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

[Maxperson]

Hang on - so you're saying that, for instance, at Gygax's table the GM tracked the location of the loot inside the gelatinous cube in advance of any encounter, and used that position to work out whether or not the PCs would be able to notice the cube?

I don't know, but I do know that he played a very different game than the 1e rulebooks lay out. It's certainly possible, though.

 

[AlViking]

Yes. The fact that D&D is so commonly used for a simulationist agenda (or play with no particular CA agenda that has simulationist trappings) does not mean that the game engine itself is oriented towards sim. There are better games out there that are more oriented towards sim as an explicit agenda.

To be clear I'm only really talking about my approach to the game and how I view it. Other people may have a completely different take on the game since D&D is not designed with a specific agenda, playstyle or goal in mind.

On the other hand D&D's roots are combat simulation and at it's core that influence still shapes the game today.

 

[Maxperson]

So it would be more realistic if bad things happened whether competent or incompetent people took the lead? That doesn't make much sense to me.

That's because you aren't thinking it through. Whether or not someone is in a room has zero to do with competence of a lock picker. None. Hell, how many times have you seen a movie where the master thief is picking a lock and someone walks by and he has to stop and play it cool, or opens the lock and door to find someone behind it and has to shut the door quickly to avoid being seen, waiting until the person is gone?

Those random encounters weren't because he screwed up some roll. Skill can mitigate to an extent, but it can only mitigate from stuff that's there, not keep stuff from being there in the first place.

 

[pemerton]

TLDR: BW Revised (edit - not to be confused with gold revised) and Gold turn out to be completely different games in scope of this thread!!

<snip>

Or possibly BW Revised edition. It seem to me like that could allow for that kind of play, and I still think it looks like an absolutely excelent system. Indeed I personally after learning about these changes would much rather play BW revised than BW gold I cannot see anything I cannot do in revised that I can do in gold - but gold clearly has doubled down on being more opiniated in these key aspects.

I think even you as an experienced BW enthusiast might like to be aware of this difference, as it clearly lead to confusion like here - and actually this conscious changes to gold very much leaves no doubt what is the intention with BW Gold even more than what snippets of text from gold alone can do

I will also edit my post you quoted with clearifying that it analyse Revised, and that every key point is fundamentally changed in gold.

This is not correct. I mean, I learned to play BW from Revised. I only quote Gold because the text is available as a free download from DTRPG.

The stuff that you are asserting is absent from Revised is not.

Page 12: "players take on the roles of characters inspired by history and works of fantasy fiction. These characters are represented by a series of numbers, designating their abilities, and a list of player-determined priorities."

Page 13: "One of you must be the GM . . . Everyone else plays a protagonist (aka, "a character") . . . The conflicts of the characters' aforementioned priorities creates situations for the players to resolve"

Page 19: "As I mentioned in the Introduction, characters are the most important part of Burning Wheel."

Pages 26-7: set out the fundamentals of intent and task (I'm not going to type it out)

Page 32: "If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - completed the task at hand in the manner that the player described in the Task and Intent sections.

This is important enough to state gain: Characters who are successful complete actions in the manner described by the player. A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor any other payers can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish on or reinforce a successful ability test."

This is then followed by the same 3 examples as I quoted upthread from the Gold Hub and Spokes.

Page 34: "Two Directions . . . Failure is not the end of the line, but is a complication that pushes the story in another direction. Failure Complicates the Matter . . . the GM should present the players with the possible ramifications of their tests."

Page 75: sets out "Vincent's Admonition" in the same terms as Gold does, including "When there is conflict, roll the dice. There is no social agreement for the resolution of conflict in this game. Roll the dice and let the obstacle system guide the outcome. Success or failure doesn't really matter. So long as the intent of the task is clearly stated, the story is going somewhere."

The text on the Role of the GM and on "the sacred and most holy role of the players" is identical in both versions.


Gold is cleaner. That's the point of an update. It states the role of the GM more clearly upfront. But there are no fundamental changes (there are technical changes, especially to Range and Cover and Fight! - for Range and Cover I use a mix of the two versions; for Fight! I prefer the positioning rules in Revised to those in Gold). This is borne out by the fact that the commentary in the Adventure Burner (written for Revised) is reiterated almost word-for-word in the Codex (written for Gold).

When you look at the bibliography in revised, and see Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Riddle of Steel and My Life With Master, those are not titles that got lost on their way to an indie RPG party. Burning Wheel is a RPG influenced by all of them. If you try and play it in a way that priorities setting over character, with the GM driving, the game will break down: Beliefs won't work, Artha won't work, Circles won't work, Wises won't work, Relationships won't work, etc, etc, etc.

 

[CreamCloud0]

So it would be more realistic if bad things happened whether competent or incompetent people took the lead? That doesn't make much sense to me.

Indeed, this would seem to be precisely the opposite of "resembling reality" or "having the semblance of truth".

Because good things happen more often and bad things happen less often when competent people are leading, when compared to incompetent people leading. That's why we care about the competencies of our leadership IRL. (Or, at least, in theory that's why we care, recent history notwithstanding...)

it's not more realistic if complications happen less when competent people are performing the task, the world doesn't care who is performing the task or how skilled they are, be it the three stooges or james bond, if the cook is going to be on the other side of the door then the cook is going to be on the other side of the door regardless of who is opening it.

Failures happen less when someone competent is taking the lead, Complications are entirely independent.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yes, I was noticing this. I hence updated my post slightly, but you replied too quickly! (Thank you by the way). I think this is really an interesting topic! In the wilderness it might for instance make perfect sense to adjust the encounter rate with survival skill based on if the group try to find or avoid encounters.

