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

[Lanefan]

Give me a good reason why people should be unhappy while playing a game.

Because in any game someone, sometime, has to lose; and losing generally doesn't make people happy.

The difference between RPGs and other games is that with an RPG you can lose and yet still keep playing, where with many other games losing means the game is over for you if not for everyone.

-----

A thought occurs to me. In the card game Bridge, while everyone gets to participate in the bidding process of each hand, one player out of four then has to sit out the actual playing of the hand. Depending how the deals go and the cards lie, it might be the same player sitting out most often or it might be somewhat evenly spread. And that one player, while sitting out a hand, might get frustrated as all hell at the way partner is playing the hand but can't do a thing about it.

Does this make Bridge a bad game? That it remains highly popular after 100-odd years would suggest the answer is firmly no.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Like most taxonomies, GNS is terrible right up until you try and create a replacement.

And I'm probably callused, but I didn't read anything in that post that seemed remotely insulting.

I think the Six Culture model is better than GNS.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That blog post is from 2020.

World's moving fast now...

 

[The Firebird]

The problem is “OSR” and “traditional” are way too similar to each other to be 2 of the 3 categories; it’s roughly equivalent to categorizing mammals as “big cats”, “small cats” and “everything else”.

For an all-encompassing theory, certainly. For what actually gets played, at least at game stores and cons? I think it makes sense. (Usually cons will add "Pathfinder" and "Other RPGs" as well).

Of course you can quibble with the details--my point is that when we use these terms they express what a game will look like much more effectively than GNS.

 

[Eric V]

If that's all that it took, the entire course of gaming history for the last nearly 20 years would have been different.

Not at all. Enough people still didn't like that iteration of D&D, so that the subsequent edition of D&D was different enough from that version of D&D, but it's all D&D.

It's not hard to understand.

 

[Eric V]

You say that like the game's publishing history is the only thing that matters to people on this issue.

Sure, their own feelings matter (to themselves, anyway), but they're irrelevant when identifying a game as "Dungeons and Dragons." The name is right there, it's referred to as D&D all the way through...it's just Dungeons and Dragons. It just is.

That you didn't like it doesn't change its identity.

 

[Lanefan]

Second: So that being said, stuff like what Egri wrote there is interesting but also pretty dang insulting in the way it's worded, right?

Maybe not insulting per se, but there's an overwhelming sense of someone talking down a very long academic nose to the uneducated masses at his feet, which doesn't exactly make one eager to listen.

Also, I'm not sure we gain anything by rehashing the old GNS style crap that was never that good to start with.

What I'd say instead is that throughout all of human history there's an interest in heroics as adjudged by the culture at hand (although certain themes do tend to run through). We've always been engaged by stories about heroes, because quite often the world is Crap; and it's cool to have the idea that people can like fight that back in a bit of a wish fulfillment way. (some argument here wrt cultures and this being a very Western thing as well)

What there's also always been, and which early D&D provided an excellent avenue to harmlessly explore, is an underlying interest in the anti-hero; the morally gray or even morally pitch-dark character and-or society that we also can't be - or can't get away with being - in real life. Starting with 2e, published D&D has done its best to sweep this under the rug, but it's still there; and the popularity of morally-gray Game of Thrones thrust the anti-hero squarely into the spotlight. Sadly, D&D ignored this trend and instead doubled down on high-heroism and capital-G Goodliness; which has I think helped the OSR some, if nothing else.

I had more in mind, but my train of thought has wandered off to the pub for a beer; I might just have to follow it.

 

[zakael19]

Because in any game someone, sometime, has to lose; and losing generally doesn't make people happy.

Not true. Cooperative games exist. TTRPGs are largely held to be an excellent example of those. In fact, pretty much every TTRPG rule book I’ve read over the last decade has said it’s not a game where you have winners and losers.

 

[AnotherGuy]

At this I would tell the rogue they can continue the attempt but it will take time, up to 20 minutes (2d10 for my house rule), do they want to try?

Just as an aside, I once got locked out of my place as the wind blew the front door shut and it auto-locked. As it happened the only option was to call for a locksmith (my sister who had the spare was out of town).

The dude literally took 30 seconds to unlock the door. I dunno if that is standard but boy was that easy money.

Other scenarios would have different options. For example fail to climb a wall may not mean any HP damage (or it might) but you may also make a lot of noise as you fall alerting nearby guards. The difference is that the guards will always be there regardless of the climb check and could have been alerted in other ways as well.

I borrowed an idea from @pemerton's game whereby 1 of the 2 PCs had their boot damaged by a Fail Forward check (think it was Perception) a few hours after having left the city. Unable to mend the boot, the PCs had the option of returning to the city or hoping to meet a cobbler or tradesman along the way. The damage boot was affecting their movement speed negatively. They decided to stay course and not return. That evening they joined an encampment of a group of travellers etc on the way to the city.
At the encampment the other PC managed to successfully find and buy a pair of boots off one of the revelers.

The reason to use fail forward to me is so that the ongoing gameplay doesn't come to a screaming halt because of a single failed roll.

I think either you or @FrogReaver mentioned something about D&D being about overcoming obstacles. Well on that, I appreciate that Fail Forward provides a mechanic to generate those obstacles.
But even more so I like that it affords me the authority in the creation of those obstacles without having obstacles generated via DM decides without a mechanical trigger.

EDIT: Lastly, I like that the mechanic can work in such a way to encourage the DM to being more creative with the obstacles. And a by-product of that being a greater engagement by the players, IMO.

And just to reiterate, I view this as a tool for my table not standard play for every roll.

 

[zakael19]

What there's also always been, and which early D&D provided an excellent avenue to harmlessly explore, is an underlying interest in the anti-hero; the morally gray or even morally pitch-dark character and-or society that we also can't be - or can't get away with being - in real life. Starting with 2e, published D&D has done its best to sweep this under the rug, but it's still there; and the popularity of morally-gray Game of Thrones thrust the anti-hero squarely into the spotlight. Sadly, D&D ignored this trend and instead doubled down on high-heroism and capital-G Goodliness; which has I think helped the OSR some, if nothing else.

Sure, but by and large this sort of play is being done as a short lark, in games designed for it as the premise (see: Blades), or by players that have largely been pushed out of many spaces because they’re objectionable in many ways.

Edit: The excellent book A Theory of Fun talks quite a bit about how games start as teaching tools, and we can build games that do more then just cheap entertainment and power fantasy stuff. I think that applies to TTRPG play as well.