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

[Micah Sweet]

I never said otherwise. I have, in fact, repeatedly used DL modules as my example of the most maximally railroaded style of D&D one could possibly play, bordering on "having scripted lines for every player".

I am solely using them as disproof of the claim that the everpresent threat of death--even if it is not "constantly imminent danger of death"--is a "structural necessity" for D&D.

So you're picking nits by purposefully using a ridiculous, extreme example? Not the best take unless you're just trying to score points, IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Trying to force someone who is risk-averse to become risk-tolerant or even risk-seeking is, frankly, rude as hell and that exact attitude is one of the reasons why I don't have a lot of sympathy for OSR fans who complain about people ignoring their preferences and desires. Their approaches frequently come with baked in hostility toward any view other than their own: you MUST be risk-tolerant (or, preferably, risk-seeking), or else the game Just Isn't For You, Go Play Something Else. (Often with quite a bit more judgmental-ness than that!)

And yet the degree of hostility you're presenting right now isn't IMO being thrown back at your preferences.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And yet the degree of hostility you're presenting right now isn't IMO being thrown back at your preferences.

I very much beg to differ, but I don't think such a discussion is productive in any way.

 

[Enrahim]

No, I read them quite thoroughly.

So did I - and yet again with your comments for reference. And you had also my post to misunderstand.

 

[Enrahim]

Perhaps, when a person speaks in the generic, they aren't making a personal attack against you.

If I make a "generic" remark that everyone that eat cereal for breakfast are morons, and you happen to eat cereals for breakfast - how is that not a personal attack against you?

 

[Lanefan]

I never said otherwise. I have, in fact, repeatedly used DL modules as my example of the most maximally railroaded style of D&D one could possibly play, bordering on "having scripted lines for every player".

I am solely using them as disproof of the claim that the everpresent threat of death--even if it is not "constantly imminent danger of death"--is a "structural necessity" for D&D.

Still means you're using what we agree to be bad D&D to disprove your claim, thus putting the disproof on a shaky footing.

And a threat isn't a threat unless a) you're prepared to follow through on it and b) the recipient(s) of said threat know you're prepared to follow through. Otherwise it's no more than a bluff, and sooner or later it's inevitable that bluff will be called.

Not possible. I would need to kill their characters off before they are created.

Is it Traveller that lets you kill 'em off during character creation? I don't know of any other games that have this.

More importantly, this is precisely the "shock therapy" I already addressed upthread. For some players (IMO and IME a sizable minority, but a minority nonetheless), doing this is great, because then they know death is a real threat and thus don't need to be reminded but will still keep it in mind.

But for other players--IMO and IME a slim majority--it does exactly the opposite of what you want. Instead of enhancing their motivation, this deadens it.

I think you've got the minority-majority very backwards here, but OK; let's carry on.

They see that any investment they might put in not only can but will be ripped away from them suddenly, without warning, without anything they could've done to stop it. So why bother? Or, alternatively, if they are going to bother, they're going to take immense pains to ensure, as much as humanly possible, that those risks cannot happen. Hence, they will avoid all creative or risky endeavors, because creativity is often dangerous and risk is always dangerous. They'll veto any group plans that would risk death, because they don't want their participation in play to be ripped away because they tried to get a tiny, temporary advantage; it's a simple cost-risk-benefit analysis, the benefit is small, temporary, and not guaranteed to be useful, the risk is (as they see it) both extremely high in likelihood and extremely high in potential loss, and the costs are often high for attempting, but the opportunity cost of not attempting is low. So they take the safest route each and every time.

Which isn't entirely bad in one respect: it's what wise characters would probably do in the fiction as well if they've a reasonable sense of self-preservation.

If they're outnumbered by the risk-neutral or even risk-seeking players, these risk-averse players will turtle up more and more and more, often building lingering resentment because they feel their preferences, their participation, are valued less by their supposed companions than See Big Number Happen and Experience Crazy Stuff even if that crazy stuff ends up being upsetting (to the risk-averse players) rather than enthralling. And the reverse happens if the risk-tolerant and risk-seeking players are outnumbered by risk-averse ones; the risk-tolerant will become more and more annoyed at the group avoiding stuff that probably could succeed but which has a risk of serious problems, while the risk-seeking will build up that same resentment as before, finding the majority stuffy and boring and unwilling to have fun.

Imbalance in risk tolerance at the table is a bad thing, on this we agree. That said...

Trying to force someone who is risk-averse to become risk-tolerant or even risk-seeking is, frankly, rude as hell

In real life, I somewhat agree.

But as this is a fictional game we're talking about, in that context I don't agree. There's some players who really could use a big heapin' helpin' of Leroy Jenkins in their play, and I'll keep encouraging them in that direction at every opportunity.

and that exact attitude is one of the reasons why I don't have a lot of sympathy for OSR fans who complain about people ignoring their preferences and desires. Their approaches frequently come with baked in hostility toward any view other than their own: you MUST be risk-tolerant (or, preferably, risk-seeking), or else the game Just Isn't For You, Go Play Something Else. (Often with quite a bit more judgmental-ness than that!)

If you want a high-risk high-reward game (which is how I'd like the game to be) it helps if you either have or can develop risk-tolerant or risk-seeking people to play it. A very simple means of doing this is to put it in big bold writing right up front in the PH: This game is hard on its characters. They will die. They will suffer losses. With that, the player base will self-select and away we go.

Low-risk low-reward (i.e the direction 5e has taken) might be fine for some, but it's also bland and boring. I mean, look at all the talk in this thread about how to generate interest and-or excitement for the players and their characters and the answer's been right there all along: raise the risk level.

With this, though, some DMs will have to rein in their impatience: players will naturally seek out the safer option and often this involves lots of planning and in-fiction preparation, which slows play down.

 

[Hussar]

If you are walking across a desert known to have spots of quicksand and you accept that risk, you are still sinking in quicksand if you found yourself in it. And it's still a negative.

If my character is in the desert, unless I'm next to an oasis, if there's quicksand in that desert, I'm calling shenanigans. Quicksand doesn't form in the desert. It can't.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

This one's always been a problem. A simple, if perhaps inelegant, houserule solution: on a point-blank shot where the shooter has time to line up the shot and take good aim (thus not in the heat of combat) any hit prompts a save-or-die from the target. On a made save, damage accrues as normal. On a failed save, hit points are bypassed and the target dies.

 

[Lanefan]

But obviously there is a choice to avoid the sort of non-simulationist play that hit points produce. Dozens upon dozens of RPGs show how this can be done.

And compared to the size of the overall hobby the player-base of those dozens and dozens of games adds up to a rounding error, which tells me that most of the sim-types or wannabe sim-types in the hobby are willing to accept a few necessary evils in their games.

 

[Lanefan]

If my character is in the desert, unless I'm next to an oasis, if there's quicksand in that desert, I'm calling shenanigans. Quicksand doesn't form in the desert. It can't.

While you're technically correct here, quicksand or similar as a hazard in deserts is a trope as old as time and probably isn't going away anytime soon.