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

[AlViking]

Going to respond to this slightly out-of-order because it will flow better that way.

You're objectively correct with this statement....and I never said anything contradictory to it. Far from it. I pretty much explicitly said otherwise. However, I find that the costs of saying "no" too often are much, much, much worse than the costs of saying "yes" too often; I find that DMs are much, much, much more prone to saying a flat unequivocal "no" when they should have said some variation of "yes" (or at least "no, but...") than they are to saying some variation of "yes" when they should have said a flat unequivocal "no"; and that players in general respond very negatively to even a very slight excess of flat unequivocal "no" answers, while even an egregious excess of some variation of "yes" is far from guaranteed to cause a problem.

Point being: "Yes" is something DMs need to learn to use, whereas "no" seems to be the default for situations the DM wasn't already well-prepped to respond to, and that both the benefits of saying "yes" in the cases where you definitely shouldn't say "no" far outweigh the costs of saying "yes" when you shouldn't, and the costs of saying "yes" when you definitely should have said "no" far outweigh the costs of saying "no" when you shouldn't.

In general, some variation of "yes"--usually "yes, and" or "yes, but", or occasionally "no, but", which is functionally a "yes" answer along a new/different/alternate path--is simply better. There absolutely will be times when you should just say a flat "no." But those times should be exceedingly rare. Like "a couple times in a year of weekly games" rare. If you're needing to say a flat "no" more often than that, something is seriously wrong and you need to have a heart-to-heart with your players to figure out where and what the disconnect is.


Well then, Ms. Silverman's mother was a good person. Honesty isn't just the best policy, it's the only policy. But it's also only the first step on that policy. As the Good Book says, we must speak truth in love. That is, lying never serves love--but as an old friend of mine once said, "The truth is not an excuse."

That's the critical bit missing here with the analogy from "always be honest" to "always make sure the players earn their fun". It has to be reasonable, achievable, actually "fair" in the way people usually want "fair" to mean, that is, giving folks plenty of chances even if they've foolishly ignored/overlooked/simply missed previous ones, adjudicating based (at least in part) on what was intended and not (exclusively) on what was actually done, giving folks ample time and space to explain themselves, and meeting them at least halfway if not much much more than halfway, etc., etc.

In other words, something that doesn't really look "impartial" at all, except for from the perspective of the participants themselves. Because what feels impartial, and what is actually impartial, are often two very different things. As is the case with so much of the stuff in this conversation, what often (not always, but often) matters is not the absolute truth of the situation, but the feeling of having a thing. The only place where both the feeling and the fact matter equally is agency itself, hence why I've spoken at length about the problem of invisible railroads and illusionism in this context.


I've had a similar situation to your previous example. I had prepared this (I presume!) awesome encounter where several blood-obsidian spirits (long story--TL;DR: they're not-technically-undead wraiths made by evil druids binding the still-technically-living spirits of sapient beings to a sufficient quantity of ground-up blood obsidian) had been accidentally melted by soul-animated mechanical spiders (whose bodies were designed to be destroyed by their own flames); in the conflagration, because of the similar magics involved, the two opposing forces had fused into a towering molten-obsidian golem with mythril mechano-spider-leg claws coming out of its "hands".

And then they just...retreated and taunted it into walking into a pit trap full of water, which solidified it and they shattered it with a single weapon strike. I simply hadn't considered that possibility, they had, and although I felt a bit embarassed at having failed to foresee such a thing, my players loved that they'd figured out something clever. Talked about it for months after (not in a "haha see how we pulled one over on you" way, but rather a "that was AWESOME" kind of way).

So I very much understand where you're coming from on this. My problem mostly arises with...well. Taking the thing too far; shutting down too many plans because of an excessive commitment to realism over fun, treating the rule of cool as something absolutely verboten rather than a useful tool to be applied when appropriate and to be left aside when inappropriate. I've had both bad DMs I've personally dealt with and DMs I've heard horror stories about from my personal friends (not just randos online, who can say whatever they like even if it's pure fiction) who have taken "realism before fun" WAY too far. From that, it is my considered belief that taking this too far is both extremely easy to do--as in, it's one of the hardest-to-resist DM temptations out there, second only to the temptation to force outcomes to go the way you designed them to--and extremely easy to ad hoc justify when one should not have done so.

I can only speak to what I do and what I've enjoyed. If someone attempts something that I think clearly isn't in the spirit of the rules I will ask them what they're trying to accomplish. Then we'll see if we can work out something. Frequently it will be something they can attempt to get some advantage but there will be a penalty if they fail. So they may be able to jump down from the tree they're hiding in to attack an enemy, but to do so they have to go to the very edge of the branches and if they fail and acrobatics check they'll fall and land prone. If it does work I'll give them advantage on the attack. In the case of the players discussing options like sneaking past the guard I give them all the details I think the characters would know. If I think there's something the players might notice I'll be generous with whatever check makes sense.

