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

[Maxperson]

And yet again, what "quantum" is changes to fit whatever argument is convenient for the arguer today.

I'm done. I'm not going to respond to arguments that make the goalposts more mobile than a parkour artist on speed.

Then you should be responding to that post as there is literally no change there. I've been saying that since my first post.

 

[Micah Sweet]

While that is the original meaning of the term, most buildings called "châteaux" in French today are not castles, and are instead manor houses or palaces. Versailles, for example, is a "château" but definitely isn't a castle, it's a palace. (It was called a "château" in its time because, when it was built, it was a country estate. The city has expanded around it.) Some places are called a "château" not because of any house per se, but because they're wine-growers, hence why there are a number of French wines that are named "Château <Name>"; this is apparently especially common in the Bordeaux region.

Per Wikipedia, "The French word château denotes buildings as diverse as a medieval fortress, a Renaissance palace and a fine 19th-century country house. Care should therefore be taken when translating the French word château into English, noting the nature of the building in question. Most French châteaux are 'palaces' or fine 'country houses' rather than 'castles', and for these, the word 'château' is appropriate in English."

In modern French, if one wishes to refer to the kind of thing that English means by the word "castle", the correct term usually involves the French word fort somewhere, sometimes (not always) paired with château, e.g. "Château fort de Roquetaillade."

I thought a structure had to be built for defense to be considered a castle.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Complications come up in as many as a third of surgeries, and in surgeries that have complications, around 40% of those have multiple complications. Surprises happen to lawyers. Clients lie to them all the time and the other side finds out something that was either denied by the client, overlooked by the client, was something the client didn't feel was relevant, etc. And police officers? You think they don't experience complications frequently?

And you still seem like you are implying that an easily fixed complication isn't a complication. Those things are problems, even if they are easily and quickly fixed by an expert.

 

[clearstream]

if there is a roll, the climb will be dangerous in some way the specifics of which rarely matter.

That was the part I found really interesting. Accepted that "the specifics... rarely matter", I found myself wondering why they rarely matter and how play proceeds without them?

The mechanics prove sufficient to stand for the thing the characters are imagined to be doing as if they were descriptive language. They lack detail... or it might be better said that everyone at the table has their own picture of what's happening and mechanics converge those pictures well enough that no more need be said.

 

[Pedantic]

That was the part I found really interesting. Accepted that "the specifics... rarely matter", I found myself wondering why they rarely matter and how play proceeds without them?

The mechanics prove sufficient to stand for the thing the characters are imagined to be doing as if they were descriptive language. They lack detail... or it might be better said that everyone at the table has their own picture of what's happening and mechanics converge those pictures well enough that no more need be said.

It's a question of the level of fidelity/resolution into the fictional setting. I don't think there's universal agreement on what precise label of retail is necessary for sufficiently shared fictional understanding; I generally find 5e much too imprecise about this, but the popularity suggests many players are comfortable with less.

 

[The Firebird]

Let me pull out some salient points. First, I argued that narrative games do not allow you to 'play to win' in the same way trad games do. @hawkeyefan claims it doesn't need to clash with immersion and @pemerton asks what winning looks like in narrative games.

To the first point, I think this is just a subjective preference. I've found it does break my immersion in narrative games. That doesn't mean it does for everyone.

To the second--I'm not sure. When I think of 'winning' in RPGs, I think of successfully achieving my PCs goals. That's why for the rune example, I said 'imagine the runes caused me to instantly accomplish all my goals'. Is that not what winning looks like in these games, for you?

The worry here seems to be about "easy mode" or "breaking the game". That's not a problem in MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic: an Asset has a rating, which is the result of the roll made to create it, and then is the measure of the contribution the Asset makes to building a dice pool.

As to this point--why are you brining in MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy Heroic? Wasn't the discussion about BW and AW and BitD? Do they have systems like this?

I asked you specifically about how you would adjudicate things if a player said "the runes cause me to achieve all of my goals and my enemies to instantly perish". So--how?

 

[The Firebird]

Second, regarding changing the fiction, there are some misunderstandings about how fixed the world can be.

