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

[Lanefan]

You've given me d8 and the name. You might as well have said V8, at least then I'd know you were using vegetable juice which would tell me something.

Vegetable juice?

Hell, no. He's using a big ol' Cadillac gas-guzzlin' engine from the 1970s.

 

[pemerton]

There's not much of a victory in solving something when you get to determine what the solution is

Did you not read any of my posts in which I said that this is not a game about solving puzzles or overcoming GM-authored challenges so as to get to the "finish line"?

most of us would see the runes-reading situation as a straight-up puzzle that needs to be solved.

Anyone who is playing MHRP and thinks this seems to be as confused as a person who turns up with their bag of dice to a chess tournament.

 

[Enrahim]

Players declare actions to confer benefits on their PCs all the time.

The runes case wasn't mechanically easier than any other candidate action: it had a cost in the action economy the same as any other action declaration would have had; it required the player to roll their dice pool against the Doom Pool, just as would have been the case if (say) they tried to become unlost (mechanically, reduce or eliminate the Lost in the Dungeon complication) by turning into a wolf (the PC was a werewolf) and trying to smell where outside air might be coming from.

Which is the main reason why I don't take the idea of "getting out of jail free" or "cheating" seriously. It wasn't easier or structurally any different from any of numerous other action declarations which no one in this thread would bat an eye at.

The only difference in the runes case is that the resolution of the declared action also generated, on the way through, a bit of previously unspecified backstory. Which is why I have arrived at the conclusion that it is player as opposed to GM authorship that is the source of objections.

I think the issue here is the following: Either it was a move that was done fully according to the rules of the game with approperiate stakes and balances, in order to confer a benefit to their PC. I that case the example is perfectly valid and good play, the rules allow for a good consistent experience, but some people feel this breaks their sense of how a simulation should behave.

Or, the move was supposed to be a step in a simulation, where the player was supposed to honestly provide what they thought was the most likely meaning of the runes, disregarding their own preferences. In this case this seem now to mostly be accepted as a perfectly ok way of simulating things. However this is the case in which someone feel this smells like cheating, as they have trouble believing that the player indeed was honest in their guess.

You seem to in this post argue for the first perspective, while you in other posts appear to be arguing the other perspective. In terms of this analysis these two scenarios are contradictory. A player cannot both be supposed to try to pursue the benefit of their PC at the exact same time as they are supposed to try to disregard their own preferences.

This is why I tried to get clarity if we were talking about "conjecture" or "hope", as that could at least be a indication which of these scenarios we are looking at. That is, are the player supposed to try to fully disregard their preferences when stating the proposed meaning of the runes in this game?

 

[Lanefan]

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.​

While it may not affect your greater point, I feel obliged to point out that the two modules you reference here weren't entirely representative of modules of the era. Ghost Tower of Inverness was specifically written as a tournament module and that purpose specifically and in some ways quite negatively informs a lot of its design (ditto the A-Series modules and some others), while Tomb of Horrors was written as a gonzo way for EGG to hose his players.

 

[Lanefan]

Did you not read any of my posts in which I said that this is not a game about solving puzzles or overcoming GM-authored challenges so as to get to the "finish line"?

If it's not about solving puzzles then why was such an obvious solve-this-puzzle situation presented?

 

[Maxperson]

But you can see why I have a problem calling that simulationist right? How is your example any different than magic pixies? That's the point I've been making all the way along. One implausible outcome is simulationist simply because the DM and players don't know any better, while the other is not simulationist? It's simulationist so long as no one challenges it? That's not really a definition of simulation that I'm very comfortable with.

It attempts to simulate a process, which is 10000% better than magical pixies which don't make the attempt at all. Making an attempt and getting it wrong doesn't mean that you aren't trying to simulate something. Not making an attempt and using magical pixies 100% means you are not.

In any case I just looked and Google shows that ropes can be cut by sharp rocks while climbing. Didn't see a single hit that said no it can't. Maybe you didn't encounter it, but it seems a lot of other people have. So it seems that it's real sim after all.

 

[pemerton]

I think the issue here is the following: Either it was a gamist move that was done fully according to the rules of the game with approperiate stakes and balances. I that case the example is perfectly valid and good play, the rules allow for a good consistent experience, but some people feel this breaks their sense of how a simulation should behave.

Or, the move was supposed to be a step in a simulation, where the player was supposed to honestly provide what they thought was the most likely meaning of the runes, disregarding their own preferences. In this case this seem now to mostly be accepted as a perfectly ok way of simulating things. However this is the case in which someone feel this smells like cheating, as they have trouble believing that the player indeed was honest in their guess.

You seem to in this post argue for the first perspective, while you in other posts appear to be arguing the other perspective. In terms of this analysis these two scenarios are contradictory. A player cannot both be supposed to try to make the best possible "game" move at the exact same time as they are supposed to try to disregard their own preference of winning.

