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

[Hussar]

I strongly disagree with that. Rather, it's more like a puzzle that has 80%(or whatever percentage) fixed and the remaining 20% can be filled in by someone else, as long as what's filled in matches the 80%(or whatever percentage).

The DM adding in details in narration that MUST fit what the mechanics tell you(resolved via skill and natural talent), as well as prior narration, doesn't mean that the mechanics didn't say anything at all.

Yes, but this only works if you interpret the d20 roll to only mean skill. We are not going to agree on that. That's just not going to happen. And, I'd point out that 2024 doesn't agree with you either. Nor does any TSR version of D&D. So, yeah, I'm not going to buy that interpretation. But sure, if we interpret the d20 to ONLY represent skill, then sure, your definition works. Of course, you can't argue a rope breaking then, since that has nothing to do with skill. The rope breaking is no different than a cook waking up. It's introducing elements into the fiction that are not connected in any way to the roll being made.

 

[Hussar]

There's more to it than that. Perhaps the whole puzzle border. Enough is given that the DM is not free to just put in whatever he wants without disrupting the game.

The DM can put in whatever he wants so long as he doesn't disrupt the game. It's a subtle but very important distinction. So long as the players don't challenge the interpretation (which in your words has never, ever happened in your experience) then whatever the DM invents is perfectly fine.

IOW, it's going to matter a whole lot who is sitting at that table. So, is our definition of simulation now, "Any narration from the DM the table finds acceptable"?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The judge in the court case, the moderator of a debate and speaker in parlament typically expect a level of obedience. In these formalised settings you might argue that the required obedience is not "absolute", but for a layperson it still seem pretty near.

Sure. Judges don't have absolute authority in their courtrooms, but they do have extremely high authority and literally have officers of the court to force obedience when it is not given.

Still in all of these settings the person to be obeyed is far from the main contributor to the activity at hand. Rather their function and the required obedience is to help everyone else being properly heard.

The judge also mostly sits silently, interjecting only to correct deviations from the rules. Further, it is seen as a profound violation of justice to have the judge also be the prosecution...and the jury...and the executioner...and... As a result, the analogy fails to apply to GMs, who

As such I cannot see how you can from a request for obedience deduce a wish to take over the content of the activity?

Because the GM...

• represents the entire environment (the court) and the opposition (the prosecution) and the adjudication (jury) and the executioner (causing character death) and all of the rules and limitations (laws and procedures)
• acts completely unilaterally, without any mechanism by which their decisions may be appealed or addressed in any way
• is under no obligation to explain anything they do, or really, under any obligation whatsoever

Hence, for the specific reasons that make the judge analogy disanalogous. There's a reason the phrase "judge, jury, and executioner" is not used positively.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There's more to it than that. Perhaps the whole puzzle border. Enough is given that the DM is not free to just put in whatever he wants without disrupting the game.

This conflicts with the repeated assertion that "the GM is reality".

By definition--by your definition--the GM cannot disrupt the game. Everything they say goes. Period. That's the necessary consequence of them having absolute power. Whatever they say is true, is true. Period. End of discussion.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because you are still wrong about what it means. Not one of us has ever required the bolded part of it at all.

By definition, you have. To have authority MEANS to expect obedience.

authority: "the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine."
obedient: "obeying or willing to obey; complying with or submissive to authority."

Absolute authority requires absolute submission from those over whom that authority applies. That is, very literally, what "authority" is about; those with authority receive obedience from those over whom they have authority, and those with absolute authority receive the absolute obedience of those over whom they have absolute authority.

Oh, and it's absolute authority over the game, not the players. I doubt very many of us have any authority over our players, and any such authority for those few who do certainly doesn't extend from the game.

How can you have absolute authority over the game and not the players? That's straight-up nonsense.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

People have expressed their preferences. If you take that as a demand that you change it's on you.

Not me.

I'm not the one being asked to change.

The game is what is being asked to change (or, where it already pleases such folks, to never change nor expand).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not me.

I'm not the one being asked to change.

The game is what is being asked to change (or, where it already pleases such folks, to never change nor expand).

Can't people (you, me, all of us) just change the game we play if we don't like it anymore, or want something different? That's what I did. Cutting the cord with WotC was the best move I've ever made as a gamer.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think in one example a Druid was narrated to be busy with a long term acrivity in camp. The perspective proposed would be that the reason they were distracted by this activity was that they didn't spot the aproaching threat. So the start of the activity the druid was busy with happened because of something that happened later. This is retrocausality.

Another way of seeing it is that you have a time period where you don't know what was happening. In order to deduce what happened you take information you have about the world that includes known facts about state after the time period to deduce what must have happened in the time period. In this perspective I would say there are no retrocausality.

I think both perception check and the runes example can be viewed both ways. The runes example however covers a wildly longer time span. It could be hard to argue at what point it became qualitatively different from the perception check case. Though one cut off I have proposed might be time periods that extend further back than the last narration (last time more clumsingly formulated as the granularity of resolution). @EzekielRaiden , do you have any example of perception checks or similar that requires retrocausality beyond the last narrated event? (Assuming we have diciplined participants that do not eagerly but prematurely start narrating before the dice hit the table)

Nothing comes to mind, but I'm sick and operating on a grand total of three hours of sleep (2 early this morning, another 1 about five hours ago) so I'm not really firing on all cylinders.

Though part of the problem is "the last narrated event" is an extremely squishy thing. Consider, for example, if the party rotates shifts to watch throughout the night, and an Elf in the party (who doesn't truly "sleep" and only needs to "trance" for a few hours) takes the last, longest shift. If said Elf then--despite being proficient in Perception and having good Wisdom--does poorly for their watch roll and fails to notice the ambushing brigands, we now have (potentially) four whole hours to play with, which are technically "the last narrated event".

However, I do think there are some areas of something similar. Lockpicking, for instance. It isn't objectionable for folks to determine that a lock is simply beyond the picker's skill to pick....only after they have made the roll. This may, at times, include the revelation that the lock is of a type that the picker didn't know how to pick. Pretty sure something like that has been mentioned (possibly, in part, to respond to my argument that it's blatantly unrealistic to claim that two similarly-skilled lockpickers could get different results about whether each person is capable, at all, of picking a given specific lock) as an explanation for how it could be that the lockpicker could fail to pick the lock--but that is now retrocausality which reaches back to when the door was made, just like how the runes reach back to when the runes were carved, it just has to do with explaining why the picker failed, rather than why the archaeologist succeeded.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can't people (you, me, all of us) just change the game we play if we don't like it anymore, or want something different? That's what I did. Cutting the cord with WotC was the best move I've ever made as a gamer.

I tried to "cut the cord" with WotC.

I literally didn't find games. The absolute, overwhelming hegemony of D&D is too much.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I made this same point upthread, in relation to Perception checks and surprise mechanics.

The reason it doesn't get commented on is the same as the reason that no one objects to "retro-causally" narrating sharp rocks, crumbling rocks, poorly-tied knots, etc. It's because the GM is doing it and not the player.

Well then, I consider that objection pretty seriously problematic, if retrocausality is totally unacceptable from one participant and completely unobjectionable from another.