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

[FrogReaver]

Note, the distinction that makes the difference isn't whether the mechanic exists, but whether the mechanics are directly associated to and simulating processes that exist in the narrative.

I think you've misunderstood the quote I was responding to.

 

[FrogReaver]

More puzzling still, how do the supposed TTRPG mechanics make themselves felt in play without some person's specific mental process to enact them?

Yea, I find that most all the mechanics in every RPG i've been a part of require a great deal of GM judgement to enact. If GM judgement being required excludes something from being a mechanic then there's very few things i'd classify as a mechanic.

This is very prevalent in 5e with skill checks, due to the DM setting DCs. It was also very prevalent in Blades in the Dark with setting initial position and effect, and also deciding on the complication for failure or success with complication. Even something like when to call for initiative in D&D or when to transition to a score in Blades in the Dark isn't always clear cut in actual play. A judgement often must be made.

 

[Faolyn]

Umm, you are mistaking the method of the simulation with the fact that the simulation is providing a very clear amount of information to inform the narrative. How that information is generated isn't really the point. The fact that none of it is "real" isn't the point. It is a simulation after all. None of it is "real". Realism isn't the point at all.

The point is that the narrative - the wheel of your car fell off because you hit the wall in the game - is made perfectly clearly by the game. Again, you failed to answer my question. Would you play a video game where the wheel of your car falls off the car without any explanation or cues from within the game as to why?

Because that's what D&D is. It's the wheel falling off the car - the result - without any explanation provided.

Uh, no.

D&D doesn't go into technical explanations--like, they don't get into the nitty-gritty of hit locations or discuss the exact mechanisms of a trap--but they don't have random things happening for no reason. If something is going to cause the wheels to fall off in a D&D adventure, the text will say why.

Your problem here is that D&D isn't giving the exact reason for every single issue you can think of. But there's no way a game, any game, can model every single possibility that any GM or adventure writer can come up with for anything. Like climbing a cliff. Even if it went into detail about climbing a cliff, each cliff and each length of rope is going to be different. And there's also climbing a wall, and climbing a suspended rope, and climbing a spiral of magically solidified smoke, and climbing up side of a dragon as it leaps on the party's fighter, and, climbing any of the above in the rain, at night, in high winds, with a sturdy rope, with a weathered rope, with a magic rope, while being shot at, when there are creatures flying around your head, and, and, and.

And this isn't a D&D problem. It's the problem of condensing real life into a book of manageable size in a way that's not mind-numbingly boring to read and won't take too long to roll out. There's no game out there that can adequately simulate climbing in even a fraction of the situations that a GM or players can come up with. There's no game that can sim that even if we limited ourselves to things that could only happen in reality, with no magic or monsters adding to the problem.

Which is why these games rely on your imagination. We can just make stuff up. We don't need rules to say that the wheels fell off because the crash (somehow) caused the wheel nuts to break. We don't even need to know that the wheels fell off. All we need to know is that the car has been rendered inoperable because of the damage it took when it crashed into a wall, and if the genre is one in which this will cause the car to explode. We can use our imagination to decide if that was because the engine was crushed or because the wheels fell off or because of something else.

 

[Faolyn]

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!!!

You claimed, way back then, that D&D was bad/difficult for sandbox games because it took too long.

Many of us said "So what? We don't mind if it takes a while to set up. We like that sort of prep. It's fun for us!"

You refused to accept that.

So I repeat: If someone wants to spend six months prepping a sandbox, then that's obviously not something that will make a system bad/difficult for them. Therefore, D&D is not an inherently bad/difficult system for sandbox games.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This one matches my vision exactly. Indeed you have more vivid image in mind than me. So the difference isn't here.

Okay. For clarity, I consider this extreme control, far above and beyond what I expect of "friends". Strangers/distant acquaintances, sure--I don't know their judgment. Anyone I'd call "friend" I know enough to at least loosely know their judgment.

