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

[Faolyn]

@hawkeyefan has requested we forget the game several times during this tangent. Not that I have or would.

I'm not talking to @hawkeyefan, though.

 

[Lanefan]

And in neo-simulationism everyone has the ability to add to the fiction with the understanding that they build on whatever is already there.

Isn't that exactly what I'm doing (which you're calling me to task for) when I build on the known fiction "The Desert Rose ruby is somewhere in this house" by attempting to fine-tune its location with my action declaration "I pick open the safe to find the Desert Rose we're here for"?

I'm taking the existing fiction and building on it - or, more correctly in this case, giving it more precise detail.

 

[Lanefan]

No, there isn't a more direct and immediate connection. As I said, you're more used to it, so you're more used to the connections. Can't open door --> can't rescue trapped people --> they die. That's a pretty clear chain of connections. At least as clear as can't kill foe --> foe is still alive --> foe hits me and I die.

Sure, you can say there's some tiny chance the trapped people won't die, just like there's a tiny chance that the foe won't hit you. But so what? But that is a tiny chance that can be ignored as being a statistical outlier.

We're also not talking about "downstream consequences." We're talking about the moment. In the moment, you are trying to get through that door to save people, and your actions right now will determine their fate. We're not talking about 5 minutes. We're talking about a 1-2 rounds before that 1d6 fire damage/round kills them.

Ah. I'd been assuming there was a longer time window between door attempt and deaths, in part due to my reading the original example as the house only just having caught fire.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Except I'm not being a deliberate jerk, or any other kind of jerk for that matter. I'm simply declaring what seems like a reasonable action attempt with a reasonable-to-the-fiction intent attached.

I'm not saying I open the safe to steal a holy avenger sword, nor to steal the nation's founding constitution, nor to steal someone's teddy bear, nor to pull a bomb out of thin air and put it in the safe as a trap. None of those have as yet appeared in the fiction and - as you say - it's not my place to add them.

I am saying I open the safe in order to steal the Desert Rose, which has appeared in the fiction and which the fiction (as best we know it) places in this house.

And I am saying that you are clearly using the social contract of any game that allows player authorship for toilet paper. And if you are using the social contract for toilet paper you are being a jerk.

What you can author is generally what you can know in character in advance. You clearly do not know what is in the safe in character and what you have done is no more interesting or clever than reach in and say "I pull it out of my ear by magic".

Now I'm going to challenge you to tell me an actual existing published RPG in which you could do that when the ruby was externally set up as a McGuffin and objective. Because I don't think you're talking about actual RPGs so much as your third hand impressions and imagination based on not having read them and having your ideas created by people who don't like them.

Here I almost completely disagree. The entire campaign is a sort of puzzle, in the end, both on the micro and macro level; which the players-as-characters slowly both solve and amend through their thoughts and actions as play goes along, via in-character exploration/discovery and in-character piecing together of information.

There is a huge difference between a puzzle and a problem. The entire campaign is about problem solving both in character and out. The entire campaign only is a puzzle if there is one right answer with one right way to do it

Exploration in all forms is, at its root, puzzle-solving.

No it isn't. If exploration is all puzzle solving you're doing it fundamentally boringly. Working out how to get across the bridge-less chasm is a problem. One with multiple answers and one you can turn back from. If you have a setup where you have to get the parts to the bridge and put them on the enlarging platform that makes it a puzzle because there's one intended solution.

Now if you don't like exploration as a pillar of the game then so be it, but that's purely a personal preference and by no means a common one, never mind universal.

I like exploration. Putting puzzles in exploration turns that bit of exploration from interesting to tedious makework until we get to explore again. Exploration is about finding out what is out there and working with that rather than trying to decipher what the module writer or GM was thinking.

Finding a ruby in a house is a puzzle: it's in there somewhere, now it's on you to go find it.

