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

[EzekielRaiden]

Ok. There we have it. If you quietly, but outright, rejected one of the fundamental facts of my example, and quietly replaced it with something you came up with yourself that you think make more sense. Is there any wonder we end up with differing visions?

My problem is, you assert things that don't look like facts.

I can assert all day "this is a four-sided triangle". That doesn't MAKE it a four-sided triangle.

"This person instantly obeys another person in all respects regarding a particular object" isn't what "good friends" do. It just isn't. In inserting this bizarre restriction, you are asserting that absolute power is what friends exert over other friends. That is patently ridiculous. It just is.

 

[Emerikol]

The kinds of players I look for are those who want to be invested in the world. They ask questions about the world before they come up with a character. I often have one on one meetings with players to help fill out their backgrounds. They tell me the kinds of ideas they have for their character and I try to find a place in the world that supports that idea. If my entire campaign is set in a vast desert, then I advise not choosing pirate as a background if you want your background to have relevance to the setting. Now if pirates exist anywhere in the world I might still allow it with that warning.

 

[Enrahim]

My problem is, you assert things that don't look like facts.

I can assert all day "this is a four-sided triangle". That doesn't MAKE it a four-sided triangle.

"This person instantly obeys another person in all respects regarding a particular object" isn't what "good friends" do. It just isn't. In inserting this bizarre restriction, you are asserting that absolute power is what friends exert over other friends. That is patently ridiculous. It just is.

That might be. But if I declare a four-sided triangle, I would appriciate if you try to get clarification on what I am meaning up front, rather than go on replying to me as if I surely must have meant a square

And less importantly. I absolutely reject your notion regarding limitations to what friendship can look like. I am not asserting friends are exerting absolute power over friends. It is not needed as good friends act in a good way, even without having any notion of power guiding their actions.

 

[AnotherGuy]

"This person instantly obeys another person in all respects regarding a particular object" isn't what "good friends" do.

Your framing of one person obeying another is not how the hobby is enjoyed amongst friends.
I would not frame football (soccer for the 350k in the US) as people kicking a ball around.

In inserting this bizarre restriction, you are asserting that absolute power is what friends exert over other friends. That is patently ridiculous.

So not permitting a race, a class, a sub-class, a class feature or a spell for a game/campaign is asserting absolute power to you?

 

[AlViking]

How can something exist for the audience without the audience being able to see any information about how a result occurred?

Again, would you play a video game which provided zero information about how the wheel fell off your car? WOuld that be simulationist in your opinion

I don't know why I got a flat tire, I just did. I don't know why the gasket on my sink wore out and had to be replaced, it just happened. I don't know why my cat decided to barf on the couch, but it still happened. I start up my phone, I don't really understand how it works. All sorts of things happen that we don't understand. Meanwhile nothing in the word diegetic says anything about providing information on how a result occurs. I can always provide a description as GM that is just as relevant, just as useful, just as accurate as any pre-written chart. The only thing that changes if I make it up on the spot is that I can tailor it to the situation instead of relying on the author of the rules to provide a generic explanation that may or may not fit the current scenario.

But there's really no reason for me to answer this, you'll just ignore my response and ask the same question yet again.

 

[clearstream]

I saw this now. I think I might have a relevant point before diving to deep into this rabit hole.

I would claim neither text nor play is able to identify simulationist experience. I present chess as a case study. It can be experienced as a battle simulation. It can also be experienced as a purely abstract game. It is not possible to recognise what is experienced by the participants by examining game text or play.

As far as I can see, self reporting is required to identify this simulative experience.

I am sceptical if there are any setup that can ensure the activity qualifies as a simulative experience in this sense.

Yes, agreed. And what I mean by identifying simulationist experiences in play is of course identifying testimonial to simulationist experiences in play. To that ends I have proposed some rough categories

Immersion in subject​

Noetic satisfaction in subject​

Exploration of subject​

Investigation of subject
​

If someone says they had experiences in play fitting one of those, I believe them. If they say that there is some other experience they want to add to the list, I'm open to understanding how it fits. Those I've listed are associated with "simulationism" in numerous texts (e.g. threads like this one, papers, posts and articles, games).

 

[TwoSix]

What is the distinguishable difference between the two?
Custom a well-known published setting or building a setting from scratch?

I could run the Principalities of Glantri during the lycanthrope epidemic (where halflings and dwarves were blamed and hunted), I could run Forgotten Realms sans monks or I could run my own made up world where cantrips do not exist and magic beyond 2nd level spells doesn't exist.
I do not see a distinguishable difference that would cause more or less issues.

I don't see much of a particular difference between those use cases, no.

