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

[Lanefan]

Obviously the universe doesn't.

But some people go through life without losing their precious stuff, so it's not as if it would be unrealistic for that to happen in the case of the PC.

Those would be the people who don't go out in the field looking to save captive princes from fire-breathing dragons or raid the trap-filled tombs of Antioch.

The people who do do these things would, one would think, leave their precious possessions at home or in safekeeping somewhere, unless said possessions were demonstrably useful in the field.

 

[Lanefan]

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."

The root goal being rolled for was to catch the assassin. The roll(s) failed, and the assassin was not caught. Therefore, result and roll match.

That you got a bit of his cloak is what I would call "fail with extras". You failed the root task but got something directly related as a (potential) side benefit.

Contrast this with what I'd see as partial success or success with complications: you rolled success and caught him, but in so doing one of the PCs got nicked and now has a fairly serious poison issue to deal with and it needs to be dealt with right now.

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.

Depends what it started as. If it started as black and the white was added, it's the former. Flip that, it's the latter.

Also, because of the binary success-fail nature required by the root-task roll you can't actually get to A7A7A7 because that is neither success nor failure; instead it hovers on the razor's edge between both, like a flipped coin landing on its edge. For purposes of resolution either A7A7A6 or A7A7A8 is as close as you can get to this "tie" position.

 

[Lanefan]

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

They probably experiment by doing, not asking.

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.

Could that be because you're inserting mechanics into them on a regular basis and thus disrupting their flow?

Free-form roleplay of social encounters is often* as smooth as just talking to friends in the pub, except the in-fiction topics are probably considerably more important and-or the stakes are higher.

* - unless playing online, where conversation of any kind is stilted and butchered due to the way the tech works.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that when it comes to player loss of control of character… whether as a result of some kind of supernatural effect like magic or dragon fear or mind control, or via more mundane means like persuasion or strong emotion or whatever… is something that each game handles in its own way.

I agree with folks who are saying they’d be put off by having non-magical compulsion of any kind in D&D. Not because it can’t be done, but because by default it’s not a part of D&D (with perhaps a few minor exceptions). I think if a GM wanted to incorporate this into D&D, they need to communicate this to the players and set expectations.

Having said that, I don’t think that it’s impossible to do this in D&D if one wanted to.

I agree it's not impossible. In fact, it would be pretty easy to implement; far easier than a lot of other kitbashes I've done.

The more important question is whether it's desirable to add in these sort of mechanics (or expand them such that they work on PCs just like they do on NPCs). I'm really not sure it is, for a whole laundry list of reasons, and therefore despite it being an easy kitbash it's not one I'm going to do.

If a game does include such mechanics, I think it’s too simplistic to describe it as a loss of player agency. That criticism is too simplistic. It depends on context. If it’s a part of the game, and loss of control is some form of consequence or drawback, it’s an understood risk. Positioning it as a loss of agency just paints the entire practice as negative… and that’s not really the case.

Loss of agency is just one issue.

The other big one: ever since 3e introduced social skills, my concern (borne out all too often in our 3e games) is that players will want to skip the free-roleplay piece and jump straight to the roll; which seems to rather defeat the purpose of a role-playing game.

 

[Hussar]

Sort of. In that yes, because 5e is doesn't require targets to act in specific ways and yes, there's the implication that something has happened because it's called "Vex" and not "Cause Disadvantage On Target's Next Attack", but no, it's not mind control and it doesn't force the PC or NPC to act in any particular way or even narrate in any particular way.

Of course it doesn't. D&D never does because, as we've established, D&D isn't a simulation game. The mechanics are always divorced from the narrative. You could choose to narrate this effect any way that the table finds acceptable and that's groovy. The mechanics couldn't care less.

So, the notion of "mind contrl" basically goes out the window because D&D effects most certainly can force narratives on the players (not specific narratives, but, SOME sort of narrative) without any magic being used. You have disadvantage on your next attack because you were successfully attacked by someone using a specific kind of weapon. That is forcing a narrative on your character. That is forcing your character to behave in a manner you didn't choose, all without magic.

 

[Enrahim]

Another possible insight. I will here look at 3 semi-fictious extreme styles of play I am going to shorthand railroady (RRY), sandboxy(SBY) and nary(NY). In all of these playstyles GM has the ultimate responsibility for framing scenes.

