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

[Pedantic]

I can see how people who'd never seen it otherwise would not expect or, really, even understand the idea of quasi-objective DCs.

It's the latter that's really proven tricky, which is the whole thing in this thread right? People overindex on the play loop of whatever table they're at and then treat it as a norm of the TTRPG form.

 

[Faolyn]

I mean a) you're encouraged to figure out ways to get Advantage bestowed by the GM on stuff, b) the DCs in pretty much every published adventure bear no relationship to the iterate-by-5s stuff in the DMG, and c) almost no DMs are open about the DCs of things.

How would a player have any idea what they're rolling against is objective?

Maybe if they're always 10-15-20-25?

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's the latter that's really proven tricky, which is the whole thing in this thread right? People overindex on the play loop of whatever table they're at and then treat it as a norm of the TTRPG form.

Yeah, while its particularly common in the D&D community, I've occasionally hit people who who've only played, say, FATE driven games who go into other games and are seriously nonplussed by the fact they don't go by the same assumptions.

 

[AlViking]

Sometimes clarification isn't about arguing a point or however you and others choose to play. Often it is about accurate representation of the craft of both game designers and the players of these games. It's about not spreading a false impression of how stuff works. This is why very few responses to you have addressed your premises or preferences. It's the justification that presents a reductive view of techniques, games and styles of play you do not care for that gets responded to because that is the part of your posts that is flawed.

You might not care about stakes, but most implementations of fail forward do - so not representing that is part of your example does a disservice to the technique and what resultant play actually achieves and looks like in active play. Not including it will of course lead to a disjointed view of how these techniques operate out in the wild.

When you say stuff like "not real failure" and "not connected to what the characters are doing" but fail to include an accurate account of how these things actually function expect to get responses. It's not about how you wish to play. It's about how you represent the way other people play.

Im not telling you you're doing it wrong, I'm saying that every game I'm personally aware of which bakes fail-forward into its design and advice (most recently Daggerheart) tells you to be open and clear of the stakes of a roll. To incorporate it into D20 systems (see: Errant), you need to be similarly open for it to work. 4e's Skill Challenges were another way to bake fail-forward, open stakes play into a core D&D skill system by iterating conflicts.

I would encourage you to either a) stick to your guns and say "its not for me" and stop commenting or b) engage with the concept on its own terms instead of poking endless holes of no-true-fail-forwardman.

Different games run by different rules and assumptions. I don't care about stakes because I'm not playing or talking about a game that presents play in terms of stakes. What doesn't work for me in D&D may work if I were playing a different game with different assumptions, it's just a different approach. For that matter it may work for other GMs in D&D and adjacent games even if it doesn't work for me.

Once again - this is just about my preferences and how for me, given the approach I take for D&D, it would not work for me. I don't know how often I have to repeat that. I am not saying the process does not work, is bad, that you're doing it wrong. I'm not and have never commented on other games other than perhaps to get clarification (and I haven't done that for quite some time). I'm saying it doesn't work for me because I play and run D&D.

 

[pemerton]

How is saying '4e D&D is the version of the game that actually gives me what I wanted from D&D' not agreeing that it was a radical departure from what came before, even for you?

It got rid of bits that didn't help - eg elaborate timed spell durations - and added bits that did help - the hp/healing system.

Not all change and improvement constitutes "radical departure".

 

[pemerton]

In games that do Fail Forward right, we find that skill checks represent internal and external elements

In Burning Wheel, a test doesn't represent anything at all.

The character's rating in a skill represents something: their degree of ability and expertise. The obstacle represents something too, namely, the difficulty of a task. The rules are clear about both of these. (You can find the relevant rules text in the free download of Hub and Spokes.)

But the roll itself doesn't represent anything. It's a decision-making technique. If the player succeeds, then the character succeeds at their task and realises their intent. If the player fails, then the GM introduces a complication which negates the intent.

 

[pemerton]

I just want the result of failure to follow the fiction

Who doesn't?

 

[pemerton]

Every character having AEDU structure was a very fundamental change.

No more fundamental than the changes from AD&D to 3E.

 

[FrogReaver]

It got rid of bits that didn't help - eg elaborate timed spell durations - and added bits that did help - the hp/healing system.

