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

[Maxperson]

So all of this ridiculous back and forth over "consequences" of lock opening is just down to how granular you consider actions need to be.

So in your world, using your car door example, opening a safe would be something like this:

Player: I attempt to pick the lock of the safe
DM: You succeed.
Player:I open the safe door
DM: It opens.
Player: I look inside.
DM: There is an envelope.
Player: I pickup the envelope
DM: It is in your hand
Player: I open the envelope
DM: How do you open the envelope?
Player: OK, I use my dagger like a letter opener
DM: OK, there is now a tear in the top of the envelope
Player: I look in the envelope
DM: There is a piece of paper
Player: I take the paper out....
...... etc

No. After the lock opens, a simple, "I open the door and look inside" is fine. No need to make it separate declarations if you include them together. If I automatically included opening the door when the lock was picked and a trap went off, the player would scream bloody murder. They are not the same action.

But thanks for the ridiculous response that was not at all what I actually said.

As opposed to:
Player: I attempt to pick the lock of the safe
DM: You succeed. The door swings open, there is an envelope inside
Player: I grab the envelope and look inside
DM: There is a single sheet of paper with a list of names <reads out the names>
....

Or...

Player: I attempt to pick the lock of the safe
DM: You succeed. The door swings open and a fire trap goes off incinerating everything inside. Take 23 points of damage unless you make a successful dex save.
Player: I never said I opened the safe! You need to let me make sure there aren't traps on the thing. I wasn't planning on opening it yet.
DM: Yeah, but there are people on the internet who are convinced that they should be the same action and I went with it. Tough luck for you.

If that's how you want to play the game and your players are okay with you playing their PCs like that, have at it. Mine would string me up for playing their PC and making them open a safe before they were ready.

 

[JConstantine]

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.

It's literally not. While there are definitely GMs who are adopting clocks, as presented in BitD, into systems that don't use them (indeed, I've done it myself), they are not as widespread as you are making out. Rather than others living under a rock, you may be living in a TTRPG bubble.

 

[JConstantine]

The cause of the people dying in the house is the fire. I do not cause someone to die because I failed to prevent their death.

Assuming the reason for trying to open the door was to save people from the fire, it's a logical causal effect. While it's true that their cause of death is the fire, the character's inability to open the door prevented them from being saved in time. This cause-and-effect is precisely why some people develop survivor's guilt, even when it's ultimately not their fault.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've not touched any of the Level Up stuff, but I'm assuming it's the same as what's in WOIN, in which case it's a knock-off of the Angry GM's time/tension pool. I imagine the Angry GM would be the first to call their self trad, but the mechanic is designed to add tension.

Perhaps, but it does so in a sim way, and that's my priority. It's an excellent example of handling multiple agendas simultaneously.

 

[AlViking]

It's literally not. While there are definitely GMs who are adopting clocks, as presented in BitD, into systems that don't use them (indeed, I've done it myself), they are not as widespread as you are making out. Rather than others living under a rock, you may be living in a TTRPG bubble.

I don't know how widespread it is, but I've been using ticking clocks since the 70s (I'm old). I don't use them very frequently, sometimes the players know details and sometimes they don't. But the basic concept isn't particularly unique and it certainly didn't start with BitD.

 

[Maxperson]

Assuming the reason for trying to open the door was to save people from the fire, it's a logical causal effect. While it's true that their cause of death is the fire, the character's inability to open the door prevented them from being saved in time.

Why? Why did the pick lock roll need to make it so that they could not be saved in time? If 6 seconds is going to be the difference between survival and death, the inferno was already so bad that the rogue would likely have not even made the attempt in the first place.

This cause-and-effect is precisely why some people develop survivor's guilt, even when it's ultimately not their fault.

Survivor's guilt often has no cause and effect. If there are two people and a bad guy is going to execute one of them to make a point, the other will often develop survivor's guilt, even though they had nothing at all to do with the death. There is no cause and effect for that person that resulted in the death of the other.

Other times it has no direct cause and effect like the above fire, but the person attaches an irrational responsibility for the death to themselves.

 

[AlViking]

Assuming the reason for trying to open the door was to save people from the fire, it's a logical causal effect. While it's true that their cause of death is the fire, the character's inability to open the door prevented them from being saved in time. This cause-and-effect is precisely why some people develop survivor's guilt, even when it's ultimately not their fault.

Survivor's guilt is not about causing other people's deaths, it's about why you were spared when others were not. If people die in the fire, I did not cause their deaths unless I started the fire.

But again, this is arguing semantics that I simply don't care about. What does it have to do with TTRPGs?

 

[JConstantine]

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?

Bolded for emphasis. This is a bit of a misconception regarding the original action role. Whilst common, it is not inherently intended to be conflict resolution. To quote the book:

Zoom the action in and out. We resolve uncertain and challenging situations with the roll of the dice. But what should the scope of these rolls be? Do we resolve the whole fight in one roll, or do we zoom in to each exchange of blows? By design, the game is fairly flexible on this point. Sometimes you’ll want to resolve a lot of action with one roll and sometimes you’ll want to get down to very small moments of action. Think of it like a dial that the group can turn during play to zoom the focus in and out from the broad to the specific.

So, the action roll - and, by extension, Deep Cuts' threat roll - can range from task resolution to conflict resolution to scene resolution, depending on GM/group preferences.

 

[JConstantine]

You seem to be confused. "Intent and task" is Burning Wheel resolution.

I am not well-acquainted with Burning Wheel; is "intent and task" different from "goal and approach"?

In case clarity is needed: "goal and approach" is a suggestion for players to specify what they're trying to accomplish (goal) along with how they are going about it (approach).

 

[JConstantine]

I don't know how widespread it is, but I've been using ticking clocks since the 70s (I'm old). I don't use them very frequently, sometimes the players know details and sometimes they don't. But the basic concept isn't particularly unique and it certainly didn't start with BitD.

Oh, I'm aware. The only thing particularly new about BitD's clocks is that they're a unified graphical representation of things GMs have been doing for decades.
That spindown die counting down the rounds until reinforcements arrive - clock.
Those hatchmarks on a piece of scrap paper tracking something - clock.
D&D skill challenges - a pair of clocks.
WOIN's countdown/Angry GM's time/tension pool - clock.
Any resource that has a numerical value to monitor - clock.