In RRY play, the GM don't care about player input at all, but are free to frame scenes according to their own grand vision.
In SBY play the players are responsible to explicitely indicate what their characters are after here and now trough action and intent descriptions. The GM is obligated to take this into consideration when framing the scene.
In NY play the players are responsible to communicate clearly what is important for and about their characters trough character descriptions and other "flags". The GM is obligated to take this into account when framing the scene.

Let us look at a few of the concepts we have been looking at in this thread. Be a fan of the characters are an essential tenet of NY, as that neatly summarises the last GM obligation. However it serve no scene framing purpose in RRY play. For SBY it seem like innefficient/unneccessary advice, as the players are supposed to be explicit about their desires for the new scene trough their actions. The nature of the characters that the fandom is fixated on is not supposed to be taken into account.

For the players to make the character's life not boring also looks different in terms of scene framing. For NY, this involve making sure that the implicit signals about who the character is are inspiering the GM to frame not-boring scenes for that character. In RRY play this advice hardly make sense, as the players are in no position to affect the scene framing at all. In SBY play however, for players to make their life not boring in terms of scene framing would require them to indicate not boring actions and intent. This can make perfect sense, but will get expressed very differently in SBY play than in NY play.

Finally, all styles of play want to prevent a failed roll from stalling the game - that is after a failure there should (still) be an interesting scene. A technique to assure this is that the GM bakes a reframing of the scene into the failure narration, making sure that reframed scene is interesting. This technique works fine for NY and RRY play. However it do not work for SBY play in general, as the GM do not have enough information to frame the scene according to their obligation. The players need to be given a chance to explixitely state an action and intent as input to the new framing for the GM to follow their SBY obligation.

I hope this framing can give a new perspective into what I think have been a core difficulty in this conversation - seeing how various techniques interact wildely differently with different types of play. Even if the types of play described above is extremes, I think there are relevant things to learn also for more realistic play situations.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Another possible insight. I will here look at 3 semi-fictious extreme styles of play I am going to shorthand railroady (RRY), sandboxy(SBY) and nary(NY). In all of these playstyles GM has the ultimate responsibility for framing scenes.

In RRY play, the GM don't care about player input at all, but are free to frame scenes according to their own grand vision.
In SBY play the players are responsible to explicitely indicate what their characters are after here and now trough action and intent descriptions. The GM is obligated to take this into consideration when framing the scene.
In NY play the players are responsible to communicate clearly what is important for and about their characters trough character descriptions and other "flags". The GM is obligated to take this into account when framing the scene.

Let us look at a few of the concepts we have been looking at in this thread. Be a fan of the characters are an essential tenet of NY, as that neatly summarises the last GM obligation. However it serve no scene framing purpose in RRY play. For SBY it seem like innefficient/unneccessary advice, as the players are supposed to be explicit about their desires for the new scene trough their actions. The nature of the characters that the fandom is fixated on is not supposed to be taken into account.

For the players to make the character's life not boring also looks different in terms of scene framing. For NY, this involve making sure that the implicit signals about who the character is are inspiering the GM to frame not-boring scenes for that character. In RRY play this advice hardly make sense, as the players are in no position to affect the scene framing at all. In SBY play however, for players to make their life not boring in terms of scene framing would require them to indicate not boring actions and intent. This can make perfect sense, but will get expressed very differently in SBY play than in NY play.

Finally, all styles of play want to prevent a failed roll from stalling the game - that is after a failure there should (still) be an interesting scene. A technique to assure this is that the GM bakes a reframing of the scene into the failure narration, making sure that reframed scene is interesting. This technique works fine for NY and RRY play. However it do not work for SBY play in general, as the GM do not have enough information to frame the scene according to their obligation. The players need to be given a chance to explixitely state an action and intent as input to the new framing for the GM to follow their SBY obligation.

I hope this framing can give a new perspective into what I think have been a core difficulty in this conversation - seeing how various techniques interact wildely differently with different types of play. Even if the types of play described above is extremes, I think there are relevant things to learn also for more realistic play situations.

