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

[CreamCloud0]

The character can know it: by reading the runes! They don't know in advance, but nor does the player. Both are hoping.

but hope can never and has never changed what something actually is, my friend buys me a birthday present, i can hope til the cows come home for the box to contain this thing or that thing, but it's going to have diddly squat effect on what they actually got me or what the runes on the wall translate to.

 

[pemerton]

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.

OK?

Perhaps you've missed it, but there have been many posts in this thread, from a variety of posters, asserting things like there is no connection between the character who read the runes, and the runes or that there is no connection between the burglar and the cook or that there is no connection between Aedhros singing and the guard harassing him. (As well as "unconnected", "unrelated" has also been used.)

In all these cases, what is meant is no casual connection .

But of course in each case - whether or not there are connections of that sort, which is not clear in all of them (eg singing might attract the attention of a guard) - there is a different sort of connection that might be important:

* The moral connection between the burglar and the cook - this is called out in the blog that the example came from, which asks "In my example with the cook, do you kill the innocent cook who was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?" @thefutilist gave a possible example from AW play.

* The ethical connection between the guard and Aedhros - the guard is sordid reality at the moment when Aedrhos is seeking some sort of escape into Elven transcendence.

* The connection of salience and hope that arises between a character who has been teleported who-know-where in the dungeon, sees some strange runes on a wall, and wonders whether they might reveal a way out.

I posted this upthread, in response to @The Firebird, elaborating on that last dot point:

Is it unrelated, though?

From here, as an example of "Simulationism over-riding Narrativism":

A weapon does precisely the same damage range regardless of the emotional relationship between wielder and target. (True for RuneQuest, not true for Hero Wars)​

When playing Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic - a RPG that was designed, after all, to evoke the mood and feel of super-hero comics - emotional relationships, aspirations for things, etc are relationships that matter as much as causal relationships.

As I posted not too far upthread, in reply to @thefutilist, MHRP uses a system of Scene Distinctions. The strange runes were one such. So the framing of the scene invites the players to invest in what these runes might be. In the context of just having been teleported who-knows-where-in-the-dungeon by a Crypt Thing. What is salient, at that moment of play, is the fact that the PCs are Lost in the Dungeon (each has a d12 complication with this label). The strange runes are an element of the scene, called out as such by way of a Scene Distinction; but what they say is not itself inherently at stake. If the players had chosen to ignore them, then that would have been that unless I, as GM, had taken it upon myself to "activate" them in some fashion (using the Doom Pool in an appropriate way).

When a player choose to make the strange runes a focus of play, they establish a connection - of interest, of possibility - that matters to the resolution. To describe it as unrelated is to assume what is false, namely, that resolution is governed by a certain sort of "simulationist" priority.

 

[Enrahim]

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.

I don't understand where those assumptions might possibly come from, as I am certainty not assuming any such thing? The closest I could see for the first assumption would be the place I pointed out 2 and 3 might not work for "groups that really seek mayhem and drama". I do not know what your experience, but I think it require a very spesific kind of discipline to prevent fail forward to become a chaos engine. Indeed my impression is that this quality is an important part of what make Blades in the Dark so popular..

I absolutely do not understand where the second assumption could come from? I am absolutely not assuming anything like that to arrive at any of my conclusions.

 

[pemerton]

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

I am not using "backstory" to mean "character backstory". I'm using it to mean the background fiction.

 

[pemerton]

but hope can never and has never changed what something actually is,

Nor does it in my example.

The runes show a way out; but the character doesn't know that yet. The character tries to read them, hoping that they will show the way out. And they do!

 

[The Firebird]

This is an empirical question about a given lottery. For instance, my friend and I can all agree to raffle off <this thing that one of us owns>, each put our tokens into a hat, and draw one out. Whoever wins, wins. They win a prize that they were party to choosing. But they didn't decide to win.

Yes, I know they didn't decide to win...I stated that several times. But you're not engaging with my core point. With your friends, you can't raffle off things you don't own ... I cannot raffle off Isla Nublar. You cannot have a lottery for a map that doesn't exist.

