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

[clearstream]

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.

The accusation itself is oblivious to information normally added by participants in conveying system results into their fiction. Here's the detailed text for RQ's "dodge" (redundant wordings are in the original)

An attack is an attempt to use a weapon to harm a target. An adventurer’s melee or missile weapon skill provides the individual probability of succeeding with an attack. If the player rolls the adventurer’s needed percentage or less on D100, the adventurer has succeeded and managed to hit their opponent. The defender may still manage to avoid damage by parrying or dodging the blow, trusting their armor, or through magic.​

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The adventurer is performing that attack for the entire round and can do little else except parry or Dodge.​

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Each attack of whatever type is resolved in strike rank order. The lowest strike rank always strikes first. The defender may try to parry or Dodge the attack, with multiple defensive actions incurring successive penalties to their skill rating.​

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Dodge may be used to avoid an attack instead of attempting to parry. Dodge may be used against all known attacks directed at the adventurer, but must be rolled separately against each attack.​

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Dodge can be used against any weapon attack the defender is aware of (including projectile weapons)​

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A successful Dodge against a normal successful melee attack means that the attack missed.​

A special Dodge roll is necessary against a special hit​

A critical Dodge is necessary to avoid a critical hit.​

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If the Dodge roll is fumbled, then the attacker scores an automatic normal hit unless their rolled attack gains a higher quality of success, at which point it is treated as the better result. Subsequent Dodge attempts are at a cumulative –20% penalty, but may take place in any subsequent strike rank.​

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For every point of ENC carried up to their maximum ENC, the adventurer’s Dodge skill is reduced by –1%. For every point of ENC carried above their maximum ENC, the adventurer’s Dodge skill is reduced an additional –5%.​

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The Dodge Results table displays the results of different successful Dodge attempts versus different success levels of attacks.​

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If the adventurer has a skill above 100% and that skill is opposed by another skill lower than the adventurer’s skill, the opposing skill is reduced by the amount that the adventurer’s skill is above 100%.​

In play, I sometimes hear players say something like "I duck that broo's spear thrust". Can you see where the RQ text for dodge provides any information about ducking versus weaving, leaning, twisting, leaping left or right, etcetera? All are evasion by sudden, quick movements.

The RQ text directs players to visualize affairs as taking place in the bronze age. It seems very plausible that someone once ducked a spear thrust in the bronze age. For me, picturing that the character ducks, is far more immersive and altogether diegetic than knowing the attack missed for amorphous reasons.

Here is the Dodge text for WHFRP

Dodge Blow

Skill Type: Advanced.​

Characteristic: Agility.​

Description: Use this skill to avoid attacks in melee combat. Dodge Blow can be used once per round. See Chapter 6: Combat, Damage, and Movement.​

Related Talents: None.​

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A melee attack roll already assumes that the target is defending himself to some degree. A melee attack does not represent a single swing of a sword, but a series of exchanges in which the attacker tries to find an opening and the defender tries to deny him one.​

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A failed roll means the defender was too difficult to hit effectively, while a successful roll means the attacker was able to strike a telling blow. The attack roll does not tell the whole story, however. It is possible to avoid even a successful hit by either parrying or dodging. These are a combatant’s last lines of defence.​

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Dodge Blow is an Advanced Skill, so usually only trained warriors can use it. Once a hit is scored, but before damage is rolled, a character can try to dodge if he has the skill and is aware of the attack. This is simply a Dodge Blow Skill Test (see Chapter 4: Skills and Talents). If the Dodge Blow Test is successful, the character gets out of the way at the last minute and the attack is considered to have missed (there is no damage roll). If he fails the test, the attack connects and his opponent may roll for damage as usual. Dodging is a free action.​

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A character can only make one dodge per round.​

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What does dodging a "successful" attack by a highly skilled attacker look like compared with dodging a poorly skilled one? Without adding any information to the written mechanic, what does Dodge Blow look like in your fiction? A blur of sudden evasive movements irreducible from all possible such movements?

How can this mechanic be simulative, if it does not equip me to visualise anything specific in my fiction, where characters surely duck, weave, lean, twist, leap left or right, etcetera?

 

[Hussar]

Data can support me in making a decission. Data does not make a decission itself.
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.

Need more examples?

Absolutely yes. Because none of that was an actual example.

You absolutely are introducing things into the fiction. WTF do you think inventing a narration means?

How do you narrate the cause of the result without introducing anything into the fiction? That's not rhetorical. That's an honest question. If the system is not providing any information about how a result occurred, how do you, as GM narrate those results without introducing anything into the fiction?

I'm so tired of all this overly pedantic, ridiculous posturing. You're accepting that the GM can narrate the cause of results and clalming that this makes the system simulationist. It's ludicrous. That's just free form play. That's not simulationist because you can do this in EVERY SINGLE RPG.

Well, no, that's not true actually. You cannot actually do this in actual simulationist RPG's because the system will define, at least in some small part, how a result was achieved. Therefore the DM is actually constrained by the information the system itself is providing. That's what makes the system simulationist. "Make naughty word up" is not simulationism.

