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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Quoting just a small part of this post because it has the most important bit.

But...yeah it is a bad idea. Imo. I want to clarify first that it's not "nothing happens" which fail forward is avoiding. You get that without fail forward, when someone is hanging onto a rope and fails, or when the guards are on your heels and you fail to pick the lock, and so forth. The issue isn't with nothing happens.

Instead, it seems to be with failed rolls adding new information which was unrelated to the check to the narrative. For example, the lockpick fails, and now there is a cook. What's-his-names song doesn't make him feel better and therefore a guard shows up. That sort of thing.

The consequences here are logical--a cook could be in the kitchen, a guard could hear a song--but they aren't part of the check. (Compare--ok, you can sing, but there's a 20% chance you'll attract a guard, regardless of success/failure). There's a sort of double jeopardy going on. And this makes these games more, well, narrative--they're about telling a story more than playing a game.

It's fine if that's what you want. But it is opposed to what I want, and it's fair to recognize that.

I don't know what 'part of the check' means. That is, I think you're creating a pretty arbitrary criteria here. It feels like it's simply tradition for tradition's sake.

 

[pemerton]

Sounds like a request to get people off the thread if they're happy with their current play.

I thought you liked the blog post!

 

[zakael19]

I honestly prefer games where it's possible to lose. I told a story about a recent campaign that ended with a definite personal loss, and it was amazing!

Oh, loss is fascinating. That's totally different then whiffing on a task and then standing around looking at each other.

 

[SableWyvern]

Well. I can't say I come to the table with them.

But they aren't just talking about their table. They're talking about the game's design. Something that everyone who plays it will get saddled with.

So, the point is even more extreme then. No one should be allowed to design games that @FrogReaver likes, because if they're allowed to exist there is a chance that people who don't like that style might be forced to play them and endure terrible torment?

I ask again, who are these people that are going to be forced to stop playing the games they like and forced instead to play games designed to provide an experience they don't like?

 

[Yaarel]

I am unsure the "GNS" distinctions are fully helpful. I think D&D culture has more specific terms that are more useful when talking about the D&D game.

Gamist ≈ mechanics
We all know what "mechanics" means: roll a d20 for "success", and sometimes other dice for damage or healing, and for some styles "grid counting", plus other simple-but-versatile mechanics, such as damage type and creature type. D&D gamism strives to be as simple as possible but not simpler.

Narrativist ≈ story telling + character (identities, desires) + "adventure"
Here narrativism encompasses various aspects of "story telling". The game organizes around the players as the center of the multiverse, the protagonists. Thus all adventures are quests to express the character concept and its identities and to fulfill the desires, values and ambitions, of the character. Meanwhile the encounters themselves are timed in a way to approximate a story structure. The structure includes an intro into what the setting is, a vague sense of the challenges ahead, and "meeting the heroes" during the lowest tier, then struggles in a strange fantasy otherworld until a major achievement of ambitions around middle tier (9-12), then progressing into all-or-nothing "saving the multiverse" at the highest tier. The struggles themselves are encounters, typically combat encounters, that relate to the identities and desires of each player character. All of this is story telling. In addition to the story structure expounding on the protagonists, the narrative descriptions of each encounter, the narrative immersion by the players as they interact spontaneously with each scene, and the DM narrative adjudication of the outcomes of these player spontaneities are also part of narrativism.

Simulationist ≈ "sandbox"
Here "sandbox" refers to a DM creating a world that exists independently from the player characters. These world phenomena preexist. Simulationism uses sophisticated mechanics to represent these phenomena, that tend to be predeterined, with automated responses, scripts, and other mechanically determined outcomes − whether players interact with them or not. Videogames work this way, with preprogrammed encounters, that players may or may not run into.


A different question is who creates the world that both narrativists and simulationists explore: the DM, rotating DMs, the players, the dice, the tables? It could be a DM adjudicates a narrativist adventure, or the players decide what goes into a standbox or how a phenomenon reacts to the player characters.

 

[Hussar]

That doesn't fly, either. From the very first instance, I was talking about from the player's perspective. On top of that, at no point did I ever say or imply that I don't care if it's quantum. It's not. Not from the perspective I've been using since moment one. The DM's perspective isn't relevant. The encounter isn't about him and never was.

You SPECIFICALLY stated in the quote, that you didn't care if it was quantum or not. I mean, I directly quoted you. From the player's perspective, they can never actually know if the encounter was quantum or pre-planned. It's not possible to know unless the DM tells them.

 

[grankless]

this is the most ENWorld thread i've ever seen. i don't even know where the goalposts are anymore, they've moved so far

 

[grankless]

It's not about failing the dice roll, it's about how to deal with the fact that you fail sometimes because we all fail sometimes. Do you get upset or just accept failure, figure out what went wrong and try a different approach?

In any case I'm not going to argue about it I just don't see the issue being failure, it's how you deal with failure. If you never fail we might as well be handing out participation trophies.

I love how you've turned "it's good when events continue moving forward when you fail" to "these damn MILLENIALS think you should NEVER FAIL!"

i have no idea how so many people in this thread are just completely ignoring the actual topic to to -CENSORED- themselves about how Good And Pure And Noble their style of gaming is. when asked "hey you should consider the merits of this other way of playing" like 8 people in this thread respond "this is a personal insult to me and anything other than rigorously prepared or randomly rolled occurrences is a moral failure and generates a failure of a game"

Mod Edited

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And there it is. It’s not good enough for me to say some people feel it’s not real d&d. I have to submit that their opinion is wrong despite us both knowing their meaning of ‘real d&d’ refers to a concept other than its legal identity.

Just note. I’m not the one making those kinds of demands here.

Yeah, because the person who thinks recognition and acceptance is good is clearly the villain, and the people who think rejection and exclusion are awesome should totally be catered to at every breath.

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

I'm saying that people being exclusionary and hostile to other people's fun are a problem and should never be catered to for any reason, yes.

If you think that that means I'm rejecting their opinion, maybe it's because there's something actually wrong with that opinion.

You know it's ok for you to like 4e without feeling the need to defend it's D&D-ness. No one is arguing it's a bad game in anything beyond the "for me" sense.

Except they LITERALLY ARE by declaring that it isn't D&D.

That's literally what is actually being said. It is openly "your fun isn't allowed in this community". It is "your kind aren't allowed here". That's why I will not, cannot, accept this as a "valid opinion".

Beyond that, I'm done with this actively edition-warring tangent.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, the point is even more extreme then. No one should be allowed to design games that @FrogReaver likes, because if they're allowed to exist there is a chance that people who don't like that style might be forced to play them and endure terrible torment?

I ask again, who are these people that are going to be forced to stop playing the games they like and forced instead to play games designed to provide an experience they don't like?

What? Like seriously, what?

FrogReaver wants games that HAVE to cater to him. No one playing them can have experiences which avoid catering to that desire. It is hard-baked into the foundational rules of the system. Everyone playing it must always have the risk of completely unavoidable, completely unpredictable "gotcha" failure. Anything less is insufficient, and thus an affront to simulation, because such events occasionally happen in real life.

I'm not the one demanding exclusive catering!