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

[Faolyn]

I'm saying what I actually said.

Well, you didn't say it clearly enough for some.

 

[HappyHubris]

A lot of this is just natural preference for the version of the thing that you first encountered. You see the same thing with music, fashion, candy flavors, and other subjective topics.

This is magnified by the burden of learning new rulesets in TTRPGs - it's more of a hassle than grape gum tasting grapier. People have also invested way more time into each system.

I also suspect that this board skews to people with more time spent on TTRPGs, so that point of introduction is less likely to be 5e24.

 

[Lanefan]

I think this perfectly encapsulates exactly why I have not merely zero but extreme negative interest in this sort of thing.

That, quite literally, is explicitly calling for a cycle of never-ending revenge, of "getting one over" on the person who wronged you, back and forth and back and forth until nothing is left. I have no interest in that. That sounds like the most miserable and infuriating experience I could possibly have.

I want to have fun, not be constantly afraid of a short knife between the ribs and constantly plotting how to slip one between someone else's.

All this tells me is that we have different ideas of what can be fun in the game.

And don't get me wrong - it doesn't have to become an endless cycle and IME never does. Eventually, one or both of the feuding characters either leaves that party or perma-dies, and the rivalry ends.

That said, rivalries can go on for a few adventures and at times become very entertaining for all. I've also seen instances where in-party rivalries and infighting affected the course and outcome of the adventure/mission they were on, for better or worse or just sideways.

In any case, reacting in character is to me light-years better than getting upset at the table.

 

[Lanefan]

Why? I can't imagine fiction so vacuous that it would allow that. I'm being completely serious here.

Because that conclusion IMMEDIATELY leads to the principle that if two players both choose to pick locks at the same time, both of them find the Desert Rose. How could that possibly be? That clearly doesn't make any sense.

Indeed, it doesn't, and in the extremely unlikely event that two characters try picking different locks at the exact same time each with the same intent (to find the Desert Rose) then some sort of one-off resolution would have to be invoked to determine which of them in fact found it.

The Desert Rose is clearly only in one place, and just magically HOPING that it will be hiding behind this locked door doesn't make it so.

What thing gives you the justification to say "no, it makes perfect sense that the Desert Rose would be behind this random locked door"? Where is the fiction which establishes this? You can't just declare any intent whatsoever. It has to follow from and build upon what is already known. You are the one inserting this notion that the player is at liberty to declare ANY hope, literally ANYTHING at all, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how abstruse, no matter how utterly irrational. How could any hope no matter how irrational follow from the fiction already established?

I remember getting into a long argument with (I think it was pemerton) years ago about just this very idea: that in the systems he was advocating for at the time, the player's stated intent to find the Desert Rose* in the safe would put it there on a successful roll, rather than in the desk drawer or in a coat pocket in the wardrobe or in a bank vault down the street. The GM didn't get to predetermine its location; established fiction might have put it in the house but its exact location was quantum until someone's intent+roll nailed it down.

Perhaps not to your surprise, I argued against this.

* - the specific McGuffin under discussion at the time was different, may have been a book, I'm not sure now.

If they don't know where it is, how could they have an established by the fiction reason to believe that it is behind this singular specific door?

Maybe they don't. The advantage of allowing the GM to predetermine its location, though, is that even if the fiction has said nothing about it to this point, they could stumble onto it anyway by sheer good luck - they thought to check the desk drawer, and there it was - or could miss it by sheer bad luck, they opened the safe just fine but never thought to check the desk.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

You absolutely should be considering the surrounding situation and not just the task. This is why these games push for something to happen whenever you roll the dice. That "nothing happens"... although it may be perfectly fine in other games... is not what's wanted in this type of game. Things need to progress in some way... either negatively or positively, or some mix of the two. This is why a mixed success result is such a key feature of many such games.

When you ditch the idea of binary succeed/fail outcomes, and instead start imagining what a success or a failure means given the context of what's happening in the fiction... and you allow for some amount of mixed outcome... you really open things up. I think this is the mindset that it takes to run these games. Don't look at the tasks individually... look at what they mean. What is being attempted AND WHY?

