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

[JConstantine]

Same here, although I am neutral on the drain resources part. It may drain resources or it may not, depending on the circumstances and choices made.

Sure. What I meant was that it was intended to drain resources. Whether it actually does comes down to the players. If they're savvy enough to resolve/bypass it without resources expenditure, more power to them. The flip side is that they sometimes spend resources on thing that weren't explicitly intended to be encounters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Did you have reason to know your henchmen were idiots?

Seriously, they're NPCs, all the 100s of ways we use to judge the competency and reliability of people, to know who to trust are not present in RPGs. They had explicit instructions and the information needed to (not) act foolishly. So I covered my bases. This was, fundamentally, a gotcha, but a classic type of situation I've seen so many times before from a litany of GMs. Flawed design of process of play.

 

[Enrahim]

As a DM I generally have no wants for the players to do or not do something. Like @Lanefan, it would take something very extreme for me to stop and tell the players that I don't want them to continue on with what they are doing. I've been playing and DMing since 1983 and I have yet to encounter a situation like that.

If they want to investigate what happened in the castle, they can. If they don't, they don't have to. If they decide one way or the other and later change their mind, that's cool as well.

Yes. The context of my comment was this post

I think that's probably the more likely cause, but you could also see how this could very plausibly flow from principles based on the assumption that the world keeps progressing. For example, we could posit this wasn't the henchmen being idiots, it was deliberate sabotage due to one of them being replaced by a doppelganger, plausibly one hired by the character's enemies if they hadn't opposed one so far in the campaign.

Externally, such a scenario would appear to be identical to what has been described, but rather than "getting on with the module" there would potentially be motivation to investigate the circumstances and chase down this new threat. This, I think is what's being got at with the "black box". From the outside, this appears to have the hallmarks of some fairly heavy handed railroading but from the inside it may follow plausibly and realistically from player actions and NPC motivations. If we can't distinguish these cases at the table, it seems it may lead to some of the problems described.

Referencing this scenario:

Right. Let me give an example: I had a 5e character, way back when 5e was brand new. The game was set in my sister's pre-existing game world, which has a ton of lore and lots of games played in it. So, I pick Dwarf, Wizard, Transmuter, and Folk Hero. So I'm not trying to be especially profound in my characterization, I just figure he's tired of all the BS associated with being a little guy and he wants to play in the big leagues.

So, we go out on the frontier, turns out we're doing some loose version of Phandelver, which is itself reasonably location-based kind of AP-esque 'there are a few routes but they all basically lead to the same place'. But along the way Azardel kicks the ass of the Boss Hobgoblin in personal combat (good trick for a wizard, but as a Mountain Dwarf he's actually got a battleaxe and chain armor he can wear).

He decides he's going to take over the castle, and rebuild it, call all his dwarf buddies that he's a folk hero to down to live in it, and develop a trade route. Yeah, I guess that either A) doesn't mesh with whatever the DM wanted to do, and/or B) doesn't seem 'plausible'. Well, I did it, and got some reasonable problems and whatnot to solve, for a time. Had to kiss the arses of the neighbors, kill of a few monsters, build a bunch of stuff, and somehow come up with enough cash and retainers to make it work.

So, once I was dragged off on an adventure related to the other characters, that was that, it was decreed that my henchmen, acting with monumental foolishness, released a terrible monster which immediately took over all my stuff and undid all of that work.

Now, that MIGHT happen in a kind of narrativist fashion, but all of the above just illustrates many of the flaws with plausible and logical, and the many foibles of trad play in general. Also, I want to be clear, it wasn't BAD play in its own right, it was just a certain kind of play that is very distinct from what is found in games like BitD.

That was then confirmed to be relevant for one of the larger themes of this thread:

Yes, that would be exactly my concern with something like this.

So summarised: This is applicable to only a certain type of scenario, that I would think is very rare. A player felt their initiative was shut down, and there was expressed frustration that it might be impossible to discern if this was a good faith living world move or a bad faith railroad like power play. I tried to provide a way I thought would make it quite possible to discern which of these we are looking at for this particular situation.

So assuming you are a good and concious living world GM you just confirmed my assesment that you can not envision yourself giving the "bad faith" indicating answer (Hence strengthening the case that this approach at least are unliky to provide false positives)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

More shifting goalposts. I never said anything about success, just that the core is adaptable.

Sure, if you set your expectations low enough!

D20 Modern (and it's spiritual successor, Everyday Heroes)?
Star Wars d20?
Stargate SG-1/Spycraft?
Given Pathfinder 1e is basically D&D3.75, that and Starfinder?

PF1e is a 3.5e clone, not really a separate d20 design, it trades on being 3.5 to a high degree. I've never seen a copy of SG-1 or Spycraft, I don't know how to evaluate that.

Anyway, yes, Paizo found the formula of success with PF/SF, clone 3.5 and supply it to people who didn't want to play 4e. Plus they had access to all of WotC 's marketing channels.