It's an interesting analysis, but it feels like there really isn't much difference between NY and SBY (except for one I'll address below). That is, the only difference I can see is that, in SBY, the players have a more overt responsibility to be as proactive as possible, while NY they should still be proactive, but not being all-proactive all the time is fine. In pretty much every other sense, though, your analysis seems to put the two very close to one another. Basically, their only difference is the degree to which the players need to be "taking the lead" in terms of what matters and where the action "goes".

Conversely, RRY seems to be distinctly different from both of the other two at almost every turn, except that very last one...which I'm not entirely sold on?

That is, there is no need to "reframe" anything at all in the RRY approach. The GM just declares what they wish to declare; the players are simply along for the ride regardless of what the rolls say. In NY, it's necessary, and in SBY, it's simply a greater challenge because, as before, the players are required to furnish more than a minimum amount of information. They need to be pretty proactive, as before; it is possible for the GM to struggle if the players simply aren't giving them enough to work with, but far from guaranteed. Hence, it's not that the technique doesn't work, it's that the technique doesn't work for a GM acting autonomously.

And I think that's a pretty big kicker here. In both NY and SBY, the GM cannot act entirely autonomously. The only meaningful difference between NY and SBY is that sometimes the GM can act autonomously in NY, but she is nearly incapable of acting autonomously in the most extreme versions of SBY. In RRY, the GM not only can act entirely autonomously, they always act autonomously.

That's a pretty big difference, and shows how NY is much closer to SBY than to RRY. In NY, it might be the case that the GM can act autonomously, but it's not guaranteed to be possible--some of the time, they won't be able to. In SBY, it's rare to nonexistent that the GM can act autonomously--so both have a presumption, unless proven otherwise, that autonomous GM action is not guaranteed. RRY has autonomous GM action not only guaranteed, but outright enforced, all the time.

Can we come up with two additional methods that would fit into the missing spots? That is, it seems to me this reveals a pretty major gap: there should be a #Y where autonomous GM action is always possible but never required (the exact midpoint between SBY and RRY), and a separate $Y where the natural state is the GM acting autonomously but it isn't guaranteed that they will.

Or, in more tabular form:

RRY : GM functionally always acts autonomously, barring extremely rare exceptions
$Y : GM is presumed to act autonomously, but might decline to at times
#Y : GM always can act autonomously, but never has to; no presumed bias either way
NY: GM might be able to act autonomously, but is never guaranteed to be able to
SBY: GM functionally can't act autonomously, barring extremely rare exceptions

For me, I find that the vast majority of D&D games that bill themselves as "sandbox" games are closer to NY, or (occasionally) #Y, whever we choose to call it. Games like pure no-myth PbtA or Ironsworn are full-throated SBY, especially the latter, since it doesn't actually need to have a GM at all. Further, most games that are railroad-y are $Y, not RRY; it's actually pretty rare to get something as utterly extreme as RRY (hence my use of "Dragonlance-style" etc. as my term for this sort of thing, as that's one of the rare places where D&D goes so far as to assign individual characters and even spoken lines to specific players.)

 

[AnotherGuy]

Do you believe in different rules for NPCs and PCs?

In 5e different rules exist already in character creation.

 

[CreamCloud0]

does anyone have any examples they could bring to the discussion of how social mechanics are implemented in some games other than DnD? i'm seems they manage to not make it mind control in other systems, or at least i never hear complaints of it being so...

 

[Emerikol]

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?

Well here is the situation...
1. If I have gotten in this situation then I've failed to vet my players.
2. The answer is yes and no depending on the issue but I suppose if I take it as asking is there ANY scenario here I would say yes then yes. I will say that in 1e players lost magic items all the time but no one seemed to think it was game destroying. They lost levels too. They also died and had to roll up a new character. So some of this thinking comes out of the type of game you are playing. To me without risk of a bad outcome for the CHARACTER the game isn't nearly as fun.
3. I'm far more gamist in how I play though so that is not a secret I keep. The group collaborates to defeat common enemies and those enemies will try to kill them. I'm not crafting an epic story UNLESS it emerges naturally and to me those that emerge naturally are genuine and for me treasured moments. Prep, tactics, etc... are essential parts of the game. Groups that just run into the room at low levels and don't use terrain ot their advantage inevitably die.