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

[Hussar]

/snip

Sorry, something wonky with my computer right now. Can't cut and paste images into this thread.

 

[pemerton]

What's real isn't what's in the players' minds, it's their acts of volition.

I'd say also their cognitive state (using that phrase loosely, to encompass imagining X as well as believing X, conjecturing X, etc).

And a bit more on this issue:

Suppose that you are looking at a celestial body, and conjecture "That's the morning star."

Given that the morning star is the evening star, and that both are the planet Venus, you are conjecturing that you are looking at a planet. But you don't necessarily know that you are conjecturing that you are looking at a planet (eg if you have only a little bit of astronomical knowledge).

This is one reason why it can be helpful to distinguish content from state.

Turning to imagination:

Suppose you're imagining an Elf, in Middle Earth, fighting an Orc. If we take in Middle Earth seriously, then it follows that if your Elf is killed they will travel, spiritually at least, to the House of Mandos. But if your knowledge of Middle Earth is feeble, you won't know this.

Again, it is easier to talk about this stuff if we distinguish content from state.

Another example:

If your Elf fights the Orc, then - in the fiction - there must be all sorts of things happening (breathing, grunting, footwork, swordplay, etc) that no one imagines. These consequences of what is imagined - a fight between an Elf and an Orc - are part of the imaginary world, but do not figure in anyone's mental state.

I'm surprised that there is debate over this stuff.

 

[Enrahim]

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.

The player's idea about their PC's action has causal potency, of course. This is how a game works: players make decisions about their "moves", and those decisions then yield consequences for the state of the game

This is an exelent expansion of what I mean when I wrote "a causal relationship between character hope and meaning of runes". I said just the same thing, just shorter - as I believed the content of all the extra words you add here should be evident from the context.

 

[pemerton]

This is an exelent expansion of what I mean when I wrote "a causal relationship between character hope and meaning of runes". I said just the same thing, just shorter - as I believed the content of all the extra words you add here should be evident from the context.

To me, it's not evident, given that multiple posters keep asserting what is false, namely, that the character caused the runes to mean one thing rather than another by hoping.

 

[AlViking]

The player didn't change the state of the fictional world. The fictional world was in a constant state - there were runes before the PC read them, and runes after, and what they mean didn't change.

The world is created in the imaginations of the people at the table. Before the runes were encountered they literally had no meaning because you as GM had not assigned anything. After the player stated what they hoped the runes would be, the runes went from undefined to defined. The state of the world changed. Had the player failed their roll, you as GM would have changed the runes to something detrimental if I remember your explanation correctly.

This is counter to the example you quoted a while back about the GM asking the player what the bandits use for currency (I think), because the currency is something the character could have known from their background and history. Using ears is a bit of inconsequential fluff that doesn't really change much for the state of the world, it just adds a bit of color. Having the runes be a map when I can't think of any logical reason for them to know that this random room would contain a map is part of the issue. The other is how incredibly helpful it was in the moment. The character went from hopelessly lost to knowing exactly where they were and how to find the drow. That's pretty game changing.

Having said all that, it's your game. If you like that kind of change and how it came into being, cool. I just don't want that kind of on-the-fly benefit granted to the characters whether it's done by player or GM.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If the GM tells the player they are authoring, the player then knows that their action declaration prompted the GM to author something. I don't see how that is structurally different from the action declaration leading to a dice roll that then prompts everyone to agree that something has been established in/about the fiction.

It's not structurally different in the way you mean, but the rune example in my view is the kind of thing that should be established by the GM, not by the player or a player-initiated mechanical process.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To me, it's not evident, given that multiple posters keep asserting what is false, namely, that the character caused the runes to mean one thing rather than another by hoping.

No, we all understand that the character didn't cause that. In fact, that is the cornerstone of the whole objection! That the player caused something the character didn't!

 

[AlViking]

Obviously they don't. What makes you think I haven't worked that out?

So you really are incapable of understanding play using methods different from your own? You're like a soccer fan who literally can't grasp how players of American football aren't cheating every time they pick up and carry the ball.

Are you really incapable of understanding that we simply have different preferences on how the game works?

 

[pemerton]

Are you really incapable of understanding that we simply have different preferences on how the game works?

I'm not talking about preferences. I'm talking about accurate description.

I mean, if I said that I find your game silly because in your game fighters kill Orcs by rolling polyhedral dice, I'm guessing you'd object.

(I'm also a bit puzzled that you take my reply to @Micah Sweet to be addressed to you.)

It's not structurally different in the way you mean, but the rune example in my view is the kind of thing that should be established by the GM, not by the player or a player-initiated mechanical process.

Yes. I know this.

Your preference, though, doesn't determine what counts as an accurate description of what happened in my play.

No, we all understand that the character didn't cause that. In fact, that is the cornerstone of the whole objection! That the player caused something the character didn't!

Some posters have posted, multiple times, that the character caused the runes to mean what they mean, that the character "warped reality", etc. So obviously they are not part of the ostensible "we".

What the player caused is a process which led to everyone agreeing on a shared fiction. In your game, you prefer the GM to do that.

My point is that it doesn't become less "realistic" or less "simulation" or more "meta" because we know the process is <this> rather than <that>.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It is sort of neccessary to absract. The playstyle involve that there are no euclidean spatial concerns going on. Think of colossal caves' "YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES"

That is it is essentially run as a point crawl, with only interesting spots (to be created on the fly) and (potentially) connecting passages.

It might be necessary to abstract for gameplay reason in certain dungeons. Often, I contend, it isn't. The example you provide is an exception IMO.