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

[Maxperson]

Did you read my original post?

Because it looks like you didn't read my original post. Where I specifically and explicitly said both things.

It's really irritating to get multiple "well AKSHULLY" responses when I already said every one of those "well AKSHULLY" things.

It can't be both. You can't have no death rules and then also death rules.

 

[Lanefan]

Again… sounds like a GM problem. Or maybe a combo of that player and GM.

This isn’t generally a problem in the games I’ve run or played in.

IMO it was a player problem, but a very very preventable one.

The player was simply taking what the game gave him, as was his right, even though the guidance suggests otherwise.

Easy means of prevention: do away entirely with social mechanics that both allow and encourage players to lead with "I roll [Perception-Insight-Intimidate-Bluff]". Without those mechanics, the player has no choice but to roleplay it through.

I think movies and novels are a good indicator here. I find in character dialogue to be a bit limiting, much like a movie… we don’t actually get into the characters’ heads.

Which is fine, as characters - like real people - should be allowed to at least try to hide their actual thoughts, motivations, etc. I don;t want to get into their heads, I want to see them as my own character sees them and respond-react accordingly.

Whereas with a novel, we can get their thoughts and feelings.

In part because in a novel the character can't really hide anything if the author wants it exposed. We as readers get to see the bits that aren't spoken out loud by the characters, in part because we're not being put in a position of having to ourselves react to this information.

I find a player thinking out loud about their reasoning to be more like a novel. Ideally, they do both… they think aloud as a player and then speak in character once they’ve decided.

Where I don't want any of that meta-info as a fellow player, as it butchers my ability to react truly in character. Yet again, the best equation is [player knowledge = character knowledge]. As the GM it might help inform me why the character does what it does, but then as GM I shouldn't have to care about that; my job is to react neutrally to whatever the character actually does without care for what's behind it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It can't be both. You can't have no death rules and then also death rules.

Tell me, then, what the Dragonlance modules do.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Yep. I don't think a fully narrative game is for me, but I'm absolutely willing to try one out. If I do, I'm not going to try and play like I would D&D. I'd play it as it's intended to be played. That way I can actually experience what it's like, and I'm not being a disruption to the other people at the table.

Lol. We aren't narrative, I have no real experience with playing narrative games. I'd be doing a massive disservice to that style I think. It's only what I've picked up from here, links provided by narrative players and some youtubes.
We've got a hybrid thing going on in a traditional D&D sandbox. There's a lot of GM decides still but we do our best to work with these gamist + narrative techniques in an attempt to better enjoy our hobby.

 

[Lanefan]

I would hope that when you describe your world, you at least try to make the descriptions a bit interesting and engaging. Unless your goal is to be as bland as possible.

I'll freely admit this as a personal failing: if-when I try to describe things interestingly and-or in detail, I tend to get so long-winded about it that everyone gets bored anyway.

And so, I've learned to stick to the quick and maybe-boring descriptions (or just read the boxed text) and let them ask questions if they want more detail.

Addressing the characters means staying in character and using their names. "Rime, you managed to nimbly leap out of the way of the dragon's breath; what do you do now?" versus "Faolyn, you didn't take any damage because of Evasion; you're next in the initiative order."

I'm completely on board with this one. Never use player names* unless it's completely out of character e.g. "Bill, grab me a beer while you're at the fridge, will ya? Thanks!"

* - unless you get stuck in the awful situation I once had where a player named her character after another player at the table. Yeah, that got messy fast.

If you follow the link, the move is described thusly: "Monsters are fantastic creatures with their own motivations (simple or complex). Give each monster details that bring it to life: smells, sights, sounds. Give each one enough to make it real, but don’t cry when it gets beat up or overthrown. That’s what player characters do!"

In other words, if your PCs encounter zombies, then don't just say "you see three zombies." Instead, spend a few seconds to talk about the stench of their rotting bodies as they lurch across the floor. Talk about the buzzing of the flies that are attracted to their shambling corpses. Things like that.

The first few times they meet zombies, I'll try to do that. Thereafter, it's just "you see three zombies" unless there's a new player joined in the meantime.

There are, fortunately, about eleventy gazillion random fantasy name generators online. I counted. But anyway, the text specifies NPCs with speaking rolls.

My problem isn't so much one of inventing NPC names, it's remembering them ten minutes later. I can't write and talk at the same time, and often by the time I think to note down the NPC's name - i.e., ideally, the next time I get a break - I've already forgotten it because play (and thus my train of thought) has moved on to other things.

If you're at "think dangerous" here's the actual quote: "Everything in the world is a target. You’re thinking like an evil overlord: no single life is worth anything and there is nothing sacrosanct. Everything can be put in danger, everything can be destroyed. Nothing you create is ever protected. Whenever your eye falls on something you’ve created, think how it can be put in danger, fall apart or crumble. The world changes. Without the characters’ intervention, it changes for the worse."

If you want good to always prevail, then it will--and the PCs are that force of goodness. If you want a game where life is usually good, except for the occasional rise of evil things that the PCs put down, that's also OK. Just leave spaces for the PCs to be heroes.

This makes the huge and not always accurate assumption that the PCs even want to be heroes.

For me, the world does what it does and the PCs might in aggregate make it better or worse or neither, depending.

Because nothing happens isn't acceptable. When the player fails a roll (6 or less) or looks to the GM, the GM makes a move, either soft or hard.

A soft move is "this is a thing that happens" while a hard move is "this is a thing that is happening to you right now."

A soft move can also be "this is a thing that's potentially going to happen", can't it? As in, a telegraph, or hint of future badness.

