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

[pemerton]

I don't think I understand this post--or rather, I understand all the words and the claims and everything, but I don't understand what you are asserting when you say 'not grappled with the tension'. Are they not aware of it? Are they aware of it but deal with it poorly? Perhaps the problem is that I don't see the 'common issues' you suggest as common at all. While 'the GM controls the world and the players control the PCs' is the foundation for the majority of the games I play.

I don't know if your RPGing involves knowledge checks or not. If it does, then presumably one upshot of a successful knowledge check is that it is established here and now that, in the past of the fiction, the PC had an experience that is the cause of their present memory/knowledge.

That seems to me to violate simulationist preferences that causation in the resolution process correspond to causation in the fiction.

I also don't know if your RPGing involves "strangers in a strange land" PCs, or PCs going about their business in their homelands and interacting with people whom they know well (both as individuals, and in social/cultural terms). If the latter, I don't know how your play deals with the gap between the players' situation - having to ask the GM for all that knowledge - and the PCs' situation.

I also don't know how you narrate, for instance, PCs being struck in combat, or falling when they try to climb walls. Do you narrate the PC failing to dodge? Or missing a handhold? These are departures from "the player controls the PC" because they involve the GM describing the PC's bodily movements.

I think you are misunderstanding the argument. The use of quantum in this thread encompasses method--'things are quantum for the players but not for the GM' is a meaningful statement. People are not just using quantum to mean 'authoring here and now because of a real world prompt'.

I don't follow the jargon "quantum for the players but not the GM". How is the farrier not "quantum" for the GM? Or the owlbear?

giving that narrative control to the players makes it more difficult for the players to immerse themselves as their characters.

Do you accept that this is an empirical claim, about what sorts of activities (in the course of playing RPGs) make it easier or harder to achieve a particular psychological state?

I ask because to me it seems obviously an empirical claim, but in the past other posters have regarded it as some sort of logical or a priori claim.

On the premise that it is an empirical claim, then its truth depends upon the realities of actual human experience. And I can report that my experience does not bear it out.

In particular, and returning to the "strangers in a strange land" thing: when I am playing a PC who is at home, nothing wrecks my immersion more than having to ask the GM what my PC knows, what my culture is, who my friends and neighbours are, etc.

Or, in the ears-as-barter case, the GM is inviting the player to immerse in the fiction, to locate themself sensorily, socially and morally in this world of hateful slave traders - and it is out of that immersion that the idea flows. At least, that's how it works for me.

 

[pemerton]

Then it would have happened on success or failure. The fact that it only happens on a failure, that the room is empty on a success is the issue.

Why would it happen on success or failure?

I talked about a "diegetic reason" - that is, a reason that comes from the shared fiction. As I said, it's a kitchen, there is a burglar, the burglar has bungled their burgling attempt, and so they have startled a cook in the kitchen. There is nothing there that departs from in-fiction, "diegetic" reasoning.

If you insist that the shared fiction concerning the kitchen, and who is in it must be the same whether or not the player's roll succeeds or fails, you are not talking about things being "diegetic". You are asking for a far more particular sort of process of determining the contents of rooms - at least roughly, map-and-key resolution, or some approximation to it (eg upthread you have said that you as GM would work out, in advance of the burglary attempt, who is where in the house: that is a version of map-and-key).

There's nothing wrong with playing map-and-key style. But it is not the only way to pay RPGs, and it is not the only way to generate "diegetic" consequences.

At 2am having a cook in the kitchen wouldn’t be diegetic.

That's a matter of opinion. I think I know as much about pre-modern households as anyone else posting in this thread, and I don't find the idea that a cook (i) sleeps in the kitchen and/or (ii) might be working in the kitchen in the middle of the night, problematic at all. I also note that "2 am" is one the random accretions to the situation not found in the blog.

I am right that cook in the kitchen at 2am is viewed as a flawed example by you because it’s not a complication that would typically happen in narrativist games implementing fail forward or success with complication?

I don't regard the cook in the kitchen at 2 am as a flawed example. Nor as a strong example. What is the context? What threats had been telegraphed?

Here's an actual play example that is in the same general neighbourhood:

Aedhros re-entered the scene: with a successful Stealthy check I entered the kitchen unnoticed, and found Alicia. I proposed that we relieve the innkeeper of his cash-box (repay hurt for hurt) and Alicia agreed. Then we would take on the master of the ship. Alicia used her Weathersense to determine if a mist would be rolling in; her check succeeded, and so her prediction of mist was correct! (We'd agreed that a failed check mean clear skies and a bright moon.) She also rested (for about 6 hours) to regain one point of Tax, taking her Forte up to 2.