This is why I tried to get clarity if we were talking about "conjecture" or "hope", as that could at least be a indication which of these scenarios we are looking at. That is, are the player supposed to try to fully disregard their preferences when stating the proposed meaning of the runes in this game?

From the perspective of an external observer, there is no "most likely" meaning of the runes. That's like asking a reader of LotR, who gets to the picture of the Moria doorway, to guess what is the "most likely" password to open the gates. In the fiction, we know that Gandalf forms conjectures. He is reasoning; but the reader of the fiction doesn't know what his reasoning consists in.

Similarly when Gandalf says "I now know where we are. This must be, as Gimli says, the Chamber of Mazarbul; and the hall must be the twenty-first of the North end. Therefore we should leave by the eastern arch of the hall, and bear right and south, and go downwards. The Twenty-First Hall should be on the Seventh Level, that is six above the level of the Gates. Come now! Back to the hall!" The reader of the book can't confirm any of this, or reach this conclusion independently.

In a RPG, who gets to determine things like what magic word will open this gate? or what information about my location in this place can I obtain from learning that I'm in such-and-such a room? One well-known answer is the GM. That is not the only answer.

In the game I described, the player makes an action declaration because he wants to reduce or eliminate the complication that has been inflicted on his character - and given that that complication is Lost in the Dungeon, he needs to declare an action that, if successful, will help the character become unlost. I've known this player for around 30 years, and so can confidently say also that he generally declares actions that he thinks are fun, and interesting, and true to his character and to the fiction.

The player knows - because I as GM have declared it as part of framing the scene - that there is a Strange Runes scene distinction. So it is fun and interesting to incorporate that into an action declaration. In MHRP, scene distinctions are intended to be played with, and to be incorporated by players into their action declarations.

The character also has the following milestone:

WANDERER
1 XP when you compare your current situation to some past event or place you have seen.

3 XP when you use a Transition Scene to prepare a strategy that draws upon your past experience.

10 XP when you either abandon the quest to resume your wanderings, or you are persuaded to cease your wanderings and settle down.​

I don't recall years after the event, but it wouldn't surprise me if the player earned an XP by stating some comparison of the strange runes to something the character had seen before. As with the example of Wolverine that I posted above (and which is from a published source for MHRP), this game encourages the players to riff on the GM's framed scenes, and embellish them with their own ideas about backstory and context and meaning.

You (@Enrahim) talk about "how a simulation should behave". Oxford Languages, via Google, gives me:

simulation = imitation of a situation or process.
"simulation of blood flowing through arteries and veins"​

The situation or process in this episode of play is a character who stands out for being a Solitary Traveller and a Cunning Expert (given that these descriptors are there on the PC sheet) comes upon Strange Runes while Lost in a Dungeon, and tries to read them based on a conjecture that they might reveal a way out.

And that is what has been imitated, in building the pool of dice with the intention of using a successful effect die to reduce or eliminate the complication.

If someone wants to insist that, because the player is not reasoning and discovering there is no simulation of the character reasoning and discovering, then they are using the word "simulation" in some non-standard sense that needs explanation. I don't see how the role of the GM in authoring backstory is not going to be part of that explanation.

 

[clearstream]

But making a declaration about something as immediately helpful as getting out of a dungeon changes the narrative, changes the current state of the fiction. It's a get out of jail free card that gets added, something I wouldn't do as a GM either.

In my example players took parallel actions, required parallel abilities and skills, and had identical chances of success.

Can you help me to understand why rolling to force the trapdoor is not a get out of jail free card, but rolling to discern the way out from the runes is?

 

[pemerton]

If it's not about solving puzzles then why was such an obvious solve-this-puzzle situation presented?

It's not an obvious solve-this-puzzle situation. There's no puzzle. There's five of us sitting around a table (if I'm remembering correctly who was there for this session). I've just told the players that their PCs have been teleported away by the Crypt Thing (in mechanical terms, I've spent 2d12 from the Doom Pool to end the scene, and reframed the PCs into a new scene which they begin with the infliction on each of them of a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication).

There was probably a transition scene, but I don't recall details. But not long after I describe the PCs entering a room with Strange Runes on a wall - where Strange Runes is a scene distinction. I think there might also have been a guardian statute, but my memory for that is a bit hazy.

It's not a puzzle for the players. There's no puzzle to solve. The game is not a game about solving puzzles. It's about declaring interesting actions and having interesting things happen.

 

[Maxperson]

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"?

That's not what I said. The context of what I said was that it MUST fit within both what the mechanics tell us AND the prior narrative. Magical pixies would be a disruption to the game whether the players complain or not. The last time I was on a plane turbulence disrupted it quite a bit and I never complained. The lack of complaint doesn't mean that the turbulence didn't disrupt the plane.

So no, it's not whatever the DM invents is fine. He still has to invent stuff that fits the narrative and the mechanics.