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

[Lanefan]

Yes.

Meaning, the idea that the everpresent threat of death is a "structural necessity" for something to be "D&D" in the first place does not compute when Dragonlance has clearly shown that this isn't a necessity.

The Dragonlance DL1-12 module series might just be the railroadiest adventure path ever printed so I'm not sure I'd want to hang my hat on it as a good example of how to do...well, anything, really.

My entire argument was simply against this claim that the game (a) stops being D&D and (b) loses all stakes/tension/etc. if death is in any way not a "structural" part of the experience. It doesn't have to be. Yes, many playstyles strongly emphasize it. Yes, it remains part of the rules (though to varying degrees! Consider how a lot of folks feel about death saves.) But it is not a necessity, structural or otherwise.

Even if you don't want actual character death on the table, it's still worth having a real threat of character death on the table.

And the best way to do this IMO is to in fact kill off a few characters in the early going before their players get too attached to them; this shows the threat is real and that you're not bluffing, and after that you can back down if you like. Even if you never kill another one, the threat's still there and the players probably aren't about to call your bluff.

 

[Lanefan]

If you accept hit points while wanting simulationist mechanics as a general principle, it makes it very hard for us, as outsiders to your perspective, to anticipate what mechanics will trip your sim sensors.

Even the simmiest of sim types have to accept that the abstractions required to make the game playable end up producing some necessary evils. Hit points are the poster child for this.

The main thing is that where there's a choice, take the sim path.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except that a reason you don't like narrative games is something that has been a part of D&D forever. Like, literally since it stopped being purely a wargame. So why is it that you're fine with narrative triggers in D&D but not in other games? The only actual difference is that they're labeled as narrative triggers in PbtA and not in D&D.

Please stop trying to trick people into liking narrative games. Is that kind of recruiting really necessary? Why can't you just accept people's personal feelings as they're stated?

 

[Enrahim]

If you have bad guys who do bad guy things, and those things actually cause harm if they're not stopped, then you are doing exactly what Think Dangerous says to do.

Think dangerous doesn't describe what to do, it describe what to *think *. Yes the actual text, not just the heading.

 

[Enrahim]

The Dragonlance DL1-12 module series might just be the railroadiest adventure path ever printed so I'm not sure I'd want to hang my hat on it as a good example of how to do...well, anything, really.

Even if you don't want actual character death on the table, it's still worth having a real threat of character death on the table.

And the best way to do this IMO is to in fact kill off a few characters in the early going before their players get too attached to them; this shows the threat is real and that you're not bluffing, and after that you can back down if you like. Even if you never kill another one, the threat's still there and the players probably aren't about to call your bluff.

Not sure. Gloomhaven manage to be pretty tense without character death being on the table at all.. Respawn mechanics is everywhere in the world of MMORPGs. I do not think threat of death is essential to the D&D experience. It might be essential to a particular sub-playstyle.

 

[Enrahim]

Um, combat has an explicit fictional trigger in D&D. That trigger is some in-game event that causes the PC or NPC to want to attack, followed by that PC or NPC saying "I attack."

In fact, tons of stuff in D&D has an explicit fictional trigger. If the party encounters a locked door and the rogue says "I pick the lock," that triggers you to use the rules for lockpicking. If the PC threatens a prisoner for information, that triggers you to use the rules for intimidating people.

Actually not. There is the middleman of the DM. This might seem like a formality, but it is indeed essential to the experience. If the thief picks the lock it is not the rules that say a thief tools check should be used. It is the DM that looks at the situation, and decides that in this case they want a thief tools check to be used to resolve the situation.

There might be groups that effectively bind the DM to call the roll DW style. But I think it is more common to happily accept the DM handwaving the thief tools roll because it will succeed eventually, or call for a stealth roll instead as that seem more important concern, or call for a reflex save to avoid the trap triggered by touching the lock, or call for a sleight of hand as that is more approperiate for the spesific type of lock.

This is different from fictional trigger.

 

[AlViking]

Think dangerous doesn't describe what to do, it describe what to *think *. Yes the actual text, not just the heading.

