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

[hawkeyefan]

If that were self-evidently true, there would be no need to mention it at all.

Yes, one would think so. Yet here we are!

 

[AlViking]

Is your front door in a dangerous location where there may be monsters on either side of it?

I don't see how that's relevant. What the characters do may be risky. Meanwhile picking a lock takes the same amount of time, causes the same amount of noise, exposes them to the same risk whether they succeed or fail.

It's just a different approach. I'm not running a narrative game, it's not my job as DM to make things happen.

 

[AlViking]

Yes, that's possible. It is also possible for many other things to happen. It's all contextual.

What if the house is on fire? Then is the failure to unlock the door the same as if the house was not on fire? Or would you say the consequences are then different?

Still the same. I decide on the best option forward based on the current situation. Just like the players will decide what their characters do based on the current situation.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While your rant applies to some, maybe even many, 2024 is utter poop, and nobody needs to love poop just because it's newer.

Mod Note:

Watch your language, please. Efforts to circumvent the language filter will be treated like regular violations.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've been wondering today whether GNS amounts to a rough stab at a factor-based modelling of player motives. It's authors were able to identify a few, and their limitation was lack of time and process to tease out more. This would make GNS not so much mistaken, as approximate and incomplete.

Just a question, since I thought the answer was "yes", but your phrasing above suggests "no": you're aware that at least to a fair degree GNS was an attempted refinement of its predecessor GDS originally developed on rec.games.frp.advocacy many years ago, right?

 

[pemerton]

If I don't have a key to the front door then I choose to do something else.

In your example, it was the front door to your house. Presumably you're not going to give up trying to go home!

But failing opening the lock? They just can't open the door.

This isn't always true. @hawkeyefan and I have given examples - the drenching rain, the ringing phone, the house fire - that illustrate why not.

I decide on the best option forward based on the current situation.

I'm sure this is a true description of your GMing. But it has nothing to do with your claim about what effects are the result of what causes.

 

[FrogReaver]

You point to a very important challenge, but we have ways around it. One way is factorization. Say we are as an initial attempt at establishing a language we try to establish 200 questions we think might be relevant for play preference that can be answered yes/no/don't care. You then have quite a bit more possible answers than number of atoms in the observable universe ( ) .

I think that's a cart before horse problem. If people don't have a somewhat shared terminology for nearly any of this how can you even ask questions about preferences when 2 participants may answer they have a preference for X but understand X to mean totally different things? (You need the horse of shared terminology/language/meaning for the cart of factorization to be useful).

Also, I'm curious if anyone has done this kind of work for RPG's before? I think not, but maybe I'll be surprised.

Get about 20 relatively random roleplayers to take this somewhat big questionnaire, and do some statistics (factor analysis) and you are very likely to find clusters that belong together. If you manage to find conceptual patterns in these questions you normally can reduce the number of questions in the questionnaire dramatically without any significant loss in information captured. Even if we cut it down to just 5 highly significant questions and insist on yes/no that would give us 32 classes; dramatically richer than anything we have have today, and spesifically targeted for saying something about preference of play.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Still the same. I decide on the best option forward based on the current situation. Just like the players will decide what their characters do based on the current situation.

So if you failed to get into the burning house and then someone inside burned, you would consider that "unconnected" to your attempt to unlock the door?

Really?

 

[FrogReaver]

It's also silly from the point of view of philosophy of action and causation.

A post of mine from a few years ago makes the point:

Consider the famous example from Donald Davidson ("Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963)):​

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I flip the switch, turn on the light, and illuminate the room. Unbeknownst to me I also alert a prowler to the fact that I am home. Here I need not have done four things, but only one, of which four descriptions have been given.​

​

So when it comes to "declaring actions" in RPGing, the key question is who gets to decide what descriptions of the PCs' actions are true, and how.​

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It's true that some players are content with getting to decide only very "thin" descriptions, focused on the character's bodily movements (analogous to Davidson's "I flip the switch"), like I attack the Orc with my sword or I wink at the maiden or I hide from the soldiers in the barn or I bring the child into the Tiny Hut. But many players want to have some influence over the truth of "thicker" descriptions of their PCs' actions, like I kill the Orc with my sword or I soften the heart of the maiden with a wink or I avoid confrontation with the soldiers by hiding in the barn or I rescue the child, first by providing shelter in the Tiny Hut.​

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The obvious purpose of D&D's combat mechanics - which you, upthread, have flagged as different in some fashion from the "core play loop" - is to give players some influence over the truth of the thick description I kill the Orc with my sword. To me (although as I read your posts not to you) it seems to me obvious that the purpose of the Rustic Hospitality background feature is to give the player some influence over the truth of the thick description I avoid confrontation with the soldiers by hiding in the barn.​

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If players were not intended to have some influence over how their actions are resolved, and the outcomes that follow from their PC's bodily motions - which is to say, if players were not intended to have some influence not only over the truth of then descriptions but also over the truth of thick descriptions - then why would their be action resolution mechanics at all?​

When the player declares "I pick the lock", then - as you say - there will almost always be some other description, beyond "the lock is now open", that they hope to become true. Its failure to become true would be an in-fiction consequence of the character failing to pick the lock as they hoped.

Which makes it rather sound like - 'anything the player desires to find upon picking the lock he should find on a success'. And if that's not what you are saying then it's not clear why this supports your actual position instead of the 'finding anything he desires on successfully opening the lock' position that no one apparently holds?

 

[pemerton]

Which makes it rather sound like - 'anything the player desires to find upon picking the lock he should find on a success'.

How so?