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

[hawkeyefan]

I'm taking that you are referring to this: "My singing attracted the attention of a guard, who had heard the word on the street, and didn't like the look of this rag-clothed Dark Elf."

I don't know why that is seen as not involving an in-fiction causal connection.

Yes. I had not recalled the example, and so reread it when it was linked by @AlViking … and there it was, clearly stated.

Not sure why there’s any doubt…

 

[hawkeyefan]

The "" around metagaming and the declaration that there is only the game is a statement that metagming doesn't exist. It's okay if you want to ignore metagaming, but it does exist. I was just correcting the obvious error there.

Well, no… the quotes were around the “metagame”… a concept that makes no sense for those games. It’s all part of the game.

Insert a bit about reading to respond here if you like.

 

[pemerton]

Stonetop is pretty straightforwardly designed to be setting/exploration based narrativist play

Yep, I only know it from your and other posters' accounts of your play, but this makes sense!

 

[AlViking]

Yes. I had not recalled the example, and so reread it when it was linked by @AlViking … and there it was, clearly stated.

Not sure why there’s any doubt…

The question hasn't been answered. If @pemerton had succeeded on their check would there have been a guard? A yes or no question should not be hard to answer.

 

[pemerton]

Then your statement makes no sense to me. Sorry I can't understand it.

The fact that something is a revelation to a person - that could be a film, a piece of technology, a vista, a romantic relationship, anything really - doesn't mean that the person disliked every prior experience.

In don't really see how this is so mysterious.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And yet, Pathfinder existed in a financially successful state for many years. Weird.

By what metric did 3.5 "need to be firebombed"? Was it the, "I don't like this system and want official D&D to be something else" metric?

No, the problem with 3.5 (3e generally) is that it is NOT a highly organized exception system with good generalized subsystems. It gets a lot of the way there, but the game became an unwieldy mess as it was extended. Even from the start the pieces didn't mesh all that well. It just became extremely hard to both publish new material for it AND continue to have a playable game. A break was needed.

And 4e began, judging from what we've been told, as a project of the game designers. A group of people who had grown thoroughly tired of the problems with 3.5 which they couldn't solve in a compatible way. 4e was a way of taking what was learned in almost 10 years of 3.x development and distill it into a new and more robust game. IT WORKED! 4e is phenomenally robust. They were able to print almost TEN BOOKS A YEAR for it and the game works as well at the end, heck better, than it did on day one. No other edition of D&D can say that. 5e would crumble into pea soup if 40 supplements and core books were published for it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Unconnected by any metric the poster in question values. As it turns out you have different standards.

Okay. I’ll make sure to quote this in the future when you complain that people are inconsistent with their definitions! Any metric the poster in question values!

How? @AnotherGuy literally told me there was no in-world connection with his example. It was only connected by the GM choosing something to happen because the player failed a roll. So who am I to believe? You or the person who provided an example and explained that there was no in-world causation? Other examples have been "since you failed to pick the lock someone notices you". In order to make it "improve" it, it's just not a chef in the kitchen.

I’m not sure I understand the example offered by @AnotherGuy … but I also didn’t read all the back and forth between you two that closely. @AnotherGuy has also been one of the more reasonable posters in this thread, and seems genuinely curious about understanding what people are saying… perhaps his example was meant to show something else. I honestly am not sure, so I can’t comment.

All I can say is that if you want to cling to the one example that may involve an unconnected consequence instead of many posters repeatedly telling you that’s not how it works… then go ahead.

But then I’m not quite sure why you’re asking questions only to dismiss the answers.

If the guard showed up because they overheard singing, they should have shown up whether the check was successful or not.

Why?

Seems to me that there's a spectrum of people who view the game we play as trying to play from the perspective of our character where for other people the character as just an avatar used to play the game. I know I always try to put myself in the shoes of the character, other people couldn't seem to care less.

So here’s the thing… you’re in a thread with some of those other people. So why not ask one of us how we feel about character inhabitation?

Why assume you know and declare truths about what we’re doing?

And the when called on it, hide behind “oh I’m just stating my opinion, why are people pushing back on it”.

If I started telling you why you play the way you do, I’d expect pushback. Hell, @Micah Sweet wouldn’t be able to post quick enough to chastise me!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The argument, I think, would be that experimentation with resource systems might lead the designers to find one that they really liked and them deciding to apply that universally to see how that worked.

4e is really just the culmination of a trend of design in the 3e era. Not only do later 3.5 supplements clearly experiment with systems that are either effectively or close to AEDU, you can also find other elements of 4e there, like the psionic system is definitely presaged in 3.5 supplements.

SWSE even more clearly presages 4e. It appears to be almost a clean intermediate game that bridges between 3.5 D&D and 4e D&D. It was widely seen as such back in the 4e era.

 

[Faolyn]

Worth noting here that the players eagerly embraced the frustration of being unable to solve the riddle. Good on them!

@Faolyn , any thoughts here?

It looks like they were given multiple attempts to do the task, rather than just a single attempt. The game didn't stall or stop because they didn't answer the riddle. It failed forward, since there were complications from the failure that weren't just "nothing happened."

Also, the group was given an out-of-character option to continue as is or have the GM do something about it.

Were you expecting I'd be upset about it? This is a fine encounter!

 

[Faolyn]

And yet, Pathfinder existed in a financially successful state for many years. Weird.

By what metric did 3.5 "need to be firebombed"? Was it the, "I don't like this system and want official D&D to be something else" metric?

Just because 3x was a bloated mess didn't mean people like it. So why shouldn't PF1, which is basically 3.75, do well? Especially when the alternative was a game those same people didn't like?