elsewhere.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah. I just feel like there's this immense kind of mental gymnastics that goes on around "this stuff is ultimately just made up by the GM." Now, there can be a legitimate reason to favor stuff being made up far in advance and then stuck to assiduously. But that argument is a gamist one, to make the challenges 'fair contests' of player skill. I see no sign @Maxperson advocates for that. If it's the actual reason, he can win me over instantly by saying so. There's other posters whom I think might be more in that camp though, like @Pedantic

It's not gamist. It's simulationist. If there's a bear over there in the woods, that's where it is at regardless of what anyone succeeds or fails at. It also didn't just appear there in an improvised moment. Advance prep is part of simulating a more realistic environment where things are set independently of what the PCs do.

 

[Faolyn]

Right… again, the example as presented was not great. It’s really incomplete and was only meant to give a basic idea of the fail forward method. It was woefully incomplete.

As I said above to @The Firebird , I’d have telegraphed the presence of the cook. Probably the light of a cookfire and maybe some faint chopping noise. Something that establishes the risk of picking the lock. This way, when things go bad… what happens isn’t perceived as being totally unconnected.

If what happens as the result of a failed roll is actually unconnected to the situation and what’s being attempted, I think the GM has messed up in some way.

In a fail forward game, you could also just telegraph the presence. Especially if they didn't fail that badly. They just now see the light or hear the chopping, where before they were concentrating on their work too much to notice. Or because they were picking the lock on the door and the light/sound didn't travel through it. Whoops, they got through, but now there's a complication--a cook who may (or may not) have seen them (yet).

 

[Yaarel]

Close enough.

In that case, the challenge seems to be to create win-lose mechanics to represent the simulationist representation of independently existing phenomena (mechanics) and to represent the narrativist representation of player choices, relationships, story structure, and evocative scenic descriptions.

It seems to me, the win-lose gamism must be inherently simple, so as to be "playable" in a practicable way. Therefore gamism can never fully serve the needs of either simulationism or narrativism, since both of these require extraordinary diversity, complexity, nuance, and surprising situations.

Gamism will always be a rough sketch of any kind of storytelling game.

 

[Maxperson]

In your particular example there wouldn’t be a difference. But depending on precisely the players do in that 5 seconds it might matter a great deal. And of course @Maxperson is talking about much longer timeframes than 5 seconds in advance.

Especially since if they are forewarned about the two paths like that, they might opt to go off trail to avoid both locations. Foreknowledge alters the situation and doesn't keep it to the two paths.

 

[TwoSix]

Especially since if they are forewarned about the two paths like that, they might opt to go off trail to avoid both locations. Foreknowledge alters the situation and doesn't keep it to the two paths.

To be fair, simple whim might drive the players to choose an alternate path. I'd argue part of the point of playing a TTRPG of any flavor as opposed to another kind of game is that there are never just two paths.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There are bears in the forest, whether or not you happen to see one is quite random but they exist whether you see them or not. The cook only exists because of a failed check.

Again, both cooks and bears exist in their respective environments and in both cases the process of adjudicating their appearance is the rolling of dice. It feels like to me that a lot of people have so internalized the specific process of D&D that they've given it all these special properties and status that objectively just aren't there! I'm not criticizing anyone for their taste in games, but I agree with the OP that running into this can get a bit wearing.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

For me, probably any but the first one, the classic quantum ogre. All the others are random monster encounters that point to a single statblock. Mind, I don't use random encounters, at least not in the "let's see what monster attacks you now" way.

Although it also depends on what you mean by "the ogre." If there's a single ogre in the forest, then the actual chances of coming across it depend on whether its a Named NPC, the PCs are seeking it out, or its seeking the PCs out. Of course, not finding the ogre is an option, but that's because it's a big forest. If you actually use random encounters, it's no different than just not rolling the ogre entry on it.

If there's lots of ogres, then sure, have them show up. Or not, if the PCs are taking pains to avoid them, or are scary-looking enough to frighten away ogres.

The anticlimax shouldn't be used, if only because there's no functional difference between it and not rolling the ogre entry on the random encounter table. The only exception I can see is if the PCs were actually rivals with the party that killed it--in which case, don't have its remains consumed. Let the PCs know that the NPC party killed the ogre.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Or real life history, since medieval cooks would have slept in the kitchen.

 

[Faolyn]

Improvise.

Awesome. So why is it so hard to accept that it's OK for GMs to do that regularly?

I've explained my position at length in earlier posts. Even when I I explicitly tell you I'm not sayng something, you continue to characterize my views as such. So I'm not interested in explaining them to you again. You can check my post history in this thread if you'd like.

Because you say "I didn't say that" and that's it. You don't say "what I meant was this."