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

[Faolyn]

OK?

What does this have to do with point that imaginary things don't actually cause real events? According to the Wikipedia entry you linked to, the cause of their actions was mental illness ("Weier and Geyser were both found not guilty by mental disease or defect and committed to mental health institutions"). I assume that you're not meaning to say that the fictional "Slender Man" caused those girls to do what they did?

And I also assume that you're not suggesting that RPGers have the sort of delusional relationship to imaginings that these girls did.

Slender Man is imaginary. These girls thought an imaginary being wanted them to do something. That imaginary being had an actual impact on their real life.

Just recently, I had a conversation with someone online who was terrified that Smile Dog was actually real. This person was an adult with children of her own. I had to spend quite a bit of time reassuring her that no, Smile Dog was just something that someone made by photoshopping a picture of a dog and that no, I never had to pass the picture around chain-letter style to avoid having it come and attack me.

Countless children modify their behavior to get presents from Santa. Countless children agonize over what body parts they can leave uncovered to avoid having the monster under the bed eat them (according to my mother, she thought it was OK to leave her feet uncovered; I, on the other hand, thought that feet had to be covered but my face could be uncovered).

People's beliefs cause them to act in certain ways, even if the thing they believe in doesn't actually exist.

 

[robertsconley]

It's about the game-ability of players acting as their characters, about being able to achieve outcomes through smart play of both the fiction and mechanics. So, it's stuff like telegraphing traps and what NPCs care about adding to your agency to achieve your objectives. Worlds Without Number and most of Kevin Crawford's adventure design stuff has great pointers on how to ensure scenarios are designed with playability in mind while still maintaining the sandbox nature of play.

That sounds like an important subtype of character agency, and it is distinctly different from how I handle it. I only use mechanics that allow me to adjudicate the actions players attempt as their characters. I don't concern myself with whether these mechanics produce an interesting game. Granted, I want the adjudication to avoid being boring or tedious, so I gravitate toward systems I consider elegant for handling character actions, but my selection isn't focused on how interesting they are as a game.

So, discussing how interesting a system makes the game certainly has merit, as does examining what players can do as their characters within that system. It's not my approach, but it's certainly a valid way to handle what I call character agency.

 

[robertsconley]

I decided to check in on this thread since it was on page 693 and I was like "Let's see where this is at" and I see we are arguing about Burning Wheel rules.

This is more about player agency, using Burning Wheel and my living world sandbox campaigns as examples. But yes, it involves a lot of minutiae about Burning Wheel.

 

[TwoSix]

Slender Man is imaginary. These girls thought an imaginary being wanted them to do something. That imaginary being had an actual impact on their real life.

Just recently, I had a conversation with someone online who was terrified that Smile Dog was actually real. This person was an adult with children of her own. I had to spend quite a bit of time reassuring her that no, Smile Dog was just something that someone made by photoshopping a picture of a dog and that no, I never had to pass the picture around chain-letter style to avoid having it come and attack me.

Countless children modify their behavior to get presents from Santa. Countless children agonize over what body parts they can leave uncovered to avoid having the monster under the bed eat them (according to my mother, she thought it was OK to leave her feet uncovered; I, on the other hand, thought that feet had to be covered but my face could be uncovered).

People's beliefs cause them to act in certain ways, even if the thing they believe in doesn't actually exist.

Yea, and people choosing to follow those beliefs shows agency. The imaginary figure is not exerting any agency.

 

[AlViking]

Because it should be self-evident that different games work differently?

I didn't open the PDF for Brindlewood Bay and start thinking "Where are the feats? Where are the spells?" I didn't start playing Catan and think "Where is my token? Why am I rolling 2d6 and not moving my piece around the board like Monopoly?"

Likewise, I don't open a TTRPG and assume the rules are meant to serve as an objective simulator of a fictional world because I've played other games and am aware that there a lot of types of TTRPGs.

In a perfect world you would acknowledge my point and consider ways to explain things in terms someone with a background in D&D and related games you're just going to double down on "It's your fault if you don't understand." I assume that anyone that is posting on a D&D forum on a D&D General thread has at least a basic understanding of how the game works and sometimes it helps to start from a commonly understood system.

 

[Faolyn]

I only ask this of you because I have seen you personally get stroppy about others swinging around (allegedly) universal claims out of this.

I dislike rules being applied to others, taking them to task for it, and then expecting lenience for the exact same thing when they do it.

