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

[Lanefan]

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.

That's an in-fiction deadline, which makes lots of sense.

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.

Again, though, an in-fiction thing rather than a meta-counter. You've determined it's going to take the building 7 rounds to collapse which means, though the PCs don't realize it, they've got 6 rounds to get out of there safely.

Looks like you use the term and concept the same way I do.

 

[clearstream]

The commitment to finding ever more absurd reasons to construct a Straw-Fail-Forward and knock it down is remarkable.

For other people, an interesting question somebody else brought to me:

Deep Cut's Threat Roll assumes some degree of success via stated Effect, the roll is now to deal with whatever Threats may arise (unless Failure is explicitly brought to bear).

Is each roll here still conflict resolution? Or is it more abstracted task res a la 5e combat; with the Score Target being the overarching conflict we're resolving?

What has been labelled as conflict resolution has historically focused on player intent. The new threat roll doesn't resolve player intent (other than the generic intent to avoid "a negative consequence from a dangerous opponent or challenging situation" and the "threat of failure" edge case.)

One could say that intentional actions by the player are what evokes the roll (which then focuses on avoiding negative consequences) but I wonder how that should play out if the threat is unexpected? In any case, the threat roll isn't supposed to be deciding the success of those actions (again, except for the "threat of failure" edge case.)

It seems overall most like a saving throw, where as a player I get myself into situations and there's a general saving throw to handle all the various bolts that might on that account strike me dead. Seeing as a single bolt (in the harm/trauma system) won't probably kill me in one, that can give rise to a chain (effect-consequence-effect-consequence-etc.)... so I can see why you might liken it to combat.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I'm happy to begin and end with the fiction, but if as a player the game lets me try to establish some of that fiction (that's not yet been established) via action declaration incuding intent, and on a successful roll that fiction becomes established, then why wouldn't I always declare intents that benefit my character and or its goals?

We know the Desert Rose exists because that's been established in the fiction, and we think we know who currently owns/has it. What hasn't been established in the fiction is its location. It could be in the safe in the wall in the tycoon's house, it could be in the bank down the street, it could be on his yacht in the harbour, it could be in his pocket, or any of a hundred other possible places.

And so if we've managed to break into his house and get to his safe, I can declare "I pick open the safe to find the Desert Rose ruby". Task - pick the safe. Intent - find the ruby.

And if the examples I've seen earlier are correct, a full success (roll of 10+ in some systems) will give me both task AND intent, meaning that by my success I've not only just established the location of the Rose but I've also now got my mucky mitts on it. And if I fail, it's not there. I suppose success-with-complication could mean among other things that I open the safe but the ruby's not there.

What this makes impossible, however, is the result of "I fail but the ruby is in fact in the safe"; because the ruby's location has to remain quantum so if I fully succeed (10+) in searching for it on the yacht or somewhere else it can be there waiting for me. Or so I've been told, anyway, though not in those exact terms.

 

[Lanefan]

So, just to be absolutely clear...

Even if every single person at the table, including the GM, agrees that the "truth and veracity of the fictional world" actively and directly leads to an experience all of them genuinely dislike--not even in the "losing sucks but always winning sucks more" way, just genuinely not enjoyable--then everyone is bound by it?

I'm having a hard time imagining how this situation could ever arise. The GM is responsible for the truth and veracity of the setting and if she's blown it to the point where even she's not enjoying it, something's really come adrift somewhere.

I just want to be absolutely sure that that's what you're saying here. That the "truth and veracity of the fictional world" is legitimately more important than having a long-term good time (not just a short-term one). That the "truth and veracity of the fictional world" is more important than the people participating at the table.

If, hypothetically, it were to get that bad I'd probably just shut the campaign down and start over in a different setting and with different fiction...and different characters.

I've done this exact thing, not because of the fiction itself but because the underlying rules system became too wobbly and needed a major overhaul.

 

[Maxperson]

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!

Connected yes. Connected close enough to be tied to the pick lock roll? Not in my opinion. Suppose they get the door open the first try, but the stairs are on fire so they can't get up to the family? Then the successful roll to get inside got them inside, but wasted precious time.

I know that wouldn't happen in your game, but it does show that the fire and family are too distant from the pick lock roll for the roll to determine or have a direct affect on the outcome.

 

[Lanefan]

If you're actively trying to get into the building, you are doing something. Your failure to open the door has lead to their deaths. If you want to say the blame is yours, or on whoever installed too good a lock or hinges that were too strong for you to kick down, whatever. The point is, because you could not get into the building, they are dead.

If they would have died anyway had I done nothing, my failing to get into the building didn't change anything.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Those are really bad examples. Poison killing someone is a DIRECT effect. Clicking the mouse and the post being posted is a DIRECT effect. Opening the lock(or not) has zero direct effect on the fire or saving the folks inside.

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!


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?

This is a pretty good sized Strawman. We aren't saying that.

 

[Maxperson]

If I lock someone in a room when the building is on fire, then yes my action of locking the door leads to their death.

There is likely someone out there that I could donate bone marrow to that would save their life if I knew that I was a match. Am I responsible for their death if I do not donate? If I find out I am a match and want to donate but by the time the donation can be scheduled they've died am I responsible?

One of these things is not like the other.

Even then you didn't kill that person directly when you locked him in. It was indirect. If you shoot someone in the leg and give that person a lifelong limp, then 20 years later the limp causes the person to fall down stairs and die, you caused that death indirectly. It doesn't matter that you purposefully shot the person in the leg, or that the death was only two steps removed(shot-limp-death), the roll shouldn't be the cause of that death.

 

[Maxperson]

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?

Because you don't have access to it until you open the safe door. Until then unless you can phase your hand through steel, it's not accessible. The only thing that changed with the pick lock roll was that now the lock is open. You have to take another action to gain access to what is inside.

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?

See above. All of those things require additional actions to actually change the scenario. Until then, all that happens is the lock is unlocked. Many times in my game I've seen the players unlock a door or chest, but not open it immediately. They did some other stuff first. In a very few occasions, they never got back to the door and went through it. Other stuff came up. Opening the locks resulted in nothing but an unlocked lock.

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

It's a real and valid distinction. Tomorrow when you unlock the door to your car, try getting inside without opening the door first. It's not going to work out very well.

 

[Enrahim]

Is it the only safe in the house?

Assume that is not established.

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?

These would certainly strengthen the justification for the desert rose to be there, but why would they be necessary, when you already have "Rose in house, safe in house" as "a good, well-founded reason to believe"? Edit: In particular in light of the examples you gave in my first quoted post.

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.

I fail to see how these could be a success response on the prompt Lanefan used:

"I pick the safe open in order to steal the Desert Rose ruby"

It would indeed as a player seem very much like a bad faith call from the GM to twist the semantics of the stated intention.

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".

This example is just trying to highlight how important this problem is, because this is quickly where you arrive if you follow the principle to its logical conclusion. The crux of the matter is what and who determines if there is "a good, well-founded reason to believe".

If "only known safe in a house where the valuable object is known to exist" is a good well founded reason to believe* , then why wouldn't the only known locked drawer in a house where the valuable object is known to exist (safe not discovered yet) be a good well founded reason to believe the object is in there? The only failure mode for this tactic to find the Rose appear to be if the characters are stupid enough to gather info on the presence of safes or other potential hiding places before starting the heist. See the problem?

*(which I cannot see you have argued against without trying to introduce a new potential in fiction premise that could cause it to not be, which sort of implies you seem to agree that without these it could very well be)