With the morning mist rolling in, it was time to clean out the innkeeper's cash box. We agreed that the day's takings would be 2D of cash. With successful checks, Alicia cast Cat's Eye so she could see in the dark; I succeeded at a straightforward Scavenging check so that Aedhros could find a burning brand (he can see in dim light or by starlight, but not in dark when the starts are obscured by mist). Alicia went first, in the dark but able to see, but failed an untrained Stealthy check despite a penalty to the innkeeper's Perception check for being asleep. So as she opened the door to the room where was sleeping on his feather-and-wool-stuffed mattress, he woke and stood up, moving his strongbox behind him.

Suppose that the Stealthy check for Aedhros to enter the kitchen unnoticed had failed; or the Scavenging check to grab a burning brand for light. What sort of consequence might have followed? I have no memory now, some years later, of what we at the table were thinking at the time. But one obvious possibility, implicit in the situation, is that the innkeeper comes downstairs to his kitchen, for some-or-other reason (he is hungry, he can't sleep, he has a big feast to prepare for, he want to check that his new hire Alicia is not doing anything untoward, etc, etc).

The fact that the cook example, in the blog, is being presented through the lens of D&D play rather than Burning Wheel play doesn't change any of these considerations, as far as I can see. If a D&D GM wants to use "fail forward" resolution, then they are going to need to adopt some of the other practices that support it, and help make it work: situations with an implicit trajectory of threat and promise; action declarations with express or implicit intents, so that there is some desired outcome of the action which can then be used as a touchstone or measure to aid in determining what will count as a failure; etc.

I think that depends a lot more on the amount of detail given for each scenario. There’s some variations of dragon in this hex because of a low roll that likely corresponds to the cook in the kitchen at 2am. I would expect though haven’t confirmed that such scenarios would cause similar dislike.

And theres also the additional difference around what the roll is described as representing, which I think is the bigger concern, or at least it is for me.

Well, in "fail forward" resolution the roll of the dice doesn't represent anything at all. The character attributes represent things; the obstacle/difficulty rating might represent something (depending on the details of the RPG in question; in D&D 5e I think the DC is generally understood to represent something). But the roll doesn't. It's a decision-making device: everyone at the table has agreed to abide by the outcome that the roll determines.

I don't see a random encounter roll representing anything either. The chance of a random encounter often represents something (like how dangerous, or heavily populated, etc) an area is. The distribution of the entries on the table often represents something (eg frequency/rarity of particular sorts of creatures). But the roll itself is just a decision-making device, I think.

And if you don't like the dragon example, because dragons are rare and special, make it an owlbear. Or a nest of giant ants. Or an angry bear. Whatever it is, the point remains that the reason everyone agrees that the shared fiction contains that thing in it here-and-now is because of some dice rolls.

There is in fact a difference. I came up with that town waaaaaaay before that session, so that's when the farrier was there, not during the session the player reminded me that I had forgotten to write it down.

The difference is timing. Making it up when the player asks is creating it on the spot. Confirming the existence of something that was in the town prior is not making it up on the spot.

Huh? When you invented the town, you did not expressly invent a farrier. Perhaps a farrier was implicit in its invention; but as I said, you could just as easily have stuck with the absence of a farrier and turned that into a plot point.

I mean, suppose that you decided that the village had 9 buildings in it. Then it is true that, at that same time, you decided that the building had 3^2 building in it, even if no one has yet done the maths. Mathematics works by entailment.

But the farrier, even if perhaps implicit, is not entailed. It wouldn't contradict anything to have no farrier. "Confirming" the farrier is a creative, authorial decision; just as it would have been an authorial decision to affirm the absence of a farrier.

It has no real world existence, but it does objectively exist within the world that I use. I put it there. It was written down.

The farrier wasn't written down, until you wrote it down. Like the cook. Like the randomly encountered owlbear.

@pemerton just for clarification. Are you arguing that even those that eschew formally making things up on the spot are doing so informally anyway? I'm trying to understand what you are saying. It seems a bit inflammatory if you are saying what I described.

@Maxperson posted an example of play, way upthread, where:

• He as GM narrated the PCs arriving at a village;
• A player, as their PC, asked about the presence of a farrier in the village;'
• Maxperson had not made a note about a farrier in the village, but regarded this as an oversight, because logically there would be a farrier in the village;
• Maxperson therefore told the player that yes, their PC can find a farrier in the village.

My point is that Maxperson made up, at that moment of play, the existence of that farrier in that village.

Likewise, when a GM rolls a random encounter die, and it comes up 6 (or whatever, that triggers an encounter), and then rolls on the wandering monster tables, and thus decides that there is (say) an angry owlbear whom the PCs here-and-now encounter, the GM is making up, in those moments of play, the existence of that owlbear.

