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

[Hussar]

D&D does that in spades. Gravity is simulated. Weapons are simulated. Armor is simulated. Walking is simulated. Ships are simulated. Worlds, which includes trees, grass, berries, and millions of more things are simulated. Skills are simulated. And on and on and on and on. The DM is just providing color to the multitudes of things that are simulated by the rules and lore.

ROTFLMAO.

Weapons and armor are simulated? In what way? How? Exactly how are weapons and armor simulated in D&D? Worlds are not simulated BY D&D in any way. The worlds are virtually system neutral and do not rely on the mechanics in any way. Heck, often the world building contradicts the mechanics in many ways. The king falls from his horse and breaks his neck. 100% impossible under D&D mechanics, yet entirely plausible as a lore element in a setting. NPC dies from a single arrow wound, despite the mechanics 100% making this impossible. On and on and on.

Gravity is kinda, sorta simulated, although not really. Falling damage? When my character can leap off a 100 foot cliff onto jagged rocks and walk away without so much as a limp? That simulation of gravity? Heck, when I can leap off a 100 foot cliff into lava and walk away means that there's not a lot of simulation going on here.

It utterly baffles me why trad D&D players insist that D&D is a simulation. It's just so bizarre. It's like claiming that my Nissan Serena van is a sports car. It really, really isn't. Sure, it can drive on the road and it can go kinda quick. But, no matter what claims I want to make, no one is going to call it a sports car.

The only people who claim D&D as simulation are very conservative D&D players. And, really, they only claim that it's simulation in order to force their onetruewayism on the rest of us to ensure the "purity" of D&D. Which is made all the more ironic as D&D drifts further and further away from it's origins with each new edition adding and subtracting all sorts of elements.

 

[Pedantic]

On the crumbling rocks…

Consider what’s been established. The pc is climbing a rocky cliff. A failed climb check need not mean you fall off the cliff. So I’m already a bit puzzled with why the result of the failed check is falling.

Now suppose we had fictionally established the detail that some of the rocks looked loose/crumbly. Now the fall result works! But the example is no longer adding crumbly rocks after the roll.

If a dm has you fall on a failed climb check (athletics in 5e) and those specific details aren’t present I think it’s a problem. Albeit a different class of one than the cook.

Color can't be both a criticism of the insincerity of player added detail, and also the reason simulation is impossible. The rocks are below the level of granularity of the abstraction.

As long as the action of climbing is fixed, the ability to determine the difficulty of the climb from the description is fixed and the consequences of the succeeding or failing are fixed, you can fill your boots with whatever flavor you want that fits in the remaining space. Crumbling rocks, a missed jump, a finger slipping off a sharp edge, heck, even whether it's the player or the DM providing the flavor, it does not matter.

You'd like to think, but that seems to be the first place a lot of people's brains go on a failed climb check unless the system explicitly spells it out otherwise.

That's a different matter. If the rules aren't complete enough to tell you the resolution ahead of time, I'm not really sure what they're for.

 

[Maxperson]

ROTFLMAO.

Weapons and armor are simulated? In what way? How? Exactly how are weapons and armor simulated in D&D? Worlds are not simulated BY D&D in any way. The worlds are virtually system neutral and do not rely on the mechanics in any way. Heck, often the world building contradicts the mechanics in many ways. The king falls from his horse and breaks his neck. 100% impossible under D&D mechanics, yet entirely plausible as a lore element in a setting. NPC dies from a single arrow wound, despite the mechanics 100% making this impossible. On and on and on.

Gravity is kinda, sorta simulated, although not really. Falling damage? When my character can leap off a 100 foot cliff onto jagged rocks and walk away without so much as a limp? That simulation of gravity? Heck, when I can leap off a 100 foot cliff into lava and walk away means that there's not a lot of simulation going on here.

It utterly baffles me why trad D&D players insist that D&D is a simulation. It's just so bizarre. It's like claiming that my Nissan Serena van is a sports car. It really, really isn't. Sure, it can drive on the road and it can go kinda quick. But, no matter what claims I want to make, no one is going to call it a sports car.

The only people who claim D&D as simulation are very conservative D&D players. And, really, they only claim that it's simulation in order to force their onetruewayism on the rest of us to ensure the "purity" of D&D. Which is made all the more ironic as D&D drifts further and further away from it's origins with each new edition adding and subtracting all sorts of elements.

