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

[EzekielRaiden]

It may just be that verisimilitude is essential to the players enjoying the campaign. I seek those sorts of players. It does vary by person though and the degree it is designed also varies by person. For me though I like a high degree of it.

I mean I feel like this is a pretty straightforward yes/no question.

If you had to choose between ruining a player's experience, destroying the thing that makes them enjoy playing their character, but preserving perfect fidelity to the feeling of verisimilitude, vs making a small (I emphasize small) sacrifice to verisimilitude, so that the thing that that player enjoys about playing their character would not be casually destroyed, would you choose the former?

It's a simple yes/no. Would you choose destroying a player's enjoyment of the experience in order to preserve that feeling of verisimilitude?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I can't say I'm surprised that you would cavalierly destroy the things that make your players enjoy your game in order to uphold perfect fidelity to the feeling of verisimilitude. Player enjoyment of the experience is not the most important goal.

 

[AlViking]

In my experience it depends on what you're using as a systemic basis in the first place.

But of course my real answer is "Don't try to just cobble it together from the start. Pick one that's pretty close to how you think things should go, then tweak (even if that involves important a version of a mechanic from elsewhere)." Sometimes that's hard too, but there are, to be blunt, games I generally think have a better gestalt than D&D. The only advantage D&D and its offshoots have to me is a lot of people have gotten used to even the dumb parts.



Sure. My own feeling is, however, there's "Is even there a basic structure here that seems like where I want to go?" Mighty little of that is true with D&D's structures. There are are some bits that are more acceptable than others, but mighty little is what I'd consider actually things I'd select by close.

(And again, not expecting D&D folks to agree here.)

If you dislike D&D so much, why spend time on a D&D forum?

 

[AlViking]

Do you believe in different rules for NPCs and PCs?

Normally no, but there are exceptions. Telling people what their character thinks or feels is one of them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I'm saying it needs to be one or the other--and the character needs to remain consistent from one instance to the next.

If player A can declare that their character simply cannot be convinced to drink, then the players cannot get mad that there are things NPCs simply cannot be persuaded to do, and it cannot be the case later that the character chooses to drink when they were previously established to never choose to drink no matter what. And, likewise, if the character is already known to partake in drink, they don't get to declare out of the blue that suddenly they have an unshakable deeply-held conviction against alcohol.

Conversely, if it's always the case that players actually can persuade any NPC to drink, perhaps with difficulty but it is consistently always possible, then that cuts both ways; the PCs cannot then declare that they are totally immune to persuasion.

At least on this one narrow axis, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I generally prefer asymmetrical PC/NPC design in combat abilities, but in this? Nah. If you can always roll to try to persuade an NPC, NPCs can always roll to try to persuade you. If you can declare yourself unpersuadable, then (a) you have to accept the limitations that that declaration will induce and cannot simply vacillate on it, and (b) you bet your britches some NPCs will be simply immune to persuasion too.

None of this "PCs can always attempt to persuade NPCs, but NPCs cannot ever persuade PCs, and PCs can change their minds about whether they're amenable to persuasion at the drop of a hat."

 

[Maxperson]

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

No, but they are seizing control when they successfully use a social skill on a PC. In games designed for that to happen, it's okay. If it happens to me in D&D where that's not supposed to happen, I'm walking out of the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Entertaining though. Big fan of House here.

Well, House MD isn't Sherlock. By being a different character, even if he is inspired by the (crappy) interpretations of Sherlock Holmes, it's quite a bit easier to swallow that he would behave as he does. House is a semi-pro cynic with various emotional traumas and severe physical pain pretty much 24/7, and the show delves into how and why he became such a bitter, jaded, angry person.

Part of the problem with the all-too-common bad interpretation of Sherlock Holmes is that it conflates how he behaves with specific people into being the way he behaves toward everyone. Holmes cares deeply about Watson, for example, and even though Watson himself explicitly says that this feeling isn't commonly shown, it's still there, and that he feels very honored in the moments when Holmes shows that depth of feeling. (There's a particular mystery where they're busting a counterfeiter, and a fight breaks out in a pitch-black room. Holmes thinks Watson has been grievously injured, and goes absolutely HAM on the criminal, which prompts Watson to explicitly make that observation.) Likewise, Holmes tends to be both respectful and compassionate to the ordinary people, especially women and children, that he encounters; it's wealthy, powerful, and/or influential people, usually men, to whom he acts so cold and dispassionate. E.g. contrast his behavior toward the unnamed European noble in A Scandal in Bohemia vs how he listens to, and supports, the woman who comes to him frightened by her nebulous experiences in The Adventure of the Speckled Band, or the similarly confused and unnerved young woman in The Adventure of the Dancing Men.

