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

[Gimby]

Or else he could use a non-disparaging term like Roleplaying Childhood Heroes. He chose not to, which makes what he has to say suspect.

I mean, you are asking him to coin new jargon here rather than using well understood terms from outside of the hobby - given the general tenor against academic terms and desire for casual communication, that seems counterproductive.

 

[FrogReaver]

What I'm really saying is that "nothing happens" is boring.

There’s a bit more to what you are saying I think. Nothing happens is boring AND nothing happens or nothing can happen is a possibility when you don’t use fail forward or similar, so use fail forward or similar instead.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

IMO, most of the quotes from @pemerton 's preferred game designers read as quite arrogant to me, with an "ivory tower academia" vibe. I didn't ask Max because I don't need to.

Again, anything to back your accusation?

Well, for instance, the rather scornful rejection of anything that doesn't work the way the speaker accepts (e.g. dismissing cited evidence that the claim that the most immediate cause is often not how real people talk about causation); the numerous times people (including yourself) have besmirched my ability to trust or interact with others; the repeated situations where users have openly ignored corrections about how games they don't play (like Burning Wheel or Dungeon World) in order to continue making the same point they previously made; the user who repeatedly and actively antagonized me, personally, while making sure doing so was juuuuuust nonspecific enough to not be worthy of an infraction.

I could probably list more if I went and trawled through the thread, but they're there.

And, just to you know? The things that are being quoted ARE meant to be at least compatible with publishing in academia. You're the one ascribing haughtiness; you correctly identified what voice the authors were going for, you just assumed they were therefore judging you.

 

[FrogReaver]

One problem with our examples is they tend to stop time, and here one needs to extend the example in time to see that "nothing happens" needn't be boring at all. It's just more granular.

Player "I attempt to pick the lock" [rolls and fails]
GM "Nothing happens"
Player "Righto, I take my crowbar and break a window"
Bedlam ensues...

Or whatever. The point is that stopping time at "nothing happens" doesn't adequately exemplify play of this sort.

This was said.

Y'know, people keep getting hung up on the lock and/or cook, but in reality, this applies to anything. Fail to climb a wall, nothing happens. Fail to search a room, nothing happens. Fail to answer the riddle, nothing happens. Fail to convince the NPC, nothing happens.

The point isn't that you can take a crowbar and break a window. The point is when "nothing happens" prevents the game from continuing, and that's not fun.

Then this in direct reply.

Not at all. They're very different things. In both cases, a lock may be not opened, but in fail-forward, something else will happen. In tradgames, nothing happens. This has nothing to do about whether or not there's gold behind the door.

Then there's also this.

Just for reference.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Prince Valiant defaults to situation as a source of the rising action across a moral line. Here's a little scenario I wrote, that I hope illustrates the point:

I quite liked the After the Battle scene.
Does Prince Valiant require planning, particularly moral/ethical quandries as you wrote up this example as opposed to say Burning Wheel where the direction of the narrative is discussed at the table with the players?
i.e. greater player participation in BW when determining mortal quandries.


EDIT: Recently through player choice and declaration, the player decided that their character was desperate enough to enter into a Devil Contract to satisfy a Bond and see himself reunited with the rest of the party faster, which itself produced a moral quandary as the cost of the contract was to impregnate a tiefling selected by the devil (and essentially abandon his firstborn).
While I said "Yes and..." to further PC negotiations I was able to further layer it with more moral and ethical issues by having the contract magically inscribed on a damned wretch, in this instance a chain and shackled female of indeterminate age with her eyes and mouth sown shut where as the runes appeared on her body tears forced their way through the gaps and murmurs of pain escaped her. In conclusion both the fiend and the PC had to physically sign their names on her to finalise the contract.
The PC signed his name gently on her hand while the devil took delight signing his name deeply across her forehead.

The idea being that the fiend is familiar with the PC and thus unable to negotiate for his soul directly (something the PC would never agree to), thus the fiend intends to gradually taint the PCs soul (and thus claim it anyways) by having him participate in acts that are dark.

