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

[clearstream]

Sure, maybe there's just something wrong with me, as @clearstream has intimated. Could be. Or, maybe, the arguments that people have been trying to make for quite a while now don't actually carry a whole lot of water.

I didn't intend to intimate that there is anything wrong with you... one ought to as readily take what I wrote to imply that there is something wrong with those discerning differences. But I am not proposing that there is anything wrong with either!

My aim was to suggest that if I don't see any difference between A and B, then I am hardly likely to form any preference between them. Whereas if I discern a difference between A and B, I could (but are not bound to) form a preference between them. This follows, because preferences are perforce oriented to differences... I prefer A (if I do) on account of the ways it is different from B.

The line of reasoning came to mind from " I'm failing to see the difference here." One option is that folk who do see differences are mistaken about their personal experiences. Another is that there are different sensitivies at play, so that it can be true that they see differences and true at the same time that I do not.

 

[AlViking]

So, you change the game world for meta-game reasons. The only reason you are changing this encounter is because of totally unrelated things that the PC's did.

LIke I said, I'm really confused now since you have insisted repeatedly that this is something you refuse to do. You would never change the game world based on meta-game reasons but only because of the "logic of the world". You claim that your primary priority is simulating the world. But, this change has nothing whatsoever to do with simulating the world. You are only doing it to make the game more fun.

Which is exactly the same as everyone else. The only difference is, some of us have a mechanical framework in place to guide these changes and you're doing them through fiat. It's a meaningless distinction.

I'm always creating and changing the world before the fiction is established, even if it was established for a different group. I assume at some time before a combat encounter starts you plan out at least a little bit of what's going to be encountered. What difference does it make when that decision is made? Do you also call that planning "metagaming"?

Once fiction is established it is not changed, even if the players don't know everything. If I change the number of thugs the pirate captain has, it happens before the number is revealed to the players. Once play starts I do my best to be a neutral referee of what happens next based on what is said and done.

What I don't do is have things happen that are not directly related to the attempt and happens only on a failure. I don't add entire encounters because the game is boring. I'm not concerned about directing play or keeping the game moving, I don't find failure boring.

If you can't see the clear difference there's nothing else I can say.