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

[clearstream]

Sure, maybe there's just something wrong with me, as @clearstream has intimated. Could be. Or, maybe, the arguments that people have been trying to make for quite a while now don't actually carry a whole lot of water.

I didn't intend to intimate that there is anything wrong with you... one ought to as readily take what I wrote to imply that there is something wrong with those discerning differences. But I am not proposing that there is anything wrong with either!

My aim was to suggest that if I don't see any difference between A and B, then I am hardly likely to form any preference between them. Whereas if I discern a difference between A and B, I could (but are not bound to) form a preference between them. This follows, because preferences are perforce oriented to differences... I prefer A (if I do) on account of the ways it is different from B.

The line of reasoning came to mind from " I'm failing to see the difference here." One option is that folk who do see differences are mistaken about their personal experiences. Another is that there are different sensitivies at play, so that it can be true that they see differences and true at the same time that I do not.

 

[AlViking]

So, you change the game world for meta-game reasons. The only reason you are changing this encounter is because of totally unrelated things that the PC's did.

LIke I said, I'm really confused now since you have insisted repeatedly that this is something you refuse to do. You would never change the game world based on meta-game reasons but only because of the "logic of the world". You claim that your primary priority is simulating the world. But, this change has nothing whatsoever to do with simulating the world. You are only doing it to make the game more fun.

Which is exactly the same as everyone else. The only difference is, some of us have a mechanical framework in place to guide these changes and you're doing them through fiat. It's a meaningless distinction.

I'm always creating and changing the world before the fiction is established, even if it was established for a different group. I assume at some time before a combat encounter starts you plan out at least a little bit of what's going to be encountered. What difference does it make when that decision is made? Do you also call that planning "metagaming"?

Once fiction is established it is not changed, even if the players don't know everything. If I change the number of thugs the pirate captain has, it happens before the number is revealed to the players. Once play starts I do my best to be a neutral referee of what happens next based on what is said and done.

What I don't do is have things happen that are not directly related to the attempt and happens only on a failure. I don't add entire encounters because the game is boring. I'm not concerned about directing play or keeping the game moving, I don't find failure boring.

If you can't see the clear difference there's nothing else I can say.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm always creating and changing the world before the fiction is established, even if it was established for a different group. I assume at some time before a combat encounter starts you plan out at least a little bit of what's going to be encountered. What difference does it make when that decision is made? Do you also call that planning "metagaming"?

Once fiction is established it is not changed, even if the players don't know everything. If I change the number of thugs the pirate captain has, it happens before the number is revealed to the players. Once play starts I do my best to be a neutral referee of what happens next based on what is said and done.

What I don't do is have things happen that are not directly related to the attempt and happens only on a failure. I don't add entire encounters because the game is boring. I'm not concerned about directing play or keeping the game moving, I don't find failure boring.

If you can't see the clear difference there's nothing else I can say.

The question might be why are you changing the fiction before, to what ends and why is it better to do it beforehand and then run the creation neutrally in the moment rather than just changing it in the moment to meet the same ends?

 

[Hussar]

I'm always creating and changing the world before the fiction is established, even if it was established for a different group. I assume at some time before a combat encounter starts you plan out at least a little bit of what's going to be encountered. What difference does it make when that decision is made? Do you also call that planning "metagaming"?

Once fiction is established it is not changed, even if the players don't know everything. If I change the number of thugs the pirate captain has, it happens before the number is revealed to the players. Once play starts I do my best to be a neutral referee of what happens next based on what is said and done.

What I don't do is have things happen that are not directly related to the attempt and happens only on a failure. I don't add entire encounters because the game is boring. I'm not concerned about directing play or keeping the game moving, I don't find failure boring.

If you can't see the clear difference there's nothing else I can say.

You straight up said that you would change an encounter because the party deviated from your expected path, had more encounters than you thought they would have, thus the final encounter would be too difficult. IOW, you are absolutely changing things because of completely unrelated events. If you don't find failure boring, then why are you adjusting the encounter?

Of course I change stuff all the time. I've been pretty open about that. What I don't do is pretend that I'm not doing it.

There is no difference between changing the number of thugs the pirate captain has because of completely meta-game reasons (the party had too many encounters beforehand and this encounter would now be too difficult) and adding a cook for a completely meta-game reason (the party failed a skill check).

 

[AlViking]

The question might be why are you changing the fiction before, to what ends and why is it better to do it beforehand and then run the creation neutrally in the moment rather than just changing it in the moment to meet the same ends?

If I change it's simply to ensure a potentially difficult but winnable fight. Same as when I originally planned it. But sometimes I'll realize it's not it's not going to be the level of risk I had in mind when planning.

It's not directly related to player prep or planning. If the players were smart and precast spells or figured out some clever strategy or ambush, cool. Nothing changes. If I'm glancing through the monsters and realize I made a minor goof in my plans or, as I said above, there's an unexpectedly high level of attrition I may adjust.

I don't see it as any different than changing it the hour or two before the game when I do quick review of what I had planned.

 

[AlViking]

You straight up said that you would change an encounter because the party deviated from your expected path, had more encounters than you thought they would have, thus the final encounter would be too difficult. IOW, you are absolutely changing things because of completely unrelated events. If you don't find failure boring, then why are you adjusting the encounter?

Of course I change stuff all the time. I've been pretty open about that. What I don't do is pretend that I'm not doing it.

There is no difference between changing the number of thugs the pirate captain has because of completely meta-game reasons (the party had too many encounters beforehand and this encounter would now be too difficult) and adding a cook for a completely meta-game reason (the party failed a skill check).

