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

[AlViking]

If you don't like something, it's the things fault? So everything you like is good and everything you don't like deserves to be disliked?

And why would you assume that something is changed purely for the sake of change? See, this is exactly what I meant. You're not assuming that things were changed for actual reasons, such as an attempt, however well or poorly done it was, to make things better or faster or more useful. No, you're acting like it was some sort of lolrandom shakeup.

I wasn't talking about rules being changed or new games being written. I was talking about why would I put the time and effort into learning a new game when I see no benefit from changing?

I play with a couple different groups but we can only get together once a month and even that is questionable at times. Trying out a new game? That would likely take at least half a year to really learn the new rules and play long enough to really understand them. The potential payoff would have to be significant and its just not there. All assuming, of course, that i could convince others to go along with it.

Towards the end of 4e and shortly before 5e was announced we were ready to go a different system because 4e just wasn't working for us. But we are nowhere near that with 5e, we're still enjoying the game.

It has nothing to do with fear, pride or not wanting to learn new things. If those new things looked promising? I'd push for it. I don't see anything worthwhile.

 

[bloodtide]

A bad GM is one that engages in various harmful behaviors, such as: arbitrary and capricious decisions, bad-faith rules interpretation, crapping on others' preferences, refusal to engage in warranted and appropriate discussion (note: not the same as "always let everyone argue for as long as they want", because people love to twist this description into that), being manipulative or coercive, lying to the players about the nature of game they're going to be playing. That sort of thing. Truly bad GMs are rare.

Not all that rare, really more common. To DM an RPG is hard. The base line of "being the only adult in a social group" is hard. For any social activity. This is where a lot of DMs will fall under the "bad" category. It's not the game play, it is the meta game play. The DM that lets their "best friend" act like an utter jerk and ruin the game, is a bad DM. Just as the DM that stops the game to "take to a player" for three hours is a bad DM. Nearly all Casual DMs are "bad". DMs that don't know the game rules are "bad".

The social side plus the game side make for a lot of bad DMs.

The vast majority of GMs are somewhere between "pretty decent" and "not very good", without being bad GMs. This area is hard to precisely quantify because someone could, for example, be absolutely amazing at fair and supportive adjudication, but be utter garbage at providing a scene/situation/context that is engaging to play in. Or they could be craptacular at running NPCs with reasonable and understandable behavior, but phenomenal at setting conceits and off-the-cuff homebrew. Or any of a number of other things.

I'd say a lot of DMs are average. As you say, you see a lot of variations. Some DMs are good at running mechanical combat, but can't describe anything "um, the orc looks like a guy". Some DMs craft wonderful adventures, but some just sit back and say "what do you players want to do?"

A good GM obviously avoids all of the bad things that bad GMs do, but goes beyond that to doing the opposite or inverse: consistently fair or generous decisions, good-faith interpretation, going above and beyond to respect others' preferences, permitting warranted and appropriate discussion (while firmly but gently setting discussion aside when it truly isn't productive), being scrupulously honest and forthright when it comes to GM actions and justifications (read: NPCs can lie to PCs, that happens all the time; GMs, in their capacity as GMs, should never lie to their players). And, naturally, being no less than mediocre at the GM-skills stuff mentioned in the previous paragraph, but preferably better, and definitely quite good at at least a couple different GM skills.

Being a Good DM is hard.

I'd say the ratio of bad : mediocre : good is about 1 : 7 : 2. The clear majority of GMs are mediocre, and only a very small proportion are bad. But the bad ones are still more than common enough that most people will encounter one sooner or later.

I'd say a lot more 40% 50% 10%. Walk into any game store and your sure to find a mix of Bad and Average DMs.....and no Good DM in sight.

Correct. People say they want a "cool" Superman. But then the thing that actually succeeded was a dorky Superman, a Superman who was comfortable being kinda lame.

Of course people...and even more so RPG players.....don't know what they want.

The vast majority of player want a fun game with a list of other things they want. But it won't take much more then an hour of game play for the players to whine and complain. Very often what "sounds good" to the players, is NOT what they want in the game.

The difference is that suddenly we have ogres made out of the world's most fragile glass. It makes no sense from an immersive in-world point of view to me or the majority of people I played with.

