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

[Micah Sweet]

When it kills dead any opportunity I have to play the games I want to play, I'd say it hurts me rather a lot.

How exactly does it do that?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why not play Rolemaster?

I wish! That game sounds great!

 

[SableWyvern]

I wish! That game sounds great!

It only sounds great because it is!

 

[AnotherGuy]

From what I've read, it can take a locksmith anywhere from under a minute up to 20 minutes which is why I chose the length of time I did. Apparently locks can just be stubborn sometimes.

Fair. I was just shocked at how quickly he opened it.

I'm trying to imagine A) why you would have a perception check to avoid stepping on something and B) what you could step on something that would do just enough damage to harm a boot but not your foot. I'm sorry, but to me that sounds like just another disconnected penalty that had nothing to do with the check. I mean, fail a check and fall into a covered pit makes sense (even if I can't remember I used that particular trope), but at least it makes sense.

PC went off the road to investigate something, found himself in a ditch (failed to notice it while trying to focus on his target). The ditch housed an abandoned foothold trap, his fall luckily saved him from getting caught, but clipped his boot tearing the one side in the fall.
Had it been a complete failure I'd have had his foot caught.

Sometimes failing a climb check just means you take a bit of falling damage

This is where I'd check out by having two party members fail a climbing check and take falling damage. To imagine that happening in real doesn't pass the immersion test for me. Having a player cut their hand on the jagged rocks yes, or lose an item in the rough climb yes, suffer a minor scar (per lingering injury table) against the rockface yes etc but 2 characters falling taking silly falling damage and climbing again doesn't work for me anymore.

But I'm not going to add guards that would not have been there if you had succeeded just to add an obstacle.

Guards are a possible complication but yes I would need more context to just drop a guard in. If it was a wall being climbed in an urban environment, perhaps being spotted by someone taking out the trash would be more reasonable. I dunno one would need more context on the location and persons normally in the area.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

OK, now we reach the true crux of the issue. @FrogReaver'a preferences should be opposed and derided

Their mandatory enforcement should be opposed. Derided, hardly, but opposed? Sure.

A system which is compatible with such preferences, but does not enforce them, would be vastly preferable.

So, tell us again who expects to be catered to exclusively?

The person demanding that their preferences be enforced, as opposed to those who want as many different things supported, but not enforced, as possible.

This is quite possible. But I have found that simulation fans are by far the most likely to be very difficult to please, and the most likely to require that the whole game cater to them, regardless of what problems it causes for anyone else.

 

[clearstream]

I am unfamiliar with "FKR", it would help to summarize the point while referring to it. Judging from a google to this Reddit, it seems FKR is a reinvention of a pre-D&D wargame, "Free Kriegsspiel Revolution". Heh, I dont think I as a ENWorld forumer in the 2020s should have been expected to be familiar with this.

(reddit .com/r/rpg/comments/lvcjqz/a_brief_introduction_to_the_emerging_fkr_free/)

In any case, what the Reddit describes for this "FKR" seems more like the opposite of "simulationism". Indeed, it is exactly narrativist (DM narrative adjudication) with minimalist gamist mechanics (opposing 2d6), that requires "trusting the DM" rather than relying on sophisticated mechanical outcomes.

FKR = narrativism certainly wasn't on my replies bingo card. From that reddit post

FKR places a high priority on immersion and realism by giving the DM a lot of authority over the rules​

​

What I think is interesting about your take is that you draw attention to the fact that minimalist rules with high GM authority might play out in all sorts of ways. To my reading genre emulation is more often cited; Tuovinen writes that genre emulation may very well be be simulationism if the game is about it.

Whatever one decides about that, it still does not seem right to me to say simulationism must be strictly mechanical. As an aside, I sometimes notice characterisations of modes of play that seem to assume a crystallisation of that play some decades ago, with no change allowed since then. To get around that, I suggest new labels like neo-sim.

What's interesting about FKR in all that is of course that if you know the history it seems like the connection to rules light simulation is pretty clear.

 

[SableWyvern]

The person demanding that their preferences be enforced,

Enforced in whose game? Not yours, I'm quite sure. If in theirs, then, why are you opposed to this?

 

[pemerton]

One area that Eero Tuovinen really fails to grasp at when it comes to simulation (and I think this has been a general failure within our community but especially within the Forge) is not really grasping with the legacy of Pendragon, Ars Magica and Vampire. Particularly the way in which these games mechanics (rough as they were) helped to achieve a heightened understanding of characters' internal states. There's a legacy of embedding character mentality into the mechanics of the game to help us immerse into our characters those games brought to the table that inspired Narrativist designs, but never really got significant coverage from a theory standpoint.