So yes, I'll give players information because it makes sense for what their discussing or give them chance to notice something they aren't thinking about. I want the players to succeed and have victories. I just want them to earn it, even if I give them a hints here and there, other times I'll go back and clarify something just in case I didn't make something clear.

 

[JConstantine]

I think some people are likely not very good at running sandbox campaigns and I don't necessarily see a different system helping much. Fortunately for them there are plenty of modules as options.

I'd say some systems are better at facilitating a sandbox than others, but it's a tool that you still need to know how to use. Personally, I'd never run a sandbox with 5e just because of certain assumptions built into it's design (that's not to say it can't be used for a sandbox, of course), but on the flipside, V:TM is a game I will only ever run as a sandbox, despite it's association with railroading.

 

[AlViking]

I'd say some systems are better at facilitating a sandbox than others, but it's a tool that you still need to know how to use. Personally, I'd never run a sandbox with 5e just because of certain assumptions built into it's design (that's not to say it can't be used for a sandbox, of course), but on the flipside, V:TM is a game I will only ever run as a sandbox, despite it's association with railroading.

Care to explain why you don't run sandboxes in 5e? I've always found it easier than using modules or figuring out all the details for a linear campaign. Of course I suppose some people would likely say that I don't run pure sandbox because I always try to get the general outline of where the characters are headed next at the end of a session.

 

[JConstantine]

Just to add to what I previously said about fun, something I observed in discussions on sandbox was there was wariness around things like the rule of cool, and there was a tendency to be concerned about ‘the tyranny of fun’.

I'll cop to being such a person. I hate rule of cool because I find it leads to a game that lacks consistency in tone and adjudication, and inevitably gets increasingly more gonzo as players try to play the GM. I have a friend who prioritises rule of cool above all else, and that's exactly what happens until they feel like a shonen anime, and such games are horribly unfun for me.
"Fun" is too subjective to be used as a guiding principle, so I focus on other things like verisimilitude and maintaining a consistent tone and let enjoyment arise (or not) from that naturally. And even then, what I give more weight to changes between games.

 

[JConstantine]

Let me make a really simple analogy...

It is Valentine's Day. You create a table - Roll a D4. On a 1-3, your loved one gets a box of their favorite candy treat. On a 4, you give them a bag of poo.

You're going to need more straw for stability. Who on earth is going to put poo on such a table?!

 

[JConstantine]

Care to explain why you don't run sandboxes in 5e?

A combination of factors. 1. Its design, particularly levels and CR, breeds a certain assumption of balance (though we all know action economy trumps CR) that I feel goes against the nature of a sandbox. Not that one is beholden to balanced encounters, of course, but there are expectations to overcome. 2. For a while now, D&D has had a culture of linear adventure path design, likely in part thanks to the previous point, that also results in that expectation. 3. Sometimes, you just want a straightforward big damn heroes vs BBEG plot, and D&D is well suited to that.

 

[zakael19]

I think system matters, but I do agree. Not to harp on the BitD community, but a prevalent attitude I've seen is how they will insist that any problem someone had with the game was the result of a bad GM or simply not understanding the game, but when people enjoy the game, they're quick to sing the praises of the system. It's never the other way around - no acknowledgement that a person can understand the system and just not enjoy it, no recognition that those enjoyable games were thanks to the GM. And then those same exact people will moan about D&D as a system not facilitating what they want, with no sense of irony or self-awareness.

I mean some of the problems I see reported are clearly trying to force the design into pretzels where it performs poorly! But I’m definitely one of the people who’s pretty “meh” on Blades in particular (neither the premise nor setting grab me at all), and didn’t like the design much until Deep Cuts came out with adjusted core mechanics. Now the flow feels a lot better to how I like to run games, with an emphasis on cost and struggle that I find narratively compelling (and that from a design perspective most other game designs simply don’t offer).

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are many different GM best practices depending on what works for the people at the table. I don't think how I run my games is best for everyone. So when you say that a game codifies best practices I just disagree. Great if it works for you but that doesn't mean it's a better approach.

Yeah, sounds like an argument that everyone should be playing Narrativist games, since they supposedly codify GM objectively best practices. The opinion reads as biased to me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It would add predictability to resolution for players in cases where the GM isn't as good at being consistent in his decisions as he thinks he is.

But I expect you to say its not necessary or is some sort of unacceptable impediment on your GMing, so I haven't bothered for a while and I'm not sure why I am now.



This isn't about collaboration per se, though a more collaborative approach can make it less necessary.



Replace the "isn't" with an "is". Basically, my view is that the more a game system requires me to make ad-hoc decisions, the less its doing its job. There's some diminishing returns there, but that doesn't mean I don't think a far number of them are more lightweight than is desirable in this area.

These guardrails feel to me very much like trying to protect the players from the GM. I really object to it as a general principle, because it assumes either incompetence or malice.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, sounds like an argument that everyone should be playing Narrativist games, since they supposedly codify GM objectively best practices. The opinion reads as biased to me.

So do most OSR games these days. Even D&D 2024 took a stab at it. To not have some degree of best practices, or dislike their presence, is conservative in the utmost.