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

[Maxperson]

How can one abuse authority that is absolute? Absolute authority permits you to do anything. That is what makes it absolute!

Ask all the dictators throughout history. With great power comes great responsibility, and you can abuse that power.

 

[Maxperson]

But the GM is beholden to no one. Why would words achieve anything? The GM does what she wants. Words are irrelevant.

Because the DM is human.

 

[Maxperson]

What does the die roll represent if not everything other than the PC’s skill. It’s virtually guaranteed in DnD you only succeed by rolling high enough. That’s why you are rolling. You have a chance to fail.

So if ability plus skill is the pc, what is the die roll? If the die roll can change the environment then it can do so on a fail or success.

The die roll also represents skill. We aren't all at the same level of skill every moment of every day. We can tired, distracted, just not on top of our game, hungry and a host of other variables that impact the skill of the person making the attempt.

 

[Maxperson]

You might want to address this to @Maxperson who disagrees with you.

Whoever that was and I cannot see each other.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I am sorry, but as I said I don't think I have ever encountered a situation that matches what you describe here. In particular the premise "need to be reconciled" is one I have a hard time envisioning how could be the case. The "agree to disagree" and continue amicable relations are a very well known technique for a reason.

And "agree to disagree" is useful when we are, for example, talking on a forum. (Though I fail to see how that is at all comparable to an "invisible rulebook" type thing? That's an explicit statement of, or request for, action.) "Agree to disagree" doesn't work when we are playing a game, because the game-state requires that we be on the same page about all of the salient details. If I think my character is conscious and wounded and you think my character is unconscious and dying, that cannot be smoothed over in this way.

As stated, I don't choose to play at tables that feature this kind of "traditional GM" role, so I don't personally have very many lived-through examples of this kind of disagreement when it comes to D&D. I do, however, have some examples when it comes to playing other games, even with friends. For example, a former friend and I played a lot of strategy games. Unfortunately, they had (presumably still have) very different ideas about what that meant, so despite our "gentleman's agreement" about various things, we ended up having some problem disagreements that required a lengthy conversation to resolve. Or a different group of friends, with whom I played some other games, where we had three different ideas of what those games were "for", and because of it, we almost had a major falling out until we finally dragged all of it into the light and actually TALKED about what we wanted rather than just presuming everyone understood us.

Invisible rulebooks, presumption of common thinking, "going with the flow" while suppressing your own interests, has consistently been a cause of problems in my life. Conversely, open, forthright, specific communication has never led me astray--and by having rules that we can actually read, and thus see and ask about, all those conversations happen well in advance of a disagreement occurring. Instead of suffering in silence or getting upset when a contradiction rears its ugly head, we actually develop real understanding of one another, not the hollow presumption of understanding.

For instance a relative common case I have seen in relationships (outside the scope of games) is that there might be a major underlying difference in perspective that is expressed in a spesific way. Often it is possible to find a practical arrangement both can live with that covers that spesific expression, without trying to unpack the entire underlying problem. It might not be an ideal way of doing things, especially in the context of deeper relationships. In the context of a game however you can often get away with it, or at least throw in a quickpatch until it can be furter hashed out out of session.

See above. I see this as "bandaid after bandaid" until finally something happens that rips all the wounds wide open, and now we've got a giant festering gash where before we had thirteen paper-cuts we could've just treated by actually talking.

And if you are unable to find aproperiate words even out of session, then trying to establish a good answer to the problem situation up front trough written rules, without even being aware of this being a potential issue seem a bit ambitious?

Howso? There are only finitely many rules. That's the nature of games. I am, of course, quite partial to rules that exploit the utility of abstraction to cover a broader swathe, but that's a separate thing. If the rules are written out, and we actually do read them, that does double duty, clearly specifying what is known, and providing opportunity to ask about things that weren't specified already. That might result in new rules, or it might result in explicit agreement rather than presumed tacit agreement, but either way, it promotes, rather than degrades, the ability to achieve a real understanding of where each of us stands.

Silence doesn't communicate. Communication does. And written communication lasts.

If both person 1 and person 2 are able to say "A" Then you are aleady in the domain of words? That is I fail to see how the exact same problem doesn't also apply for written rules?

No. Because the words of "A" don't actually communicate what they're saying. It's all bound up in the presumptions that go unsaid.

Yes. As I have said I am not happy with the language we have available. That however is also a problem with written rules, isn't it? If words with poorly defined meaning is used in a rules text that would give the same problems as if you for instance carelessly mentioned it oraly when pitching a game (creating unintended expectations)

I never said that rules couldn't be of bad quality. Obviously they can! But if they're of bad quality, we can actually SEE it. How can we see that an invisible thing is badly-formed? It's not possible for us to look at it until it goes wrong.

