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

[Micah Sweet]

Well if they can't pay their bills then we get nothing.

Those aren't the only two options. You don't have to keep up with the Hasbros or shut down.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you are using the scientific definition of simulation to describe how to do a role playing game? Does that mean we all need supercomputrs to make our worlds and simulate out what happens with each change? Come on.....but by that definition the person making the simulation gets to decide the complexity, the number of variables etc. . you just made the argument that everyone's opinion and way of doing their game is.correct because they get todecide the variables. What were you arguing about then?

People claiming that their opinion is more valid than those of others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Some people seek out new experience and are incessant tinkerers. I know people who only consider music they listened to in high school "good". Meanwhile my Spotify list has a separate old school channel for those rare occasions when I feel nostalgic that I rarely listen to. I wouldn't have been successful as a software developer if I hadn't continuously upgraded skills for new tools.

I don't resist change. I also don't seek out change for the sake of change. Saying that people are wired to resist change is true to a certain degree and more true for some people than others. It also implies "If you like <anything I define as old school> it's only because you're too scared to change."

No it doesn't. Saying that people are wired to say no doesn't mean that they should always say yes.

 

[Faolyn]

Well have I ever run a "combat" (technical term) without using the rules for "combat" (technical term)? No because the technical term is defined by usage of the rules. What I did reply to was:

The context here was a claim that D&D had a in fiction trigger for a rule system(technical term)

I think at this point you know what I mean. You're being unnecessarily pedantic here in order to claim that you don't do a particular thing that you do.

Like, when you say that you decided to ask the players what to do after the attack the players didn't respond with "we attack back." If they had, that would have triggered combat. Because there's no way you can tell me that if the PCs had chosen to attack, you would have said no to them and not let them attack. And it's almost certain that the attack would mean calling for initiative and attack rolls.

And by the way, doing something as the GM, then asking the players what they want to do, is one of the core principles of narrative games!

Neither you nor your games are going to be tainted by accepting that you don't just call for die rolls out of lolrandom nowhereness, that instead something happens in the game that prompts the die roll, and that something comes about from the game's narrative. Seriously. Narrative games don't have cooties. Get over it.

The long and the short of it is, the GM principles, agendas, and moves that are listed in PbtA and similar games are taken from what GMs do in tradgames, but just explained and codified. The end.

 

[AlViking]

"It’s not an attack. But you can’t “not think about your play with deep introspection” and also be expected to be taken as seriously as those who do."

That very clearly says that if you don't think about your play with deep introspection, you can't expect to be taken as seriously as those who do.

It's a judgment that one way is superior to the other. Perhaps @TwoSix didn't intend it to be that way, but that's how it was written.

I don't need some deep understanding of other games and styles of play to have valid and serious opinions about how D&D plays. I do try to understand other styles from the rules that are quoted here from time to time, and I make an effort not to get them wrong. If I didn't, though, to just dismiss my opinions because of a lack of "deep introspection" would be wrong. I would still know D&D well enough to have valid and serious opinions.

The phrase "deep introspection" sure does seem like code for "agree with me". Do I analyze it in exactly the same way as other people would from a game designer perspective? Probably not because I don't particularly care for academic approaches since many of the papers I've read seem to just put lipstick on the "this is my preference" pig. I quote the Sorensen post someone linked a while back to because it happens to match how I typically approach the game. But I don't think it adds any more weight to my preferred style of play and I don't think it's helpful to analyze that blog as if it were a scientific research paper thesis.

People should play the games they enjoy. Nothing else really matters.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't think you've hit the mark on what's bothering trad players here, but if you're right, maybe they just prefer a more casual, DIY style.

Yeah, all those casual gamers certainly haven't created tens of thousands of pages of homebrew, personal settings, house rules, entire supplements, and philosophies over the decades. Because casual gamers are far too casual to think about their games in any sort of codified manner.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

There's people I've played with for ages who I'd still describe - and who would probably self-describe - as casual.

We have some in long term groups (close friends) who love to play but are simply not as rules savvy, forum savvy or DIY savvy.

They love to RP and roll d20s, sometimes with prompting.

My pop point—-is that I also have that experience. The others of us are rules
Teachers, game buyers, polygamers.

I think of adventures to design, build terrain and make characters. The long term casual players show up ready to play and frankly increase group enjoyment with their participation in other ways.

I know what you mean here.

 

[clearstream]

You're right, it doesn't have to be very complex. But, it generally will have to be a little bit more complex, simply to give the user any information to work with.

I've noticed that tolerances or sensitivities for "information to work with" vary considerably across posters.

One example that could seem clear in 5e 2024 is the Weather table which can invoke Environmental Effects. I imagine many will find that enough information to work with, but a DM would need to decide their baselines for seasons and regions. Consistent with the general design, it is intended to support campaigns in a range of imagined worlds. The Balazaring Weather table for RQ provides the same level of information, but tied to one region of one world.

An example where I have observed strong disagreements on whether it's enough to work with, is combat. Some find knowing that a morningstar dealt say 4 (roll) + 2 (strength) + 2 (dueling) piercing damage enough to work with, others do not. RQ offers more information but, as was noted upthread, some observe that it involves "a replay of the character's intent and action that is nearly intolerable. It often breaks down in play, either switching entirely to called shots and abandoning the location roll, or waiting on the parry roll until the hit location is known" I've played a lot of RQ and I have not noticed that... and would be curious to know if the sample sizes were really robust.

I think the most obvious challenge to questions of "enough information to work with" is simulationist FKR. It seems hard to argue that no one ever thought they could achieve a better simulation with "less information to work with" from the game system! And plausible that this was indeed achieved, given its history.

 

[Thomas Shey]

An example where I have observed strong disagreements on whether it's enough to work with, is combat. Some find knowing that a morningstar dealt say 4 (roll) + 2 (strength) + 2 (dueling) piercing damage enough to work with, others do not. RQ offers more information but, as was noted upthread, some observe that it involves "a replay of the character's intent and action that is nearly intolerable. It often breaks down in play, either switching entirely to called shots and abandoning the location roll, or waiting on the parry roll until the hit location is known" I've played a lot of RQ and I have not noticed that... and would be curious to know if the sample sizes were really robust.

Yeah, I played with a lot of RQ players over the years and that seems--exceedingly idiosyncratic--from my experience. It also tends to ignore the fact that while you might want to hit in a particular spot, in reality you sometimes take what you can get.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, all those casual gamers certainly haven't created tens of thousands of pages of homebrew, personal settings, house rules, entire supplements, and philosophies over the decades. Because casual gamers are far too casual to think about their games in any sort of codified manner.

You can think critically about what you are designing without the kind of deep introspection folks like @pemerton and other Narrativists devote to it. What requires you to write academic essays about game theory in order to write a new subclass or a few monster statblocks?