A person exercising this level of control over their friends is, to put it bluntly, weird and mildly concerning.

I wonder where you got those bolded parts from? I will give a stab at a speculation further down. But this do not harmonise with my vision. Indeed I have a hard time seing how that first thing could even be possible. The rest harmonises with my vision except I imagine we might differ a bit in what constitutes "harmful" in RPG context. (Including agreeing that the friends are behaving weirdly exemplary - but it is an example after all)

Instant deference is incompatible with giving any response--including comment or criticism. I had bolded this previously, here it is again: "rapidly shoots down any idea...that they are worried might damage their toy", coupled with "The friends...do not question or push, but immediately defers to the owner...whenever they voice any opinion regarding this toy's use."

First part means owner acts with maximum (effectively instant) speed when "shoot[ing] down" ideas. Second excludes any form of question or pushback the moment the owner speaks. Hence, together, they entail instant, total deference.

I don't think I never used the words "comment and critisise" in any of the two examples. In my mind the ability to comment and critisise has been an unquestioned ability, and as such my vision when writing has always included that posibility. Again, I wonder where you have gotten this notion from? And for this I cannot even speculate, so I would really like it if you can give me some more clue! (Even if zooming in on acceptability I can only see me describing the kid being opiniated about actions done with the toy - nothing about how the friends should express opinions about the toy)

See above. Instant deference is incompatible with commentary or criticism. They are forms of pushback, no matter how gentle. E.g. pausing and asking for an explanation of why an act is harmful is still pushback. (One major part of my issue with "absolute" power. Its absoluteness is what denies or invalidates commentary/criticism.)

And it is absolutely not acceptable to run that car over rough surfaces!!!! (The fingerprints can be removed, even if the job might be tedious).

Seems an impasse. Analogically, this is saying "never, ever risk scuffing the paint". Never take actions that can meaningfully change the setting; it must be, in some sense, pristine. When even minor, easily removed blemishes (e.g. fingerprints) are seen as a major concession, the primary concern is clearly the toy, not the other people.

I stand by all those words. But this I think is the crux. You missed an absolute essential 3 words in this summary: "being good friends". More below.

Well, I'm sorry, but as noted above, I don't believe such instant deference is something that can be rooted in friendship. Declaring that it arises from such a thing is not the same as that actually being the case. Friendship is rooted in reciprocity; this isn't reciprocal in the least. There are many things we can declare come from "being good friends" (or any other source) without that actually being true.

Or, if you prefer, that declaration is where you have erred, because you have made your reasoning circular. You have presumed that this situation solely arises from "being good friends", when that very thing is what you wanted to demonstrate. I won't accept the conclusion being included as one of the premises.

The reason for instant deference is absolutely crucial for this example, and you seem to have missed it. They are so well behaved because they are being good friends. It is not because of some notion on the friend or kid's part that such behavior would be unaccepable. No test for what would have happened if any of the kids had deviated from this is included in the example as it simply doesn't happen.

I just cannot accept this connection. It does not compute. "Friendship" requires back-and-forth--reciprocity--and this has been specifically defined to have no reciprocity whatsoever.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

all those things can happen and as long as the GM is still the one making the final calls of if something gets added or not in that last bullet point then they still have absolute power.

You will note that I specifically referred to powers of such a type as distinct from absolute power.

 

[FrogReaver]

And how does that relate to "convenience"? Are you now saying that if the GM decides to introduce strange runes that have useful information that makes play not simulationist, because "convenient"?

I think it depends not on what but on why and that also applies to the GM. If the GM included runes to teleport you away only after realizing you were in over your head, that would not be simulationist. If he included them only as an interesting feature of the world/dungeon and you happened upon them then that is very much simulationist.

I am not grasping what you, and those other posters who seem to be agreeing with you, mean by "simulationism". Unless it just means a preference for GM narration of the fiction. But in that case, why not just come out and say it?

