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

[Lanefan]

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.

Well, unarmoured Elves and Hobbits are stealthy. Rangers are more observant.

Never mind Monks, who use an entirely different surprise mechanic bespoke to the class.

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 thought the same. Then again, 5e "surprise" mechanics are a bit of a jumble anyway; as if the system almost wants to do away with surprise completely (can't have PCs dying without ever knowing what hit them, after all) but just can't bring itself to take that last step.

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).

In the TSR versions the Orcs also get a roll to see if they are surprised by the PCs. Technically a Gelatinous Cube would also, though I'm not sure whether the Cube is surprised or not makes any real difference to anything.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't recall 2 am being a feature of the example set out in the blog:

Which is a glaring error of omission in the blog's scene-set.

Time of day (or night) makes a pretty big difference to almost everything about the scene, from likelihood of people being awake/alert in the house to ease of a passerby observing the lockpicker to etc. etc.; thus rendering in-depth analysis of the scene useless until-unless those doing the analysing add in that element as a what-if.

In this thread we seem to have largely converged on it being 2 am and analysed on that basis; if instead it's 2 pm both the scene and the analysis would be very different.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is one reason why I always prefer to run sandbox.

That's as it is, but my statement still stands for probably the majority of games out there; a dead end can be, if not planned for, a true dead end.

 

[CreamCloud0]

But the end results are the same, so it's not actually any different.

and you've been told just as many times that others feel very different, that the end results are not the same, and how people feel about the end results are not the same.

edit: when the state of the fiction is decided before the results of the check are known the consequences will be different, when it's decided after you only have two options, 1) you succeed and the cook isn't there or 2) you fail and the cook is, when decided before there are four options: 1) you succeed with no cook, 2) you fail with no cook, 3) you succeed with a cook or 4) you fail with a cook

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would consider that a failure of module design, not a failure of the rules.

I don't recall mentioning rules at all in my post.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

If that's the case - that the D&D system itself isn't doing any simulating and is instead getting out of the way so the DM and players can do the simulating themselves such that the players feel like they're acting in a real place - doesn't that in fact make it a very good system for simulation?

 

[Thomas Shey]

If that's the case - that the D&D system itself isn't doing any simulating and is instead getting out of the way so the DM and players can do the simulating themselves such that the players feel like they're acting in a real place - doesn't that in fact make it a very good system for simulation?

The lack of something doesn't make it a good tool for a job; at best it means its not actively interfering, since its not providing any help.

 

[Enrahim]

Except that you're forgetting some very important things:

One: The GM and player work together to make a good story. The GM isn't antagonistic to the players. The players aren't trying to rules-lawyer the GM into submission. They are collaborating, which means that unless your proposed action would be actively unfun (such as trying to play on godmode), it's going to be accepted by the GM and group most of the time.

Yes - but it is a fully valid mode of trad play as well to work together to make a good story. The difference lie in how this collaboration is working in actual play. In trad the player input lies exclusively in what the protagonist in the story is doing, and their play hence are very focused on character and the world they can affect. In this other style the collaboration happens on a higher meta level - players propose much more freely what could happen in the world, and their focus hence is shifted away from their characters.

Two: What the players decide is supposed to be based on their character--and for narrative games, you have at least a modicum of your characters interests, backstory, goals, etc. already created by the time you start the game as part of making your character. Thus your actions are by default connecting with something solid--who your character is. For a trad game, you should be basing your actions on your character, even if the game itself doesn't have you flesh them out as part of generation.

Yes, the goals and priorities are anchored in the character, but the vessel for how to achieve those goals and priorities are different. And it is in how to achieve these most play revolve around.

And I want to emphasize that a lot of trad players have character personality detailed to an extent that would make most of the so called narrativistic games' character sheets blush. For some having boxes on a character sheet is a vacuum to fill stuff in, for others it is a painful constraint in depth of expressiveness.

 

[Enrahim]

The lack of something doesn't make it a good tool for a job; at best it means its not actively interfering, since its not providing any help.

And that is the thing - when any rule system come in contact with a human GM that really know their stuff, the best it can hope to do is exactly not actively interfering.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And that is the thing - when any rule system come in contact with a human GM that really know their stuff, the best it can hope to do is exactly not actively interfering.

I don't really agree, because I'm not here to do freeform roleplaying; as such, a GM can "really know their stuff" and it doesn't help with a substandard rules system, because interacting with rules in a game way is part of what I'm there for. You can argue that matters more in some areas than others, of course, but I actually expect rules to support what I'm trying to do, not just to not actively interfere in most things. "Just not interfere" is an overly low bar as far as I'm concerned.