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

[hawkeyefan]

You didn't go on the date because you didn't choose other options. You could have met at the dance. You could have had someone give you a ride. Depending on where you live you could have taken a bus or an Uber. You could have apologized for assuming you'd have a license and rescheduled for later. There were any number of other things you could have done, just like when a character in my game can't unlock the door, there's always something else they can do. Include giving up on getting into the house. But as DM I don't care, what they do next is up to them.

I didn’t ask what else could I have done to still go on the date. I asked why I didn’t go on the date.

The answer is obvious.

Not really. I'm a referee when I'm running the game. I do not care about the goals of the characters, I'm only making calls that directly respond to the singular action taken. I never take into consideration downstream effects because that's not what I want from a sim based instead of narrative based game.

The bit you said this in response to literally said “forget the game for a minute”.

I understand how you do things. You don't need to explain be it to me any more.

I was asking how things work in real life. How we look at them in real life.

Why do you always add in some other simultaneous event? What if there's not a killer chasing me with a knife? Are you regularly being chased by homicidal knife wielding maniacs?

I’m introducing context because it matters quite a bit. We shouldn’t view tasks in isolation because they don’t occur in isolation.

I chose the knife-wielding maniac to make the point clear. If you cannot get the door open, the consequence is obvious. I didn’t expect a more nuanced example would do much work.

Subsequent downstream decisions based on where I find myself. But I have a lot of options. I could ring the doorbell hoping someone's home. If it's my old apartment I could break in with my credit card (my not-yet-wife didn't believe that would work). I could sit on the front porch until my wife gets home. I could go to a movie knowing by the time I get done someone will be there. There are all sorts of possible options, things that I could choose after the failure to open the door.

Yes, those are options you can take. And you would take them because…?

Because you did not have your keys to unlock the door.

In game I only judge the immediate result of an action. I'm not going to add a killer chasing the character with a knife because they failed to unlock the door.

The killer isn’t the consequence. The killer is the reason you’re trying to open the door.

Getting stabbed by the killer would be a consequence of failing to open the door. In addition to not opening the door, of course.

You told him his reasoning is flawed because he doesn't do things like you do. It's absolutely telling him the way he does his game is inadequate. That's what flawed means.

No, I didn’t tell him his reasoning is flawed because he doesn’t do things like I do. You continually read all kinds of things that aren’t actually stated.

His reasoning is flawed because it’s based on a faulty premise… that what he does in the game is the way things work in real life.

If I did break the window it would have been a simultaneous emergency, much like your knife wielding assassin. I'd tell her I broke the window to get away from the assassin

Exactly. The broken window is a consequence of you not being able to open the door, but still wanting to get away from the killer. So you not only couldn’t open the door but you also broke the window… a consequence other than failing to open the door.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I feel like you missed the point of the question. You had said this;



To which Lanefan answered this;



And you replied;


So my question was;



And if we revisit Lanefan's retort; "Why on earth wouldn't they work the same?" And we revisit your answer to that "Because one is a game." Simply restating that it is a game, doesn't address the issue.

If the point of the game is to simulate reality or maintain immersion by acting as if it’s not a game, then Lanefan’s question stands. In that kind of play, it makes sense to expect things to work similarly to how they would in real life. That’s part of the premise. Simply replying with “but it’s a game” sidesteps that premise rather than engaging with it.

That's why I asked the question I did.

Because we can’t fully replicate real life with a game. And I don’t think @Lanefan ’s take is accurate at all. Real life actions have consequences beyond themselves. I think that’s incredibly obvious.

Now, that shouldn’t be read as me saying that “fail forward” is “more realistic”, because I’m not making that claim. Sometimes, nothing does happen in real life if we fail at something. Fail forward directly considers the fact that we’re playing a game and so it wants to keep things interesting.

Neither is “more realistic” than the other. But the idea that “nothing happens” beyond the failure is closer to the way things work in the real world is demonstrably false.

 

[AlViking]

I didn’t ask what else could I have done to still go on the date. I asked why I didn’t go on the date.

The answer is obvious.



The bit you said this in response to literally said “forget the game for a minute”.

I understand how you do things. You don't need to explain be it to me any more.

I was asking how things work in real life. How we look at them in real life.



