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

[Enrahim]

@thefutilist and I and @hawkeyefan all discussed this upthread.

A cook is implicit in a kitchen, in the same way that soldiers are implicit in a barracks (unless it's expressly called out as abandoned), gardeners are implicit in a hedge maze (unless it's expressly called out as overgrown and tangled), farriers are implicit in a typical village, etc.

The GM choosing to make the cook salient by narrating them as startled by the intruder, but otherwise ignoring the cook just as they ignore 99% of all the other people who are implicit but never described, is not spawning the cook or conjuring them into existence.

Nope. Cook is not implicit in a kitchen at 2am, which has been identified as a feature of thenproblem scenario people are pushing back again. And no it is not about scene framing, as in the example people have a problem with the kitchen is described as explicitly empty on success.

The situations you have in mind are quite unproblematic situations. We have narrowed it down to a very spesific situation some think is problematic while some apear to not see the problem with though the number of the latter appear to be shrinking as people actually start understand properly the scenario and the problem with it.

My solution to these problems is, as a player, to play with GMs who know how to narrate coherent fiction and, as a GM, to narrate coherent fiction.

Yes. And, many of us GMs might want to avoid using techniques that needs to be handled with care, as they allow and temp/push (but not force) the us to narrate incoherent fiction. I think that seem like an entirely sensible thing to do for someone taking on a role with a lot of things to handle already, to not complicate the job even more

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm not sure why there is such a push to include Fail Forward in skill challenges in games whose tasks resolution are very singular when it comes to a die roll.

For instance the so-called Narrative games, as I understand it, include Fail Forward in a sense in all areas including that of combat, whereas D&D does not. When a PC fails their attack roll, there are no consequences on a miss, there is no damage inflicted, that is because the PC's attack roll and the monster's attack roll are separate.
This is very different in the Narrative games where the PCs attack roll reflects both their attack roll and the opponent's attack roll effectively.

I use Fail Forward here and there which works with my table and my desired output (push story in interesting directions, heighten gamism etc) but I would not expect others to feel the same way, particularly after 100's of pages of discussion and especially when there is an entire pillar of the game (combat) which is not built to accept Fail Forward - where rolls are separated by function, even though one could merge functions into singular rolls.

Perhaps this example is too contentious which merges a Skill Check with a RE roll.
I'm sure there are other examples of Fail Forward that might indeed work with a Trad crowd. Those would be more fruitful to explore.

 

[Enrahim]

What is the "easy break down" actually going to look like?

The proposed example of a scene could be one part of such a breakdown. Adding scenes like this only make sense as long as the players or the GM have ideas for interesting scenes related to the conflict. It could be a scene where 2 of the advisors are negotiating one offering assume serious unrelated concession for their agreement, it could be playing out a one on one with the king with the outcome providing advantage/disadvantage on the final roll. It could be a slice of life scene having all the advisors chasing about unrelated events over a meal. It could be one of the advisors challenging another advisor to a duel. All of these could be player initiated or GM initiated (active NPC)

A dungeon map-and-key creates a framework for the triggering/activating of scenes - by default, these happen when the players have their PCs open a door. Wandering monster rolls intersperse unplanned scenes that tend to disrupt the players' control over the pacing of events. Locked doors, traps and the like complicate the process, for players, of exercising control over what scenes are activated.

Even map and key play is not that spesific. There are tons of "homebase village/city" maps that is clearly map-and key, but are never run as a crawl. And it appear task resolution is the main thing of focus in Campels posting. How map and key and task resolution is used almost interchangeably in this writing is one source of mynconfusion. Those two concepts are completely unrelated in my mind beyond that they by historical accident were used together in one of the main modes of D&D play.

As @Campbell said, the assumption for this play is that the "world" is largely static until provoked by the PCs (as the players have them open doors, or go into places, etc):

This is another thing that had me a bit confused, as I felt like something like this was implied, but I couldn't see it clearly spelt out. This is a notion I completely and utterly reject. It is true that in most old dungeons there is a status quo before the players enter, but that is almost always the case everywhere everytime. Systems tend to settle into an equilibrium. Once the players have done their first interaction, the system is supposed to dynamicly react based on the active motivations of the NPCs. Static monsters behind every door is a hallmark of the computer/video game rpg genre that I never have liked. Caves of chaos is supposed to respond to player intrusion, and the map and key is supposed to be understood as the initial stalemate situation.

