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

[pemerton]

A vision can be anything. Fidelity to what come before is a specific vision, grounded in logic.

So as I posted, it's a special case.

 

[Bedrockgames]

YES.

I've literally said that. Repeatedly. I have repeatedly said that the terms being used are so vague I cannot understand what is being said. I have repeatedly asked for clarification, for alternative phrasing, for ANYTHING that might help me understand better.

I have, repeatedly, been told--by multiple people!--that they simply refuse to do that.


So you admit to refusing to actually participate in discussion? Either everyone must dance to your tune, or not at all? Everyone must agree to use your terms and only your terms, or else the discussion is called off? I mean I guess I appreciate being so up front about it...

I agree there is a communication issue between some posters. I honestly suspect it is because we think very differently, which is fine, those kinds of differences often result in huge gulfs in style and approach between tables. We can try to walk you through what we do and how we do it, but that is going to be hard if you are challenging every foot we stake in our explanation, and it is not going to be helpful to fit our explanations into GNS because I don't think that model is a good match for this approach in particular

 

[Micah Sweet]

YES.

I've literally said that. Repeatedly. I have repeatedly said that the terms being used are so vague I cannot understand what is being said. I have repeatedly asked for clarification, for alternative phrasing, for ANYTHING that might help me understand better.

I have, repeatedly, been told--by multiple people!--that they simply refuse to do that.


So you admit to refusing to actually participate in discussion? Either everyone must dance to your tune, or not at all? Everyone must agree to use your terms and only your terms, or else the discussion is called off? I mean I guess I appreciate being so up front about it...

I prefer more casual discourse, yes, and I won't apologize for that. If you insist on exhaustive and aggressively pointed demands for explanations of ever more detail as you "drill down" ever deeper, I'm just going to keep seeing more attempts to score rhetorical points and attempt to invalidate what folks have been doing in their games, to great effect, for years or even longer.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is very hard to have a conversation if this is how you feel about what we say

How do you think I feel?

It's really hard to have a conversation with someone when we have the following exchange seventeen times:

Person A: "I don't really understand what you meant by the terms X and Y. Could you explain in a different way?"
Person B: "No, I can't. That's it."

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I'm just extraordinarily frustrated with the constant accusations, the unending litanies of requirements, the "no you're just wrong and I won't explain why", etc., etc., etc.

I, and others who share (at least some of) my positions, have jumped through hoop after hoop after hoop. We have explained in painstaking detail. And what do we get for it? Diddly-squat. We have to explain; the other side explicitly refuses to explain. We have to justify. The other side explicitly refuses to justify--unless it resorts to "justifications" which almost instantaneously crumble as soon as the slightest touch of discussion hits them, like the whole "it takes my agency away to tell me what my character thinks or feels, like if a failed roll causes my character to feel fear", only for that standard to be completely outright contradicted and that contradiction to be claimed as some kind of victory.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I prefer more casual discourse, yes, and I won't apologize for that. If you insist on exhaustive and aggressively pointed demands for explanations of ever more detail as you "drill down" ever deeper, I'm just going to keep seeing more attempts to score rhetorical points and attempt to invalidate what folks have been doing in their games, to great effect, for years or even longer.

And I'm going to see it as you rejecting even wanting to participate in a conversation at all.

I don't care about "scoring points". I care about genuinely understanding things. I can't genuinely understand things if, when I sincerely ask a person to explain their position, they just flatly reject any effort at doing so. Which has happened. Repeatedly. People wouldn't even explain what they meant by a given single WORD, let alone anything bigger.

 

[Bedrockgames]

How do you think I feel?

It's really hard to have a conversation with someone when we have the following exchange seventeen times:

Person A: "I don't really understand what you meant by the terms X and Y. Could you explain in a different way?"
Person B: "No, I can't. That's it."

Okay but try to understand, this isn't our impression at all of the conversation

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Okay but try to understand, this isn't our impression at all of the conversation

So: Your impression is the only impression that matters?

Because unless you are taking that position, I don't understand why this is a productive response to what I said. Either both of our positions matter, or at least one of them doesn't--and the "you have to understand our position" reply, when I'm literally saying my position is "I don't understand, could you clarify?", communicates to me that the only impression that matters is yours, not mine.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I invite you to illustrate precisely what you are talking about with my actual play breakdown.

I’ll just quote an earlier post of yours where you said it.

That’s fair, within your framework. In mine, the referee exists to support the core goal of the campaign: to make the players feel like they visited a living, coherent world. That feeling of verisimilitude is what’s prioritized.

Did I misread this post in some way?

