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

[FrogReaver]

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.

In our playstyle it would be against our unwritten (see social contract) play principles for the DM to just arbitrarily decide such details. He should be basing them on the already established fiction.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In that case, are you sure there are no genres characterised by the protagonist being chased around by screaming household members every time they mess something up? It just strike me as something that is such an obvious hilarious picture it should be a comedy trope

It is a comedy trope, all be it a rather dated one, generally accompanied by Yakety Sax.

 

[AlViking]

Except that if the roll fails, neither the players nor the GM will know what would have been in the kitchen on a success. It's not like the adventure has the note "if failure, then cook; if success, then empty." There are people here who said that they would have come up with elaborate tables detailing every occupants' location at any given time period, but you know what? I'm not sure I believe that. That would be pages' of pages' worth of extraneous detail for a place that is probably not all that important in the long run, and since some of these people seem confounded at the sheer existence of a cook at at all, it's work that they probably wouldn't have thought to do in the first place.

And as many of us have said before, this is only one possibility. If you think it's a stupid idea that there would be a cook in the kitchen at 2 am, then pick another complication! Squeaky hinges, something in front of the door that gets bonked when the door is open, a cat or dog, a night patrol outside who sees them, a trap that the PC didn't search for, a broken lockpick, a lost item, it takes far longer than usual so they are at risk of running out of time, etc., etc.

The hinges don't squeak and the item in front of the door doesn't get bonked because you picked or failed to pick the lock, those things happen because you open the door. The character gets spotted because they're standing in an area where they can be seen by the patrol, the trap goes off if it wasn't searched for or disabled. It's a standard action to pick a lock in D&D, success or failure does not change that.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Don't forget that most narrative games don't allow this level of player power, though.

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?

In one, the GM made it up before, and in the other, the GM made it up now.

I keep asking but nobody will really explain how that difference is any better--especially when some people have said that making it up even a few seconds before the roll is somehow better than making it up a few seconds after the roll.

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".

 

[Faolyn]

If nothing happens prevents the game from continuing then I consider it poor GMing. The specific action you took doesn't succeed, there should always be options, even if that means that you can't achieve your immediate goal.

There are many ways of ensuring the game doesn't come to a halt I just prefer different options than you do.

And the purpose of fail forward design being baked into the rules is to prevent poor GMing from the start.

People always complain when games like D&D don't provide guidelines or rules for how to GM well, but then get annoyed at games that do.

 

[Faolyn]

The hinges don't squeak and the item in front of the door doesn't get bonked because you picked or failed to pick the lock, those things happen because you open the door. The character gets spotted because they're standing in an area where they can be seen by the patrol, the trap goes off if it wasn't searched for or disabled. It's a standard action to pick a lock in D&D, success or failure does not change that.

I love that you think that it's unrealistic for a failed lockpicking check to do any of the above, but don't have a problem with picking a lock in six seconds.

 

[AlViking]

And the purpose of fail forward design being baked into the rules is to prevent poor GMing from the start.

People always complain when games like D&D don't provide guidelines or rules for how to GM well, but then get annoyed at games that do.

I'm not annoyed at ways other games choose to apply to solve the issue, I just don't like the tools they use to prevent it. I don't think anything needs to be baked into the rules, GMs just need advice on what to do to prevent failure stopping the game. The new DMG includes the option I prefer by talking about having alternative ways to achieve goals.

 

[AlViking]

I love that you think that it's unrealistic for a failed lockpicking check to do any of the above, but don't have a problem with picking a lock in six seconds.

You don't like a specific rule in the game. So? I'm using the rules for the game I choose to play, if you choose to play a different game then follow those rules. On the other hand a quick search for "how long does it take to pick a lock" gets answers as low as 5 seconds for a modern lock, although it does vary significantly.

Also, picking a lock is just one example. As always if you have better or different examples feel free to provide them.

 

[The Firebird]

Ignoring the use of "quantum" here, I'm just going to ask if, based on your description above and the importance it places on the GM and their notes, that perhaps you can see why some of us describe this style of game as being GM-driven or GM-focused.

Yeah, certainly. I think the narrative systems give players more agency, separate from their characters, to change the fiction, and I see why this seems less GM driven.

The disconnect is that I think giving the players power in this way actually gives them less agency in-character. Their in-character actions aren't connecting with anything solid and so they don't really matter. In that sense, the game is more GM-driven--you just want to convince the GM action X will make a good story. ('Hmm...will Pemerton, the GM, go for this runes = map idea?')

 

[hawkeyefan]

If you think the example is flawed, feel free to provide a different example.

Forcing the GM to be creative has nothing to do with why I don't like fail forward. It's about the fact that on a failure something that is not directly connected to the task being attempted occurs. Every once in a while it's bad luck and coincidence. Happens every time it's breaking my sense of verisimilitude even if it does not for you.

All of the things you list are specific granular actions a character can take that does not require a specific type of goal or scenario. They can be used in a variety of situations or by multiple characters in the party. There's nothing wrong with a "burglary" skill, but it does aggregate a bunch of unrelated skills into one bundle. That bundle might be useful as part of a burglary but those individual skills are useful for many other things. More to the point, picking a lock doesn't imply any action other than picking the lock. It doesn't involve other people, it doesn't require sneaking quietly through a house or second story work. Those are separate things, separate actions judged individually.

Sure, but there isn't even a Lock Picking skill... it's a subset of Tool Proficiency with Thieves Tools.

I had a D&D that my character that was just a locksmith who isn't particularly good at any of the the other aspects of being a burglar. He wore armor that gave him disadvantage and didn't train in it so he wasn't very good at stealth, he never invested in acrobatics. He was good at locks because of his backstory but he was a fighter not a rogue. That flexibility is something I enjoy about D&D.

Was he good at disarming traps? Or did you just ignore that?

Not everyone accepts @Hussar's definition even if we understand it.

That's fine. But you asked "Why should the game rules tell us why or how we fail a climb check?" so I explained why, per @Hussar 's post, that would be the case.

If you don't want to use "absurd" examples, provide better examples.

I have.