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

[FrogReaver]

How so?

You said '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.'

In which case, if the player hopes for X then success is the player getting X, with no given restrictions on X. That's what we hear from that. I think sometimes you just don't explain yourself well, because i know from other conversations you don't actually mean any X the player desires.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How would you be able to tell the difference?

Well, as noted, the difference lies in the player's behavior. In essentially every case I've ever seen or heard of where someone uses this phrase, it's only given after the harmful act has been completed; it's used as an excuse or justification, a "well I had no choice, I had to do it, my character made me" as though the character were totally external to their self/choices and they had zero responsibility; and, finally, it's given in response specifically to quite reasonable frustration, agreed upon by at least one (and usually most) players at the table. Usually, the "but it's what my character would do" is also only deployed after a covert or hidden action which did something harmful (and often VERY harmful) to one of the other PCs.

I have literally never seen a reasonable group of people, who talk to one another and respect one another's interests and preferences, ever use this phrase in that way. It would instead be given in advance, as a "man...I kinda think I need to do this dumb/dangerous/etc. thing...", which allows the other player to come to terms with it in advance rather than just having to like it or lump it. It would usually have at least a brief window of opportunity to discuss it and maybe find an alternative. And, finally, it absolutely would not be covert--the action, if it did in fact get carried out, would be open knowledge to the group, not hidden away to only get discovered later.

Because no player has ever unjustifiably got aggravated with another’s play simply because they didn’t like the final outcome?

"Never", certainly not. But, in general, I find that that is usually pretty obvious at the table. That is, if most other players thought the situation was quite reasonable, and only one person got really bent out of shape, it's probably because the person who got bent out of shape had inappropriate expectations and is now butthurt to learn that those expectations have been dashed.

In either event, sitting down and having a genuine conversation, rather than throwing up the fig-leaf excuse, is always the better option. Communication, even if imperfect, is always better than making excuses after the fact. Checking in with others before you do things is almost always better than just doing things and demanding forgiveness or allowance afterward.

Because every player playing in good faith is a great communicator in the meta channels?

I don't understand what you mean by this.

I think you are demanding qualities here that aren’t specific to anyone playing a character meant to gel with the party, but might not in every conceivable circumstance in good faith.

...what qualities, now? I'm expecting that the player be sincere, that they think about the plausible consequences of their actions before they take those actions, and that they speak to other players if they think there might be issues resulting from the actions they feel they need to take. I don't see how any of that is in any way having unrealistic expectations. I see that as...expecting people to be communicative adults who treat their colleagues with respect. Is that really an unrealistic expectation at the table?

Sure. I’ll grant its rarity.

It certainly did not come across as indicating that it was a rarity. You made it sound like this was fairly common, as in, most groups will encounter it many times, such that it should be perfectly reasonable in nearly every case for a player to say "but it's what my character would do!" and have that be an unassailable defense for crappy behavior.

Right. It’s why I said I think you went too far instead of I disagree.

And I don't think I've gone too far at all. I am quite confident that, almost all of the time, if a situation has arisen where:

(1) A player has chosen to do something knowing that it would be harmful
(2) Another player has gotten upset because of that action
(3) At least one other player agrees that it's reasonable to be upset about that action
(4) The upset player has asked for a justification for this harmful action
(5) The player who took that action excuses this behavior with "but it's what my character would do!"

Then the player who gave that excuse is trying to justify jerkish behavior with something that isn't a justification at all, trying to pretend that the character is external to them and "made" them do it when they are completely responsible for 100% of the characteristics their character possesses.

I see nothing unfair, nor inappropriate, with saying that in the vast, VAST majority of cases--certainly more than 99 out of 100--when a player is using this as an ex post facto "explanation" for their behavior, it's because they're trying to get away with being a jerk.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You said '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.'

In which case, if the player hopes for X then success is the player getting X, with no given restrictions on X. That's what we hear from that. I think sometimes you just don't explain yourself well, because i know from other conversations you don't actually mean any X the player desires.

I don't see how this follows at all.

"There is some other description, beyond 'the lock is now open'" says nothing whatever about the player having the freedom to invent whatever they want as that some-other-description. All it says is that the state of play has changed in some way more than LITERALLY ONLY "the lock is now open".

So...if the lock was on a safe, they opened the lock so they could get to whatever was in the safe. That doesn't mean the player has any control whatsoever over what the safe contains. Maybe they already know that it should contain the documents they're looking for, or the Desert Rose ruby, or the last of the Orbs of Dragonkind, or the phial of chimaera-flu cure, or whatever else. If the lock is on a door, the some-other-description will be whatever lies beyond the door; just because you've opened the door doesn't mean you have even the slightest bit of control over where the door leads!

You're committing a pretty bad chain of illogical leaps in order to get to this conclusion.

 

[FrogReaver]

Well, as noted, the difference is that


"Never", certainly not. But, in general, I find that that is usually pretty obvious at the table. That is, if most other players thought the situation was quite reasonable, and only one person got really bent out of shape, it's probably because the person who got bent out of shape had inappropriate expectations and is now butthurt to learn that those expectations have been dashed.

