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

[Maxperson]

Short-and-sweet name for a useful thing to do when figuring out what a group wants from a game (e.g., something to deploy during Session Zero).

"Lines" are things that, if crossed, would break the experience. "Veils" are things that are okay to occur, but not much "on camera", so to speak--hidden behind a veil of fade-to-black/nondescript summary. More or less, the antithesis of "must-have" and "big plus"--a "must-NOT-have" and "keep it soft touch".

Lines and veils can be anything, whether in-world or game-rules or whatever.

If a group has incompatible interests, e.g. one has a line against (say) killing innocents and another player (or the GM) is specifically there to play through seeing/doing genuine, unrepentant evil, spelling this out saves everyone time. It helps nip bad group comps in the bud. For groups that have compatible interests, it helps avoid unintentional harm; if you know that sex scenes or high-detail bartering are veils for player A and B respectively, then A knows not to get hyper-invested into detailed shopkeeper interactions and B knows that adult events are okay but nitty-gritty details are not.

The point is to promote communication and avoid causing unintentional harm.

Thanks! I hadn't heard that term before.

 

[Maxperson]

No. The point was, if it is on the table in the first place, it must have been possible to begin with. If it wasn't possible to begin with, it never should have been on the table in the first place. These two things are logically equivalent, as they are contrapositives of one another. ("If A, then B" is logically equivalent to "if not-B, then not-A" because it both reverses the order and negates both parts. Miss either one of those and it fails to be logically equivalent in general; specific exceptions exist.)

There may be some games that are played that way, but D&D when I've seen social skills vs. PCs used hasn't been played that way.

I'm also not sure I'd want to play that way. The DM would have to ask the DM every time he wanted to use a social skill if it was okay to use, which would end up being a sizable disruption to game play. Better to just leave social skills vs. PCs off the table completely as intended by the game designers.

 

[Pedantic]

Just so I understand your concern, the idea is that making consequences known breaks immersion as it opens up negotiation.

Sort of, but I wouldn't have put immersion as my primary concern. I think immersion comes down to the distance between character and player decision making and how aligned those are mechanically. A player playing well should produce the same decision their character would be inclined to use in the same situation.

I also just think negotiation is unpleasant as a general gameplay mechanic, outside of a TTRPG setting, unless it is the whole of the game, and even then I'm not generally that excited to play Sidereal Confluence or Chinatown.

So is your preferred method for the consequences to be unknown until the die is rolled? Kind of like combat, where the PCs are NOT always aware of their opponent's capabilities (supernatural/magical, offensive/defensive, legendary/lair, damage output etc)

Not at all. My preferred approach is that the rules be transparent, and established before play. It's possible a given cliff may have a feature I don't know about, but the rules for interaction with cliffs (presumably climbing) should be laid out in the player facing material before the game begins. I should be making decisions about climbing with full knowledge of how climbing is resolved, and that procedure should not change. The inputs to it might, this cliff might have different traits, I might have failed to spot an ambushing party of aarakockra and so on (though I would also expect the rules for perception/hiding to be transparent and knowable), but the act of climbing should reference a procedure that already exists.

 

[AnotherGuy]

So verisimilitude is more important than players enjoying the characters they wish to enjoy.

I do not think we should be reflecting the argument as an either or.
Item loss is a consequence that many simulationists adhere to.

I do though think a GM has to be careful how they navigate the fiction for the item loss. And I believe that is where you are coming from, in that we cannot be flippant about PC possessions, particularly items that are core to character.
At the same time, verisimilitude / setting reality is core for simulationists.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I curse the name of the person that taught you what a Red Herring is.



No, because on a success, the thief was quiet enough to not draw her attention.

I feel like someone dosed me.



The principle as it appears in Monsterhears is "Make each main character's life not boring". That's literally the principle in the book that it is telling the players and GM to keep in mind. To make decisions with that as a primary factor.

But this is guidance for that game (and others that share it), not necessarily every game. While I might try to GM by this principle when I play 5e, it's not something that's always easy to do, and it's not something I'd expect most others to do since it's not in the book at all.

Not all principles work for all games. "Be a neutral arbiter" doesn't work for Monsterhearts or Apocalypse World.



You literally posted that the principle was implying that other games were boring.



Yes, this is why the principles have been suggested as being oppositional. That you cannot be a neutral arbiter and be working to make the characters' lives not boring. There may be times where they don't conflict, but there will be times when they do.

If you're running prep-focused D&D, then it makes sense to consider the principle "be a neutral arbiter" as more important.

If you're running Apocalypse World, then it makes sense to consider the principle "make the characters' lives not boring".

It's just how different games approach play. Neither is better or worse. That the words "not boring" appear in one doesn't mean that it's saying others are boring.

It doesn't seem to me to be just about how different games approach play. It seems IMO to be at least as much about coming up with cute, pithy names for those principles that people can repeat and associate with your product, even if those names don't seem to fit the principle for which they are a label. It is in fact marketing to some extent, at the expense of clarity.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It doesn't seem to me to be just about how different games approach play. It seems IMO to be at least as much about coming up with cute, pithy names for those principles that people can repeat and associate with your product, even if those names don't seem to fit the principle for which they are a label. It is in fact marketing to some extent, at the expense of clarity.

That's what you think, huh? That when Vince and Meg Baker wrote Apocalypse World, that they said "we need some marketing phrases that can be used in online discussion" rather than "we need to provide a list of useful guidelines to playing this game"?

Not that they just tried to write the game to be as clear and evocative as possible, but that they were thinking of marketing?

Well... it's a take, I guess.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The GM has more power than the players do, even in the most player-friendly of games. These rules are here to prevent an imbalance of power.

Not a fan. Talk to your players and/or GM before you play, or work out disagreement as it occurs at the table. Creating binding rules that force the GM to behave in a certain way or make decision based on restrictive principles is not the way I want to play.

 

[Maxperson]

Would the lines and veils safety tool adress your concern? It sound to me like you might have a line at character behaving in a way you don't envision yourself?

I don't need it to be so formalized as that. Usually I can tell if people are going to be similar enough in playstyle for me to fit in with. Very few things will break a game for me, but taking away my agency is at or near the top of that list.

 

[Maxperson]

That's what you think, huh? That when Vince and Meg Baker wrote Apocalypse World, that they said "we need some marketing phrases that can be used in online discussion" rather than "we need to provide a list of useful guidelines to playing this game"?

What's useful or evocative about a phrase that has nothing to do with the actual principle discussed?

 

[Micah Sweet]

...

So, let me get this straight. You want me to give you demonstrations of Fail Forward...in the contexts where that technique appears...

But you demand that it ONLY be examples from campaigns specifically using D&D?

Are you serious?

If they don't play and don't want to play your games, what value do examples from those games give them?