So the issue is clearly even more nuanced than who rolls the dice, and what factors into the roll. In my edit I threw out "unrelated" and more than one thing hinging on a single roll as possible nuances of importance, but this rings hollow. It is too simple, and I am sure there are important counter examples; like if entering a part of the dungeon that is random generated on the fly, then the result of orcs as wandering monster might also determine that there are going to be an orc lair nearby without that ticking off anyone.

The best fallback I can find is the concept of "weird". We are having an outcome that is connected with either a skill bonus, or another outcome that seem like it should be unrelated. Like the pick lock skill seem related to if it is picked before a guard show up, but seem unrelated to if the cook happens to have started preparing breakfast half an hour ago.

And that boils down to a sort of subjective notion. If something make you go "huh, that doesnt feel right" then that is a moment that calls for suspension of disbelief. In a living world setting this is moments we want to minimise, so employing a technique that is known to at least for some make them go "huh?" Seem ill adviceable.

I think a rule of thumb of not having a roll affecting more than one as isolated thing as possible within the granularity level of the described actions is a good advice in this regard. This should make it easy to relate modifier to effect, and there are no correlations that could be weird. Breaking this rule of thumb should be done with preventing any correlations that could be seen as weird in mind, but can make sense some times.

Yea. There’s alot of nuance here and we are just scratching the surface. And it’s also different for each person. But we aren’t trying to generate a fully unified theory that all sim oriented people are the same so everyone having some differences is okay. We are trying to talk mostly in generalities.

But I think the reason narrativist techniques keep getting pushback when applied to sim based d&d is because they can harm the ‘independent world’ that the sim requires. The nuances around what precisely harm independent world sim is interesting but I don’t think it needs explicitly spelled out.

 

[pemerton]

I agree that there could be far more detail, there are a lot of compromises in order to make the game easy to play. It may not have the granularity or match the level of fidelity to the real world that you desire, that has nothing to do with it being a simulation.

The reason hit points are not a simulation is not because they are not granular. It's because they don't model anything. They are just a countdown clock.

Saving throws in classic D&D are likewise just a mode of plot armour, as Gygax explains in his DMG. 3E and 5e change this, taking them in a more simulationist direction with the well-known result that fighters go from being good at saving to being bad. With the Indomitable class ability being a further non-simulationist patch for this problem.

On surprise, I've got nothing to add to what @Hussar and I have already posted.

 

[Maxperson]

But, you do. This is exactly the same process that you use. You choose to have an event occur (or rather the dice choose for you) and you then backfill the scene and the narrative to make that event fit into whatever is going on in the game.

No. I don't. You can't make me use someone else's methods. I'm not sure why you are even trying. I don't retroactively create valleys or clearings for encounters to happen.

There is no difference here. You keep trying to claim some sort of unique process, but, it is exactly the same. Your grass is long because you need it to be long to have an ambush.

This is the last time I'm going to tell you this. You are completely wrong with that statement. If I describe the grass is long, it's because the grass on the planes is freaking LONG. They party may or may not have random encounters on that plain. Those encounters may or may not try to ambush. I don't know.

Otherwise, the length of the grass would be unnoted or irrelevant.

It's a boring world that only gets described if there's a monster around. I describe details about the terrain or rooms quite often that are not relevant, but would be there and noticed by a PC.

If the plain has short grass when they enter it, I will note that my description of the plain. If it has long grass I will note that in the description. If it is flat, I will note that in the description. If it has gently rolling hills, I will note that. If there are scattered trees, that gets noted. If the plains change 2 days in and the rolling hills flatten out, that gets told to the players.

All of that gets told whether or not a random encounter is happening. Any random encounter is going to conform to the terrain already established, not vice versa.

Your event will magically teleport to whererever the players happen to be at that point in time, and then the scene will be retroactively constructed to make the event fit.

No. YOUR event does that. My events do not. While I do not describe every moment of every day, or every slight difference, I do describe major changes to the environment like hills coming into view or when you leave the hills and the ground flattens out, or when the grass changes height significantly.

I would be negligent in my duties as the DM if I failed to do that. It would be pretty crappy of me to be like, "Surprise! The grass is really 4 feet high and really dry, so your fireball just set off plainsfireageddon. Don't you wish you had known that in advance? Suckers!"

By letting them know what the significant aspects of the terrain they are traveling through are, they can keep that in mind for any tactics or concerns they may have. Hell, they may want to crouch low and move slower through the high grass, but keep any visibility to possible enemies to a minimum.

Why do you prefer to deprive them of that possibility by only describing the terrain when they have an encounter by teleporting them as you describe above?

 

[FrogReaver]

it's not more realistic if complications happen less when competent people are performing the task, the world doesn't care who is performing the task or how skilled they are, be it the three stooges or james bond, if the cook is going to be on the other side of the door then the cook is going to be on the other side of the door regardless of who is opening it.

Failures happen less when someone competent is taking the lead, Complications are entirely independent.

Unless the complication is dependent on time or something the experts expertness might impact related to the complication. But otherwise yes.

 

[pemerton]

it's not more realistic if complications happen less when competent people are performing the task, the world doesn't care who is performing the task or how skilled they are, be it the three stooges or james bond, if the cook is going to be on the other side of the door then the cook is going to be on the other side of the door regardless of who is opening it.

Failures happen less when someone competent is taking the lead, Complications are entirely independent.

This isn't my experience. Competent people make their own luck, along these sorts of lines:

So skill kind of plays into it but skill is conceived of as a mix of keeping cool, speed, knowledge, whatever else might be in play in a given conflict.