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

[TwoSix]

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!

The player just played their character.

"Look, there's some weird runes over there. We've been stuck down in the dungeon for a while, maybe those runes can give us a clue to the way out!"

And then the game goes to the mechanical resolution step.

 

[pemerton]

It might be necessary to abstract for gameplay reason in certain dungeons.

What does necessity have to do with it?

Not everyone who plays RPGs wants to engage in nothing but map-and-key play. It's not some bizarre deviance from an obvious norm.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. I know this.

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

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>.

Of course it doesn't make your description inaccurate. Your play is your play. But for me it absolutely does become less realistic, less sim, and more meta to play the way you do.

 

[Enrahim]

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.

Maybe they claimed the same causal relationship as me, just not as eloquently put as you managed to describe it?

 

[pemerton]

Of course it doesn't make your description inaccurate. Your play is your play. But for me it absolutely does become less realistic, less sim, and more meta to play the way you do.

And as you know, I find your play too much of a railroad.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It

As I asked upthread, are you really incapable of cognitively grasping anyone's approach to RPGing other than your own?

EDIT:
Apparently the answer is "yes".

Is possible to accept that other people do things differently yet still not agree with that way of doing things.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Why would it be?

Because it creates different incentives. Given how you supposedly are well-versed in game theory, it is rather surprising how blind you are to the incentives the mechanics create. That the players know that the mechanics mean that conjectures have good chance of becoming true and that chance is related to the "skill" of the character conjecturing, very strongly incentivises players to conjecture things that are beneficial to them. It also incentivises the character with the best score in related "skill" to be doing the conjecturing.

Now perhaps one could be completely detached, and not at all invested in their character's success, but that in my experience is both rare and not even desirable. Nor is it evident in your game that this is the case. After all, the player here conjectured that the runes would be the exact thing they would need to get out of their predicament (And they were! Vilken tur!) instead of an ancient curse that would doom them all.

Or to put it another way: why would the character assume things are not possible - unless the player is in author stance, trying to solve the GM's puzzle?

I mean this is what seems to be happening in your game. Granted, as puzzles go, it is a rather poor one. But they are in (GM created, I presume) predicament, and then they are in author stance trying to invent ways why they can quantum collapse the no-myth to get them out of it. In this sort of game there is still skilled play, it just isn't about manipulating the pre-established fiction elements with the causal powers of your character to get the desired outcome, it is about on meta level suggesting narratives that get you the desired outcome, preferably narratives where you get to roll the actualisation with your best skills.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

The player responds by declaring an action for their PC, and probably rolling some dice.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@Lanefan clearly doesn't.

No. He doesn't agree with you.

 

[pemerton]

It Is possible to accept that other people do things differently yet still not agree with that way of doing things.

I don't know what this means. As in what does it mean to "not agree" with how someone else plays a game?

Some people enjoy wargaming. I don't, really, That doesn't mean I "don't agree" with their way of doing things!

You are also positing some weird monomania on the part of each RPGer. When I GM a classic D&D module, like say White Plume Mountain, I run the game as it is intended to be run. Like when I play soccer, I don't touch the ball; whereas when I play Australian rules football, I do.

No. He doesn't agree with you.

About what? About what happened at my table, in my game? Because he has special knowledge that I lack?

The notion of agreement isn't apposite here.

Beyond that, there are posts like this:

Or are you saying these games don't involve exploration either?

If the PCs are drawing a map then the players are drawing a map.

The mixture of incredulity and dogmatic assertion suggest to me a failure to understand how the play I am describing actually takes place.