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

[clearstream]

The question cannot be directly answered with "yes" or "no" because it is in conflict with the fundamental assumptions and structure. It is somewhat like asking if the rules of chess say anything about the referee granting the players the ability to bring fairy chess pieces instead of standard ones. Or, just read what @Neonchameleon wrote. DW is a toolbox; D&D an instruction manual. Trying to reforge your wrenches isn't going to make your toolbox more useful, especially if you're doing it in an unfocused, pure-exploratory manner.

I agree with your comments on the consequences of redesigning agenda or principles (omitted here for brevity) but disagree with the take that categorizes some RPG texts as instruction manuals and others as toolboxes. I've laid out elsewhere why I believe these texts all serve as tools with which players fabricate their play, and I have found that model robust in explaining the relationship between games-as-texts and games-as-played.

I'm not strongly against saying something like "RPG texts comprise sets of instructions for playfully fabricating fiction", but that simply amounts to saying that they're tools usable to that ends.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thing is, the player is equally bound by those same rules. If a player rolls a 1 to hit, she can't ignore that roll and say her character's attack hit anyway.

In D&D, I can think of a bunch of rules that are binding on players but not on DMs.

I cannot think of a rule that's binding only on the DM and not also on the players.

Really? Players don't have to "respect" rolls of any kind; that's literally not what they're doing. GMs need to, if the player is to have any understanding that the values they roll matter for the results they get. (This is, among other things, why I detest fudging--secretly ignoring the die and covering this up so the player can't find out--so much.) Or, for another example, GMs can't just willy-nilly declare that today, initiative is determined by who can stand on one leg the longest...while being tickled by another participant. To do so is to break the rules of the game.

Or, to come up with a different example: Things that do damage (not any other effect, JUST damage) have to produce damage numbers. An attack which does damage by deleting words from the player's character sheet would be breaking rules that bind the GM, not the player, since players can't invent new attacks, they simply have them or don't. Or a third: Knowledge checks. If the rules say that getting 20+ on a Knowledge check means you give the player certain information, and the player does in fact legitimately (not with any exploits or other stupid bovine feces, just genuine sincere research, roleplay, and a good die roll) get a result of 20+, would you not say the rules are binding on you to actually follow through there? Would it not be a pretty serious faux pas to look at that and say, "Nope, that's stupid, I'm going to lie instead."?

D&D has rules that bind GMs. You just think they're so obvious you don't pay them any attention; you have no need to break them.

And if DW and other systems do have rules that only apply to the GMs but not the players, that might be the difference.

Let us consider encounter design rules. How do the rules for how to build an encounter apply to players? Sure, the players will presumably face that encounter at some point. But where did the rules for building it apply to them? As far as I can tell, they never do. Where do the rules for setting DCs apply to players? Players shouldn't be setting DCs at all. Such rules can only apply to GMs!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree with your comments on the consequences of redesigning agenda or principles (omitted here for brevity) but disagree with the take that categorizes some RPG texts as instruction manuals and others as toolboxes. I've laid out elsewhere why I believe these texts all serve as tools with which players fabricate their play, and I have found that model robust in explaining the relationship between games-as-texts and games-as-played.

I'm not strongly against saying something like "RPG texts comprise sets of instructions for playfully fabricating fiction", but that simply amounts to saying that they're tools usable to that ends.

I think there's a very, very significant difference between "This is how X operates" vs "This is an action which has these effects."

The former is an instruction on how to take actions yourself. The latter is an action, which you may or may not actually take.

 

[clearstream]

Thank you for doing exactly what I feared people would do, and which I thought, "Ah, no, I can trust that people will understand what I mean." It's incredibly tedious to be met with things that are obvious technicalities as though those things are somehow clear proven facts that my argument is just entirely wrong.

So, yes: ABSENT AERODYNAMIC DRAG, meaning, when things are JUST falling and not doing anything that isn't JUST FALLING, heavy objects fall at exactly the same speed as light objects. A one-inch cube of rubber falls at exactly the same speed as a one-inch cube of lead.

Are you happy now? It's stuff like this which is precisely why my posts get so horrifically long-winded. I have to cover every. single. possible. technicality. Because if I don't, someone WILL bring up whatever technicality I left out, and then act like they've completely disproven everything I had to say. It's frankly really crappy argumentation.

I truly understand your frustration, albeit just upthread I suggested that a serious challenge to some definitions of simulationism is "how much is enough?"

I take @Lanefan's concern here to exemplify that. It seems that to them, it's unnecessary to model the falling of objects in a vacuum. Worked through I think that comes to more than a quibble. It's fundamental to ask things like - why do we care that the parry caused a miss, but not the resultant combatant's weapon positions and balance that are going to cause future and perhaps decisive hits?

 

[clearstream]

I think there's a very, very significant difference between "This is how X operates" vs "This is an action which has these effects."

The former is an instruction on how to take actions yourself. The latter is an action, which you may or may not actually take.

Both are tools. Knowing that X operates in such-and-such a way, I can use X in play that includes the effects of X. Just as knowing that an action has such-and-such effects, I can use that action in play that includes its effects. The motives for choosing PbtA moves over other kinds of rules isn't that the former are tools and the latter instructions.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If you want to nitpick you can nitpick. If you want a good conversation, that might not be the best strategy tough.

I am not nitpicking. I see there to be a genuinely important distinction between a single experience where you play pre-scripted character and are working through the life events of that person in specific and their relationships and a set of events that could happen to a theoretically almost unlimited range of characters. In Persona 5 I am always playing Joker, I always make the same friends who are the same people, I always pick the same targets in the same way, and I always succeed - or have the game reset me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Still IMO a valid goal to work toward in one's world/universe building, no?

