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

[Lanefan]

This argument was not widely accepted during the 4e era. It's slightly odd to see it being trotted out this late in the day.

I'm not so much trotting it out as trying to point out the contradiction in what (was it Hussar?) said, that D&D doesn't simulate anything.

That said, I'm not sold on the idea of system being the only - or even the most significant - determinant of whether a given table's game runs more sim or nar or gamist or somewhere else; if for no other reason than there's nothing stopping a GM and-or table from massaging said system (or emphasizing parts of it while de-emphasizing others) in order to get what they want from it.

 

[Lanefan]

So adding colour is fine, but adding a cook as a consequence is out of bounds? As I said, I don't see the ostensible contrast.

The adding of colour doesn't change what happens next in the fiction.

The adding of the cook very much does, as her screams waken the household.

 

[MrBeens304]

No worries. I just know it's very easy to take someone's opinion about what they like that involves contrast and interpret it as an attack on what they don't.

It is however very easy to interpret things as "attacks" on things when many people in this thread use absolute statements like "That way of playing is just fundamentally unsound" or "D&D just doesn't support this kind of play" or "You are doing it wrong", or "person A said they like X, but person B said they like Y how can both be true".

A vast majority of the 1400+ pages have been people arguing back and forth over the "best" way to play, or to somehow come to some absolute truth over how certain ways of playing the game should and shouldn't work and how cooks and lockpicking should interact.

 

[pemerton]

The adding of colour doesn't change what happens next in the fiction.

Doesn't it? My experience doesn't really bear this out: players (again, in my experience) like to riff on, build on and interact with established fiction.

An example arose way back upthread: I talked about an episode of my own play, where I narrated a sick room, purely as colour for what I took to the actual action (ie a race between PCs and NPC assassin to get to a recovering mage), but one of the players used that colour as the foundation for an action declaration "I look around for a vessel to catch the mage's flowing blood".

 

[clearstream]

@Hussar has not said anything about what counts as game play. And has not really expressed any serious view as to what counts as a rule. What he has said is that, in D&D, the process of mechanical resolution typically does not specify what has happened in the fiction to bring about some particular result. With the poster child for this being - unsurprisingly - hit points.

You said that:

​

And Husssar, as I said, has not said anything about what counts as playing D&D. Though he has strongly implied that (i) he thinks that adding in narration which the mechanical process of resolution neither yields nor requires is part of playing the game, and (ii) that it is fun:

@Hussar asserted that

For something to be "Verisimiltudinous", the system has to actually inform the narrative.

and concluded that

it is not, again in any form, a simulation of anything.

It seems you want to narrow what counts as "a simulation of anything" to necessitate "mechanical simulation" which given you have cited Tuovinen 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.​

Neither Tuovinen, Sorensen or (IIRC) Edwards count mechanical simulation necessary to simulationism. That aside, I do not picture that @Hussar is unaware of one of the most basic rules of 5e. Therefore they must be discounting the possibility that players could expend significant time and effort quantifying, formalizing and then calculating outcomes beyond the step-by-step instructions. That is formalist.

Tuovinen's vision of mechanical simulation as written implies that it can be achieved only through formalism, seeing as it is limited to "witnessing the mathematical structure of the game engine in action". Players going beyond it in their quantifying, formalizing and calculating outcomes somehow aren't contributing anything to their experience.

 

[Enrahim]

In mainstream D&D, if you hope for your PC to climb the cliff, and you then succeed at your roll, your hope comes true: the fiction now includes your PC at the top of the cliff.

What is different about (say) Cortex+ Heroic is what sorts of additions to the shared fiction can follow from action resolution.

A RPG in which the players hopes for what happened to their PCs had no effect would be a total railroad, wouldn't it? Because that would mean everything is being decided by someone else without reference to any desire or intention that a player has.

If a player declare their character climb a cliff, and resolution indicate they succeed on this task, then indeed the character will (presumably) find themselves at the top of the cliff. However this is due to the in-fiction causality link between the act of climbing and the change of position. There happen to be a correlation between hope and what happened to the character, but there are no direct causal link. (The causal link you might find is that this hope was what motivated you as a player to declare that action)

Indeed my challenge here is the following: I initially try to express how the thing that is widely advertised as a strength of these techniques can have detrimental effects if used in inaproperiate context. That these techniques shouldn't be used in inaproperiate contexts appear from previous things you have written is something you would completely agree with. I actually would expect you to agree to the notion I attempted to express, or maybe point out how I am unpresice about what context might be inaproperiate.

