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

[Bedrockgames]

It does seem odd to advocate against choosing fun when playing a game.

I am sure Rob’s overall goal is that people have fun. But I think he doesn’t think the game is enhanced by having fun steer the GMs decisions. The point here is GM as neutral arbiter. I have no problem with fun outcomes in my games. But what Rob talking about is something I get. I see it as part of a more naturalistic approach to play that places strong emphasis on GM neutrality and impartiality. If you are considering what is fun, that is a bias that can lead you away from what is more plausible. But people who go for this will tell you they are still having fun, because that is the kind of play they want. It is a style of play that feels more documentarian

 

[robertsconley]

• I looked it over. A lot of it is perfectly clear, but there are some areas that I’m not sure what happened. I’ve quoted those below.

This is vague. What is the process for rolling for encounters? What are the chances an encounter will happen? What encounters may happen?

During the Day in a Rural environment 14 or better on a 1d20.

So this was a perception check to notice the encounter from afar. You explain a lot about the timeline and location of this encounter… but not the nature of it. It seems like this is a set encounter, is that correct? Or was it a random encounter?

It was a timeline encounter. The young couple were travelling south from Woodford. The party didn't delay their departure or get sidetracked along the way. So they met at the location marked Campsite on the night of Day 2. The couple left Woodford the afternoon of Day 2.

Did you tell the players what they needed to roll for the perception check or leave that unknown?

I generally tell them what they need for success. For that roll I didn't but Brendan and Adam were briefed on how I handled skills before the video. 15 or better. In this case, the roll was for situational awareness, so I wasn't looking for a specific number I wanted to see how high Adam rolled to see how much information I gave him. He rolled a 10 or higher but not a 15 or higher. Hence I described as a human scream a 100 yards away.

Why do the specifics of this encounter matter so much to you?

Because the young couple left Woodford on the afternoon of Day 2.

No real question here, but I think your lack of familiarity with other systems shows. In Pbta, players just narrate what their characters do, too. They don’t announce moves. Some of their actions may trigger a move… but that’s just a label to describe when a roll is taking place.

So just to clarify, you’re saying that PbtA moves are essentially no different than ability checks in 5e? That something like “do something under fire” or “go aggro” is functionally equivalent to a player describing what they do and then rolling Perception or Athletics?

From what I’ve read in PbtA (specifically Apocalypse World 2e), moves are specific mechanics that only trigger when something particular happens in the fiction, like threatening someone, acting under pressure, or reading a situation. They’re not general-purpose checks. The outcomes are structured, with each result pushing the fiction forward in a way that fits the genre and tone of the game.

Yes, both systems involve players narrating their characters’ actions, but the mechanics that follow, and how they’re framed, are quite different. That’s not just an aesthetic distinction; it reflects a fundamental difference in design philosophy.

Honestly, if I claimed that PbtA moves and 5e skill checks were equivalent, I suspect many PbtA players would strongly disagree. I’d be curious to hear if others familiar with both mechanics see them as functionally interchangeable, as you stated.

That all strikes me as odd… a horse charging that far and still catching the bandits by surprise. And the fact that the woman was being held by one of them would have, if I was a player, made me hesitate to make such a bold move for fear of her safety.

Maybe this is just a result of using this specific system?

He was able to get within 50 yards before charging and a horse in my Majestic Fantasy Rules can move 60 yards a round (180'). Moreso he was knight , a class specific to my Majestic Fantasy rules and thus trained as a mounted warrior. In short he felt he had he situation covered and acted accordingly. But things could have go wrong he could rolled a nat 1. He could have missed one or both ruffians he acting. The odd were in his favor but not certain.

Why not use any social rolls at all? Was there any doubt about the interaction?

Not sure what you getting at. you did understand I was discussing the times I was running the adventure and generalizing the results.