You're definitely more generous than I am with this whole plausibility thing. Honestly, I think it is a very weak plank to build on. First of all we're discussing Fantasy games (or similarly fantastical SF etc.). So, there is no defined way to say what is or is not possible, or even how likely it is. Gygaxian Naturalism can be seen as an attempt at an approach to this issue. The world is as it is, so presumably it is most plausible for it to continue to be that way, and some lampshades are applied to that, like describing the 'ecology' of various monsters.

Well, regardless of how fantastic a setting may be, there are still going to be some elements that are at least somewhat grounded, meaning they should work similarly to how we expect them to. If someone’s insulted, we can quickly and easily come up with some likely outcomes. Now, perhaps there’s some cultural element at play in the fiction… but still, we have enough to go on.

I think that we’ve talked about plausibility being a pretty uniform goal for GMs that I’m not gonna argue against it. It’s just about events having some sense of cause and effect within the game world.

Also I feel the need to point out that this deep questioning approach where you force people to defend their playstyle through a Socratic series of questions isn’t really illuminating anything. It is just forcing people to give answers, answers that are probably not fully thought out, and leading down questionable paths of assumptions. It seems to be the deeper we go here often there is less clarity rather than more at the end of it

Well, maybe people should pause and think a bit more about their responses? Assuming they want to continue in the discussion? There’s nothing that obliges anyone to answer immediately or at all. We’re all here voluntarily.

If you feel a hasty, not fully thought out post leads you to being misunderstood, then try not to make one.

Is the traditional side really being so vague and confusing that you can't understand what they're talking about? And as for the Narrativist stuff? Plenty of folks don't care for GNS and the Forge, and have no interest in using its IMO biased framework to discuss general RPG topics.

So a willful denial of understanding is okay?

I haven’t been using GNS terminology much at all. And I happily run and play sandbox style games myself, as I’ve pointed out.

That seems inconvenient for you and others, though. Much easier to ignore that despite similar experiences, I draw different conclusions… much easier to paint me as “them”.

As for the traditional side being hard to understand… it comes from the fact that there seems to be an almost endless way to do sandboxes. Even what’s essential to sandbox play varies from person to person.

The only thing that seems universal is a rejection of any agency on the players’ part beyond what’s been called “character agency”… but then also vehement denial that such a limit in agency means that player agency in such a game is therefore limited.

So yeah… not always crystal clear, Micah.

 

[Faolyn]

The consequences of the Duel of Wits are binding on the participants. A non-participant can't be compelled to do something because of them. Nor do I think they can deny that the argument happened and the results are what they are. "Gee, the elven seneschal really kicked your ass in that debate, Bob. Guess we have to [do whatever]."


Yeah, Catamite sucked as a trait. They did remove it from BWGR because it was problematic. But I think it stayed in the game too long, and I'm glad they finally removed it.

The petition-the-emperor-for-his-sister's-hand-in-marriage example could be very creepy in play or it might not be. For starters, we know nothing about his sister and what she wants, which would seem to be necessary to evaluate it. Yeah, it could be awful in play, and it's not my favorite example. But my general experience has been that creeps don't need permission to use RPG rules for creepy behavior.


That's funny, but I still think you're taking the least generous reading possible and starting from there. I can certainly imagine such games as you propose, as historically most RPGs presented things such. And I've played in plenty of games where monsters were wandering bags of experience points and little else, as well as some where there were attempts at roleplay and negotiation without a framework for doing so. Neither was entirely satisfying to me.

Look, I'm not saying BW is perfect. I am saying it's my favorite RPG, and a lot of my joy in this thread has been about talking about a game I love. In play, I've managed to avoid a lot of the things that you find objectionable, either because I knew specific material was not for me or because I don't play with creeps, bullies, or knuckleheads. And in some cases because our play preferences (yours and mine) are disparate enough that I don't have issues with some of the things that you and other posters have expressed problems with (e.g., I love the Steel rules; they're fun to me). I don't really know what else to say, except that it seems like it's probably an unbridgeable gap?

Look, all I'm saying is that the book itself presents a rather different point of view than what I've seen people actually say about it. I can't help but wonder if the fans are simply giving it the most generous reading possible and starting from there.

As for the bit with the Emperor's sister, yes, we only know from that one tiny block of text. All I'm going to say is that this is a great example of why, nowadays, paying for a sensitivity reader is a very good thing (yes, I know they weren't as much of a thing back when this edition came out). All it would take is a bit of rewording and it would very easily lose its ick factor. For example, the sister herself is there as well wants to marry the PC instead of entering a loveless politically-charged arranged marriage, and the PC has to prove his worth.