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

[Micah Sweet]

Which is not the same as saying it can't happen.

From a personal, in my game where it matters perspective, I'm afraid it is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I honestly don't know how you could look at the examples given and not see that they were highly tense, drama-filled situations.

They absolutely are, but I'm focusing on the sim side because that matters more to me, especially as far as mechanics are concerned.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

From a personal, in my game where it matters perspective, I'm afraid it is.

Which is exactly why I have such a dislike for this "game-as-artifact" concept.

You can now fluidly move back and forth between discussing the high-level philosophy distinct from every game, making pronouncements about what should or should not be done. But as soon as someone assails the bailey, you retreat to the motte of "well I'm just talking about MY game".

And then you go right back out and begin using the bailey again as soon as the assailing force has left. The perfect structure; you can make blanket statements all you like because when challenged they're only about your game, where no one could possibly dispute your position, but then you'll go right back to talking about the game generally, "system" in the new verbiage.

 

[Enrahim]

I don't know, maybe that you now have access to the thing you have a good, well-founded reason to believe is on the other side?

How is this difficult?

If you're picking a lock to break out of a prison cell, your hoped-for description when you succeed is that you're free and nobody has noticed that you picked the lock. If you're picking a lock to get at the documents inside the safe, your hoped-for description when you succeed is that the documents are still there and no one will immediately notice their absence. If you're picking a lock to break into the mansion, your hoped-for description when you succeed is that all is quiet and dark and the heist may proceed as planned. If you're picking a lock to free your friend from their fetters, your hoped-for description when you succeed is that they're now able to high-tail it out of there with you. Etc.

It is you folks--the people who self-professedly don't play games of this nature--who keep inserting this utterly ridiculous notion that the player is empowered to invent LITERALLY anything whatsoever, anything at all, completely untethered from any established fiction or sensibility. Maybe, instead of assuming that that's present when people keep telling you that it's not, it might be better to ask what the limits are?


....

Are you seriously making a distinction between "the lock is open" and "the object that was locked is open"?

Like are you actually being for real right now? Because I genuinely cannot tell if you are serious or trolling.

Lanefan.

What people keep telling you--and what you keep stubbornly ignoring--is that if you don't have an established-by-fiction reason for something, you can't do it.

You cannot just declare that any hope you might have, no matter how ridiculous, is just...what happens. That's literally against the rules.

And remember--both sides, the GM and the players, are expected to follow the rules. "Begin and end with the fiction" is extraordinarily important.

The scenario of the later reply thread is that it is known that the Ruby is in the house. It is known that the house contains a safe.

Tell me how this is not "a good, well-founded reason to believe" That the Ruby is in the safe? That seem to me as wel l founded an assumption as those assumptions you gave in the first post quoted here, as those seemed not to rely on explicit info about the state of affairs ahead, but rather following from implicit genre assumptions.

In other words what prevents Lanefans proposed scenario "we open the safe to get the Ruby? That is hardly inventing castles in the sky.

 

[Maxperson]

It's amazing to me how you guys are equivocating to avoid admitting that actions have consequences.

Incorrect. We are saying that the consequences are not tied to a roll to open a lock.

 

[Maxperson]

No it doesn't. It also means no one inside is able to get out through the door.

I feel like I've taken crazy pills!

If the party can pick the lock from the outside and lead the folks inside back out through the door, then the folks inside can just walk down and open it from the inside and leave.

This example doesn't seem any better to me than the cook example.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The scenario of the later reply thread is that it is known that the Ruby is in the house. It is known that the house contains a safe.

Tell me how this is not "a good, well-founded reason to believe" That the Ruby is in the safe? That seem to me as wel l founded an assumption as those assumptions you gave in the first post quoted here, as those seemed not to rely on explicit info about the state of affairs ahead, but rather following from implicit genre assumptions.

In other words what prevents Lanefans proposed scenario "we open the safe to get the Ruby? That is hardly inventing castles in the sky.

Is it the only safe in the house?

Is it a particularly well-guarded safe, where one would expect particularly valuable things to be? Or perhaps very well-hidden, such that one would expect the contents to be more important than a safe just sitting out in the open in the drawing room? Or is it in a room that is difficult to access, on the far side of multiple prior locks?