What was the skill used to forge the document? How was the DC determined? Was this provided to the players? Did they receive just a single roll or could they have attempted it again? I would think a forgery roll would be allowed only once… but I’m curious if you agree.

There is no DC the player rolls and see how high they get. That becomes the DC for the document to be detected as a forgery. If they are willing to spend the time and resources they can try to forge another version of the document.

Well, it’s hard to say for sure… some moments of play seem very similar, though perhaps different mechanics are used. The combat certainly would have played differently in BW or most PbtA games. Seems pretty similar to 5e, especially with dis/advantage mechanics and the same general. Process of d20 plus modifiers to exceed a target, along with initiative and surprise.

I don’t know if I agree with that… it seems pretty authored to me. But I also acknowledge this is a one shot, and that likely plays a big part in that.

The requirement of first person declaration is an aesthetic choice. I’m not sure why it seems so important to you… but it’s certainly fine as preferences go. I don’t demand that of players, and when I play, I freely slip from first to third and back. That’s not something I consider all that important… so it’s an interesting difference.

Certainly everything that happened as far as what was transcripted seemed plausible. I’m not sure where the world continuity came into play… is that the importance of the location of the encounter with the bandits and the young lovers?

All in all, it seems like a perfectly fine example of trad style RPGing. I don’t know if it’s the nature of the one-shot or what, but I’m not really getting the living world element from this example.

If you look at the actual transcript, you’ll notice how much of the session plays out through first-person roleplay without mechanical interruption. There are extended stretches, tavern scenes, court interactions, planning, negotiation where no dice are rolled, and everything progresses based on in-character dialogue, player decisions, and world-state logic.

That’s not just aesthetic. That’s a procedural and structural difference in how the game is run.

You made little to no comment on:

• The roleplaying at the court.
• The roleplaying among the players before they left.
• The interaction with the pilgrim at the tavern

Instead, you focused almost entirely on the mechanical resolution in one scene (the lovers) and the aftermath. Your comments on the mechanics showed a lack of engagement with the way first-person roleplaying shaped the situation. And your question about forgery didn't account for the fact that I was discussing how different groups handled it across multiple sessions.

Looking at your reply, it seems you approached my actual play write-up like a system analysis document, filtering everything through the lens of mechanical triggers and resolution structures. That’s fine as a preference, but it misses what the session was actually showing: that first-person declaration, consistent world logic, and continuity of events were doing the heavy lifting in how play unfolded.

Given your knowledge and participation here on the forum, I’m surprised that didn’t come through more clearly.

 

[robertsconley]

But, that's contrary to the idea that the world runs on its own logic and results from events should follow from what is most plausible. You are choosing results and events because they make a fun game. Fantastic. That's just being a good DM. But, @robertsconley is very insistent that his decision making process is completely divorced from what he thinks would make an "interesting" event. That everything that happens is based on the logic of the setting.

Since you missed it the first time, here is the complete post I made about how I use plausibility.

The comparison of plausibility is grounded in what makes sense from the perspective of the world and the people in it. I look at what each faction or NPC knows, what resources they have, what their goals are, and how recent events appear from their point of view. From the character’s side, how they act depends on:

• What they know – A duke may not know the emperor is dead, or might assume someone else already took the throne. He’s acting on what he knows, not what I know.
• What they want – Is he ambitious? Loyal? Trying to keep order? His motivations shape what makes sense.
• What’s around them – Are his troops intact? Are rival lords mobilizing? Is there famine or calm? This affects his risk tolerance.
• What’s normal for them – If succession usually ends in civil war, that leans one way. If past crises led to strong central authority, that leans another.

So say the empire just collapsed. The players want to know what their home province’s duke is going to do. I consider the situation and ask:

• Is he likely to declare independence?
• Will he try to join a confederacy?
• Could he make a claim to the throne?

