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

[hawkeyefan]

What point are you trying to make and why ask the same question when you know how we'll answer? Going beyond that what are you trying to prove?

I asked the same question because many people have avoided giving a straight answer, or, as in your case, somehow misinterpreted the example. You thought that I was talking about the cause of the fire but that was not the case... so I clarified.

My point is that there are consequences beyond failure of the task. I think viewing these tasks in isolation, separate from the situation around them, is an odd way to look at it. What the characters are doing is connected to other things in the fiction, there are consequences for their actions, including their failures.

Now, you don't like to play with fail forward or other methods of GM leveling consequences on a failed roll... that's fine. I have no issue at all with your preference. But your phrasing is poor... none of what we're talking about is "unconnected". Especially when, the way you describe your own preference sounds far more "unconnected" to the events of play than anything anyone else has said.

 

[AlViking]

For those of us not living under purposeful rocks, "clock" in TTRPG parlance has become widely used to denote a deliberate progress counter of some sort; which may or may not be player facing. Widely popularized by Blades in the Dark, the concept shows up all over the advice and play spaces for any number of games inclusive of 5e (4e obviously had Skill Challenges which are their own form of progress counter).

Like, it's literally everywhere.

I don't know anyone who doesn't understand the usage, I was responding to @Faolyn who insisted that it's always player facing.

I typically use something that can be observed by the characters such as a sunset on the winter solstice. But occasionally there will be a ticking clock where the players know there is time pressure but don't know specific details. Escaping a collapsing building would be an example, they know the building is collapsing they don't know exactly how long it will take.

 

[AlViking]

I asked the same question because many people have avoided giving a straight answer, or, as in your case, somehow misinterpreted the example. You thought that I was talking about the cause of the fire but that was not the case... so I clarified.

My point is that there are consequences beyond failure of the task. I think viewing these tasks in isolation, separate from the situation around them, is an odd way to look at it. What the characters are doing is connected to other things in the fiction, there are consequences for their actions, including their failures.

Now, you don't like to play with fail forward or other methods of GM leveling consequences on a failed roll... that's fine. I have no issue at all with your preference. But your phrasing is poor... none of what we're talking about is "unconnected". Especially when, the way you describe your own preference sounds far more "unconnected" to the events of play than anything anyone else has said.

It is not connected in the sense of cause and effect. Beyond that I don't see why it matters.

 

[pemerton]

I see all this as ultimately tied back to a style of GM ownership of all fiction.

On this we agree!

 

[pemerton]

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

I guess that's one possibility . . .

 

[Micah Sweet]

For those of us not living under purposeful rocks, "clock" in TTRPG parlance has become widely used to denote a deliberate progress counter of some sort; which may or may not be player facing. Widely popularized by Blades in the Dark, the concept shows up all over the advice and play spaces for any number of games inclusive of 5e (4e obviously had Skill Challenges which are their own form of progress counter).

Like, it's literally everywhere.

I must be under a rock then, or you might be wrong about how wide-spread a concept that conforms to your preferences actually is.

Who knows?

 

[pemerton]

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.

Non-linearity in respect of consequences, like you describe in your last sentence, is pretty straightforward. It's bringing onto the "stage" some of the innumerably many parts of the fictional world that have not yet been described and talked about at the table.

Non-linearity in respect of framed scenes, like you describe in your second-last sentence, I think can be trickier, because the outcomes of the scenes that are played later but that, in the fiction, occur earlier, need to not contradict what has already been established. @AnotherGuy has posted about doing it in 5e play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know anyone who doesn't understand the usage, I was responding to @Faolyn who insisted that it's always player facing.

I typically use something that can be observed by the characters such as a sunset on the winter solstice. But occasionally there will be a ticking clock where the players know there is time pressure but don't know specific details. Escaping a collapsing building would be an example, they know the building is collapsing they don't know exactly how long it will take.

Still an in-fiction amount of time, just one the PCs don't know every detail about.

Happens in real life all the time.

 

[pemerton]

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

Yes, it is possible for different causes to produce similar effects. But if the cause of missing the phone call is that you couldn't open the door, that's the cause. The fact that, under different circumstances, something different might have caused you to miss the phone doesn't change that fact.

Like, if I burn my hand on the hot plate, it is burned. The fact that it's imaginable that I might instead have burned my hand on the pot doesn't mean that it's not the stove that caused my hand to burn!

 

[Faolyn]

Level Up's description of countdowns is pretty darn trad, actually. I just read it and didn't see anything about adding tension, just a way to simulate a situation with an unknown time limit, some what abstractly.

No, it doesn't say that specifically, but that's what it does. The PCs know there's only a few dice left. If they're climbing up a cliff, the GM should be narrating this to show the cliff is crumbling badly or the rope is fraying. Will they get to the top before the cliff completely crumbles or the rope snaps? If they're picking a lock where the GM felt a countdown was necessary because there's a trap slowly coming online, the GM should be narrating the ka-thunks and clicks in the walls getting faster and nearer.

That's the entire point of the countdown. It's building gradual tension--will the PCs succeed before the bad thing happens?