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

[TwoSix]

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.

That certainly makes it sound like the “purpose of a role-playing game” is a bunch of in-character dialogue and thespianism; that might have been the conventional wisdom 25-30 years ago, but I think we’ve moved past that.

 

[Emerikol]

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.)

These terms are pretty foreign to me besides "sandbox" and since you are using it here I'm not sure it even means the same thing.

In my campaigns, I design the sandbox ahead of time, I create major NPCS with agendas that drive events over time inside the sandbox, and I let the PCs act & react however they feel like reacting. For example, a gnoll tribe may be plotting to destroy the local village. Will my group stop it? Maybe. Maybe not. If they don't stop it, then the gnolls will possibly destroy the village. That may affect the players indirectly. They have to travel farther to find a home base.

I strive for a living breathing world. That is verisimilitude.

 

[Emerikol]

That certainly makes it sound like the “purpose of a role-playing game” is a bunch of in-character dialogue and thespianism; that might have been the conventional wisdom 25-30 years ago, but I think we’ve moved past that.

I would argue if it doesn't happen it's not really roleplaying. What do you think playing a role is? In combat, my players will narrate their combat actions and then roll. I believe in many cases it would be better if the players just roleplayed and the DM rolled the rolls for reactions due to skills behind the screen.

 

[AlViking]

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.

You may have decided that D&D isn't a simulation game, that doesn't mean much.

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.

D&D draws a clear line - the DM controls the world, the player controls what their characters think and feel unless the character is affected by a supernatural effect. Obviously the character does not always control what they can physically do. Having disadvantage on your next attack is a physical limitation, not a mental one. It's not like they're forced to attack an ally. Perhaps the attack left you slightly off balance or temporarily made you slightly dizzy. It did not affect your beliefs or thought processes. You might as well say the rules are forcing character behavior because they can't move while grappled.

 

[AlViking]

That certainly makes it sound like the “purpose of a role-playing game” is a bunch of in-character dialogue and thespianism; that might have been the conventional wisdom 25-30 years ago, but I think we’ve moved past that.

I'll be gracious and assume that by "we've moved past that" you meant you and your group. Because otherwise it comes off as very presumptive of how everyone else plays and one-true-wayism while also being quite dismissive of someone else's preference.

The people I play with? I make allowances for people that aren't particularly articulate and just ask them what their points are while encouraging direct interaction. Most people get really into the back and forth dialog, it's a big part of our games. I still ask for rolls under certain circumstances but that's because it works for me. If someone else never touches the die during social encounters and that's what they like, good for them.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Quite fair; my issue is not that bad outcomes shouldn't be possible (I always endeavor to do the same). Rather, in the context of the preceding conversation, the principle given was some variation of "Don't take away the things that make the character matter to the player." I fear I don't remember the exact wording, so that's a complete paraphrase, not the original wording, but it gets to the same point.

I certainly grant that for some styles, e.g. "classic" ones, there isn't any particular thing, and having the character taken away is just an expected part of the experience. I would also say those classic styles are...not as commonly-played in "contemporary" gaming, because they don't appeal to the average contemporary gamer. For players of more contemporary tastes, rather than classic ones, there will usually be certain things that are very important to their investment. Where losing the character entirely would actually be less of a problem than losing some particular thing about said character. For example, perhaps a 5e Fighter who picks up calligrapher's tool proficiency and uses those tools to add new poems and illustrations to a book that's been in his family for three generations. To have said book just get casually burned up because (say) the character got hit by a fireball and that spell can set things on fire...sure, it would be a very small gain of verismilitude, but it would ruin an irreplaceable key element of the character's roleplay, for pretty light and transient reasons.

Now, obviously, this could theoretically be be abused if you have a player acting in bad faith, but as I have previously argued, if we are to assume GMs acting in good faith, then I expect a presumption of good faith from the player unless and until evidence suggests otherwise. It's a give and take; the GM gives those minor, incidental deflections away from absolutely perfect verisimilitudinous representation (such as "random fire spells won't burn your family heirloom book"), the player gives that such deflections will only apply to a few, limited, warranted things, and would be lost if the player actively does something to risk them (and presumably none of the items will have more than highly incidental mechanical significance.) Basically, if a player really cares about a "fluff" item that might be conceivably vulnerable, don't just willy-nilly let it go kablooey simply because it would give a very minor boost of verisimilitude; conversely, the player should understand that taking obvious stupid risks with a treasured item might result it in being destroyed.

Tit for tat. Respect given in both directions.

Or, if I may, consider: You play a Sorcerer. Your group went through some kind of planar adventure and interacted with a cousin of a rust monster that feeds on magic instead of metal, and the thing almost killed you in a fight, but you survived. The GM says, "Well, because it fed on your blood, you've lost all of your Sorcerer magic. Replace all of your Sorcerer levels with Rogue levels, unless you accept a Warlock pact from some empowering entity to fill the void--then replace the Sorcerer levels with Warlock levels instead." Would you find that a reasonable or appropriate thing for the GM to inflict on your character? Would you feel that something pretty essential to the character's nature had been rudely ripped away simply because the GM felt that that would be "more verisimilitudinous" than just having your character recover normally from their wounds?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

These terms are pretty foreign to me besides "sandbox" and since you are using it here I'm not sure it even means the same thing.

In my campaigns, I design the sandbox ahead of time, I create major NPCS with agendas that drive events over time inside the sandbox, and I let the PCs act & react however they feel like reacting. For example, a gnoll tribe may be plotting to destroy the local village. Will my group stop it? Maybe. Maybe not. If they don't stop it, then the gnolls will possibly destroy the village. That may affect the players indirectly. They have to travel farther to find a home base.