Other than PF, d20 is just another generic system, mostly gathering dust like the others. Generic systems are just not very successful. Usually there's one or two core games they arise out of where they work well, and attempts to expand beyond that fail.

Honestly, the main one that is pretty successful? PbtA, followed by FitD, and then Agon has also been used as a base for a bunch of games too. My conclusion is there's something about trad style games that limits them, or leads to people trying to use them in badly fitting ways. I don't think D&D/d20 is really more limited than, say PbtA, but it is so much more opaque that it seems attract inappropriate attempts to build off it

 

[Faolyn]

Again, appreciate the explanation. But this thread is the first time I remember seeing a real definition although it would have been easy to miss. My only point was that people throw around game specific terms and phrases all the time without explanation. Presumably it's been explained before somewhere, but there's the assumption that everyone understands it. On the other hand "encounter" has been used in D&D since the beginning and is just plain old normal English even if it is an uncommon usage of the word.

Hey, the verb form is used pretty darn often!

On a side note I would find that text quoted kind of off-putting because of it's one-true-wayism. It's not a suggestion or one option, it's saying how the game is played. Not that I want to go down that rabbit hole but every group should find their own groove and for some people it will be very descriptive for absolutely everything and others will be "make a charisma save" (in D&D terms) because it's just their style. This on the other hand is telling people specifically how they must handle it.

PbtA games do tend to have a “one true way”-ism feel to them, which can be very off-putting, especially if they’re writer combines it with an overly… snotty, perhaps, style of writing. And I agree that it’s not an intuitive “rule” at all. I will say that the PtbA games I’ve run and played have been very immersive, though, likely because of “to do it, do it” manta.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Seriously, they're NPCs, all the 100s of ways we use to judge the competency and reliability of people, to know who to trust are not present in RPGs. They had explicit instructions and the information needed to (not) act foolishly. So I covered my bases. This was, fundamentally, a gotcha, but a classic type of situation I've seen so many times before from a litany of GMs. Flawed design of process of play.

Well, it's a good thing you have been able to objectively determine good vs bad design like that. Very impressive!

 

[Bedrockgames]

Anyway, yes, Paizo found the formula of success with PF/SF, clone 3.5 and supply it to people who didn't want to play 4e. Plus they had access to all of WotC 's marketing channels.

Other than PF, d20 is just another generic system, mostly gathering dust like the others. Generic systems are just not very successful. Usually there's one or two core games they arise out of where they work well, and attempts to expand beyond that fail.

Honestly, the main one that is pretty successful? PbtA, followed by FitD, and then Agon has also been used as a base for a bunch of games too. My conclusion is there's something about trad style games that limits them, or leads to people trying to use them in badly fitting ways. I don't think D&D/d20 is really more limited than, say PbtA, but it is so much more opaque that it seems attract inappropriate attempts to build off it

The OSR has been quite successful in taking D&D/d20 and reshaping it to fit a concept. That is much of the point of the newer waves of the OSR: taking the D&D engine and then fitting it to something new. The reason it works is because that core system is very gameable and it is very well known (so there is less system mastery to hurdle). Granted OSR is leaning into earlier versions of D&D but there is still often some amount of d20 in there.

 

[Faolyn]

Note that I said satisfying!

So “GM comes up with something on the fly, players decide to move around it” isn’t a satisfying answer? What more do you want?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, if you set your expectations low enough!

PF1e is a 3.5e clone, not really a separate d20 design, it trades on being 3.5 to a high degree. I've never seen a copy of SG-1 or Spycraft, I don't know how to evaluate that.

Anyway, yes, Paizo found the formula of success with PF/SF, clone 3.5 and supply it to people who didn't want to play 4e. Plus they had access to all of WotC 's marketing channels.

Other than PF, d20 is just another generic system, mostly gathering dust like the others. Generic systems are just not very successful. Usually there's one or two core games they arise out of where they work well, and attempts to expand beyond that fail.

Honestly, the main one that is pretty successful? PbtA, followed by FitD, and then Agon has also been used as a base for a bunch of games too. My conclusion is there's something about trad style games that limits them, or leads to people trying to use them in badly fitting ways. I don't think D&D/d20 is really more limited than, say PbtA, but it is so much more opaque that it seems attract inappropriate attempts to build off it

What do you mean by "successful"? Are you talking about units sold, because that's the only measure where your objective presentation might make sense to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hey, the verb form is used pretty darn often!


PbtA games do tend to have a “one true way”-ism feel to them, which can be very off-putting, especially if they’re writer combines it with an overly… snotty, perhaps, style of writing. And I agree that it’s not an intuitive “rule” at all. I will say that the PtbA games I’ve run and played have been very immersive, though, likely because of “to do it, do it” manta.

That "one true way" style really puts me off, yeah. The game in question really has to hit my preferences for me to get around that presentation.