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

[pemerton]

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.'

Yes. I said nothing about what such "other descriptions" might be, how they are to be formulated consistently with the rules of the game, etc.

In which case, if the player hopes for X then success is the player getting X, with no given restrictions on X.

I didn't say that. As per what I wrote just above, I said nothing about how permissible action declarations are framed.

 

[pemerton]

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".

Right. This is more-or-less the same as what I just posted in reply to @FrogReaver.

 

[pemerton]

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?

Sure. This is the same as, when I was a child and woke up hoping to find a wonderful new Lego set at the bottom of my bed (because I'd dreamed it) and didn't, I hadn't woken up as I hoped.

This tells us nothing, though, about what it is reasonable for a human being to hope for; nor what reasonable human beings do hope for; nor what counts as a permissible action declaration.

 

[FrogReaver]

This tells us nothing, though, about what it is reasonable for a human being to hope for; nor what reasonable human beings do hope for; nor what counts as a permissible action declaration.

1. So I agree, but why does the hope need to be reasonable?
2. Why didn't you mention this 'reasonable' requirement of the hope in the initial post?

EDIT:
3. How is it determined what counts as a permissible action declaration? The System?

 

[pemerton]

What @pemerton is almost certainly saying is that the lock is a barrier between the PC and their goal, which is whatever lies behind the lock (the other side of the door, the inside of the chest), and the lock is not the actual goal. Unless it's a lockpicking contest. When they fail to do so, they fail to get to their goal.

I'm saying what I actually said.

Yes. That's the implication of the statement as given.

No it's not.

My statement was that there is some thing, other than the mere fact of the lock being opened, that the player is hoping to be the case. I'm not an expert on logically formalising hopes - it probably involves some sort of modal logic. But ploughing on regardless, the logical form of what I describe is along these lines:

There is some X such that (i) X <> "the lock is opened" and (ii) the player regards X as a possible description of their action (which can also be described as "opening the lock") and (iii) the player hopes for X.​

That does not entail what you are asserting, which is that For all X, X is a thing that a player can reasonably (i) hope for and (ii) regard as a possible description of their action (which can also be described as "opening the lock").

I think the lack of entailment is obvious, but in case it needs further demonstration: let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that there are N things that a player might hope for and regard as a possible result of opening a lock, where N = the number of natural numbers and where "the lock is opened" is not one of the N things. (This supposition is shown to be acceptable thus: if a player can hope to find <this many> coins on the other side of the door, then they can also hope to find <this many +1> coins.) I can exclude arbitrarily many of the N possibilities from the domain of the reasonable and/or the permitted, either by enumeration or by some general description (other than "all of them") and it will still be true that there is at least one thing that can satisfy (i) X <> "the lock is opened" and (ii) the player regards X as a possible description of their action (which can also be described as "opening the lock") and (iii) the player hopes for X.

You are inserting, without any justification, the idea that the player may invent ANY other description, anything at all, no matter what, with no limitations, no exceptions, nothing. They can just directly declare whatever they like whenever they like no matter what.

That is clearly and explicitly not compatible with anything else @pemerton said there. Nothing--not one thing--gives even the slightest hint that the player is somehow CONTROLLING what the hoped-for-thing is. It's simply that they do, in fact, hope for something beyond "there is now an open lock". That is the one and only thing actually described in that statement. Nothing--not one thing--is said about where that hoped-for-thing came from. YOU are the one inserting this bizarre and ridiculous notion that the player, by succeeding, gets to declare anything they like. Why would you insert that? It isn't present in anything pemerton said. It isn't included in any part of the examples he gave in things like combat actions, where the player is (for example) hoping for more than literally only and exclusively "my sword made contact with the orc" or whatever. If you wouldn't reason from that to, say, "and thus the orc popped open like a piñata and a million gold pieces fell out, why would you thus reason from "the player hopes for more than literally only and exclusively 'the lock opened' " to "and thus the door popped open and a million gold pieces fell out"?

The combat piñata example is a good one for making the point: players in D&D typically declare and roll attacks hoping to reduce the foe to zero hp, not just to be told that their weapon made contact with their foe. (And the fact that the mechanics readily accommodate this hope is is one reason why D&D has needed to have somewhat ad hoc systems, like "subduing" and "vanquishing" in AD&D, grated onto it in order to account for situations where victory in a fight is achieved via a demonstration of superior skill rather than actually killing someone.)

The question of what counts as a permissible action declaration and who gets to set the parameters around that is quite separate from my rather simple point about the relationship between action and description, namely, that most actions can be truly described in multiple ways and that typically what motivates the action is some hoped-for description beyond the fairly simple bodily motion (like flicking the switch, or picking the lock).

Are you saying they can't hope for 1,000,000 gold upon opening the lock? Because if not then suppose they do!

<snip>

I'm proposing that the player can hope for whatever they want when having their character perform an action.