So again: Pemerton claimed that BW is more intimate, more personal, or has more heft than other games. Examples:

Here are two examples from actual play of TB2e; if you read them, you'll see how they illustrate the less "intimate" and more externally-oriented focus of TB2e compared to BW:

The game also supports more "intimate" play than typical approaches to D&D, in at least two ways: it does not depend on a notion of "adventure" - as the examples I've already posted of Aedhros, Alicia and Thoth illustrate, play can unfold just by focusing on the PC's living their lives; the priorities can pertain to matters beyond adventuring and looting and solving problems and mysteries, and so the stakes of situations can be very personal, or low stakes from the point of view of other people in the setting.

I'm sure you're going to now go tell him that he should have used "I think" in those statements, yes?

 

[AlViking]

If you are exercising your character’s agency, why would you say something that doesn’t really matter?

I think this is a circular argument. You can’t immerse yourself into the character, so you claim that what your character says doesn’t really matter. Then you claim that because what your character says doesn’t really matter, you can’t immerse yourself into the character!

I have no clue what you're talking about. I want what my character says to matter. In D&D 4e when skill challenges were originally released there was no adjustment to the difficulty based on what someone said, at least with the DMs I played with. I was not clear that I was referring to 4e when I wrote that what I said didn't matter. On the other hand I have no clue how much what I say will impact BW because I don't know details of the dice pool.

Personally I want the content of what my character to have the possibility of bypassing an obstacle altogether. For that matter I want even critical situations to only rely on dice if there's uncertainty. In many cases in my campaigns there isn't any reason to ask for a roll.

 

[AlViking]

D&D doesn't have disadvantages that one can pick. Therefore, any such things are RP only.

GURPS does. In GURPS, the player chooses to have the disadvantage. In GURPS 4e, most of these disadvantages come with control numbers. You choose 6, 9, 12, or 15--the lower the number, the more points the disadvantage grants. Then, when you encounter the trigger, you have to roll under that number or succumb.

But note those two uses of the word choose. The player consents to having those disadvantages, and by doing so, they get a benefit: more points with which to build their character.

Consent is important.


So in 5e, only dragons of Adult or older can cause fear. In 2e and 3e, even Young Adults could cause fear. Now, I can't recall if dragons in 3e and 5e are given actual sizes in terms of feet/meters, but in 2e, a Young Adult white dragon--the smallest chromatic dragon--is on average 69 feet long (including tail) and an Adult white dragon is on average 86 feet long.

A spinosaurus, in real life, is over 40 feet long (paleontologists disagree on the exact measurements), with five-inch teeth (not including the root).

View attachment 405610
(From Wikipedia. Remember that a Young Adult white dragon is half again as large, and an Adult is twice as large.


On the one hand, we have some extremely large, often hungry carnivores, both of which are large enough to eat you in one, maybe two bites, and one of which is actively malicious in nature.

On the other hand, we have normal people doing things that make sense to their character.

I think I see a bit of a difference between those two things.

Just google tourists in Yellowstone getting gored by bison. Some people are not frightened by an animal that can weigh up to a ton that can easily toss you 20 feet through the air and prove it by trying to pet them. Same with approaching grizzly bears, dunking in water hot enough to burn you alive and when you fall in all they find are your shoes. The list goes on.

As far as the Spinosaurus that's from the tomb of beasts.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

“Did I tell you about the case of the Giant Cat of Sumeria Watson? It involved the murder of an archaeologist and a golden cat idol. I had to teach myself ancient Sumerian in order to prove that the idol was a fake. Handy I know it for this case.”

Point is, a sufficiently creative player can justify absolutely anything unless they are constrained in some way.

This logic applies in spades to the GM. At a practical level, sure some things the GM might say would be contradictory or absurd, but this is, on the whole, a trivial constraint.

Yet you all advertise this as if it was some mighty force in play. It is nothing, and what we are left with is the reality. The actual constraints are considerations which allow for the game to take place and be successful. This is exactly what Baker et al have been saying for ages now, and why their games have focused on what those are, or should be, and how to deploy them successfully.

 

[TwoSix]

So again: Pemerton claimed that BW is more intimate, more personal, or has more heft than other games. Examples:



I'm sure you're going to now go tell him that he should have used "I think" in those statements, yes?

The first of those examples is @pemerton comparing BW to another game that they continually advocate for on these boards (TB2).

The second is in response to a post where you, YOU, asked "I'm looking for you to say "I feel that Burning Wheel does <thing> well because of <reason>". Come on. You literally asked for a subjective answer.