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

[pemerton]

What makes this a case of the expert conjecturing with evidence as opposed to without

Why is there no evidence? I mean, do you assume that your 8th level D&D fighter wins bouts against Orcs without moving their feet, feinting, parrying blows, etc?

 

[FrogReaver]

Why is there no evidence? I mean, do you assume that your 8th level D&D fighter wins bouts against Orcs without moving their feet, feinting, parrying blows, etc?

Why do you assume there is?

 

[FrogReaver]

So here we do have a causality issue. A decission made outside the game collapsed the possibility space i the fiction in a way that cannot be accounted for in the fiction itself. But how is this different from the GM choosing exactly what to narrate on a success or failure in D&D?

Differences abound.
1) the significance of the details being ‘filled in’. For example - What the runes mean is a huge detail whereas what causes you to fall is an extremely minor one.

2) how the GM in d&d chooses the specific narration is done with the whole probability space in mind and if asked to pick will pick among the most likely outcomes and probably the most likely outcome (or roll for which of those). This is not the process for the narration of the GM or player in the runes example. There is a lower threshold of plausibility that must be met, but beyond that and a few other constraints nearly any outcome can be chosen for whatever reason one desires. So for the player it will be outcomes directly speaking to character goals, which is basically the whole point as that’s how player driven is achieved in these games.

Or said another way, if the GM in d&d chose significant outcomes the same way as the player chooses in the runes example, it would be straight up railroading.

3) in d&d players don’t just achieve their intent (whatever it may have been) with an action declaration on a success. They succeed at a particular task. Now if players then self limit intents to ones that can be achieved via succeeding at a task, then they will achieve those intents, but that just goes to show the difference lies in the scope of intents they can choose and still have come true. The runes being an example of a much broader intent than would be allowed to come true in d&d just because the player succeeded.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I also found this point confusing. The point of the mechanic is to say what happens. How and why are design level questions that guide which whats are appropriate. A point of critique from the simulationist perspective is often whether the results sufficiently encode for those questions, and do so consistently enough. An outcome that strains credulity too far (say, the surprisingly non-lethal falls in D&D) gets side-eyed for that reason.

There is some back and forth about whether it's appropriate to supercede the rules with on the fly design to do a better job when they fail. I would say that's never acceptable and a poorly simulative rule is a design failure that requires a mechanical solution (or must actually be reflective of a consistent change in the setting being modeled) but some people seem convinced having the GM as an on the fly designer is adequate or even preferable.

I don't see how this is different from what I was talking about. If you prefer this phrasing, consider this to be what I meant, I just said it badly. Same for you @Enrahim.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

While I agree with you that most of the time, it’s very easy to determine if something is diegetic or not in an RPG, there are instances that are less clear. Certain player side resources and the like… Cavegirl used Blood Points in Vampire as an example on their blog.

I think there’s likely some gray area on the topic when it comes to such instances, and that might actually be worth discussing.

But conflating blatantly non-diegetic things like a player rolling a die as a diegetic thing because it’s representative of something in the fiction of the game… that’s a pretty blatant display of ignoring the whole point in making the distinction to begin with.

Well. We do in fact have someone arguing that in the thread, so...yeah.

While I suppose I can grant that there is a possible grey area, in that there could be things which are hard to figure out whether it is or is not so, I should still think that the baseline is that each thing either is, or is not, diegetic--there are just some things where the jury is still out. My greater concern is that if personal interpretation and emotional impression are the driving force behind what makes something "diegetic(al)" as a mechanic, then we land in the "anyone can say it's diegetic(al) because they feel that it is, and anyone else can say that it isn't diegetic(al) because they feel that it isn't, and nobody can be right or wrong".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oftentimes, this is indeed correct.

Let me rephrase. "Skills", the D&D concept, have nothing whatsoever to do with skill, the real-world concept?

Starting with 3e the game has taken professions (armourer, baker, etc.), natural abilities (athletics, persuasion, etc.), common life skills (swimming, riding, etc.), and trained abilities (open locks, hide in shadows, etc.) and lumped them all under the catch-all "skills" label. Prior to that, professions were "secondary skills", trained abilities were class-dependent, and the other things handwaved if existant at all.

Are professions not skills? I would not call a blacksmith or a baker "unskilled" just because they haven't had an academic education in order to practice their craft. We call these things trade skills, or skilled trades, after all. What you refer to as "natural abilities" are very VERY much something that results from practice and refinement, not some kind of innate and unchanging "talent" (which mostly doesn't exist; "talent" is >=95% myth and the remaining percentage isn't what most people think it is): why do you think professional and Olympic athletes practice so much? It's because it's a skill, that needs to be honed and maintained. Persuasion, likewise, is a skill. That's why there are so many public speaking courses for up-and-coming professional types.

Like, I can grant you that there are elements of these things which rely heavily on reflex responses and intuition...but developing intuition is one of the primary benefits of developing your skill at any particular activity.

Whether putting them all under one banner is a good thing or not is open for debate, but if nothing else it's convenient.