 

[Emerikol]

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.

I don't know how you do it so quickly. I think a lot of work done by DMs beyond the essentials is a labor of love. A DM can do a simple sandbox setting with no more detail than the module B2. For me it is important I know the fictional persons, human or otherwise, in the primary playing area. I don't know that detail outside the sandbox. I know more world of greyhawk gazateer type knowledge though it is easy to just take a 1/3 of that world and make that your starting setting.

Ptolus is a great city based sandbox. B2 is a decent simple sandbox.

 

[Hussar]

Do you mean, how can rolling dice support clonking someone with a heavy piece of flanged metal, given rolling dice isn't actually doing that thing?

Wow, that's not disingenuous at all is it?

 

[Enrahim]

Well, to begin with, you are now inserting an assumption into what I said that isn't supported by the text. Specifically, you've assumed that the player is (or even can be) putting their foot down. I would see an utterly intransigent player as being just as much of a problem as an utterly intransigent GM!

And I find both very unlikely? Where did @Lanefan explicitely state they wouldn't have an adult conversation with the player to unearth why they were interested in playing a dragonborn, before needing to assess if they were going to accept or reject it? It seem like you are inserting the assumption they wouldn't? If I were forced to make a guess I would lean much more toward the intepretation that they would indeed have this discussion.

So if we indeed assume my most likely intepretation, the fact that Lanefan find themselves needing to make a judgement call sort of implies to me that there must have been some sort of insistence going on at the player's part.

And this kind of player isn't a hypotetical. I have been on the receiving end of something like this:

Spoiler: Extremely minor spoiler for WotBS

I had a first time player that was really disapointed there was no halfling in my list of allowed races. We were running war of the burning sky, and I think I limited to human, elf, halfelf and half-orc (possibly dwarf, I do not remember for certain), the intention was to have some anchoring between their race and the central conflict. I had a chat with the player, and came relatively quickly to the conclusion that I should allow it. It wasn't a hard insistence, but it was a well founded wish. It required some extra work on my part to try to integrate some hallfling society into the setting, but it was importantly no demand for making the halfing race as important as the others in terms of relevancy for the scenario.

I see no indication that this situation is not matching what Lanefan might have had in mind when making their relatively short and to the point statements.

 

[pemerton]

But does it not then rather make it mechanics driven rather than player driven, if we use the same criteria for how to designate a "driver"?

I dunno. What mechanics are you envisaging?

I mean, upthread lots of posters - @Crimson Longinus, @AlViking, @Micah Sweet, @Faolyn, I think probably you - have described the player in my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game as having decided what the runes say.

Are you now saying that all those posters were wrong, and it wasn't player driven at all?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Also, at least to me, most of that world building world is not about the system. It is about the fiction, coming up with places, people cultures, organisations, drawing maps and concept art etc etc.

Furthermore, one thing where I feel playing 5e helps in this (and one of the main reasons I chose it for my current campaign) is that as most popular system by far margin there is just so much stuff, both official and fan made, for it. You can easily find statblocks for huge variety of creatures to populate your world with. Granted, some rules light systems do not really need such detailed enemy stats, but as I wanted a game where tactical combat features rather prominently, such were needed.

 

[Emerikol]

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?

I think PbtA style games vs traditional games is an orthogonal discussion to simulationism. I lean toward the idea that the rules are the physics of the universe idea of simulationism.

The debate here though between the two styles of games is a far bigger one because most DMs and players find their balance of GNS ideas without even thinking about GNS. I find my own game to be a mix of all three but gamism and simulationism are probably stronger than narrativism. But who cares, because my groups know me and my campaigns.

But whatever we want to call PbtA games vs traditional games, it is an idea that a player should know about ahead of time. Naturally if I see someone playing a PbtA game then I know what they are doing but if the ideas are being brought into D&D then I don't expect D&D to be doing those sorts of things by default. I am more upfront about my style now than I was in the 80's and 90's because my style is not the overwhelmingly dominant style anymore. It is still a solid faction but just one of many.

 

[clearstream]

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?

To the extent you achieve playful "simulationist" experiences with them, why wouldn't they be?

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.

I have noticed that.

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.

It could be, but one can experience the same pleasure by doing the research (for example) and relating it at an appropriate moment in play. That comes up often in play of games like Bushido. An example I recall is where a player wanted training in two-sword technique from Miyamoto Musashi. Apparently an advantage he employed was in using the swords to thrust rather than the traditional slashing style. It worked well in play via the Piercing Thrust Okuden; and there was noetic pleasure in imagining learning such a technique from the famous swordmaster.

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.

100%. I really have no idea why we'd rule out players making such contributions. Why couldn't those be simulative?!

 

[pemerton]

To the extent you achieve playful "simulationist" experiences with them, why wouldn't they be?

I have been asking multiple posters this question for some pages now, but without any clear answer other than that they do not rely on GM narration as the overwhelmingly principal technique for introducing fiction.