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

[pemerton]

How do you define "situation" in a way that exclude my example, and still matches everyday usage?

Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.

 

[Enrahim]

Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.

Seem like a very strong change in situation. From "Do I manage to pick this lock?" To "What the **** should I do now?"

Edit: This would be the problem. The circumstance may also have changed similarly drastically from "There is a sweet lock, should be easy entry for someone with my skillset", to "No promising easy points of entry".

 

[JConstantine]

The real question I have - do rich people have tame water mephits acting as bidets or do they just have a low level magic user servant that casts shape water? Perhaps that magic user servant has prestidigitation instead. It would be useful for removing stains or would that be too gauche? Enquiring minds want to know!

Bidet of Endless Water and Loofahs of Prestidigitation. Totally going in my next Eberron game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is talking about succeeding or failing on a roll.

Also, there is an assumption in most of the posts on this thread that all that is at stake, in a roll, is some tactical or operational question, such that the only way to fail is for the attempted task to not produce all the goodies that were hoped for.

@thefutilist pointed to this not too far upthread:
In the Burning Wheel game in which Aedhros was singing, and was accosted by the guard, the significance of the failure is not that he couldn't sing (of course he can sing), and not even that he didn't get a bonus die to resist Thoth's bullying (although that would have been nice), but that his attempt to re-orient himself as an Elf, rather than a spiteful Igor-like figure, failed. This was reinforced when the Circles test failed, no Elf came to his aid, and so he found himself having to bribe the guards to get them to leave him alone.

This is not quite moral ( @thefutilist's term) but still sits within the realm of value, and could be characterised as ethical.

I made a similar point in reply to @The Firebird upthread: not all connections, or relations, between things are causal/instrumental ones.

Ok. But in my games a specific attribute roll is for determining the success or failure of a specific task associated with that attribute, often modified by your knowledge and facility with a skill associated with that specific task (and possibly other circumstances as determined by setting logic). The connection between roll and result, even if there are more possible results than simple success or failure, is through the adjudication of that specific task.

 

[Faolyn]

This makes me wonder.

If alignment were rare by default, nearly everyone would share your frustration.

If alignment were common by default, nearly no one would share your frustration.

The fact that some do, and some don’t, suggests to me that a modifiable factor is at play. So I wonder what that factor is? Session 0s? Vetting players? Clarifying expectations early? Something else entirely? Can we ever know for sure?

What I find curious is that every game I’ve run for strangers seems to end up with everyone on the same page. But games I run for friends often don’t. This all has me thinking. Maybe alignment isn’t a happy accident but a product of how we do things.

I tend to overthink things, so maybe I'm doing that here. But it all makes me wonder.

Maybe because you're friends, everyone feels comfortable doing their own thing, even if that means not aligning with the tone.

 

[pemerton]

Now imagine a fictional game that is exactly like D&D5ed except the following: When declaring an action, both task and intent must be specified. If you roll equal or over dc, task succeed and intent happen. If you roll less than DC the GM has to narrate something really dramatic that brings the story forward. GM are in this case free to decide if the task succeed or not, but the intent at least isn't fully acheived.

If we now look at the mechanic of strength, we still have the same claim regarding what it represents. But what it does has changed. It no longer (purely) affect task success probability. Indeed it more strongly correlates with intent achievement. It also strongly affects the probability of dramatic stuff happening in situations where strength is involved.

How does this affect the functions? Depending on the motivations of the group 2 and 3 might still be relevant, but for groups that really seek mayhem and drama it could have the oposite effect! And the first function is almost completely obliterated, as a weak character that inspires the GM to think of good succeed with complications might very well succeed more often in strength tasks than a high strength character that inspires the GM to think of more failure with twist scenarios.

This is where my claim about FF/intent on success games come from.

This seems to assume that nothing dramatic that "brings the story forward" will happen on a success, such that players who want such things should aim to fail their rolls even if this means not advocating for their characters.

It also seems to assume that the GM is not expected to have regard to the fiction of the character in narrating consequences.

Neither of those things is true in Apocalypse World ("Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring"; "Be a fan of the players’ characters."). I don't think either is true of Burning Wheel either, although it's rules text is a bit more diffuse in the way it articulates theses sorts of principles.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Please stop with the absolutes. This is very much (one of) the sort of thing I enjoy doing in RPGs. Admittedly, I don't always get to indulge in it because others at the table aren't really into it and I don't want to hold them hostage as it were, but that's a playstyle clash/table culture problem.

Agreed. I would have much more detail in my games as player or GM if I thought my fellow gamers would let me get away with it.

 

[Faolyn]

It doesn't even need to be a sustained period - given how short 5e levels 1 and 2 can be in terms of encounters it's very straightforward for them to be obtained over a day or two for which we can account for all of the Wizards time. The point is that there are no rules as to what actions a wizard needs to declare in order to get their spells. And considering how time compressed 5e campaigns can be it seems a bit unfair to single out Wizards by claiming they need an (unspecified) amount of free time to obtain their class features.

Especially when nobody complains that the fighter somehow magically got a new combat-oriented ability or feat out of nowhere without showing how they learned them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Especially when nobody complains that the fighter somehow magically got a new combat-oriented ability or feat out of nowhere without showing how they learned them.

I complain about both things. I'd much we use downtime and training more often, but my players mostly want to, "get to the action" .

 

[AlViking]

I don't know why you don't acknowledge that I introduced the example as an illustration of a player's action declaration establishing some backstory element; and I even drew the contrast with TB2e which takes a different approach to backstory from MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic:

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You seem to think that this is some shocking confession or revelation. When it's the point of adducing the example.

It's a backstory element that they knew what runes that they had never seen before said? If you say so.

As I said before, I have no issue with a player* adding to the world proactively if that's what you want out of a game. I'll just leave it at that.

EDIT - meant player, not character.