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

[AlViking]

I didn't talk about terrain. I talked about the facts of what the PCs are doing, such that they don't notice the Orcs.

But terrain could be mentioned. Is there enough shadow to hide in? The GM can just decide this, like the ride on which the dire wolf stands.

So your issue is that the GM can make decisions about the world the characters exist in? Describe the terrain they're passing through? Shocking.

 

[Maxperson]

And being stealthy when you pick a lock is thus definitely never relevant whatsoever, no matter what, under any circumstances?

Given that I've said otherwise at least 6 times in this thread, why would you even ask that? If the cook is present on the other side of that door regardless of success or failure, a successful stealthy lockpicking might keep her from being aware that it happened.

 

[The Firebird]

You're not quite getting my point.

It's not that it has to simulate reality. It's that a simulation has to simulate something. Anything. For something to be "Verisimiltudinous", the system has to actually inform the narrative. And in D&D, it never does. The system in no way tells you what happens. Combat is the easiest example, but, anything else works as well - skill checks, saving throws, anything. Nothing in the system actually informs the narrative.

I get your point, but I don't think it is true. I don't see why the simulation has to simulate something at that level of detail to be verisimilitudinous. In my experience that isn't true.

 

[The Firebird]

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".

Ok, this is a good start.

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.

But, I think you are missing the point of why we're choosing this example. It's illustrating an extreme case to show that the principles behind the technique are not, in our opinion, sound. The GM is trying to create an illusion of verisimilitude--but they are doing so without relying on a fixed world backdrop. For me, once I realized this as a player nothing the GM can do can give me the feeling of verisimilitude, even if they are making sensical decisions all the time. It feels fake.

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.

So while I am sure this works for you, it doesn't, and cannot, work for me.

 

[Maxperson]

You're not quite getting my point.

It's not that it has to simulate reality. It's that a simulation has to simulate something. Anything. For something to be "Verisimiltudinous", the system has to actually inform the narrative. And in D&D, it never does. The system in no way tells you what happens. Combat is the easiest example, but, anything else works as well - skill checks, saving throws, anything. Nothing in the system actually informs the narrative.

If you fail a climb check, what happens? If you are at the bottom of the climb, then nothing happens. You simply do not move. Why did you fail the check? What caused the failure? Who knows? The system tells you nothing. Conversely, if you succeed at the climb check, the system again does nothing to actually inform the narrative. Maybe you found foot and hand holds. Maybe you scrambled up. Maybe fairies came and lifted you higher. Maybe you succeeded by the lightness of your heart. Who knows? Any narrative you choose is equally valid as far as the system goes.

I have no problems with the idea that your players want to feel like they are acting in a real place. I get it. I honestly do. But, I do not understand why you would choose D&D for this. Or why you would think that D&D is providing this in any way, shape or form. D&D, at no point, informs the narrative. Because it is not, again in any form, a simulation of anything.

IOW, your players would feel like they are acting in a real place regardless of system since D&D isn't doing any lifting here at all.

I don't agree with that premise. Why must the system tell me why the climb check failed for it to seem real(have verisimilitude)? If the DM narrates a rock bearing my weight crumbles and my PC falls, that makes it seem real.

 

[The Firebird]

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.

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.

Ok, yes. I don't love your use of 'shared fiction' because I think it presupposes an approach towards gaming I don't share...but yes, the important thing is that in this case, something external constrains the decisions the GM is allowed to make. It doesn't just constrain them to 'what could reasonably be justified by the fiction', but to the specifics of the notes on the page--the cook is there or they are not there.

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.

That's good. We've established the two methods are significantly different.

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.

Personally I think this flows obviously from the above. But more in the next post.

 

[Enrahim]

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

Thank you for pointing this out! I have done some work to try to clean up the D&D combat terminology, and this particular spell has stood put like a sore thumb. It really deserves a rename, but I still haven't found a good candidate as "restoration" is already sort of taken.

