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

[JConstantine]

The focus is on providing opportunities for the players to engage the world through telegraphed events, make Doskvol feel real, and have a mechanic for the city to push back against them.

Maybe is this is an aesthetic preference, but I don't find a player facing graphic to do anything to make Doskvol "feel real". Every appropriate advance in the fiction should tick a clock, but every tick should result in the change it represents being narrated, and that narration is what's important. If the GM had a bunch of player-facing clocks, and ticks them without narration, it's going to feel incredibly gamey. So as long as the various "living world" proponents are narrating changes, I see no functional difference. Which just goes back to what @thefutilist said about people overrating systems.

Unless I've misunderstood what you meant.

 

[Lanefan]

This is actually not as obvious as it might seem on face value. I have three times as a GM been heavily criticised for abiding to the constraints of a prewritten scenario and rules. Two of them was critical hit rolls in the first round of combat against enemy with outsized damage potential than the average foe they had met so far in the adventure. This outright killed the characters.

It was very clear that my insistence in letting the dice results stay was breaking the player expectation on how the game should work. They were aware that the game and tradition granted me as the GM the privilege to with a handwave declare the roll uncool. Not only that, they appeared to consider it a duty given that power.

Yikes.

So my insistence of honoring these rolls was actually a breach of the implied social contract. I made an unilateral and egoistic decission to not wield the powers bestowed me in order to get an experience I was the only one at the table really seeking. I was the only one putting the constraint of honoring rolls on myself.

And in making that "unilateral and egotistical" decision you also absolutely 100% made the right call.

If the "implied social contract" has got to the point where players' characters can't be killed now and then by bad luck (or in broader terms, that bad luck can't force a loss condition) it's a sad day for all of us.

And if the players argue with your call, flip it around and ask if you're supposed to honour their rolls if-when they one-shot your BBEG. Then tell 'em the same principle works both ways, and rest your case.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, they almost can't. @Lanefan has one of the longest lasting, consistent settings that I know of. I'm curious with all that time and with all those different groups, what percentage of the total setting has been revealed to all the players combined(let alone a single player).

A surprisingly small amount, truth be told. Lots of detail around some well-travelled areas but little if any interest in going far afield to places merely hinted at.

That said, it still takes up a fair bit of space. Check it out here....

Decast World Page

...if you're interested.

 

[AlViking]

Yikes.

And in making that "unilateral and egotistical" decision you also absolutely 100% made the right call.

If the "implied social contract" has got to the point where players' characters can't be killed now and then by bad luck (or in broader terms, that bad luck can't force a loss condition) it's a sad day for all of us.

And if the players argue with your call, flip it around and ask if you're supposed to honour their rolls if-when they one-shot your BBEG. Then tell 'em the same principle works both ways, and rest your case.

I think this is something people should talk about when they join a game. I don't go out of my way to kill off characters and I certainly don't have the lethality level you do, but I also don't ignore die rolls. Every once in a while I'll ignore a monster's power because it would make for a boring encounter without really doing much to alter the outcome of the fight but that's a bit different.

But I roll in the open and if I crit too often that may mean they need to invest in adamantium armor.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Every once in a while I'll ignore a monster's power because it would make for a boring encounter without really doing much to alter the outcome of the fight but that's a bit different.

Can you give an example of this? As I can't remember a time where this as come up at my table. The opposite has come up where the monster died before the cool power materialized or recharged but I don't think I've experienced what you seem to be talking about.

 

[Faolyn]

This is actually not as obvious as it might seem on face value. I have three times as a GM been heavily criticised for abiding to the constraints of a prewritten scenario and rules. Two of them was critical hit rolls in the first round of combat against enemy with outsized damage potential than the average foe they had met so far in the adventure. This outright killed the characters.

It was very clear that my insistence in letting the dice results stay was breaking the player expectation on how the game should work. They were aware that the game and tradition granted me as the GM the privilege to with a handwave declare the roll uncool. Not only that, they appeared to consider it a duty given that power.

So my insistence of honoring these rolls was actually a breach of the implied social contract. I made an unilateral and egoistic decission to not wield the powers bestowed me in order to get an experience I was the only one at the table really seeking. I was the only one putting the constraint of honoring rolls on myself.

I do not consider the activity my players wanted to have in any way a "wrong" way to play the game. Indeed I would rather think it a superior activity for most players over the one I forced them into.

