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

[AlViking]

How can one "foster a spirit of sincerity and co-operation" when one is secretly modifying the rules whenever one feels like doing so, concealing the actual processes by which player actions produce consequences, and employing techniques like illusionism or fudging?

So because there is a small handful of bad DMs out there that do any one of those things, all DMs are suspect. Same old same old.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So because there is a small handful of bad DMs out there that do any one of those things, all DMs are suspect. Same old same old.

I mean, when several people in this thread explicitly reserve the right to do these things whenever they feel it necessary, what am I to conclude?

 

[AlViking]

I mean, when several people in this thread explicitly reserve the right to do these things whenever they feel it necessary, what am I to conclude?

Have they? I'd need actual quotes to believe that.

 

[Umbran]

Huh. The social science PhDs I speak to disagree with you. Maybe it didn't take.

The word "appropriate" did some lifting in my statement.

For example, there are social sciences that are not appropriate for use as the basis for generalizations to be applied to current, living people, or used as the basis for current social policy, and the like.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Okay. This is a good reply. But it seems to me that it is (perhaps excessively) summarized laconically as: "Stop doing those things." Or, at the very least, "Avoid those things as much as you can, and if you really have to, do it only under direst need."

Out of interest since I haven't been following this thread as diligently as many others, is there anyone who is actually advocating all those things secret rule-changing, illusionism, fudging, secret resolution & consequence as a DM-must?
I know I played like this in the 90's and 2000's but one grows as does your table. People relax a little.

 

[Maxperson]

I have repeatedly given examples, in this very thread, where I spoke about GMs who simply screwed up on something, or did something I considered to be Very Concerning but not overwhelmingly awful.

I was told--by several people, including you!--that either it wasn't that bad and I should just Put Up Or Shut Up, or that if it bothered me, that not-gaming is better than suffering through bad gaming.

In other words, the way people actually talk about it, every time I present "This is concerning, but not automatically a problem, how do I-as-player work with a GM to address it?" I'm told one of two things:

• You just have to place unending trust in the GM, or
• The GM has obviously blown past the point of no return so throw in the towel

It took hundreds of posts of back and forth before I could get even one person to start considering techniques for how trust could be re-established if it were banged up a little but not destroyed. Not helped, of course, by the insistent throughline by numerous posters that GMs don't ever need to earn trust nor work to build it, they just deserve it from nanosecond 1.

No. What I said was that unless your character's life is on the line, if it can't be resolved in a minute or two, it should be dropped until after the game when it won't be a disruption to everyone else.

I never said unending trust or that you need to throw in the towel.

 

[clearstream]

You're gonna have a real, real rough go of getting anyone talking about "system" in the usual sense to accept that "GM making up whatever they feel like, no rules whatsoever" is a "system."

Have you ever noticed the sheer  inertness of a game text?

Because to me that's improv theater with a director. I wouldn't call improv theater a system of any kind. "System" requires some kind of rules. Without rules, it's just...not a system. Even FKR-type stuff still has SOME system, e.g. rules about which kind of dice to use for resolving ambiguous situations.

Here we were discussing D&D in particular. So I am saying that D&D appoints DM to act as part of the lusory-means. Effectively part of, and in some respects completing, system.

I invoked FKR in support of the notion that GM can act in a simulative capacity in games.

 

[clearstream]

It's completely possible to play any version of D&D without that. In no way does that mean you are "leaving D&D". Hell, I'd even argue that Basic and 4e are best played with an alternative approach--and @pemerton has spoken extensively on how and why.

It's possible, and I've tried it. It can feel a bit like picking up DW and ignoring the GMing principles. It can miss taking advantage of what the game is designed to do.

I'd have to reflect on Basic, but agreed 4e is a possible exception here.

 

[Umbran]

But then you aren't doing this invisibly, behind-the-scenes. You aren't relying on what is unspoken. You are speaking it aloud.

I am speaking it aloud before any play begins, but then probably not in the moment.

For example, I generally reserve the right to occasionally fudge dice rolls. I do not generally announce when I am doing so in play.

You most likely also don't go out of your way to prevent the people in the group from knowing you've done this, I assume? May even check in with the players on how they think a given deviation should be handled?

Occasionally, but most often not. They allow me my judgement. I have built trust in my intentions, and do not violate that trust.

At which point you're doing exactly what I've already said, and you aren't just acting unilaterally through unspoken, unwritten "rules".

Well, there's been a couple of times when I've told the players that there were rules in play that that aren't in the book, but that they didn't know. So, the presence of such rules was known, but not the details.

If your base complaint is about GMs who don't have the wisdom to run a proper Session Zero... that's not really a game design, or even a playstyle issue, to my mind. That has nothing to do with the game, and is about not knowing how to work with groups of people, in general.

 

[Maxperson]

Not true. You could easily have succeeded because of helpful pixies. Again, the system in no way gives any indication of how a result was achieved. You succeeded because a friendly air spirit gave you a boost up and you climbed the wall. Again, nothing in the mechanics invalidates that interpretation because the mechanics do not give any indication at all about how something occured, just that it occured and it is now completely up to you to make it make sense in your game.

If that were true, you would be unable to add your stat bonus or proficiency bonus to the roll, because those represent personal ability, not pixie helpfulness.

Skills represent personal effort and personal failure, not outside sources. Even the one example in the climb skill where a creature is trying to knock you off, success means you used your personal skill to succeed despite the attempt to knock you off, and failure represents the failure of your personal skill to remain on the cliff.

At no point does a failure on a climb check mean that a pixie shows up to knock you off just because you rolled low. That would invalidate any personal ability of yours and place the entire failure on the pixie.

The pixie example also violates the order of play rules.

1. The DM describes the fiction(there's a rough cliff that's 37.313 feet high).
2. The players declare their actions(We climb to the top. Then success or failure is rolled).
3. The DM narrates the result of their actions.(A pixie appearing is not the result of their declared action to climb the cliff).

A pixie might appear, but only because the DM has a preplanned, chose for one to appear, or rolled a random encounter in which one appeared. Those falls into the first part of the order of play rules. It's the DM describing what is happening in the fiction.