For universe-building, sure.

But I'm not talking about universe-building. I'm talking about the process of actually playing.

The cynic in me thinks the locks are all designed to be pickable in the same way in order to make life convenient for those who need to, in a non-criminal way, do the picking.

Well...I mean, no, not really. It's just that a mechanical device which fits into the kind of space it needs to (a roughly inch-/2.5cm-wide cylinder no more than a couple inches/10cm deep, or a block no more than about the size of a playing card deck, perhaps stretched or squished a bit) doesn't really have a lot of options for how it can be designed in order to still be usable. The vast majority of locks IRL use pins (or wafers, for low-security, high-wear applications) and springs. ("Dimple" locks are basically just sideways, narrow pin-tumbler locks, and vulnerable to most of the same exploits.) The only major exceptions are "disc detainer" locks and tubular locks (e.g. the kind used on vending machines, with a key that has a cylindrical shape), which require a specialized tool for easy picking and are relatively modern inventions. The best high-security locks (e.g. those used by the US military to lock nuclear materials!) are, functionally, just really really high-quality pin-tumbler locks with extra pins, and picking them is, again, mostly a matter of having the right tool to make it easier. Old-style "warded locks" are basically never used anymore except for cosmetic purposes, because they're almost trivial to pick and extremely susceptible to skeleton keys.

It's not really a matter of anyone conspiring against anyone else. It's that a machine that is simple to use, small enough for purpose, resistant to wear-and-tear/dirt-and-grime, and which works consistently with the right key, has extremely tight design constraints. Or, to turn an old phrase, if you can build a better locking mechanism, the world will beat a path to your door...and then be unable to get in because it's locked.

And this comes down to a question of accuracy vs entertainment. It's the same argument I hear when I use pop-culture Xena-like versions of the Greek deities instead of the historically-accurate versions; some say I should use the historically-accurate versions out of a sense of realism, where I prefer the pop-culture versions for the sheer entertainment value.

But are you actually willing to use that argument? Are you willing to commit to it?

Because that opens you up to a number of rebuttals I'm not sure you want to face. Like the idea that, because it's a game, it should be designed to be entertaining as a game, in addition to and separately from its realism, historicity, etc.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Both are tools. Knowing that X operates in such-and-such a way, I can use X in play that includes the effects of X. Just as knowing that an action has such-and-such effects, I can use that action in play that includes its effects. The motives for choosing PbtA moves over other kinds of rules isn't that the former are tools and the latter instructions.

Are they? You keep asserting this, but I don't agree.

The limit definition of the derivative is a set of instructions for finding a thing. The Sieve of Eratosthenes is an action you can perform. Both of them are abstract, but there is a clear difference between the two. The former doesn't actually tell you any specific effects. It tells you the concept you're pursuing, and what abstract-layer processes that concept requires; it's on you to figure out what, if any, actions can possibly achieve that concept. The Sieve of Eratosthenes is an algorithm which, if you follow its instructions, always tells you every prime number from 2 to whatever prime number is smaller than your chosen stopping point.

Both of them aren't things you can physically point to, but one actually is a tool; the other is a set of instructions for how to find tools yourself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I truly understand your frustration, albeit just upthread I suggested that a serious challenge to some definitions of simulationism is "how much is enough?"

I take @Lanefan's concern here to exemplify that. It seems that to them, it's unnecessary to model the falling of objects in a vacuum. Worked through I think that comes to more than a quibble. It's fundamental to ask things like - why do we care that the parry caused a miss, but not the resultant combatant's weapon positions and balance that are going to cause future and perhaps decisive hits?

Surely--surely--whether or not a heavy boulder falls faster through the air than a lighter object like a person, could in fact actually matter in many games.

Which is why I used the example I gave, and why the intentional obtuseness of ONLY comparing bowling balls and feathers is so frustrating.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Here we are back to the context problem that was the entire point of my post. Are we talking about floating devices, or are we talking about cruise ships? Seemingly the context here was so poorly defined that I thought we talked about the former while you seem to posit that @EzekielRaiden talked about the later?

I do not think that was the case here though. It seemed more of a case of being so annoyed by their argumentation style and (seemingly) closemindedness of the FKR hardliners, that they couldn't get themselves to engage with their core belief even when posited by a moderate like myself. I pointed out that this was a communication problem that complicates conversation when an important influence is dismissed in this maner by some of the conversation participants.

I agree with @EzekielRaiden that the FKR hardliners approach to discussing these things are problematic. That was actually the point of my post that started this particular reply subchain. However the extreme of fully rejecting the FKR notion of no rules is in my eyes as bad. This was what I tried to express in the paragraph that started this.

My impression was that the utter rejection of FKR crowd (note FKR is not even mentioned in this paragraph) that this paragraph triggered, was a clear signal of flagging belonging to the "kriegspeil lair" given the context.

(Edit: I also have to moderate the "no rules" claim. FKR games clearly have some rules, and I think looking at what even they are willing to include can be instructive for informing some design choices)

If you want to nitpick you can nitpick. If you want a good conversation, that might not be the best strategy tough.

I guess I just don't understand how we can have anything that accepts the "FKR" approach without being full-bore.

Either there are no rules, or there are some rules. It cannot be the case that there are both no rules and some rules.

I find that what the FKR approach is willing to include don't even look like rules to me anymore. I've tried. I really have. I just haven't ever seen anything worth actually engaging with--particularly given the absolute rejection from them that I see for anything that isn't "zero or functionally zero".