If none of these stands out as the clear favorite, I’ll assign weights based on what the duke values and how he views the current state of things:

• Join a confederacy: 3 in 6 (he’s risk-averse and has trusted allies)
• Go it alone: 2 in 6 (he’s confident in his troops but wary)
• Claim the throne: 1 in 6 (it’s bold, risky, and out of character)

Then I roll.

But if I think a die roll isn’t enough on its own, especially when the players’ goals, backgrounds, or actions make one outcome more compelling, I may pick. Still, I’m only picking from within the plausible range. I’m not authoring a twist. I’m choosing between outcomes that already make sense, based on what we know about the NPC and the world.

The choice to pick isn’t arbitrary. I weigh:

• How often I’ve rolled vs. picked lately (so I don’t drift into invisible bias)
• How each option fits with what the players are invested in right now

Here’s another example:

The party has been working with Lady Merrowyn, a mid-tier noble who’s been quietly backing their expeditions. Word spreads: someone tried to assassinate the Duke, and rumor has it House Durn is involved.

So what does Lady Merrowyn do?

She’s loyal to the Duke, but her sister is married into House Durn. She’s political, risk-averse, and cares more about reputation than wealth. She’s backed the PCs but isn’t close to them personally.

The players may ask what she’ll do, or they may just wait to see if she pulls support or changes direction.

I consider what’s been established and weigh her options:

• She keeps quiet, asks the PCs to discreetly investigate – 3 in 6
• She suspends support entirely, avoids entanglement – 2 in 6
• She tips off House Durn out of family loyalty or fear – 1 in 6

If none of these jumps out, I roll. But again, I might pick, say she chooses to use the PCs as intermediaries to quietly pass word to House Durn, because that’s the most interesting given what the players are trying to do. Still, it has to be consistent with what we know about her. I’m not inventing drama. I’m resolving uncertainty in a way that respects character logic and builds off the established situation.

That’s how I handle even NPCs in the PCs’ immediate circle. It’s not about crafting a better scene. It’s about figuring out what they would actually do, and letting the world move forward from there.

 

[SableWyvern]

Can you imagine if pemerton had said any of those things at any point in the thread? You'd all have pilloried him for it, and rightly so!

In all seriousness, if pemerton advised me he wasn't interested in providing further answers to some question I had, I would most likely have shrugged and moved on. I may have started composing some kind of snarky response but (along with about 90% of the things I've typed in reply boxes for this thread) I would most likely have deleted it before posting.

(As an aside, I deleted at least four comments I had composed to you today, before finally biting on your demand for repeated explanations.)

 

[pemerton]

OK, you really need to read what I write before you respond because I brought that up in the same sentence.

I did read what you wrote. Here it is:

That's all it talks about until you look at the table of modifiers where murder is suddenly listed. And it's not even clear that it's talking about committing murder until after that, when there's a list of difficulties. I can't remember them all, except that committing murder is level 5 and watching a childbirth is level 2.

Contrary to your assertion, in the table of modifiers it is crystal clear that it is talking about committing murder. I provided the exact quote from p 124.

What you then describe as "the list of difficulties" which say that "committing murder is level 5 and watching a childbirth is level 2" is found in p 125. That is actually a list of experiences which will allow a character to take a Steel test for advancement even if no test is rolled (this is a notion that does not apply to all attributes, but does apply to Steel and also to some Emotional Attributes). Here is what p 125 (relevantly) says:

Situational Conditions for Steel Tests for Advancement Only
In addition to advancement via die rolls and tests, GMs can award tests for advancement based on conditions that arise in play. Players compare the situational obstacle to their current exponent and record the level of difficulty for purposes of advancement.

If an actual Steel test is made - dice are rolled, hesitation is overcome - these conditions should not be used. The are only used to represent the overall nerves of a larger situation.

Some possible situations and their equivalent obstacles for advancement:

Obstacle 1 Steel Tests
News of a relative dying. Weird low-grade supernatural phenomena.