As a random encounter? No problem. Added as a result of a failed attempt to open a lock when it takes the same amount of time, makes the same amount of noise? That's why I wouldn't do it.

@Emerikol: this is the topic of discussion.

Some posters assert that when the cook, or owlbear, or whatever is narrated as being there because the GM extrapolated it from their notes (as Maxperson did with the farrier) or because a random encounter is rolled, that is not "quantum"; but when the cook is narrated as being their as a consequence of a player's failed check that is "quantum". And I am saying that I do not see how one is more or less "quantum" than the other: they are all examples of something being written into the fiction here-and-now, by the GM, in response to some real-world prompt: be that a question from a player, a roll of the wandering monster dice, or a player's failed skill roll.

 

[pemerton]

You've many times gone on about how rolling for the runes and rolling to kill an Orc are the same thing.

I've not said that they are the same in every respect. I have said that they are the same in some respects.

One respect in which they are the same is this: before the dice are rolled, the player has a hope for what the state of the fiction will be (in one case, I - the PC - have killed the Orc, in the other I - the PC - have read the runes and thereby learned a way out); and after the dice are rolled, the fiction is in that state.

When I roll to kill an Orc, you-as-DM already know things like the Orc's AC and how many hit points it has. Its specific characteristics are pre-established by you.

AC and hit points are mechanical things. Yes, I know what the mechanical parameters are that will help determine whether the fiction ends up in the state the player wants, or some other state (let's say, that the Orc kills the PC). Those parameters, in very general terms, correlate the combat preparedness and toughness of the Orc.

Yet when I roll to read the runes, you-as-DM don't already know what they say.

Obviously. That's the whole reason the example is causing controversy - that the question What do the runes say? is being answered by some process other than the GM deciding (by virtue of notes, or a heuristic that tries to model notes, or a roll on the Strange Runes table, or some other GM-centred process).

But I do know the state of the Doom Pool - which tells me (again, in very general terms) how likely a PC is to be correct in their intuitions about these sorts of things. I know the rating of the Strange Runes as a Scene Distinction (d8, probably - that's the default, and I don't remember departing from the default). I know the rating of the PC's Lost in the Dungeon Complication (d12).

These are not the sorts of ways of characterising a situation that you prefer. But they are the important ones in Marvel Heroic RP and my fantasy hack of it.

Their specific characteristics are not pre-established by you or anyone else.

If by "specific characteristics" you mean "what they say", then yes.

Of course, there are "specific characteristics" of the Orc that are not pre-established by the GM or anyone else either, like: the Orc's name; the Orc's age; whether or not Gruumsh and Ilneval are takin a special interest in this Orc, perhaps intervening when the Orc might otherwise be skewered by an opponent to save the Orc's life; whether the Orc is fated to die here-and-now, or to live to become a great Orc champion; etc.

Some of us see the inconsistency here and ask - why?

There is no inconsistency. There is just a difference in the way situations are presented and resolved.

And this is what I am finding a little frustrating about this conversation - the tendency of some posters to frame all RPGing through a rather narrow lens that happens to be their preferred lens, which assumes things like (i) all important backstory/setting elements must be established by the GM, and (ii) the only things that matter in the resolution of a declared action are very local, causal/mechanical processes. This is what I mean when I talk about (eg in reply to @Faolyn) posters assuming a simulationist approach to how situations are presented, actions resolved, and consequences established.

It is not inconsistent to use approaches that differ from that.

Consider again this from John Harper, explaining how Apocalypse World is to be played:

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.

Sometimes, the players say things that get very close to the line. Usually this happens when the MC asks a leading question.

MC: "Nero, what do the slave traders use for barter?"
Player: "Oh man, those [foul people]? They use human ears."

That's a case of the player authoring part of the world outside their character, however -- and this is critical -- they do it from within their character's experience and frame of reference. When Nero answers that question, he's telling something he knows about the world.​

Here, the player - at the GM's invitation - authors something about the setting, namely, the currency favoured by the slave traders. That is not inconsistent, just because Gygax didn't suggest it as an approach in Keep on the Borderlands. It;s just how Apocalypse World works. It's one reason why playing Apocalypse World will be pretty different from playing Keep on the Borderlands as Gygax presents that scenario.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Just to add to what @EzekielRaiden already posted in response to this: which RPG are you talking about, when you refer to a "well established game procedure"? I mean, classic D&D has those sorts of random encounter rolls. 4e D&D, by default, does not. Burning Wheel doesn't have them at all.

As far as I know, random encounters are optional in 5e D&D. There is nothing that says a 5e D&D GM should use random encounter rolls rather than "fail forward".

