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

[kayakingpoodle]

@Snarf Zagyg has entered the chat!

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I pretty much hate remote gaming myself. Did the whole Roll20 thing for a while during COVID and it was just okay. Unfortunately I suspect we're pretty widely dispersed and when we travel my wife tends to pull out the stopwatch everywhere we go because we have to stick to an itinerary. On the other hand we're planning a visit to New Zealand next February so if we want to set up a game in Hobbiton* I'd be game.

*I'm excited for the trip, not so much for the tourist trap. Loved the movies, don't really need to see the set but since my wife is also my travel agent I just go where I'm told.

A game in Hobbiton would flat-out rock! Unfortunately, I'm about as far away from New Zealand as I can be and still be on the same planet, and am unlikely to get down there anytime soon.

 

[Lanefan]

Right - the idea here is that any principles, strongly held, have fail cases. Being a neutral arbiter may (may not must!) lead to situations where the table is bored. "Filling the characters lives with adventure" may lead to feeling of broken immersion due to the contrivances present. No principles are immune to failure like this, it's just a matter of picking the ones your group is generally happy with and recognising where these failure states may (may not must!) occur.

And then the question simply becomes one of how willing people are to live with or tolerate those failure states when* they occur. IME most people will put up with them as long as they know it's a temporary situation rather than forever.

An example might be a somewhat lead-'em-by-the-nose adventure embedded in the bigger campaign; those who don't like being railroaded will usually be fine with it for the one adventure provided the adventure itself is halfway engaging.

* - in a short campaign it might be "if"; the campaigns I run go on long enough that if there's a failure state out there, we're bound to hit it sooner or later and maybe more than once.

 

[Lanefan]

Exactly. People might not like D&D played that way, because they're attached to the principle or aesthetic of "everything in the setting is already generated", which has deep historical roots in D&D. But it's not like using a "fail forward" methodology in D&D would violate a presented core operating principle of the game.

To a point, I agree. There's times when a complication makes sense, and times when it doesn't. Also, while it's a good tool in moderation, adding complications all the time can get overdone.

I'll often let the task roll inform this. A close fail might just mean nothing happens while a bad fail might mean something else has gone adrift. Ditto for successes; a clear success means all is good while a marginal success might come with extras you don't want.

The one non-negotiable for me, however, is that a failure on the roll cannot be turned into a success-with-complications, nor can a success be turned into a failure.

 

[Enrahim]

I actually think the problem is the inverse; two groups may be appearing to do something very similar (especially when you judge the end-product report of play) when they have actually done quite different things.

Reading this made me think: Maybe the core RPG experience indeed is very robust to methodology?

Thinking back on my experiences with games as diverse as Munchausen, Universalis, Fiasco or Gloomhaven they have all had something essential in common with my experience playing trad RPGs like CoC, WoD or of course D&D. It is about letting your mind enter a state of actively interacting with a fiction somewhat outside your own controll. It is strongly distinct from the experience of reading a book, or writing a story or simple daydreaming.

What determines if two groups have done quite different things? Do a D&D group braving a dungeon have more in common with a group playing dungeon world, or a D&D group playing curse of Strahd? Or are all engaging in the essentially same activity of RPGing, just via slightly different means?

 

[Lanefan]

Uh... not following you here.

Easy example using your lock.

The DC is 15.

15 and higher? Success.

9 and lower? Failure.

10-14? Fail forward (success with complication)

This is exactly what I've been railing against: your 10-14 bracket turns a fail into a success, which dishonours the original 'fail' roll!

Should instead be, using your ratios and if the DC is 15:

20 and higher: success
15-19: success with complication
14 or lower: failure. (maybe failure with extras on 1-4 as well)

If those odds are too steep then just lower the original DC.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, an SC is an encounter worth of play, complexity 5 might need 14 rolls to resolve. Even at 5 minutes each it's an hour of play. So, sure, if you want to spend a whole evening playing through a scenario then it should be 3-5 SCs of varying complexity.

You can do things like framework SCs, something where many of the tallies are entire encounters of their own. What I especially liked about it is it provides an objective measure of when to move on.

The way I read it, they seemed to want to take those few hours of play and concatenate them into a few minutes of player-side "Here's how we approach this" followed by a string of rolls; with the specific intent being to speed up play by skipping over all the granularity previous editions would have demanded.

In fairness, from what I gather SCs were much better defined and explained in one of 4e's later DMGs, but I only got the first one and stopped there.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Only to a point. There comes a time when over-analysis becomes dull; thankfully there's always players with low-ish boredom thresholds who, when they get bored, will have their characters (who also tend to have low boredom thresholds) do something to stir the pot.

Game trains you so badly that interesting things happen when you're bored.

Also, modern D&D really does have death as the only remaining true-loss condition, so you're correct there.

As opposed to Level Drain, Sex Change and Alignment Change?
Granted we also had Ability Drain and Aging.

That said, your alternate method of advancement would raise a big red flag were I a player, in that it means you-as-DM are now judging my roleplaying and I'm at the mercy of that judgment.

And no my system uses your character's TBIF to reward you for following them when it serves against the rational (optimized) choice. You don't get rewarded for roleplaying your character when the stakes are low or don't even exist. Your character is defined in the tough moments.
And if you don't agree with the GM it's open to the table for discussion.

1e had this, after a fashion (by RAW your costs to train into a new level were set by how well the DM thought you'd roleplayed to your alignment during the previous level), and it didn't work well then either. I don't know of any tables that actually used that rule as written.

Alignment never worked for PCs. It had some setting/cosmological/world-building value but failed miserably for roleplaying purposes. But it's OK - that was the start of the hobby. 50 years on they still have nothing. Pretty lame.

 

[TwoSix]

This is exactly what I've been railing against: your 10-14 bracket turns a fail into a success, which dishonours the original 'fail' roll!

Should instead be, using your ratios and if the DC is 15:

20 and higher: success
15-19: success with complication
14 or lower: failure. (maybe failure with extras on 1-4 as well)

If those odds are too steep then just lower the original DC.

But that’s just terminology. It doesn’t matter.

10 is the “success with complications” target, 15 is the “success free and clear” target.

The only thing that might matter is if the system has some specific mechanics for that middle 10-14 area. (Sort of like how Daggerheart has specific mechanics for “success with fear” and “failure with hope”, which are similar in being the middle result.)

 

[AnotherGuy]

Double post