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

[Lanefan]

White Plume Mountain. Castle Amber. Against the Slave Lords. In all these modules, and as far as I know in the modules that WotC is selling today, 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.

The italicized bits seem so fundamentally obvious I don't know why they need stating.

 

[Lanefan]

Nor would I. Leaving the table would be our only recourse, though. Not control of the game in any way. Inside the fiction, the character would not have picked his nose.

Not only is there a suggestion, the 5e rules out and out say that the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. He can change them as he sees fit. That includes modifying the play loop.

And again, I wouldn't play in a game like that, either. I certainly would never run a game that way.

And yet, not in your rather silly example but in a broader sense, many DMs do seem to run that way: they prevent or veto the declaration of impossible actions (e.g. "I shoot the moon with an arrow" or "I pick up the palace and throw it in the lake") rather than allow that hopeless attempt to play out in the fiction.

In these forums I've seen various people recommend this veto-the-impossible approach, and have argued against it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And yet, not in your rather silly example but in a broader sense, many DMs do seem to run that way: they prevent or veto the declaration of impossible actions (e.g. "I shoot the moon with an arrow" or "I pick up the palace and throw it in the lake") rather than allow that hopeless attempt to play out in the fiction.

In these forums I've seen various people recommend this veto-the-impossible approach, and have argued against it.

Its always going to be a hard sell to make people think that's a useful spend of time.

 

[Lanefan]

Like, it is no news flash that games with different rules play differently. That is precisely why we have them! If all games played exactly the same, it would follow that there would only be one game on the planet!

While, of course, you get to choose what game is at your table, more broadly, we are far, far better off with diversity and differences.

It's impressive that you, having had to moderate through the edition wars, would still hold this position.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its one of those things that seems to vary considerably. I've never had any trouble with convincing people to play other things than D&D, but then, I've been playing with at least overlapping groups I've known for 40+ years in some cases, but even back in the day (and it wasn't like D&D was small potatoes then) when I hadn't yet established those groups, I could usually find people interested in other things.

Yet its hard for me to say other people don't struggle here, because I've heard of it too many times to blow it off.

(Edit: Though, I do have to point out in your case you were selling people on something pretty D&D-adjacent).

Yeah, that probably why it worked. But I think I can make donething happen with other games. One of my players suggested we all play Monster of the Week for Halloween and we all seemed to be on board.

 

[Lanefan]

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

If these other things remain the same

--- the DM
--- the rules system
--- the setting (including relevant NPCs, pantheons, etc.)
--- the ongoing story or stories

Then IMO yes it is the same game even through some player turnover.

 

[Lanefan]

But there's a big difference between final authority and referee. That's the basic assumption of the game as spelled out in the books so it makes sense most groups follow that.

Absolute power over the players has totally different connotations.
View attachment 412926

The look of my character Black Leaf is very much patterned after the DM in this game.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet, not in your rather silly example but in a broader sense, many DMs do seem to run that way: they prevent or veto the declaration of impossible actions (e.g. "I shoot the moon with an arrow" or "I pick up the palace and throw it in the lake") rather than allow that hopeless attempt to play out in the fiction.

In these forums I've seen various people recommend this veto-the-impossible approach, and have argued against it.

Yeah. You don't veto something like that. You simply narrate the arrow going up a few hundred feet and dropping down to stick in the dirt.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I once tried just this, when a group of PCs had unintentionally got themselves punted to what amounted to a Plane of Dreams. With Robert Jordan's dream-plane Tel'heran'rhiod (sp?) firmly in mind, I ran it that whatever the players said in-character came out real for the characters.

The result was an incoherent mess for a while, until the players (both in-character and out) started to figure out how things were working; after which it went pretty well.

 

[FrogReaver]

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?

I find it amazing you are jumping to egregious narrations. I guess my question is outside things contradicting genre or the very thin bit of established fiction in the runes example, what could possibly make whatever the player wants the runes to be egregious. It’s basically a blank slate as far as I can tell and that’s not by accident. That is, what do you base any potential egregiousness on?

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.

I’m not following this part at all.