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

[Faolyn]

Nice in theory. Sure it works for some people.

If the people you play with won't act like adults to the point you can't actually play some games with them, why game with them at all?

 

[Umbran]

I don't think managing a limited resource is particularly deep, but given D&D spent literally years based around resource management, I think the rest is a reach; deciding when to use a limited metacurrancy can require the same kind of judgment and risk taking.

I think at this point we have reached "yes it is/no it isn't" territory, and I feel no compulsion to spend further effort to disabuse you of your notion.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If the people you play with won't act like adults to the point you can't actually play some games with them, why game with them at all?

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that if your players can't get behind the principles of narrative games, you shouldn't play any games at all with them.

Or did you mean something else?

 

[hawkeyefan]

Probably best not to assume other posters are lying.

I’m sorry… it just reminded me of something a friend of mine used to do that frustrated me.

This friend of mine, he’d make some kind of passive aggressive comment, but then play it off like he’d heard someone else say it. This way he could get away with making the comment… which was usually about something he knew next to nothing about… but could then avoid responsibility for it. If anyone called him out for it, they’d seem like they were being unreasonable!

Used to drive me crazy. Such a little weasel… trying to get a dig in, but too scared to own it. My friend, I mean… not @Paul Farquhar … his comment just reminded me of that, and so I reacted. That was unfair of me, and I am genuinely sorry.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that if your players can't get behind the principles of narrative games, you shouldn't play any games at all with them.

Or did you mean something else?

I thought I was pretty clear. If you can't get players to agree to the rules and tone of the game, to the point that you can't play the game, why play with them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

We do see it. Every time the wizard casts a spell in or out of combat, including times where he tries to get creative with the use of one of his spells, that's practice, experimentation and training, etc.

But that explicitly ISN'T the same thing. That's them creatively using the spells they already have. It is NOT experimentally developing a new spell. Doubly so for spells of a higher level, which they literally cannot cast anyway, and yet somehow they're able to spontaneously develop new spells the moment they gain the slots!

In the fiction at level up it's something like, "Hmm. You know, if I take the ranged component from the here Magic Missile spell and the explosive firey portion of the Burning Hands spell, and then bridge them together with McFearson's bridging language that Master Splinter taught me as an apprentice, I can throw fire farther away. Holy cow! Bridging those two together compresses the fire into a form as small as a pea and then it explodes into a great Fireball at the point of my choosing.

Except that that "take X component from Y spell" thing never actually happens. It doesn't get shown. It doesn't get played out. It doesn't get referenced in the slightest.

It is, quite openly, the game world being twisted around into whatever pretzel shape is needed in order to justify...

What we hear at the table is, "Hey DM. I'm picking Fireball as one of my two spells for making 5th level."

...a game-mechanical fact.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the people you play with won't act like adults to the point you can't actually play some games with them, why game with them at all?

Because they're good people that bring a lot to the game? Different people have different strengths and weaknesses, and being good at getting on the same page with others is only one of them--and, IME, not by far the most common.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, I've made the argument that the problem for most of the people I play with is they'd view the traditional PbtA roll as consisting of "success, failure with a cookie, and fumbles" and the basic die roll leans into the latter two.

I guess I don't understand how a "fumble" isn't "just a straight failure". Sure, it's a significant failure...but that's still just a straight failure, it just happens to be big...?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that if your players can't get behind the principles of narrative games, you shouldn't play any games at all with them.

Or did you mean something else?

To be fair, this isn't about just narrative games. Its about getting people on the same page in a very consistent way.

I just don't think that's nearly as common as some people act like it is, and as long as they think it is, they're not going to understand why some things work better for some groups than others.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess I don't understand how a "fumble" isn't "just a straight failure". Sure, it's a significant failure...but that's still just a straight failure, it just happens to be big...?

To their view a straight failure does not add extra complications, other than whatever loss of time is involved. A PbtA failure absolutely does, its baked into the ethos of the game.

As I put it earlier in the game, from their point of view, making a roll in in PbtA, especially outside of the characters specialty always makes things worse. It may give you something to go with it getting it worse, but they don't want it to get worse.