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

[Lanefan]

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!

You get better results if you add up the dice, the bonuses, and everything else, get the original damage total, and then multiply that.

So if your 2x-crit roll on a sword attack is d8+6 and you roll 2, you end up doing 16 damage.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Opposite tack here: I say build the setting first. If you build it, they will come.

That, and inviting players in only to then have them wait for half a year while you build out the setting doesn't seem like a great way of keeping players.

 

[Lanefan]

"You can't play a dragonborn because I hate dragonborn and thus forbid them" is not a fixable issue. It's a rejection of the other person's interests.

And allowing them is a rejection of my own interests.

So, stalemate; and now the DM gets to pull rank.

 

[FrogReaver]

Just to add to this, and to address some comments about skill systems (which have come from @Crimson Longinus and @Don Durito):

Here is the entry for Climbing skill in Burning Wheel Gold Revised (p 264):

This skill allows the character to navigate sheer surfaces using rope, harnesses and really strong finger muscles. In addition, rougher surfaces can be scaled with bare hands.​

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Obstacles: Easy climb (a rocky hill, a tree or a fence), Ob 1. Moderate climb (inclined rock wall, a treacherous tree), Ob 2. Difficult climb (straight rock wall), Ob 3. Dangerous climb (sheer rock wall), Ob 4. Impossible climb (ice climbing), Ob 5. Suicidal climb (bad conditions, overhangs, etc), Ob 7.​

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FoRKs: Knots, Rigging​

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Skill Type: Physical​

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Tools: Yes, expendable.​

This is what I expect a classic simulationist skill entry to look like: it identifies what the skill bonus represents (ie skill with climbing gear and/or strong fingers); it locates it within the broader context of possible actions (this is a physical skill, and it is aided by skills such as Knots and Rigging - Fields of Related Knowledge); and it characterises obstacles that the skill might be used to overcome (like different sorts of slopes and surfaces) in game-mechanical terms (the list of sample obstacles).

A contrast could be drawn with the 4e D&D skill system, which identifies the relevant sorts of activities the skill pertains to but uses a pretty different sort of framework for establishing difficulties, and is much more open about what the skill bonus represents (eg suppose that an Epic tier Wizard has a +15 bonus to Athletics - it is really up to the player and the rest of the table to decide what that tells us about the character, and given that most of that bonus will be a level bonus there is no expectation to describe the character as having strong finger muscles).

The process of establishing a BW character's climbing bonus, and of working out what the difficulty is for a climbing attempt, strikes me as "diegetic" as that term gets used in RPG analysis: in the fiction, there is this character with these fingers and this degree of mastery of rope and harness, standing at the base of this (near-, semi-)vertical surface that poses this degree of challenge, hoping to ascend it. And the audience is in the same sort of relationship to these game elements like the bonus and the obstacle.

Whereas in 4e D&D it is not a diegetic process. The PC has a climbing bonus, but the number on the sheet doesn't tell us a great deal about what this character looks like, or does, when they try and climb. And there is a (near-, semi-) vertical surface but its in-fiction properties are not the main consideration in determining what obstacle to set.

I don't know whether 5e D&D, as typically played, is closer to BW or to 4e D&D.

Earlier in the discussion we discovered some games you reference state skills meant one thing only to find out that in play they functioned differently. As such, I'm not sure how to proceed when we can have potentially 'lying' game texts. It seems not just the skill description but the full set of details around it's use also must matter.

The infamous lockpicking with cook and runes examples both show this.

 

[Lanefan]

I think it's pretty rarely "done right", so that's probably why I have a difference of opinion.

The most common occurrence, and I think the approach that causes the most issues, are the DMs who make a pseudo-"kitchen sink" setting, which has like 10 races but doesn't seem to have room for any other ancestry because the DM doesn't like those.

You say this like it's a bad thing.

Why on earth would I include something in my setting that I don't want to see there?

 

[Lanefan]

I would think it’s trivially obvious that the GM makes more decisions than the players. I mean… you’re running an entire world. Each player is running an individual character.

I absolutely make more decisions than my players when I run D&D. And I don’t even prep heavily!

During play, the players probably make more decisions in aggregate than I do.

Outside of play, I make loads of decisions during prep.

So, depending whether one is just looking at during-session play or looking at the overall total, both answers can be correct.

 

[FrogReaver]

The making of a decision, guided by a heuristic.

"Mechanic" is cognate with "machine". Using a machine to generate a result stands in contrast to making a judgement.

As a potential counterexample, what would you make of a 'mechanic' where players vote on whether something happens. I assume each players individual vote isn't a mechanic in your view as it's their judgement, but the vote tally deciding whether that something happens would be a mechanic, correct?

Assuming that matches your assessment then 'DM decides' should be a mechanic. How the DM decides should not be.

 

[FrogReaver]

I like “heuristic”, but I’m open to workshop it.

I just think “mechanic” isn’t the correct term because if you said “I like FKR games because they have lots of mechanics” that seems farcically wrong.

What about, "I like FKR games because I like the mechanic of having an expert decide the outcome"?

 

[FrogReaver]

This seems to be a description of GM-driven/GM-centred play. The players declare their PCs actions, and everything else is worked out by the GM (either directly or, as you say, mediated via the mechanics).

If all it takes to be GM driven is (1) the players declare their PCs actions and everything else is worked out by the directly or mediated via the mechanics then that seems to designate even the RPG's you call player driven as actually GM driven.

 

[Hussar]

Opposite tack here: I say build the setting first. If you build it, they will come.

That, and inviting players in only to then have them wait for half a year while you build out the setting doesn't seem like a great way of keeping players.

Heh. It's really funny. Wayyyyy back early in the thread, I commented that D&D was a poor system for sandboxing because of the amount of work required to get the game off the ground. Now, here we are, thousands of posts later, and you're talking about needing six MONTHS of work to get a sandbox off the ground using D&D.

I got absolutely taken to task for suggesting that D&D was a difficult system to use for sandboxing because of the work required, and now, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that every sandboxing D&D Dm is nodding their head with what you said about needing six months to get ready. But, suggest there might be a faster way to do it? HERESY!!!