And this is not even talking about how event driven adventures is recognised as an entirely seperate class of adventures for D&D seperate from location based.

It's not obvious to me at all how this sort of technique can be applied in a social context of the sort that Campbell described.

Faction play is huge in OSR. You might want to have a look at what that crowd is saying about the matter..

Your example is not active scene-framing. The players are trying to take an action - a low-stakes one ("stay awake outside the cell hoping the assassin might talk in their sleep) - so that the GM can give them more information about the backstory the GM has prepared. It's basically the anithesis of active scene-framing.

Here's a thread about scene-framing techniques used in D&D: D&D 4E - Pemertonian Scene-Framing; A Good Approach to D&D 4e

I'll say something about some of the episodes of play that I've talked about upthread:

When resolving Aedhros's night-time activities in Hardby, or Thurgon's reunion with Rufus, my goal as a player is not to learn how the guards in Hardby (as imagined by the GM) treat nocturnal singers or to have the GM tell me about Rufus. These are not puzzles to be solved, or challenges that I will solve via choosing an optimal set of maneouvres. As you say, it's about visceral experiences that make me feel like I'm there as my character, experiencing hopes and failures.

I think this hits the crux of it. It isn't about task resolution being unsuitable to handle a spesific kind of situation. It is about task resolution being unsuitable to provide a spesific kind of experience

This is a completely different claim. First I am not sure the premise is right. I have heard stories about GMs managing to direct an impressive range of experiences within a task resolution framework. And even if it is true, this doesn't seem like a kind of experience at least I would value very highly.. But need to get children to school now, so I do not have time to further unpack this right now.

 

[clearstream]

Edwards and Tuovinen don't offer identical characterisations: sincerity is not the same thing as elevated appreciation and understanding in virtue of intensely detailed perspectives. What they have in common is that they exclude certain sorts of ways of establishing the shared fiction:

"Simulationist" RPGing, as described by these commentators, precludes altering the fiction on the basis of, or as a direct response to, our appreciation or engagement with it. This is not easy to state, and not easy to achieve. In a RPG, the fiction has to change. Necessarily, those changes occur because the participants engage with it - they describe fictional events, fictional causes, fictional effects. "Simulationism" is about trying to hold the fiction constant on its own terms while the RPGing happens.

(Emphasis mine.) You make an important observation here. There ought to be a third characteristic speaking to how the fiction can be altered. To my reading Sorensen aims to solve that via insistence on players engaging only diegetically. But before continuing, I want to make clear one thing that others might disagree with...

Often (not always - consider some approaches to Tuovinen's "dollhouse play" or "substantial exploration") it is the job of the GM to hold the fiction "constant on its own terms", meaning that the GM is not really getting to engage in the sincerity and the elevated appreciation. They are labouring away, fully conscious of their authorial role, so that the players can enjoy the pleasure of simulationist play. I think it's actually rather common to see GMing described in this way, often using metaphors of "behind the screen" or "behind the curtain".

I do not take "simulationism" to necessitate a GM. I don't see anything at all about simulationism that requires it. It's a good, workable option with a lot of benefits, but it's not the only option. If others think it has to have a GM, then they should just bear that in mind in how they understand the third characteristic.

iii) play alters the imagined world diegetically​

That frankly steals directly from Sorensen, only freed from assumptions about a GM. Can players be relied on to give the imagined world precedence, address it as independently real, and not alter it during play other than diegetically? I don't see anything inherent to what it is to be a player that prevents it.

Like the others, this characteristic is also intended to apply to how the game is designed. It leverages my contention that game mechanics can be diegetic, but constrains designers to not offer non-diegetic mechanics. (One ought then to say how to separate them, but I will leave that for another post.)

To summarize how things are evolving, back in #13,237 I glossed Sorensen as saying

Setting precedes abstraction precedes play; so that setting indeed serves as reference.​

​

Abstractions exist only to make the details and dynamics of setting available to play; knowing that this will be incomplete.​

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At every moment of play, players contribute to the fiction only that which is faithful to setting; where "GM is a player."​

Whether that's right can best be judged by reading his words. Here I'm proposing three characteristics that through emphasis upon them identify a family of things a game can do as "simulationist"

i) the imagined world has precedence​

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ii) the imagined world is addressed as if it were independently real​

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iii) play alters the imagined world diegetically​

​

These are intended to bind on designers as well as players. They're not all or nothing. They're expected to be productive of doing something that can be recognized as simulation, without guaranteeing it. They're silent as to your motives for wanting to do that. As I write this I feel I'm mirroring what Sorensen has said, albeit removing the reliance on GM.