1) it's more descriptive about why the preference for GM narration of the fiction exists.
2) there's a long history of talking about simulationism in RPGs.
3) GM can narrate fiction not following simulationist principles, so it's not precisely the same thing.

As I already posted upthread, the player is not deciding what the runes say. They are hoping the runes say <this rather than that>, and the dice roll determines whether this is the case or not.

IMO. If everytime and no matter what you hope for you then proceed to get it on a successful die roll then you are doing more than hoping.

If they hope, and the GM decides that their hope comes true, does that make it simulationist?

No, or rather it would depend on why he decided that

What if the GM rolls on their Strange Runes table, and the player gets lucky - does that make it simulationist?

Probably. The 'Strange Runes table' could be constructed or employed in a non-simulationist way, but assuming it was created and employed with simulationist intent then rolling on it would yield simulationist results.

No process used at the table is going to emulate the actual process of actually writing runes. Which ones make for simulationism?

The ones with simulationist goals in mind.

I have my own views about the answer to this question: they are based on 1000s of hours of play of Rolemaster, and a lot of play of other RPGs that involve mechanics that try hard to model ingame causal processes. But my answers tell me that, for instance, the approach to weather and the environment in TB2e is more simulationist than in typical D&D; and that Fight! in Burning Wheel is far more simulationist than typical D&D combat. Whereas in this thread I am being told that D&D combat and falling rules are simulationist-oriented rules in a way that some of those other RPGs are not.

No one is saying other games don't have some simulationist mechanics or that D&D is the only simulationist game.

Likewise stop-motion resolution in contemporary D&D combat.

No one identifies stop motion D&D combat as the pinnacle of simulationist. It's typically viewed as either a necessary evil or a fun minigame, and even then it still carries alot of simulationist ideas with it, even if not every aspect of it is. That's been the common theme to that point in this thread.

Or not knowing whether "I hit you for 8 hp of damage" is a nothing-burger or a fatal wound until we apply the result to the target's hp tally.

Not sure why this wouldn't be simulationist?

Or not knowing that the rope is running across a sharp stone, or that the climber is grabbing hold of crumbly rock, until after the roll to climb is made.

I don't think that particular part is simulationist either. For simulation, the characters skill check roll shouldn't be telling you about the world, it should be telling you how well you performed. Yes, I'm aware others have defended those descriptions as simulation. I don't agree.

That said, I think there's also a difference in a mechanic that simply says, 'if you fail a climb check you fall'. I don't think that's an actual mechanic in 5e d&d but possibly it was one in a previous version. If that was the mechanic or believed to be the mechanic or houseruled in as the mechanic, I think authoring why the fall occured on something other than character ineptness is probably the most simulationist way of threading the needle against the competing priorities of heroic characters, failed climb check = falling, and not altering the world around a check. I'd note the difference here between this and the cook example is that in the cook example, the complication wasn't mandated to be a cook and so the glue of competing priorities wasn't there to make the cook example okay in the same way.

This is why I am having trouble working out why some of these causal "violations" are being characterised as simulationist, and some are not.

There's alot of nuance there and different posters are going to have different views about the edge cases.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This actually give me an idea. I think @SkidAce 's description is very close to what most GMs actually do. However it seem like the formulation SkidAce is using actually is more reassuring due to it being properly articulated.

I think very few GMs would be able to with confidence formulate the right lines for them.

Then I consider this a severe, indeed critical, problem that should be the top priority for any GM to fix.

Being unable to articulate your bright lines is a very, very bad thing. It nearly guarantees there will be problems.

I for instance once allowed a build that turned out to be completely broken. It had an animal companion that outshined the entire party of PCs in combat. The group agreed this was ridiculous, and the character that had it got modified. However this is a piece of experience I would like to be able to draw upon also in the future. What to do if a different player come up with the same build, and refuse to believe me, or think it just sound cool when I tell about my experience? Having that bright line on character creation would indeed feel quite handy there - to protect the other players.