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've got no issue with how you did this in your game. But you also post stuff like this:
And you use this sort of thing to criticise other posters' RPGing, suggest their settings lack "reality" or "verisimilitude", etc.

And when posters like me and @AbdulAlhazred say that, in reality, almost no one plays with the GM never making stuff up in response to player prompts, or without including player ideas, you accuse us of "dismissing" simulationist priorities.

But it turns out that, "in practice", your game illustrates out point.

Always and never are absolutes, used in rhetoric for emphasis. They probably shouldn't be, but the more precise you make your language, the harder it is to make a clear point. I have a series of preferences I believe in, that work best for me. I rarely get to follow those preferences exactly in actual play, because no preference survives contact with other human beings unscathed. I remain hopeful that I'll continue to have more opportunities to get closer to what I want.

Also, I don't recall any objective value judgements by me against your preference. I like what I like, and you like something different. Good for us.

 

[pemerton]

That would depend entirely on the game in question, of course. There are numerous games where the players get to make the world, or at least major chunks of it. There are numerous groups that build the world together for the GM to run in.

But I would say that putting something down to be "fun and interesting" is hugely different from putting something down to be "potentially anything the players want, provided they roll well enough." I've said many times that the players shouldn't be playing on godmode and should respect the tone, genre, and fiction of the game, but pemerton's example was basically directly handing the PCs the cheat codes.

So you won't play unless you have massive amounts of control. Gotcha.

I don't tell you how to go about RPGing. What makes you think you're entitled to tell me how to do it? Especially when it seems obvious you have little or no familiarity with how Marvel Heroic RP actually works. Cam Banks posted that what I was doing with MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic was "really great": Into the North - Cortex Plus Heroic Fantasy actual play Do you think you know better than him how the game is meant to be played?

And what makes you think that you know, better than my player and me, what fits with the tone, genre and fiction of the game we were playing? I mean, I had an awesome session of play. If I'd followed your advice, I would have had a worse session of play. So why should I take your advice?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know if your RPGing involves knowledge checks or not. If it does, then presumably one upshot of a successful knowledge check is that it is established here and now that, in the past of the fiction, the PC had an experience that is the cause of their present memory/knowledge.

Seems a little nitpicky to me. Is the 100% sim straw man going back into battle once more?

 

[The Firebird]

I don't know if your RPGing involves knowledge checks or not. If it does, then presumably one upshot of a successful knowledge check is that it is established here and now that, in the past of the fiction, the PC had an experience that is the cause of their present memory/knowledge.

That seems to me to violate simulationist preferences that causation in the resolution process correspond to causation in the fiction.

I don't think your description of knowledge checks is accurate. When I wrote down 'proficiency: religion' on my character sheet, that already establishes my character is knowledgeable about religious matters. The check doesn't establish specific other details about the past--i.e., 'in year 3 at university, professor Ramsey gave a lecture about...'.

If it did give the player the power to do that, I may start to have a problem depending on the amount of latitude the player was given when telling their specific story. For example, if it allowed the player to create a new NPC who just so happened to be able to get them out of a jam, that would be starting to cross the line.

I also don't know how you narrate, for instance, PCs being struck in combat, or falling when they try to climb walls. Do you narrate the PC failing to dodge? Or missing a handhold? These are departures from "the player controls the PC" because they involve the GM describing the PC's bodily movements.

These are well within the purview of the DM. We don't need to accept "my PC dodges every attack and hits the enemies in vital areas with every attack" to say "the player controls the PC".

I don't follow the jargon "quantum for the players but not the GM". How is the farrier not "quantum" for the GM? Or the owlbear?

I flipped the order accidentally. The claim from before was quantum for the GM but not the players. (I should think this was obvious...)

Do you accept that this is an empirical claim, about what sorts of activities (in the course of playing RPGs) make it easier or harder to achieve a particular psychological state?

---

On the premise that it is an empirical claim, then its truth depends upon the realities of actual human experience. And I can report that my experience does not bear it out.

Yes. I am making an empirical claim about my experience which does bear it out. I am not asserting that it is true for everyone. But for some people.

 

[AnotherGuy]

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.

Personally I'm not a fan of no re-tries unless the fiction informs the no-retry.
I'd argue the no-retries principle is gamist not sim, but that it has been adopted by the sim-crowd.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Personally I'm not a fan of no re-tries unless the fiction informs the no-retry.
I'd argue the no-retries principle is gamist not sim, but that it has been adopted by the sim-crowd.

I think its situational, but a lot of the cases I agree; its not only gamist, its sloppy gamism that could be done other ways.

(There are obviously a few cases where it applies--jumping over a chasm--but they're the exception).