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

[EzekielRaiden]

Yep. There is no point in going through it again. The argument has been well stated and looked at from lots of angles and there are very clear differences. At this point if someone is still not getting it they perhaps never will.

I mean, I still don't get it, I just decided not to bother responding because it wasn't going anywhere.

I don't understand why it's acceptable for the GM to engage in "quantum" anything. That, if anything, is worse "quantum" to me, because it's "quantum" pretending to not be. It is, inherently, a pretense, a false impression that a thing definitely has a location when it flatly does not.

When folks have made such a point of GM "integrity" (or "GMing with integrity" etc.), of being honest rather than playing fast and loose with the truth, of representing things as they (so-called) "really" are, etc., then I cannot understand how a thing which by definition does not have a location(/nature/value/etc.) until the players interact with it could ever be acceptable.

Player-facing "quantum" at least has the benefit that it's been done in the open. It isn't pretending to be anything other than what it is. It completely averts any risk of deception; it is, if anything, more a demonstration of GM integrity than anything GM "quantum".

 

[pemerton]

The cook only exists because of a failed roll that has no diegetic reason.

There is a "diegetic" reason: it's a kitchen, it has a cook in it, the cook is startled by a burglar.

That's as "diegetic" as the reason for saying "There's a dragon in this hex because I rolled a 6 on the encounter die."

 

[pemerton]

That's probably because they aren't the same. How many times do we have to say that there's a difference between the DM rolling in advance and the player rolling to determine things in the moment? That there's a difference between PC skill influencing the roll and a roll happening without PC skill in something unrelated being used?

First, encounter rolls are very often not rolled in advance. I have nearly always rolled them in the moment.

Second, none of these goes to whether or not it is "quantum".

 

[pemerton]

That's probably because they aren't the same. How many times do we have to say that there's a difference between the DM rolling in advance and the player rolling to determine things in the moment? That there's a difference between PC skill influencing the roll and a roll happening without PC skill in something unrelated being used?

First, encounter rolls are very often not rolled in advance. I have nearly always rolled them in the moment.

Second, none of these goes to whether or not it is "quantum".

Repeatedly getting something wrong over and over and over when it has been said that it's something different, and shown that it's something different, directly to him multiple times, eventually makes it seem like it's deliberate.

Has it occurred to you that, from my perspective, you are the ones getting things wrong and drawing unfounded distinctions as to what is or isn't "quantum".

For instance:

Quantum for the DM before the players encounter it =/= quantum for the players hitting a random encounter because someone failed a knowledge engineering check.

What if the players see the GM roll the wandering monster die? What if the GM says, "Hang on, just let me roll for a random encounter," and then the player see the GM rolling the dice, looking up the wandering monster table, etc. I mean, this is a thing that has happened at my table many times, and I doubt that I'm unique.

And then there is stuff like what @hawkeyefan mentioned - and like your farrier example - where it is obvious to the players that the GM is making something up in response to their question or prompt.

The player knowing that the narration of the cook follows from their failed check is no more "quantum" than any of these other things.

 

[clearstream]

It certainly seems inevitable that this is nearly always the case. I mean, why else would you DR? The alternative would be to imagine players spamming it around at random. It's additionally key to understand that PCs in a game like DW always have some definite intent! I'm sure we can imagine a situation where characters are just exploring, but if DW is being GMed as-written that will be pretty unusual. 99% of the time, the PC is trying to learn something fairly specific and the player is triggering DR with a declaration intended to evoke specific information.

I'd say that intentionality characterises game play, but that the subjects of intent can vary considerably. The words I bolded seem to be along those lines: "I'd like to see if they [the runes] contain any clues about the way out of here" or "I'd like to discover what they [the runes] signify" say.

Both are intents, but one contains a job the player has in mind for the runes. Is that what creates the difference you are thinking of?

 

[Maxperson]

First, encounter rolls are very often not rolled in advance. I have nearly always rolled them in the moment.

Second, none of these goes to whether or not it is "quantum".

Has it occurred to you that, from my perspective, you are the ones getting things wrong and drawing unfounded distinctions as to what is or isn't "quantum".