Given that I know of no RPG which does not have rules, principles or similar normative constraints on permissible action declarations - beginning with but not limited to considerations around fictional position - I don't know why you would propose what you do, nor find it so shocking that others (like me and @EzekielRaiden) would assume that such rules etc are being followed.

As for what happens if a player doesn't follow the rules? The same as in any other leisure game played among friends. (In my case, that means a conversation about whether we all really want to play this game.)

 

[Lanefan]

Problem is that fiction spills into the real world. I guess you wouldn't be keen on your players actually drawing knives on each other over an in game PvP conflict? Having the characters stall might be fine. Having the players stall might be a different matter. We are talking about real life minutes that go ticking by. Maybe even worse might be the partial stall where some players insist on keep trying while other players want to give up. I have seen such conflicts almost causing real world issues.

Which could be reflective of their characters' feelings - some want to keep trying, others want to give up. Eventually it might take those who want to give up actually walking away (in the fiction) and leaving the others to it.

This is one of those instances, though, where my go-to response is let 'em fight. I once DMed a party who got to a massive door, behind which was the treasure vault of a Dwarven kingdom. Their odds of opening it were exactly zero (to start with, it could only be opened by a Dwarf and they didn't have any handy at the time), but one PC Thief wouldn't be deterred - he was determined he was goign to get through that door.

It got to the point where the rest of the party just left him there (fortunately it was a safe area but they didn't know that at the time), went and did whatever other adventuring they were there to do, and then came back and collected him as they left.

Managing such situations is in my understanding GM responsibility. Designing the puzzles with some built in fiction mechanism to invalidate further work on it is something I would strongly recommend. Puzzles should only go to optional places (not a problem in your setup), and the emergency measure should involve destroying the puzzle with failure.

Depends on the puzzle. Some, such as a maze of twisty passages, aren't that easy to destroy and-or destroying them would carry major risk to those present.

I have found making an easy success via unrealistic hints or otherwise just give them the reward on the other side of the puzzle is extremely invalidating for those that tried hard to solve it.

Completely agree on this.

The term fail forward come from narrative games, where the forward is understood to be the story. The story has only one direction. It is not intended to indicate any direction compared to any goals as that is a fully secondary concern in a narrative game. Feel free to read every instance of "fail forward" as "fail any other direction than forwards" for your purposes - that doesn't change the meaning of it in any meaningful way at all for those advocating it

It's a very poor term, then. "Fail with immediate consequences" might be better. And fail still has to mean fail.

Would the clock work better for you if each tick was associated with some omen happening in the fiction lining up with some prophesies? Or if the GM keep the time hidden until the players has some ability to assess the situation (talking with some sage or other expert on the situation for instance)? I think quite a few clocks could be implemented this way without it affecting the purpose - it just is uncommon to be this level of concerned about PC knowledge so such techniques doesn't see widespread use.

I don't tend to put clocks into the adventures I design unless they're very long term and known up-front to the PCs e.g. being told at midwinter that something has to be done by midsummer's eve.

In published modules I've run, sometimes the very presence of a clock isn't known to the PCs until the very end, meanwhile they're taking trips back to town for supplies etc. thus meaning either a) what was intended as a two or three day clock has to somehow be spun out to weeks or b) the Bad Thing happens long before the PCs have any hope of stopping it. Neither is a desirable outcome I don't think.

 

[FrogReaver]

My statement was that there is some thing, other than the mere fact of the lock being opened, that the player is hoping to be the case. I'm not an expert on logically formalising hopes - it probably involves some sort of modal logic. But ploughing on regardless, the logical form of what I describe is along these lines:

There is some X such that (i) X <> "the lock is opened" and (ii) the player regards X as a possible description of their action (which can also be described as "opening the lock") and (iii) the player hopes for X.​

That does not entail what you are asserting, which is that For all X, X is a thing that a player can reasonably (i) hope for and (ii) regard as a possible description of their action (which can also be described as "opening the lock").

for (iii) a player can hope for anything, perhaps not reasonably but reasonably wasn't an original requirement. I'm all for saying it should be part of the requirements, but let's first tackle what you actually said before we go modifying it to make it correct.

for (ii) being a possible description of their action just means there needs to be some causal sequence that depended on their opening the lock. That may not be everything as it excludes sequences with other causes, but it's so robust that any desired set of details can be added in by simply adding the action as the first cause of a causal sequence.

it's because of this that I say X can be anything.

I think the lack of entailment is obvious, but in case it needs further demonstration: let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that there are N things that a player might hope for and regard as a possible result of opening a lock, where N = the number of natural numbers and where "the lock is opened" is not one of the N things. (This supposition is shown to be acceptable thus: if a player can hope to find <this many> coins on the other side of the door, then they can also hope to find <this many +1> coins.) I can exclude arbitrarily many of the N possibilities from the domain of the reasonable and/or the permitted, either by enumeration or by some general description (other than "all of them") and it will still be true that there is at least one thing that can satisfy (i) X <> "the lock is opened" and (ii) the player regards X as a possible description of their action (which can also be described as "opening the lock") and (iii) the player hopes for X.