Dr. House is a jerk to everyone because he's bitter, lonely, in chronic severe pain, and struggling with emotional trauma and cognitive dissonance. Mr. Holmes is a jerk to powerful people who want him to wish their problems away, but not to the downtrodden, overlooked, or disenfranchised, even when he gets nothing more than the satisfaction of an interesting case either way. I'm reminded specifically of how impertinent, and indeed even overtly rude, Holmes behaves in The Adventure of the Priory School, where a powerful and wealthy nobleman basically wants Holmes to smooth over the criminal acts committed by the noble's bastard son--and unlike the vast majority of his cases, he is quite keen to collect the substantial sum offered in payment for his services.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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?

There's been plenty of antagonism in this thread. I've been responsible for my share of it... as has just about everyone involved. My point was not just the antagonism. It's the antagonism combined with ignorance. If I genuinely don't know something, I don't try to tell those who seem to know about it how it works. I don't fail to grasp some bit of game text in isolation and then brand it as useless. I don't look up examples online to challenge people who seem familiar with the topic. I don't demand that other people provide me with examples that work for me, while simultaneously doing everything I can to read everything in as negative a light as possible, and to poke holes in things with absurd edge cases.

I don't really get that. Even in my earlier days on this board when the vast majority of my gaming was D&D, and if it wasn't D&D it was still something firmly in the traditional games category, I wouldn't assume I knew more about other games. I know this is a thread in the D&D forum... but it is nominally about challenging the conservatism of D&D. How to do things differently, how to engage with the game differently.

As a result, naturally, examples of other games and how they handle things have been mentioned. What I don't get is why that's so problematic... why the idea that other games have other ideas that are worth looking at. And while I know you've said that you're okay with these ideas and other games... but you've also basically done everything you can to shoot down any and all examples or proposals and have flatly rejected that these games have anything to offer.

So yeah... that kind of antagonism is more what I'm talking about.

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

No, of course not... why would I deny that? That's largely my point.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, but they are seizing control when they successfully use a social skill on a PC. In games designed for that to happen, it's okay. If it happens to me in D&D where that's not supposed to happen, I'm walking out of the game.

Is it "not supposed to happen" in D&D? That implies there are things that are and aren't "supposed to happen" in D&D. Where do you derive this certainty from? I presume it would need to be something even more inarguable than the rules, since I know your stance is that the GM is the absolute authority in their game.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Ok, so I (mostly) agree with pretty much everything you've written here*, especially these parts:
"The GM doesn’t own the PCs."
"It shortcuts character development and undermines the collaborative nature of the game."
"The game is social at its very core, and if you're forcing players, through mechanics and DM fiat, to act in ways that contradict their character's will, without prior consent, then there's been a serious breakdown in the table’s social contract."

It's just that I also think all of this also applies to PC death, pretty much point-for-point, and yet most of the DMs I have seen in this thread are fine with it (see my previous attempts to demonstrate this with the paladin who fails the climb check and dies, and is met with "sorry, them's the dice!"). After all "It's a shared narrative, and each participant owns part of it."

So, if my PC can't change her mind without my consent, it certainly doesn't seem right that she can die without it (her mind changes to...nothing). At least, according to the principles laid out above.

*What if it were several persuasion rolls? Over time? How many lights did Picard see?

I don’t disagree with you in principle. You're absolutely right that character death is a massive loss of agency, possibly even more final than a shift in beliefs. But there is a difference between a persuasion roll of an NPC and the death of a PC. At least in cases where death is acceptable.

Death is a structural necessity. Forced persuasion is not.

Continuing with D&D, the threat of death is what holds the game together. It provides the weight to decisions, grounds the tension, and just creates stakes in general. Without the threat of death, you lose all of that. The game loses its edge and becomes flat. Death is a consequence of a player's choices and actions, and emerges naturally from gameplay when done right.

We can compare that to forced persuasion. Where the DM controls every aspect. From the NPC's decision to do it, to whether it works. It is completely DM fiat, with no meaningful player input. It's never necessary. Other tools such as roleplay, consequences, incentives, social pressure, and temptation, are available to accomplish the same goals without the artificialness.

If the goal is to create drama or tension, forced persuasion is a shortcut that breaks authorship without improving the game. It’s not essential, and the alternatives are more collaborative. To answer your question, no number of persuasion rolls fix this issue. The issue is in the very premise, not the mechanics.

So we agree. You shouldn't force death arbitrarily. But there’s no real substitute for the risk of death, and there are countless alternatives to overriding a player’s portrayal of their own character. That, I think, is the core of why death is sometimes appropriate and forced persuasion, almost never is. One has player input when done correctly, the other never does.