Are we going to make any real attempt to get at why some mechanics cause a backlash and others don't? It looked like for a moment we might be trying to dig into that, but we seem to be back to sanctimoniously going on about GM authority again.
I have dug down, and have offered a diagnosis. You apparently reject it because it's "sanctimonious".
But anyway, here are two resolution systems:
*In classic D&D dungeon-crawling - I'm thinking Ghost Towers of Inverness, or Tomb of Horrors, or anything like that - we work out whether or not the PC falls down the pit or triggers the pressure plate by (i) tracking the PC's movement on a map, based on (ii) the player's description of where their PC moves.
*In any version of D&D I'm familiar with, we work out whether or not a PC falls when climbing a wall by rolling dice (d% in some versions, d20 in others) against a chance of success.
Why do we not resolve climbing like we resolve walking down trapped corridors, by having the GM describe or provide a picture of the wall with its holds, and asking the player to describe how their PC moves up the wall?
The answer is not about realism, or abstraction. Dungeon movement can be abstracted - see eg the way getting lost and then getting unlost was handled in my MHRP game, or if you want a D&D example the way it was handled in
this part of my 4e D&D game.
And there is no reason why the climbing resolution system I've described couldn't be implemented, if anyone wanted to. There are intricate descriptions of physical situations in White Plume Mountain and Ghost Tower of Inverness and Tomb of Horrors. We could describe surfaces with holds in the same detail, if we wanted to.
Here are two more resolution systems:
*The
Symbol spellincludes the following bit of rules text:
You decide what triggers the glyph when you cast the spell. For glyphs inscribed on a surface, common triggers include touching or stepping on the glyph, removing another object covering it, or approaching within a certain distance of it. For glyphs inscribed within an object, common triggers include opening that object or seeing the glyph.
Applying this rules text, to determine the result of an action declared for a character, may well require attending carefully to how the position their body and move their limbs and digits - eg do they open something?, do they see something?
*In any version of D&D that I'm familiar with, resolving an ordinary hand-to-hand fight between two opponents does not require having any regard to the details of how they position and move their bodies, and move their limbs and digits - we just roll a d20 to hit and then, if they do hit, an appropriate damage die.
Why the difference in what we attend to in these different approaches to resolution? Again, the answer is not abstraction or realism. The triggering of a symbol could be abstracted, similar to the way that avoiding a blast of fire is not resolved by attending to how a character positions their body but rather simply by asking for a saving throw. Or the way that dodging sword blows and avoiding feints is just bundled up into a DEX bonus to AC.
And we
could have a combat system that attends to details of physical movement. An adventure game book series from the 1980s,
the Way of the Tiger, has diagrams that depict the different combat moves the main character can make, and the descriptions of foes and how they behave is meant to be used by the player/reader to help make sensible decisions about which sort of attack to use.
D&D has particular ways of doing things. Some of them have a rationale - like tracking movement on a map as an important part of the dungeon exploration game. Some seem to be closer to haphazard legacy.
The idea that there is some general principle that explains D&D as such, doesn't seem all that plausible to me.