The point was that we call them "Skills" because they, y'know, relate to skill. Ability scores also relate to skills--they do not EQUAL skill, as had been previously said. But I am frankly tired of that conversation and don't intend to continue it; I just wanted to respond to your comments here.

 

[clearstream]

Saying the expert made the conjecture is simply not enough.

I've been wondering if one can arrive at the same result using D&D mechanics. Here is some relevant text

1. The Dungeon Master Describes a Scene. 2. The Players Describe What Their Characters Do. 3. The DM Narrates the Results of the Adventurers’ Actions.​

​

the DM might ask the player to roll a die to help determine what happens​

​

The DM has the ultimate say on whether a skill is relevant in a situation.​

An ability check represents a creature using talent and training to try to overcome a challenge, such as forcing open a stuck door, picking a lock, entertaining a crowd, or deciphering a cipher. The DM and the rules often call for an ability check when a creature attempts something other than an attack that has a chance of meaningful failure. When the outcome is uncertain and narratively interesting, the dice determine the result.​

​

Athletics Strength Jump farther than normal, stay afloat in rough water, or break something.​

​

Strength Physical might​

​

History Intelligence Recall lore about historical events, people, nations, and cultures.​

​

Intelligence Reasoning and memory​

​

Skills here are those words I bolded. I want to compare a character breaking something with a character conjecturing some ancient runes show the way out.

Player 1 "We have to get through that trapdoor. I believe I can break it with a bit of effort"​

Player 2 "The sand is pouring in fast! Can I help?"​

DM "The crawlspace is too narrow for more than one person to get at the trapdoor"​

Player 1 "We have to get through! Can I apply Athletics to force it?"​

DM "Yes, the trapdoor is made of stone so Strength (Athletics) against a DC of 20."​

DM (continuing) "But working in the crawlspace makes it hard to apply your strength, so make that with disadvantage"​

Player 1 (rolling) "13 on the lowest die plus 4 for Strength and 3 from proficiency Athletics, it takes all my skill to manage it"​

DM "The thick stone of the trapdoor resists your efforts to break it, but then the rods that close it suddenly give way and it falls into a void... with you nearly following"​

​

Player 1 "We have to find our way out. I believe those runes could indicate the right way out"​

Player 2 "If we're still here after sunset, those things awaken! Can I help?"​

DM "Only someone skilled in History has any chance of reading these runes to see if they do"​

Player 1 "We've got to get moving! I'm trained in History so...?"​

DM "Yes, they're from the Founding Time so Intelligence (History) against a DC of 20."​

DM (continuing) "But the chance of them helping you find the right way out is slimmer, so make that with disadvantage"​

Player 1 (rolling) "13 on the lowest die plus 4 for Intelligence and 3 from proficiency History, it takes all my skill to manage it"​

DM "The runes seem at first hopelessly obscure but then you make out symbols for warning and undeath... and for light! It's got to be the tunnels going East that you should follow."​

​

I don't think the DM in the second imagined sample of play has broken any rule in D&D. In both cases the outcome was uncertain and narratively interesting. Characters didn't do anything non-diegetic. DM is as empowered to say the stone trapdoor can be forced as they are to say the ancient runes indicate that the tunnels going East will lead to light (indicating the way out).

Some approaches to play would have DM work out what the runes indicate in prep, but the D&D game text does not mandate that.

An encounter centered on exploration might involve the characters trying to disarm a trap, find a secret door, or discover something about the adventure location. An exploration encounter could also involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or traversing vast caverns.​

​

The DM’s Role. If the characters can’t figure out how to solve an encounter or aren’t sure what to do next, you can remind the players of things their characters have already learned or call for Intelligence (Investigation) or similar checks to see if their characters can remember and connect things that the players might be missing.​

​

Surely a virtuous instance of "call for Intelligence (Investigation) or similar checks to see if their characters can remember and connect things that the players might be missing" would be when something a player says prompts DM to do so!

@pemerton for vis.

 

[FrogReaver]

I know why it matters to you: you're playing a game where a principal goal is for the players to (i) learn what obstacles/challenges has placed into the setting, and (ii) overcome them.

This is no more "simulationist" than anything I'm doing. As I've posted upthread, it involves a lot of "author stance" - more author stance than is necessary and typical in most of the RPGs I GM, which are easily approached in "actor stance" because all the player has to do is declare actions as if they were their PC, without worrying about what the GM has authored and having to poke and prod at the GM's world to learn it.

How is simply declaring what runes mean (contingent on a success) actor stance instead of author stance? How is poking and prodding at the GMs world author stance instead of actor stance?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd say the answer to "What does a simulation do?" is more like "It models, as best as it can, how something would happen were it happening in reality."

That's what a model is, though...? A model tells you how and why things happen. Or, rather, it predicts how and why things will happen. A good model predicts very accurately and precisely, and thus does in fact tell you how and why things happen.

How does the flight simulator do this? By dint of lots of careful programming (analagous to out-of-fiction game mechanics) that within itself has no idea what it's doing or why, it just does it.