I strive for a living breathing world. That is verisimilitude.

I was replying to another poster (not sure if you can see this) and using their terms to build the response.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Player 1: "I just saw two guys playing Russian Roulette and the first one lost and is dead."
Player 2: "You can't use dead since that paints what happened as a negative and he understood the risk."
Player 1: "Why on earth would we have to call it something else just because it's a negative? The guy is dead."

You see the issue?

Non-magical compulsion is absolutely a loss of agency and it's not wrong to call it what it is. I also view loss of agency as a negative, because that's what I think it is. Here's the kicker, though, negatives aren't always bad. It depends on the people involved.

I won't play in a game where PC death isn't possible. PC death is a negative. If it happens to one of my characters, I'm bummed about it. However, as you say, I understood the risks and accept that as part of the game. Further, the risk of death adds enjoyable excitement to the game while I am playing it, and no risk of death would make the entire experience meaningless to me.

Some people don't want the risk of PC death to even be a possibility. It's too negative for those folks. That's how I am with non-magical compulsion taking away my agency. Yes it's a negative, but that doesn't mean it has to be a bad thing for you or those games that use it as a process of play.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I can't imagine why you are saying this, but I can't believe this is true.

D&D worships at the altar of the HP god.
Character death is very much part of the game. Many rules revolve around dying and death.

Has the game pushed the envelope further from perma-death over the years with hit point bloat, permanent level and ability drain, Revivify, death saves, save end mechanics removal of system shock, resurrection survival etc? Yes is the answer.

Threat of loss should be present, but as I mentioned much earlier in the thread, death is not the only form of loss, or even the most interesting.

What threat of loss? Item? Titles? Family/Friends/Animal Companions?
I'm not sure anyone is arguing what the most interesting form of loss is.

13th Age has an informal rule that PCs can only be killed by named villains. Sentinel Comics RPG heroes can't die at all without player permission. Both games hold together fine, and there's no reason to think D&D should be different.

Your argument is that game x and game y create these GAMIST safety features in their games against character death and you are asking why simulationists that value verisimilitude do not accept those rules for their games?

 

[Emerikol]

Quite fair; my issue is not that bad outcomes shouldn't be possible (I always endeavor to do the same). Rather, in the context of the preceding conversation, the principle given was some variation of "Don't take away the things that make the character matter to the player." I fear I don't remember the exact wording, so that's a complete paraphrase, not the original wording, but it gets to the same point.

I certainly grant that for some styles, e.g. "classic" ones, there isn't any particular thing, and having the character taken away is just an expected part of the experience. I would also say those classic styles are...not as commonly-played in "contemporary" gaming, because they don't appeal to the average contemporary gamer. For players of more contemporary tastes, rather than classic ones, there will usually be certain things that are very important to their investment. Where losing the character entirely would actually be less of a problem than losing some particular thing about said character. For example, perhaps a 5e Fighter who picks up calligrapher's tool proficiency and uses those tools to add new poems and illustrations to a book that's been in his family for three generations. To have said book just get casually burned up because (say) the character got hit by a fireball and that spell can set things on fire...sure, it would be a very small gain of verismilitude, but it would ruin an irreplaceable key element of the character's roleplay, for pretty light and transient reasons.

We might debate sizes of groups etc.. but I think it would be nonproductive. Let's just say there are diverse playstyles out there.

Now, obviously, this could theoretically be be abused if you have a player acting in bad faith, but as I have previously argued, if we are to assume GMs acting in good faith, then I expect a presumption of good faith from the player unless and until evidence suggests otherwise. It's a give and take; the GM gives those minor, incidental deflections away from absolutely perfect verisimilitudinous representation (such as "random fire spells won't burn your family heirloom book"), the player gives that such deflections will only apply to a few, limited, warranted things, and would be lost if the player actively does something to risk them (and presumably none of the items will have more than highly incidental mechanical significance.) Basically, if a player really cares about a "fluff" item that might be conceivably vulnerable, don't just willy-nilly let it go kablooey simply because it would give a very minor boost of verisimilitude; conversely, the player should understand that taking obvious stupid risks with a treasured item might result it in being destroyed.

This is another of our debates. Sadly, I don't think players on average are as likely to be working in good faith unless it's a well tried group of friends. Also the group is typically anywhere from 5 to 6 players (I've had 9 before -- too many). But again this doesn't really reflect much on our main discussion.

Your last example (see below) is a bit strained but the book one is a good one. Maybe if the player is new I find a way for the book to have survived. I then tell the player it was a one in a million long shot that the book survived and he should consider that going forward. If he keeps carrying the book on adventures, then he might lose it if the rolls are bad.

Tit for tat. Respect given in both directions.

Or, if I may, consider: You play a Sorcerer. Your group went through some kind of planar adventure and interacted with a cousin of a rust monster that feeds on magic instead of metal, and the thing almost killed you in a fight, but you survived. The GM says, "Well, because it fed on your blood, you've lost all of your Sorcerer magic. Replace all of your Sorcerer levels with Rogue levels, unless you accept a Warlock pact from some empowering entity to fill the void--then replace the Sorcerer levels with Warlock levels instead." Would you find that a reasonable or appropriate thing for the GM to inflict on your character? Would you feel that something pretty essential to the character's nature had been rudely ripped away simply because the GM felt that that would be "more verisimilitudinous" than just having your character recover normally from their wounds?

I don't think that would be acceptable nor would I consider it rules as written. I wouldn't play a game where a rust monster could take all magic away from a sorcerer. So I'd houserule it away if it was there. I would though allow for level drains or character death because that is up front a part of the game. I tell my group I play the monsters to the intelligence and ability that they would have in the world. That doesn't always mean to the best of my ability. In fact it rarely means that.