Highlighting a downside means things like, a PC has a criminal background and there are a lot of guards around who might recognize him. Or the PC cleric's church may not be too happy if the cleric hasn't been donating enough money to them.

Providing a tailored opportunity means things like, there's a rogue in the party, so sometimes the party will encounter locks to be picked. Or, there's a wizard in the party, so maybe they'll encounter a wizard NPC who can teach the PC a new spell.

I'd rather all these sort of things arise organically from play as they will - or not, depending how the fiction develops - rather than be somehow forced or nudged or mandated by the game system.

I take it as a given that sometimes they're just going to have the wrong characters for the job e.g. someone happens to bring a Thief into an adventure where there's nothing but combat (Thieves aren't great warriors in my game) and nary a trap or lock to be found.

 

[pemerton]

Gotta say, this thread is going to make for an incredible resource for an academic paper on the fragility of the Gamer Personality(tm) where people absolutely freak out at the mere possibility that someone may tell them what to do. If you (generic you) don't want a roleplaying game rulebook to tell you what to do, why are you using it? You can just do freeform roleplay whether by text or voice, it's fun and will probably satisfy you more.

Right.

As some internet rando once said,

if all your formal rules do is structure your group's ongoing agreement about what happens in the game, they are a) interchangeable with any other rpg rules out there, and b) probably a waste of your attention. Live negotiation and honest collaboration are almost certainly better. , , ,

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of an rpg's rules is to create the unwelcome and the unwanted in the game's fiction. The reason to play by rules is because you want the unwelcome and the unwanted - you want things that no vigorous creative agreement would ever create. And it's not that you want one person's wanted, welcome vision to win out over another's . . . No, what you want are outcomes that upset every single person at the table. You want things that if you hadn't agreed to abide by the rules' results, you would reject.

If you don't want that . . . then live negotiation and honest collaboration are a) just as good as, and b) a lot more flexible and robust than, whatever formal rules you'd use otherwise.​

 

[Lanefan]

Tell me, then, what the Dragonlance modules do.

They cause me to put them back on the shelf and pull out something different to run.

 

[pemerton]

Wait. So it's a moral conflict to go into a territory that you have a treaty not to enter or else not, but you don't see moral conflict between murdering someone and letting him go at risk to yourself? Or between committing a crime to access the lord and risking failure by trying legal means?

That's a weird moral line.

I'm not seeing rising conflict across a moral line.

Here is my example, from upthread:

Here's an example of conflict that is across a moral line: do we go overland, violating the ancient treaty never to enter <their lands>, or through the underdark, even though it is prophesied that one of our number will die should we attempt such a journey?

I haven't spelled out any rising conflict, but I think it's fairly clear how rising conflict across a moral line is implicit in this situation: violation of a treaty, forfeiting our honour, etc; or the prophecy hanging over us like Damocles's sword, making each choice a potential self-sacrifice.

Where's the rising conflict in your example? For instance, suppose that the PCs kill the prisoners, where - in the typical D&D module, which was the context of your reply to me - is the rising conflict?

I'm not saying that there can't be rising conflict across a moral line involving the treatment of prisoners - I've seen it. But I didn't get it out of typical D&D modules. And if the D&D table also uses GM-adjudicated alignment, then it is not player-authored conflict.

 

[pemerton]

Lol. We aren't narrative, I have no real experience with playing narrative games. I'd be doing a massive disservice to that style I think. It's only what I've picked up from here, links provided by narrative players and some youtubes.
We've got a hybrid thing going on in a traditional D&D sandbox. There's a lot of GM decides still but we do our best to work with these gamist + narrative techniques in an attempt to better enjoy our hobby.

For what it's worth - maybe not much - your play seems to me to include narrativist inclinations/tendencies, using the 5e D&D chassis (with a few adaptations/additions) for that purpose.

 

[hawkeyefan]

IMO it was a player problem, but a very very preventable one.

The player was simply taking what the game gave him, as was his right, even though the guidance suggests otherwise.

Easy means of prevention: do away entirely with social mechanics that both allow and encourage players to lead with "I roll [Perception-Insight-Intimidate-Bluff]". Without those mechanics, the player has no choice but to roleplay it through.

I’m not saying that I’ve never seen this. I’m just saying that it’s easily addressed without abandoning what is otherwise an interesting portion of the game.

Just “no rolls made before the GM calls for a roll count” or similar pretty much gets the job done. Show the player how others are rewarded for describing their approach and playing the scene out… give them lower DCs. Make him roll with disadvantage.

Our group fixed this tendency for players to declare rolls and make them before prompted.

Which is fine, as characters - like real people - should be allowed to at least try to hide their actual thoughts, motivations, etc. I don;t want to get into their heads, I want to see them as my own character sees them and respond-react accordingly.
In part because in a novel the character can't really hide anything if the author wants it exposed. We as readers get to see the bits that aren't spoken out loud by the characters, in part because we're not being put in a position of having to ourselves react to this information.

Yeah, I want to get into their heads. I want to experience the other characters (and my own, to some extent) as an audience would. I want to know more about them.

Where I don't want any of that meta-info as a fellow player, as it butchers my ability to react truly in character.

This gets said often, but I don’t find it’s the case. Does it really “butcher” your ability to react in character? You can pretend one thing but not another?

Yet again, the best equation is [player knowledge = character knowledge]. As the GM it might help inform me why the character does what it does, but then as GM I shouldn't have to care about that; my job is to react neutrally to whatever the character actually does without care for what's behind it.

Nah, players can separate what their character knows and doesn’t know. It’s really not that hard.