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

[Lanefan]

I am a decently competent chess player, but when I play it if there are no obvious move better than others I always go for the move that bring most chaos, and seem interesting to explore further.

Chess? Hell, that's how I play D&D!

 

[Faolyn]

Because this is the first time I realized I needed to make the distinction.

Both. It's a gamble where I-as-player have a variable-by-situation degree of control over the odds I'm facing.

I'd handle this situation vastly differently, ideally roleplayed in detail enough to allow for far more possible outcome options:

Many of these...

--- the wooing works as intended and the information is gained
--- the wooing part works as intended but inaccurate or incomplete information is gained
--- the wooing appears to work as intended, the information is gained but she rats him out at the first opportunity
--- the wooing goes nowhere because she's not into guys, or just doesn't like him, or doesn't trust him
--- the wooing may or may not succeed in itself but he blew his cover, and now has to resort to bribery or other means of getting info
--- the wooing leads to a diversion in, or new branch of, the story e.g. he has to do something for her before she'll tell him anything

...are good examples of fail forward, or partial successes/partial failures.

Just FYI.

 

[Lanefan]

Every character having AEDU structure was a very fundamental change. For casters they could no longer cast the same spell multiple times in an encounter unless it was at-will (also a new idea). Fighters (outside of a supplement I never purchased) had always just used weapons to attack with, never had things like auras of damage or the ability to force pull. Add in things like skill challenges. That doesn't mean they didn't share some characteristics.

I could go on the game we played was significantly different from what came before or after. Whether it was good, bad, radical or minor is a matter of opinion. It felt like a completely different game to me with some cosmetic similarities in a way that previous editions and 5e did not.

From my perspective the biggest departures seemed to be:

--- monsters that changed their stats based on who-what was fighting them (i.e. the same monster, Bob the Giant, could be a minion today against a 15th-level group and an elite tomorrow against a 3rd-level group)
--- general reduction of resolution granularity outside of combat in favour of catch-all skill challenges
--- hard-ish codification of character roles within the party, and classes then designed specifically around these roles
--- universal AEDU ability structure regardless of class
--- hard break from the idea that PCs and NPCs were at all the same mechanically
--- overall radical tone shift away from grittiness and toward big-damn-heroes even at the lowest PC levels

This is ignoring aesthetic concerns e.g. adventure presentation, art, and so on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

From my perspective the biggest departures seemed to be:

--- monsters that changed their stats based on who-what was fighting them (i.e. the same monster, Bob the Giant, could be a minion today against a 15th-level group and an elite tomorrow against a 3rd-level group)
--- general reduction of resolution granularity outside of combat in favour of catch-all skill challenges
--- hard-ish codification of character roles within the party, and classes then designed specifically around these roles
--- universal AEDU ability structure regardless of class
--- hard break from the idea that PCs and NPCs were at all the same mechanically
--- overall radical tone shift away from grittiness and toward big-damn-heroes even at the lowest PC levels

This is ignoring aesthetic concerns e.g. adventure presentation, art, and so on.

Yup. All those things definitely departed from D&D as I played it. And I didn't care for the aesthetic either.

Not that any of that makes it a bad game for anyone but me and mine

 

[Lanefan]

Many of these...

...are good examples of fail forward, or partial successes/partial failures.

Just FYI.

Indeed, but they'd ideally emerge in a much more detailed fashion than just the results of one roll, in - I would hope - a one-thing-leads-to-the-next manner that makes sense to all involved.

In actual play, this means that while some might want to resolve that wooing and info-obtaining sequence in one roll, I'd take a lot longer with it - maybe not a whole session, but however long it took to resolve it in some detail and with some roleplay involved.

 

[Pedantic]

Really? I've never seen that. Except, possibly, in cases where a "fully developed skill system" ignores bounded accuracy.

The very idea that a DC lives outside the DM has been alien to the 5e first players I've discussed it with. Even when presented with skill mechanics, they still treat the base gameplay loop as negotiation, and treat the mechanics as a DM facing tool to help me set DCs.

 

[Enrahim]

From my perspective the biggest departures seemed to be:

Interestingly quite a few of these seem actually moves the gameplay closer to the root.

--- monsters that changed their stats based on who-what was fighting them (i.e. the same monster, Bob the Giant, could be a minion today against a 15th-level group and an elite tomorrow against a 3rd-level group)

Does that happen in real play though? If this is an extreme edge case it hardly seem like a "big departure". And I cannot remember any rules requiring converting a monster as a minion? Monster vault is having separate minion creatures with unique names and stat-blocks.

--- general reduction of resolution granularity outside of combat in favour of catch-all skill challenges

This actually seem like is heading backwards toward 2ed?