It really doesn't matter, since we are treating both sides as "quantum." It's not as if we are just aiming the term at your playstyle.

What if the players see the GM roll the wandering monster die? What if the GM says, "Hang on, just let me roll for a random encounter," and then the player see the GM rolling the dice, looking up the wandering monster table, etc. I mean, this is a thing that has happened at my table many times, and I doubt that I'm unique.

Then that just adds a third different way to do it.

DM in advance----->DM in the moment----->Player in the moment. For me it gets less desirable the farther right you go.

And then there is stuff like what @hawkeyefan mentioned - and like your farrier example - where it is obvious to the players that the GM is making something up in response to their question or prompt.

Confirming the presence of, not making it up. The DM just forgot to put it in the town, but it the town was never going to be without a farrier.

The player knowing that the narration of the cook follows from their failed check is no more "quantum" than any of these other things.

The player roll still determines if the cook is there or not, and the PC skill at something not directly connected to the cook still makes it more or less likely. You can dress it up however you like, but you can't get rid of those distinct differences.

 

[pemerton]

Confirming the presence of, not making it up. The DM just forgot to put it in the town, but it the town was never going to be without a farrier.

There is no difference between "confirming" and "making it up". I mean, any other GM in your position might have decided to use the absence of a farrier as a clue, turning an oversight into an opportunity - "Hmm, yes, it is strange that there's no farrier in this village."

This is just a particular illustration of the general point, that when we are making things up the metaphysics bend to our wills. The village has no objective existence which establishes that it does have a farrier in it.

The player roll still determines if the cook is there or not

Yes. at least in some - not all - versions of the example.

the PC skill at something not directly connected to the cook still makes it more or less likely.

This is contentious, as I assume you know from reading the thread. Some posters thing that the more skilled a burglar is, the less likely they are to blunder into someone on the other side of the door they are opening.

You can dress it up however you like, but you can't get rid of those distinct differences.

Those differences have nothing to do with what is or isn't "quantum". They're differences in how the content of the shared fiction is established, not differences in the nature of that fiction. The GM making it up of their own accord is not more "fixed" than the GM making it up because prompted by a player question, or a player roll.

 

[clearstream]

Has it occurred to you that, from my perspective, you are the ones getting things wrong and drawing unfounded distinctions as to what is or isn't "quantum".

Accepting for the sake of argument that the cases are distinct, I've been trying to understand just why?

Many modes of play assign responsibility for world to GM (MC, DM, etc.) and character to player. For example, Harper wrote that

In Apocalypse World, the players are in charge of their characters. What they say, what they do; what they feel, think, and believe; what they did in their past. The MC is in charge of the world: the environment, the NPCs, the weather, the psychic maelstrom.​

​

That sort of division could imply that if it's world it ought not to depend on player choices, but come from GM in response to those choices. Because GM is world it's never a violation of causality and never casts doubt on membership in the diegetic set.

On top of that, the actor immersed in character seeing the fake gun on the table must ignore that it is fake and that they saw the set dresser put it there just moments ago in the break. Play has been likened to ritual, and its sacraments need no deeper justification. Some processes of play may demand resistance to awareness of game as game and obscurement of the management of the ludonarrative... unimmersed, so to speak. Baker recently defined "narrativism" as just one thing that a game can do. What a game does, is something done by text and players together. Things players can do must still matter. So distinctions between accepted versus rejected play may be layered along the lines of intent toward and processes of play as play.

A few posts in this thread have attributed intractable differences in perceptions to mental models. Here I'm suggesting that without the mental model, the distinct play might not exist.

 

[kayakingpoodle]

That's why you're under the mistaken impression that it's like a train wreck/broken record. Like a working record, maybe, but not a broken one, and certainly not a train wreck.

The record sounds pretty broken to me.

 

[clearstream]

The record sounds pretty broken to me.

I'm sure it's not your intent, but to me posts that seem liable to stifle speech are least useful of all.

So I wondered if you could state your concern in a form it can be addressed? What is broken? Why is that problematic from your perspective in a way that isn't fixable by muting the thread?