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

[EzekielRaiden]

Yep. And while I'm quite OK with that, I'm not OK with the 5e-style frequency of crits, and so I require a confirm roll that takes the odds of critting from 1 : 20 to (in my system) more like 3 : 200.

That said, we don't have Great Weapon Master. A Fighter with really good "exceptional Strength" (or using a strength device e.g. Ogre Gauntlets or a Girdle of Giant Strength) can get to +5 damage or more just from Strength, then add in a magic weapon and other benefits e.g. Prayer and +9 or +10 isn't unreasonable. Never mind that when two or more multipliers apply, they all stack; thus someone using a Giantslayer sword (double damage vs Giants) who gets a 2x-damage crit is multiplying everything by 4. And our crits go to 4x damage if you're lucky. A high-level Thief backstrike plus crit adds up real fast!

Yes this means sometimes we see some truly crazy and pretty much insta-kill damage numbers, but not as often as you might think. In over 40 years of play across all our games I've seen 100+ points of damage done maybe twenty times by a PC, and 200+ points done exactly once. The flip side, of course, is that the monsters get to crit as well; I've maybe seen 3 characters eat 100+ points from a single melee attack* and none of them survived.

* - the most damage I've ever seen a PC take from any source happened to one of my own: a wand of lightning broke in a confined space (the inside of a Dragon's mouth) and released all charges at once. My little Hobbit was in that mouth too, and after eating 283 points of damage was reduced to a small crispy pile of slag.......

Heh - we roll for hit points and always will.

The maximize-dice approach is simple, but also a whole lot less exciting than having the chance of doing something crazy.

I prefer the long-tail approach where once in a while you can get that huge damage number.

I guess I don't understand why "3:200" is desirable here, but given you specifically set them up to be stronger, I guess that's fair. D&D overall aims for much more common but not nearly so dramatic crits.

And yes, I grant that this change does away with the rare but extra impressive crits. That's the necessary trade-off. Can't win 'em all. I personally think that simplicity, efficacy (crits always feel strong) being at least kinda-sorta tradition-like,

You could, of course, then tack on another rule if you want to still have some impressive crits. That's the final piece of 4e's crit rules (which I would not have expected 5e to copy). Specifically, you get some bonus d6s equal to the enhancement bonus of the weapon you're using, at least in 4e. So if you have a +3 weapon, when you crit with it, you maximize that attack's damage dice, and then roll 3d6. (This also makes up for the missing (Y+1) part from the equation above, incidentally.) That could result in an extremely impressive crit....or merely a really solid one if you roll poorly on those d6's.

For your stuff, perhaps indefinitely exploding d6s would be better (or "very high cap", e.g. like max of 10d6 bonus). That is, roll a 6, you get to roll another die, keep doing that until you roll something that isn't 6. You can theoretically do a bazillion damage, so there's still that roulette-like element I know you prioritize, but even if you roll a 1 on that first (and thus only) d6, you still got a solid baseline. Every crit matters, but some will matter A LOT.

Naturally, I imagine such rules would also apply to creatures attacking PCs.

 

[Emerikol]

So are you now saying that those who don't value playing in highly GM-curated settings are suffering a cognitive deficiency?

This seems to be an assumption. Some people enjoy DM curated campaign settings and value what those DMs do to make the game good for them. Others prefer other things. A matter of taste will vary across different people.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

But "a notion of power guiding their actions" is inherent to what you described.

The toy-owner has that power. Explicitly. You specifically said they gave "clear instructions". That's not just a person exercising good judgment and giving the benefit of the doubt etc. That's one person laying down specifically and exclusively what is and isn't permitted, and everyone else instantly deferring the moment any other opinion is voiced by that one person. That's just...that description simply doesn't fit what "being a good friend" means in terms of human behavior.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Because when your first resort is to "pull rank" on what I see as an incredibly mild request, it looks like you literally could not care less what your players like, think, or feel. That's a HUGE red flag.

I don't think the player wanting to ignore the setting and/or campaign concept is "a mild request." People who want to play wookiee jedi is a Star Trek game are a problem, as it tells me they are not interested in playing a Star Trek game in the first place, so this will be just first of the many issues.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I guess I don't understand why "3:200" is desirable here, but given you specifically set them up to be stronger, I guess that's fair. D&D overall aims for much more common but not nearly so dramatic crits.

I stand to be corrected (@Lanefan) but Lanefan may prefer a lower crit count because they do not use 1e/2e's system for hit point generation and far less healing is available all round, also their game likely employs a slower natural healing from those earlier editions.

 

[AlViking]

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!!!

It took me approximately a day to come up with a brand new campaign world for D&D for a sandbox campaign. Came up with basic concept, did a bit of a writeup, generated a city online, used a random generator or three and bingo new campaign setting. I still haven't gotten around to make a map of the island (when does an island become a subcontinent?) it's set on but I haven't needed the level of detail for that.