I’m introducing context because it matters quite a bit. We shouldn’t view tasks in isolation because they don’t occur in isolation.

I chose the knife-wielding maniac to make the point clear. If you cannot get the door open, the consequence is obvious. I didn’t expect a more nuanced example would do much work.



Yes, those are options you can take. And you would take them because…?

Because you did not have your keys to unlock the door.



The killer isn’t the consequence. The killer is the reason you’re trying to open the door.

Getting stabbed by the killer would be a consequence of failing to open the door. In addition to not opening the door, of course.



No, I didn’t tell him his reasoning is flawed because he doesn’t do things like I do. You continually read all kinds of things that aren’t actually stated.

His reasoning is flawed because it’s based on a faulty premise… that what he does in the game is the way things work in real life.



Exactly. The broken window is a consequence of you not being able to open the door, but still wanting to get away from the killer. So you not only couldn’t open the door but you also broke the window… a consequence other than failing to open the door.

As DM I judge the result of an action based on the action that failed and only the action failed. If there are other simultaneous events happening, those may play out differently based on whether or not they succeeded at their action. As far as the narrative goes? There may or may not be consequences. I am not concerned with the overall narrative of the game, it does not matter. I think that's more realistic because there is no narrative to life, just consequences to what we say and do. When running a game all that matters to me is that I judge immediate results of success or failure as neutrally as possible. If I think an action may or may not succeed I call for a roll, there's no other goal in mind other than resolving the action.

Your failing a drivers exam was not the cause of you not going out on the date, you not finding alternative mode of transportation or rescheduling the date was. If the knife wielding maniac is chasing me, my inability to open the door did not cause the knife wielding maniac.

Is there anything else to add other than that we're playing flawed games because we don't run our games the way you do and have different opinions?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not the character development I'm taking about. I'm talking about the game's base expectations. As I said, there's the psychic maelstrom, which is baked into the game via the playbooks via the Weird stat, as well as in various moves. You can't play AW without it, unless you rewrite the playbooks or make brand new ones. At best you can minimize it, or reskin Weird to be the "blind luck" stat. You could probably include things like zombies or an alien invasion that either was the cause or a result of the weirdness, but you couldn't have a "mundane" apocalypse (pandemic, climate change) or have something fantastical that people can't tap into easily (a "fae-pocalypse" where humans don't have inherent magic).

Which is fine, of course--nothing wrong at all with what's there--but it means that it's not setting-free. There's just no official setting, in the sense of there's no map or list of locations.

(Do the AW books tell you how to barf forth a psychic maelstrom apocalypse? That is, to take advantage on the inherent weirdness such a thing would cause. I honestly can't remember.)

Well, I think you could have pretty much any of the kinds of Apocalypse you speak of. I mean, maybe Humanity has a collective unconscious? There's a massive pandemic, and people get WEIRD! I'd be hesitant to spend a lot of time, personally, on trying to come up with a lot of setting logic for what the psychic maelstrom is. I think it is best to let it emerge. I think in AW the setting, the apocalypse, what is going on in the world, is a lot like another character, you play to find out what it is. Sure, a given group might not click with a 'fae-pocalypse' and so they don't go that direction.

So, I think it would be fine to consider maybe that the participants in the game 'bring setting with them' in some sense. Certain things will jibe, others won't.

My instinct as a GM would be not to describe anything about the maelstrom or the apocalypse myself. I might ask questions, like what is advised when a character first contacts the maelstrom, just let the player describe it! AFAIK nothing in the AW material tells you what it 'should' be like, or gives any examples that I would consider prescriptive.

But like I said before; I think there is SOME set of assumptions about the world baked into the playbooks. I don't think it would be possible to build a playable game without that. Holds exist, and there are Battle Babes, and Mechanics, and weirdos who seem to have some sort of otherworldly power sometimes. I think you could twist that in some directions nobody has envisaged, but yeah, they will all have some things in common. I would call that less 'setting' and more genre.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you really need one? Okay.

If you fail a test, is that all that happens?

When I was 16, I asked a pretty girl to go out with me on Friday night. She said yes! The problem was that I didn’t have my driver’s license yet… I was scheduled to take the test that Thursday. As long as I passed the test, I’d be able to pick her up Friday evening. But if I failed, then I’d have to cancel the date because I’d have no way of picking her up.

