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

[zakael19]

It's not expressly mentioned in the passage you referred to. It's expressly mentioned in various die traits, and in the list of obstacles. Which I've already posted, in reply to you and others, probably four or five times now.

To me, that seems like quite a mis-reading.

I chose.

I mean, one bizarre aspect of this conversation (one of many) is that you seem to treat hesitates when attempting X as is unable to attempt X.

Read the actual play report, and you'll see.

Huh? Alicia and Aedhros were robbing the innkeeper at night, out of anger at how he had treated them. Aedhros decided to escalate to murder; Alicia objected.

I don't understand why you are wanting to project your own idea about what might happen in a RPG onto an actual session that actually happened, that you can read an account of if you like.

I've never met you and know little about you. You were not in my mind when I created my PC. I was thinking of Eol and Maeglin from the Silmarillion, filtered through an urban degradation vibe.

I thought we were done with the Steel thread . Faolyn is obviously never changing their mind, and at some point we're gonna run out of digital ink.

 

[pemerton]

Dismissively saying "it's all in our heads", as one poster (not you) does repeatedly, is redundant. Of course it's all in our heads! The point is that when engaged in play at the table we're acting and behaving based on those things going on in our heads - the "shared fiction" that we're imagining and (one hopes) immersed in - and thus to suggest the fiction has no real-world causality is bupkus.

It's not dismissive. It's just accurate - which you acknowledge here! ("Of course it's all in our heads!")

What has real world causality is your heads. As I've said, via complicated social processes.

The only reason this is even being discussed is because some posters seem to want to say that the fiction made me do it rather than my idea made me do it. That is, they appear to want to disclaim responsibility for what they are imagining.

 

[Bedrockgames]

accidental post

 

[pemerton]

The key here is that those of us who are trad-leaning are for the most part explaining ourselves through subjective, personal opinion. "This doesn't make sense to me", or "using this method of adjudication would be meaningless to me". In many cases, your "side" has not done this, which leads to your statements sometimes coming off as needlessly aggressive. Bringing this up with your side has not led to more pleasant and fruitful discussion, unfortunately. At least no from my perspective.

My experience is that when I say that I would probably find your campaign pretty railroad-y, you and others get pretty aggressive!

 

[pemerton]

I don’t think they looked at plate tectonics once

Yeah, I find the idea that plate tectonics and wind currents are important for designing a fantasy setting a bit odd.

 

[pemerton]

I think that multiple posters here have conjectured a "why" - namely, the GM has a vision of the setting that they wish to affirm via play.

Do you mean by that that decision making is fiat and/or arbitrary?

No. I mean what I said: the GM has a vision of the setting that they wish to affirm via play.

fidelity to the pre-exustibg fiction of the setting, and player action, are the primary sources leading to decisions.

Can you tell me what you think the difference is between affirming a vision of the setting and fidelity to the pre-existing fiction of the setting? I can't see one, but apparently you can.

 

[robertsconley]

What’s the counter argument?

Should RPG design be done by emotional intuition?

On vibes?

Sure, why not?

The history of the creative arts is full of debates over this kind of tension. Take the classic example of the Poussinists vs. Rubenists, where one side emphasized structure and reason, and the other championed emotion and sensory appeal. That debate was never really resolved, and similar divides persist across multiple disciplines, including RPG design.

I’ve identified various incompatible assumptions and creative goals between several posters in this thread, including myself. Once those assumptions are laid bare, each side’s reasoning makes sense within its own context.

The one person who seems unwilling to accept this is @pemerton.

And let’s not forget: the goal here isn’t convincing someone to like a particular RPG or framework. It’s about understanding how and why these designs work the way they do. I’ve learned more about Burning Wheel during this conversation than I knew before. I still don’t care for it, just like I wouldn’t want a red paint job on my car, but I see the design logic and the advantages it offers for the kind of game it’s trying to support.

In fact, I’ve found some of its procedures useful when I run theater-of-the-mind sessions or have to improvise due to lack of prep. Burning Wheel is built to get things moving with minimal preparation, and that’s a valuable insight for situations where the players decide to go right instead of left at the last minute.

 

[pemerton]

My point is that the world doesn’t actually react, the GM makes decisions or uses procedures to depict how the world reacts. Which may seem silly to point out, but I’ve noticed a tendency for some folks to attribute such things to the world.

Yes, this!

 

[TwoSix]

I thought we were done with the Steel thread . Faolyn is obviously never changing their mind, and at some point we're gonna run out of digital ink.

What’s really odd about is that it’s gone from “I don’t like the ways these rules work” to “I don’t think you GMed this right, because of my personal view of how psychology works”.

Which is quite a change in focus!

 

[SableWyvern]

But that's the point that you keep trying to ignore. It is YOU who are choosing between the plausible outcomes. It is YOU who defines "plausible". The world doesn't define that. There is absolutely nothing in your setting that defines what is plausible or not. Every single decision point is grounded in your personal views of what is plausible or even possible.

I don't believe this is in dispute. (At least not if we accept that anything in the setting that defines the plausible was put there by the person designing the setting. I could quibble over semantics, but I can see the general point you're getting at, which is pretty straightforward.)

That is what people are pushing back against. This notion that there is some sort of objectivity in your setting. There absolutely cannot be any objectivity here. Not when every single element of your setting is defined and detailed by you. Every single outcome, decision, event, whatever, is 100% sourced from you. There is not way that can be objective.

This is getting pushback. You have jumped from, "Ultimately, you are responsible for the decisions you make" (which I am confident everyone agrees on) straight to "Thus there cannot be any objectivity."

There is agreement that GMs are never completely objective. There is disagreement with your assertion that there cannot be any objectivity, or that the participants cannot agree among themselves that there is sufficient objectivity.