I said "PbTA" earlier, but I was really thinking about my experience playing Starforged / Ironsworn. So everything I've said before and now is really me describing my struggle with Starforged.

What I find challenging about "looking at the surrounding situation and not just the task" is figuring out just how much of the surrounding context gets included into a roll.

With Starforged, I found myself caught between rolling for atomic tasks and abstracting entire chunks of the play, neither of which felt satisfactory. Rolling for atomic tasks felt boring and repetitive—it felt like for the most part, I kept using the same one or two moves over and over again, which didn't seem right. Abstracting too much of the play felt anticlimactic—a single roll to determine whether or not my guy can successfully infiltrate a high security lab to get intel, felt like there was no room for me to actually "play the game." (EDIT: Not saying these two extremes are my only choices. But just expressing my struggle finding the right middle ground for a satisfying experience.)

I'm also wondering if part of my struggle with Starforged is from trying to enforce linear time, i.e. the time in the fiction is (almost) always moving in the same direction as time in real life (also a habit I picked up from DND 5e). If I were to allow more flexibility with the temporal component, I could presumably do a single roll for my "infiltration missoin" described in my previous paragraph to determine a general outcome, then jump back to construct detailed scenes that may have happened during the mission and using rolls if appropriate. Non-linear time would also give me the ability to be more flexible with consequences—introducing elements I may not have previously thought about existing, like security guards.

Anyway, I am excited to retry Starforged with some fresh perspective. Sorry for my rambling, and thank you for responding to my post, and thanks to everyone who are arguing in good faith in this thread. It's very thought provoking.

Stay safe y'all.

 

[Lanefan]

Perhaps. Just from that very first principle, however, I find something to at least raise my eyebrows at. "If, at any point, any aspect of the game begins to clash with the veracity and truth of the fictional world, change it." That means, even if everyone at the table agrees that something being true in the fictional world is a less enjoyable experience, the less-enjoyable experience MUST be enforced, no matter what. I don't believe anyone, even "new simulationism" fans, sincerely believes that something genuinely agreed to be antagonistic to enjoyment should remain true, and that instead the understanding of the world needs to change so that the players will actually enjoy playing in it, even if that requires a little bit of light rejuggling.

So far, I rather like the cut of this guy's jib.

Point 8 is also....a pretty damn bold claim that I'm not sure is even true? "Abstractions are, by their very nature, mechanistic. Non-playful." They're literally saying that play not only does not, but cannot, even in principle, occur via using or thinking about rules. I'm not sure any simulationism fan I know would accept such a claim!

And the cut of his mainsail, too.

He's bang-on right with this, and is saying the quiet part out loud: when we have to abstract things (and it's unavoidable that we will) we're in whole or in part turning roleplay into mechanics-play. And sure, there's those that are in it for that mechanics-play thus for them, in general the more abstraction the better; but those of us in it for the roleplay side would logically want to see less abstraction in those cases where there's a choice (usually, social encounters).

And then point 10 is a reiteration of my criticism of point 1 and my confusion over point 7. Points 10 and 7 indicate that the world is not supreme--the players are. Either point 1 is false (or badly overstated), or points 7 and 10 are. Given the repetition of 7 and 10, I'm quite confident it is point 1 that is in error. What it should say is:

1. The fictional world is your primary focus.​

In everything you do, ensure that the fictional world is the focus. If, at any point, any aspect of the game begins to clash with the veracity and truth of the fictional world, change it, unless the group agrees that doing so would be a worse experience.​

​

In every ruling, every rule, every encounter, every moment—the fictional world reigns. It cannot be overcome, unless the table agrees it should be. If the table does so, step back, figure out where the problem with the fictional world lies, and fix that. Do not try to invoke rule or procedure or any other intermediary. All that matters is the agreement of the participants, and ensuring that the veracity and truth of the fictional world are worth pursuing.​

This recognizes that the true supreme thing is not the world, not the veracity or truth thereof (not sure what makes "veracity" different from "truth" anyway!), but rather the enthusiastic participation of the people joining for the experience, regardless of what role they play.

