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

[Micah Sweet]

Because there's not enough people complaining and comparing D&D to other games and how (almost always) other games handle things better every time anything rules related comes up?

No one says that, but I must admit I sometimes get that impression.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But again, you chose to take the psych trait. You don't choose to run away in the above instance, because the dice say you have to.

But as you said yourself, the psych trait may well just be modifying a roll you have to make in the situation anyway (I know its that way in Savage Worlds for fear checks).

 

[Thomas Shey]

No one says that, but I must admit I sometimes get that impression.

I'll outright say that there are mechanical elements of D&D that I think a large number of other games just handle better. I just don't expect D&D fans to generally agree with me.

 

[Lanefan]

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).

No saving throw and you get to know what the target is thinking? Nasty.

Does using Detect Thoughts give anything away about the user, e.g. do their eyes glaze over for a moment while they're detecting such that the target might notice? Also, after the fact does the target have any way of knowing the thought detection has happened, other than any reaction from the detector?

 

[Lanefan]

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

Bluntly put: yes.

If one's enjoyment of a character in part hinges on that character's possession and-or use of a possibly-fragile item, whose job is it to make sure said item is and stays protected? Hint: the answer is not the DM.

Further, my take is that if you take something out into the field with you, you're by default putting that thing at risk. WotC D&D (4e and 5e in particular) have gone way WAY too far in protecting PCs' possessions even when the fiction shouts loudly that there should at least be a chance of those possessions being destroyed (and-or disenchanted, if magical). This is one thing 1e got right at least in principle, even if the specifics-as-written needed some tweaking.

 

[Eric V]

As another poster pointed out, charming a PC into drinking alcohol, even if that PC is a strict teetotaler, is very different from using a social roll to convince them to do so over the player’s objection. In the former case, the out-of-character behavior is justified by the fiction of literal mind control. In the latter, it’s simply forced through mechanics when actual persuasion may have never been possible due to strongly held beliefs.

I think we can all call upon stories where this has happened in real life without any magic involved, though. It's quite common for someone to do X, even when they told themselves they'd never do X. Persuasion is a real thing in the real world...why couldn't it be present in an RPG?

 

[Lanefan]

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.

So if I've got a character who never drinks, in a system with binding social mechanics someone's not even allowed to try to persuade me to drink? Or, if you like, flip it around: it's an NPC who never drinks and a PC doing the persuading.

 

[Campbell]

Wanting sole authorship of the character you play's inner world, emotions and the like is fine preference to have. So is a shared authorship model where what we do affects and impacts who our characters are. Is it more potentially fraught in some ways? In some ways yes, but less fraught in others. No matter what you should game with people you trust.

The moralizing around shared versus individual ownership of character and setting is frankly not helpful to fruitful discussion.

Like I don't view the characters I play as belonging to me. I view them as something I am responsible for, and I trust that the GMs (and other players) I play with are as interested and invested in them as I am. That they are considering my character as played and acting of interest in them when they use their judgement to invoke social mechanics or invoke the meta channel when the actions I declare do not make sense to them (given the fictional context).

When you play certain games or in the case of my group (when we play more trad games) it's just part of the explicit social contract that you are opting into. If you do not want to opt in don't. But don't tell us we have no agency.

 

[AlViking]

I think we can all call upon stories where this has happened in real life without any magic involved, though. It's quite common for someone to do X, even when they told themselves they'd never do X. Persuasion is a real thing in the real world...why couldn't it be present in an RPG?

I drink on very rare occasions, but if I'm not in the mood? Nah. Insist? No, thank you. Continue? "I said no, stop asking." At a certain point the more somebody pushes, the more I'm going to dig in my heels.

 

[Lanefan]

Here you go. One thing I think is helpful is to just treat the heading like the name of the thing. What it says underneath each heading is what really matters.

Sorry, but other than the first one "Be a fan of your character..." (which is excellent advice) that mostly speaks to a game that, taken at face value, I'd have little to no interest in playing and less than no interest in running.

I'm a bit surprised that in the "Speak to the characters..." piece they didn't include advice along the lines of "Always speak as if talking to the other characters during play, rather than their players. Use character names even if-when referring to game-mechanical things. Only use player names during breaks in play."