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

[Micah Sweet]

You made the decision to not have orcs in your fantasy setting.

That’s not a judgment. It’s not a normative statement. It’s just a trivially obvious statement of truth.

Does the "why" of decision-making really just not matter to you at all? I'm still trying to figure out the end goal here.

 

[AlViking]

Dude.

Did you seriously turn to "hit points" for an example of a simulationist model? Hit points?

Solid joke. 9/10. You almost got me.

A model doesn't have to be particularly accurate, it just has to serve the intended purpose for whatever is being simulated. There are many, many shortcuts used in engineering and physics models that are "good enough" for their purpose. Sometimes they're improved Student refines 100-year-old math problem, expanding wind energy possibilities | Penn State University. If we didn't settle for good enough we'd have to model down to the atomic or even quantum level, at some point you just have to say it's good enough.

Same way with the way I try to run my campaign world so that at least at the high level it feels realistic. Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough and all that. HP may be a poor model but it's easy and it works which is why it's been adopted in countless other TTRPGs and video games. My modeling of the physical world, factions, NPCs and how they all react is even cruder than HP in many ways but it serves the intended purpose.

 

[AlViking]

Does the "why" of decision-making really just not matter to you at all? I'm still trying to figure out the end goal here.

Seems like the only goal is to claim a "gotcha".

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm missing how this relates to @EzekielRaiden's post that you quoted - which didn't seem to be about mechanical processes or game loops, but about the principles by which the GM makes decisions.

In many of your favored games, does the GM not make decisions based on mechanical processes in the rules?

 

[AlViking]

In many of your favored games, does the GM not make decisions based on mechanical processes in the rules?

That's kind of the same question I've had. We have all this talk about process and guardrails and yet as far as I can tell the GM is still the one calling for checks, setting the difficulty level and modifying the dice pool as they see fit. It's a very different approach but it seems like a bad D&D DM could just as easily to be a bad BW GM as well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, are you simply arguing that a lot of people without agendas and principles? The DM just says "Well, this feels good, let's do that?"

That's definitely true, but that doesn't leave a whole lot of play to examine!

It's true that a lot of non-traditional games tend to have more (sometimes many more) strongly outlined, bespoke mechanical pieces that form their specific and unique processes than are usually called out in more traditional systems. Perhaps that's why their proponents keep trying to apply the same analytical methodology they presumably use to discuss their own preferred systems.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Micah said this a few pages back.


A table does not make a decision. A person reading the table does.

If you make a setting with a powerful king as an antagonist, the king is not the causal agent of sending assassins after the PCs. The DM is, even if the DM is using impartial mental heuristic or rolling on a random event table to determine what action within the fiction the king will take.

If you make a statement that the king is a causal agent, one of two things is happening.

A) You are confused about the reality of your setting.
B) You are speaking in a metaphor, or in the fictional frame of your setting. (Narrating, or speaking in character, as it were.)

In a discussion of analysis of play, that is confusing and you shouldn't do that. Don't use metaphors. Don't talk about your characters or your setting like they're real. Talk about your tables and the participants at the table, don't discuss from within the fictional frame.

Why not? You might find it confusing, but others might find a highly
academic and high-minded vernacular, with uniquely defined terms not agreed upon by all involved to be confusing as well. Personally I prefer a more casual vernacular when having a discussion outside of the graduate program classroom, but we all have our likes and dislikes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which is exactly what pemerton has said. The imaginary world simply--flatly--does not exist. Our beliefs and attitudes exist, and those beliefs and attitudes can interact, evolve, and be coherent or incoherent with one or more other beliefs/attitudes. These beliefs/attitudes are causative agents, even though they fail to refer in any way because there simply isn't anything for them to refer to.

The current King of France doesn't exist, because there is no King of France, it hasn't been a monarchy for 150 years (not since the Second French Empire was abolished and replaced by the Third French Republic.) But it is possible for us to have beliefs or attitudes about "the current King of France", and for those beliefs or attitudes to agree or conflict with one another, and for those beliefs or attitudes to be causative agents for future actions on someone's part.

It is most striking to me how this little exchange is echoing closely some of the discussions that happened almost 25 years ago at The Forge. Once we get past the whole pretending about what we're pretending and start talking about the actual tools and processes in an objective way then tons of stuff can be done.

Just to be clear, you don't have to end up at something like Narrativist play. Agendas or attitudes/culture of play can get you wherever you want to go, you are just no longer in the dark.

I think there are a few people here who have some exposure to the most current thinking that came out of the Forge era community. I get the impression thought has moved on from agenda to maybe culture, but I am no expert.

 

[Faolyn]

You're wrong here. What you describe is one possible use - in Torchbearer 2e that is called a Convince Crowd conflict.

But it can also be used to resolve an argument between two people, and in my experience that is the more typical use of it: in Torchbearer 2e these are called Convince conflicts and Negotiate conflicts.

(In case you're wondering why I mention TB2e, it's because it's a game by the same designers using many of the same basic principles and techniques, but with some refinement/development of the BW systems.)

I haven't quoted rules text in this post, but you can find it in the core rulebook, with further discussion in the Adventure Burner reprinted in the Codex, and if you review the free sample adventure The Sword you'll also see there that Duel of Wits is (inter alia) a resolution system for an argument between two characters.

OK, so fun fact: I found a copy of BW Gold online. I didn't download it, because I won't download a game without paying for it, but I have been looking stuff up in it. Everything I wrote there was taken directly from the book.

Again: maybe next time you get into a prolonged argument with someone about the duel of wits, you mention that you're using the rules in ways that they're not intended to be used. It's incredibly disingenuous of you to claim other people don't know what they're talking about when you're using houseruled mechanics! As I previously said, you have repeatedly failed to mention key elements here, even when directly questioned. That is not cool. You either need to stick with RAW or say that you're modifying the mechanics.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ahh. It's only a model if you write it down. Oh, wait.

Modeling is creating simplified representations, such as physical models, diagrams, math, etc. to simulate things or make things easier to visualize, etc. that happen in the real world. In other words, what DMs quite often do .

And falling damage models(predicts what happens) falling and hitting the ground really hard. D&D sword swings model what happens when a sword hits the body. And on and on. They are really simple models, but they are designed to predict what will happen about what we know of these things.

They are simple models.

Perhaps they're thinking of science? I don't know about you, but I am definitely not a gaming scientist. Just a guy who likes talking about RPGs.