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

[EzekielRaiden]

What's your cut-off?

Generally? Probably about what you said in the bit I cut out--about two or three sessions at most. If the game takes more than four multi-hour sessions to play, it's at least more like a TTRPG than it is like the vast, vast majority of board games.

I don't think length of game gives anyone an extra special claim here, except perhaps that no one can reasonable be upset if a player resigns in a game of indeterminate length, and the unbounded nature of play necessarily means the game can be completed at basically any point.

Why not? Length of game means length of commitment--and severity of deprivation, should someone be deprived. It sucks to be knocked out of play on round 1 when you know there are 300 rounds of play.

I don't really care that you found an absolute in an article linked by a different party that whoever you're arguing with generally affirmed, and have decided to make it a synecdoche for the whole position. That's barely a rhetorical leg to stand on.

It's not something I found. It's something Micah himself specifically replied to by saying it was HIS ideal. Hence, it is something Micah himself has explicitly signed on for.

I'm not projecting anything. I'm using his own arguments here. He agreed to this. I'm arguing with him about this. You decided to intrude and treat my arguments directed at him as though they were universal arguments. Of course they're going to sound stupid if the points I made specifically and only to Micah Sweet, member of the ENWorld forums are instead inflated to be universal principles for all of mankind.

 

[SableWyvern]

Why does our first player have any more claim?

I would suggest that the basis for it being considered stronger claim is that it aligns with the position of the poster. No more, no less.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Tough. I'll deal with that argument as and when I have to.

The point was that your personal perspective on it has nothing to do with whether it is, in fact, absolutely that thing and no other things.

Partial success is distinct from both unmitigated success and unmitigated failure. It is, by its nature, a mixed thing. You are within your rights to say "for me, Lanefan, if it contains any success at all, it's a success"--though I would have criticisms of that in light of your positive response to the "assassin escaped but we got a piece of their cloak" example if you did say that. You are not within your rights to say "partial success simply is success, doesn't matter who you are, it's just ridiculous to claim otherwise."

Is perfect A7A7A7 grey "really" black with some white mixed in? Is it "really" white with some black mixed in? Is it a distinct thing from both black and white, that just happens to contain elements of bot things? This is likely a distinction each individual person needs to make.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's actually in the 5e rules. None of them in the PHB or DMG are about NPCs to PC. All of them are PC to NPC and the designers confirmed that they are not supposed to be used on PCs.

Now, the DM can absolutely change that, but by default they aren't supposed to be used against PCs.

None of that counts as ironclad, just designer intent (and after publishing, really). And as you say, it's just default, which means only as much as any given GM wants it to mean.

 

[Maxperson]

But it isn't a large disruption in combat...? Where rolls are much more frequent and often occur rapid-fire?

It doesn't happen in combat. The players don't ask me if they can swing at the orc. They tell me. They don't ask if they can cast a spell. They tell me.

It's not the same as having to stop every few seconds to ask if it's okay to roll for this social thing or other. And it's doubly true because combat is already clunky with starts and stops for turns, decisions, etc. Social roleplay flows much more smoothly and is more prone to disruption.

 

[Maxperson]

None of that counts as ironclad, just designer intent (and after publishing, really). And as you say, it's just default, which means only as much as any given GM wants it to mean.

Find me any rule in the 5e DMG that talks about an NPC using a social skill on a PC. Just one.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Oooh boy. Gonna have to completely reject that penultimate sentence of this bit. Death is not a structural necessity. There are plenty of games, including some versions of D&D, that do not have character death. Consider Dragonlance stuff. Very much D&D--but the modules explicitly had rules against deaths for named characters prior to certain events happening. Hence death cannot be a necessity of any kind, structural or otherwise.

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.

Nah. I had a whole thread about this topic a long, long while back (couple years at least now). Death is not the only thing that achieves these goals. It is merely one way to do so. IME, it actually is not the best way, because the extreme severity means a significant number of players turtle up and disengage, becoming no-experimentation, no-risk, no-derring-do types, because they're afraid of having their participation taken away. And no, in my experience, it EMPHATICALLY is not effective to try shock therapy on these folks. Quite the opposite; that's the fastest way to drive them away from ever participating in TTRPGs ever again. Further, because death is simultaneously maximum severity and maximum impersonal-ness (impersonality? hmm), it doesn't really motivate players very well in my experience, other than scaring them off. If you actually want to motivate them, they need a reason to dare, not a reason to be scared of daring--which means other motives are actually a lot more effective. Again, all IME.

So with the very foundation of your argument challenged, it's hard to really respond to the rest. You're working off an assumption I find not only personally inapplicable, but objectively incorrect. There are, in fact, versions of specifically D&D, not just any TTRPG, that involve no-death or minimized-death rules, and yet they still hold together, they still have weighty decisions, they still have meaningful tension, and still have stakes both general and specific. My DW game still has plenty of edge and isn't flat, even though I have told my players that they will never be subject to character deaths that are all three of (1) random (=fluke of the dice, not the result of an intentional incredibly dangerous choice or of accepting one's fate), (2) permanent (=character is dead and isn't going to come back on their own e.g. Gandalf in LotR), and (3) irrevocable (=players will not have the ability to reverse the death in a reasonably short period of time by expending resources or promising something to a being that can do the job.) My players are still highly invested and indeed even the brand-new-to-TTRPG players care a lot about many things in the world, and have done rash or dangerous things to protect who and what they care about.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It doesn't happen in combat. The players don't ask me if they can swing at the orc. They tell me. They don't ask if they can cast a spell. They tell me.

