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

[Maxperson]

....obedience IS submission to authority!

Absolute power that does not come with others owing absolute obedience ISN'T ABSOLUTE POWER.

For God's sake, Max, you are literally mincing definitions left and right just to hold onto your precious "absolute power" phrasing without recognizing the MANY, MANY problems it induces.

Obedience is submission to authority when that person is using the authority on you. Your assertion that absolute authority passively causes everyone to be obedient to you at all times is where you go wrong.

 

[Enrahim]

Well start by defining the decision space separately for the player and for the character.

What is at stake in the players decision and what is at stake in the characters decision? What is the basis for each? Etc.

The characters decision is can I interpret these runes. The players is, if I successfully interpret these runes what do I want them to mean (given whatever constraints are in the game).

I think the problem in the cleric example is - do the cleric have remove curse memorized?

I myself would likely have tried to determine that first independently of the persuasion check, but it seem like @clearstream claim that bundling these might be common practice in certain circles at least? I find such a notion plausible.

 

[Maggan]

If pixies bother you, feel free to substitute any somewhat ridiculous example tickles your fancy.

Thing is, I don't feel any particular need to reach for ridiculous exemples to explain things like falling damage or being hurt by being hit in the head with a sword, or avoiding damage if my opponent doesn't beat my AC, or performing an exquisite dance move in front of the emperor, even if none if these things are described in detail in the rules.

I actually think that if the rules said "when you fall, you will take damage because when you hit the ground you will have accelerated 9,8 meters per square second and reached a velocity that means that your body mass is severly negative effected when it meets the hard ground below, which is why you are damaged*", I would feel that the designer should have focused on other things.

I'm perfectly happy with "when you fall, you take damage."

* Paraphrased to be an example, not a scientific theory as to why people damage themselves when falling.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the problem in the cleric example is - do the cleric have remove curse memorized?

I myself would likely have tried to determine that first independently of the persuasion check, but it seem like @clearstream claim that bundling these might be common practice in certain circles at least? I find such a notion plausible.

Yea I didn’t notice that at first. In my games the persuasion check wouldn’t mean the priest has remove curse memorized or even that he is at a level he can cast it.

 

[Umbran]

Then let’s not publicly discuss, review or critique mine either

Excellent.

 

[AlViking]

I mean yeah, you'd think. But every time someone says that "personally I don't like a narrative game due this difference" then certain people will go for thousand pages trying to claim that there is no actual difference!

This is my issue as well. Different games work differently? I'm glad, life would be boring if everything was the same. Saying that narrative games and D&D-like games work exactly the same is the issue. Embrace the difference, celebrate the uniqueness, find your joy. I don't understand why people are insisting that apples and oranges are exactly the same fruit.

 

[Maxperson]

Fair enough.

But, just to be clear, while I have used "Pixies" as the go to example, it's not really meant to be exactly that. My point has always been that since the narrative is not informed by the mechanics, any post hoc justification is equal. Whether it's pixies or anything else, it doesn't matter as far as the mechanics are concerned. If pixies bother you, feel free to substitute any somewhat ridiculous example tickles your fancy.

Yeah. We have understood that from the beginning.

We're saying that the DM is constrained by what the mechanics tell us and what the prior narrative has been up until that point. If the PC is climbing a cliff face, I can't narrate him falling down a building wall. If the cliff is super crumbly and that was described to them before the climb, the narration for a failed climb and fall should involve some sort of crumbling of the cliff face, whether it's a rock in hand crumbling away, or a piton coming loose from a weak part of the cliff.

And since in 5e(not sure what 5.5e says) says the ability check = skill, it should be a failure of skill as well. Such as failing to skillfully keep the rope away from a sharp rock or hammering the piton into a weak point of the cliff that should have been noted with your skill.

 

[Enrahim]

I mean yeah, you'd think. But every time someone says that "personally I don't like a narrative game due this difference" then certain people will go for thousand pages trying to claim that there is no actual difference!

Well, If someone claim they don't like narrative games due to this difference: (Go on to claim something noone likes, and that is not part of (most) narrative games, is a defining property of narrative games. And partly correctly go on to assert this is not part of trad games (it indeed is sometimes)) Do you really expect everyone to go out and celebrate this difference?

 

[Pedantic]

I like the notion of making this distinction, yet am still left wondering why

player A and character A hope an action (study the runes) will produce a benefit (they indicate a way out)​

player B and character B hope an action (persuade a priest) will produce a benefit (casts remove curse for them)​

are not equal in correlating player decision space with character decision space?

I think that's probably the wrong axis for that question. The relevant point is the nature of the action; in case B the relative impact of the action is similar for the character and the player (and easy to parse from common ground; we have all tried to persuade someone to help us at some point) while in the first the impact is disparate; the player's hope has significantly more impact on the world than the character's does.

Though now I'm curious to see how coherent you could make a game where hopes unavoidably trigger potential results, and players are obligated to report all of them.

 

[Maxperson]

Would it be the same game if the player(s) is leaving?

In my opinion, yes. The DM just makes the PC an NPC or has the former PC wander off and retire or whatever, and the game continues on. Even if all the players leave, the DM can get 5 new players and have 5 new NPCs or retirees. Then the game continues on.