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

[clearstream]

The example I was speaking of was a Thief needing to get into a house, picking a locked door, and failing. If you wish to talk about that other example, I would probably need to know more, as "play literally just started, you looked for secret doors and found nothing" seems grossly unfair against the pro-"traditional GM"/sim-focused folks; that reads to me like an incompetent or even malicious GM, and I don't want to presume that.

For the lock picking example, what I narrated upthread was

Player "I attempt to pick the lock" [rolls and fails]​

GM "Nothing happens"​

Player "Righto, I take my crowbar and smash a window"​

Bedlam ensues...​

This assumes a mode of play in which players can be active, i.e. drive play forward.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I didn't have to invent anything. The wizard is in fact experimenting and practicing with his spells all the time. It's called spellcasting. Wizards do it a lot, and they get inventive with their spells.

i have to at least agree with @EzekielRaiden point with this particular bit, just using the spells you already know how to cast, no matter in how many varied situations, is not experimenting with them or going to teach the wizard anything new, that's like saying if i 'experiment' cooking scrambled eggs or mac and cheese enough, if i try doing it on the hob, in the oven, with the microwave, enough times then i will 'discover' how to make chicken noodle soup, no, i need to read new cookbooks, practice making stock, how long to boil the noodles for, how fine to chop the vegtables, all before they can come together and i can say i 'learned' chicken noodle soup.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm sorry, but "you didn't roll high enough, you cannot open the lock" simply isn't "pregnant with possibility". It is nothing but a dead end. I genuinely do not understand how anyone can characterize "you simply couldn't roll high enough to get through the door you really need to get through" as anything other than a dull dead end that adds nothing and simply creates unnecessary, pulls-you-out-of-the-game frustration.

Why is it a dead end? There are several different ways through a door other than picking the lock. And who said they need to get through it?

 

[AlViking]

So is going to the bathroom. It doesn't have to be on camera. It can be, just like going to the bathroom, but there are generally better things to play out in the limited time the group has.

I didn't have to invent anything. The wizard is in fact experimenting and practicing with his spells all the time. It's called spellcasting. Wizards do it a lot, and they get inventive with their spells.

World mechanics require world lore. The spells just don't pop out of thin air. Or put another way, they can pop out of thin air into the brain of the wizard if that's the lore you establish for how they gain their spells.

I never said I don't invent new stuff. I said that that it doesn't happen retroactively.

The way I explain it is that they understand the concept of higher level spells, they just need to practice the basics in order to master the more difficult maneuvers. People do this all the time. There was a time when Tony Hawk had never been on a skate board, it took him years to learn to do the tricks that he would later make look easy. It's the same with any number of other skills. Michelangelo didn't just one day pick up a chisel and carve out his sculpture of David, like most artists he probably started with blocks of clay, worked up to soft stone and finally marble.

Admittedly it should take years, and typically does take years in-game for my campaigns, but nobody wakes up one day and says "I'm going to be a wizard, I think I'll cast Meteor Storm." They start out with cantrips and work their way up as they slowly gain the skill to manipulate magic.

 

[clearstream]

I think you are partially right about not wanting the character to look incompetent. Which, generally speaking, is a good approach, I'd say.

But there's also the matter of the emotional or mental state of the character... some of the possible reasons they might fail a climb (or any kind of check, really) are because of mental factors... fear, uncertainty, and so on. For some folks, if a GM chose to narrate things that way, they'd find it unacceptable. Their character's mental and emotional state is entirely theirs.

Narrating psychological reasons for an outcome is one of the fun aspects of games in which players narrate their failures.

 

[Maxperson]

i have to at least agree with @EzekielRaiden point with this particular bit, just using the spells you already know how to cast, no matter in how many varied situations, is not experimenting with them or going to teach the wizard anything new, that's like saying if i 'experiment' cooking scrambled eggs or mac and cheese enough, if i try doing it on the hob, in the oven, with the microwave, enough times then i will 'discover' how to make chicken noodle soup.

No it's like saying that if you experiment with scrambled eggs, and you also experiment with cheese, you can see how it will be possible to make scrambled eggs with cheese, and if you add just a bit of pepper from what you learned in cooking school, it could be really good.

Keeping in mind that the wizard is a master chef right at 1st level with all the learning about magic and schools. A master chef can see how to take aspects of many different dishes and put them together to form a good new dish. It doesn't have to be just two dishes like above, and can involve what they learned in school.

 

[Maxperson]

The way I explain it is that they understand the concept of higher level spells, they just need to practice the basics in order to master the more difficult maneuvers. People do this all the time. There was a time when Tony Hawk had never been on a skate board, it took him years to learn to do the tricks that he would later make look easy. It's the same with any number of other skills. Michelangelo didn't just one day pick up a chisel and carve out his sculpture of David, like most artists he probably started with blocks of clay, worked up to soft stone and finally marble.

Admittedly it should take years, and typically does take years in-game for my campaigns, but nobody wakes up one day and says "I'm going to be a wizard, I think I'll cast Meteor Storm." They start out with cantrips and work their way up as they slowly gain the skill to manipulate magic.

That works, too. There just has to be lore for it. When something mechanical happens in the fiction, some sort of lore needs to be there to compliment it.

 

[Maxperson]

D&D doesn't have anything that quite corresponds to "success with complication" as an out/escape hatch/alternative result for failure. The closest thing, I guess, would be something like Advantage or the Lucky feat in 5e. With any edition of D&D I can think of, anything akin to "failure actually means success with complication" is going to be both an "in this one case, not every time" situation, and something that only occurs specifically because the GM offered or supported it.

5e has the success with a complication optional rule in the 5e DMG. It basically adds a two tiered DC check. If the DC for something is 15, at 15 or higher is a full success. However, it also has a success with a complication DC of 13, so if you roll a 13 or 14, you succeed but something happens.

The way it's worded is if the roll fails by 1 or 2 it can succeed with a complication, but that's essentially the same as a slightly lower DC for success and complication.

 

[Umbran]

Elevated appreciation and understanding of what?

Of the thing being simulated.

 

[JConstantine]

Watsonian vs. Doylist is basically character vs. author... it's another take on stances. Watson is the character, Doyle the author.

If we're being accurate (read: pedantic), Watsonian vs Doylist originated as a framework for literary analysis in terms of in-world reasoning vs meta-reasoning, as Watson was effectively Doyle's self-insert, but in the context of RPGs, yes.

I think it may vary by game, but generally speaking, I agree with you, I don't find narrativist games to be a whole lot more author stance than other games. Does it happen? Sure. Does it also happen in other games? Sure.

I think I've said this before in response to @pemerton (or maybe @AbdulAlhazred), but I'd agree almost all players are moving between different stances at different times, but certain games encourage the use of one stance over another. Fiasco, for example, relies on author stance over actor stance, in combination with director stance; not strictly a stance in the same way, but BitD spends more time in meta/resolution channel than say D&D (which can be off-putting to some).
Then, of course, there's playstyle preferences. I have a friend whose approach tends to be primarily author stance, but in play, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and my approach using actor stance. Indeed, I only know that as a result of discussion we've had about it - he never actually uses Forge-ite terms, but what he's said indicates author stance. Meanwhile, there's another member of the group who is the only one to bring in elements of director stance, regardless of system.