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

[Lanefan]

The problem with “IC-authenticity” as a play virtue is that it’s completely unprovable that anyone actually does it. Any declared action can be held as “true for my conception of my character” and no one can contradict you!

If you can’t demonstrate you’re actually doing it (you can only assert it), it’s pretty useless as a normative goal for play.

Once a character's been played for even just a few sessions, it usually becomes fairly obvious what to expect from it to the point where you can almost predict what that character is going to do in amost typical situations. And yes, this includes those characters whose usual modus operandum is "do the unexpected".

This makes it fairly easy to tell when someone's playing a character true* or not.

* - or true enough; characters aren't robots (sorry, all you Warforged fans) and would thus have mood swings just like we do, this represents the "almost" in almost predict.

 

[Lanefan]

i mean, 'that's what my character would do' is generally seen as a very distinct thing from playing the character true,

To me they're exactly the same thing, and if playing the character true leads me to doing something nasty in the fiction or to leaving the party or whatever then so be it: it's what the character would do.

the line of 'TWMCWD' is a stereotypical one used as a deflection and defence for just being a massive disruptive ass in play and 'justifying' it on their character's personality.

Let 'em fight, says I.

 

[Lanefan]

As I live in Reality, it works out fine.

Quick google check finds no town, state, or country by that name. Should I expand my search to check planet names?

 

[SableWyvern]

I'm sorry that you seem to stagger through life with no awareness of the risks inherent in what you do, or any judgement of potentially dangerous actions you take.

It it is my understanding that it is fairly well accepted that people are, in general, not great at assessing risk.

This, then, appears to be a dispute over how an individual wants to interpret "we know what the risks are at least to a general level," in light of the low average quality of human risk assessment skills. Alternatively, it could be a dispute over whether the average skills are actually that bad.

In either case, in keeping with the history of this thread, I suggest more people join in and we ensure the argument on this minor technical point continues for at least a week or two, with no one giving any ground at any stage.

 

[bloodtide]

Quick google check finds no town, state, or country by that name. Should I expand my search to check planet names?

Reality, Ohio, is a very small unincorporated community.........................

 

[Faolyn]

it's actually like saying if you miss your attack and fail to kill them then the enemy is still going to be an obstacle on your next turn.

Only if you completely ignore the point, which was that, supposedly, failing on a roll gave you info; that is, the thing you did that failed didn't work, so don't do that.

Which is not fail forward in the slightest.

 

[AlViking]

Ideally my roleplaying of the bartender doing those things while he talks to the PCs should be enough to get that across, shouldn't it?

If I want the players to know that the NPC is nervous or lying, I've always been able to make it pretty obvious.

 

[AlViking]

-Oops-

 

[FrogReaver]

Only if you completely ignore the point, which was that, supposedly, failing on a roll gave you info; that is, the thing you did that failed didn't work, so don't do that.

Which is not fail forward in the slightest.

As long as there is something else you can do then why not?

 

[AlViking]

Only if you completely ignore the point, which was that, supposedly, failing on a roll gave you info; that is, the thing you did that failed didn't work, so don't do that.

Which is not fail forward in the slightest.

If you're doing a puzzle and you failed you have learned something. You've learned that what you just tried isn't the answer.