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

[clearstream]

So, stuff that has not been established (if a cook is around close by) can neither be diegetic or not. The characters making noise trying to break in (due to a failure) and encountering a cook who was nearby (due to a GM decision to move the game forward in a way they find compelling) follows from what has been established but introduces new elements (with the GM making a call about the presence of a cook because they feel that adds something to the scene).

So, we have an C which requires both A and B to be true - A + B => C. Even if B is decided by a GM motivated by making the lives of the player characters not boring A is still a necessary component that leads to C. Not liking how B was decided by the GM does not make A and C disconnected.

If you don't have an agenda as GM that includes making the character lives' not boring you should not use fail forward. But to imply that people who use it are playing games with disconnected or disjointed fiction is not cool and not accurate. But it's the agenda, not the mechanic that supports it you likely have the actual problem with.

The problem with the mechanic causes the cook to exist is two-fold from my perspective. First it presents a view where the GM has no agency in how things go, but the way fail forward is expressed is entirely on the GM. The cook is there because they made a decision about what sort of complication of all available ones was the most compelling (furthermore in trad implementations it's usually on them to invoke fail forward itself). The other is that like for stuff not established whether something exists or not is up in the air.

I get people might favor or not favor particular GM agendas or principles in the play they prefer but pointing at their set as more real or authentic when it's really about particular aesthetic preferences we have is like not cool. There are ways to express stuff is not for you without trying to make it look ridiculous by taking a mechanic out of its usual context.

I liked your post. Regarding the words you bolded, why do you believe fail-forward must be welded to driving play along traditional dramatic lines. What prevents it being used other ways?

 

[clearstream]

I'm not sure that term is quite so appropriate. So, "OC"/"original character" comes from the community of people who create fan works for various media. In that context, they're essentially fan inserts, and while there can certainly be overlap in that regard as far as RPGs go - particularly with games set in a preestablished IP, like Middle-earth or Star Wars- there's a common trend in that community that isn't so common in the RPG crowd. Admittedly, this is anecdotal from my experience interacting with a few people from that scene in my younger years, as well as a younger cousin who currently engages in it, but there is a certain protectiveness and specific view that the creator tends to have for the character that is generally at odds with the randomisation aspect of RPGs - it is akin to those GMs who people often feel would be better served writing a novel.
At a convention game a few years ago, I experienced a player with this mentality at the table, and I have seen (as an outside observer) this occur a few times online. It seems to be a burgeoning trend that I personally think it warrants being considered it's own playstyle (even distinct from neo-trad, if going by the Cultures of Play article).


While I certainly think it's commendable for a person to change their opinions with new information, the post @AbdulAlhazred linked earlier (I forgot to post my thoughts on it, sorry) was simultaneously frustrating and vindicating in that Baker seemed to finally recognise what some people were saying at the time and in the intervening years since.

Regarding neotrad the Cultures of Play author revised their accidental conflating with OC. The linked post contains a full explanation with references.

 

[Faolyn]

AFAIK the psychic maelstrom ONLY effects things through the interpretation of the characters, as described by the players. While it doesn't belong to the players, they're the ones who actually describe it.

The GM could then follow up on that and manifest it as an actual threat.

According to the book, the maelstrom is always trying to get into people's heads--that's why there's a roll to use it, because using it is dangerous, and exposure to it can cause "Ψ-harm," and the GM is supposed to make it an actual, omnipresent threat, not just the result of a bad roll. Also, there's bits in the last chapter that strongly indicate it's flavored however the GM wants it to be flavored--because remember, it will also affect NPCs from time to time (PCs aren't the only people in the world who can tape into the maelstrom, after all), and NPCs are under the GM's purview.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Is it really all that surprising? The player who creates an elaborate 50-page backstory with everything nailed down is as real as the murderhobo with nothing beyond a name. Extreme outliers they may be, but they're out there.

Yeah, it is surprising. For the same reason that the GM needs to come up with stuff on the fly… because you can’t come up with everything ahead of time. Even a 50 page backstory can’t encompass all the details of a fictional life.

Again, I see all these worries people have about players 'abusing' things like this is just hold over from some basically obsolete Gygaxian skill-test play perspective.

Exactly. There’s a lot in modern D&D (both in the products and in play at the table) that is like a weird holdover from the old days.

This is why I tend to find it useful to accept that these things will happen, and to be ready for them and use them to positive effect rather than simply trying to eliminate them.

 

[Lanefan]

Vincent Baker is not especially casual. He's serious about game design. I don't see how that makes him elitist or condescending.

Unfortunately, oftentimes people who are "serious" about something (doesn't matter what) tend to both know more about it than the average person and know they know more about it than the average person. This can (and often does) lead to a sense of "I know more than you" that comes across in their interactions about the topic at hand, whether written or verbal, except those with other "serious" practitioners.