Well, this might be so, but I still do not see how these observations are relevant with regard to prefering rules to be written rather than unwritten?

Strong opinions built on the false assumption of tacit agreement are one of the greatest sources of conflict in human relationships.

If they make a claim shaped as a objective truth claim rather than as an expression of subjective opinion, I tought pointing out the complete lack of evidence for the claim was considered a solid refutation?

How can that be so when everyone has a complete lack of evidence?

But that's not what I said. I said there is a lack of evidence showing that they are wrong. That's quite a bit different from saying there's no evidence that they might, possibly, be right.

This is a new perspective on gaming to me. As such I might not quite get what you are trying to say here. However I will still try to give it a go.

I think in one way I must fully grant you the point in the scope of how I understand your statement's relevancy. I fully agree that the central ambiguities that make out the game should be determined by explicit rules provided prior to resolution, preferably in written form. I think for instance fudging is either cheating or otherwise invalidating the game in this sense. And Illusionism would be making it look like there is a game when there is indeed none.

However the problem is that I am pretty sure there isn't, and can never be, a TTRPG that resolves all game relevant fictional ambiguities via game in this sense via explicit rules. An attempt at doing so would likely be recognised as some more traditional type of board game like experience. Even if for instance the outcome of the written rules demand something interesting to happen and list a lot of principles for how such an interesting thing should be chosen, this will in general not be able to single out a unique possible narration of the outcome. The details not specified would become part of the fiction and hence could fuel future ambiguities to be resolved via game.

Really? I don't think that's the case at all--at least if we're understanding "relevant ambiguity" the same. A relevant ambiguity is, at least as I understand it, something where (a) we care about what it resolves to, (b) any particular result will do something interesting (e.g. in DW terms, both success and failure are interesting), and (c) there is meaningful impact. I draw a distinction between (a) and (c) here because the former is about whether the players are interested in it, while the latter is about whether it affects the game or not. There are plenty of things that are ambiguous that we'd like to resolve...but which won't actually affect the game one way or another, and thus don't need rules, even if some groups might opt to use them. (Naturally, it is possible for something to not matter for a while and then begin to matter later, but that's just the nature of the beast.)

Keep in mind, as mentioned above, I prefer rules that exploit the utility of abstraction: namely, that the same resolution structure can be applied in whole classes of situations, not just singular ones. Games that strive to have an individual, specific rule for every instance will inevitably fail in their endeavor (and become massively over-bloated as a result; one of 3rd edition's weakest characteristics was that it tried for encyclopedic coverage.) Of course, excessive abstraction is also a risk, and thus we shouldn't abstract willy-nilly--but we shouldn't hate or fear abstraction simply because it is abstract. It's a tool to be used.

Armed with what I call "extensible framework rules"--e.g. things like group checks, skill challenges, my proposed/hypothetical "skirmish" concept (read: "lite" combat; "skirmishes" are to full combats more-or-less as group checks are to skill challenges), etc.--we can use a relatively small number of rules to cover vast swathes of gameplay, or if you prefer, all or nearly all classes of relevant ambiguity for a given game. I recognize that there might still be very rare, limited edge cases, but I'm confident that they would be rare enough to not be a significant concern.

So how to resolve this ambiguity about which of possibly thousands of possible narration to use? I think all ttrpgs rely on one of the participants (don't need to be the GM) to just declare a resolution. And moreover I believe all TTRPGS to some extent depend on the one singled out to provide this declaration to take into account a number of unwritten rules when making this declaration. A game can try to limit the scope of this disambiguity by explicit rules, and hence somewhat reduce the dependency on unwritten rules - but I dont think it can ever be fully eliminated.

Certainly not. Ironsworn, at the very least, is a TTRPG I've played that doesn't. It has rules for pure GM-less play where the rules tell you how to resolve ambiguities, including answering questions. If you aren't sure what to do, you "Ask the Oracle"--you consult an extensive series of tables with various questions, which may be yes-or-no, or rolling off a list. The one and only element of player judgment involved is, for some of the yes-or-no questions, you should determine how likely or unlikely a "yes" answer would be on that question....and if you aren't sure of that, either, you can just take the basic 50/50, or you can roll to determine what likelihood "yes" should have (and thus, obviously, what likelihood "no" has, since those are the only options).

So this reduces the central question to: How much of what happens in a TTRPG should be determined by written rules? All is not an available answer, and indeed the more you approaches that limit, the less flexible and more board-game like the experience become. However as you point out the other extreme enters pure improv/freeform territory.

