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

[hawkeyefan]

Holy semantical nonsense Batman!

Sick burn, Max. I’m not gonna lie… that stings.

There's no lock picking skill, there's only proficiency with thieves tools whose only purpose is to pick locks and disarm traps!

This is my point. @AlViking said that a Burglary skill wouldn’t work for him because it bundles too many skills together, and that such design was more “about the story rather than the adventure” (whatever the hell that means) and he would therefore not like it.

So I pointed out how there are several examples of this in 5e, including the Proficiency with Thieves Tools. As well as Acrobatics, Athletics, Perception, Stealth… and so on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The problem is a lot of rules consider "resolution" just in terms of success and failure, without spelling out what those mean.

 

[Maxperson]

This is my point. @AlViking said that a Burglary skill wouldn’t work for him because it bundles too many skills together, and that such design was more “about the story rather than the adventure” (whatever the hell that means) and he would therefore not like it.

So I pointed out how there are several examples of this in 5e, including the Proficiency with Thieves Tools. As well as Acrobatics, Athletics, Perception, Stealth… and so on.

That's been a sticking point with me as well. 5e bundles too much together. My desert nomad who has never been in enough water to swim in is a master swimmer because I picked athletics so he could climb well. I can't have a PC who can't see well, but has other good senses.

 

[Faolyn]

You want me to explain my feelings? If I don't feel the setting has a sense of independence from me the player, such that my ability to affect it is limited to the abilities and choices of my character, then that setting feels artificial and unsatisfying to me. I am not immersed in the experience of my PC in that world, because I have the explicit option (maybe even the responsibility in some games) to step out of that personal and advocate to the GM directly, or maybe simply declare facts myself. I don't want that power. It is not fun for me.

I'm confused re: the bolded bit. In narrative games, there very often is independence from the player--that's why there are countdowns and fronts and situations that exist independently from the players, created by the GM. You've said you've played Monster of the Week, right? Each adventure has a six-step countdown, labeled Day to Midnight, that does exactly that. Maybe not every narrative game has them, but a lot of them do. So I still don't understand what the problem is.

 

[Faolyn]

Assuming the ship can be turned in time to miss the iceberg.

That's what did in the Titanic: the ship's design was such that it took so long to turn that, even with a competent helmsman putting the helm hard over on first warning, they still hit the iceberg anyway on a glancing - but deadly - angle. (subsequent analysis holds they'd probably have been better off had they not turned and instead hit it head on, but that's a different issue)

That the ship was going too fast for the conditions wasn't the helmsman's fault.

Not necessarily, see above.

That's covered in games that have modifiers for tool quality or steering or things like that.

 

[Faolyn]

What games would you expect a Sim GM to go for?

GURPS?

 

[Maxperson]

That's not what the narrative said though. The character fell because the rock crumbled. It's not "flair", it's the direct cause. It's no different than the cook being there because of the failed check or the random encounter poofing into the area of the PC's because of a random check.

These are are identical. The game world is being retroactively changed by the DM to fit with die rolls. Note, the die rolls themselves aren't actually informing any of the narrative. It's all being 100% added by the DM. So, not simulating anything. Just adding stuff to make the game more interesting and fun.

In actual game play it goes something like this.

DM: "You guys have been tracking the goblins for two days now. The tracks lead you to a cliff and stop at the bottom."
Player(s): "I will examine the cliff to see if it's safe to climb and try to estimate how high it is."
DM: "The cliff rock is decaying granite and parts of it are obviously crumbly. Gimli knows that even rock that looks solid could be weak and unsupportive of your weight. It would be a treacherous climb."
Player(s): "Legolas can climb pretty well and is light as an elf. He will give it a shot."
DM: "The DC because of the shape of the cliff will be 20."
Player of Legolas: "Crud, I rolled a 1."
DM: "As you are climbing up the cliff, you put your foot on a rock that was looser than you estimated and it gives way..."

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

A perfectly valid preference. But no more than that, of course.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Of course the failure was caused by the crumbling rock. The nature of the cliff would be considered when setting the DC or penalty for climbing the cliff, just like other environmental factors would be considered. If a sturdy cliff with lots of handholds is (say) DC 13 to climb, then a crumbling cliff would have a higher DC--say, 18. If the climber rolled below that, they didn't fail due to random chance; they fell due to the crumbliness that caused the DC to be higher. If the climber had good, sturdy climbing equipment, that could also be factored into the climb--assuming the rules didn't give it a bonus to begin with (I don't remember from D&D). So that DC 18 could be knocked down to a 16. The rope offsets the crumbling.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

The system I've been considering that allows for tiers of success and failure uses different DCs.