Look at the rules! Swords are made of metal and have edges that slash for physical damage. They come in longswords short swords, rapiers and other real world varieties. You use them in combat to try and kill things. That's simulation. The rest of arms and armor are also simulating how weapons and armor are used in the real world.

I think you mean 100% possible. Kings aren't automatically skilled with lots of hit points. A fall from a horse could kill him by reducing him to 0 hit points, and the broken neck is just the color to the mechanics that caused him to die. The same with an arrow. An arrow can easily kill NPCs. The king probably only has like 4 it points. The same with baker, the butcher and the candlestick maker.

Of course it's simulated. A simulation doesn't have to be complex and/or very accurate to be a simulation. I can float a block of wood across a mud puddle to simulate a ship going across an ocean. It's a piss poor simulation, but it's still simulating it.

Also, we aren't saying D&D is simulationist. We're saying D&D simulates a lot of stuff. The former is how a game is designed, and the latter is true.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think this is right at all.

What @Hussar is expressing is a classic "mechanical simulationist" viewpoint. From [urk=[URL="https://www.arkenstonepublishing.net/isabout/2020/05/14/observations-on-gns-simulationism/#13-mechanical-simulation]Tuovinen's"]Observations on GNS Simulationism – Correspondence is about Diligence[/URL] blog[/url]:

“Mechanical simulation” means having the players expend significant time and effort quantifying, formalizing and then calculating outcomes for all sorts of fictional things. The enjoyment is in witnessing the mathematical structure of the game engine in action, and its dance with the game fiction.​

In RuneQuest, when an attack is made we know whether or not it was parried/dodged (the attack/parry dice tell us that), and if it hits where the opponent was struck (the hit location die tells us that) and what effect the strike had on the opponent (the damage dice, in conjunction with the rules for the effects of damage on body parts, tells us that).

The contrast with D&D hp combat is in my view very striking. It's why games like RQ and RM have the mechanics that they have: so that the process of resolution also actually tells us what is happening in the fiction.

He's wrong about that, too. You don't need to spend significant time and effort quantifying, formalizing and then calculating outcomes. Far less complex simulations are still simulations.

 

[The Firebird]

I'd suspect there are plenty of people who are trying, in narrative games, to "win" its just that the win condition involves arriving at a satisfying conclusion rather than in a more traditional sense.

Agreed!

Really? 1 in 6 chance is "fixed" world? How? The presence of the guard is totally arbitrary. It's a 16 percent chance. Doesn't matter what the players do or what's going on in the world. It's totally arbitrary. So, how is it that any different than the percentage chance of a failed check?

If the presence is fixed, then the roll could, in principle, have been rolled at any time. I could do it years in advance, days, second, or seconds after. It feels like we are discovering something together.

If it depends on player skill, then I can't -- it can only be determined at the moment of interaction. This reveals that it is wholly dependent on the player.

 

[Maxperson]

Yet maybe she would: "Despite the crumbly rock and unsure footing, you make it to the top....". This narration efficiently does two things at once: it correctly narrates the check outcome and also serves to telegraph to anyone else thinking of trying that climb that it maybe ain't as easy as it looks.

Yep. The DM will describe the cliff most of the time, and most of the rest of the time the players will examine it to see if it's stable. The rest of the time something big is chasing them and they don't have time to look.

 

[Maxperson]

Only works when you assume a weapon only exists for defense. As a hunter how useful a weapon he doesn't use is.

No. It also works if you take it in the context that saying is used. It's used in the context of human on human violence, which in D&D translates to person on person violence, since many more races than human. Hunting is outside of that context and so doesn't run afoul of its meaning.

 

[Faolyn]

Only if the end results are all that matters to you. Is that how it is?

In a manner of speaking.

I have pre-planned. I have improvised. I have not felt any different about the results. Neither felt more or less good, real, honest, or whatever other adjective you might want to use.

While I will say that I can think about a scene more thoroughly when I plan it out in advance, when it actually comes to playing it, more often than not either I forget the specifics I wrote down or can't find them in my notes, or the PCs go off in a completely different direction or do things I didn't think of, thus rendering those notes useless. Thus in the long run, it doesn't matter. What's important to me is that we all have fun and the game moves along, so I might as well improvise as much as I can. If the players do something, I can ask them questions and build on that--even in my Level Up game.

