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

[AnotherGuy]

There is no more fiction to measure the runes against. We’ve got some runes on a wall, we’ve got a cunning expert and some genre constraints. In the practical sense the fiction established is just enough that the player can say the runes mean anything.

Let say I were to use this in my game
So,
Has anything been established in play about who passed through here/who built this (dungeon/complex)?
Is there any secret backstory (that's my Trad background, in case I want to link this later to something) about who passed through here/who built this (dungeon/complex)?
What level of magic has already been exhibited in this dungeon/complex?
What level is the expert?
Is the power been sought from the runes within the expert's ability and/or field?

Determine DC for success, given the above factors.
If Advantage or Disadvantage should be applied.

 

[Pedantic]

Can you say how having a curse removed is a lesser impact on the world than finding your way out? What I had in mind was similar impact.

You're conflating intent and action here (and also pointing out the reason I'm not thrilled with systems that demand intent as part of action declaration). It's not about the desired outcome for the player or character, it's about the impact of taking an action; the persuasion case is "someone takes another action on my behalf" and the rune case is "I learn the contents of these runes." There's significantly less space between "they perform the action I already know they can perform" and "the thing I learn is what I want it to be."

I have that first agency in my real life, and having recently opened a letter concerning my taxes, can assure you I don't have the latter.

I don't follow your thought here. Do you mean that you don't sometimes hope a roll will go a certain way? That something you try will work out?

I'm making the absurd case. If we're to validate the character's hope as an action declaration, I see no reason to do so at this scale instead of any other (I hope the army leaves, I hope my mother is secretly not dead, I hope the world leaders at that summit finally broker world peace) nor to privilege some specific subset of hopes as actions but not others.

To be fair, I don't believe any of this matters if we don't expect players to express agency in their choices. If I am not supposed to seek out a goal, or make choices to best achieve it (I'd say challenge based play, but I can feel the silent "old-school" and other modifiers appended to the front, which I categorically reject), then the distance between the incentives for me as a player of a game and the character as a person in a situation no longer need alignment in the first place.

 

[Faolyn]

And here we have exactly what I was talking about. The players can either accept the DM's narration or they can leave the game. Doesn't matter if the DM is right, wrong, an expert or pulling nothing out of his petoot. The player either accepts it or leaves.

Not exactly all about the simulation anymore is it?

Give an example. I was playing a Warhammer fantasy game a few months back. We had fought some beastmen describe (more or less) like minotaurs. Some time later, in the dark, my character hears hoofbeats approaching. Ok, fair enough. I ask the DM if I can tell how many hoofbeats and if they are beastmen. He says, "No, there's no difference between a beastman hoof and a horse's hoof. It just sounds like hoof beats, what do you do?"

Now, I've grown up around cows and horses. I know for an absolute fact that you very much can tell the difference between a bipedal, some 300 pound hoofed animal running and a 6 or 700 pound horse, with saddle and tack, plus a 150-200 pound rider wearing armor (which we learned later that they were wearing armor). These do not sound at all the same. A bipedal animal can't sound like a quadrepedal animal at a trot because, well, it's only got 2 feet. Never minding that someone in armor on a trotting horse sounds like a bag full of pennies being jingled.

But, according to what's being said here, I'm not supposed to question this. I am supposed to accept it or walk.

If your definition of simulation is, "whatever I decide it is, and if you don't like it, there's the door", then I want absolutely no part of that. And I reject that notion that that's what simulation games should look like.

...how many bipedal hoofed animals did you know growing up? What kind of farm was this?

But in seriousness, this calls for some real questions: In-character questions:

Was your character as skilled in recognizing the sounds of hoofed animals as you are?
Was your character skilled in what hoofed beastmen sound like?
And while I agree that one bipedal hoofed being is going to sound different than one quadrupedal hoofed being, can you--either you, Hussar, or your character--honestly tell the difference between many bipedal hoofed beings and many quadrupedal hoofed beings that are moving in a group?

Out-of-character questions:

Is there a reason to expect that the GM would know the difference? Or care about it? Because trust me, there are plenty of people who are woefully ignorant in what you might think of as common animal knowledge.
Is something like this actually a game-breaker for you, that your options are only "not question" or "walk"?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I have that first agency in my real life, and having recently opened a letter concerning my taxes, can assure you I don't have the latter.

You and me both!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sorry I have not been following this thread religiously, what is MHRP?
I would expect the answer to my question about the level of creativity permitted on player determination of the runes would similarly have a "DC" that would be decided upon by the GM. At least that is how I would rule it.


Totally agree. But that is where the opposition to your rune example is coming from (map-and-key).
Has this been mentioned?

I think people get it, @pemerton . They just don't like your style of play.

 

[clearstream]

No. They do not. They cannot say priest give me all your churches riches, that is the thing i want. Or priest I want you to cast foresight on me for the upcoming battle (making the priest a 9th level caster).

Why should that sort of reaching be any more valid for the runes?

The priest and his abilities are established independently of the persuasion roll and if he doesn’t have the capability of performing the action hoped for then at least in 5e there wouldn’t even be a roll.

I'm not sure it is right to suppose that anything at all can be elicited from the runes.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why should that sort of reaching be any more valid for the runes?

What sort of reaching? I thought the whole point of the runes was that the player could attempt to author them by having his character say I hope they are X. Is that now incorrect?

I'm not sure it is right to suppose that anything at all can be elicited from the runes.

Practically speaking, what isn’t allowed given the fictional details we’ve actually been given in the example?

 

[Lanefan]

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?

Physical challenge vs mental challenge.

The trapdoor is a clear and obvious physical challenge for the PC(s) to overcome. Physical challenges by their nature have to be abstracted, and the results of the roll - you punch through the trapdoor or you don't - are directly connected with the ongoing fiction. It's also fairly clear that punching through the trapdoor provides at least a potential means for the PCs to escape their current peril; in this way the solution and its immediate results are quite clearly pre-defined.

The runes, however, are more of a puzzle - a mental challenge - only the solution is not pre-defined nor are its immediate results. It's by no means clear that the runes provide a potential means for the PCs to escape any current perils they are in; in fact the runes might point toward greater perils, or indeed say nothing of any functional relevance. The fiction is almost put on meta-hold until someone gives those runes a meaning.

 

[Lanefan]

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).

You were very nice to them: the Crypt Thing teleported them all to the same place!

IME Crypt Things are great for scattering parties all over the dungeon and-or countryside (I think in 1e their teleport range is many miles), which is why for the sake of my own sanity as DM I don't run them very often.

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.

Aha! The typo reveals all - those runes were in fact a contract, guarded by statutes and clauses and 12-hit-dice wheretofores!

 

[clearstream]

What sort of reaching? I thought the whole point of the runes was that the player could attempt to author them by having his character say I hope they are X. Is that now incorrect?

Hopefully you will recollect the arguments in this thread that GMs can be free to author without authoring egregiously. Do you now disagree with those arguments?

Practically speaking, what isn’t allowed given the fictional details we’ve actually been given in the example?

The Cortex rules allow reducing a complication or creating an asset in a bridging scene. The mechanics delimit effect. Play is otherwise limited only by imagination and norms for acceptance... TTRPG, in other words. Saying something that follows seems to me it would apply; as it appears to have in the case of the runes.