The lines of code may not, but their mathematical structure does. Because that mathematical structure is designed to approximate the actual mathematical structure of reality. That's...kind of the point. The model tells you how (the procedural steps) and why (the causative elements) your known initial state becomes a new state.

Anything--simulation or not--tells you what does happen. We are specifically comparing resolutions, hence, they must resolve to something, that isn't a useful standard because it describes the whole universe of interest. Simulation adds to "what" the additional requirements of how and why.

Also, your answer above isn't so much defining a simulator; it's defining a predictive model like what weather-forecasting computers produce, and IMO there's a difference between a simulator and a predictive model in that a predictive model - due to its intended purpose - has to move beyond what's already known and in fact does most if not all of its work as educated speculation.

But...that's...that's what a predictive model IS. We build and test it based on what things we do in fact already know, so that it can then be applied to things we don't know so we can learn something. In being "predictive", it has to predict that something will happen when we don't know what would happen. If we already know what would happen, it isn't "predicting" anything!

 

[FrogReaver]

I've been wondering if one can arrive at the same result using D&D mechanics. Here is some relevant text

1. The Dungeon Master Describes a Scene. 2. The Players Describe What Their Characters Do. 3. The DM Narrates the Results of the Adventurers’ Actions.​

​

the DM might ask the player to roll a die to help determine what happens​

​

The DM has the ultimate say on whether a skill is relevant in a situation.​

An ability check represents a creature using talent and training to try to overcome a challenge, such as forcing open a stuck door, picking a lock, entertaining a crowd, or deciphering a cipher. The DM and the rules often call for an ability check when a creature attempts something other than an attack that has a chance of meaningful failure. When the outcome is uncertain and narratively interesting, the dice determine the result.​

​

Athletics Strength Jump farther than normal, stay afloat in rough water, or break something.​

​

Strength Physical might​

​

History Intelligence Recall lore about historical events, people, nations, and cultures.​

​

Intelligence Reasoning and memory​

​

Skills here are those words I bolded. I want to compare a character breaking something with a character conjecturing some ancient runes show the way out.

Player 1 "We have to get through that trapdoor. I believe I can break it with a bit of effort"​

Player 2 "The sand is pouring in fast! Can I help?"​

DM "The crawlspace is too narrow for more than one person to get at the trapdoor"​

Player 1 "We have to get through! Can I apply Athletics to force it?"​

DM "Yes, the trapdoor is made of stone so Strength (Athletics) against a DC of 20."​

DM (continuing) "But working in the crawlspace makes it hard to apply your strength, so make that with disadvantage"​

Player 1 (rolling) "13 on the lowest die plus 4 for Strength and 3 from proficiency Athletics, it takes all my skill to manage it"​

DM "The thick stone of the trapdoor resists your efforts to break it, but then the rods that close it suddenly give way and it falls into a void... with you nearly following"​

​

Player 1 "We have to find our way out. I believe those runes could indicate the right way out"​

Player 2 "If we're still here after sunset, those things awaken! Can I help?"​

DM "Only someone skilled in History has any chance of reading these runes to see if they do"​

Player 1 "We've got to get moving! I'm trained in History so...?"​

DM "Yes, they're from the Founding Time so Intelligence (History) against a DC of 20."​

DM (continuing) "But the chance of them helping you find the right way out is slimmer, so make that with disadvantage"​

Player 1 (rolling) "13 on the lowest die plus 4 for Intelligence and 3 from proficiency History, it takes all my skill to manage it"​

DM "The runes seem at first hopelessly obscure but then you make out symbols for warning and undeath... and for light! It's got to be the tunnels going East that you should follow."​

​

I don't think the DM in the second imagined sample of play has broken any rule in D&D. In both cases the outcome was uncertain and narratively interesting. Characters didn't do anything non-diegetic. DM is as empowered to say the stone trapdoor can be forced as they are to say the ancient runes indicate that the tunnels going East will lead to light (indicating the way out).

Some approaches to play would have DM work out what the runes indicate in prep, but the D&D does not mandate that.

An encounter centered on exploration might involve the characters trying to disarm a trap, find a secret door, or discover something about the adventure location. An exploration encounter could also involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or traversing vast caverns.​

​

The DM’s Role. If the characters can’t figure out how to solve an encounter or aren’t sure what to do next, you can remind the players of things their characters have already learned or call for Intelligence (Investigation) or similar checks to see if their characters can remember and connect things that the players might be missing.​

​

Surely a virtuous instance of "call for Intelligence (Investigation) or similar checks to see if their characters can remember and connect things that the players might be missing" would be when something a player says prompts DM to do so!

@pemerton for vis.

I don’t think I agree but let’s assume I’m wrong for a moment. At best all this does is show d&d can be played in a larger variety of ways than I initially gave it credit for. But since my point is really that d&d in X playstyle doesn’t do this, then I’m not sure how this counterpoint has any broader implications. Maybe you can explain.