 

[pemerton]

In 5e surprise is directly a function of your parties stealthiness. There is no separate surprise roll.

Yes. This is the case in AD&D sometimes too, albeit the label given to the roll is different. - eg Rangers, and unarmoured Elves and Halfings, are stealthy and hence get a better surprise chance.

There is a previously rolled stealth check that gets used to determine surprise but no rolls are occurring to determine surprise.

A roll is used to determine surprise but no rolls are occurring to determine surprise? You can see why that might parse as self-contradictory.

I think you feel the need to educate me. But I know how 5e works in this respect, at least as the rules spell it out.

Example. PC rolls a 15 on stealth long before combat starts. The PC is trying to sneak through hostile territory. Combat begins. The DM compares that 15 to the passive perception of all enemies. That’s how surprise is determined.

I haven't talked about the PCs. I've talked about NPC Orcs and gelatinous cubes, who only become salient when some process, like a wandering monster roll or the GM's notes or the GM's spontaneous decision, means that they are going to encounter the PCs. That's the point at which the GM makes the roll for Orcs, or determines if any player gets to make a roll for their PC to spot the cube (if the GM decides that it's not moving).

 

[pemerton]

How do you see it as changing the shared fiction?

I said that it changes the way the shard fiction is established.

In the "fail forward" example, it is the failure of the player's roll that prompts the GM to introduce a startled cook in the kitchen as part of the shared fiction.

In your example, it is the player's making of the roll to pick locks which then leads the GM to (i) note that the cook hears the attempt, and (ii) narrate <whatever they take to be appropriate, applying their particular rules and heuristics> into the shared fiction.

There are specific hours when both skilled and unskilled thief avoid the cook and hours when both unskilled thief and skilled thief have the cook in their path.

That's not a description of the shared fiction, though. That's basically a recapitulation of the GM's notes, that will be applied to determine what the GM narrates into the shared fiction.

I'm not asking if it's the kind of game you want to play in, or a good model of reality, or anything like that. Just that it differs in a meaningful way from what you do.

It differs from "fail forward" resolution, yes, and also from "say 'yes' or roll the dice" resolution. But I didn't know that was in doubt.

I have mostly been responding to assertions that a "fail forward" resolution approach is distinctively "quantum" or involves "conjuring beings into existence" or involves "unconnectedness" between cause and effect.

 

[pemerton]

Sure they have - they've simulated the feeling-out process where combatants size each other up and see what the other is made of, and now they're about to get to the part where each significant blow really hurts or even kills outright..

If three or four of those things were to happen in a row, then someone would drop to zero hp - all from sizing up!

And that could happen - imagine a PC who only participates in the first round of combat, but does so for three or four consecutive combats.

So the narration would have to change to explain why the character suddenly fainted or whatever. And the narration changing although the resolution process remains identical is one basis for saying that hp don't simulate anything.

That's before we start to ask why curing wounds helps someone recover from "sizing up".

 

[FrogReaver]

A roll is used to determine surprise but no rolls are occurring to determine surprise? You can see why that might parse as self-contradictory.

There is no surprise roll. There was a stealth roll.

I think you feel the need to educate me. But I know how 5e works in this respect, at least as the rules spell it out.

Doesn’t sound like it.

I haven't talked about the PCs. I've talked about NPC Orcs and gelatinous cubes, who only become salient when some process, like a wandering monster roll or the GM's notes or the GM's spontaneous decision, means that they are going to encounter the PCs. That's the point at which the GM makes the roll for Orcs, or determines if any player gets to make a roll for their PC to spot the cube (if the GM decides that it's not moving).

It’s the same for NPCs and PCs. The DM must establish the creature is trying to be stealthy and have it roll stealth. Then when combat is initiated there is no roll. If the creature wasn’t trying to be stealthy before combat began then no surprise. In both cases the roll was for stealth, ie no surprise roll.

 

[pemerton]

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.

These desires can be satisfied using resolution systems that are not "simulationist" at all. I know this from my own experience!

EDIT: I see that @hawkeyefan posted the same thing.

 

[FrogReaver]

These desires can be satisfied using resolution systems that are not "simulationist" at all. I know this from my own experience!

I think the key there is ‘for you’. Not for everyone.