A person who is simply unwilling to come to the negotiation table in good faith is a bad fit for gaming, period. Having some bright lines is okay (good, even!). Having tons of them isn't. Doesn't matter what you're doing at that game table.

I completely agree it would be nice to have such a fixed set of lines. It improves predictability both for the players and for me as a GM. It make me not getting into the dilemma if I should take the social risk of introducing a new bright line (a risk that is certanly there even if it is accepted that i formally have the power to do so. An absolute monarch can still make unpopular decissions)

However I have yet to see anyone trying to actually concreting such lines for trad RPG (except possibly just here). Hence we are in the unfortunate situation of ad hoc lines being the best we have.

Then the situation is completely indistinguishable from the arbitrary execution of unchecked, absolute power. That's a huge bloody problem.

So hence I was wondering if you could try to formulate some lines based on my needs. Spesifically what I can think of I might need lines for is:

• Protecting in-fiction integrity (no thieflings if a central piece of worldbuilding is that it has nothing corresponding to hell)
• Protecting other players against abuse (No overpowered animal companion. No spider familiar if a player has severe arachnophobia. No insisting to spend hours pursuing some conspiracy theory regarding temple guards)
• Maintain the spirit of the game (No placing an unguarded dragon hoard in the next room simply because the players all agree that would be neat)

I don't understand why tieflings need a thing that corresponds to hell. Why can't they be--for example--people descended from the byproducts of magical experiments? Or, perhaps, an ethnic group from a distant land, that the local population simply falsely believes that they're scary bad guys when literally no such thing exists? Or...(etc.) Point being, I don't understand this bright line. If it's truly an absolute, utter impasse, we find that out by talking, not by people laying down the law from on high.

More or less, this seems to go far beyond "in-fiction integrity"; it is specifically that, because you didn't conceive of something that looks like a tiefling maybe possibly appearing somewhere in this world, nothing with that appearance can ever appear in this world. That's a dramatically stronger position, and is more or less the kind of thing I've been referring to above. It's not just that the fiction must remain unchanged, it's that the visualization in your head must remain unchanged.

Protecting other players from abuse is presumed by the nature of a cooperative game. I don't even consider that a "bright line"--it's literally foundational to the experience. Those who choose to undermine the foundation by permitting crazy stuff are on their own.

I don't see how that third thing is a "bright line" for anyone here? That is, this line doesn't seem to apply to anyone participating in the conversation. The GMs who claim "traditional GM" status have already made clear that "the GM is the world". If the GM feels that a dragon hoard being located in the next room is the correct thing to do, it happens. If they don't, it doesn't. And the GMs who don't do that...build table consensus already and if the table consensus is that there should be a dragon hoard, then there is one.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's unfair. I used that term for anything a player does in game, during active play, that modifies the fiction outside of the purview of their PC. That's it. Even then, there's a little wiggle room around stuff like personal backstory and the like. And of course, there are many games where that sort of thing is perfectly acceptable, or even encouraged or required (not games I prefer, but still). And I'm happy to use the term "player collaboration" if the other is too inflammatory for you, as I've said.

Hardly "anything that isn't done according to my exact preferences".

My point was that there have been some inflammatory statements from both sides--and far enough back that, if there ever were an objective "first shot", it absolutely no longer matters who made one. Both sides have said disparaging things. To make an argument based on "why is it you present my preferences in an awful light?" makes it sound as though folks have not done the reverse, when they demonstrably have.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And allowing them is a rejection of my own interests.

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

No.

Now the two of them need to decide if it's worth participating together, when they, or at least one of them, is so bullheaded, they cannot ever work with the other to find an amenable solution.

Personally, I consider it an extremely bad red flag when a GM slams their foot down, "pulls rank", before character creation. That tells me enthusiastic player participation is a low priority to them.