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

[AlViking]

Sure...unless you just haven't been persuaded by the right person, in the right circumstance. Imagining it as a white-room scenario really doesn't amount to much.

Every person who goes against one of their hard-core beliefs was previously 100% sure they wouldn't go against their beliefs.

If I don't feel like having a drink, I won't and the more you push it the less likely I am to comply. I'm not discussing white room scenarios here, I'm talking about something that has happened in the real world. You could always come up with some hypothetical I suppose, you could intimidate me into having one, but persuade? No. People die for because they refuse to go against their beliefs on a regular basis.

 

[AlViking]

The problem is when the discussion involve terms that seemingly cannot have a well defined meaning outside the scope of a given system. Like it seem like someone suggested D&D could use "fail forward", but when drilling into that suggestion it turned out "fail forward" is not defined in a way that made the suggestion even inteligable.

There do seem to be multiple definitions. If a character fails to pick a lock and the GM says "You can try bashing it down or you saw a window you could go through" is that fail forward? Heck if I know any more. In another case the scenario of failing a climb check doesn't result in damage it just means it takes you longer to climb a cliff is a textbook example of allowing multiple retries while rolling to see how long it takes straight from the DMG. But was told there was "something else", nothing specific of course just that I don't get it.

I get that in some narrative games, complications completely unrelated to the task can happen because that's just how those games work based on different approaches to play. But if you google fail forward, the term is pretty nebulous for a lot of people. Kind of like "Be a fan of the characters" and "The characters shouldn't be bored" and so on, the way they work and are integrated into a system makes all the difference.

Which is all fine. It's not like we have an official RPG Standards committee and we don't need to have 100% consensus here either. I just accept that other people want different things out of their games.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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."

Oh, I’m not surprised by that at all. I’ve never played that way, even in the AD&D days. Sometimes you have to discuss things as players and you should do so. I think it’s good to remind players to make that distinction at times.

The problem is when the discussion involve terms that seemingly cannot have a well defined meaning outside the scope of a given system. Like it seem like someone suggested D&D could use "fail forward", but when drilling into that suggestion it turned out "fail forward" is not defined in a way that made the suggestion even inteligable.

Amazingly, the confusion was all on the part of folks who admittedly are unfamiliar with the games that use fail forward.

No one who is familiar with those games was confused at all. Why is that, do you think?

I mean… we’re all familiar with armor class as a game term, but if we weren’t, discussion about it could lead to confusion as well. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad term… it means that some folks aren’t familiar with it.

The problem, in my opinion, seems more about people who are unfamiliar with something not wanting to admit it, or that they can become just as familiar as others with like a quick look online at a blog or on reddit.

It’d be a lot more productive if people approached that kind of stuff from a place of curiosity rather than antagonism.

If I don't feel like having a drink, I won't and the more you push it the less likely I am to comply. I'm not discussing white room scenarios here, I'm talking about something that has happened in the real world. You could always come up with some hypothetical I suppose, you could intimidate me into having one, but persuade? No. People die for because they refuse to go against their beliefs on a regular basis.

And yet… I have been persuaded to have a drink many times in my life.

Your example doesn’t refute the point. The idea is that people can be persuaded at times. Why deny that?

 

[AlViking]

Oh, I’m not surprised by that at all. I’ve never played that way, even in the AD&D days. Sometimes you have to discuss things as players and you should do so. I think it’s good to remind players to make that distinction at times.



Amazingly, the confusion was all on the part of folks who admittedly are unfamiliar with the games that use fail forward.

No one who is familiar with those games was confused at all. Why is that, do you think?

I mean… we’re all familiar with armor class as a game term, but if we weren’t, discussion about it could lead to confusion as well. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad term… it means that some folks aren’t familiar with it.

The problem, in my opinion, seems more about people who are unfamiliar with something not wanting to admit it, or that they can become just as familiar as others with like a quick look online at a blog or on reddit.

It’d be a lot more productive if people approached that kind of stuff from a place of curiosity rather than antagonism.

Who's antagonistic? You mean the people who repeatedly state that while it doesn't work for them, if it works for you have fun? Or people that insist that people that have not played and have no desire to play a specific game can never truly understand how things work? That for some reason they are shocked and amazed that I would like an example of how something would work in D&D when they've been going on and on about how it can be done?

And yet… I have been persuaded to have a drink many times in my life.

Your example doesn’t refute the point. The idea is that people can be persuaded at times. Why deny that?