The very best teachers are those who manage to impart solid information to average people and yet not come across as "I know more than you".

Couple that with the audience here largely being composed of people who may well be, in their own way(s), every bit as serious and-or experienced* about gaming and-or game design as the writer(s) being quoted, and yeah: "I know more than you" isn't going to go over well at all.

* - IMO amateur experience counts every bit as much as professional experience, perhaps even more so as there's no monetary "carrot" pulling the amateur forward.

 

[TwoSix]

Couple that with the audience here largely being composed of people who may well be, in their own way(s), every bit as serious and-or experienced* about gaming and-or game design as the writer(s) being quoted, and yeah: "I know more than you" isn't going to go over well at all.

The boundary between "I'm an expert" and "I know more than you" in presentation is blurry and often dependent on the relative confidence and security of the receiver just as much as the intent of the presenter.

I know I haven't read everything Baker has written, but nothing I've read has come across, to me, as pretentious or arrogant.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes and that reason (X happens) needs to makes sense to me and my table if I'm working under the sim banner.

EDIT: You can try again after you level does not work for sim.


My point exactly! So a dead-end in the lock-picking exercise needs to/should provide consequence whether it be time lost, lockpick broken, lockpick stuck, lock broken etc.

A simple "No" is IMO unacceptable.
The example provided a "No" with no consequence/follow-up.

In a no-retries paradigm, the consequence of failure is that the lock avenue is now closed to you and you have to find another way.

No-retries is very sim - sometimes you've got your A-game on and sometimes you don't, which is part of what the roll abstracts.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So the cook(not maid) would be up at 2:30am for some reason, but wouldn't be around to serve and prepare breakfast, lunch or dinner because they shouldn't be seen?

Food would not be delivered by the cook(s) regardless. It would either be carried up to the person in their private rooms by their personal servant(s), or placed in the dining area before the employers and their guests arrived, covered by cloches to keep it warm until they sat down. If additional courses needed to be delivered, they would be so by senior/personal servants.

Yes, it was a decidedly messed up system where tons of work needed to be done as if by magic.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, so can princesses! I think we agree in this area. I certainly wouldn't consider either term derogatory, at least not inherently. @JConstantine's CS Lewis quote is pretty spot on. If I was concerned with seeming childish I would certainly not play RPGs!

The problem is not with appearing or even being childish. Hell, I've always held that being grown-up is vastly overrated.

The problem comes when one type of RPG is held up as childish in order to make another type appear more adult.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But time/noise do have a mechanism for being handled. That is what the random encounter roll is for! If the ruleset specifies the time needed for a pick lock check, you roll the aproperiate number of wandering monsters. If it is indeed noisy then that normally triggers a wandering monster check in most systems. If the time is not specified by the rules, this is ruling territory. Depending on ruled time an approperiate number of wandering monster checks should be done.

This is well established game procedure that ensures approperiate (in)dependene between pick lock and encounter.

An example rulings for a non specified system is that the GM based on the result of the check determines the amount of time before the character concludes with succeeding or that they are not able to do it. Then each turn until this time-limit the GM ask if the character keep going (note: no new skill roll!). When the time has come for rolling wandering monster, the GM does so. (Edit: this ruling would of course be known (and accepted) by the players before having to make the choice between keeping going or not - maybe they even get to know how the time is determined, like a roll of 1d6 turns)

An effect of this would be that we could have a lock that the thief roll well enough to unlock, but that get interrupted before they finish the job. I think this will be a much more acceptable state of affairs for most trad players and GMs.

Why do we need to go through all of that rigmarole?

We already have a roll. It already tells us something went wrong.

And, again, it's not like a single roll can't do two things. Failing a stealth check (VERY closely allied to a lock picking check!) absolutely does result in both the failure of the specific task AND, in many many cases, an immediate outbreak of hostilities or problems etc. So, again, why is it so gorram important that the die be thrown by the GM and not the player?

And just so you know, I literally already did argue that the way the VAST VAST VAST majority of locks work, they ARE pickable by almost anyone who knows how locks work. Unless it's a highly specialized weirdo lock (and thus the character never had a chance to pick it to begin with, which we've been explicitly and repeatedly told is not true) such that you need a very specific tool to open it, nearly every lock is eventually pickable by anyone who has learned how to pick locks. But they might be really slow or blazing fast. Thus, again, it is significantly more verisimilitudinous—as in it literally does have more similarity to what is true, it literally is more like what we can observe in reality—to say that a lock is only "unpickable" because attempting to take the time needed to pick it is too lengthy a process...which would be best demonstrated by having a danger appear that needs to be addressed.