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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I do understand. I just don't like it. Just like @Lanefan .

 

[pemerton]

I do understand. I just don't like it. Just like @Lanefan .

You don't like my play. You'd rather it not be? Its existence irks you? Wrongs you? Quite odd to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Never said it was. But in map and key style, it still be necessary for gameplay reason to abstract certain types of dungeons.

Again, I understand your playstyle. I just don't like it, and I think I've explained why.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don't like my play. You'd rather it not be? Its existence irks you? Wrongs you? Quite odd to me.

I don't care what you do. You're welcome to play however you like. But I don't like it and I see no reason not to examine why.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I do understand. I just don't like it. Just like @Lanefan .

The issue is that @pemerton cannot accept your reason for not liking it. Thus all the desperate arguing that red is blue and that actualisation doesn't change the decision space. Because if he admitted that it did, you would have a proper reason for not liking it and it wouldn't be because you just like railroads like he claims.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

Well, there you go. We do understand each other!

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.



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.

This how I read 4e skill challenges, which was ultimately a reason why we decided to drop the system.

 

[pemerton]

The issue is that @pemerton cannot accept your reason for not liking it. Thus all the desperate arguing that red is blue and that actualisation doesn't change the decision space. Because if he admitted that it did, you would have a proper reason for not liking it and it wouldn't be because you just like railroads like he claims.

When you make assertions, I'm not obliged to agree with them just because you make them.

You don't like player authorship, direct or mediated via rules, unless the thing the player authors (directly or indirectly) is also something that the player's character produces, via their actions, in the fiction. This seems pretty obvious. Ron Edwards talked about it over 20 years ago (but for some reason all the people who agree with Edwards about simulationism feel obliged to assert that he was wrong about it - I've never understood that).

This doesn't entail the other things you assert though, like different "decision spaces" or author stance rather than actor stance.

I mean, how can you claim to know what stance a player was in in an event that you have no knowledge of other than what I tell you - and I'm telling you that he was in actor stance!

 

[pemerton]

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.

I trust my own experience, over conjectures that are not founded on experience. I know what the incentive structure of the RPGs I play is, because I've seen it at work.

 

[Maxperson]

As I alluded to upthread, the magic-user can't use all magic. The spell "Guidance" doesn't actually tell the caster the way from here to there, or what to do more generally. Etc, etc.

That suggests to me that you didn't read the spell Guidance. Guidance means aid or information aimed at resolving something. You know, what Guidance the spell does when it gives you a bonus to help you resolve an ability check.