Obstacle 2 Steel Tests
Witnessing violence (a fight, a beating, a stabbing, a hit and run accident). Being in the presence of a character with the Dreaded trait. Heated sports competition. Witnessing childbirth.

Obstacle 3 Steel Tests
Witnessing real bloodshed and gore (a murder, a bloody accident). Being badly beaten up. Being in a brawl or fist fight or riot. Bearing a child.

Obstacle 4 Steel Tests
Fighting a duel to the death. Participating in a knightly tourney. Being stabbed. Shooting another character. Witnessing a friend or relative killed. Surviving a natural disaster. Encountering anthropomorphic monsters.

Obstacle 5 Steel Tests
Participating in a mass battle. Being shot with a bow, crossbow or gun. Stabbing someone to death. Murder in cold blood. Witnessing or being a party to spirit activity.

. . .​

Given the reference to witnessing murder as an Ob 3 experience/situation, the reference to murder in cold blood is an Ob 5 experience/situation is obviously a reference to committing murder.

Generally I wouldn't make a big deal of someone mixing things up (as you have with the list of modifiers vs the list of "conditions for advancement only"). But you have been posting so aggressively about alleged gaps in the rulebook that are not there, that I feel the correction is important for anyone who is following along.

And in relation to alleged gaps, I notice that you have not acknowledged that you were just wrong when you posted this:

I don't think it says who gets to decide what happens.

Your aggressive and oddly confident errors of reading and interpretation have been replete in this thread. I don't really get it. I mean, I'm not very interested in Fate or in the sort of neo-trad-ish PbtA that you appear to favour, but I don't post lengthy screeds interrogating about your play so I can misdescribe both what happens at your table and the rules systems you are using.

 

[pemerton]

there’s an element here of “why would you not choose the fun thing?”

And surely the answer is, because the less fun thing is more realistic/likely (relative to some heuristic that the GM is applying).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

[Nevermind. Not productive.]

I think I'm really well and truly done with the thread now.

 

[Lanefan]

Speaking with a degree of generality but also (I believe) accuracy, the what-ifs assume that play is about solving a problem/puzzle - overcoming pre-established obstacle to achieve a goal that "exists" on the GM's hidden gameboard. So Aedhros losing 4 heartbeats of action is seen as a player loss because it sets back the attempt to get to the finish line.

Whether it's the GM or the player who sets the finish line, there's always going to be one. I can't remember whether Aedhros' goal was to commit murder or whether the murder was a step toward completing some other goal; in any case if the hesitation set you back from achieving that goal that seems like a loss to me.

But there is no finish line. There is no default/background trajectory which the PCs' actions are perturbing.

These two things are not related.

"I will become king of Althasia before my 35th birthday" sets a fairly obvious finish line involving a specific crown being put on a specific head.

This has nothing to do with any background stuff that might be going on.

 

[SableWyvern]

It does seem odd to advocate against choosing fun when playing a game.

I know that’s not exactly what anyone has said, but there’s an element here of “why would you not choose the fun thing?”

Because there are different degrees and types of fun, and most adults understand that instant gratification isn't always the best option.

Eating all the cookie dough right now might be fun, but it will also result in you feeling sick, and you will miss out on baked cookies later. Feeling that the world is responding realistically is a type of ongoing fun that might be considered more important than instant moments of fun that ruin the ongoing fun. Having high intensity fun might be more enjoyable when those moments are spread out, rather than constant. Feeling that the situation is bad, and getting worse, and that the world is out to get you, might be frustrating now, but make victory all the sweeter if you achieve it. The striving, in and of itself, might be fun. The list goes on.

 

[Lanefan]

So, to put this in (hopefully) plain, straightforward, relatively short terms. (I know I'm garbage at being concise.)

I don't understand what you mean by things like "realism", "objective"(/"objectivity" etc.), or the way that a fictional thing can cause or induce behavior. "Plausible" I'm unsure whether I do or don't understand, so it would be cool to get more about that. Especially "realism", because I have a lot of problems with its usage in topics like this. (I will explain more if asked, trying to keep simple.)