 

[The Firebird]

Here's an analogue from actual play, that I posted somewhere upthread in the past few days:

the PCs had been teleported deep into the dungeon by a Crypt Thing (mechanically, when the PCs confronted the Crypt Thing the Doom Pool had grown to 2d12 and so I spent it to end the scene), and all were subject to a Lost in the Dungeon complication. As they wandered the dungeon looking for a way out, I described them coming into a large room with weird runes/carvings on the wall. One of the players (as his PC) guessed that these carvings might show a way out of the dungeon, and made a check to reduce/eliminate the complication. The check succeeded, and this established that his guess was correct. (Had it failed, some further complication might have been inflicted, or maybe the carvings were really a Symbol of Hopelessness, and the complication could have been stepped up to a level that renders the PC incapacitated.)


I described the weird marks on the wall, but I did not, and did not need to, think about what they might mean. That was resolved by the player declaring an action to read them, to see if his (and his PC's hope) that they might show a way out was correct. The roll succeeded, and thus (in the fiction) the PC correctly deciphered the clue in the carvings about how to get out of the dungeon and (at the table, in mechanical terms) the complication Lost in the Dungeon was eliminated.

I want to pull out this example, because I think it is even more clear than the cook one and comes from actual play. I get what you are trying to do it. But I don't think I can enjoy any game that uses this kind of adjudication. The problem is that nothing is fixed here--the player could just have easily made up that the runes were a protection spell, or some piece of history they wanted to introduce. And the only thing that determines whether the runes are a boon or a bane is a die roll.

This is exactly the failure we've been trying to get at with the cook example--on a good roll, the world is defined such that good things happen, on a bad one, the world is defined such that bad things do.

The runes are simultaneously good and bad until the die is rolled. No one knows, not even the GM. They are quantum runes.

Compare to a case where the players don't know what the runes are but the GM does know, because they are in the GMs notes. You see the difference?

This is what we are criticizing when we say this adjudication system is quantum or conjures stuff (beneficial or harmful runes) out of nothing or involves a disconnect between cause and effect. Here the cause is "the player rolled well to decipher the runes" with the result "the runes were beneficial".

 

[AlViking]

Ok, this is a good start.


But, I think you are missing the point of why we're choosing this example. It's illustrating an extreme case to show that the principles behind the technique are not, in our opinion, sound. The GM is trying to create an illusion of verisimilitude--but they are doing so without relying on a fixed world backdrop. For me, once I realized this as a player nothing the GM can do can give me the feeling of verisimilitude, even if they are making sensical decisions all the time. It feels fake.


So while I am sure this works for you, it doesn't, and cannot, work for me.

I tried to explain a while back how long ago I would unwittingly break that sense of verisimilitude by using what I call OTAs (Obligatory Thug Attacks). OTAs aren't all that similar to fail forward or success at a cost but they were events that I would throw in now and then because I wanted some "excitement" in the game. So in situations where I felt it would be fun, interesting or just humorous, I'd have some bad guys attack the characters. These attacks could happen just about anywhere, under any circumstance, were not really tied to the fictional depiction of the world or even be a good fit for the current scenario.

It wasn't long before the players figured out that I was doing this and called me on it. Not that the encounters that resulted weren't enjoyable in and of themselves but because it made the game world feel less "real". I feel much the same as fail forward or success at a cost. If it's just a screaming cook here and there that's one thing but when it happens repeatedly? Every time my character fails to pick a lock a guard shows up, a cook screams, the neighbors notice me? I would know what was happening and it would make the game less enjoyable to me.

When I play D&D I want to envision my character in a fantastical world where the world responds to what they do in a way that is the direct result of what they have done. If my character is climbing a wall and I fail my athletics check I'm okay with falling. I'm not okay if every time I fall I also trigger the equivalent of an OTA that hadn't been indicated in the fiction up until that point.

 

[Maxperson]

In addition to what @EzekielRaiden posted, I didn't use the phrase "surprise roll" in relation to 5e D&D - I used the phrase "rules for surprise":
There is a roll that determines surprise though, as I've noted: the roll for the DEX (Stealth) check.

Then there is no roll to determine surprise, because stealth doesn't determine it. Perception does. You can have all the stealth in the world due to a high roll and if someone's passive perception will pick you up anyway, no surprise. So even with your odd definition of a roll that determines surprise, it still doesn't.