One way the good climber will discover the crumbling rock is by testing it, and discovering that it crumbles. Does the GM then narrate it?

I posit that, in most D&D games, the answer is no. When the check succeeds, the sort of thing that might cause failure - like crumbling rock - is not narrated. It never becomes salient.

I also posit that, in most D&D games, the GM does not systematically correlate (i) the number and location of the protuberances that will crumble under weight with (ii) the DC for the climb. Especially because most GMs are not experts in climbing, the DC will be some intuited reflection of grade, slipperiness, number of handholds, strength of those protuberances, etc.

Also, on your model the DC of the climb should get easier once it has been climbed by a poor climber, as that will have reduced the number of misleading protuberances that will crumble under weight. But I don't think I've heard of that happening very often in D&D play.

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.

I don't agree with your assumptions about play in d&d. "Cliff, DC 15, crumbly" gives you all of the information you need to narrate. I've heard and given descriptions like this.

But more generally, even if this is true for most d&d games, that doesn't really matter, because no one is asserting that most d&d games are good. Maybe there are a lot of DMs out there who are changing the fiction on the fly or hiding salient details or making stuff up on the spot. These are just instances of poor DMing. Imo.

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Other comments:

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?

Yes--but in OSR play, the DM is adjudicating things in a simulationist manner. They check their notes, or they use chance to decide. They're meant to be impartial. It would be a big failing on the part of an OSR DM if they said "Bob wants these runes to lead to a way out...if he gets a 15+, I'll make that the nature of the runes".

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

This is explicitly not the case in the runes example. The player came up with an idea, and, subject to a successful roll, was able to introduce it to the fiction.

 

[The Firebird]

Right! The players' actions don't matter, because all they do is change or add to the shared fiction. To truly matter, they must reveal the content of the GM's notes.

....if getting what the characters want involves a lot of meta-play - e.g. acquiring and spending metacurrencies that don't exist in the fiction - that can hammer immersion pretty hard.

And two comments I thought that revealed things in a particular salient way. @pemerton doesn't mean this positively, but I think it correctly characterizes my view. If the players actions are changing the shared fiction they don't matter, because tomorrow they could change the shared fiction again, the next day again. Yes it has to respect previously established fiction, but it leaves so much open that I don't find my actions to be meaningful in such a game.

To go back to chess, its as if I made a clever move to trap your queen, and you said "bishops move on files now", preventing my success. Giving the players more power to affect the game by modifying the rules leads to less agency.

And @Lanefan's comment is exactly what breaks my immersion. It doesn't matter if there are rules for determining types of assets or what-have-you--the fact that I can decide what that asset looks like as I'm staring at some runes on the wall ruins my feeling of immersion.

 

[AlViking]

It's a question of the level of fidelity/resolution into the fictional setting. I don't think there's universal agreement on what precise label of retail is necessary for sufficiently shared fictional understanding; I generally find 5e much too imprecise about this, but the popularity suggests many players are comfortable with less.

A GM can never provide every single detail. I provide enough details so that the players can understand and make informed decisions based on what their character perceives. If there crossing a prairie I'll let them know they're in tall grass but I won't include what type of grass. If it's night I will only include details like cloud cover moon phase and so on if its relevant.

In case of an incline we can go anywhere from it being difficult terrain to go up, difficult terrain and an athletics check to see how quickly you can scramble up, easy climb but chance of falling to nearly impossible or just impossible.

Most of the time all the players need to know is the difficulty level, and even then most will assume moderate difficulty until told otherwise.

 

[JConstantine]

I feel like this has the goalpost sliding a little bit.

Possibly. The original context was @Lanefan implying he engaged in illusionism, which caused @Hussar to express incredulity that it would occur from the GM side. My assertion was that GMs tend to run the sort of game they would like to play in and so I found Lanefan's comment perfectly understandable. @Thomas Shey and your sentiments about not always getting to run the games you really want doesn't inherently contradict that, even if it's something I can relate to (I have a document that currently contains 20 or so campaign pitches with varying levels of interest). Hence my question.
Now your claim about being a service-oriented GM is absolutely a counterpoint to my original assertion, but I must admit I'm skeptical of how representative that is.