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Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8438791" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>"I've no way of knowing what the right thing is until..." becomes very problematic.</p><p></p><p>If you're a master archer who has slain dozens of creatures in your life by arrows through eyeballs or severing arms at the elbow because of perfectly placed shot + exit velocity + genre tropes...it would seem that the character in the fiction should have developed a model of the world that spits out the following:</p><p></p><p>"I can put an arrow through that appendage (tentacle) and split it in two...just like I did the other day when I 'disarmed' that swordsman by taking his forearm off at the elbow. The girl needs help...hopefully my aim is similarly true."</p><p></p><p>You know what doesn't work and is completely metagaming?</p><p></p><p>"Well, I have no idea if the HP of this tentacle are either (a) shared with the huge HP pool of the monster at large and therefore can't be severed or (b) a 10-12 HP creature where I could fail to sever it an unreasonable % of the time, or (c) 1 HP that I can reliably sever. Screw it and screw the little girl. Faceroll shooting the kraken."</p><p></p><p>4e makes it extremely easy to align physiology and genre tropes. </p><p></p><p>* Big monsters with tentacles (et al) have their tentacles (et al) modeled as 1 HP Minions.</p><p></p><p>* Summoned mooks/lackeys are 1 HP Minions.</p><p></p><p>* Any horde of mooks are modeled as Swarms (where AoE is the damage du jour as you cleave through them or rain fire down on them, felling them en masse).</p><p></p><p></p><p>Now the cognitive space of the character and the player are always aligned in terms of both the physiology being modeled and the genre tropes being modelled. There is no spending action economy/wasting a round (or more) trying to (strangely...and its very strange to me that you specifically would be good with this little metagame minigame that has to take place at the beginning of each combat) poke/prod/model the ever-changing physiology puzzle of the world and whether typical fantasy genre tropes are going to be online for this combat or arbitrarily turned off this combat...meanwhile, little girls on boats that you would like to rescue are getting dirt-napped at a 50/50 clip because you've got to play your physiology/genre trope feel-out minigame at the beginning of each combat in order to inform subsequent decision-points (the meaningful ones...because that early physiology/trope feel out minigame is just hoop-jumping for a player and worse than that for a seasoned warrior actually of the world in question)!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 8438791, member: 6696971"] "I've no way of knowing what the right thing is until..." becomes very problematic. If you're a master archer who has slain dozens of creatures in your life by arrows through eyeballs or severing arms at the elbow because of perfectly placed shot + exit velocity + genre tropes...it would seem that the character in the fiction should have developed a model of the world that spits out the following: "I can put an arrow through that appendage (tentacle) and split it in two...just like I did the other day when I 'disarmed' that swordsman by taking his forearm off at the elbow. The girl needs help...hopefully my aim is similarly true." You know what doesn't work and is completely metagaming? "Well, I have no idea if the HP of this tentacle are either (a) shared with the huge HP pool of the monster at large and therefore can't be severed or (b) a 10-12 HP creature where I could fail to sever it an unreasonable % of the time, or (c) 1 HP that I can reliably sever. Screw it and screw the little girl. Faceroll shooting the kraken." 4e makes it extremely easy to align physiology and genre tropes. * Big monsters with tentacles (et al) have their tentacles (et al) modeled as 1 HP Minions. * Summoned mooks/lackeys are 1 HP Minions. * Any horde of mooks are modeled as Swarms (where AoE is the damage du jour as you cleave through them or rain fire down on them, felling them en masse). Now the cognitive space of the character and the player are always aligned in terms of both the physiology being modeled and the genre tropes being modelled. There is no spending action economy/wasting a round (or more) trying to (strangely...and its very strange to me that you specifically would be good with this little metagame minigame that has to take place at the beginning of each combat) poke/prod/model the ever-changing physiology puzzle of the world and whether typical fantasy genre tropes are going to be online for this combat or arbitrarily turned off this combat...meanwhile, little girls on boats that you would like to rescue are getting dirt-napped at a 50/50 clip because you've got to play your physiology/genre trope feel-out minigame at the beginning of each combat in order to inform subsequent decision-points (the meaningful ones...because that early physiology/trope feel out minigame is just hoop-jumping for a player and worse than that for a seasoned warrior actually of the world in question)! [/QUOTE]
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