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

[Faolyn]

How so? My comment had nothing to do with how I played the game. It was about how playing the game as written didn't appeal to me.

Because you are still talking about preplanning things in a FitD game instead of trying the game as it is actually meant to be played.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It was that the position is in fact real, and actually held, by at least one real person in this thread. It cannot be dismissed as a boogeyman, a fiction, a strawman, a mockery, an exaggeration. It is, in fact, real and demonstrated before our very eyes.

I will agree that position has been expressed. I'm not convinced its real. I personally think Bloodtide's postings are mostly schtick.

 

[The Firebird]

Because you are still talking about preplanning things in a FitD game instead of trying the game as it is actually meant to be played.

I didn't preplan it when I ran the game. I tried it as it was meant to be played. I disliked the lack of preplanning.

 

[TwoSix]

So, with respect, simulation in general does not require that association.

That association is specific to what is usually called "process simulation" - it is an added requirement that may not be relevant to all folks who want simulation.

For example, folks looking to simulate a fictional genre often don't need the association, which is good because genres are often not differentiated from the real world by identifiable processes.

Agreed. As an example mentioned in this thread, FKR play would generally be defined under the “simulation” label but certainly doesn’t have specific mechanics that are doing that simulation. (My gut feeling is that a referee’s specific mental processes to simulate don’t count as a “mechanic”.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Seems like it's rather wasteful then, to characterize all GMs as either perfect angels, someone whose behavior not just isn't questionable but cannot be questioned, and horrible devils, someone whose behavior is utterly and horrendously unacceptable.

Seems like it might be much more useful to recognize that there are degrees of acceptability. That there are techniques available to fix gaps. That a showing of genuine respect, rather than an enforcement of absolute hierarchy, can be incredibly helpful.

And that maybe it's possible for a GM to screw up, and get called out by a player in a non-campaign-destroying way, and then fix their behavior. Rather than the insistence that the GM is always right up until the point you've got conclusive proof that they're a monster.

I don't recall ever making that claim. Players call me out all the time, and we talk about it. Sometimes, I change what I'm doing. Sometimes, I explain what I'm doing and it stands. Every situation is unique. I still get to decide what I want to do, but I choose to take the opinions of others into consideration, because I don't want to be a jerk. I much prefer this system to any set of rules demanding I behave in a certain way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think causality is often messed up if we are thinking just about what we do at the table. Resolving hit locations in RQ being a clear example. Within world, causality is fine.

That said, it seems worth making a list of proposed features identifying simulative mechanics, I've now

association between the mechanical process and the process that takes place in the fiction​

provides information about how the result was achieved​

results are not defined by a player statement and a successful roll​

abstractions of a larger, more complex fictional reality​

ease complicated processes into something that can be more easily played with​

non-playful​

change the fictional world to reflect character actions​

​

Those last four are from a quick parsing of Sam Sorensen's "New Simulationism".

I mean, if you want a simple example: the complexities of narrating a critical hit in 3e (and to a lesser extent 5e).

You narrate that you are attacking the enemy. You roll a critical threat--but, unless this is specifically 20, you must still confirm that you hit, as with any attack roll. (Which means, yes, this is a "simulation" which generates critical threats that miss in some cases. Don't ask me what that means physically, I have no idea.) Once you have confirmed that you hit, you must confirm that you really did get the crit. This requires you to roll and hit a second time. If you do, then it is a crit. If you do not, it is just a regular hit. Then, after all that, you roll certain damage dice (primarily, only those from the weapon itself), rolling twice as many as usual, unless it's a weapon that has a better crit multiplier (e.g. x3 instead of x2), then you follow whatever the multiplier is.

However...because you don't multiply all the dice...it is quite possible to roll very poorly on a crit--indeed, you can easily do below-average damage on a "crit". By the time you're rolling the damage, however, someone has almost certainly begun narrating the attack action, meaning it's very plausible to get an epic description and then a wet fart of a result.

5e doesn't have the whole confirm-crits thing (and also has far fewer means of expanding one's crit range, and all crit multipliers are always x2), but is otherwise functionally the same. And I would know about that whole "rolled damage and got a wet fart" thing. Literally just happened the day before yesterday in Hussar's OotA game. I got a crit on sorcerous burst, which is particularly nice because it has (limited) exploding dice...and then proceeded to roll a grand total of three damage on 2d8.

It's one of the places where I'm truly baffled why they chose to go with the 3e way instead of the 4e way (and thus one of the reasons I believe 5e has dramatically more in common, in its design and its ethos, with 3e than with any other edition of D&D). 4e's crits are guaranteed to be a big hit--you maximize damage dice. Even if that maximizing-dice thing were only applied to the basal weapon damage, it would still mean that the highly unnatural "struck a telling blow for far less than even an average strike" thing didn't happen. A blow being a critical hit would, in fact, be a hit that is critical--something anybody would be upset to have to deal with. And it isn't even like it's that different! The average result of doubling XdN is simply X(N+1). It's extra work, for a less verisimilitudinous result, that often (as in, like, about a third to a quarter of the time?) results in worse results than if you'd just gotten a pretty average hit!

 

[FrogReaver]

Agreed. As an example mentioned in this thread, FKR play would generally be defined under the “simulation” label but certainly doesn’t have specific mechanics that are doing that simulation. (My gut feeling is that a referee’s specific mental processes to simulate don’t count as a “mechanic”.)

So what would to call the referee’s specific mental process to simulate if not a mechanic?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't recall ever making that claim. Players call me out all the time, and we talk about it. Sometimes, I change what I'm doing. Sometimes, I explain what I'm doing and it stands. Every situation is unique. I still get to decide what I want to do, but I choose to take the opinions of others into consideration, because I don't want to be a jerk. I much prefer this system to any set of rules demanding I behave in a certain way.

So you don't have absolute power, then?

Because you're specifically saying here that players can:

• Criticize your decisions
• Expect a reasonable response, assuming reasonable criticism (again, not giving carte blanche to anyone!)
• Lay out what they think needs to change
• Get that change to actually happen, at least some of the time, even if you yourself don't think the change was needed (again, not saying you can't have bright lines, just that there are limits)

That last one is especially important.

 

[TwoSix]

Are you sure your position isn't, "if the players wants to play something that isn't in the world the GM made and is running, the GM should just let them regardless of their feelings on the matter"?

I can’t speak for @EzekielRaiden, although I think we share similar sentiments on this issue. My take is that generally a GM shouldn’t attempt to author highly specific settings and then look for a group to play them, because that specificity causes more harmful issues than it adds positive additions to play.

If you like to solo worldbuild for fun, go for it. If your group has been together since the Pliocene like @Lanefan’s and is cool with you building out a highly specific setting, great. Otherwise, I think it’s a poor idea.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I will agree that position has been expressed. I'm not convinced its real. I personally think Bloodtide's postings are mostly schtick.

By that standard, anyone's position can be asserted to be "schick" rather than an actual belief.

I take people at their word when they tell me what their opinions are. They are the best authority one could ask for about such things. If they're lying about that on a random internet forum for a ludicrously overextended and bizarre "bit", well, I don't really feel like it's my responsibility to divine that they are doing that.

What, then, do you make of the fact that that post, for example, has gotten (as of the last time I looked at it), two or three upvotes? Are those people also "mostly schtick"?