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

[hawkeyefan]

In the kitchen specifically. We talked some about random rolls, and how they are fixed, but I think they are distracting. Let's take the edge case:

Suppose I want a "nailed down" fixed world game, where everything is specified with no probability involved. The module says the cook is present from 9-8pm. From 8-10 pm they are in the adjoining room and hear anyone trying to pick the lock. Otherwise, they are off site.

Do you see how this is different from "on a failure the cook is alerted, and a success they are not present"?

Do I see how it's different? Yes. I'm not sure if this helps reveal anything, and I think it continues to kind of misconstrue things. Specifically, I find "on a failure the cook is alerted, and a success they are not present" to be odd. It's more along the lines of "on a failure the cook is alerted and comes to the kitchen to investigate, and on a success they are not alerted and don't come to investigate".

If you're advocating for a type of play where the GM can just decide ahead of time that the cook will hear any attempt to pick the lock, then I don't know why you'd be against a GM introducing an NPC to any scene for just about any reason at all.

My point is that regardless of the type of game or methods used, a GM has to come up with the outcomes of the actions (constrained by the dice or any other procedures or principles). The GM can come up with nonsensical outcomes... or they can come up with sensical ones. Most folks arguing against fail forward and similar techniques are not making cases against the technique itself... they are instead constructing poor examples of it that they then use to criticize the method.

That, to me, is a poor argument. I could easily do so for trad GMing. Both @Maxperson and @AlViking both very cleverly said that a DM could have Godzilla jump out of a closet in trad play... but that it would be bad form, even if not technically against the actual rules of play.

What if I latched onto that example and just kept pointing out over and over again that this can happen in trad play, therefore trad play leads to absurdities?

 

[Faolyn]

Exactly - the presence/absence of a cook is unrelated to the success/fail of the door being opened.

I would. Absent other pre-narrated considerations, "nothing happens" would be by far the most likely.

So you keep saying, even though that's also the most boring consequence.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This is exactly what I mean when I say the conflation of "simulationism" and "accurately simulating reality" muddies things. I think it is a failure of language. "Verisimilitudinism" or something is probably a more accurate term than "simulationism".

Anyway, the desire to have a fictional world with verisimilitude, where the players feel like they are acting in a real place and that world is responding to them in an authentic way, does not require that you use no abstractions or that abstractions are a bad thing. Nor do abstractions necessarily get in the way of verisimilitude. In some ways they heighten it.

See, then the problem with this is that I consider my games of Stonetop and Spire and Blades in the Dark to be just as verisimilitudinous as the trad games I play, if not more so... and I don't really care about simulation at all.

I mean, as a player, if my character breaks into a rich home through the kitchen, the illusion doesn't break if a cook happens to be there. There's nothing that's not verisimilitudinous about that.

 

[Maxperson]

Do I see how it's different? Yes. I'm not sure if this helps reveal anything, and I think it continues to kind of misconstrue things. Specifically, I find "on a failure the cook is alerted, and a success they are not present" to be odd. It's more along the lines of "on a failure the cook is alerted and comes to the kitchen to investigate, and on a success they are not alerted and don't come to investigate".

Alerted by what? It's unlikely that the cook could hear the lockpick attempt from somewhere else in the house.

That, to me, is a poor argument. I could easily do so for trad GMing. Both @Maxperson and @AlViking both very cleverly said that a DM could have Godzilla jump out of a closet in trad play... but that it would be bad form, even if not technically against the actual rules of play.

I did not say it specifically as traditional play, but just that the DM could do it since the DM has the authority to do it. I could also strike all the PCs down with bolts from the blue. It would be bad form since it would violate the social contract.

 

[Maxperson]

However, the random encounter is generated because of a failed roll.

It's there due to a successful roll. The DM successfully rolled the chance that a wandering monster would appear.

Exactly the same completely arbitrary way that a random encounter is generated because the DM picked a completely arbitrary time on a clock to roll a check. The checks have NOTHING to do with anything the players are doing. We are simply using the checks as a means of randomizing potential encounters.

IOW, there is no difference.

You don't see a difference between the DM and the players? Because to me that's a significant difference. Only one of them involves the encounter being there or not there depending on what the PCs do.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Alerted by what? It's unlikely that the cook could hear the lockpick attempt from somewhere else in the house.

By the sound made by the lockpicking.

It is not necessarily unlikely that a cook could hear such an attempt. We’ve already suggested many ways that it could in fact be likely.

