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

[Micah Sweet]

from what i know of john wick (admittedly only vague knowledge) i'd say it's half of what a high level fighter is trying/wants to be, the other half is MCU hulk/thor-esc physical capability.

but that's a conversational rabbit hole i'm not looking to open up again in this thread right now.

Since when do D&D characters of any level demonstrate MCU hulk/thor-esc physical capability?

 

[Micah Sweet]

And that's fine if you want to do the heavy lifting. I'm a low-prep low-work DM; for me it's much more fun to just think through the setting consequences of a particular rule than to make up all new rules (and then have to transmit them to players!)

Well, in my games the fiction has priority over the rules (which IMO should adjust to fit it), and I like lots of prep anyways.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Since when do D&D characters of any level demonstrate MCU hulk/thor-esc physical capability?

to be fair i didn't say that was what it is but what it's trying/wanting to be.

 

[clearstream]

The difference is important. Hit points are just abstraction. Falling a 100ft and being able to stand up and dance a jig is a fictional game outcome.

It doesn't matter what rules got you there. If it's a game artifact and not a reflection of what the reality is supposed to be in the setting it seems you have a problem with Sim.

In D&D it might be escalating hit points that make a character completely indifferent to a crossbow pointed at your face - in Warhammer it may be that you are a Dwarf with a ridiculously high Toughness. It doesn't necessarily matter how you got there, if you are trying to simulate a world (or genre) where people should be afraid of crossbows aimed at them you have a problem.

I appreciate the "supposed to be" and "if" in what you say. Few worry that super-heroic characters can do such things. But if that isn't what you're going for, you'd need to house rule D&D to fit.

What's quite interesting is how many folk seem willing to insist that simulation necessitates diegetic consequences of system and rulings of mediators.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Heard of it, but know very little about it.

The parts that were trying to in-setting D&D assumptions (not all of them; to hit and armor weren't connected) were that all PCs were magically powered (the ones that weren't spellcasters were analogous to Shadowrun Adepts, which is to say they channeled magical power into superhuman abilities directly), the "level" equivalents were recognized in-setting ("Circles" which were degrees of advancement within you class), classes (again, particular schools of developed power: Warriors, Swordmasters (which were more oriented around avoidance and fancy techniques than the Warrior's taking a licking and just being good at standing there and throwing down), Scouts and so on), and dungeons (leftovers from when most of the society had to go underground to avoid, effectively a quasi-Lovecraftian demon incursion for a time--and not all of them worked out).

 

[Thomas Shey]

And that's fine if you want to do the heavy lifting. I'm a low-prep low-work DM; for me it's much more fun to just think through the setting consequences of a particular rule than to make up all new rules (and then have to transmit them to players!)

Of course if the system is that much off what I'd expect, I usually just start by going to another system, but I understand that's not a practical option for everyone.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I
If you lower the barrier to entry by making character creation easier without stripping too much customization,

I think the combination of things in this phrase are doing some very heavy lifting in some, maybe many cases here.

 

[TwoSix]

Of course if the system is that much off what I'd expect, I usually just start by going to another system, but I understand that's not a practical option for everyone.

If the system can't seem to generate a workable fiction for you, than drop it, for sure. But I'm a fan of taking what the system gives me and letting it play out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the system can't seem to generate a workable fiction for you, than drop it, for sure. But I'm a fan of taking what the system gives me and letting it play out.

I just usually have a bit too much look-and-feel I expect when going in. On the other hand, if it isn't too intrusive, I can end up ignoring it the way I do with genre conventions in some genres, so...

 

[zakael19]

I think we may differ here because I think "exercising creativity" and "having a creative agenda" are two different things. Simply having some desire to be "creative" does not means it coelaseces into an agenda.

An agenda requires at least some forethought and a sense of aspiration.

Not the least because there are so many types of creativity to exercise. The table which emphasizes player-creativity in selling problem solving ideas to the "impartial referee" GM in dungeon crawling play is going to be focusing on a very different overall agenda then the one who is emphasizing moment to moment creativity in descriptive fiction of what their characters are doing to trigger PBTA mechanics and tell an interesting story in each second of play.

I think this is why for understanding actual desires of play something like the Same Page Tool is more useful, because you're grabbing players and eliciting their preferences around what they enjoy experiencing/seeing from a moment to moment table perspective and not jargon you need to define.