I disagree.

 

[nevin]

Is it right to conclude that on this view GMing is basically unfair? Or at least GMing in any TTRPG where they run the opposition.

So that it would be well-motivated for a GM to look for ways to redress that fundamental unfairness?

To avoid being disingenuous, my question appertains to a conclusion I feel unlikely to draw, although I haven't worked through the arguments in detail.

I'd argue it's right to conclude (from my experience anyway), that most DM's adjust on the fly, that it's been going on for as long as DND has existed and that only a small minority on forums ever seem to complain about it. That seems to indicate most players either don't notice, don't care or simply would prefer it.

I've "fudged" for years, ever since I wiped a high level party and basically destroyed my gaming weekend for 6 months because my players who were so invested in their characters, they had to go off and Grieve till they were ready to come back. I'd only been DM'ing a few years at that point. So adding to that about 20 or so years later with a different group, we got this guy who thought all dice should be rolled on in front of the screen. NO DM was going to screw him over. We tried it. That lasted 3 sessions. The rest of the players all told him to deal or go away they didn't like his playstyle of gaming. He stayed and about 6 months later he privately told me He was having a lot more fun than he'd ever had. Now I"ll admit the problem with DM fudging, especially for the inexperienced is that not all DM's fudge for the same reason's. I"ve played in games where the DM has decided things are going a certain way and the dice be damned. That's uncool I left those tables. But I think a vocal minority of players assume anything that they can't see is always against them and In my experience anyway, It's far more often fudged in the players favor for storyline or simply keeping the fun game going than for any diabolical reasons.

And for me at least Fun and keeping the game going trumps any other reason that any other person can come up with for why it shouldn't happen.

Also I've played in a game with all rolls on the table and had an entire 5 levels of absolute dice suckage. It got so bad I tried different dice at every session at one point. I dont' expect anyone here to believe it. I wouldn't have believed it if it hadn't happend to me. But Random rolls can suck or be over the top good for a stupidly long time and not break the concept of random. Remember it's not random per dice or randome per person, it's random across reality. If you take all the rolls from all the people then it's random. That means outliers exist which means those mythical people that always roll bad or always roll good actually do exist. So just letting the dice decide can be a very unfun thing when that happens.

 

[bloodtide]

I'm always creating and changing the world before the fiction is established, even if it was established for a different group. I assume at some time before a combat encounter starts you plan out at least a little bit of what's going to be encountered. What difference does it make when that decision is made? Do you also call that planning "metagaming"?

I change anything at any time. I don't care what is "established", as anything can happen. The idea that nothing in the game world can change ever is just silly.

Once fiction is established it is not changed, even if the players don't know everything. If I change the number of thugs the pirate captain has, it happens before the number is revealed to the players. Once play starts I do my best to be a neutral referee of what happens next based on what is said and done.

But even if it is a fact that on May 5th the captain has five thugs, but then on June 5th has ten thugs, it can just happen without a big explanation to the players of "gee, look he just hired more thugs, ok"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That brought to mind an analogy. Suppose for some reason apples and pears tasted the same to me... no difference between them. And then someone said they love apples but dislike pears. Because I fail to see any difference between them, their preferences don't make sense to me.

Perhaps it is because they can see a difference, that they are able to prefer one or other?

But the point is that it isn't 100% pure, unmitigated personal taste. There's more going on here.

Mathematically, other than the extra action economy, there really is a lot that is the same between adding/removing opponents in order to strengthen/weaken the opposition...and reducing/increasing damage taken in order to strengthen/weaken the opposition. Sure, it's less obvious, but obviousness isn't the criterion being cited here, since it's been made clear that things "spawning in" just out of sight isn't any better than them doing so within line of sight.

Your analogy breaks down if this isn't purely a matter of taste. The explanations given thus far don't reduce to a matter of taste. They make stronger claims than that--and those claims seem like they should apply to both cases, but they don't.

 

[Faolyn]

Is it right to conclude that on this view GMing is basically unfair? Or at least GMing in any TTRPG where they run the opposition.

So that it would be well-motivated for a GM to look for ways to redress that fundamental unfairness?

To avoid being disingenuous, my question appertains to a conclusion I feel unlikely to draw, although I haven't worked through the arguments in detail.

I'm not entirely sure how intrinsically unfair being a GM is, but it probably is at least a somewhat.

I suppose one thing to do is to question how and why you're making an opponent in a certain way. Another part of the GM unfairness is that we want to build opponents (at least major ones) to challenge the PCs and/or to let the PCs be cool. This often means building them in a way to either shut down PC abilities or to let PCs show off their abilities. And we can make NPCs who use their tools and intelligence really competently really well (see: Tucker's kobolds). Likewise, we can easily justify harassing the PCs every night to the point they can never get a long rest in. But this isn't much fun for the players, and the point of the game is to have fun, so...

But we also can't nerf the bad guys, even if it would be logical: the Enemy Mage has work to do, or at least a life to live, so their prepared spells should be mostly utility in nature (even if the Enemy Mage expects home invasions, they still need those non-combat spells). But that wouldn't be much fun in a fight, and worse, can be seen as cheap or babying the players, especially if you do this often. And while the BBEGs shouldn't have read the Evil Overlord list, they also shouldn't be making that many cinematic mistakes.

So to answer your question: I'm not sure. It would be a very delicate balancing act. Or only running games that don't have adversaries. Or doing something like Dragonbane does and have Random NPC Action tables.