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

[Maxperson]

Everyone may have an opinion on the plausibility of any development in play... but since the GM is the one deciding what the development will be, it would very much seem that they can determine what is plausible.

Players may disagree... but that may or may not matter, depending on if the GM is open to discuss and potentially revise things.

You're conflating deciding the outcome with deciding what can be plausible. The DM has no ability to decide what can be plausible, only which outcome he decides upon.

Maybe, maybe not. Can a plausible reason be crafted to explain all this? Yeah, probably. Since there is no actual causality at play, the GM can make up whatever they want. That flexibility gives them a lot of leeway.

You're making the same mistake as @Hussar and conflating highly unlikely, but possible with plausible. Plausible is what is reasonable/probable. It's highly improbable that a merchant is going to show absolutely no signs of leaving, and then vanish overnight. Possible, but not plausible.

You can come up with a reason where it's possible, but there is no reason that will make the highly unlikely plausible.

The Forgotten Realms is an implausible mess! It's a bad example to go to for plausibility.

That's not what I was talking about, though. I was talking about taking the Realms and any DM being able to extend the setting logic(as implausible as some of it may be) and use that setting logic to run games that are in line with that setting logic.

 

[Hussar]

A game where the players' opinions just don't matter is a dysfunctional one, and I am confident that no one in this thread is advocating for dysfunctional games. "This playstyle won't work if the GM doesn't care what their players think," is a given, as far as I'm concerned.

You've never thought that the choice your DM made for how something played out was wrong? Not ever? You never thought that their "plausible" wasn't very plausible at all? And every DM should automatically discount every resolution as soon as a player challenges its plausiblity?

Yeah, didn't think so.

 

[Maxperson]

This is a hugely important point. Nothing in the world is actually likely to happen, it is all vastly improbable chains of events. It's just that something happens.

Well, that's objectively false. If I pick up a rock and chuck it at a window, the window is actually likely to break. There's nothing vastly improbable about that chain of events. If I push someone off the Empire State building, it's actually likely to result in his death and a big splat. Nothing vastly improbable there, either. If I eat dinner, it's highly likely to result in my being full. That chain isn't vastly improbable, either.

It's only if you get super absurd and start claiming that I ate dinner because a butterfly spit on a cockroach in China, and all that chaos crap that it becomes vastly improbable. Also vastly worthless in a discussion.

 

[Maxperson]

There were three popes in two-and-a-half months in 1978. Weird stuff happens.

Weird stuff does happen. It's not plausible for it to happen, though. Longshot occurrences are not plausible.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Weird stuff does happen. It's not plausible for it to happen, though. Longshot occurrences are not plausible.

I think, to some degree, this would depend on framing. There have been 266 popes, and there've been a baker's dozen of years with at least three popes. 1276 had four popes, and all but 1978 happened between 827 and 1605. If we're talking about the early modern world or later (roughly 1500 on), I'd agree that it's implausible. In a medieval world, it seems plausible enough. Not common, but not shocking, both possible and reasonable.

 

[SableWyvern]

You've never thought that the choice your DM made for how something played out was wrong? Not ever? You never thought that their "plausible" wasn't very plausible at all? And every DM should automatically discount every resolution as soon as a player challenges its plausiblity?

Yeah, didn't think so.

This response seem to have little or nothing to do with what I said.

A DM being required to automatically discount a resolution as soon as any player questions it also sounds pretty dysfunctional to me.

My expectation is that players and GMs are able to arrive at mutually agreeable arrangements with little effort.

You seem to be assuming any kind of disagreement is likely to be difficult to resolve. I would tend to consider such a situation dysfunctional and I expect reaching an accord to be straightforward and easy.

 

[Hussar]

t's only if you get super absurd and start claiming that I ate dinner because a butterfly spit on a cockroach in China, and all that chaos crap that it becomes vastly improbable. Also vastly worthless in a discussion.

And yet, you have no problems with @robertsconley using chaos theory to base what is probable in his campaigns.

But, are you trying to claim that there was some sort of objective chain of causality that caused you to choose to eat whatever you ate for breakfast? Never minding that when we are talking about the DM adjudicating plausibility in the setting, claims of minor things like throwing a rock through a window is not really relevant. Nobody cares about that. However, when you choose for an NPC to do X or Y, the notion that it's any sort of objective choice goes straight out the window. The fact that modules never play out the same across different DM's. Sure, there's some stuff that might be similar, but, overall, virtually no table's experiences transfer between tables. And, while of course player choices will impact this, the DM's choices will easily have as much of an impact.

 

[Hussar]

This response seem to have little or nothing to do with what I said.

A DM being required to automatically discount a resolution as soon as any player questions it also sounds pretty dysfunctional to me.

My expectation is that players and GMs are able to arrive at mutually agreeable arrangements with little effort.

You seem to be assuming any kind of disagreement is likely to be difficult to resolve. I would tend to consider such a situation dysfunctional and I expect reaching an accord to be straightforward and easy.

Ok. So, the DM decides that the King will not talk to your PC's for reasons. You disagree with the reasons because you think they are implausible. How do you resolve this?

Or the old chestnut about swimming in armor. Your DM rules that you automatically start drowning and sink to the bottom of the lake because of your armor. You've done your homework and you know that it is possible to swim in armor. In the days before easy access to Youtube, how did you resolve this disagreement of plausibility?

 

[Lanefan]

Weird stuff does happen. It's not plausible for it to happen, though. Longshot occurrences are not plausible.

True, but that those longshot occurrences are possible means we-as-DMs still can't rule them out as a "what happens next" answer every now and then.

If longshots start happening all the time, though, something's come adrift.....unless, of course, someone's just wheeled the Infinite Improbability Drive into the room, at which point you're all hosed.

 

[SableWyvern]

Ok. So, the DM decides that the King will not talk to your PC's for reasons. You disagree with the reasons because you think they are implausible. How do you resolve this?

I explain my position, the GM explains theirs, we reach a decision, we move on. Most likely, the root cause of the disagreement was a miscommunication and we both had slightly different understandings of the situation, so once we identify that point of confusion, it's generally easy to reach a mutually agreeable resolution.

"Wait, the manservant was definitely sneering at me earlier. Why am I being treated like the bad guy here?"

"Oh, my bad, I was saying that he was peering at your amulet."

"Oh, that makes so much more sense. Well, in that case I obviously wouldn't have raised this with the King. Instead, I would have said X".

"OK, no worries, we'll disregard the original exchange. In reality, the King responds this way."

Or whatever, depending on the exact context.

If you're talking about some hypothetical situation where the GM and I have irreconcilable differences about how the events should turn out and neither of us is willing to budge, we're talking about a situation that can't be resolved, but I have never found myself in such a position in decades of play. If I did, I would recognise the the GM and I have incompatible styles and move on (ie, cease to game with them). In any case, the issue wouldn't actually be the style with which the GM runs their game, it would be the irreconcilable differences in perspective that exist for the purposes of this hypothetical, but which don't exist with anyone I've ever actually gamed with.