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

[AlViking]

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 I also don't like it and generally avoid people with that type of personality. So yea, I'm not trying to be maliciously insulting but it's also difficult to act neutrally about it. I will continually try to be as analytical as possible about it but sometimes my internal irritation leaks through.

In the US pickup trucks and large sized SUVs are very popular. Am I just being conservative because I don't want to drive either one? That I'd rather drive a smaller car since I'm not a farmer or in construction where I actually need that kind of vehicle? I'm not defending the status quo because it's the status quo. I'm defending my personal preference of what I want in a vehicle. I understand why certain vehicles are better for some people, that in no way makes them better for me.

I can be curious about new things without wanting to use them. But then we inevitably get endless accusations of misrepresenting things by people who refuse to give examples* or the examples are written with jargon (all games have jargon, it's not a bad thing) so they're hard to follow. Throw in that narrative games and D&D-like games are just approaching gaming from completely different perspectives.

Then we get things like this where you seem to say that the only reason I don't agree that narrative games are better is out of willful ignorance. Why is it so hard to just accept that our preferences differ? Why do you even care what game I prefer? Life would be boring if we were all the same.

*Some people do provide examples which I appreciate. Others do not no matter how many times they're asked

 

[AlViking]

But in the fiction, the cook was always there. The lockpick failure was just the reason the cook was encountered at that particular time.

Improving a NPC or encounter doesn't make the encounter quantum; once introduced, it was always a part of the history of the setting.

I was the one who found the example. The cook was added as a complication to a failed roll.

 

[Faolyn]

Nope. The cook was added because of the failed check.

No, because once the cook was established, they'd always been there. Kind of like how the GM may describe a kitchen but only think to talk about the stove, the tables, and the pots and pans. If the player asks if there's any garlic there and the GM says yes, there's some garlic hanging on the wall, the garlic didn't suddenly come into being--it had been there all along. If the room had first been established to be empty, and then poof, a wild cook appears, you'd have a point. But that wasn't the case.

 

[AlViking]

No, because once the cook was established, they'd always been there. Kind of like how the GM may describe a kitchen but only think to talk about the stove, the tables, and the pots and pans. If the player asks if there's any garlic there and the GM says yes, there's some garlic hanging on the wall, the garlic didn't suddenly come into being--it had been there all along. If the room had first been established to be empty, and then poof, a wild cook appears, you'd have a point. But that wasn't the case.

I disagree. If the lockpick check had succeeded the cook was not there. But the example is just emblematic of my real issue, if every single time I fail any check things go to heck in a handbasket it would be a style of play I would not enjoy. Connect the failure directly to the declared action? Cool. Random-ass crap like this? Nah.

 

[TwoSix]

I disagree. If the lockpick check had succeeded the cook was not there. But the example is just emblematic of my real issue, if every single time I fail any check things go to heck in a handbasket it would be a style of play I would not enjoy. Connect the failure directly to the declared action? Cool. Random-ass crap like this? Nah.

To be fair, in most games which rely heavily on success with complications generally rolls should only be called for when the complications would call for "heck in a handbasket".

I'm also struggling a lot with the idea that finding someone in the house you're breaking into is "random-ass crap". That doesn't seem random at all! It seems pretty darn connected to what's going on in the fiction.

 

[FrogReaver]

I disagree. If the lockpick check had succeeded the cook was not there. But the example is just emblematic of my real issue, if every single time I fail any check things go to heck in a handbasket it would be a style of play I would not enjoy. Connect the failure directly to the declared action? Cool. Random-ass crap like this? Nah.

Right. There’s major resistance to the idea that a success or failure on a lockpicking check can determine whether the cook is there.

A large part of that is associating the characters lockpicking skill with his ability to pick locks. As opposed to lockpicking skill being ability to pick locks while avoiding unrelated to picking-a-lock complications.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I tend to view "gamist" and "simulationist" as the same thing.

Uh, no.

Gamism is focused on a particular sort of experience for those playing (at least in part) about enjoying how choices and mechanics play out when manipulated by the player. It doesn't have to be simulating anything in-world at all (though, just as with dramatist concerns, it usually does) and in some cases its perfectly willing to toss some simulation elements on the fire because they, frankly, make for a worse game on one level or another.

It tends to get short shrift (and really always has) because a lot of people with dramatist/narrativist concerns (and far as that goes, some with simulationist concerns) consider it to one extent or another a necessary evil rather than something desirable in and of itself.

I am assuming by the distinction, gamist specifically means formulating "mechanics" in a way that is either "win" or "lose", and emphasizing challenge and competition?

Not necessarily competition, but certainly the challenge end of it.

 

[The Firebird]

Great! So with all these things in mind over our last few posts let’s see if we can make something similar to fail forward that works for you?

Suppose we change fail forward into a 2 part process. 1) a roll is made to determine if there is a consequence (for now let’s say it’s the lock picking roll) and 2) a separate roll is made to determine what the consequence is.

The table we roll on for 2) is not static though, because the particulars of the situation change what can occur and the probabilities it can occur. So we generate the table as early as we can, but that’s not very early given the constraints of needing scenario specifics to populate and weight it appropriately.

Would this be an acceptable implementation of fail forward for you?

Hmm. I think it depends on the content of the table. I'll hazard a thesis--the consequences must be defined far enough in advance that the PCs can take action to credibly avoid them. So if you fill in your table, putting a cook there is ok--but the the players have to still be able to decide to go to the second story. Likewise, if they decide to listen at the door or look for light or smell, it forces a roll on the table and you have to check for the cook.

 

[AlViking]

To be fair, in most games which rely heavily on success with complications generally rolls should only be called for when the complications would call for "heck in a handbasket".

I'm also struggling a lot with the idea that finding someone in the house you're breaking into is "random-ass crap". That doesn't seem random at all! It seems pretty darn connected to what's going on in the fiction.

As I've said repeatedly, it's because something happens that's completely unrelated to what the action declared was. Add in that there's nothing the players can do do prevent this ahead of time. It's fine if it works for other games but just like I'm not going to ask if I land on Free Parking when playing D&D, I don't see the same process working for D&D. Sometimes there could easily be a negative consequence because you fail a stealth check and get noticed by the guards, fail an athletics check you fall and take damage, fail and animal handling and the dog becomes aggressive. Those things make sense to me but there's also no "success", just a "cost".

I just don't want to play a game where the GM is actively manipulating the flow of play in the way fail forward does.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Alternatively why can’t those with a narrativist preference just be ex-d&d gamers whose preferences never aligned much with d&d who finally found a game that does and they mistake their like for it as the narrativst methodologies possessing special properties and status that just isn’t there?

Though I have to point out its entirely possible to have had preferences that never aligned much with D&D that don't really align strongly with most narrativist games, either. I bailed out of D&D pretty early, but it was into other trad games that I still found quite satisfying (though the early tendency for everything to have random character gen was pretty tiresome).