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

[Enrahim]

There are tons of systems out there that disagree with you. FATE being an easy example. There are all sorts of mechanics in Fate, the Aspects for example, which give the DM a lever to influence the player's actions.

Nitpic: FATE is definitely not an easy example. Rather the opposite. From Invoking & Compelling Aspects • Fate Core

GMs, remember that a player is ultimately responsible for everything that the character says and does. you can offer decision-based compels, but if the player doesn’t feel like the decision is one that the character would make, don’t force the issue by charging a fate point. instead, negotiate the terms of the compel until you find a decision the player is comfortable making, and a complication that chains from that decision instead. if you can’t agree on something, drop it.

I cannot off the bat give a good comment comment on your other examples. Too long since I read them. But I cannot remember either ironsworn nor 3:16 striking me as doing anything particularly untraditional in terms of character ownership and responsibilities.

 

[clearstream]

I don't see how that solves the problem. If you don't allow the player to change their again declaration in response, then there was hardly any point to informing them in the first place, or if they can, you're back to negotiation as they fish for different consequences.

Would this change for you were the consequence or knowledge concerning it diegetic... something the characters can know?

"Sure, you're confident you (the PC) can climb the cliff, but unless you get a good route it could take more time than you have."

What's 'negotiated' then isn't what the world is like, that's stable once established, it's what the player characters decide to do.

 

[Lanefan]

The issue remains, the roll is the mistake. Who rolls it is irrelevant.

I'll go a step farther and say that including mechanics to govern ordinary social interactions (as opposed to outright control abilities a la Suggestion, Charm, Dominate, etc.) are the root mistake.

I'm fine with control abilities for a few reasons:

--- there's only a fairly small subset of not-monster people who can do them
--- they are hard to do subtly if by spell
--- they are a prime ability of many classic trope-based monsters: Demons, Vampires, Dryads, Sirens, just to name a few

I'm not fine with social mechanics replacing roleplay.

Also worth noting perhaps that I see fear effects (of which there's a wide variety) as being different than control effects. Fear usually falls more under either the save-or-suck category (you're frozen, or you flee in panic) or the bane-effect category (you can keep doing what you're doing but you're mechanically worse at it).

Anytime we use mechanics to bludgeon players into acting in a certain way, especially if the player protests, we are crossing a boundary. We are choosing mechanics over the people at the table for little gain. Anything that could be accomplished through such tactics can be done in other less intrusive ways.

I believe GMs have a responsibility to take the path of least resistance in directing the course of the game. They need to provide interesting situations but need to do so in a way that doesn't remove the player's creative control over their own character decisions. If you need a player to open a cupboard, instead of persuasion, give them a reason to open it themselves.

Using mechanics to bludgeon a player into compliance is rarely going to be the least intrusive option. It's easy to get PCs to do as you wish if you compel them via mechanics. But we’d call it railroading if done any other way. Hiding that same force behind a die roll doesn’t make it less controlling.

In systems like D&D, that’s rarely a healthy or collaborative approach to the game. I wouldn’t recommend it, and I don’t consider it good GMing. I think, if done consistently, it'd put you on a fast track to r/dndhorrorstories.

And so, in order to preserve even a vague semblance of in-setting symmetry, these mechanics also shouldn't be usable by PCs against NPCs*. Chuck 'em all out.

* - PCs using them against other PCs is a whole different mess that hasn't been touched on yet.....

 

[Lanefan]

Would this change for you were the consequence or knowledge concerning it diegetic... something the characters can know?

"Sure, you're confident you (the PC) can climb the cliff, but unless you get a good route it could take more time than you have."

If the PCs have in-fiction reason to know or think there's a time crunch, then sure.

What's 'negotiated' then isn't what the world is like, that's stable once established, it's what the player characters decide to do.

Where it would get really interesting would be if the players (as their PCs) were put in the position of having to choose between:

1. Climb safely, you'll get to the top for sure, but you maybe won't make it in time, and
2. Climb fast, you'll get to the top in time if you succeed, but failure means you fall for damage and don't get anywhere.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This seems like another example of jumping to the worst possible example and critiquing on that basis. In which light I ought not to play roleplaying games: they're horrific!

I wasn't the one who called it railroading. Others did, and you granted it.

Is it right that you are worried that fail forward can be used by a GM to advance the situation along a preordained trajectory?

You had agreed with pemerton that it was being used to keep the story, in his words, "keeping things 'on the rails'"; to which your reply was:

At a mechanical level it's just fail forward. The way that it's deployed is as fits that mode of play. I suppose one could say that involves changing what would be "improper" in that mode.

When innovations are coopted into modes they didn't originate in, I see it as a testimony to the success of the ideas and a sharing of their benefits.

Were you disputing that this was railroading, and simply did not choose to actually say that? Context doesn't give me any reason to conclude that.

Any such problem is with the deceiving, not with using fail forward.

But the deceiving--the "keeping things 'on the rails'"--was already understood to be the context of the usage. The person to whom you were talking had repeatedly referred to it as such. At no point did you dispute this. Were you simply ignoring this? It seemed to me from your conversation that you very much weren't, as you had specifically said you had "never seen it used that way in GM'd play". Seemed quite clear you were on board with calling it "keeping things 'on the rails'" at the time.

Player "I roll 5", GM "You find a poorly concealed secret door." How does the player in that scenario know they were not deceived? It hardly seems necessary to revert to fail forward to manage illusionism.

How does any player know that they were not deceived? Now you see why I have such a problem with illusionism! The very fact that it is enforced by secrecy is part and parcel of the problem. It denies players the ability to decide whether or not they like the gaming experience they're being given.