Even worse, things like minions give false feelings. And sure for some very simple people it is enough that they had a character that just "attacked and killed 100 orcs!".

Of course, for anyone else there is a harsh reality. The player did not do anything amazing to defeat those 100 orcs. In fact the game set up those 100 orcs to fail. So the player would win that fight vs some minions no matter what they did. It's like an NFL linebacker playing vs some five year olds: he will plow through them and score a touch down no problem. Or when an adult plays 'bumper bowling' and gets a strike.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just so I understand, the proof that the directors etc were right to ignore what people said they wanted is the financial success of the new Superman film, but the financial success of 5e can't be used as proof that the designers of 5e were right in their approach?

No. It is in the actual critical and audience positive response, in people analyzing how this new Superman film fixes an ongoing problem that superhero media has suffered for at least the past decade, and how it in fact broke down specifically the things that people thought they "had" to do because audiences asked for it.

Because, need I remind you, Batman v Superman was nowhere near as well-received by audiences...and yet it still made a significant profit over its budget, even when you account for the "budget doesn't include a huge amount of the cost to do a film". That is, it made something like $874M in 2016 dollars, on a budget somewhere between $250M and $325M. Making two and a half to three times the listed budget still means it was an unequivocally successful film, a top-ten film that year for gross income in fact--and yet it was a critical and audience disappointment. 2017's Justice League was even worse, failing to reach the break-even point.

Just because something is an unequivocal success doesn't mean it is well-made or what its audience actually wants. That also doesn't mean it is a horrible awful monstrosity that needs to be burned with fire. It just means that raw profit does not tell you if the thing was good, well-made, or what audiences are actually looking for. Profit is a proxy measure. Proxy measures not only can, but do fail to actually measure the thing they are proxy for. It's an unfortunate truth (it would be lovely if we could consistently measure things by proxy data that is way easier to obtain and analyze)--but it is a truth nonetheless.

And if film examples aren't enough, consider the rocky road World of Warcraft was on and has only questionably gotten away from in the past couple years. They began to focus almost exclusively on proxy measurements like number of active users per month or the percentage of players that engaged with a specific kind of content, rather than...y'know...sitting down and doing the work of designing content that was genuinely enjoyable in and of itself. And guess what that did? It ended up creating a system that players felt obligated to engage with, despite disliking or even outright hating it. Their "data-driven" design ended up creating a situation that players did, in fact, engage with in record numbers, and which was driving players away. From what I've heard, the ship has been righted since...but players are leery that Blizzard has learned the wrong lessons and is now plowing ahead into a different kind of anti-player design, rather than truly buckling down and figuring things out.

Financial success is a proxy. Personally, I think it is a significantly over-valued proxy. Doesn't mean it should be ignored (which I literally already stated, albeit in a different post). Just means that we absolutely must not pretend that sales = quality, nor that sales mean every player is blissed-out ecstatic about every single thing. Which, yes, is an argument people make on this board all the time, that because 5e sold well that must mean players are extremely happy with everything in it. (This, of course, conveniently ignores all the data from WotC itself showing that there was significant customer dissatisfaction with several parts of 5e that 5.5e attempted to address.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The dragon will likely die if you heavily, heavily stack the odds in favor of the peasants. Assuming commoner stats, make it a young black dragon, arm them with longbows. Perfectly positioned to all get shots off without losing a significant percentage each round. It could hypothetically happen.

Yes, a sufficiently large mob of CR 0 monsters/NPCs with the appropriate weapons, setup and opportunity can be a threat to high CR monsters or higher level characters for that matter. That was a conscious design choice.

But what does that have to do with minions?

Noooope. Don't need to "heavily, heavily stack the odds".

It's literally just like a hundred, hundred and fifty peasants with slings. That's all you need. "Perfectly positioned"? Not at all. Literally just don't cluster up and don't stand in a straight line.

A semicircular arc is good enough, or a couple arcs, or just scattered around in, say, a 60x60 square.

Dragons should not ever assault anything bigger than a..."hamlet" I think was the official term from the Gygaxian era? They'll straight-up die as long as the villagers are even remotely trying to defend themselves.