I failed the test. So, not only did I not get my driver’s license, but I also didn’t get to go out with the girl.

This isn’t complicated stuff. Actions have consequences, whether we succeed or fail. If we weren’t having this discussion in the context of RPG task resolution, this wouldn’t even be questioned.

That’s not to say that task resolution is bad or lesser in any way. All I’m saying is that the idea that it “works like real life” is a flawed idea.

I don't believe it is. You deal with those less direct consequences through other diegetic means. It all still holds up even if you don't bundle everything into one roll.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I didn’t ask what else could I have done to still go on the date. I asked why I didn’t go on the date.

The answer is obvious.



The bit you said this in response to literally said “forget the game for a minute”.

I understand how you do things. You don't need to explain be it to me any more.

I was asking how things work in real life. How we look at them in real life.



I’m introducing context because it matters quite a bit. We shouldn’t view tasks in isolation because they don’t occur in isolation.

I chose the knife-wielding maniac to make the point clear. If you cannot get the door open, the consequence is obvious. I didn’t expect a more nuanced example would do much work.



Yes, those are options you can take. And you would take them because…?

Because you did not have your keys to unlock the door.



The killer isn’t the consequence. The killer is the reason you’re trying to open the door.

Getting stabbed by the killer would be a consequence of failing to open the door. In addition to not opening the door, of course.



No, I didn’t tell him his reasoning is flawed because he doesn’t do things like I do. You continually read all kinds of things that aren’t actually stated.

His reasoning is flawed because it’s based on a faulty premise… that what he does in the game is the way things work in real life.



Exactly. The broken window is a consequence of you not being able to open the door, but still wanting to get away from the killer. So you not only couldn’t open the door but you also broke the window… a consequence other than failing to open the door.

And, just to point out one of the reasons why I favor this sort of 'consequence resolution' is that ACTUAL game situations are so threadbare when compared to real life. It is beyond any reason to imagine that a game would have detailed all the things that your scenario posits. That is, that there's a door, and a window, and a gargoyle statue that can be used to break the window, and a neighbor with a copy of the garage door opener, and a wife who isn't home but will be in a couple hours, etc. This is a far richer level of detail than I've ever seen in a game.

So, in actual play of a likely game, all we know is that we have a PC trying to get through a door into their house while potentially subject to attack by someone, should they fail. The rest can be come up with. It is a perfectly viable and pretty effective method to use fail forward. The PC fails to open the door, so they are forced to break the window with the gargoyle. This is a pretty reasonable way to enrich the environment in a way that produces a narrative that is internally consistent.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yet you keep posting...

Shall we set a time when everyone agrees to stop posting at once?

 

[The Firebird]

Forget the game for a minute. Just think about how consequences occur in real life. If you fail to do a thing in real life, do you really think the only consequence is that you fail to do the thing?

Isn’t that a very strange way to look at this in real life?

I guess we're at an impasse then. I think the only direct consequence of you driving exam is that you didn't get the license. The decision not to go on the date is indirectly connected but it is an entirely separate event. You could have made different plans. The failed exam does not dictate 'no date'. It only means that a very specific date plan isn't possible.

And so I think your way of look at it is a very strange way to look at real life. It's ascribing causality where there is none.

I'm not sure there is a way around this.

What if there’s a killer chasing you with a knife and you don’t have your keys? Nothing would happen?

Whatever the independent nature of the world causes would happen...that is unrelated. The fact that you forgot your keys did not cause someone to run after you with a knife. That was independent of the keys.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But there's also no negative consequences for not opening the jar other than not opening the jar. Which means that, in a game, there's really no point to call for a roll to open the jar. Just look at the character's Strength score and make a judgement call. It's only if something will happen that you need to call for a roll.

Also, "if you can't succeed with one method, try another" is still "nothing happens." It's puts the onus on the players to use a different method, rather than the GM.

Why would the onus be on the GM? It's the player's choice what to do next.

 

[Faolyn]

Why would the onus be on the GM? It's the player's choice what to do next.

Why shouldn't the GM try to make their game more interesting and less likely to grind to a halt due to a bad roll?