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

[Faolyn]

Hmmm, I think there's some issue of context of surrounding events mattering here; as an example, in the latter case the GM has a greater potential to be influenced, even if only subconsciously, by how things have gone for the players up to that point. Unless they're changing the pre-written material, that's much less of a risk there.

Well, that's entirely the point of these games. From BitD's GM Prinicples: Let everything flow from the fiction. The game’s starting situations and your opening scene will put things in motion. Ask how the characters react and see what happens next. NPCs react according to their goals and methods. Events snowball. You don’t need to “manage” the game. Action, reaction, and consequences will drive everything.

You're supposed to be influenced by how things have happened.

 

[clearstream]

I don't know what "RPG as artifact" is, so no.

What I mean is, are you asking about the RPG in play, or the RPG artifact? The designed thing.

Can you provide an example of a RPG that doesn't satisfy your principles? I can't think of one.

I think that the intention of the author of the manifesto is to specify a much more narrow range of games.

We've discussed that RPG artifacts don't guarantee modes of play. They're liable to encourage and better serve some modes over others.

With that in mind I want to venture that the principles ought to guide how to design, interpret and use RPGs, and ought not be expected to winnow the set of RPG artifacts to any great extent: that's not their job. Their job is to winnow the set of RPGs in play.

Upthread was debate on the validity of 'Paladin fails climb check and falls to their death just before reaching the climactic scene.' The principles exclude deciding such things based on what would be dramatically satisfying. So D&D as played in accord with the neosim manifesto won't be the same game as D&D played in accord with some hypothetical dramatism manifesto.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, making it up seconds before is OK?

Because I know that if the player says "I'm going to try to do this thing," my mind is already coming up with ideas of what can happen on a success.

Is there a reason you've decided this needs to be nitpicked?

 

[clearstream]

Well, that's entirely the point of these games. From BitD's GM Prinicples: Let everything flow from the fiction. The game’s starting situations and your opening scene will put things in motion. Ask how the characters react and see what happens next. NPCs react according to their goals and methods. Events snowball. You don’t need to “manage” the game. Action, reaction, and consequences will drive everything.

You're supposed to be influenced by how things have happened.

That can be counted a virtue without changing that the information asymmetry makes the cases distinct.

 

[The Firebird]

So, making it up seconds before is OK?

Because I know that if the player says "I'm going to try to do this thing," my mind is already coming up with ideas of what can happen on a success.

Yes. That's what I had in my example and it was not the reason I didn't like it.

 

[pemerton]

Not all of them were INUS conditions, though. Take the example he gave of my being tackled for punching someone in the face. The "punch and witness" will not always result in my being tackled, so the "punch and witness" does not qualify as a sufficient condition.

An INUS condition is not a sufficient condition. It is an insufficient but necessary component of an unnecessary but sufficient condition.

In the punch example, clearly there is a sufficient condition for the witness punching you - if there wasn't, they wouldn't have. Your provocative action is not, in itself, a sufficient condition. But it is a necessary component of that sufficient condition - the other principle necessary component will be the witness's cantankerous disposition.

 

[pemerton]

The combat rules use the stop motion method because if you tried to mimic reality, combat would be a God awful boring mess that takes 10-20 sessions to complete depending on the size of the combat. It's a necessary evil, not proof that some principle should not be or is not used.

This claim is refuted by the existence of RM, RQ and even Burning Wheel.

Second, surprise in D&D has changed a lot over the years, so using 40somthing year old surprise rules to prove something in games being run now is sort of fail on its face. I haven't played in or run an AD&D game in 25 years, and I haven't played in or run Gygax's AD&D version in 36 years.

As per what I posted upthread, the 5e D&D 2014 surprise rules are the same in the relevant respect - the roll of the dice determines an event in the fictional now which then requires retrofitting on a prior fictional cause for the current fictional event.

 

[pemerton]

I think the crucial difference is the degree of freedom the GM has in their narration. In the farrier case they are completely free - they could just as well have narrated that there was no farrier without anyone calling foul. There is an outside compell, and that is when the decission need to be made, but a neutral referee with is the ideal for a living world would not feel any pressure toward the content of the answer.

