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

[Lanefan]

It takes less than 6 seconds. RAW says you can attempt to open a lock on your turn during combat. Success and it opens. There is no penalty, increased loudness for speed or anything else. It's a normal lockpick attempt in your 6 or less seconds. That means that outside of combat, it also takes 6 or less seconds. It can't take longer or you would incur penalties during combat for rushing the attempt.

While 5e might have it that way by RAW, 5e rules are far from perfect and this is a good example.

Picking a lock really shouldn't be do-able while in initiative (i.e. combat) as it'll simply take too long given 5e's very short combat rounds. (this is one of the rare instances where 1e's one-minute rounds actually work quite well)

For the purposes of discussion I'd rather not hang my hat on a bad rule, even if it is what the book says.

 

[Enrahim]

As I read the thread, it seems to be people who are not very familiar with games that use "fail forward" or "no whiffing" as a principle who are trying to come up with general formulations, generally beginning from rejections of formulations that have been offered by those who have actually played Burning Wheel, Sorcerer, Apocalypse World, etc.

You have a copy of BW Revised. So you can see how, on p 34, it says this:

Two Directions . . . Failure is not the end of the line, but is a complication that pushes the story in another direction. Failure Complicates the Matter . . . the GM should present the players with the possible ramifications of their tests."​

That is "fail forward": failure complicates the matters, generates ramifications, pushes things in some or other direction. What counts as an appropriate complication or ramification; what sorts of directions should be introduced based on failure; depends on the other principles of the game. As well as, obviously, the current contents and trajectory of the fiction.

I deleted my previous somewhat critical post about this, as I realise this might be essential and constructive.

First of, I read the quote itself as not excluding fail with no retry. (While I read the gold version of this exact section to exclude fail with no retry)

However you here point to that "approperiate" complications are defined other places in the game text. You do not seem to explicitely claim that these are part of the definition of fail forward as a concept. Rather these are parts of defining fail forward as implemented by BW? (And I presume you read these as excluding fail with no retry?)

That is: Fail with no retry is not incompatible with fail forward as a concept, but rater incompatible with certain implemenations of the technique given the principles of the implementing game?

 

[Lanefan]

Rounds were 1 minute back then, so probably it takes longer.

We use 30-second rounds, still not perfect but it's an OK middle-ground between 1-minute rounds and the much shorter WotC-edition rounds.

Thinking about it, though, I can't remember the last time (if ever!) someone tried picking a lock during combat; so this isn't something I've had to give any real thought to other than for purposes of this discussion.

 

[AlViking]

While 5e might have it that way by RAW, 5e rules are far from perfect and this is a good example.

Picking a lock really shouldn't be do-able while in initiative (i.e. combat) as it'll simply take too long given 5e's very short combat rounds. (this is one of the rare instances where 1e's one-minute rounds actually work quite well)

For the purposes of discussion I'd rather not hang my hat on a bad rule, even if it is what the book says.

You may want to take a look at some of this guys videos: McNallyOfficial. I especially like 41 seconds of Kingsley combo locks getting slapped.

 

[Lanefan]

This is a wild claim. It assumes that fidelity to a character must be measured externally, as if there's an authoritative benchmark.

Hearkens back to 1e where you had to play to your stated alignment and harsh mechanical penalties followed if the DM determined you'd drifted.

Not one of 1e's better ideas.

 

[Lanefan]

It's a group game with group dynamics. If one character has inherited wealth and power it's not fair to the rest of the players at the table.

One of the things we roll for during character creation is past profession, which can (on a very lucky roll) include nobility; and if you hit that then by sheer luck you could very well have resources etc. to draw on that the other characters don't. Nobody has any problems with this, though it sometimes takes some effort to explain why a high noble is out in the field adventuring.

Out of hundreds of characters rolled up and played in our games, I've seen one reigning queen, two crown princes*, one other prince^ and one princess, several member-of-parliament equivalents, and a couple of minor nobles. This doesn't include a few other characters who came into (or seized!) rulership as a result of or part of play; this is what they started as.

* - one of which was the very first character I ever played - beginner's luck?
^ - in a truly amazing bit of rolling which I-as-DM witnessed, this second-in-line prince and the other crown prince were rolled at the same time by two different players, each at odds of considerably worse than 1 : 1000. They were of different species and cultures, thus not brothers.

 

[TwoSix]

This is a wild claim. It assumes that fidelity to a character must be measured externally, as if there's an authoritative benchmark. But that's an odd standard. It dismisses a person’s ability to assess their own thoughts and intentions.

You also disregard subjective portrayal. In roleplaying, internal consistency is the norm. If I say my character is cautious, but I play them recklessly without reason, I’m not staying true to my concept. But I don’t need someone else’s metric to realize that. My own creative goals provide the standard.

This argument doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It casually dismisses the value of self-awareness and introspection. Worse, it seems to undermine the legitimacy of self-directed creativity. An idea that, if taken seriously, would reduce personal expression in roleplay to something dangerously limited.

Not wild at all. You can obviously roleplay however you want.

But you can't call it a faithful portrayal without being able to measure it against something to be faithful to. I'm not arguing about the play, I'm arguing about the terminology.

 

[clearstream]

Link doesn't work for me, but if it's what I think it is, the author's revision is that they consider "neotrad" to be a misappellation to the playstyle laid out in the original post, and that "neotrad" should refer to game design, while "OC" should apply to the playstyle, yes?

Yes, a designer introduced the term to describe what they were doing, another commentator defined it further, and then the Six Cultures article muddied the waters but was later recanted (to agree it labelled a design trend.) So far, it has proved predictive.

I, however, have no problem with "neotrad" being used for that playstyle, instead viewing "OC" as the misappellation, and further that there is a burgeoning new playstyle that warrants being called "OC". Essentially, I see "trad", "neotrad" and "OC" as 3 different playstyles with enough overlap to be considered somewhat of a continuum, albeit with a crucial enough difference to be considered separate (I could also see an argument for them being 3 subtypes of a broader playstyle).

OC is a distinct playstyle. Games developed following neotrad ideas lend themselves to it.

 

[TwoSix]

No. That is wrong. If I establish through play that my character is a certain way, I can in fact faithfully stick to it or faithfully betray it for reasons of personality/backstory, etc. I need no mechanic or reward system in order to do that.

The key is that the character of the character has been established through roleplaying, background, alignment(if the players choose to use it), and what the players tell the table about their character's character.

You can do that; you just can't call it faithful. Being faithful to your headcanon doesn't count.

If you've made external declarations as to how you're attempting to portray the character, than that's fine. It doesn't have to be a mechanic. But it can't just be in your head.

 

[Maxperson]

While 5e might have it that way by RAW, 5e rules are far from perfect and this is a good example.

Picking a lock really shouldn't be do-able while in initiative (i.e. combat) as it'll simply take too long given 5e's very short combat rounds. (this is one of the rare instances where 1e's one-minute rounds actually work quite well)

For the purposes of discussion I'd rather not hang my hat on a bad rule, even if it is what the book says.

I see a distinction between arguing a rule in a rules discussion, and hanging my hat on that rule in my game. People shouldn't assume that I necessarily run my game the way I argue here unless I say so.