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

[Micah Sweet]

Someone upthread asked what "fail forward" means, and what it looks like in play. I thought I would answer them.

If you think they ought not to have asked the question, please chide them.

All I'm saying is that I have more interest in what you're saying than who you're quoting.

 

[Umbran]

All you've got is testimony. I mean, you could travel to Australia and check it out. But most human knowledge depends upon accepting the testimony of those who are qualified to give it (ie authorities). That's why the notion that it's a fallacy to appeal to authority is a fallacy.

Correction - most of human knowledge depends on the consensus of many authorities, not the statement of one.

The Argument from Authority is an informal fallacy, and it happens when an authority who lacks relevant experience is still used as evidence. As someone mentioned above, when Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks on biology, he should be taken with a grain of salt, as he's not a biologist.

But... there's always a but...

To quote Arthur C Clarke, "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." Being an expert does not mean one is without biases. The clear example here would be Albert Einstein, whose later opinions on quantum mechanics haven't held up to scrutiny, even though he helped develop the thing.

So, it really depends which authority you are talking about, and what they are opining upon.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Correction - most of human knowledge depends on the consensus of many authorities, not the statement of one.

The Argument from Authority is an informal fallacy, and it happens when an authority who lacks relevant experience is still used as evidence. As someone mentioned above, when Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks on biology, he should be taken with a grain of salt, as he's not a biologist.

But... there's always a but...

To quote Arthur C Clarke, "If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong." Being an expert does not mean one is without biases. The clear example here would be Albert Einstein, whose later opinions on quantum mechanics haven't held up to scrutiny, even though he helped develop the thing.

So, it really depends which authority you are talking about, and what they are opining upon.

Well, I'm certainly no expert on QM, but my understanding of the state of the field is that Einstein's reservations have yet to be effectively addressed. And there are, in fact, a number of quite competent physicists who take them seriously and have worked out interpretations of QM which, like Superdeterminism, both satisfy Einstein's objections AND are consistent with all experimental evidence. There are even claims which go beyond this, although they remain speculation.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope: you may be attempting to articulate the Appeal to Authority fallacy, but you have it wrong. Appeal to Authority is a fallacy when the person you are appealing to is NOT AN EXPERT in the field you are discussing. So, appealing to Gary Gygax, a legitimate expert in the field of RPG design, is not a fallacy! Appealing to Barack Obama about RPG design WOULD be a fallacious Appeal to Authority (as far as I know).

It's not just about people appealing to an authority on a different topic, but people rarely point to Carl Sagan to prove something in D&D is true, so it doesn't come up very often. It's most commonly people pointing at an authority and declaring their position to be true because an authority said it, which is also an Appeal to Authority fallacy. This is a fallacy, because one of the hallmarks of an Appeal to Authority is if real authorities are in disagreement about the topic, which is pretty much every topic in existence.

There is almost no similarity between expert testimony and scientific reasoning. This is simply a False Analogy, coupled with False Generalization. People are paid to testify in court!

They are paid to testify truthfully under oath with their expert opinion on the matter. Being paid doesn't(or at least shouldn't) matter.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Clearly there are many people for whom that if does not apply, yet many more for whom it does.

From what I'm hearing from some folks here, it applies to everyone whether they realize it or not.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's over for the paladin...and in very lame fashion.

These things happen in a fantasy world not running on narrative causality and the emotional lives of a handful of people.

Sorry if that's a little harsh, but I'm getting very tired of this.

 

[Micah Sweet]

...OK, you know it doesn't have to be a cook, right? It could be a member of the house having a midnight snack. It could be the dog. It could be that the PC knocks over a stack of pots and pans, making a huge clattering noise, or the shutters slam back noisily. It could be that the window or the floor beneath it is actually trapped in some way, harming, incapacitating, or temporarily inconveniencing the PC. It could even that the PC burglar interrupts an NPC burglar!


I said house. Do you flesh out each and every single house in your world, just in case the players decide they want to break into one? Do you flesh out every single person who lives in the world, just in case the player says "Hey, you there!" to one and starts asking personal questions.


In other words, you do exactly what I've been talking about this whole time. You make a judgement call about what makes the most sense.

The difference is, narrative games have that baked into the rules.

That is an enormous difference to some of us. The big one, as it were.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Imo--the platonic ideal would be to have everything fleshed out ahead of time. Obviously this is not practical, so instead the DM will focus on high likelihood areas.

The point isn't that it's bad for the NPCs to respond. But that the NPCs should be specified ahead of time so that the players have meaningful choices, rather than after the roll where the most important thing is the dice.

I have tables I can roll on to determine who's in a random house. They're neat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not just about people appealing to an authority on a different topic, but people rarely point to Carl Sagan to prove something in D&D is true, so it doesn't come up very often. It's most commonly people pointing at an authority and declaring their position to be true because an authority said it, which is also an Appeal to Authority fallacy. This is a fallacy, because one of the hallmarks of an Appeal to Authority is if real authorities are in disagreement about the topic, which is pretty much every topic in existence.

No, it isn't. And as for 'pretty much every topic in existence' being in dispute, I heartily disagree. Most things are settled matters, or else fall into the category of the unknown. Some things are known to be unknown, others are unknown unknowns, but very few things are thought to be known, but are actually unknown.

You are falling for the tactics of cheap rhetoriticians and populists here, who thrive on the creation of a false sense of doubt in their audiences, and then ironically themselves pose as a source of expertise! I won't go into any examples as they're both obvious, too numerous, and inflammatory.

They are paid to testify truthfully under oath with their expert opinion on the matter. Being paid doesn't(or at least shouldn't) matter.

Ah, you might think so, but that's not the case. Certainly no expert will testify contrary to a position which can be colored to be defensible. Perjury is a very high bar. Beyond that, most testimony is itself examples of various forms of fallacy (or to view it another way, rhetorical tactics) in action. Having an expert testify to something which sounds impressive, but is actually irrelevant, is for example quite common. Also, remember, a decision in a court of law requires a high bar, even in civil cases. All an expert need do is sow any seed of doubt to be effective with a jury.

Again, law and legal testimony by experts bear very little resemblance to scientific process or standards. I once helped assemble MANY cases for the EPA in superfund litigation. As chemists we could show facts with essentially 100% certainty, yet industry had other chemists, sometimes ones that also worked for us, who would happily testify to the opposite. Everyone KNEW they were wrong, but no court is going to waste its time trying to prove that.

 

[zakael19]

From what I'm hearing from some folks here, it applies to everyone whether they realize it or not.

I mean I don’t think the original quote applies to those OSR players who are focused on skilled play, and any story that shows up is incidental (Baker call it out as such in the original post - which is why I highlighted the if conditional so heavily). It doesn’t apply to people who are focused on maximizing the ruleset to achieve power gaming / “win” conditions. It doesn’t apply to any group that genuinely has no interest in narrative of play at all, or only in retrospect.

But as @Eric V said, a pretty big swathe of TTRPG players have always played with the story unfolding in mind, and I think that these days it’s probably the vast preponderance to some greater or lesser degree.