--- hard-ish codification of character roles within the party, and classes then designed specifically around these roles

Come on! The Tank, Healer, Damage dealer trio was effectively codified into D&D from the first publication. They managed to muddle it a bit up, but this is basically just a cleanup, clarifying the design.

--- universal AEDU ability structure regardless of class

This was big and new. Cleaning out the spell list fiddling was likely their gravest game design mistake with regard to player retention.

--- hard break from the idea that PCs and NPCs were at all the same mechanically

3ed introduced this. From my understanding this was a big controversy in the 3ed design team. This was just going back on that decision to pre 3ed sanity. (Edit: Maybe new that they did not suggest making full blown PC characters as rivaling parties. But I believe there was nothing stopping you from doing that, beyond it would be blowing away some of the benefits of going from 3ed to 4ed, as you then again have to handle hard to run NPCs.)

--- overall radical tone shift away from grittiness and toward big-damn-heroes even at the lowest PC levels

Yes, they got rid of the low level experience. For many this likely wouldn't be a big shift though, as I get the impression it was common to skip them anyway. Again more of a cleanup/focusing rather than a radical departure.

This is ignoring aesthetic concerns e.g. adventure presentation, art, and so on.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Uh uh. You have no ability to shove false words into our mouths. We are saying it's quantum because the player's die roll causes the cook to be there or not be there and we only find out after the box(die roll) is opened. Not because we're saying it's objectively wrong.

We do say that it's wrong for us. And we also have said over and over and over and over and over that neither method is better or worse, just different.

D&D is not medieval Europe.

Right, you use derogatory terminology, but you don't mean it. Lets just drop this, it can't lead to anywhere good.

As for D&D is not medieval Europe, you cannot really say that. I mean, you cannot really say that the milieu envisaged in many, perhaps most, D&D games is not based on some, perhaps vague and inaccurate, medieval archetype. Certainly Gygax flat out stated that D&D was exactly that! Now, that doesn't constrain YOU, but it is a pretty good base assumption in a discussion of things D&D.

But this is really moot, because there's no way you can make assumptions about some unknown culture that isn't based on anything, so it is perfectly feasible that cooks sleep in kitchens, or prepare food at all hours. If you want to construct a setting where you have explicitly detailed this level of information on domestic life and then tell me that it would be wrong to place a cook in the kitchen at 2AM, that's fine. I'm totally up for that! In DW parlance such a thing would no longer 'follow from the fiction'!

 

[AnotherGuy]

Of course there is going to be mechanical consequences. But what consequences would you have in mind that wouldn't feel like "going soft" compared to falling down? (In particular in a high-risk climb).

Good question.
So falling down in D&D would be d6 per 10 feet with the requirement to making an additional climb check.

So a soft move for a hand cut would be 1-2 points of damage and you cannot hold anything with two hands until you either have a long rest, receive magical healing or you hand is treated by a successful Medicine check followed by a short rest [my game is a little more gritty).

The above is a modification on the lose hand on the Lingering Injury table (DMG 272)

But they have fixed it! In 5ed there are no specified result on a failed athletics check to climb. Rejoice!
(And what premise do you think is blatantly false? That rules matching player misconceptions sell better than rules trying to teach players the real deal? That would indeed be surprising news to me!)

Maybe I misunderstood you. It sounded to me like you were saying that what was more commercially viable was to sell your basic falling damage idea as if including the ideas for complications is too much of a task for the design process.
I was disagreeing with the above in that you could have your falling damage for your basic binary approach but advice could be given on how to run more complex skill checks.
I mean just look at what they did with tool proficiency in Xanathar's.

I think having a friend sharing with the group "you know - falling while climbing complicated cliffsides, even if untrained and not properly secured, is actually a lot less probable than you might think. Maybe we should look for alternative outcomes of a failed climb check?" Would be considered a very nice, and appreciated by everyone in the group.

However if the rulebook states: "As it turns out that falling is an extremely unlikely outcome when climbing, you should not narrate that as a consequence of a failed climb check", that at least give me a very different feel. If I read that in a rulebook my initial gut reaction would likely be something along the way, "I feel like this game takes itself too seriously and imposes too many detail rulings I need to remember. I think I'd rather look for something more intuitive to play."

Honestly I think it starts with the rulebook.
Somehow we imagine D&D players to thick to read, but when it comes to other modern games where player input may be more common, players don't need special friends to help them understand.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Shouldn't teaching actually teach to keep trying after a failure?

Which isn't something that usually isn't allowed in RPGs.

Hmmm. I've seen plenty of games that allow repeated attempts on skills, there's just some caveat on what's needed to do so (extra time, additional resources, etc.)