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

[Thomas Shey]

There's that reactionary pushback I was talking about. The irony is that I, the one who made that comment, not only don't think everyone should be playing Narrativist games, I don't even like them myself.

Until this comment, I've deliberate tried to avoid stating my preferences precisely because cliques form and lines in the sand get drawn.

See my comment about constantly being lumped in with the more narrative group just because I share a couple positions with them. The last four games I've run have been 13th Age, BASH Ultimate Edition, Fragged Empire and Mythras; the next one will be Eclipse Phase 2e. If you ignored the combat elements of the game (which are a big part of it) you could perhaps call the remainder of 13th Age "narrative focused" but even that I think would be a stretch in some ways, and I can't see how it describes any of the other four.

The desire of people to draw lines in the sand and firmly put people on one or the other side is tiresome.

 

[Bedrockgames]

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.

Rule of cool is definitely one those things that can cause issues. It sounds great, and I think in moderation there isn't anything wrong with it, but the way it got used, tended to lead to issues

 

[Micah Sweet]

I’ve literally never had that apart from playing 3.5e with friends as a teen. I think that’s
the minority of play these days, and the absolutely massive international contingents of enthusiastic players suggests that’s just not a reasonable thing to eexpect at all.

Hence the 2024 rules finally getting explicit about social contracts and stuff.

I don’t think it is necessarily reasonable to expect, but it is very nice .

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not sure how much value a rant about how much you dislike traditional play DMs would have, but it's a free forum. Lord knows plenty of folks have wondered why I posted something.

Well, the hope would be that it is not a rant.

Instead, the hope is that it is an explanation of why this is a problem, in a way that those who have not realized that it is a problem could truly grok--understand at an intuitive, gut level, rather than what is often dismissed (in other terms) as "highfalutin' nonsense" or the like. Further, my intent is not to say "HOW DARE YOU HAVE BADWRONGFUN", it's to point out an unfortunately pervasive problematic behavior that many do not realize is a problem, because it is subtle and its effects only manifest over long stretches of time. Ideally, I would further provide specific, useful advice, strategies, and tools to not only avert such a problem in a given DM's own games, but to help DMs work with players who have already been "trained" by such problematic DMing, so those players can un-learn the bad, unhelpful coping/defense mechanisms they've built up, and thus working more productively with DMs and groups in the future.

I know this is a perennial problem for DMs, and this is a forum frequented more by DMs than by players. Presumably, someone who could benefit from it would see it. Ideally, it would also attract others who can add their own hints, tips, etc., or provide their own experiences and how they resolved similar issues. Speaking more practically (some might say cynically), it will also invite a score or two of people who fundamentally reject the premise, deny that this is ever a problem, question whether I am smearing their preferences, etc., but I prefer to focus on the positive hope rather than the cynical-but-probable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can only say what I've seen. The OSR space, in my experience, is actively hostile to the idea of actual rules. That's why they adore things like "invisible rulebooks"--which are nothing of the sort, but they like the idea because it makes "rulings, not rules" sound way more consistent and reliable than it actually is.

I have a lot of OSR books full of rules that give the lie to this statement. Very much agree to disagree.

 

[Umbran]

Y'know. The thing you and everyone else in this thread constantly accuses me of doing to you?

Folks, I get the point, but making it personal is apt to lead to this discussion degrading.

 

[JConstantine]

I mean some of the problems I see reported are clearly trying to force the design into pretzels where it performs poorly!

Personally, I try to approach a given game in the spirit it was intended, even if it's not quite my thing. Not everyone does, and that certainly results in a messy game, but certain Blades fans holding John Harper up as the RPG messiah and refusing to accept that their game isn't universally appealing is tiresome.

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).

See, I was drawn to BitD because of the setting and premise - I loved the Dishonoured and Thief games. I disliked pretty much every mechanical element of Deep Cuts, and the Strangers/Catalyst lore point.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Rule of cool is definitely one those things that can cause issues. It sounds great, and I think in moderation there isn't anything wrong with it, but the way it got used, tended to lead to issues

Would it surprise you, then, to know that I run a game heavily driven by the rule of cool....where my players have explicitly praised the consistency and cohesiveness of the world that game occurs in?

Anything taken to extremes causes problems. I find that keeping the rule of cool from causing problems is quite easy: just ask that the players work with you to provide explanation and justification, and that the bigger the ask, the bigger the cost/burden/consequence. Sometimes, no matter how cool something is, it's just not going to make sense. But most of the time, indeed nearly all of the time in my experience, something cool can be worked into a shape that does make sense. This requires that both the DM and the player are engaging in true good faith, of course--but if I am expected to presume good faith on the DM's part for discussions of this kind, I expect symmetric treatment in the other direction, the presumption of good faith on the player's part.

At which point, where's the problem? We recognize that a heuristic (rule of cool) has its limits, but can be highly effective applied quite broadly, with a couple reasonable limits, assuming people engaging in good faith.

 

[AlViking]

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.

#1: I still design encounters appropriate for the level. In theory they can go against anything they want but they'll have to ignore the big flashing neon sign "don't do this". I normally don't foreshadow a whole lot, this is the exception to my rule. If they still do pursue something significantly over their heads (or if for some reason the signs had no electricity so to speak) I'll give them one last chance to bravely run away.

#2: I've never done linear paths so what other people do doesn't matter to me.

#3: I still have the team being big damn heroes. They just get to choose which BBEGs they go after. There's pretty much an endless supply, although I do avoid world ending threats which I find to be kind of a boring trope anyway.

But people should do what makes sense for them. I just don't see any incompatibility here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have a lot of OSR books full of rules that give the lie to this statement. Very much agree to disagree.

I genuinely don't see why I should.

I am not trying to be a crap-stirrer here. I genuinely don't see why I should agree to disagree, when I've seen cited page/post after cited page/post indicating this. Whole reams of threads about "Free Kriegsspiel" and how games would be better if players never actually saw any rules at all, and always just directly spoke to the DM and said what they're attempting. Page after page after page on "invisible rulebooks" and how super-amazing-wonderful they are because they let us get rid of rules entirely.

I know no other interpretation of this than seeing rules as nasty bad things to be destroyed. If the OSR overall is such a proponent of rules being good and useful things, where were such folks in those FKR threads? In the many conversations where people talked about how rules minimalism is always better no matter what?