Despite my better judgement, I would just point out that this is just one example where the rules read like an instruction manual than a toolbox of rules to me (bold added).

Think dangerous​

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​

Since I run a sandbox campaign the world exists outside of the characters. Bad things may happen, good things may happen, completely neutral things may happen and would continue to happen without the intervention of the characters. The world does not revolve around the characters and if they fail, they fail. The world ticks on. The characters may make the world a better place, at least in the short term, they may just decide to ignore that looming evil and head off into parts unknown. In other people's games the characters could be aiming to be the evil overlords.

I don't think in terms of setting up the game to make the world worse unless the characters intervene, I think of what the various factions want and how they interact. Quite frequently if the characters don't intervene the status quo will just continue on. The slavers may still kidnap people off the street, but they aren't kidnapping any more than they used to, it doesn't get worse because the characters didn't intervene. Or perhaps someone else takes out the slavers but at a higher cost than if the characters had done it.

Obviously I could ignore all the rules I don't like, all the restrictions I don't want, don't respond with strong and soft moves because I want to think through the repercussions and reactions instead of following a prescribed level of response, but at a certain point why am I even using this game in the first place? Don't even get me started on things like Discern Realities or why call an attack "Hack and Slash" or any number of other things.

Despite what I just said, I don't think it's a bad game and I'm sure that for some people it's the cat's meow. It's just not the game for me.

 

[pemerton]

"But the hit points!" is a strawman.

Not for the many 1000s of RPGers who adopted RPGs that were deliberately designed to eschew the non-simulationist elements of classic D&D (thing like hp, saving throws, class + level, etc).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not for the many 1000s of RPGers who adopted RPGs that were deliberately designed to eschew the non-simulationist elements of classic D&D (thing like hp, saving throws, class + level, etc).

Well I'm sorry, but my crew doesn't want to learn Rolemaster.

Still a sim fan, somehow.

 

[pemerton]

I've spent some time trying to get to grips with the hidden design principles actually at play here. Mostly I think it comes down to "don't mess with forward causality of decision->action->resolution" and "don't separate character/player resources." This thread has me considering another principle "don't introduce new information through resolution."

I think that about covers all the cook/lock etc. swirl. You can reveal hidden information during resolution, and characters (GM or PC) can introduce new information during action declaration, but resolution can only enact changes to the known board through existing known rules structures.

I feel pretty good about that, because it answers the "realism" question. Calls for "realism" are best understood as appeals to use a relatively knowable common knowledge ruleset in cases where the rules are undefined.

To me, it seems that your criteria are routinely violated in everyday RPGing.

I've already pointed out, in this thread, that D&D combat resolution violates forward causality in at least two ways:

(i) the turn-by-turn resolution (eg a person who takes cover later in the fiction but earlier in the mechanical sequence of resolution gets the benefit of that cover against an attack that occurs earlier in the fiction but later in the mechanical sequence of resolution);

(ii) whether or not person who is in a fight dodges, or falls for a feint, isn't really known until the damage are rolled and the overall effect of that hp loss is known.​

These are both well-known phenomena. They underlie the tendency, found in RPGs like RQ, RM, GURPS, HARP, Burning Wheel, etc to move towards simultaneous resolution, to factor in a dodge value or resolution process, to use hit location, etc.

Hit points also separate character and player resources, in that a player can know they are (for instance) unable to be shot to death by three crossbow-armed militia members (because their PC has 50 hp left), whereas the character can't know that none of those crossbow bolts can kill them.

And as I've also pointed out upthread, it's routine to introduce new information through resolution: the roll of a hit against a PC is narrated as the character stumbling over a stone on the ground; a failed climbing check is narrated as some rock being slippery or crumbly or a clump of grass pulling away; etc.

The first two issues are typically dealt with by distorting the fiction: the game participants act as if the fiction itself is a "stop motion" situation; and the fiction of injury and healing is treated as if it actually involves "shaving off" a person's hit points, like chipping away at a concrete block.

I don't have such a strong intuition about the third, but one way is just to narrate the character as lacking the physical prowess or failing in their climbing technique.