The amount of prep a game takes depends on how you want to do it. I could come up with a starting campaign on the spot if I needed to do so. Meanwhile it takes me less time to prep for a session than it does to actually play while my wife spends more time than the session itself. Just depends on the person and unless everything is just made up as you go I don't see how what system you're using makes much of a difference. Most of my prep time is on locations, factions, names and so on. Those have nothing to do with the rules of the game.

 

[Hussar]

While I instead of suggesting you take a car, would cheer you on and praise you for what good thing you do for the community (assuming there in this analogy also is some positive community effect like some charity payout per mile on this 1000 mile treck)

But, see, that's the point. There is no good for the community here. From my POV, people are being encouraged to do all sorts of unnecessary work that makes the job far, far more difficult than it has to be. And the only reason that people are being encouraged to do it this way is largely the conservatism from the fans. They did it this way and apparently suggesting that there is a faster and easier way to do it is badwrongfun. I'm telling people they are having fun wrong by pointing out that their six months and a hundred hours of work could be done in about an hour and then spend the other 99 hours actually playing with your friends instead of playing with yourself.

I'm not really sure what I'm doing wrong, but, apparently, it's a terrible thing that I've done.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Your framing of one person obeying another is not how the hobby is enjoyed amongst friends.

It's not my framing. It's Enrahim's. They specifically set out the scene. I'm simply following the description they gave:

A school kid come to school with their new cool toy. They let their friends play a bit with it. This sharing is a nice bonding exercise. All the while though, the kid owning the toy provide clear instructions about what they find ok to do with the toy, and rapidly shoots down any idea the friends might have that they are worried might damage their toy. The friends, being good friends do not question or push, but immediately defers to the owner of this toy whenever they voice any opinion regarding this toy's use.

If you have an issue with characterizing the hobby as one person expecting obedience from others, you'll have to take it up with them, not me.

I would not frame football (soccer for the 350k in the US) as people kicking a ball around.

I mean, that would be one of those "Microsoft answer" type things--technically correct and completely useless. I wouldn't say that that sort of situation describes the above. As said, review the above description from Enrahim and decide for yourself whether that is an accurate or inaccurate analogy for the kind of behavior engaged in by "good friends" in a D&D-alike situation.

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?

Doing so in the way described, yes.

Doing so after permitting appropriate discussion, explaining one's position, sincerely listening to the other side, and making a sincere effort to find a reasonable compromise? No.

But nobody ever talks about the latter. It's always "pulling rank". "Putting your foot down". "Calling the shots". It is 100% always framed in terms of power--and, nearly always, framed as the poor, beleaguered, near-helpless all-powerful GM merely defending their sweet, innocent setting from the evil, wicked, nasty players who want nothing more than to despoil the pristine beauty and sublime vision thereof.

Because, as always: every GM is an angel (unless you prove that they're a devil), and every player is a devil (no proof otherwise, they just are).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I would imagine for this discussion, that lore is built into appearance, right?

They explicitly said that the appearance was not a concern.

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.

The visual appearance of tiefling had nothing to do with the issue. "Being" a tiefling was the core issue.

 

[pemerton]

A random roll might support me in making a more neutral narration. The roll doesn't make the narration itself.
My role as a GM supports me in having my simulative judgment calls be accepted into fiction. This role as GM doesn't introduce anything into the fiction in itself.

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.

On "I believe them": multiple posters in this thread have talked about how they find playing (say) Dungeon World or Burning Wheel or some other game that is generally described as non-simulationist more immersive than RPGs which rely heavily on GM narration to tell the players what their PCs know and believe. So now, do those games turn out to be simulationist after all?

Or to put it another way: the boundaries of "simulationism" in this thread seem to be drawn based on the casual universalisation of particular experiences and preferences - eg because this particular poster imagines (though they have no play experience) that playing Marvel Heroic RP or a fantasy variant thereof would be un-immersive, they posit that it is un-immersive in general and hence not simulatioinst.

On "noetic satisfaction", "exploration" and "investigation", coupled with "my role as GM": this seems to me to be obviously pointing towards RPGing where a principal activity in play, perhaps the principal activity, is the players declaring actions that prompt the GM to tell them things about the setting: either things the GM has already prepared/authored, or things that the GM works out by extrapolation from what they have already prepared/authored. If this is what is intended by "simulationism", then I think it would be help to be clearer about it.

If that is not what is intended, then lets talk about player contributions to the subject which is investigated, explored, intuited and cognised. In my 4e game, the player of the wizard routinely articulated - speaking for his PC - theories of how magic worked, what its potentials and limits were, etc. These would inform his use of his Arcana skill, his approach to rituals etc. To me those seem to be simulationist moments of play, based on the ideas @clearstream has set out. But they have nothing to do with GM authority over the fiction.