In either event, sitting down and having a genuine conversation, rather than throwing up the fig-leaf excuse, is always the better option. Communication, even if imperfect, is always better than making excuses after the fact. Checking in with others before you do things is almost always better than just doing things and demanding forgiveness or allowance afterward.


I don't understand what you mean by this.


...what qualities, now? I'm expecting that the player be sincere, that they think about the plausible consequences of their actions before they take those actions, and that they speak to other players if they think there might be issues resulting from the actions they feel they need to take. I don't see how any of that is in any way having unrealistic expectations. I see that as...expecting people to be communicative adults who treat their colleagues with respect. Is that really an unrealistic expectation at the table?

Essentially it all boils down to - IMO, you have unrealistic expectations around communication in a typical group.

It certainly did not come across as indicating that it was a rarity. You made it sound like this was fairly common, as in, most groups will encounter it many times, such that it should be perfectly reasonable in nearly every case for a player to say "but it's what my character would do!" and have that be an unassailable defense for crappy behavior.

I think you read that into my response when it wasn't there at all because I wasn't in 100% agreement. My whole point was there are exceptions and your post on the subject left no room for them.

And I don't think I've gone too far at all. I am quite confident that, almost all of the time, if a situation has arisen where:

See, this is better and it demonstrates that you've backed off what made me say you had went to far in the first place, which was the 'it's never okay to say it's what my character would do'.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Where it includes is not the same as must always include. That noted, I hadn't reflected on it before but where a group extend the artifact with additions such as world supplement, then that becomes part of "the game" for that group. Thus Dragonlance became part of the game for groups using the core books + dragonlance.

Okay but like...what do we DO with that?

Because now that means discussing 5e is genuinely impossible. There is no such thing as "5e". There are a million different games which are fundamentally and inherently completely distinct from one another, because this game-as-artifact makes every table a totally unique specimen, incomparable, incommensurate.

Like, doesn't this literally kill the very concept of a game discussion forum stone dead?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Essentially it all boils down to - IMO, you have unrealistic expectations around communication in a typical group.


I think you read that into my response when it wasn't there at all because I wasn't in 100% agreement. My whole point was there are exceptions and your post on the subject left no room for them.


See, this is better and it demonstrates that you've backed off what made me say you had went to far in the first place, which was the 'it's never okay to say it's what my character would do'.

When I say "almost all of the time", I mean so often that many people will never encounter an exception.

Hence why, even in my original post, I said one-in-a-million. Exceptions are so rare, I've never seen one. Ever.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Every game you are playing (not every game system) has a setting in which the activities of the PCs take place. that's what is inseparable from the game to my mind.

Then people need to stop calling 5e a game, because it isn't a game by this standard. It's a game "system".

Also the word "campaign" is now useless, since "this game [read: game system] applied to our specific interests" is...literally what "a campaign" has always meant.

Seems to me like this is just a way to define out how other people discuss things so you can tell them they're wrong. Funny, I seem to remember being told that that was a no-no...

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't see how this follows at all.

"There is some other description, beyond 'the lock is now open'" says nothing whatever about the player having the freedom to invent whatever they want as that some-other-description. All it says is that the state of play has changed in some way more than LITERALLY ONLY "the lock is now open".

So...if the lock was on a safe, they opened the lock so they could get to whatever was in the safe. That doesn't mean the player has any control whatsoever over what the safe contains. Maybe they already know that it should contain the documents they're looking for, or the Desert Rose ruby, or the last of the Orbs of Dragonkind, or the phial of chimaera-flu cure, or whatever else. If the lock is on a door, the some-other-description will be whatever lies beyond the door; just because you've opened the door doesn't mean you have even the slightest bit of control over where the door leads!

You're committing a pretty bad chain of illogical leaps in order to get to this conclusion.

I'm not at all. The statement was that '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.'

So if a player hopes to find 1,000,000 gold when opening the lock then if he doesn't find that then he has failed to pick the lock as he had hoped. Right?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't think this specific point quite holds. There's quite a few art-first success stories in board games, including some pretty heavy hitters. Scythe and Beast were both very successful and designed specifically to use existing artwork, and the company Off The Page Games takes as their entire business model working with independent comic books to create games reusing their worlds/art assets. Mind MGMT in particularly was a huge hit from them, and Harrow County also had a reasonable presence.

In TTRPGs, Tales from the Loop was also famously an art-first design.

I mean, there might be exceptions? But they're going to be VASTLY outnumbered by things that follow the pattern. Rules design is a really, really difficult thing. Hoping that your artists happened to send you art that worked for making good rules does not sound like a productive game plan, even if it coincidentally happened to work out for some people previously.

 

[FrogReaver]

I mean, there might be exceptions? But they're going to be VASTLY outnumbered by things that follow the pattern. Rules design is a really, really difficult thing. Hoping that your artists happened to send you art that worked for making good rules does not sound like a productive game plan, even if it coincidentally happened to work out for some people previously.

That there are exceptions seems to undermine the point you were attempting to make with the example though?