Those would all be okay reasons. Not unassailable, but not utterly ridiculous. I don't think it would be a problem to reveal that, even on a full success, the thing they're looking for isn't in that particular place--but it wouldn't be completely inappropriate for a GM to say it was there. There should, however, be something useful, or productive, or desirable, even if the grand prize isn't there. For example, one might not find the Desert Rose itself--but one might find the key or combination to wherever it's actually stored, or perhaps the ownership papers, which could then be altered (or even "legally" updated!) to "prove" that you yourself truly are its current owner, or various other highly-useful things that would still be a true success...but not the instantaneous absolute success that isn't quite justified in context.

But separately, remember, the example repeatedly given was that any lock--ANY lock, whatsoever, anywhere, no matter what--WILL produce the Desert Rose (or whatever other MacGuffin we're talking about) on a success, simply because the player hopes that it will be so and succeeded on the roll. That's very specifically why it was used, in an attempt to write something off as so utterly ridiculous that it could not possibly be rationally accepted by anyone. It VERY MUCH was "You ARE inventing castles in the sky, and I reject that".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Incorrect. We are saying that the consequences are not tied to a roll to open a lock.

And yet they demonstrably are.

"I could not get the lock open, and the consequence was that I got rained on" is very clearly a straightforward causal relationship. The inability to open the lock is precisely why the rain had the opportunity to get you wet. "I didn't get the lock open" causally produced "I got wet".

Are you now going to argue that my clicking a mouse button is not the cause of my post appearing on this board? Because by your logic, we can't make that claim. Likewise, "because someone poisoned his food, he died" is an invalid causal relationship, nor is "because I struck him with a flametongue sword, he was burned", nor is "because I spent money, I acquired a bag of holding", nor...etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Apparently, all one can say when poisoning food is that one caused the food to be poisoned. The poisoner is now completely guilt-free, since they didn't cause the death, the poisoned food did. The sword-swinger didn't cause the burning, the flames did. The customer doesn't actually get anything, because all they did was pay coins--that doesn't CAUSE them to acquire goods in exchange.

Thank the good Lord our courts don't follow this doctrine, and instead recognize that just because a proximate cause exists doesn't mean ultimate causes don't!

If the party can pick the lock from the outside and lead the folks inside back out through the door, then the folks inside can just walk down and open it from the inside and leave.

This example doesn't seem any better to me than the cook example.

So, if I can pick the lock of my friend's jail cell, and then walk back out through the unlocked door afterward, the person inside could just open it from the inside and leave?

 

[hawkeyefan]

If the party can pick the lock from the outside and lead the folks inside back out through the door, then the folks inside can just walk down and open it from the inside and leave.

This example doesn't seem any better to me than the cook example.

Yes, well it was a quick example that I thought folks could separate from gameplay and would then easily demonstrate the connections between actions and consequences.

Foolish me! Turns out actions aren’t connected to other things and they happen in isolation!

 

[clearstream]

There are bits of the manifesto that I think are wrong. For instance, there is this:

All rules are abstractions of a larger, more complex fictional reality. They exist to ease complicated processes into something that can be more easily played with—and nothing more.​

This is a variation on, even a parody of, Baker's remark that

Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.​

But whereas Baker's remark is true, the Manifesto's statement is false, given that (i) it sets out some rules for play, and (ii) the rules it states are not abstractions of the sort it describes, and don't serve the purpose it attributes to rules. (Maybe some fine distinction could be drawn between "rules" and "principles". But I don't see the point, in this context at least.)

(Emphasis mine.) This morning I was thinking about that exact remark in a different light. I wondered if one might read Baker's choice to link to Sam Sorenson's "new simulationism" as a response to Tuovinen. Given Baker appears to have set aside the notion of GNS as creative agendas, reframing N as one thing that you can do in a game I assume he would see Tuovinen's Observations mistaken on the same account.

According to the text I bolded, Baker is willing to see modelling the stuff of the game world as another thing that you can do in a game. I can then look at each case in Tuovinen's observations and separate them out from any notional umbrella S creative agenda, to notice their differences and reframe them as things I can do in a game. Sorenson has taken one such case -- a form of "Substantial Exploration" with setting as its proper subject -- and laid out that the rules serving that case will be those abstracting the "larger, more complex fictional reality."

He might not have hit quite the right wording with the last part, but I feel the intent is reasonably clear (and it reads like an intentional mirror of Baker's phrasing, just as you indicate.) Something one can be sensitive to is the difference between a rule that has the chroming of a more complex reality, and a rule that fosters play analogous to that reality. Emphasisis should be put on "something that can be played with".