As a GM, you can choose to incorporate likely things or unlikely things. Choosing unlikely things that may seem nonsensical or otherwise push credibility would therefore seem to be an error on the part of the GM rather than a flaw in the method itself.

I did not say it specifically as traditional play, but just that the DM could do it since the DM has the authority to do it. I could also strike all the PCs down with bolts from the blue. It would be bad form since it would violate the social contract.

Sure, but if I continually point out that “at any moment the DM can have Godzilla show up, so trad gaming leads to absurd results and that’s why I don't like it”… you’d probably argue against that, wouldn’t you?

Now imagine that Godzilla is a cook and trad GMing is Fail Forward… and maybe then you’ll get my point.

 

[Maxperson]

By the sound made by the lockpicking.

It is not necessarily unlikely that a cook could hear such an attempt. We’ve already suggested many ways that it could in fact be likely.

I suppose of the lock picker shouts that would work, but the just the sound of picking the lock probably wouldn't be enough.

Now imagine that Godzilla is a cook and trad GMing is Fail Forward… and maybe then you’ll get my point.

I do get the point, which is why I think fail forward is good for those that want to play that way. It's not for me. Not exactly. I do like the success with a cost if you roll very close to the success number.

 

[Enrahim]

I have no idea what this has to do with anything.

See next comment

The original example was… as has been pointed out many times… flawed. The consequence should follow logically from what’s been established. A kitchen implies a cook. The failed roll means the cook has been alerted to the lock picking. A successful roll means the cook’s not alerted.

Then everyone agrees! It is just you sort of making a fool of yourself thinking the rest of us are talking about the fixed example, when you are the only one actually doing so.

So here’s the thing… a causal relationship absolutely can be established. See immediately above.

You could also choose to narrate an unrelated consequence. But why would any GM do that?

Except maybe in an online discussion to try and portray the method as flawed.

See above. Indeed why would any GM do that? Ask those that has kept defending the original example, insisting they cannot seee the problem with the conjuration. This is not you.

But it’s more than that. I don’t see how people can push against the idea of the player’s roll being connected to the outcome for hundreds of pages and then try to claim that play is player driven.

See above. It seem like you might have been misreading the last few hundred of pages. What has actually happened has been a pushback against an example you yourself describe as flawed. It has nothing about what rolls players do, it has always been about the problem of narrating an unrelated consequence. Indeed what is being called out is that the GM in this original example overstepped their responsibilities.

Always present where? In the kitchen specifically? Or just in the house? Couldn’t the cook’s location depend on different factors? Is a GM really not able to decide that a failed lock pick brings the cook to the kitchen?

Again… a GM could choose to narrate things that don’t make sense. But why would they do so? Why would a GM instead not try to come up with sensible events?

And there we are back. "The GM could choose to narrate things that don't make sense." This is the problem this tread has been all about. They cannot honestly make this choice in trad task resolution. And further "But why would they do so?" Because the system require them to come up with something dramatic to push the story forward. "Why would a GM instead not try to come up with sensible events?" Who said they didn't try? In the heat of the moment it is hard to solve the puzzle of comming up with something that is both really dramatic and fully sensible in light of complicated and subtle relations like comparing with what you would have narrated on success. This has been done in a couple of seconds. It is not like you are quietly sitting on your own pondering the finer details of a prewritten adventure for hours in this game!

Why wouldn’t they exist? They’re just not in the scene as established on a success.

Nope, this twist ha been attempted before. This is not about scene framing, it is and has always been about the kitchen being empty on success and the GM creating a fully new previously unestablished NPC in the kitchen in the middle of an activity on failure.

Gameplay?

<no comment, incuded for completeness>

 

[clearstream]

I don't think I am refusing to suspend disbelief just because the setting is being first imagined while we play a zero myth game like Apocalypse World. If the GM asks me "what does Rocker's car look like?" and I answer, then both of us believe that description! It's accepted and becomes fictionally true.

So you are agreeing with me that it would be weird to do that (fail to suspend disbelief), right?

 

[clearstream]

So you keep saying, even though that's also the most boring consequence.

One problem with our examples is they tend to stop time, and here one needs to extend the example in time to see that "nothing happens" needn't be boring at all. It's just more granular.

Player "I attempt to pick the lock" [rolls and fails]
GM "Nothing happens"
Player "Righto, I take my crowbar and break a window"
Bedlam ensues...

Or whatever. The point is that stopping time at "nothing happens" doesn't adequately exemplify play of this sort.