The fact that the player knows how the resolution process works doesn't mean that they're not in director stance.

Not in general, but in this case yes. When the player declares that they attack an orc, they know the orc exists and that they have a chance of hitting it. If they declare they hope the runes are a map, they don't know if that map exists. That is information they didn't have access to ... except for the fact that a player is controlling their movements.

 

[AlViking]

Door remaining locked can very well be adequate. But there might be guards chasing you around, or all your lockpicks are now trash, or the door has suddently started laughing hysterically because you tickled it too much. All of these are dramatic changes to the situation, and I think that might be the qualifier that is most helpful for understanding what sort of situation change we are looking for (ref @pemerton )

Which was all I was trying to say. It's not just that the door remains locked, something unrelated to the lock itself happens. That's why I don't care for it, there's no in-world diegetic reason why a failure would trigger anything other than the lock remaining locked assuming all other variables are the same. Obviously if the lockpicking takes longer, makes more noise, something that actually changes in-world that's different.

If the only discernable difference between success and failure is that the lock is now unlocked or not then any consequence of failure is not diegetic which violates Sorensen's definition of simulation that matches what I strive for.

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand where those assumptions might possibly come from, as I am certainty not assuming any such thing? The closest I could see for the first assumption would be the place I pointed out 2 and 3 might not work for "groups that really seek mayhem and drama". I do not know what your experience, but I think it require a very spesific kind of discipline to prevent fail forward to become a chaos engine. Indeed my impression is that this quality is an important part of what make Blades in the Dark so popular..

I absolutely do not understand where the second assumption could come from? I am absolutely not assuming anything like that to arrive at any of my conclusions.

If things are dramatic and move forward regardless of success and failure, then there is no reason for the players to prefer failure. (Which is one of the things you conjectured.)

If the GM has regard to the fiction of the characters in narrating consequences, then it will not be the case that the fiction reveals the weaker character to be stronger than the strong character. (Which is the other one of the things you conjectured.)

 

[The Firebird]

OK?

Perhaps you've missed it, but there have been many posts in this thread, from a variety of posters, asserting things like there is no connection between the character who read the runes, and the runes or that there is no connection between the burglar and the cook or that there is no connection between Aedhros singing and the guard harassing him. (As well as "unconnected", "unrelated" has also been used.)

In all these cases, what is meant is no casual connection .

But of course in each case - whether or not there are connections of that sort, which is not clear in all of them (eg singing might attract the attention of a guard) - there is a different sort of connection that might be important:

* The moral connection between the burglar and the cook - this is called out in the blog that the example came from, which asks "In my example with the cook, do you kill the innocent cook who was just at the wrong place at the wrong time?" @thefutilist gave a possible example from AW play.

* The ethical connection between the guard and Aedhros - the guard is sordid reality at the moment when Aedrhos is seeking some sort of escape into Elven transcendence.

* The connection of salience and hope that arises between a character who has been teleported who-know-where in the dungeon, sees some strange runes on a wall, and wonders whether they might reveal a way out.

I posted this upthread, in response to @The Firebird, elaborating on that last dot point:

I think we all get that non-causal connections can exist. But when non causal connections are used to generate causal ones that harms verisimilitude. E.g., these runes connect with the characters hopes, therefore the characters hopes cause them to do X.

 

[Enrahim]

Which was all I was trying to say. It's not just that the door remains locked, something unrelated to the lock itself happens. That's why I don't care for it, there's no in-world diegetic reason why a failure would trigger anything other than the lock remaining locked assuming all other variables are the same. Obviously if the lockpicking takes longer, makes more noise, something that actually changes in-world that's different.

If the only discernable difference between success and failure is that the lock is now unlocked or not then any consequence of failure is not diegetic which violates Sorensen's definition of simulation that matches what I strive for.

Agreed Just wanted to make sure the term was understood and used correctly. (Edit: And the tickled door is quite related to the lock itself )