Here is what he says about Pendragon, in the blog:

Pendragon is a prime example of a [substantial exploration] game, as the purpose of its existence is to be this massive exegesis and love letter to the Matter of Britain. If the players don’t appreciate it yet, they will. Aside from folklore studies, the game features [GM story hour] in a big way. The character player side is interesting in that it’s [subjective experiencing + dollhousing] without as much as [princess play] focus as you’d normally expect; the characters are intentionally relatively generic.​

Here is what he says about "substantial exploration":

“Substantial exploration” is a type of game that involves a major external reference source. This is not just a big pile of GM notes; every player may or may not be familiar with the source material, but either way, exploring this material is core to the game’s creative purpose. . . . a game could conceivably be completely about substantial exploration creatively. You might have some player characters, I don’t know, adventuring and stuff, but that’s just the excuse, and what we’re really into here is [the material]​

He does allow that Pendragon isn't completely about substantial exploration: it also has the player-side elements he mentions. But I think you're right to say that he doesn't go into this in real detail. Ron Edwards said a bit more about it 20+ years ago, in his review of Wuthering Heights and also this in the "right to dream" essay (where he is comparing Pendragon Traits and Passions to The Riddle of Steel's Spiritual Attributes, with a side discussion of GURPS behavioural disadvantages):

a character in Narrativist play is by definition a thematic time-bomb, whereas, for a character in Simulationist play, the bomb is either absent (the GURPS samurai), present in a state of near-constant detonation (the Pendragon knight, using Passions), or its detonation is integrated into the in-game behavioral resolution system in a "tracked" fashion (the Pendragon knight, using the dichotomous traits). Therefore, when you-as-player get proactive about an emotional thematic issue, poof, you're out of Sim. Whereas enjoying the in-game system activity of a thematic issue is perfectly do-able in Sim, without that proactivity being necessary.​

I think that this fits with what you say about "a legacy of embedding character mentality into the mechanics of the game to help us immerse into our characters . . . that inspired Narrativist designs".

I think from an agenda standpoint a large part of why I like the Narrativist games I like has to do with their adjacency to simulation of character mentality. Like the basic moves in Apocalypse World, Apocalypse Keys and Monsterhearts directly embed the same sort of modeling of character psychology we see in Vampire - The Requiem and Pendragon. I think that as much as the crucible model (even perhaps more than the crucible model) is really drove me to invest in those games.

If I've understood your properly, this seems to agree (at least roughly) with what I said about the "thin boundary" between "simulationism" and "narrativism" when it comes to these aspects of character psychology, and the way mechanics pick them up in various ways.

I think this also fits with Edwards - given how easy it is to "get proactive about an emotional thematic issue", the transition "out of Sim" to narrativism seems easy to do.

In my own play, I look at how I play Aedhros and Thurgon, and the pleasure that I get from that inhabitation, and think about where it fits in this "simulationist"/"narrativist" contrast. I think I'm mostly on the "out of Sim" side of things, because of a degree of proactivity about emotional thematic issues, but I don't think it's a huge distance that we're talking about here. When it comes to Aedhros, I can almost pin it down to one moment of play:

We discussed how we would get through the first door, and my friend - reviewing Alicia's spells - noticed that she has Chameleon. So he decided she would turn invisible.

Chameleon is 8 actions to cast, but we were in no great hurry and so he decided to cast as carefully as possible - x8 = 64 actions to get +4D (the maximum bonus, equal to the spell's Ob 4).

With Alicia's B5 Sorcerery reduced to B4 by the lingering effects of the bad pie, this was 8 Sorcery dice. Alicia's Will of B4 was reduced to B3 by the Light wound. And she had 1D of Forte (B4 reduced to B3 by the wound, and 2 tax remaining). That was 12 dice in total, to allocate to two test against Ob 4 (casting and tax; casting patiently allows allocating Sorcery, but not Will, dice to the tax check). I think a Persona may have been put into one of the pools, but in any event both failed: she took 1 tax (and so once again fell unconscious) and the casting failure was garbled transmission. This is the first time we've ever had that result in our BW play, and we rolled diligently on the Wheel of Magic. Instead of a Control Heaven, Personal Origin, Sustained duration effect on the Caster, Alicia had created a Transmute Water, Presence Origin, Instantaneous duration Natural Effect.