Of course, the player added an additional Bond to their character sheet: I will not abandon my child
His intention being that once he does what he needs to - he will rescue his child, its mother (there's a longer story here) and the damned wretch.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm telling you what actual goal he had, in the actual play of the game that I'm reporting on.

There is no "simulation" to be broken.

A "con" is a downside or a problem with something. The fact that the player was able to establish, via his action declaration for his PC, that the runes revealed a way out, is not a downside or a problem. It's part of what makes that particular system worth playing. If I want to play a different sort of RPG, then I can do that too.

Also, the "kill an Orc" example, here's a thing that the player establishes, when their PC kills the Orc: they establish that the Orc didn't dodge. And this is not a ubiquitous feature of RPGs: in RuneQuest, the player doesn't get to establish that. The GM, controlling the Orc, gets to make a dodge or parry roll. Which we could structurally compare to the GM making a roll on the Strange Runes table.

This is why I say that (i) the boundaries are subtle, and not easily drawn; and (ii) that for some posters, they seem to conform very strongly to how they are familiar with D&D doing things.

But imagine someone who responds to the Orc dodging issue as you are responding to the what do the strange runes say issue, and you will understand why so many players of RQ, RM, and similar "mechanical simulationist" RPGs have trouble taking D&D combat seriously.

I think we are back to repeat. Seems to me this tangent of is in agree to disagree territory.

 

[FrogReaver]

Wait, so you assume that because I try not to have "nothing happens" be the result, that means I have a boring game?

Umbran first said, 'it suggests that their experience without it[fail forward] has had many boring bits.'

Is that assessment incorrect?

 

[AnotherGuy]

One problem with our examples is they tend to stop time, and here one needs to extend the example in time to see that "nothing happens" needn't be boring at all. It's just more granular.

Player "I attempt to pick the lock" [rolls and fails]
GM "Nothing happens"
Player "Righto, I take my crowbar and break a window"
Bedlam ensues...

Or whatever. The point is that stopping time at "nothing happens" doesn't adequately exemplify play of this sort.

I think you are missing a step in this particular example...the PC should be afforded the opportunity to attempt to pick the lock again.
In the same way I can attempt to hit a creature again during combat.

 

[AlViking]

The comparison to how things work in the real world was made, and that's what I've been addressing when I've asked people to look at it without doing so in the context of RPGs.

If you don't care about that, then you probably shouldn't have been responding.



Again, I'm talking about in real life.



Yes, this is my point. It depends on the context... on what's going on in the world. Maybe a cook shows up, maybe a guard does, maybe a knife wielding maniac... and so on. None of those things are necessarily going to wait for the character to act again.



Sure, the players declare actions for their characters, then the GM says what happens next, then the players declare actions again, and so on.



Then I really don't know why you're responding to me. My point for some time now has been about how "nothing happens" is not "more realistic" than fail forward or any other technique. My point is related to how we view these kinds of things in the real world.

If that's not of interest to you, and if you're not claiming that "nothing happens" is more realistic, then you're not actually disagreeing with me and I have no idea why you continue to respond.

I do not care about cause and effect in real life, although I think many instances of cause and effect are far more complex than you give it credit. For example you may have had many reasons for not going on that date because you failed your drivers license test, but the failure of the test was only one. You still had multiple options to go to the dance and chose not to take them, those other reasons are just as important. But I realize now that answering that is pointless because you've decided on a singular cause and while that could be an interesting philosophical debate it has nothing to do with D&D. I'm answering because you keep trying to twist my statements around and injecting real world scenarios to prove ... well I don't know what.

I only care about how cause and effect is handled in game when discussing it on this forum.

 

[AlViking]

No I'm simply saying that saying "I don't mean this disparagingly" doesn't mean you're not being disparaging or that you're immune to all claims to the contrary.

It's on par with saying something offensive and then saying "It's just a joke".