In the fail/succeed roll case the GM is not free to narrate. They are bound by the result. On a fail they are not only forced to make an answer, they need to make sure that answer is interesting, and negative for the characters.

I largely agree. That is why I call one approach a GM-driven approach, which I tend to find rather railroad-y, and the other not.

But wait a second! Wandering monsters and random tables is a hallmark of living world sandbox play! How can this possibly be if wandering monsters are even worse than forced fail forward? That is that when used in such play, the criterion of player side rules for their use is not present. Rather than being a game mechanics, they are a tool for the GM to help them stay neutral. These are usually made by the GM and tailored to the GM vision of how population dense the location is, and only populated by things they expect might make sense. They are only bound by timings they create, and if they find the fiction is critically different than what they expected when they made the tables, they are fully free to skip rols, alter frequency of rolls, or alter table results if that make more sense in the new situation. So they are actually not bound to time or content. The use of the structure and the random roll is to further eliminate the bias that might come in if they would have introduced things only on "feel", hence producing an even more authentic feeling world than they would have managed with full freedom.

Ditto.

 

[pemerton]

I think the reason this isn't landing is because "no one knows if the guard would show up on success or failure" isn't any better, from my perspective, than "the guard will show up on failure and not on success". The guard's appearance is still being adjudicated as a result of an independent action roll.

I don't know what you mean by an "independent action roll".

At the table, the GM's decision is not independent of the roll - it is the result of the roll that requires it to be made. And in the fiction, the guard harassing the character is not independent of the action the character is performing - his singing has attracted the guard.

Yes, we do. The guard is there--that is fixed.

At a point in time - probably around about the time the player has their PC wander the streets of the town at night, singing - you (as GM) decide that a guard is there. Prior to that, the guard is not "fixed", having not been thought of beyond the generic idea that towns have guards.

At a point in time - when deciding how to narrate the failed Sing test made by a character wandering the streets of the town at night - the Burning Wheel GM decides that a guard is there. Prior to that, the guard is not fixed, having not been thought of beyond the generic idea that towns have guards.

The guard is equally "fixed", from the moment of mental conception, in both games. You are talking about a difference of process in the GM making the decision, not a different degree of fixed-ness.

Does 'no one' include the GM?

The GM can't decide what scene they might frame next, before this one has resolved. Suppose the roll to Sing had succeeded, and so Aedhros has gained a degree of self-resolve. What action might I have declared next? Maybe I would have gone back to Thoth to try and talk him out of his mad plans to raise the dead.

Would the GM have mentioned the guard? I don't know - there are a lot of people a character sees when walking through a town that the GM doesn't mention. Would the GM have decided that a guard approaches Aedhros? I don't know, and I very much doubt that the GM knows. I mean, until I declare an action for Aedhros, or we otherwise talk about what we want to do next, how could he?

 

[pemerton]

My approach?

1. The character goes to the door, attempts to open the lock
2. As DM I think about the scenario and whether or not anyone will notice the lock being picked. If someone would hear I see no reason success or failure of the attempt would make a difference.
3. The player rolls poorly and fails.

That's it. Nothing else happens, the lock is not unlocked, there is no step 4. Other things may happen because a round has passed but as DM I am not going to introduce anything else to the scenario because of the failure. If I had determined in step 2 that someone or something inside would hear the attempt on success or failure I'll decide what happens based on them hearing the attempt.

Fail forward

1. The character goes to the door, attempts to open the lock
2. The player rolls poorly and fails.
3. The GM adds some complication that they feel is plausible for the current scenario. It may or may not be helpful, but something will happen. Examples have included a guard showing up, rolling on a wandering monster table and a grick appears, the door is opened anyway and there's a cook inside who cries for help.

That's pretty much it in an abbreviated form and of course I've left a lot out on the narrative side of things.

If you look at step 2 of your approach, you will see why I regard it as a GM-driven approach.