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

[Pedantic]

I’d suggest it’s a bigger problem. I mean at some point you get a feel for your DMs style and so in a sense learn this aspect for your given table. But making tactical/strategic decisions before you’ve ’found the pattern’ makes this nearly impossible. In practice this ‘unknown’ means players are much more conservative when trying things that are likely to rely on skill checks than they might otherwise be.

That said it seems like determining the appropriate level of zoom/granularity for a an action declaration in a narrativist game yields similar results.

Right, I'm saying this doesn't need to be in the GM's hands at all. You could write a sufficiently detailed stealth system before play, then have the GM simply apply it to any given situation. Those decisions about difficulty and repeated rolls could be made by someone else ahead of time, thus that players can know them before play begins.

To my view, the primary argument for detailed rules is to make it clear to players precisely what their characters can do. The primary argument for PC/NPC transparency is so that those same players can also transitively know what other characters can do.

 

[Lanefan]

In a trad game, these NPCs aren't going to have a lot of hit points[1], so between smoke (poison damage) and the flames (fire damage), they're going to die very quickly.

In a more narrative game, there (IME) usually aren't rounds that represent seconds or minutes; instead, actions take as long as they would logically take. so any attempts you make also don't take a set amount of time. In the real life, picking a lock can take anywhere from, say, 30 seconds to twenty minutes, or longer, depending on your skill[2], tools, and the type of lock. Thus your single lockpicking attempt (whether a roll is needed or not) would actually be five minutes long.

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[1] If they did, it would suggest a higher level, and thus they would be less likely to need rescuing because they'd also have higher skills.

[2] In these games, "skill" doesn't necessarily mean a number of special ability.

I've been assuming the presence of at least some lock-picking skill beyond the typical norm on the part of the person trying to get inside, as only someone with such skill would even think of lock-picking as the fastest means of getting inside. Most normal people faced with that situation would likely try the doorknob and, on finding it locked, immediately go to a more brute-force approach.

 

[Faolyn]

Hello folks. I have something to add. There is an argument being presented that it is not meaningful to ask "what would have happened on a success", because the player does not know. Therefore there is no awareness, from the player perspective, of 'weird correlations'. I quoted some posts but will put them at the end.

I want to bring in my own experience. As a player, the first games of BitD I played were really enjoyable, even though the GM was using these weird correlations, because I didn't quite get them at the time. There was enough of a disconnect and enough of a veil that the world seemed organic.

But, this fell apart when I tried running BitD myself. The illusion is only player facing. As the GM, when the player says "I want to open this lock", I start thinking:

ok, what will a success look like? I guess they get in clean. What about fail forward? Hmm, we've established that this is an estate, and the lord will want to eat breakfast early, so maybe the cook is getting in to start working on that. That's nice, it follows from the fiction.

Then there is no illusion and I know exactly what happens on success because I decided it. This made me feel dishonest and like I was cheating my players.

Once I had this experience, I started seeing the "what would have happened on a success" question everywhere, and because I had run it as a GM it felt bad to me as a player. The veil was lifted and the mechanics no longer worked for me.

But... you would know what happens on a success in a trad game as well. In fact, there's a good chance you would have written everything down already, or at least thought about it while writing the adventure. So the only real difference is that you thought it up before, rather than now.

 

[AlViking]

Then don't be ridiculous, because we're talking about the game, not your parents.

I would certainly hope you knew that I was not in any way being serious. I think we all get too serious on this forum, I was attempting to add a bit of humor.

 

[The Firebird]

But... you would know what happens on a success in a trad game as well. In fact, there's a good chance you would have written everything down already, or at least thought about it while writing the adventure. So the only real difference is that you thought it up before, rather than now.

Well, no. The key difference is that success has no cook and failure has a cook.

 

[Enrahim]

But... you would know what happens on a success in a trad game as well. In fact, there's a good chance you would have written everything down already, or at least thought about it while writing the adventure. So the only real difference is that you thought it up before, rather than now.

This difference is huge! When you create the adventure you have to consider both options, and can make sure both are consistent with an underlying fundation. In the heat of the moment you usually have only time to consider one of the sides, without time to make sure it balances out neatly with the opposite result. There is also a bias in making the result we know "cooler" than what we could have done if we tried to make both sides cool with a common basis.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've been meaning to have a look at Daggerheart. Seeing this, however, just made my interest plummet, and I hope it's not reflective of a broader-based inventory-doesn't-matter design philosophy.

I consider Daggerheart an excellent game based on having played and run it - but it is absolutely the wrong game for you given what I know of your preferences. Different people have different tastes.

As an aside I 100% would recommend it for the "narrative 4e" crowd like myself, @pemerton and Manbearcat (anyone know what happened to his account)?

 

[Faolyn]

I've been assuming the presence of at least some lock-picking skill beyond the typical norm on the part of the person trying to get inside, as only someone with such skill would even think of lock-picking as the fastest means of getting inside. Most normal people faced with that situation would likely try the doorknob and, on finding it locked, immediately go to a more brute-force approach.

The example still stands, though. Brute force usually calls for a roll as well, which may or may not succeed.

 

[Enrahim]

But... you would know what happens on a success in a trad game as well. In fact, there's a good chance you would have written everything down already, or at least thought about it while writing the adventure. So the only real difference is that you thought it up before, rather than now.

Seperate point from the previous, which was relevant for the situation you proposed where a planned test actually can have wide reaching consequences. Most tests in trad is as spontaneous as in the alternative, and the key difference between those is scope. A test in a fail forward system binds the GM to more than just what the result of the task at hand is. Trad only resolves the task, and most of the time in a way that is not open for interpretation at all.

 

[Faolyn]

This difference is huge! When you create the adventure you have to consider both options, and can make sure both are consistent with an underlying fundation. In the heat of the moment you usually have only time to consider one of the sides, without time to make sure it balances out neatly with the opposite result. There is also a bias in making the result we know "cooler" than what we could have done if we tried to make both sides cool with a common basis.

@The Firebird said:

Then there is no illusion and I know exactly what happens on success because I decided it. This made me feel dishonest and like I was cheating my players.

There's still no illusion either way. Whether you think it through carefully ahead of time or completely ad-lib it at the moment, you know what's going to happen. If anything, you know more of what will happen if you plan it out ahead of time (which is "more dishonest" according to The Firebird's feelings on the matter). If you would normally try to make both sides cool when planning it, then there's no bias if you improvise it to be cool.

The only difference is still whether you did this before hand or on the spot.

Also, the more you actually do narrative gaming, the more you learn how to do it consistently, and the more quickly you can consider both sides. It's just a matter of practice.