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

[pemerton]

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.

But they're not necessary. That's the point!

 

[AlViking]

But they're not necessary. That's the point!

The point seems to be that you don't personally care for them.

 

[pemerton]

Everything in combat happens in world, represents in-world events.

So why does everyone stand around while others act, according to the repeated ticking of some weird 6-second metronome?

 

[pemerton]

The point seems to be that you don't personally care for them.

I haven't said anything about whether or not I care for them. I'm saying that they're not simulationist. The action economy in D&D, the turn-by-turn initiative system, hit points - none of them represents or models or stands in for any in-game process.

Why did the character fall? Because it was uncertain whether or not they could climb the cliff. When there's uncertainty the DM sets a target DC. Because that's how abstraction works.

This isn't "diegetic". It's you reading the result of a die roll back into the fiction.

 

[AlViking]

So why does everyone stand around while others act, according to the repeated ticking of some weird 6-second metronome?

Because it's an abstraction of simultaneous combat in order to simplify to the point of being playable.

 

[AlViking]

...
This isn't "diegetic". It's you reading the result of a die roll back into the fiction.

In other words it's not diegetic because you don't like it. By your definition no complex system could ever be simulated because we're not actually doing it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I never said it was bad D&D. Far from it. I consider it D&D--without quality qualifier. It simply is. Whether you like that it is or not is irrelevant. We cannot deny that the Dragonlance modules are D&D; we cannot pretend that their approach was somehow utterly unacceptable to anyone who played; in fact, we can't even deny that it had a long-term impact on the hobby, because it one million percent DID, just (generally) not in that specific area of "scripted to the point of almost being a theatrical performance".

And because we cannot deny those things, it isn't the case that death is a necessity, structural or otherwise, to being "D&D".

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.

I don't think threats are the only, or even best, way to motivate people. I find that persuading them to care about something is dramatically more motivating. Fear simply makes people run. That's what it's for; fight-or-flight, after all, defaults to flight unless you don't think flight is possible. But people who care? They'll run into the fire willingly, even if they know they'll be burned, because they have discovered what C.S. Lewis wrote about friendship: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” They have discovered that survival without the things that give it value is worthless.

And that, in my not-so-humble opinion, is where the best roleplay occurs. Since I know my way isn't for everyone (and, indeed, is as much a minority as the meatgrinder early-edition style), I've never said that everyone should think this. I do, however, think that people have an inappropriately high appreciation for death and only death with absolutely nothing else as the thing that gives games meaning, while rejecting to the point of open disdain the possibility that maybe something else could be more appropriate for some specific groups. (Different things for different groups, most assuredly!)

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

You have it backwards. I am saying the players are invested before the characters are finished. Even if we were doing OSR-style games--which I have no interest in running--I know my players well enough to know that they WOULD invest before the character sheet was complete. Hence, in order to do what you told me to do--kill the character before the player has invested into it--I would need to kill their characters before they were even created.

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

As most folks on here who love the meatgrinder early-edition style seem to believe, but as you say, let us carry on. I really don't think much good will come from dwelling on this disagreement.

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.

And yet you've said that such players are boring. This is hard to square!

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

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.

But this is real life. The real-life risk of one's investment and participation in the experience (I would say "story" but I know that has baggage a bunch of people here outrightly hate.) And, for me? There's a bunch of players who have been browbeaten into being pure murderhobos who can't conceive of actually caring about anything other than survival and mounds of GP. I'll continue doing the antithesis of what you're doing.

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.

Translation: You'll be kicking out everyone like me, and you think that that is a good thing for the hobby. You'll have to pardon me for not really wanting to be kicked out of the hobby just so you only have people you like playing with.

And this, right here, is precisely what I've been talking about. It isn't enough for you to get respect for your preferences. Your preferences must be enshrined. They must be enforced on the playerbase. And the players who reject that enforcement? You laugh them out of the room as unfit to play in your game.

You can see how I might find this attitude rather disdainful and exclusionary.

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.

Or, we teach people to care about things other than brute survival, so that they take risks, not because survival is on the line, but because they actually care about achieving something, doing something that truly matters to them.

Dunno. Seems like maybe pushing hardcore eliminative materialism as the only value characters should ever have might not be the best thing for the hobby. Having some characters, indeed some playstyles that do that? Sure, have at it. But excluding everything other than that? Nah. Not gonna happen, or at least you can expect me to fight tooth and nail against it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Does it? Or does it just say that in the modern period there aren't that many sim-centered gamers in the RPG sphere? If the sim players are also a rounding error (and unlike many years ago, I suspect they are) most of them could still be in games other than D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

That's fair. I wrote those examples in a bit of a hurry and flubbed that one up. Shall we say a sandstorm instead?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Does it? Or does it just say that in the modern period there aren't that many sim-centered gamers in the RPG sphere? If the sim players are also a rounding error (and unlike many years ago, I suspect they are) most of them could still be in games other than D&D.

There are, I suspect, considerably more sim-oriented GMs than there are sim-oriented players. At least, the DM side cares about it more on average I think. This to me means it makes more practical sense for a sim GM to take a known game like D&D and its relatives and tweak it as much as their players allow toward what the GM wants out of it. It is a compromise, but it doesn't mean the GM is delusional or fooling themselves, just that they want to play the most sim game they can manage.

Guess what I do?