And if you think I'm wrong, prove it. Prove the dragon almost always survives. The math is there. You should be able to easily show that this isn't a problem. Presume 150 peasants distributed loosely across a field. Shouldn't be hard at all to show that an adult red dragon can essentially always survive that, as you're claiming.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For the record I fully admit and am unashamed of my personal bias in this area.

Your biases here aren't the problem. The fact you have to bring it up any time you see anything that smacks of it, however, a bit is. It gets pretty tedious, man, and doesn't tell anyone in the discussion likely anything they don't already know.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What is "PC glow"?

The tendency to put up with actions from other PCs you likely wouldn't from an NPC with the same apparent personality or actions.

The classic was thieves stealing from the party. If an NPC did that they'd be dead in a ditch in two minutes flat.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You do understand that Gamism exists in GNS, right? You do understand that anything that isn’t Simulationism isn’t Narrativism by default? Even then @Hriston pointed out that what you thought was “Narrativist” about 4e mechanics was better identified as High Concept Simulationism.

Also what Narrativist games do you have in mind? You misidentified minion rules in 4e as being Narrativist and now you think anyone trusts you to think that you have any idea what a Narrativist game is other than games you dislike? You have poisoned your own well. “Narrativism” seems to equate to “anything Micah Sweet doesn’t like.” Any mechanics you hate you label as “Narrativist” regardless of whether it is or not. Coincidence?

I have repeatedly tried in good grace to give you an out by telling you that you don’t need to misuse GNS to dislike minion mechanics. My brother in Christ, I am begging you to take it without doubling-down on the error. Take the L and move on.

Hey, I accept my misuse of the term. Literally. What else do you want from me? How exactly am I "doubling down" in your exalted estimation?

Are you saying that you and those who habitually agree with your and each other's posts around here are not generally fans of what you would consider Narrativist games? PBtA (various), MHRP, and the like? Burning Wheel maybe? Basically all the different kinds of games @pemerton likes to post about? Because it seems like you are. Which is of course perfectly valid, just like my preferences.

As far as "high-concept sim" goes, to be honest I don't really see that as sim, not like process sim (which is pretty much always what I mean what I just say "sim"). That sort of genre emulation reads to me as another kind of story-based mechanic, designed to support a certain narrative. Sorry I confuse that with Narrativist (to your irritation), but in my defense the terms are hard to parse and differ from their common use definitions in what I consider vague ways. Sorry again.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The tendency to put up with actions from other PCs you likely wouldn't from an NPC with the same apparent personality or actions.

The classic was thieves stealing from the party. If an NPC did that they'd be dead in a ditch in two minutes flat.

Ah. That happened in my last game session a week ago, but let me tell you, it would have played out very differently had I been a player and not the GM (and the other players weren't my kids).

 

[Hussar]

Noooope. Don't need to "heavily, heavily stack the odds".

It's literally just like a hundred, hundred and fifty peasants with slings. That's all you need. "Perfectly positioned"? Not at all. Literally just don't cluster up and don't stand in a straight line.

A semicircular arc is good enough, or a couple arcs, or just scattered around in, say, a 60x60 square.

Dragons should not ever assault anything bigger than a..."hamlet" I think was the official term from the Gygaxian era? They'll straight-up die as long as the villagers are even remotely trying to defend themselves.

And if you think I'm wrong, prove it. Prove the dragon almost always survives. The math is there. You should be able to easily show that this isn't a problem. Presume 150 peasants distributed loosely across a field. Shouldn't be hard at all to show that an adult red dragon can essentially always survive that, as you're claiming.

It's always funny how the math never seems to matter. 10 peasants vs an AD&D ogre will obliterate that ogre in a single round. 10 peasants vs a 4e Minion Ogre will take 2 rounds on average and there should be at least 4 ogres in that group, meaning that probably all the peasants die.

100 peasants in 5e will kill a dragon without any real challenge. Granted, those same peasants would do any dragon in AD&D but that's because AD&D monsters are so weak.

Presuming that the math of the game = the physics of the world is what lands us in confusion every time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I didn't even know they did one for 3e!

Join us Lanefan on this side of 2000, I guarantee you so much fun!

I assume this in reference to D&D. If WotC made official D&D stuff I liked better than 1e and 2e's work, I'd consider it. But to me they dont, not in aggregate and certainly not at present.