They never ask if X thing would work? They never experiment? That's frankly shocking.

It's not the same as having to stop every few seconds to ask if it's okay to roll for this social thing or other.

If that isn't needed in the former, why would it be needed here?

And it's doubly true because combat is already clunky with starts and stops for turns, decisions, etc. Social roleplay flows much more smoothly and is more prone to disruption.

....

You have a very strange idea of what counts as "smooth" vs "clunky". I find social encounters never, and I genuinely mean never, are anywhere near as "smooth" as you describe. Ever.

 

[Maxperson]

They never ask if X thing would work? They never experiment? That's frankly shocking.

Nice Strawman there. I never said they didn't ask anything at all. I said they don't ask several times in a few minutes like would happen in a social setting.

If that isn't needed in the former, why would it be needed here?

I answered that already multiple times, and even spelled it out clearer in my last post.

You have a very strange idea of what counts as "smooth" vs "clunky". I find social encounters never, and I genuinely mean never, are anywhere near as "smooth" as you describe. Ever.

Maybe stop rolling so much and just roleplay. Social encounters go very smoothly if you don't stop to roll a lot or ask if you can do things every few seconds.

 

[pemerton]

I agree.

If you look at the post I was replying to, it cited realism as justification for forced persuasion of a PC. I was just dispelling realism as a defense of what I consider a bad practice. And showing why it wasn't realistic for someone to all of a sudden change their mind about deeply held belief in a single conversation. The entire game is an abstraction, I dont think "but it happens in real life" is a good argument for trampling on the intent and wishes of our players.

I think this is separate from the issue of rolling dice.

I'm sure in the history of human beings there have been cases where a single conversation changed someone's mind about a deeply held belief. Religious conversions would probably figure in here, but I'm sure there have been other examples too. I agree, though, that it's not common.

But that is about what counts as a permissible action declaration: just as "I punch through the wall with my fist" is probably not going to get off the ground in most RPGs (unless the character has superstrength etc) so "I change their mind about their core belief by saying 'Hey, howaboutit?'" is not going to get off the ground either (unless the would-be persuader has superhuman charisma or mesmerism or whatever).

But if the action declaration is "I spend the next several months in intense convesation, explaining why <whatever> is the better view to have", then rolling a die might be a perfectly good way to resolve that action, even though the process that is occurring in the fiction is nothing like a die roll. Just as we might resolve "I spend a month doing my best to make a whole through the wall" can be resolved by a die roll, even though the process of poking and digging and carrying away rubble is not much like a die roll.

I’m just kind of sitting there thinking, “I don’t really care about any of that. I just want to protect character intent.”

<snip>

All I was doing here was pointing out that overriding a PC’s core belief with a persuasion check feels like poor form to me.

I want to know more about the game, I guess.

In Classic Traveller (1977), the morale rules are presented expressly as applying to PCs (Book 1, p 33):

A party of adventurers (player or non-player) which sustains casualties in an encounter will ultimately break or rout if it does not achieve victory.

At the point in which 25% of a party are unconscious or killed, the party must begin throwing for morale. Average morale throw is 7+ to stand, or not break. Valiant parties may have a higher throw. D[ice ]M[odifier]s are allowed: +1 if the party is a military unit, +1 if a leader (leader expertise) is present, +1 if the leader has any tactical expertise; –2 if the leader is killed (for two combat rounds, and then until a new leader takes control), –2 if casualties exceed 50%.​

So the game rules simply rule out a player making it a core trait of their PC, I will never break or flee in battle.

In Pendragon, some of a PC's core beliefs are mechanised as Passions. These are not fully under the player's control. For instance, as the rules state (5.2 ed, p 93),

a character is almost certain, at some time, to receive a failed Passion roll in time of a crisis. This failure may cause an
immediate loss of 1 point in the associated Passion. Always ask the Gamemaster before you subtract the point, however (some circumstances may not warrant the reduction).​

And Passion rolls can dictate certain actions on the part of the PC, and the player does not always get to choose to make the roll. From p 91:

The Gamemaster may call for a Passion roll, possibly with a modifier for the particular situation. This roll is handled as any
other unopposed resolution (see Chapter 5), but uses the results found on Table 4.2: Standard Passion Results.

At other times the player may request a roll, with the Gamemaster’s approval. Remember that the Gamemaster has final word on the appropriateness of attempting to use a Passion for Inspiration. Players are warned that Passion rolls can be extremely risky as well as rewarding, for they may subject a knight to several unusual states of mind, including Disheartened, Melancholy, and Madness.​

These games are, in my view, as playable as conventional D&D, even though they don't give the player full control over who the character is and what they do.