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

[Faolyn]

That's not an accurate description of what happens.

What happens is that the player rolls well enough, and grabs the cup that others didn't particularly notice and wasn't explicitly described before.

We, as GMs do NOT generally describe scenes in excruciating detail. We give rough sketches. Like, when the PCs enter a library, we do not detail EVERY title of every one of hundreds of book on the shelves. We don't note the precise length of every candle in every candlestick - or even the existence of every candlestick.

There's a lot of unspecified, assumed set dressing. It isn't that the cup "appears", it is that the cup is now known to exist as part of that previously unspecified stuff in the space.

That was entirely my point--some things can be expected to exist in a particular area. In this case, the area was a sickroom where a person had been left to recover, thus, jugs, cups, and bowls for water and cleaning wounds, jars for medicines and herbs, and so forth.

Pemerton said that he (or whoever the GM was) just didn't mention a vessel; therefore, the player had to roll to see one.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean… the fact that I actively run and play more trad oriented games as well as narrativist ones tends to be ignored because how could I possibly have the opinions I do if I still enjoy trad games.

Yeah, but the difference here is that I've not found any hardcore narrativist games I actually like; in some respects their design intent actively works against the detailed game elements I prefer, and there are some common ones that at least some of my players wouldn't want anything to do with because of some common baked in assumptions.

I'm not even really with a leg in each camp like you may be; I just happen to think certain trad elements were probably a mistake from day one, and am actively hostile to some particulars mostly from the OSR branch. But that doesn't mean I'm generally arguing from the same posture as you or some of the others.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, but this problem predates Edwards; all that's changed is how people categorized each other. It just used to be the Wargamers versus the Theater Kids.

If you don't agree with or like how things are categorized, you're going to have a hard time engaging in productive discussions with those who do and want to use those terms.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We obviously have different preferences, I don't see both players and GM's restricted to concrete rules as a good thing.

And there you are. As much as possible, both Pedantic and I do. My view is having to go outside the rules to resolve something is a necessary evil (because dealing with progressively smaller special cases gets into diminishing returns), but short of using the game system for things not intended, it should be as rare as practical.

 

[AlViking]

Ones that require less judgment calls, which is primarily what I've been talking about from the start. Alternatively, one where the players inputs are taken when the call is made, and actually paid attention to (as in "if four of my six players think it should instead be done X way instead of Y way, then we do it X way") and not blown off on the grounds of speed. I think those work better in combination (the latter still can leave a player expecting one thing and getting another), but either helps.

Basically, my view is that a lot of games require more ad-hoc decision making than is necessary, and having it set up so that's less common is a virtue.

First, I disagree but it's based on what you want out of a game. If I want to allow people to kick in the door, jump through an open window, leap from rooftop to rooftop, stop the ticking mechanism or whatever stunts they want to perform you only have so many options. You can't have rules for everything a player might attempt so you have to abstract it out a bit, in D&D that means making judgement calls to decide difficulty and skill required.

If you abstract it to a level that you have specific procedures it seems to me that you can't have all that much in the way of simulation. It goes back to dice pools, target numbers and some way of deciding chance to succeed (frequently still falling back to GM judgment depending on the game as far as I can tell) that is just so different from D&D and related games that I don't see how anyone could learn anything from them. It feels like telling people to play cribbage somehow makes them better at chess.

If I'm wrong - great - please explain how! But the vague answers don't really help any, sorry they just don't.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you don't agree with or like how things are categorized, you're going to have a hard time engaging in productive discussions with those who do and want to use those terms.

Its not the categorization I have an intrinsic issue with (though I think JConstantine has it right that Edwards really didn't understand anything but Narrativism when he was describing the other two); its that people will insist on pushing people into categories whether they fit or not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

First, I disagree but it's based on what you want out of a game. If I want to allow people to kick in the door, jump through an open window, leap from rooftop to rooftop, stop the ticking mechanism or whatever stunts they want to perform you only have so many options. You can't have rules for everything a player might attempt so you have to abstract it out a bit, in D&D that means making judgement calls to decide difficulty and skill required.

I more or less responded to this in a later post. I completely disagree that the kinds of things you'll see in most games most of the time require that kind of loosey-goosey approach. Its just what some people want, but since I think there's negative consequences from what they want here in the majority of cases, I'm not going to say otherwise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If I'm wrong - great - please explain how! But the vague answers don't really help any, sorry they just don't.

Oh, also, if what I've answered so far seems "vague" to you, no others I give are likely to be more satisfactory. I think I've been pretty specific.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean… the fact that I actively run and play more trad oriented games as well as narrativist ones tends to be ignored because how could I possibly have the opinions I do if I still enjoy trad games.

No one is ignoring it. They just disagree with the lens you bring to bear on trad play

 

[JConstantine]

I'm honestly still pretty fuzzy as to what benefit is received from adding additional constraints to the GM. Why would you want restrictions on what you can do running the game?

The narrativist-leaning folk might bristle at this, but one is learning to GM. Think of it like stabilising wheels on a bike: useful when first starting to learn to ride (or just too lazy to maintain balance), but they're going to be restrictive, even detrimental for some things you might want to do, like bike tricks.