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

[clearstream]

Everyone else, even people on your side of the argument, has understood what I said. Well done standing on your own.

I'm not on any side of the argument... so standing alone sounds about right. You asked if heavy armor makes you dodge better? I don't know what level of familiarity you have with D&D so it seemed worth spelling it out. Heavy armor doesn't make you dodge better in D&D.

What did you intend?

 

[Maxperson]

Sigh.

Again, for the umpteenth time. A game becomes simulative when it provides ANY actual information about how a result was achieved. ANY. Not every, which is the strawman that keeps getting repeated over and over again.

ANY.

Is that absolutely clear. Do I need to explain it further? A simuationist mechanic MUST PROVIDE ANY information about how the result was achieved. If the mechanic does not provide any information, then all narratives are 100% equally legitimate as far as the mechanics are concerned. Sure, the table might prefer one interpretation over another, but, that's just a table agreement. That has nothing to do with the game.

Since D&D mechanics never provide that information, I reject the idea that they are simulationist based. All we ever get are the results. Then they shovel off any actual determination onto the DM to provide a justification for that result. And the only parameters of what the DM determines is whatever the table finds acceptable.

And people can make all the claims they want about "my world runs on internal logic" all they want. I simply do not believe the claims. No DM ever runs a world on the internal logic of the world. It never happens. Because we all want to have a fun game. And as soon as that priority enters the picture, "internal logic" takes a back seat. We add factions because we want conflict. We add dungeons because we want interesting things to explore. We choose result A and not result B because we think it will be more interesting at the table. No one EVER chooses to be boring as a DM. At least, not a DM who wants to have players.

If your world actually worked on internal logic and not "make this a fun game", then most of your campaigns would be mind bogglingly boring. Because, frankly, that's how most worlds would actually work. But we don't run on "internal logic". We run on Narrativium. We want excitement. We want adventure. It's a heroic fantasy!

They do include any. Climbing is done by climbing. Falling is done by failing a climb roll by more than 5. Performing is done via some sort of performance. Success being a good performance. Failure being a bad/unsuccessful performance. High charisma, used to influence folks and make them like you helps you succeed. Low charisma makes it more difficult.

Those a part of how the results are achieved. It may not be as much detail as you are looking for, but it doesn't actually need any detail at all to be a simulation of a real world process. If you want more detail, then you can go to the ability score section and read what ability scores mean. How does int help you achieve the successful result for the knowledge check, it's your memory, ability to reason and mental acuity.

 

[AlViking]

Okay. So...you do actually abide by rules when you GM? You treat certain things as genuinely inviolate?

Depends on the rule. As I said above, fall past a certain amount and you die.

The point is that DW explicitly tells the GM to follow the rules, D&D encourages the DM to adjust play based on what works best. It's also presented as more of a toolbox than an instruction manual. Unlike 3e, 5e does not attempt to have concrete rules for everything because there will never be enough rules to cover everything in specific details. Best you can do is have tools that cover broad areas.

 

[Micah Sweet]

OK?

But if you give Batman damage reduction or a dragon's worth of hit points, that's not "diegetic". And if you don't give Batman something like that, then you don't get "action movie physics".

The point is: in the fiction, Batman doesn't know that a single person with a gun can't kill him. Superman does. But "action movie physics" requires that Batman, as much as Superman, cannot be killed by a single person (indeed, any number of persons) with a gun.

Given that you posted this, I took you to have opinions on MHRP and my fantasy hack of it:

My opinion was about what I see as wrong with the runes example, from the perspective of games I play. You obviously know your games better than I do, so I would assume that for you and your table, how the runes were handled was perfectly fine. I was explaining why it wouldn't work for me because of how it looks from my perspective, which is informed by games I play, which aren't your games.

Regarding the first point, do you treat hit points as entirely meat? Is that the assumption you're making?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Quantum weak spots! Quantum aiming!