Not all change and improvement constitutes "radical departure".

I’m sorry, are you saying that elaborating on timed spell durations and updating the hp/healing system were enough to cause you to go from disliking all the previous iterations of d&d to liking 4e d&d?

 

[hawkeyefan]

In the abstract, avoiding having "nothing happen" is a good thing because it has the decided benefit of helping prevent play bogging down.

Game mechanics and/or GMing techniques that prevent a "nothing happens" outcome, however, do work at cross purposes with the players' in-character efforts (if any) at risk-mitigation. Specifically, players trying to maximize the chances of their characters succeeding at their longer-term goals have an incentive to try to limit the potential in-fiction consequences of any risky actions they elect to take along the way--in other words, such players are actively trying to drive the downside risks as close as possible to "nothing happens." That doesn't (or possibly can't) play nicely with game mechanics and GMing techniques that seek to prevent that outcome.

Of course, in those games where setting longer-term goals and strategizing to maximize the odds of achieving those goals isn't a part of play, this tension is irrelevant (assuming everyone is on board with the goals of play, anyway!) But it's definitely a part of play at some traditional tables. And I would suggest that goal setting and strategizing (and the resulting player efforts at risk mitigation) is a defining part of play in some styles of sandbox campaigns.

From my perspective it would seem to be a rational choice for any GM to "outright reject" any technique that works at cross-purposes to a defining part of play at their table. Would you agree? If so, it would seem to me that GMs whose campaigns are defined by longer-term PC goal setting, strategizing, and attendant efforts at risk mitigation are making a rational choice to categorically avoid techniques that prevent "nothing happens" outcomes, and to instead find some other method of avoiding play bogging down.

At a higher level of generality, it's reasonable when playing a game with well-definied purposes of play to reject using incompatible GMing techniques, yes? Traditional games don't have such clear-cut or uniform purposes of play, but each individual campaign presumably has some (hard to categorize though they might be), and it would seem to me to be equally reasonable for each such campaign's GM to also reject incompatible GMing techniques.

I would suggest that GMs who reject allegedly incompatible techniques may simply know their campaigns well enough to be making an informed choice, rather than engaging in reflexive conservativism, even if the difficulty of analyzing the diverse playstyles that make up "traditional" campaigns makes it challenging to tell the one from the other.

I agree with your last paragraph. I believe many folks have a good idea of what they’re looking for in a game and select games and gaming methods accordingly.

However, I also think that there’s plenty of people who don’t fully understand the things they’re claiming not to like. And when they elaborate or put forth their ideas on those things, this lack of understanding becomes clear.

Some of the posts in this thread are, therefore, not about trying to tell anyone their preferences are wrong or even that they’d adopt such and such game if only they understood it… but rather about correcting misconceptions or outright falsehoods about a game.

Regarding your earlier point about risk mitigation and long term goals… I have never really struggled to see either one in the narrativist games I’ve run and played. So I don’t agree with your assessment.

The fourth is a more open question and almost certainly quite situation-dependent.

I don’t see how that’s the case. Anyone picking a lock is going to be concerned with possibly being caught. The risk may vary, and therefore the odds will fluctuate… but it’s always a possibility. It is clearly a potential consequence of picking a lock.

Randomly encountering monsters in a dangerous area sure, but a group of ninjas just attacking you in the middle of the street because we hadn't had a fun combat encounter lately or I wanted some "filler"? Just not for me.

I happen to feel like fail forward kind of like those OTAs if I'm running a D&D game in the sense that frequently failure will have a cost, but it's going to be directly related to the action taken.

I think at this point, the only person operating under the assumption that fail forward produces unrelated consequences os you.

The fact that you think it has anything to do with your crazy ninja example just illustrates you’re not getting it… and that’s why you’re getting pushback. It’s not because anyone cares about your preferences or wants to change your mind.

It’s because you say things about fail forward that show you’re not getting it.

No more fundamental than the changes from AD&D to 3E.

I think that 4e is possibly the most radically different version of D&D from the others. I say possibly because (a) who can say for sure and (b) I wouldn’t really commit to that.

But I think once you look at the wider world of RPGs… at how radically different from D&D an RPG can be… well, I don’t know if the changes made for 4e seem anywhere near as significant.