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

[Micah Sweet]

Except that I did not. See how easy it is to riposte someone's argument when you don't actually respond to it, and instead write it off?

I explained my reasoning. It'd be nice to actually get an argument in response, rather than writing off what I said with a simplistic, inaccurate, dismissive summary.

Please explain to me how I've misrepresented you. That's how I read your statement.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As a player, I want the DM to have that power first and foremost because I do not want it. If I have the power to construct the world, the tension between PC and player becomes more pronounced and it harms the feeling of immersion. See here.



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I didn't think it was dismissing the opposite side without a moment's thought. It was examining an edge case to demonstrate why the DM having a more authoritative role in the fiction is important. GMless or other systems relegate some of this role to some other entity, like a deck of cards or background material. The Quiet Year, for example, examines a very specific scenario.

The Quiet Year is a lot of fun. I've used it twice in session zero to form the initial details of a setting for my game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The language of "reality altering", "quantum" etc to me just signals a failure to recognise that RPGing can take forms beyond one fairly narrow playstyle based around the players learning from the GM about the setting and situations the GM has come up with.

This I don't really agree with. Setting aside determinism issues, there are parts of my life where I exercise agency and parts where I don't. Eg I chose my profession - an exercise of agency - but now, at my age and given my experience, am pretty much locked-in - I no longer really have agency over what my profession will be. Within my job, I exercise agency - eg choosing what to research and write on - but also find myself having to do things I wouldn't do if I could choose - I have little agency in respect of those things.

Choosing to play a game is an exercise of agency. In playing the game, I want to enjoy agential experiences. I get enough non-agential experience in other parts of my life. If someone's pitch of a game to me is Just like the rest of your life, in this game you will often find yourself lacking agency, dictated to by circumstances established by other, etc my response is "No thanks!"

And that's totally fine. It's just a preference, and not mine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which, as usual, completely ignores the social cost of this choice.

Rejecting someone's offer is not free....because of the social contract.

No one said it was free, did they. There are consequences to any choice anyone makes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the point might be that limiting away Thiefling is ok, but doing so because having mapped out everything is not ok. The reason for this is that according to this stance having mapped out everything is not ok, and that is implied in the first sentence.

A bit convoluted. But I guess maybe it might be ok to disallow thieflings because it doesn't match the feel you were going for with your world?

Ok. I got confused because I disagree with the italicized premise.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think I really agree with Hussar's strict criterion in theory but I think he is onto something in practice.

It is very hard to feel that anything is satisfactorily simulated if it is overly abstracted.

This is why simulationist systems are so often a juggle between too complex and complex enough.

I think that whether you feel that something is satisfactorily simulated, overly abstracted(not simulated enough), or overly simulated is going to be a personal thing. A single given instance of simulation might be all three of those to three different people.

All that really matters when it comes to being sim is if something is a simulation or not, not whether you think it's too little, too much, or just right.

 

[Maxperson]

Perhaps, but the effect was first noticed on cruise liners crossing the equator which would have been using the same equipment all along, so ???

Snipers aiming at distant(for snipers) targets have to account for the coriolis effect.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. It is that all of these things presume the GM bringing a world that nailed down before players can even have a chance to speak about it. "My way or the highway" at the setting level, since that is naturally the first (or possibly second) level at which the players can encounter it.

It isn't just "agree to play a game where I'm running <SYSTEM>". It's "agree to play a game where I'm running <SYSTEM> with a world I have completely predefined such that you have no choices except the ones I permit you."

I've played in and run a lot of games where the GM has control over everything in the world except the PCs. I've never had the GM describe any of them the way you just did here. And oddly enough, I've also enjoyed nearly all of those games.

Now why exactly would I want the DM to behave differently than they have been in games I've enjoyed?

 

[clearstream]

I think the point might be that limiting away Thiefling is ok, but doing so because having mapped out everything is not ok. The reason for this is that according to this stance having mapped out everything is not ok, and that is implied in the first sentence.

A bit convoluted. But I guess maybe it might be ok to disallow thieflings because it doesn't match the feel you were going for with your world?

That's part of why I mentioned Stonetop. Everything is not mapped out, but one might exclude tieflings anyway. That is because the facts about a world are not just the set of individual contents of the world, but also the kinds of those contents, and so on.

 

[TwoSix]

Snipers aiming at distant(for snipers) targets have to account for the coriolis effect.

That's why I say "Hey man, nice shot."