If it read like that, I think many tables would crash and burn in a hurry.

Why? Because the players usually outnumber the DM X-to-1, and come crunch time all but the most altruistic of players would naturally want to "fix the fiction" to their benefit. The DM would be outvoted, the fiction altered, and the game ultimately made poorer despite the players' short-term enjoyment right now.

Short-term gain is useless if it comes at the expense of long-term pain.

The fiction, and precedent set within it, has to rule in order to remove that short-term-gain temptation.

 

[Lanefan]

Are you actually reading the examples?

I miss the phone call if I can't open my door. I also miss it if I get home five minutes later and can open my door (unless the caller is stupidly persistent and lets it ring for five minutes, which means I probably don't want to answer it anyway). The ringing phone is not related to the task of opening my door.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Who's equivocating? If this were a game and the characters hear screams for help, the fire has already been established in the fiction. The characters then decide what to do which in this scenario includes picking a lock and failing.

The example with the burning house was in no way about the cause of the fire. Again... let's set aside the game for now and just think about the situation. There's a burning building. You try to open the door to let people out. You fail to do so. People are then burned in the fire.

Do you see a connection between your action and the people being burned?

The important thing for me is that the DM changes nothing based on the failure. Yes, the characters wasted a round but they could also have wasted a round debating whether or not to go into the house or perhaps casting a protection spell on the person going in. Nothing changes because of the failed roll other than roughly 6 seconds have passed.

This is a traditional ticking clock scenario. As time progresses from when the characters hear the scream for help and they get to the person inside, things may happen inside depending on how long that takes. The clock doesn't tick more quickly or slowly depending on what the characters do, if they have 5 rounds to get to the person before they are burned, they have 5 rounds unless the characters can do something to slow down the flames.

Even if you feel the need to break down things into specific increments of time like that (which is not a requirement, but certainly some games will attempt to do so), there are still consequences if you fail. Let's say someone tries for five rounds to kick in the door. What happens on round six? Is that connected to the failure to kick in the door? The answer to me would seem to be obviously "yes". But you seem to think the answer is "no".

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, of course... but let's say you then fail to boot the door in. Then people in the house are burned.

Are your attempts to open the door or to kick it in unconnected to the people being burned?

Again, it's a yes or no.

Yes they are connected, potentially, in the downstream. No they are not connected in the immediate.

It's a question of granularity. In the immediate, my failure to boot the door open merely means I'm still stuck outside the locked door.

We won't and can't know whether my failure to get the door open led to (or helped lead to) the people inside burning until all other potentially-relevant actions, by me and by others, are resolved. The people inside may find a way to get out on their own. Someone else might get in through a back door while I'm pounding on the front. The fire department might show up and put the fire out. I might find a different way into the house.

All my inability to get through the door determines in the immediate is exactly that: I can't get in through that door. And for in-game task-failure consequences I usually look at the immediate results rather than downstream, as downstream can almost always still be affected by other factors and-or other subsequent actions.

 

[AlViking]

But you're not playing here, on Earth, in the actual real world where there are no elves, no magic, no dragons, the only hobbits were the long-extinct Homo floresiensis, there are no long-term effects from all those injuries people take, nobody gets all their skin melted off after breathed on by a red dragon, and so on.

There are games like that out there. We're not talking about them right now.


Assuming it's used. In 5e, magical healing is often not needed. In earlier editions, it's possible that nobody is playing a healer.


Exactly my point. In the real world, there'd be a manhunt if you decided to kill an IRS agent for doing their job. In an RPG world, you can skip town and hope that the GM forgets to send bounty hunters after you.


Yes, they can know there's a clock in the same way they know that they only have 15 hit points left, or that their AC is 16, or any other game mechanic needed. The clock is for the players, not the PCs.

That assumes that the players know things the characters do not. I assume you've been reading other people's posts so you should know by now that for some of us @Lanefan included ideally the players only know what the characters know. characters. Therefore it should go without saying that your definition of timeclock in a game is not universal.