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

[Enrahim]

Yes, but also, that's beside the point; in D&D clerics can change their spells with a long rest (or the characters could have sought a different cleric.) It's nickel-and-diming the example, rather than focusing on the observable fact that players use Charisma-related skills to determine fiction that was not yet settled. @FrogReaver fo vis.

It is not really beside the point. The persuasion check also seem inadequate for representing the process of finding an applicable priest. I would have expected being expert in gather information would be more helpful in that regard. (And the example explicitely did not allow for time required for such rememorisation)

The issue at hand is that you are proposing charisma checks are in use for determining fiction that is not yet settled, but gave an example where it is easy to see how alternative ways of determining this piece of fiction would be better according to the standards proposed that objects to player determination.

So I think you are onto something with the observation that checks might be used to determine not settled fiction also in trad. But I am sceptical to the example used, as it allows for too many and too easy objections of the form here. I think knowledge related checks like gather information is a better candidate.

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However I think this entire point is beside the larger point. Even if we in trad actually might at occation determine something not settled via skill check, there is as far as I know nowhere where this procedure is required. There is always an option for the GM establish the relevant fiction in advance with no skill check involved. Importantly they can do so without informing the players about having done so. This means the players can never rely on any ability to determine the relevant fiction.

This I think is an essential observation in terms of the decission space theory, that I think so far is the most promising attempt at formulating what makes the runes example feel off to many. (The map and key theory I find too simplistic as I think the relevant objections would be valid also in a game where the DM is known and expected to just come up with things on the fly based on the current vibes of the table)

 

[pemerton]

Because the game does provide "any" information. It's quite clear how the stat, skill, and other modifiers affect your roll to show you how you succeed or fail. But you continue to say it doesn't provide any info at all. And the only reason I can see for that is that its not specifically written out.

Personally I think it's the opposite.

If climbs were rated like spell levels, such that a PC with a given STR (Athletics) bonus or climb skill or whatever could succeed at them, but one with an insufficient bonus couldn't, then to me that would seem to provide some answer of the sort @Hussar is talking about. This is how 5e D&D handles jumping, and when a PC jumps and falls - because the distance in feet was greater than their STR stat - we know that it was because they weren't strong enough.

But introducing the d20 roll makes this completely different. Suppose the PC's bonus is +4, and the DC is 15. Then we know there is a 50% chance the PC can make the climb, but a 50% chance they will not. Why not? What explains those chances? What happens on a roll of 1, such that they fall? What happens on a roll of 11, such that they make it? I agree with @Hussar that the rules don't tell us that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Can you? Like any published game, a group may, and usually does, agree to follow the written rules according to its principles.

I'm pretty confident that this is the kind of "negotiation" Pedantic was referring to, yes. Whether this is in practice a significant problem is a different question. I, personally, think that it IS a significant problem in certain circumstances. Among the circumstances where it would be...are things like FKR.

 

[pemerton]

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.

This is different from MHRP, but closer to how I might do something like this in 4e D&D.

 

[FrogReaver]

I don't agree with this.

What the player of the character actually has to decide, in the game I'm talking about, is what they want their effect die to do: which, in this case, is to reduce or eliminate their Lost in the Dungeon complication. And they have to decide what they are doing to achieve that result, which in this case is to read the runes hoping that they will reveal a way out of the dungeon. Obviously in deciding to do this, they (as their PC) have conjectured that it is at least possible if not likely that the runes will do this in some fashion. And of course the PC's attempt to confirm their conjecture is motivated just as the player's action is, namely, by a desire to become unlost.

IMO, I shouldn’t be having to deal with new mechanical information regarding an example you introduced 10000 posts ago and I’m not going to. If it was actually relevant it should have came up before now.

 

[pemerton]

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

Really?

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.

I don't think @Lanefan gets that the episode of play, involving the runes, was not from map-and-key based, puzzle-solving play.

