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

[Lanefan]

As always, quibbles rather than engaging with the core point.

You're now declaring that this challenge never could have ever been resolved. So there would not have been a roll.

Correct. The helmsman was guaranteed to fail (in some form or other) because prior faulty decisions and orders had put him in that situation.

Were this a game scenario, the "roll" here would have been to see what form that failure ultimately took. And for me, the truly bizarre (and very rare!) aspect to this specific example is that, in hindsight, failure = success and success = failure!

Had he failed to turn the ship and hit the iceberg head on he would, unintentionally, have succeeded in maybe* saving the ship and almost certainly saving a bunch of lives; as even if it had sunk they would have had far more time for an orderly evacuation.

However, he succeeded in turning the ship as much as he could given the lack of warning and the ship's speed, which meant the iceberg carved a long gash down the side of the ship and in so doing, doomed it.

* - it's uncertain whether the Titanic would have sunk from a head-on collision, but if it had it would have taken a lot longer to do so.

We are, I should think extremely obviously, talking about cases where a roll is in fact valid, where success can in fact occur.

In situations where different degrees of failure (or success) can have different consequences, isn't it still useful to roll even if outright success (or failure) is impossible, in order to determine the degree of failure?

Climbing a cliff that's flat-out beyond your skill is a good example. A "good" fail (i.e. high roll) might mean you don't even get off the ground, or realize very quickly you aren't going to make it; no harm done other than you're still stuck at the bottom. A "bad" fail (low roll) might mean you get most of the way up and then fall, or become stuck in place. A moderate fail (middling roll) might mean you fall only a short distance, or get stuck but in a low enough place that someone else in the party might be able to rescue you.

And sure, most game systems don't codify this sliding-scale type of roll; but IMO that's no reason not to do it.

 

[clearstream]

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.

The words I've bolded divide DM from mechanics. Dividing DM from the mechanics when there is a rule that says they're part of them is taking a view on what counts as mechanics. It's drawing a limit around how far DM can go in fulfilment of the rule and excludes that DM completing a rule may be properly counted part of system.

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.

One aspect of enjoyment of D&D indeed lies in witnessing the mathematical structure of the game engine in action. Optimizers are sometimes mistakenly understood to be trying to win harder, but some optimizers are simply engaged by the dynamic mathematical structure of the game. The combat minigame provides an ideal arena for witnessing the game engine in action... seeing how choices in the chargen component play out. What counts as an "enjoyable mathematical structure" is subjective: what one ends up saying is that certain games had mathematical structures that one found enjoyable for their own sake.

To me Tuovinen introduces some uncertainty in what he means when he writes "Games with heavier rules have a potential to support the players in maintaining and performing a more detailed and definitive Exploration state." So now it's not about enjoying witnessing the game engine in action, it's about maintaining and performing a detailed and definitive exploration state. Tim Hutchings' game Apollo 47 Technical Handbook is all about maintaining and performing a detailed and definitive exploration state. Players, as astronauts, are urged to do so to an exhaustive, "boring" degree. It has scarcely any mathematical structures.

In the end I have changed my mind and agree with you that @Hussar doesn't take an effectively formalist position. I think it is just a subjective one, flawed by not saying what "simulationism" is. Verisimilitude seems identified as a goal, but it's poorly explained why DM cannot be the means of providing the appearance of the imagined world being true or real. It discounts tools that D&D 5e (especially in the DMG) supply DM toward that ends, perhaps on the basis that it relies on DM to decide when to use them (I could be wrong about this, but it seems to imply that narration is only done in the right way when it is prompted by step-by-step instructions.)

 

[Lanefan]

A chateau cook stays in their place of work - the kitchen, unless they are called away by something, or they are in bed. They don’t “walk around a lot” because food is constantly being prepared and someone has to supervise. They have minions who they can send out to bring in supplies, etc.

In fairness, we aren't told the staffing levels of this hypothetical house.

If it's Downton Abbey then sure, there's multiple kitchen staff and the cook almost never leaves the kitchen. If it's a smaller place that has for staff a cook, a butler, a gardener, and that's it then the cook won't always be in the kitchen; he could be in town buying or sourcing ingredients, he could be serving a meal in the dining room, he could be helping with some other task around the place, or whatever.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Correct. The helmsman was guaranteed to fail (in some form or other) because prior faulty decisions and orders had put him in that situation.

So...you agree that the (alleged) counterexample doesn't apply in cases where, y'know, actual success genuinely is possible?

In situations where different degrees of failure (or success) can have different consequences, isn't it still useful to roll even if outright success (or failure) is impossible, in order to determine the degree of failure?

