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

[clearstream]

FKR advocates have setup a boogie man of rigid mechanics to strike down, assuming a given event must be resolved either entirely through GM judgement or a mechanic that takes in fictional circumstances and a dice roll and spits out a direct result rather than imagining mechanics like we see in Pathfinder Second Edition, Chronicles of Darkness and L5R Fifth Edition that integrate targeted GM Judgement as part of the design of discrete mechanics.

It's not always judgement or mechanics. It's often judgement and mechanics.

I would claim that it is always judgement and mechanics, in TTRPG. The only variation is as to where and how much.

 

[clearstream]

While I've been not paying much attention to this particular argument and don't know where @EzekielRaiden is going, I feel the need to point out that actual history is often pretty awful to a large number of people of all sorts, and thus not always all that entertaining. So, you kind of have to be careful about what sort of history you're sticking to for the game.

Sometimes the awfulness is the exact reason for devising play that explores it. I'm thinking of Belong Outside Belonging RPGs that explore membership in marginalized groups amongst dominant cultures. EDIT It's right to proceed carefully of course, with appropriate safety tools in play.

Postclassical narratology places TTRPG within the broad category of narrative, and this means that these games are able to do more than deliver frothy fun. Other satisfactions are entirely valid. I hope this response doesn't seem too harsh, but games are not limited to casual fun. That's just one of the things they can do.

 

[Emerikol]

So when Arthur Conan Doyle says that a certain kind of snake that cannot climb in the real world, climbed down a bell pull to poison the victim, it's true that this snake can climb down bell pulls in the imaginary world of Holmes just because Doyle said so.

This is certainly true in a traditional D&D campaign.

 

[Enrahim]

I intend to respond to this (much) more fully later.

But the hyper-simple summary is, I'm running aground on the very starting premise. I flatly do not believe that even a world-class expert is guaranteed to be superior to any ruleset for this purpose. I find what you call the "hard FK hypothesis" so obviously untenable I am frankly shocked to see you accept it seemingly so blithely. I have quite a bit more to say but I am about four hours past my (already delayed) bedtime. For good reasons, for once, but still.

If even the "hard (non-amateur) FK hypothesis" is utterly implausible to me, all the rest is already a problem. Even your "soft FK hypothesis", at least if I'm understanding it correctly, doesn't sit well with me. (But I'm stumbling on the phrasing so I think I might be misunderstanding it.)

Thank you! Just to preempt some possible bad words. I think the hard FK hypothesis "is solid". I now realize that is a poor choice of words. I am too used to scientific thinking. First I want to divert attention to me acknowledging that this hypothesis is disputed. I want to emphasize I think this dispute is real, and unresolved. When I labeled the hard hypothesis as "solid", it was to a large extent as a contrast to the hard amateur hypothesis.

What do I mean by "solid" then? I am actually not sure. Introspection indicated the main reason might be that I have yet to see any compelling evidence falsifying this. However it should be added that I have not sought such evidence either, as I have never been in a position to have to take stance in this dispute.

But I am also keenly aware that the hypotesis in itself is hardly falsifiable. A central problem is that "better simulation" is hardly ever well defined. It was pretty well defined for the kriegspeil case tough, however even there setting up a good experiment for trying to falsify the hypotesis would be very hard at best.

However I do find myself having a bias toward using hard FK as a working hypotesis. I think one reason is that the obvious counter claim "It is always possible to find a complex enough mechanical system that can provide a better simulation than a human expert" is not falsifiable at all. Hard FK can at least be falsified in theory by for instance by producing a mechanics that is generally accepted to provide better results than an expert. Such mechanics are routinely used in many fields. As such, the absence of any mechanics generally recognised as better than even amateurs in the field of TTRPG, is in itself not a given.

I would finish with giving one rationale why the hard FK hypotesis might be correct for the scope of TTRPG for all practical purposes, that I think might resonate with you. That is your exelent point related to how the subjective notion of groundedness is essential to the sense of quality of the TTRPG "simulation" (at least for many). A human referee are able to gather feedback from players regarding their subjective sense of groundednes and incorporate that in their rulings. It is hard to for me to see how to practically incorporate something similar into a traditional approach to mechanising simulation at least.

 

[Enrahim]

Well, there would be wisdom in considering whether there should be a dispute in that case.

"I don't actually know this way is superior, but I'll get into an argument on the internet about it!" maybe isn't a great place to be, hm?

Absolutely. I didn't realise before it was to late I painted myself into one of the corners. My intention was really to point out that I had observed there is a dispute (something I thought was uncontroversial). I didn't expect my self to have to advocate the validity of either side the way I found myself doing now.

 

[Umbran]

Absolutely. I didn't realise before it was to late I painted myself into one of the corners. My intention was really to point out that I had observed there is a dispute (something I thought was uncontroversial). I didn't expect my self to have to advocate the validity of either side the way I found myself doing now.

Yeah, sometimes that happens as we write - ideas flow and we end up where we didn't expect.

I agree there is dispute - but we can now look at that and go... why? Why are we arguing over that? Is there something we can do to look at it differently?

 

[Enrahim]

Some further hypotheses I'd like to add for @Enrahim to consider are the

'amateur-player' hypothesis, which says that fidelity to real world beyond that which satisfies normal player expectations cannot add to the experience​

​

'authorial-expertise' hypothesis, which says that an author of an imaginary world is de jure an expert in it (what they say is true in the fiction, just because they are the appointed person to say it)​

​

'resisted-dichotomy' hypothesis, which says that more than one hypothesis can be true at the same time, they're not dichotomous​

​

So when Arthur Conan Doyle says that a certain kind of snake that cannot climb in the real world, climbed down a bell pull to poison the victim, it's true that this snake can climb down bell pulls in the imaginary world of Holmes just because Doyle said so.

The amateur-player hypotesis could be used as an possible explenaton for either of the FK hypoteses if true as they modulate the subjective "better". However all FK hypoteses I proposed might be false even if this one is true.

Authorial-expertise doesn't seem like a hypotesis, but rather a potential analytical axiom? It is really interesting though, as acceptance or not of this axiom might have profound impact on how the FK hypoteses should be interpreted, if they even make sense at all with this axiom (they might become analytic truths?)

I am not sure how resisted dichotomy is relevant here tough? For instance I pointed to how the truth value of the soft amateur hypotesis was somewhat independent of the truth value of the hard FK hypotesis.

 

[Enrahim]

Yeah, sometimes that happens as we write - ideas flow and we end up where we didn't expect.

I agree there is dispute - but we can now look at that and go... why? Why are we arguing over that? Is there something we can do to look at it differently?

I am driven by curiosity tough (witch killed the cat). I really would like to see the arguments against the FK concept, as I know I have been over exposed to the other side in the past. I enter with an open mind, and I really try to express that. If I come across as overly argumentative or biased I am really sorry!

 

[clearstream]

I am not sure how resisted dichotomy is relevant here tough? For instance I pointed to how the truth value of the soft amateur hypotesis was somewhat independent of the truth value of the hard FK hypotesis.

'Authorial-expertise' would apply to fictional-facts, but not real-facts. So some other hypothesis could accompany it.

 

[Umbran]

I really would like to see the arguments against the FK concept, as I know I have been over exposed to the other side in the past. I enter with an open mind, and I really try to express that. If I come across as overly argumentative or biased I am really sorry!

If you recognize that the argument is boiling down to preferences, that's fine.