My question is more of "Did you, as a DM, spend a lot of time detailing that setting, such that you wouldn't be amenable to changing it or from moving on from the concept if you don't have player buy-in?"

A DM who spends tons of time detailing a setting is a DM who is implicitly stating that their setting details are important, and not just being used as backdrop for play. And I think that desire can have pernicious effects on a game, even in trad play where setting is more of a consideration. I simply find it to be a very rare group where most of the players have legitimate interest in exploring all the details the GM wrote up in the past year that have nothing to do with their characters.

 

[TwoSix]

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

Installing an expert to makes decisions could feasibly be called a mechanic. (I might not call it that myself, but I can see an argument for it.)

What decision making processes go in that expert's mind is what I would not call a mechanic or set of mechanics.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is a difference between being a thiefling and look like a thiefling. I want to be able to reject outright the former without that creating too much fuzz. The latter I can be very happy to work with the player to acheive.

I don't think the difference is nearly as hard as you claim.

Given you don't care about appearance, I'll be focused purely on mechanics. In 5e, being a tiefling gives you three things, the middle of which comes as package deals associated with the three heritages, Abyssal, Cthonic, or Infernal). The first is 60' darkvision. Given this is something many species have, I doubt you care about that. The third thing is the thaumaturgy cantrip, which again, I presume you have no problem with. So the whole focus is on the three-part packages.

I assume, for example, that you would not raise such objections with drow/dark elves as characters? Or just elves in general, really. Because guess what? Other than elves getting even more features, they're functionally equivalent to tieflings! Elves get: 60' darkvision, the three-spells package deal selection (drow/wood/high), advantage on saves to avoid Charmed, one free skill proficiency from Insight/Perception/Survival, and Trance.

Tieflings get 60' darkvision, the three-spells package deal selection, and Thaumaturgy. That's it.

Is it really so hard to have--for example--a wildly divergent subspecies of elf, that was experimented upon to test the boundaries of magic, which resulted in them manifesting slightly different magical powers and losing some of the benefits that come with being an elf? I could see such a group being ostracized and hated for their differences from regular elves (especially if they have the classical "bright red/purple/blue skin" appearance of tieflings!) despite not having any connection whatsoever to anything fiendish since, as you have said, fiends don't exist. It'll be a different spin--racism inflicted upon a people, rather than being an ancient "legacy of evil" or whatever--but when you don't care about the appearance...AND you accept the "the same but objectively better" elf stuff...I just don't understand what the problem is.

If the player is okay with something that explicitly isn't, in any way, related to demons or devils or whatever, but still has the same appearance and the same abilities (perhaps reflavored?), I don't really get what the problem here is. Is it that the spells are mostly good...?

Who are in a position to not permit something?

GMs. I thought that was understood? Like you...literally used your own example of having permitted something mechanically broken that you shouldn't have, out of ignorance rather than apathy.

Someone who is apathetic about permitting something they believe to be problematic has kinda surrendered at least some of their standing to argue that someone else caused a problem.

No, this one was actually quite hard to come up with. But there have been aluded to it in connection with nkn-trad games; like exploiting intent resolution to find rubies in drawers, or what would happen if someone corrupted by power started reading runes. In trad games hardly anyone are thinking like this.

So...people intentionally and actively trying to destroy the premise of the game they're playing...?

I just don't really see this being an actual problem. The people who floated such an idea have made abundantly clear they would never play in such a game and would never run such a game. I don't see what is being achieved here.

However I now remember I think I have one situation where I was close to having to apply this kind of line. A friend was having a d20 I thought seemed a bit suspicious, so I started recording all results from it for quite a few sessions. When presented with the collected data my player luckily volunteered to change die.

I think having this as an explicit formal power can be helpful for keeping certain types of players aproperiately focused on the game; in particular the more competative minded ones. (And these are not that uncommon in trad, which also reflects back on your comment on RPGs being cooperative)

I mean, I'm not against calling it out. Very, very much the opposite. I just don't think it fits in this place. That makes it sound like it is purely elective on the GM's part. It is not. Different GMs will apply personal judgment differently, but nobody will advocate approval of things they believe are outright harmful to the ability to play a game at all.

This is a restriction required by the very act of playing a cooperative game. It should still be called out. But it should be put where it belongs: at the very heart of the activity, a "we outright HAVE to do this if we want to play" type thing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Installing an expert to makes decisions could feasibly be called a mechanic. (I might not call it that myself, but I can see an argument for it.)

What decision making processes go in that expert's mind is what I would not call a mechanic or set of mechanics.

Oh, sure. It's even got a name: "GM Says". What the GM says isn't--can't be--mechanics. The singular mechanic is "GM Says". You are no longer playing the rules; you are playing the GM.