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

[FrogReaver]

None of this is true.

Actor stance requires what it say: that the action is declared drawing on the mental states of the character, rather than for some other reason to which the player then retrofits the PC's mental states.

Here, the reason the action is declared is because the character knows they are lost in the dungeon and the character knows there are strange runes and the character cunningly judges that the runes might reveal a way out.

Actor stance play doesn't require GM pre-authorship of backstory. And your statements about your feelings may be autobiographical for you (though I'm not sure what actual play experience they are based on), but I can assure you that they don't generalise.

Well, I call that actor stance. It's what happened in this case.

An Orc appears to the characters in the fiction as a physical threat. The players respond by doing a whole lot of calculations.

The action resolution system in MHRP also involves generating and manipulating random numbers.

In actor stance the actor doesn’t impact fiction outside his character other than what his characters actions could fictionally cause. In the runes example he does and with the knowledge he’s doing so.

 

[pemerton]

If imaginary things don’t have real causal relations then how can one prompt a real player to author what the runes are?

I'm not sure what the "one" is - do you mean the impersonal third person?

Anyway, what prompts the player to declare an action is the social circumstances of play, together with the knowledge that (i) the PC has a Lost in the Dungeon complication, and (ii) the GM has just mentioned Strange Runes as a scene distinction.

The mental state of imagining something is an actual thing. It is inside someone's head. The imagined thing doesn't exist, though: it's purely imaginary.

 

[pemerton]

In actor stance the actor doesn’t impact fiction outside his character other than what his characters actions could fictionally cause.

Says who? Where is this definition found? is it some new bit of jargon?

 

[AlViking]

I...literally said....? And it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else you said in this paragraph.

I gave examples. You have argued, just now, that it is 100% perfectly acceptable to just let it ride when the dice tell us something incongruous, that there can be just "no explanation at all", period, end of discussion, nothing more said, nothing more needs be said. Others joined you in this.

You, and others, had previously argued stridently against various things BECAUSE they did that exact thing. You were one of the strongest voices against ANY form of "fail forward", for example, VERY specifically because it DIDN'T specify this stuff. Because it DID rely on a loosey-goosey, just-roll-with-it, reasonable-judgment-call process.

I said that sometimes there is no explanation, and none are needed. I linked to an article specifically talking about perception. That we aren't wired to notice every detail all the time.

Another example

If you didn't notice the gorilla, don't feel bad. About half the people watching didn't.

But yes, I accept that when my character attempts an task that the character may or may not be successful at is determined by a combination of attribute, proficiency and die roll. It's a game. Sometimes the GM or player adds a bit of description to any D20 test* whether that's perception, climbing, an attack roll but it's not an explanation for why it was a failure. It's just a bit of fluff like describing the color of an NPC's shirt. The explanation didn't cause the failure, the resolution system is too abstract to provide that detail.

That is why I'm so bloody frustrated right now. And you keep bringing up these utterly irrelevant nonsense things that are genuinely all from your own head, I didn't say or even mention anything like them.

I have no idea what you're talking about. What "nonsense" things have I brought up? You have an issue with how perception is used, I pointed out why I don't have an issue with it and asked what a better option would be. You said there were none.

It is not. It is deeply, centrally relevant to my frustration.

Fail forward techniques are different than how we handle D20 tests as far as I'm concerned.

What blog post? I saw no such blog post.

There have been a lot of posts. When fail forward first came up a few thousand posts ago, I tried to find examples of fail forward being used in D&D from Failing Forward – RPG Concepts, a blog post I've linked do a few times. But it's not like there's a lot of consistency in the definitions I've found for what fail forward even is when I've gone searching. Several of them are dependent on systems that D&D doesn't support.

But either way, that "inventing" is precisely, 100% identical logic to "inventing" reasons why a Perception check failed after the fact. There is nothing whatsoever different between that and "inventing"--say--a cloud passing by that distracted someone at a crucial moment.

That is THE problem I have here.

I may add fluff to why the perception check fails, it doesn't change the state of the fiction in the world other than the character not noticing something. Adding the cook changes the fictional state of the world by adding a cook.

Because you 100% are doing that?

I spoke of the utility of "fail forward". You responded that it not only shouldn't be used for you, it shouldn't be used in general except for people who explicitly and specifically jump for it. And now you're accepting literally identical logic in a situation you approve of, when that logic was THE reason why you rejected it before.

I said I don't care for it. I don't see how "If you like it go for it" is being interpreted as me secretly saying it shouldn't be used in general.

EDIT - didn't notice ezekiel had been blocked for the weekend when I wrote this.

 

[pemerton]

Let me finish the part sentence you half quoted.

Why did you feel like saying the same as me with so many more words?

I denied what you said.

You said " hence there was a causal relationship between character hope and meaning of runes that did not have a pure in-fiction counterpart." There is no such causal relationship. The character's hope has no causal relationship to the meaning of the runes. I have no idea why you assert that it does.

You may as well say that the Orc's failure to dodge causes the damage die to land on an 8 rather than a 1. It's just wrong.

 

[pemerton]

I don’t think you answered @maxperson’s question here at all. Posting the skill doesn’t define what if any limitations it has from your perspective. Kind of like arguing RAW in d&d.

Huh? What is confusing about this:

He's a Solitary Traveller, and a Cunning Expert. In a game that is deliberately playing on classic D&D tropes, Cunning includes the thief's traditional ability to deal with traps and read strange writings.

Maybe you're not familiar with the class D&D thief tropes?

My table is.

 

[pemerton]

Wait, you are quibbling over, the players idea of an imaginary thing vs the imaginary thing being the cause?

Given that what you call a "quibble" is fundamental to any coherent discussion of imaginary things then yes, I am "quibbling" about it.

I mean, there are a billion posts in this thread asserting that the fiction has content and consequences and generates entailments that no one has thought of yet: eg that the farrier in @Maxperson's village exists even though Maxperson didn't think of them or write anything down about them.

Those posts make no sense if the imaginary things are identical to actual mental states.

 

[pemerton]

IMO Everyone grasps what you are doing.

@Lanefan clearly doesn't.

 

[pemerton]

yes the question is how, whether in character actions do so or via direct authoring.

Obviously those are not the only possibilities.

There is no basis for the character believing these runes reveal a way out

How do you know? What is the character seeing? What does the character know, from their travels?

I know that you prefer a game where the player has to ask the GM to tell them what their PC knows and remembers, because you find that more immersive. But that is not the only possible method for establishing character mental states.

The characters hope doesn’t cause the runes to be an exit. The players does and you just explained how.

And? What does this have to do with stance? Or "decision space"? Or simulation?

I know you prefer a game where the fiction is not responsive to the hopes and inclinations of the players, and only the GM. Having the GM as sole author doesn't make it more realistic or more of a simulation though, unless you are using "simulation" in some technical sense that I don't think you've explained.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well it’s certainly enough to work for an RPG. I just don’t think it’s a simulation. “It’s kind of like this” isn’t really putting in the work to get to simulation.



Well of course. Only the player can hope about any roll that they make.

As for “changing the fiction”… this phrase or similar ones have been used very often to describe many examples in this thread… and I think they display a lack of understanding on the part of the user.

No fiction is being changed in the runes example or the cook example or the random encounter example. Fiction is being established. There’s a difference.

If the game functions in such a way that the GM has not predetermined everything, then some elements of the fiction will need to be established during play. When that happens, nothing is being “changed”; it’s being established.

Do you think that makes any kind of difference to the playstyle objection?