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

Because there are lots of RPGs that don't 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. And many of the RPGs I've talked about in this thread - including MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy - are among them.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We've several times in this thread (at least as early as @Enrahim's take on process-simulation) referred to some sort of association with the state of affairs in the imagined world. I wrote upthread about two components of this

association parts of the written mechanic are associated with things that are accepted as diegetic​

entrainment processing the written mechanic follows patterns that map to the behaviours of those things​

​

Upthread I equated these with the qualities of being diegetical and para-diegetic. A question I have in relation to them is this

Q. Isn't it a fact that association and entrainment are about the experience of the mechanic by the player?​

No it is not, or at least not any more than the player ability to accept any fact presented to them.
Like I said earlier, either the spell levels are diegetic in the setting, or they aren't. It is about the relationship between the rule and the fiction, and that certainly can be determined objectively rather than subjectively.

 

[FrogReaver]

It is not really beside the point. The persuasion check also seem inadequate for representing the process of finding an applicable priest. I would have expected being expert in gather information would be more helpful in that regard. (And the example explicitely did not allow for time required for such rememorisation)

The issue at hand is that you are proposing charisma checks are in use for determining fiction that is not yet settled, but gave an example where it is easy to see how alternative ways of determining this piece of fiction would be better according to the standards proposed that objects to player determination.

So I think you are onto something with the observation that checks might be used to determine not settled fiction also in trad. But I am sceptical to the example used, as it allows for too many and too easy objections of the form here. I think knowledge related checks like gather information is a better candidate.

-------------

However I think this entire point is beside the larger point. Even if we in trad actually might at occation determine something not settled via skill check, there is as far as I know nowhere where this procedure is required. There is always an option for the GM establish the relevant fiction in advance with no skill check involved. Importantly they can do so without informing the players about having done so. This means the players can never rely on any ability to determine the relevant fiction.

This I think is an essential observation in terms of the decission space theory, that I think so far is the most promising attempt at formulating what makes the runes example feel off to many. (The map and key theory I find too simplistic as I think the relevant objections would be valid also in a game where the DM is known and expected to just come up with things on the fly based on the current vibes of the table)

I mean don’t attack rolls determine fiction not yet settled? Or is fiction not yet settled intended to be more narrow in scope?

 

[pemerton]

Yet in your game Einstein indeed would cause things to be as he postulated.

No. That's just wrong.

You cannot just reverse the causality and pretend that it doesn't matter.

There is no "reversal of causality". There is the use of dice to track other correlations.

Eg the archaeologist's conjecture and the runes now visible have a common cause, namely, the writing of the runes 1000 years ago. That event causes there to be runes here now; and via a much more complex pathway, mediated by scientific investigation and training, it causes the archaeologist to have the beliefs that they have.

The correlation is not perfect, though, and so dice are used to resolve it. Similarly in Classic Traveller a die is used to work out the sale value of trade goods - the roll on the Actual Value table combines various factors including properties of the world of resale, the skill of the broker, and so on. Some of these are causal factors. Some are correlating considerations that have a common cause.

Also, do experts in your game always postulate things beneficial to them? I bet that most of the time they do. Because the players know that they have the power to affect the reality this way.

You seem to be assuming that the only time a PC expresses their knowledge is when a player declares an action. That's not accurate to my play experience.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, but also, that's beside the point; in D&D clerics can change their spells with a long rest (or the characters could have sought a different cleric.) It's nickel-and-diming the example, rather than focusing on the observable fact that players use Charisma-related skills to determine fiction that was not yet settled. @FrogReaver fo vis.

We use skills to settle what is not settled all the time. The difference is does the character have causal capability to settle the matter in the fiction, or do they have such only in the rules. In convincing priest case it is clear that a character could talk to a priest and convince them, and this convincing was the cause of getting the priest to help. In the rune case however, the player action causes the runes to be determined, but in the fiction this is not caused by the action of the character.

I genuinely do not understand why we need to keep repeating this. It is trivially simple distinction to grasp.