In case it's not clear. I agree with your explicit premise. I also agree that if you add reasonably to (iii) that makes for a potentially large restriction. But without the reasonably doesn't what I am saying follow from your explicit premise?

The question of what counts as a permissible action declaration and who gets to set the parameters around that is quite separate from my rather simple point about the relationship between action and description, namely, that most actions can be truly described in multiple ways and that typically what motivates the action is some hoped-for description beyond the fairly simple bodily motion (like flicking the switch, or picking the lock).\

I agree here as well, but the thing is, who gets to set the parameters around permissible action declarations is very related to my point, since you are using the idea of permissible action declaration as a shield for my criticism.

Given that I know of no RPG which does not have rules, principles or similar normative constraints on permissible action declarations - beginning with but not limited to considerations around fictional position - I don't know why you would propose what you do, nor find it so shocking that others (like me and @EzekielRaiden) would assume that such rules etc are being followed.

Because it doesn't matter whether an RPG currently does something. Either we are just talking about RPG's that currently exist, or we are talking about the set of all potential RPG's. Given that most if not all of your favorite games have came out in your lifetime, I think the problem with limiting the discussion to currently existing games should be apparent. If we had done that at any given point, some of your favorite games wouldn't have even been able to be made (presumably) since the forge wouldn't have been talking about games that didn't yet exist.

As for what happens if a player doesn't follow the rules? The same as in any other leisure game played among friends. (In my case, that means a conversation about whether we all really want to play this game.)

Why are you assuming there is necessarily some rule against this?

 

[Enrahim]

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.

This method should be robust against the multiple meanings problem you describe. If questions that is highly ambiguous is included in the questionnaire, that ambiguity will show up as a seemingly random noise. This masks the potential correlations that might have been found if unambiguous questions of each potential meaning had been asked. The effect of this is that questions that is too ambiguous are found to not carry significant meaning in the principal factors identified. Those questions that factor into these might still have some ambiguity, but still have a solid skew toward a certain understanding.

As for if this has been done before - wizards have had some large questionnaires regarding playtest. That might possibly reveal some patterns, but the questions are not ideal for determining important factors as they are not wide enough. The bartle taxonomy I believe is solidly funded on this approach by now, but unfortunately there are reasons to believe it do not properly translate from most to ttrpgs. Appart from that I am not aware of any major data collection efforts in this space.

 

[Maxperson]

I expressly don't look at it from the perspective of the story, because for these purposes I don't care about the story.

Instead,I look at it from the perspective of the characters in the fiction (and by extension, the players at the table) and whether or not they are making progress toward their goal(s). That's the only thing that matters in task resolution.

The action moving forward isn't the same as getting closer to your goal. If your goal is to break into a house and steal the magic sword, failing to open the lock and being discovered by guards is going to move you farther away. You might get caught, you might kill the guards and have to run due to the noise of the fight, or you might get away. That's failing forward, despite not getting closer to the goal.

 

[Lanefan]

We're not playing real people in the real world.

I'd like to think we're playing people who could be real in a world that could be real given the parameters under which the setting was designed.

In other words, I'm playing a real Elf in that Elf's real world.

We don't want our real lives to be filled with the kind of excitement found in a typical RPG, because most of us don't want to live in hellscapes where you're being regularly attacked by monsters or threatened with apocalypses. We want the interesting and exciting parts of our actual lives to be safe, which is why we have horror movies and roller coasters and RPGs. So saying "this would happen if they were real people" doesn't cut it. If they were real people, they'd all have PTSD and have terrible scars and permanent injuries from all the monsters and have to pay massive amounts of taxes on the gold they recovered.

With the prevalence of healing in most settings the terrible scars and permanent injuries piece becomes fairly moot. The PTSD is a valid point, and maybe needs playing up some.

As for taxes, they're welcome to try collecting them...

So? The PCs should have no reasonable in-fiction way of knowing what hit points or saving throws are either, and I'm guessing you use those.

They don't know what hit points are by name or number but they do know by concept that some people are relatively tougher and more resilient than others.

Clocks are a tool used to measure how much longer until the thing the clock was tracking occurs. Just like how a player's emotions will change if they're very low on hit points and the battle is clearly not done and they don't know if they'll survive it, the player's emotions will change if they realize that the clock is close to zero.

I know that!

My issue, as noted previously, is that oftentimes the player (and thus the PC) doesn't and can't know there's a clock in the first place because of the way the premise has been set up in the fiction. As in, you're exploring a dungeon that has some nasties in it but you've no way of knowing that the BBEG is partway through a ritual to summon some hideous demon far beyond the PCs' capability to handle and that if you don't interrupt him by midnight that demon's coming in. And so you quite reasonably decide to camp out for the night...