Well, for my part and in fairly general terms:

"Plausible" implies a reasonably easy-to-follow (or in the case of hidden information revealed later, easy-to-explain) chain of events where one can be more or less expected to lead to the next. It is, if not directly opposite to, certainly in conflict with contrivance; which often eschews plausibility in favour of plot. Example: if Bob's character Kalvin was last seen kicking around several hundred in-fiction miles to the east with vague plans to head further east, plausibility makes it extremely unlikely Kalvin will be right here right now in the west where the other PCs are but contrivance puts him there anyway because Bob wants to bring Kalvin into the party.

When imagining our worlds, plausible is another term for "what makes sense", and we probably all have different ideas of exactly what that would be in a given situation. For example, the PCs kill the Emperor and then leave the realm to its own devices while they sail away somewhere else.

What happens next? What's plausible? We could come up with dozens of different answers that are quite plausible, and thousands that aren't. That the DM picks one of those plausible outcomes over the others is no big deal.

"Realism" can mean several things and I tend to interchange these meanings all the time:

1. mirroring the real world outright in the fiction (e.g. an in-game robin is exactly the same as a robin on Earth)
2. in-fiction realism mirroring itself (or in other words, setting consistency)
3. in combination, having bigger things (gravity, weather, astronomy, etc.) work as they do in the real world except where something fantastic specifically says they don't or can't.

"Objective" to me is another word for neutral or even dispassionate when applied to how a GM runs whatever game is being run. No favouritism, no changing things just to thwart or suit one or more specific characters, no fudging, let the dice fall where they may, etc.

I do not understand how the DM decides what they already know. I understand that the DM basing decisions on "what the DM already knows" is important. Unfortunately, how the DM decides what they already know is of vital importance, yet left unexplained. I also don't understand what limits apply to how far the DM can "already know" things.

For me the limit is the capacity of my brain and-or memory to store that information. Ideally, I already know everything except that which is (or will be) affected by the PCs; in reality I only know some of it, hopefully enough to run the sessions without looking like too much of a fool.

I don't see how "I had to do it because the setting made me do it" (paraphrased) and "It's what my character would do" differ. The former is called very good, and a shield against problems. Yet multiple people have said the latter is bad, or at least an excuse for bad player acts. I don't understand why it's good if it comes from a DM, but bad if it comes from a player.

They don't differ much, and IMO both are very good maxims.

I don't understand how the above terms together (e.g. "realism", "impartiality", "objectivity", etc.) are a procedure at all, let alone a DM decision procedure. From my own GM experience, I know one almost always has many options, all of which seem perfectly cromulent on what little I understand of your use of these terms. The only difference seems to be "DM effort", but that is never mentioned as part of the procedure. Indeed, sometimes it seems like it's outright not part of the procedure, as when someone (IIRC either you or AlViking?) said plate tectonics and rain shadows and ecology need to be factored in, which is a massively high DM effort!

When designing my current setting I think I spent maybe half an hour figuring out where the major mountain ranges would be and why they were there (i.e. the simplified plate tectonics involved) as opposed to somewhere else. To me, compared to the amount of time I spent on the rest of the setting, half an hour is trivial; and now I have mountains that make sense.

I did spend longer on climate patterns, but that's mostly because having nearly got them finished I realized I'd completely messed up enough of it that I basically had to start over; so that was most of an afternoon shot to hell. And now I have weather that sort-of makes sense; the random element (that we don't have to worry about in reality) is all those high-level Druids casting weather-affecting spells and maybe upsetting patterns all over the place.

Why did I do this? Mostly because if these things don't make sense on someone else's map it annoys me to no end, and I'd rather not inflict that same annoyance on anyone else who thinks the same. I've never met anyone annoyed that a map etc. is too realistic.