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

[TwoSix]

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

I mean, it's hard but I think it's doable. (Although everyone has different standards as to how much mechanical complexity they expect.)

Daggerheart threads the needle pretty well in my recent experience. I'm a fan of games that have random creation with some customizable elements, like the playbooks in Beyond the Wall or the character templates in Troika! or the Bastionland games.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

I mean, I definitely don't think you should be using GNS terminology in your session zero. Unless everyone at the table already uses it, of course.

 

[Lanefan]

That makes it sound like you have the premise that actor stance/"immersive"/"I am my character" play is a necessary component of sim play. Is that accurate to your beliefs?

It's accurate to mine, to some extent; as part of what you're simulating is a) the character's presence in the setting and b) how the setting affects the character and vice-versa.

Not sure I'd go so far as to say it's "necessary", but it sure helps.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't believe the world remains in stasis unless the PCs act. NPCs have their own motivations that lead them to make moves. That means the GM does stuff that is not in reaction to the PCs. Plus, the passage of time causes things to happen no matter what PCs do or don't do.

Fair enough. I was referring more to run-of-play procedure during the session, where in both sandbox and narrative the ideal would seem to be that the GM is in react mode most or even all of the time.

 

[Lanefan]

The class system.

And yet there's a common real-world example that quite strikingly well emulates the in-game class system: that being degree paths through university or college.

Your major = your class.
Your minor (if you have one) = your second class, i.e. you've multi-classed
Your year (freshman, sophomore, etc.) = your level, at low levels
Your degree level (BSc, MSc, PhD, etc.) = your level, at higher levels

One could argue - and just for kicks, I think I will - that the in-game class system just takes this paradigm and applies it to character life paths rather than student degree paths, only with more obvious advances in capabilities and abilities as you advance (this is the "extras" fantasy piece in my "Earth with extras" idea).

Given that, one can say the class system is quite simulationist indeed.

 

[Lanefan]

But in the game world, if I want to be harder to hit, I put on heavy armor. The reason people don't like damage on a miss, is because, to them, it was a miss. And you missed me because I am wearing 40+pounds of steel.

This is a discrete part of the rules system, and is not simulating anything I am aware of.

I suppose one could say it's the opposite of damage-on-a-miss: no-damage-on-a-hit.

On a rolled narrow-miss the narration might go: "BONG! Your war hammer makes the foe's armour ring like a bell, but the armour does its job and your foe takes no damage".

 

[Campbell]

I mean, I definitely don't think you should be using GNS terminology in your session zero. Unless everyone at the table already uses it, of course.

In general, I'm a firm believer in just talking about what the expectations for the game you will be running. Meta-analysis of its place in the broader hobby is not necessary or helpful.

 

[hawkeyefan]

And yet there's a common real-world example that quite strikingly well emulates the in-game class system: that being degree paths through university or college.

Your major = your class.
Your minor (if you have one) = your second class, i.e. you've multi-classed
Your year (freshman, sophomore, etc.) = your level, at low levels
Your degree level (BSc, MSc, PhD, etc.) = your level, at higher levels

One could argue - and just for kicks, I think I will - that the in-game class system just takes this paradigm and applies it to character life paths rather than student degree pathsm only with more obvious advances in capabilities and abilities as you advance (this is the "extras" fantasy piece in my "Earth with extras" idea).

Given that, one can say the class system is quite simulationist indeed.

I can confirm this is accurate. My buddy and I both jumped from the roof of a 5 story building. I landed and shrugged, thanks to my Master’s Degree. He only had an Associate’s and splattered all over the concrete!

 

[TwoSix]

And yet there's a common real-world example that quite strikingly well emulates the in-game class system: that being degree paths through university or college.

Your major = your class.
Your minor (if you have one) = your second class, i.e. you've multi-classed
Your year (freshman, sophomore, etc.) = your level, at low levels
Your degree level (BSc, MSc, PhD, etc.) = your level, at higher levels

One could argue - and just for kicks, I think I will - that the in-game class system just takes this paradigm and applies it to character life paths rather than student degree pathsm only with more obvious advances in capabilities and abilities as you advance (this is the "extras" fantasy piece in my "Earth with extras" idea).

Given that, one can say the class system is quite simulationist indeed.

I can see this working for something like the WFRP career system, but not for the relatively intransigent D&D class system. The core issue is that real people don't progress linearly, learning exactly the same set of skills in the exact same order.

You can make it work by making each "class" be something like an academic course of progression, whereas there are diegetic "schools" that train wizards, fighters, rangers, etc, in a known cirriculum of skills. But that would track with "crafting your setting to integrate with the system", as I advocated for in previous posts.

 

[TwoSix]

In general, I'm a firm believer in just talking about what the expectations for the game you will be running. Meta-analysis of its place in the broader hobby is not necessary or helpful.

For sure; 99% of players are simply not going to care about the larger philosophical issues.