I hope this can bring some new perspective to the debate.

Heh. Reminds of the time when I ran Curse of Strahd. The party had encountered the door trap in the Death House and one of the players said, “You know who else ran deadly adventures right out of the module? The nazis, that’s who. <beat> I’m a cleric, I can Godwin if I want to.”

(This was a joke, in case anyone is uncertain about it)

 

[AlViking]

Can you give an example of this? As I can't remember a time where this as come up at my table. The opposite has come up where the monster died before the cool power materialized or recharged but I don't think I've experienced what you seem to be talking about.

Thing like HP max drain when I know there will likely be multiple encounters before the drain can be reversed, stuns or abilities that take a character out of play if it's been happening too often in other combats. Every once in a while things like that can be an interesting challenge but I was hitting it a lot with monsters that thematically made sense for what they were facing for a couple of sessions so it got old.

 

[Faolyn]

Not a fan of hard scene framing or any other mechanic meant to promote narrative structure, for one thing. Also not interesting in being forced to describe every situation through the lenses of player goals, desires, and fears. And of course, I don't want players to exert influence on active play beyond what their PCs are capable of, so any rules that constrain the GM's actions in that way are also roundly disliked.

Far enough. Definitely not the way I prefer to play, but each to their own.

 

[zakael19]

Maybe is this is an aesthetic preference, but I don't find a player facing graphic to do anything to make Doskvol "feel real". Every appropriate advance in the fiction should tick a clock, but every tick should result in the change it represents being narrated, and that narration is what's important. If the GM had a bunch of player-facing clocks, and ticks them without narration, it's going to feel incredibly gamey. So as long as the various "living world" proponents are narrating changes, I see no functional difference. Which just goes back to what @thefutilist said about people overrating systems.

Unless I've misunderstood what you meant.

You’ve misunderstood what I meant. Part of the intent of a world/city that has events happening independent of player action that then get telegraphed back to them via fictional updates (you don’t have to make all the faction clocks player facing) is to make it feel more real. Threat clocks in AW do something similar, but far more laser focused on the immediate interests of the PCs.

Robert has said that because the creative agenda of the game is different it’s not the same thing as his living world, but a lot of the like high level objectives & outcomes have struck me as similar.

 

[Pedantic]

This is actually not as obvious as it might seem on face value. I have three times as a GM been heavily criticised for abiding to the constraints of a prewritten scenario and rules. Two of them was critical hit rolls in the first round of combat against enemy with outsized damage potential than the average foe they had met so far in the adventure. This outright killed the characters.

It was very clear that my insistence in letting the dice results stay was breaking the player expectation on how the game should work. They were aware that the game and tradition granted me as the GM the privilege to with a handwave declare the roll uncool. Not only that, they appeared to consider it a duty given that power.

So my insistence of honoring these rolls was actually a breach of the implied social contract. I made an unilateral and egoistic decission to not wield the powers bestowed me in order to get an experience I was the only one at the table really seeking. I was the only one putting the constraint of honoring rolls on myself.

I do not consider the activity my players wanted to have in any way a "wrong" way to play the game. Indeed I would rather think it a superior activity for most players over the one I forced them into.

I hope this can bring some new perspective to the debate.

This is the sort of thing I'd put cleanly in "rules" or "system" instead of GM guideline. The expectation the players have (not unreasonably) is that they should be able to express agency before consequence pins them down entirely. It shouldn't be incumbent on the GM to redesign the game on the fly to meet that expectation, and/or it should be clear upfront that this is a possible or even likely outcome.

It's frustrating to me that we have to have these discussions about the role of the GM and so on, when we could be focusing in on how crits are largely a bad mechanic that mostly serve to hurt players. I'm aesthetically opposed to PC specific interaction mechanics, but if I was going to make an exception, crits would be a great call, seeing as team NPC will always be making more rolls than team PC. At the very least, someone like 3e's critical confirmation roll would help.

More broadly though, this is exactly the kind of problem that comes with conflating the GM's responsibilities for setting creation and curation and NPC motivation with system design. If the players can't trust the resolution mechanics to produce desirable outcomes or even predictable ones, they expect the GM to redesign it on the fly to meet those expectations, GMs then expect the resolution systems not to work and change them regularly, and designers stop trying to make systems that work without being regularly changed. We end up in a horrible cycle that prevents the resolution mechanics ever getting better.