If a person is being deceived by the people in power, and never allowed to find out that they're being deceived, how can they know? That they cannot know does not mean the act is somehow blameless.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the example was there being a secondary roll to determine the presence or absence of a complication; and if that roll were player-visible it might force the dM to add a complication (because the players would expect it due to the roll they just saw) where a complication just doesn't make sense.

I know of no system where "fail forward" is codified and could ever be used to introduce a complication that doesn't make sense. Such systems begin from their very foundation by saying that you should do things like, as PbtA games put it, "begin and end with the fiction", for example. If something is so completely stupid, so utterly bonkers weirdo unnatural, you shouldn't ever do it. Doing so would be, explicitly, against the rules.

In systems that lack this formalism, you almost always also lack the formal definition of fail-forward...so if you are okay with GMs exercising their individual judgment on what is or isn't okay to do in other ways, why would that judgment suddenly fail you only with this technique and nothing else?

Correct.

Incorrect. Even though I don't play it, I care about what it does because, for better or wosre, that becomes what the community comes to expect.

Which means when it does something I think is either really good or really stupid I'm gonna call it out. Same goes for 4e, or did during its day.

Fair enough--but "care" in this case is less about caring in any way whatsoever, and more about...well, what Hussar was trying to achieve with the argument given. That is, his clear goal was "you support X because it's present in D&D, so why do you have a problem with X when it comes from something not-D&D?" Hence, using an example drawn from 5e is likely to not be very convincing to you, because you could quite easily just say, "That's one of the things I think is really stupid about 5e, and one reason among many why I don't play it." The argument would be more effective, more pointed, if it were to call out a usage in a game you do play and thus, implicitly approve of, or have to justify why you generally accept that game but reject just that one part of it.

In simpler terms: 5e doing something doesn't necessarily faze you. "Sure, it does that and I hate it." But if, say, AD&D does something--doubly so if you personally use that mechanic, since I know you use a substantial but relatively fixed set of house-rules--that would be rather more persuasive. It would either require you to explain why AD&D's usage is good and <non-D&D game>'s usage is bad, or why you rejected that part of D&D and thus have been distancing yourself from D&D itself for some time (and thus inviting "are you actually playing D&D then?" criticisms, since folks have been rather keen to separate out "D&D" from "not-D&D" recently.)

 

[CreamCloud0]

maybe if TBIF were actually used it would be able to mitigate DMs 'forcing' PCs to act out of character, you establish something in your TBIF and if some social check or supernatural effect is trying to make a character act contrary to their nature the player gets to point to their relevant trait and say nuh-uh, this is established, and the check automatically fails or gains disadvantage.

and well, if it wasn't important enough for you not to pre-establish it maybe it's not important enough to prevent the GM to making you act against it.

edit: just remember though, once you establish something about your character that's established about them for better or worse,

 

[AnotherGuy]

And so, in order to preserve even a vague semblance of in-setting symmetry, these mechanics also shouldn't be usable by PCs against NPCs*. Chuck 'em all out.

I disagree with chucking them all out.

As it happens in D&D, GM decides if the persuasion has a probability of working on an NPC.
If No, then no roll is required.
If Yes, then I like the fact that it doesn't fall on me, but rather to mechanics.

Now with PC
NPC attempts to persuade PC. I roleplay the NPC putting forward my argument for the persuasion.
Player determines if the persuasion works or not - i.e. Player decides.
There is no need for the mechanics, unless the player wants to go that route whereby they will be providing the DC for the NPC.

 

[AnotherGuy]

maybe if TBIF were actually used it would be able to mitigate DMs 'forcing' PCs to act out of character, you establish something in your TBIF and if some social check or supernatural effect is trying to make a character act contrary to their nature the player gets to point to their relevant trait and say nuh-uh, this is established, and the check automatically fails or gains disadvantage.

and well, if it wasn't important enough for you not to pre-establish it maybe it's not important enough to prevent the GM to making you act against it.

A PC was negotiating with NPCs in Sigil. One of the NPCs used Detect Thoughts which allows one to pick up surface thoughts for free (i.e. no saving throw required). NPC asked a question on information the PC did not wish to reveal.
One of the PC's Flaws were (paraphrasing) Cannot keep a secret.

I offered the PC the chance to earn an XP if he played to his flaw, allowing the NPC to gain that bit of information.
The player thought about it for a moment and then said yes.
So I narrated, a crooked smile played across the NPC as you denied to talk about it.

The fact that WotC did not put out a book or even an Unearthed Arcana in all these years to reflect the many interesting ways one can use TIBFs to get the most out of roleplaying is a shame and a lost opportunity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A PC was negotiating with NPCs in Sigil. One of the NPCs used Detect Thoughts which allows one to pick up surface thoughts for free (i.e. no saving throw required). NPC asked a question on information the PC did not wish to reveal.
One of the PC's Flaws were (paraphrasing) Cannot keep a secret.

I offered the PC the chance to earn an XP if he played to his flaw, allowing the NPC to gain that bit of information.
The player thought about it for a moment and then said yes.
So I narrated, a crooked smile played across the NPC as you denied to talk about it.

The fact that WotC did not put out a book or even an Unearthed Arcana in all these years to reflect the many interesting ways one can use TIBFs to get the most out of roleplaying is a shame and a lost opportunity.

This kind of thing is always going to be difficult to adjudicate, and tends to fall between multiple stools.

Personally, if an NPC were to cast Detect Thoughts on a PC I would ask the player "what is your character thinking?" and go with whatever they said.

But there is no right or wrong way to do this, just go with whatever works at your table.