Again, Ironsworn neatly rejects this claim. There is no need for a GM, the rules themselves handily address that. In truth, the one and only component of judgment that must be exercised by the players is whether they, collectively, feel a given state of affairs (or a given change to the current state of affairs) is reasonable. That's....it, really. Everything else is, in fact, handled by the rules. It was a pretty cool way of doing things and I'm honestly kinda looking forward to continuing with it someday.

And I have to emphasise there are nothing wrong with improv/freeform or board games! I can highly enjoy all of these activities. And that also mean I can enjoy a wide range of TTRPG aproaches. However being overly concerned about unwritten rules can make that problematic. For one thing it seem like something you can never fully escape, and if you try to limit it you quickly paint yourself into the board game like corner - potentially missing out on some of what then full breadth of what TTRPGing has to offer.

You keep painting this as "limitation". I don't see it as such--or, at least, I don't see "limitation" as this terrible bugbear you're presnting it to be. I have criticized others in the past who use the inaccurate platitude, "Limitation breeds creativity." The correct statement is, "Good limitations breed creativity." Naturally, it is quite possible to create bad limitations; one can usually come up with trivial examples without much effort, e.g. my example of spontaneously replacing D&D's initiative rules with "whoever can stand on one foot the longest goes first". But with a reasonable amount of design effort, there's nothing preventing one from achieving really quite good limitations.

One of the first precepts for creating good limitations is to avoid things that seem like choices, but aren't--which excludes both the extreme of bad-by-uniformity faux-"balance" that is simply "everything is the same", and the extreme of bad-by-broken faux-"choice" that is simply "oh there are options, but you can calculate the correct answer". Between the two, you have asymmetrical balance: truly distinct choices, where calculation cannot determine greater value, and thus the players must use qualitative, not quantitative, reasoning to make their choices. Testing is needed to make sure you don't accidentally fall to one side or the other, of course, but it's not some impossible unachievable thing.

(This is the reverse side of why the whole "tactical infinity" concept leaves me cold. If you actually did achieve tactical infinity, then there would necessarily be one objectively correct answer to any given situation--one answer which actually does produce the best results. That deadens, not enlivens, choice. The obverse side is that I don't believe any GM actually does achieve tactical infinity to begin with. Human minds aren't that supple. We can't confine them in a singular, universal box, but that doesn't mean they're infinite.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This claim isn't true at all, in my view. Trying to infer to social life from nothing but archaeological information is very fraught.

I was under the impression that secondary sources were always considered to be suspect and not acceptable as the only basis of theories of history. That's why I said "secondhand" sources. Primary sources are held in much higher regard, and a mixture of primary and secondary is (AIUI) considered best. It's like how pure carbon is an awful building material and nobody should ever use it, iron is a much better matieral, but an alloy using the right balance of iron and carbon--steel--is better than either alone.

Unfortunately, sometimes, all we have is pure carbon--secondary sources. When that happens, we do our best to not build anything particularly load-bearing out of it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because the DM is human.

And...? I fail to see how this answers the question at all.

 

[Maxperson]

And...? I fail to see how this answers the question at all.

And I fail to understand how you fail to understand. It's a social group. The DM cannot decide the social contract. And assuming the DM isn't an ass, he is going to listen to the players. He may or may not decide their way, but he's going to discuss it.

If the players aren't happy, they will tell him. If he continues, he will have no game to play. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the DM adjusting so that the players will be happy. Rarely, the DM will be unable to make them happy, because it would create a game that makes him unhappy.

 

[Maxperson]

They have not said so here. But they have said so. Bloodtide, Max, and some I have ignored as a result of interactions in this thread.

I have never said I use illusionism and have railed against it many times. I have also not said that I create secret rules. I have said that I will once every three or so years of real time fudge rolls when extreme bad luck hits the players while they have made no strategic/tactical mistakes AND I am having extreme good luck. And then only to give them a fighting chance, not to help them win.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And I fail to understand how you fail to understand. It's a social group. The DM cannot decide the social contract. And assuming the DM isn't an ass, he is going to listen to the players. He may or may not decide their way, but he's going to discuss it.

But you have insisted: absolute power. Absolute power does not discuss. It declares. That's, again, what MAKES it absolute.

If the players aren't happy, they will tell him. If he continues, he will have no game to play. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the DM adjusting so that the players will be happy. Rarely, the DM will be unable to make them happy, because it would create a game that makes him unhappy.

What odds?

By your own insistence, there IS no odds. The GM does what they like. Period. Not even "end of discussion", because there isn't any. Only absolute power and its application: "My way, or the highway."