Sometimes people can be persuaded sometimes they can't. Do you deny that?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I 100% agree that “Sherlock Holmes that is an insufferable jerk to everyone” is both a frustratingly common and the worst presentation of him.

Entertaining though. Big fan of House here.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Some people enjoy having agency when they play.

Seems a little reductive. It's not like the GM is seizing control of the PCs left and right in any of these games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yep. Once you add mechanics, players will find ways around them. Have players buy into the idea of a narrative and group storytelling, and they'll work with that.

D&D is just not the game to mechanically enforce that. Got to rely on the social contractand session 0.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If I don't feel like having a drink, I won't and the more you push it the less likely I am to comply. I'm not discussing white room scenarios here, I'm talking about something that has happened in the real world. You could always come up with some hypothetical I suppose, you could intimidate me into having one, but persuade? No. People die for because they refuse to go against their beliefs on a regular basis.

People also choose to go along with the pressure to do otherwise at least as often. That's what the dice are for.

 

[AlViking]

People also choose to go along with the pressure to do otherwise at least as often. That's what the dice are for.

Of course. Dice come into play more often than not with NPCs just not always.

 

[Faolyn]

The definition of strawman "An informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction." I never said it was a good example. I brought it up as an example that I had found so that we could discuss a detailed example in D&D instead of talking about how it works in other games that have different approaches and assumptions.

Stop sea-lioning me on this.

You keep bringing up one bad example (instead of all the good examples that can be found by googling it, which you claim to have done), and you're saying I'm sealioning?

Yeah, no.

(Also, sealioning is constantly harassing people for evidence... which is what you're doing by constantly demanding people defend the cook that they've already said is a poor example and provide you with more examples.)

The issue that people have is that it assumes that there is a cook active and in the vicinity at all hours of the day.

No. Just when the PCs are there. The rest of the time, the entire house, for all practical purposes, ceases to exist. Unless you as the GM are actually keeping up-to-the-minute notes about it both before and after the PCs are done, of course.

If the PCs are only going to this house at 2AM and you're absolutely positive that the cook should be asleep at that time and not sleeping close enough to the kitchen door to hear, then they're asleep and won't hear the PCs should they fail. Then you pick a different consequence. I don't know how many times I have to say this.

As a DM I set up interesting obstacles and scenarios when planning. I am not being particularly neutral in my judgment here.

Are you being particularly antagonistic, in the sense of doing things like putting out obstacles that are nearly impossible to beat, like they require a nat 20 or that the players memorize twenty different steps? No? Are you actually putting out obstacles that it's reasonable (not easy; reasonable) that the players can defeat? Then you're being neutral. Are you putting out obstacles that are both reasonable for the players to defeat and it will be really cool when it happens? Then you're being a fan of the players.

I'm thinking about how I'm going to handle the boring bits using minimal game time, if it makes sense in-world for there to be a threat to great for them to handle how do I broadcast that they should avoid it and how, and finally the bits and pieces we're going to play out. So those bits and pieces we're going to play out should be challenging, interesting, and just as important not be gated behind a single roll so I need to consider multiple options. If I think there even is a cook, I may make some notes about servants quarters and whatnot such how they're going to react (not all servants are going to be fond of their employer and so on) to intruders.

Sure, and this fails to address what you do if you're improvising--and in those cases, you've said you would, in fact, improvise. Which means that you may end up putting someone somewhere where you might not put them if you were thinking, or overthinking, about it during prep.

There are some situations where I can see fail forward could apply, although most of those for me I would consider partial success or success at a cost.

Which is exactly what fail forward is. Same concept, different names.

So the player rolls high enough to break down the door but takes a bit of damage doing it. But there's still the chance that they could just not be able to break down the door. For example I don't know how I'd fail forward if the player needed to make a knowledge check to a mystery.

Incomplete information. Incomplete information plus a red herring.

There are other cases where, like with lock picking, the sleight of hand check was done to see if the character could pick the lock quickly and they may fail. If I think they are capable of opening the lock if given enough time they have the option of rolling to see how long it will take, but that extra time increases the chance of being noticed. The big difference to me is that I see those as separate action declarations made by the player, their declared action didn't work so they have multiple other possibilities including fiddling with the lock until it does work.

I understand the concept of fail forward and in games that don't have the same core assumptions of the effect being directly tied to the cause that D&D does, it would be easier to implement. If I was playing a game where failure could mean bad karma, that bad karma could have influence other than a lock just stubbornly remaining locked. I am someone who needs concrete examples sometimes,

As am I, and to get them I have read narrative games.