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

[Faolyn]

So hinky behavior now requires MONTHS of trust?

Are you for real right now?

You're misreading him. What he's saying is that if you're having a problem with something that doesn't make sense to you, and the adventure is over, the GM should have no problem explaining what happened--there's no risk of spoilers. @Lanefan's adventures just last for a few months. Do you happen to know how often they play, and for how long? My group plays weekly, but we rarely get more than two hours at a time.

Secondly, what makes you think they didn't trust him during that time? You seem to assume two states: total trust and total distrust. There's also "I trust you have a reason, even if I don't know what it is, and I'm willing to wait to find out what that is."

 

[Lanefan]

The line for where plausible becomes implausible is blurry for sure.

With no hitters, that to me is still very implausible for any given night, even for Petey. While the numbers have changed over the last 150 years, there are currently 30 teams that each play 162 times a season. That's 4,860 chances for pitchers to get a no hitter. Two a season would be 1 out of every 2,430 chances at it. While it's certainly possible to have a no hitter on any given night, and some pitchers are more likely to achieve it than others, it still doesn't seem plausible(reasonable or probable) that it would happen on any given night.

I agree with you that reasonability is more important than probability, but reasonability is connected very closely to probability. An extreme longshot is not reasonable, due to its improbability. In a game with magic, gods who take a hand in the world, etc, plausibility stretches away from the real world with regard to what is probable or reasonable, but not by gigantic margins.

And yet IMO if one doesn't somehow take into account that those oddball events can and sometimes do happen, the disservice goes the other way and ultimately results in bland-ification. I'm not sure any of us wants that.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You're misreading him. What he's saying is that if you're having a problem with something that doesn't make sense to you, and the adventure is over, the GM should have no problem explaining what happened--there's no risk of spoilers. @Lanefan's adventures just last for a few months. Do you happen to know how often they play, and for how long? My group plays weekly, but we rarely get more than two hours at a time.

Secondly, what makes you think they didn't trust him during that time? You seem to assume two states: total trust and total distrust. There's also "I trust you have a reason, even if I don't know what it is, and I'm willing to wait to find out what that is."

.....seriously?

Now you're saying I'M the one who "seems to think" that? When I have literally said exactly the opposite and argued against others doing that exact thing over and over and over and over?

This is utterly ridiculous now. People saying they never said a thing I literally quoted, and now putting words in my mouth I have repeatedly and explicitly rejected since literally the moment I started participating in the thread.

Your hypocrisy is showing. And with that, I'm done for real now. Goodbye.

 

[dave2008]

The existence of the table, or even just rough notes, is a tool for consistency. Yes, I’m still making a decision, whether I’m designing a table or making a judgment call in the moment. But I’m also making a decision about how decisions get made. That’s important.

By committing to a model or a process, even one with odds for irrational outcomes, I create stability in how the world behaves. Players can recognize that stability and use it as a foundation for their own choices. That’s what distinguishes a sandbox with internal logic from one driven purely by a referee's whim.

I agree with the bolded part, but I don't think it needs a table or a set of tools even. It simple needs a shared understanding and trust between the members of the group.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I find rules that try to govern the behavior of sentient characters to be inadequate for running a tabletop roleplaying campaign. It’s OK if you don’t feel that way, but I do.

I was making a more general point; though I'm not hostile to behavioral rules (as you presumably aren't completely since you reference two games that have them later in the post that I've clipped), that wasn't what I was referring to. I was just springing off the fact I consider consistent rules that sometimes tell me counterfactuals than inconsistent ad-hoc decisions.

 

[Lanefan]

I imagined that they were talking about the core books. Access to and knowledge of non-core books was lower 30-40 years ago compared to today. I no for 1e AD&D I only ever had:

PHB, DMG, MM, MM 2, D&D (aka L&L). I didn't even no the Wilderness Survival Guide existed back in the day!

Cool find though!

After Unearthed Arcana came out, with all the whacked-out stuff it had, we largely stopped paying attention. I bought the WSG and DSG decades later and still haven't ever read them all the way through.

 

[robertsconley]

I agree with the bolded part, but I don't think it needs a table or a set of tools even. It simple needs a shared understanding and trust between the members of the group.

That can work. I am flexible in that regard.

 

[Faolyn]

.....seriously?

Now you're saying I'M the one who "seems to think" that? When I have literally said exactly the opposite and argued against others doing that exact thing over and over and over and over?

Yep. Because after reading all of your posts, you jump between total trust and "OMG, they had trust you for MONTHS?!?"

 

[Lanefan]

So hinky behavior now requires MONTHS of trust?

Are you for real right now?

As real as it gets, old son.

For us, a few months is nothing. Hell, I sometimes ask my DM about in-game stuff from five or ten real-world years ago because something caught my eye on rereading the game log.

A fairly-recent example from my own campaign. The party were up against Deep Ones (a.k.a. amphibious Lovecraftian fishmen) in an underground complex on the coast. They'd delved deep enough that they were well below sea level and yet the place was still dry, so naturally they assumed there was no access to the sea from the dungeon complex.

Then they get to the Deep Ones' throne room, and look at that: there's a staircase leading up to an upward shaft and where the shaft starts, so does the water! Somehow the seawater didn't pour into the chamber below even though (as one spying character saw firsthand) the fishmen could enter and exit that way without problem.

Doesn't make sense, does it?

Had someone asked me out-of-game about it then and there no explanation would have been forthcoming. It's been almost half a year since they finished that adventure and I'm 99% sure they're never going back there, so if a player asked me now what was going on there I'd explain it. (I'd explain it here but it would take screens full of text about the backstory of the complex; the very short-form answer is the water couldn't come in due to divine protection)

 

[Lanefan]

You're misreading him. What he's saying is that if you're having a problem with something that doesn't make sense to you, and the adventure is over, the GM should have no problem explaining what happened--there's no risk of spoilers. @Lanefan's adventures just last for a few months. Do you happen to know how often they play, and for how long? My group plays weekly, but we rarely get more than two hours at a time.

We play weekly. Usually about 4 hour sessions, maybe 45-47 of them a year given that a few get skipped for various reasons.

A typical adventure (and I've got decades of stats to back this up) lasts on average about 8-10 sessions for us including between-adventure downtime, with a low of 2 or 3 sessions and an occasional outlier high of 30+ sessions.

Secondly, what makes you think they didn't trust him during that time? You seem to assume two states: total trust and total distrust. There's also "I trust you have a reason, even if I don't know what it is, and I'm willing to wait to find out what that is."

To the bolded: this.