Indeed. It's a "one solution" thing. It's only interesting as a McGuffin for motivation. It's essentially the briefcase with a light in it in Pulp Fiction. The interesting thing isn't the ruby, it's what we find exploring the house.

And you, being a jerk by declaring the ruby that way (and reaching beyond your power but never mind) have just declared that there's no point exploring this house any further because we have what we came here for so everyone should just stop.

 

[AlViking]

There is nothing "illogical" about a guard approaching a singing person.

There is nothing "non-diegetic" about a guard approaching a singing person. And it did not preclude the other player at the table - ie me - having my chance to play.

This is true of all RPGing.

You haven't actually specified any process here. Especially because, not far upthread, you said that you don't use a key. So what your criteria are for "popping into existence" are completely opaque to me. @hawkeyefan has also been asking you about them.

The only reason the guard approached was because you failed the test. Had you succeeded the guard would not have approached.

There was no perceptible difference in the game world so the only reason the guard appears is because of a bad roll of the dice. That is the very definition of a non-diegetic change to the state of the world. Normal and even expected in a narrative game, not in a simulationist game. I don't know why or how you would claim otherwise, different games make different assumptions.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Isn't that exactly what I'm doing (which you're calling me to task for) when I build on the known fiction "The Desert Rose ruby is somewhere in this house" by attempting to fine-tune its location with my action declaration "I pick open the safe to find the Desert Rose we're here for"?

I'm taking the existing fiction and building on it - or, more correctly in this case, giving it more precise detail.

No. You're taking the existing fiction "We are on a mission to find the Desert Rose" and taking a giant steaming dump on it. You are ending the adventure. You also aren't declaring anything that is even vaguely under the control of your character or anything that they should be able to know in advance.

Like I have said even in games where you are not explicitly prohibited from doing that it's about as clearly and obviously antisocial behaviour as bringing loaded dice to a game because the rules don't tell you the dice can't be loaded. And you know this perfectly well or you wouldn't think that it was such a clever point that you could shut down the game.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It didn't. The farrier was always there, because the town would have had one for hundreds of years. I just forgot to add it.

The player's request didn't cause the farrier to appear. The only thing it caused was me to consider whether one would have been there or not.

How come you don’t apply the same logic to the failed lockpick check?

Why does the player’s suggestion simply prompt you to consider if there would be a farrier, and then you decide yes there would be, and then he was there all along?

Why would the failed roll not simply prompt you to consider there is a cook in the kitchen, and then you decide there would be, and then she was there all along?

Why do you treat one play process as causal and not the other?

 

[Neonchameleon]

The only reason the guard approached was because you failed the test. Had you succeeded the guard would not have approached.

There was no perceptible difference in the game world so the only reason the guard appears is because of a bad roll of the dice. That is the very definition of a non-diegetic change to the state of the world. Normal and even expected in a narrative game, not in a simulationist game. I don't know why or how you would claim otherwise, different games make different assumptions.

"I did badly enough at singing that made an awful caterwauling somewhere near where a guard was and now he's come to investigate? I don't understand how this can be and what caused it!" Seriously?

If you made and failed a sing check it is because you were trying to sing and didn't do a good job.

 

[hawkeyefan]

@hawkeyefan has requested we forget the game several times during this tangent. Not that I have or would.

Yes, I have done that just to drive home the idea of events being related and how we’d view them outside of a game. I’ve asked for people to answer specific questions outside of the context of RPGs.

But I only speak for myself. There’s no reason for you to interact with other people that way. I think we’d all do better if people try to engage with each other individually rather than as sides.

 

[Maxperson]

How come you don’t apply the same logic to the failed lockpick check?

Because it isn't the same situation. The cook wasn't always in the kitchen, or she would be there even if the roll is successful. The fact that she is there if it fails and not there if it succeeds makes it very different.

Why would the failed roll not simply prompt you to consider there is a cook in the kitchen, and then you decide there would be, and then she was there all along?

Because a successful roll would prompt the same thing if she was there all along. That's how, "there all along" works.