We discussed a bit what this might mean. After one false start (my initial idea that she had transmute some water in the harbour went nowhere) I suggested that her eagerness for money meant that she had transformed the rain in her Presence into coins! My friend suggested low-value coins - copper pieces - and we agreed it was a 1D fund.

He then wanted Alicia to make a roll to master the new spell. We got out the Magic Burner and applied the Abstraction and Distillation rules to get an Obstacle for it - after applying the rule that includes a modification for powerful effects, it was Ob 5 and 66 actions of casting, to turn rain in the Presence of the caster into a 1D fund of copper coins. The fainting Alicia (fainting due to her tax) attempt the Ob 5 Sorcerer test to try and learn this new spell - her player got three successes, and so it is an Ob 7 spell for her.

Alicia was now lying, unconscious, in a pile of copper coins that had "rained" down on her. We agreed that Grellin, who is unused to such sorcery, was struck with awe by the Ob 7 Steel test for witnessing pronounced sorcery. Aedhros, on the other hand, could only see yet more evidence of the ill fortune and ineptitude that brings all things to ironic ruin. At least, until . . .

My friend was urging me - mightn't Aedhros have at least a hint of pity left in his heart, and be moved by Alicia's plight? Aedhros's relevant instinct, here, was Never use Song of Soothing unless compelled to - Song of Soothing being the Elven equivalent of herbalism. There was also his Belief about why he can stand Alicia's company - would that remain unshifted even seeing her so broken even as her poverty was slightly lifted?

I told my friend I would make the Song of Soothing test, and see where that led me. The obstacle for a Light wound is Ob 2, doubled for no tools. The skill is open-ended (natural Elven magic), and so despite being B3 plus 1D from my Rhyme of Rules FoRK, I was able to get my four successes and restore Alicia to consciousness. We then played out an exchange in which we both went for Mouldbreaker - Aedhros's Belief is now Only because Alicia is not entirely without capability can I endure her company. Alicia's Belief that The strong do what they may - I will do what I must to survive was changed by the fact that Aedhros had had her utterly under his power, and with coin all about her to be taken, and yet had healed her instead: now she Believes that I will be compassionate to the poor.

This is where Aedhros's attitude to Alicia started to change. She hasn't become a surrogate for his dead spouse (and it would be pre-emptive to say "hasn't yet become"), but his contempt reduced and sympathy increased.

I feel that's an example of a "poof, you're out of Sim" moment.

 

[Enrahim]

This is where I'd check out by having two party members fail a climbing check and take falling damage. To imagine that happening in real doesn't pass the immersion test for me. Having a player cut their hand on the jagged rocks yes, or lose an item in the rough climb yes, suffer a minor scar (per lingering injury table) against the rockface yes etc but 2 characters falling taking silly falling damage and climbing again doesn't work for me anymore.

I want to segway this into something I have been thinking quite a bit about lately. How to feel out what players expect to happen. It is the classic "which way should the flag on a sailboat flag flap?" The realistic answer is in the direction the ship is moving (more precisely, the wind is blowing), but some video game designers found that this caused too much cognitive dissonance with players used to motor boats where it flaps backwards.

I believe for many (me included) the association between climbing and falling down is so strong that that for us the obvious failure mode they can think of. Indeed to these your more realistic cut hand on a sharp rock might feel like you going soft on them.

This is a serious problem in game design. If the majority of people has a misconception then you are in a bind. Either you do the realistic approach and seriously increase the bar to entry as you have to educate the audience, or you embrace the misconception, and alienates those that know the truth. I think it is quite obvious which is likely to be the most commercially viable alternative at least.

However in a group setting with one expert the solution isn't as obvious. Having that expert educate the others would likely be welcomed by them in a completely different manner than having it forced upon them by a textbook. So I would have liked some tricks and tools for how to identify such expert situations before an unrealistic outcome is narrated, and immersion break has already happened. It could for instance be something as simple as on a failure, check with players if they have any suggestions for outcomes. The idea would be that this would encourage any expert to speak up.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Enforced in whose game? Not yours, I'm quite sure. If in theirs, then, why are you opposed to this?

In the system. As I keep saying, over and over again.

This isn't some situation exclusively applying to one single group's table.

It's the design of the system itself. Something everyone who uses that system has to accept, or go without playing at all.

That's literally what I've said from the very beginning.