Possibly--but I should think the player would know this up-front, rather than the GM saying, "Teehee! See? You actually COULDN'T succeed, this just told me how BADLY you failed!" Being coy about that serves no one, other than the GM's ego.

Climbing a cliff that's flat-out beyond your skill is a good example.

Only if guaranteed-fail rolls were in the discussion space.

They clearly weren't. You are bringing in a complete non-sequitur, which now has nothing to do at all with what I said. Hence why I am annoyed that you are continuing on this irrelevant tangent, rather than engaging with anything at all that I've said.

And sure, most game systems don't codify this sliding-scale type of roll; but IMO that's no reason not to do it.

I mean...if you want mixtures rather than pure "you just succeed"/"you just fail", that's literally something PbtA does better than D&D ever has....

 

[clearstream]

In the fiction it seems to me that there is a causal link, in that but for the hope of getting to the top the character wouldn't have attempted the climb.

And as you note, there is an obvious causal link, at the table, between the player's hope that their PC gets to the top, and the narration of their PC being at the top: the player has their hope for their PC, the dice are rolled for the climb check, the roll succeeds, and so everyone agrees that the PC is at the top of the cliff.

In my example of the strange runes in the dungeon, there is a causal link in the fiction between the PC's hope that the runes will reveal a way out of the dungeon, and the PC's choice to try and decipher the runes, which results in the PC learning that the runes do, indeed, reveal a way out of the dungeon. The PC, of course, does not cause the runes to say what they say; but the PC, by reading them, does cause it to be the case that he knows what they say.

One difference that immediately strikes me is that in trad, GM will have described or implied that the wall has a top that can be reached through a climb action. Whereas with the runes, player says what goal may be reached through their deciphering action.

It's worth saying (and connects obliquely to our other conversation) that GM embodies the imagined world (they're usually not a player, in trad.) Making it literally independent of player. The deciphering example breaks that.

I'm not saying either is preferable... I've been mainly doing something more like the deciphering in my own play.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes...

And the door...

IS NEAR THE KITCHEN.

That's why this was ever relevant in the first place! For God's sake, have we already looped around to forgetting why this was being brought up at all????

This entire thread is going round and round in circles faster than a windmill in a hurricane, and it’s all down to people’s imagining the fantasy world in completely different ways.

It can never reach a conclusion because neither side has the common frame of reference required to understand the other’s arguments. You cannot know the experience of using someone else’s brain. I can never understand what it’s like not to be dyslexic. Spelling must forever be a mystery to me. Does the elephant exist before it is drawn?

 

[Enrahim]

In the fiction it seems to me that there is a causal link, in that but for the hope of getting to the top the character wouldn't have attempted the climb.

Oh! This might be the keyword. Try to replace all occurrences of "action" with "attempt" in what I have said in the 5 or so last posts. I think that won't change my intended meaning, but it seem like that might be the word you would like to use to properly seperate it from hope. That is that in trad all causality between in fiction hope and an outcome go via in-fiction causality, and all causality between player and fiction happens by declaring that the character attempt something.

<snip, uncontroversial stuff we both agree about>

My interest is in achieving clarity about how different approaches to RPGing work. As I've posted upthread, trying to do this by looking at characteristics of the fiction, rather than of the play process, is in my view hopeless.

Yes, and I hope the above clarify my language in this regard. The key part was always the scope of what player declarations the play process take into account. The entire reason to point to in-fiction causality was to clarify how this seemingly very limited scope of relevant player declarations that is taken into account (only what the character attempts) still can have wide reaching effects on the fiction that arises from this process of play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In fairness, we aren't told the staffing levels of this hypothetical house.

If it's Downton Abbey then sure, there's multiple kitchen staff and the cook almost never leaves the kitchen. If it's a smaller place that has for staff a cook, a butler, a gardener, and that's it then the cook won't always be in the kitchen; he could be in town buying or sourcing ingredients, he could be serving a meal in the dining room, he could be helping with some other task around the place, or whatever.

Even if it's just "a" cook, moving around the kitchen, going to the pantry, sometimes going outside to get fresh ingredients from the garden (hence why there's a door to the outside nearby...), setting out food for other servants to deliver to someone's room or table, asking the footmen to collect something for you, getting something out of the wine cellar...

There are plenty of reasons for a cook to be moving around near a servants' entrance to a posh estate.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In fairness, we aren't told the staffing levels of this hypothetical house

If it’s a chateau (French for castle) I would assume that if it was understaffed that would be noted in the overall description.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There are plenty of reasons for a cook to be moving around near a servants' entrance to a posh estate

Indeed, what would be surprising is if they weren’t there. Unless, of course, the players decided to do something sensible and break in at night.