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

[pemerton]

Asking if a specific business exists in a village with multiple businesses, especially a business that would likely exist in almost all villages, is not at all like hoping that the runes are really the equivalent of a shopping mall map kiosk. In the village example everyone knows that the GM isn't normally going to detail out every single individual or what they do, there's no reason to. False equivalences are false.

And in the play of MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy, everyone knows that when the GM narrates a Strange Runes scene distinction, the nature of the runes isn't yet detailed and is up for grabs.

The equivalence is only false if one assumes that MHRP/Cortex+ should be played like your preferred approach to AD&D and 3E and 5e D&D. But that assumption would be mistaken.[

The runes didn't say anything before the check was made.

But of course they did. It's just that no one at the table yet knew what they said. Just as a village entails shops, so runes entail that they say something.

Once the wish was made, the outcome was decided. If the player succeeded on their roll it was a map. If they failed it was something other than a map.

Well it wasn't a map; but that's by-the-by.

But yes: succeeding on a roll to read the runes with the hope that they will reveal a way out, entails that the runes reveal a way out.

As I posted, it doesn't change any fiction. It does introduce new fiction: the runes reveal a way out.

 

[The Firebird]

Upthread, multiple posters - including you, I think, but maybe I'm wrong one that - described the player as deciding what the runes say. My point is that he didn't. He rolled dice, and won the roll. Much as a person might enter a lottery, and win: that doesn't mean they decided.

Ok, this has been addressed at length and there is nothing new to add. By decide we mean set the stakes.

(That is why posters who say that the player changed the fiction are wrong. There was no established fact about the strange runes, beyond them being strange runes on the dungeon wall, until after the declared action was resolved. Nothing was changed.)

Whereas this is just wrong. In universe the runes had some cause in the past. The players don't know what it is. Maybe the GM doesn't. But there was a cause. The players are modifying the past of the world.

This harms verisimilitude because it means the past isn't...real in a meaningful sense. I can't investigate intelligently and learn things because there is nothing to learn. The world doesn't feel lived in.

In the orc case I am modifying the present and future. No disconnect.

 

[AlViking]

And in the play of MHRP/Cortex+ Fantasy, everyone knows that when the GM narrates a Strange Runes scene distinction, the nature of the runes isn't yet detailed and is up for grabs.

Which is fine and all I've been saying - the player decided what the runes would say if their hope check was successful.

The equivalence is only false if one assumes that MHRP/Cortex+ should be played like your preferred approach to AD&D and 3E and 5e D&D. But that assumption would be mistake.

@Maxperson was talking about a D&D game and prefers a more simulation based approach so it's a false equivalence because the games are making different assumptions.

 

[pemerton]

In universe the runes had some cause in the past. The players don't know what it is. Maybe the GM doesn't. But there was a cause. The players are modifying the past of the world.

What got modified?

When a player decides, say in the second session, that their PC's mother was a soldier in her youth, they are not modifying the past of the world. It's not as if there was some established fact about their PC's mother that is being changed. They are just adding to the fiction.

Likewise in the rune example. Nothing is modified. The runes, necessarily, say something - now we know what it is!

This harms verisimilitude because it means the past isn't...real in a meaningful sense. I can't investigate intelligently and learn things because there is nothing to learn. The world doesn't feel lived in.

All you're saying here, as best I can tell, is that MHRP doesn't support the sort of investigative, puzzle-solving RPGing that you prefer.

I can tell you that there was no harm to verisimilitude at my table. The players felt the weight of being lost in the dungeon, the possibility that strange runes presented, the tension of trying to decipher them, the elation that they revealed a way out.

 

[pemerton]

Which is fine and all I've been saying - the player decided what the runes would say if their hope check was successful.

There was no "hope check". There was a roll to read the runes.

 

[The Firebird]

Likewise in the rune example. Nothing is modified. The runes, necessarily, say something - now we know what it is!

I disagree.

All you're saying here, as best I can tell, is that MHRP doesn't support the sort of investigative, puzzle-solving RPGing that you prefer.

I'm saying it does so because it is fundamentally different from other processes, like declaring "I attack an orc".

 

[Enrahim]

No. Is it much like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World?

This doesn't make Fiasco sound much like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World. So I'm not sure what inference you are inviting me to draw.

Nope. The entire point is that the popularity show that there are definitely players that do have a taste for failure, which was intended to contrast with your claim "(...) then there is no reason for the players to prefer failure." You could argue the conditions you stated is enough to persuade these players that success would indeed be as much fun, but I don't find that very plausible without some more significant backing than "by your experience".

This example doesn't seem very concrete to me. What game are we playing? How are stakes being established? What principles govern narration?

I mean, the RPGs I've mostly been posting about that use "fail forward" - BW, AW and 4e D&D - all have rules and principles to guide these things. (4e is probably the muddiest, but it does have them.) None of them would lead to something of the sort that you describe.

If you want to pay a silly comedy game, why would you choose any of those?

The example was very concrete in these regards. My analysis was of D&D 5ed with a specified modification.

The example is of course silly. Examples trying to bring normally subtle phenomena into light tend to be. In real play the effect described would of course not be as strong as the one in the example. But pointing out that does nothing to deny the presence of the effect also in more sober contexts.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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?

I can't imagine Session 0's and vetting don't have some impact. That said, I do Session 0's and they only help so much.

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.

Like most cases where some people find things easy and others not so much, its a thing at least worth thinking about.

 

[Enrahim]

I mean, the RPGs I've mostly been posting about that use "fail forward" - BW, AW and 4e D&D - all have rules and principles to guide these things. (4e is probably the muddiest, but it does have them.) None of them would lead to something of the sort that you describe.

I didn't reply to this in my previous post, as this seem like a possible branching to a more constructive path:
What rules and principles are in place to protect against this? (I really hope it is something more substantial than "there wouldn't be scenes on streets with unimportant houses, as there clearly never can happen anything dramatic in such a context. And if there where it can never happen that one of the characters wanting to kick down a door to went out some frustration would be an appropriate move - and certainly not a signature move no matter what is established about the character" Edit: That is something that is actually addressing the phenomenon the example illustrates, rather than just the example itself)

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think this sort of depends on what you mean by "getting on the same page".

I'm mostly talking about social contract issues and how people interpret them (though those can interact with the game structure and mechanics in various ways, and also with what the game is avowedly about. Some of this can be bridged by better and more extensive communication, but not all).