The only place I don't improvise much is when it comes to statblocks. But the actual scenes themselves? Nah.

 

[Maxperson]

This claim seems false to me.

In a "trad" game in which it is known that something dramatic is happening right now at the top of a wall/cliff/whatever, so that getting to the top ASAP is important, it would not break any "social contract" for a failure on a climb check to be narrated as the check taking more time than is typical.

It would probably be helpful for the GM to be prospective in their narration: eg the player rolls, and fails, and so the GM says 'You will be able to get to the top, but you can see it's going to take longer than you hoped - it's obvious that a lot of the holds are likely to crumble under your weight, and so you'll have to proceed extra cautiously." This gives the player a chance to change their mind - eg spend a charge from their Wand of Flight if they really want to get to the top in a hurry.

I'm actually going to be in rare agreement with you. Success with a cost does work in traditional play if the DC is two tiered. DC 15 to fully succeed and DC say 13-14 to succeed with a cost, where the cost directly applies to what is happening. So no cooks showing up in the kitchen if you fail to open a lock. Instead the cost would likely be breaking the pick in the process of unlocking the door.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Well, no. Players don’t have the ability to change the fiction beyond what their characters may be able to do to change things in their world.

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?')

This isn't accurate at all. I ran a Stonetop campaign for two years. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by the “in character actions aren’t connecting with anything solid so they don’t really matter”… but I don’t feel it remotely describes the game I ran.

I understand that @Hussar ha different opinions, he was clear in what he wants. I just disagree.

Then disagree. Don’t ask what he means if you think you already know. You asked a question so I offered an answer.

If you've provided examples i don't remember them or I missed it.

I ran a 5e game this weekend. The PCs had to climb a cliff to reach their goal. A ritual was being performed in that location, one which they hoped to stop.

One of the PCs failed his climb check. I didn’t narrate that he fell or was stuck halfway up or that he needed to make a saving throw or a new climb check or anything like that.

I ruled that the climb took longer than they hoped and so the ritual was further along toward completion.

The only thing that lingers is that before we came to these conclusions we were digging into potential failure modes of this technique. This problem example was by some found to be such a failure mode for living world play. The conflict is that others have denied this example being a failure mode even for living world play.

Okay. Then “rocks fall, everyone dies” is such a failure mode for trad GMing.

Yes, so 5ed GMs that has mastered the art of presenting a solid believable organic world experience despite absolutely no support from the system, might have some insight into what sort of content discipline is required to make such an experience work

Yeah… I’m unconvinced that such mastery exists.

A cook in a kitchen shatters the whole illusion!

Isn't it? Maybe the phrasing isn't quite right. My experience is that trying to succeed at a task in these games becomes a game of "what is the maximally beneficial thing I can say to the GM that they will find credible". Or "how can I convince the GM that my fictional positioning allows me to use my skill with the biggest bonus". That sort of thing. That's how I naturally think about it, and then I feel I start playing the GM rather than the world.

Isn’t that one of the elements of OSR play? To try and eliminate the need to even make a roll or use a resource by prompting the GM with questions or specific action declarations?

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.

Interfere with what? The rules of the game shape play. What are they interfering with?

Let's think through how the environment relates to DCs, yeah? When the GM sets a DC, that sets certain information about the fiction--its a DC 15, so there are some weak rocks. A good climber can avoid them. A poor climber doesn't.

Crucially, if a good climber makes it up, that does not subsequently change the nature of the cliff. The DC is still 15, and anyone climbing up after can stumble on the weak rock.

In contrast, if a good thief sneaks in, rolls well, and it turns out the cook is out of town, the nature of the scenario has changed. Previously there was a (quantum) cook to deal with. Now there is not. The fiction is modified by the skill check.

And you think that most GMs have the fiction they need to share with the players constructed ahead of time to this extent, always?

I don’t buy that at all.

Once again, adding flavorful fluff. The fall wasn't caused by the crumbling rock, the fall was caused by a failed athletics check. The crumbling rock was just adding flair.

What cause the fall in the fiction? The character wouldn’t say “I failed my athletics check”. There would be a reason of some sort.