I mean, we already resolved the hit with the roll to hit. Why are we now reading the damage roll back into the prior determination of hit or miss?

It's called, "GM interprets and describes the results". A big part of their job, actually. Right there in the book.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think this is really consistent with a simulationist approach, is it? Or the idea that we should avoid abstractions that are at odds with "diegesis".

You avoid abstractions when it can be practically done. My goodness, this is just the 100% realism straw man all over again. No simulation is perfect, and people make compromises for play all the time. Doesn't mean sim doesn't matter to them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay. Now: How do we then make sense of a claim such as "I reject F because W' is unrealistic."?

Because that sort of claim is precisely why, for example, a player might balk at Bastilles & Basilisks 7th Edition, because it contains elements that are "unrealistic". Or why someone might assert--as has happened in this very thread--that it is problematical ("unrealistic" is known to be a flawed word, so some variation like "lacking verisimilitude" etc.) to have a mechanic which resolves an action by having failure indicate that a bad situation has occurred as a result of the undertaken effort, for one reason or another.

In such things, W' itself is specifically being called out as wrong, bad, incorrect, unacceptable, etc., etc., specifically because it conflicts with W. Even when the actual content of the real world is more similar to the thing described in W' (hence my repeated reference back to the lockpicking example).

That's a different issue IMO. It's a disagreement about granularity of resolution and what the results of a die roll should actually determine more than anything else. From there, the question expands to whether or not the roll should determine anything more than the specific task is a preferred method of simulating the question in the world.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As usual, your jaundiced and frankly hostile descriptions of a game you haven't played, haven't read, and know almost nothing about are completely out of whack with what the actual game says.

Yes, there are rules which are binding on the GM. This is also true of D&D. Unless you're now going to claim that a player rolling a d20 and getting 20 on the die is now something that GMs are supposed to just discard completely? I had thought we had settled previously that the GM is bound, by the rules, to respect the rolls a player makes in the open?

Does DW say anything about the MC having free reign to change the rules to better suit the game they want to run if they want and make the game their own?

 

[Umbran]

As usual, your jaundiced and frankly hostile descriptions

Mod note:
Hey there.

At the moment, the clearly hostile element in this exchange... is you.

Dial it back a few notches, please and thanks.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Depends on the rule. As I said above, fall past a certain amount and you die.

The point is that DW explicitly tells the GM to follow the rules, D&D encourages the DM to adjust play based on what works best. It's also presented as more of a toolbox than an instruction manual. Unlike 3e, 5e does not attempt to have concrete rules for everything because there will never be enough rules to cover everything in specific details. Best you can do is have tools that cover broad areas.

Have you ever played DW or any other PbtA game? Or even read both DW and 5e? Because DW (for all I don't rate it as a good PbtA game) is a toolbox game and D&D is an instruction manual - with the core rules being multiple 300 page books of instructions.

You know what makes a toolbox a toolbox? The fact it contains tools; without tools you just have a box. Rule 0 or "just do what you want" isn't a tool, it's a platitude. You know what are tools? Hard and soft moves. Things like "deal damage", "turn their move back on them", "take away their resources", "split them up", "announce impending danger", etc.

D&D only explicitly includes one of the tools DW includes (deal damage). So yes it has a hammer - and a couple of other tools like a hex screwdriver. But what it mostly has is instructions and kits for things like the Invisibility Spell with its explicit components (v, s, and an eyelash encased in gum arabic or a spell focus) and assembly parts (like all monsters having all six stats). This isn't a "toolkit". D&D in the WotC era is interior design using the IKEA catalogue, complete with the instructions required to assemble each piece of furniture. And the only mainline version of D&D that has come with tools beyond a hammer and a hex screwdriver since 1e has been 4e with Skill Challenges and what was eventually boiled down to the MM3 On A Business Card

PbtA games have the MC follow the rules because when you are playing with tools like circular saws and belt sanders and have other people around you following the rules is an extremely good idea. For flat pack furniture it isn't half as necessary.