Instead I find myself being grilled on if the difference I expressed really exist. It make no sense to me that you would deny the existence of a difference, and hence it is comforting that you acknowledge that there are some difference in your second paragraph here. I have made another attempt at expressing even more presicely the difference between the ways of playing, but I am really not sure if this is a wortwhile project.

At least at the current stage I think it might not be relevant to express exactly what the difference is as long as we can agree that there is a difference, and that this difference grants players more formal power over the narrative than trad. I think this fluffy premisse is enough to arrive at the conclusion that this difference cases distruption to a play style caracterised by player influence matching what they have in trad.

Indeed expressed like this the central claim actually seem to reduce to something close to a tautology..

 

[CreamCloud0]

So you would never describe a failed climb check as being the result of a handhold crumbling? Because you would never narrate the fiction in response to a player's rolled check.

no, you misunderstand, i said i would never change the state of the fiction in response to a check, if the wall is solid it's solid, if it's crumbling it's crumbling but i'd never alter or decide that as a result of the climb check, the player might fall on a failure from a crumbing handhold but that's because they in fiction put their weight in the wrong place, not because on a failure the wall was made of fragile stone.

put simply, the world doesn't change itself because of how skilled a character was at the task.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

untrue, a complication is still a complication even if you have people who are skilled enough that dealing with it isn't an issue.

I just...I don't buy this. I don't.

A "complication" means that things...got complicated. An event or an object or an action which actually IS a problem.

With the competent person at the helm...that "actually IS a problem" doesn't happen--or, at least, it happens very rarely. Conversely, things that would have been irrelevant or even genuinely unnoticeable with the competent person become significant hurdles with an incompetent (or even merely not-very-competent) person.

And contra @Maxperson this applies to all sorts of things. An inept lock-picker strains their picks more, has to spend more attention on the lock itself, has to explore longer, etc., etc., etc. All of those things directly contribute to whether the cook, at some point during the lock-picking process, happens to be near to that door. Sure, they don't literally TELEPORT her to that door. That would be stupid! But it's a known--indeed, realistic--situation that the cook in a chateau's kitchen is going to walk around a lot, and is probably going to walk past an exterior door at least some of the time. Being incompetent at picking locks directly contributes to the possibility of being discovered by said cook while you are doing the picking.

I could come up with a dozen examples. Surgery: a competent surgeon can foresee potential complications and ensure they never actually become complications. Police officer: A competent officer prevents as many potential complications from becoming actual complications as she can, maintaining equipment, understanding procedure, being well-informed, being cautious, etc., etc. Lawyer: you make ferdamsher you've got the case law down inside and out, you do your due diligence in discovery, etc., etc.

Nearly every actual skill a person can develop has this sort of thing. You learn to simply negate potential complications as much as possible, so that things, usually, run smoothly. And that means that your competency affects both the frequency and the nature of the kinds of complications that actually DO happen.

Theoretical complications are irrelevant. The reason we involve dice is to tell us when actual complications happen.

 

[pemerton]

Therefore they must be discounting the possibility that players could expend significant time and effort quantifying, formalizing and then calculating outcomes beyond the step-by-step instructions. That is formalist.

You don't need to conjecture - @Hussar has been explicit. He has said that GM's fills in the fictional details that the mechanics don't.

That doesn't seem formalist to me. It seems to be a simple description of how D&D mechanics have been understood to work ever since Gygax wrote his essay about hit points and combat rounds in his DMG.

Tuovinen's vision of mechanical simulation as written implies that it can be achieved only through formalism, seeing as it is limited to "witnessing the mathematical structure of the game engine in action". Players aren't permitted to go beyond it in their quantifying, formalizing and calculating outcomes.

I have extensive experience with a "mechanical simulationist" game. Tuovinen, in my view accurately, says that the enjoyment is in witnessing the mathematical structure of the game engine in action - this is not a description of what play is limited to, or what is permitted. It is a description of where the pleasure of play comes from when playing a game like RM, RQ etc.

Enjoying play of this sort is not, in my view, connected to whether one advocates some or other abstract theory of what game play consists in.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

no, you misunderstand, i said i would never change the state of the fiction in response to a check, if the wall is solid it's solid, if it's crumbling it's crumbling but i'd never alter or decide that as a result of the climb check, the player might fall on a failure from a crumbing handhold but that's because they in fiction put their weight in the wrong place, not because on a failure the wall was made of fragile stone.

What's the difference between those things?

Like seriously. In practice, what's the difference? Because as far as I can tell, "you put your hand in the wrong space, one that just happened to be crumbly" IS the very thing you're arguing against, but now you're saying it's totally fine. You're changing the state of the fiction by adding that, even though most of the rock wall is unassailably solid, it turns out some portions of it are a little crumbly and could be unwise to rely upon. How is that not changing things?