D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[clearstream]

Suppose this is true - why would it matter? What does it matter that you are playing DW and I am playing DW*? What analytical benefit, either in relation to play or in relation to design, is gained by individuating game by reference to rules interpretations?

It encourages us to accept that we each may be grasping and upholding the rules rightly according to our interpretation. You can advocate your beliefs, knowing that my playing game does not depend on them.

I advocate a radical interpretation of 5e. You and others visibly struggle to accept it. My non-formalist beliefs allow me to understand that we are none of us doing anything inconsistent or ruled out.

Also, I don't know how you want us to reconcile your reference to interpretation as a cause of variation with your reliance on Dworkin, who argues that there is always a correct interpretation, given the same pre-interpretive material and the normative goals of the interpretation?

"Per Dworkin, Hart fails to take into account concepts beyond rules and thus his “positivism is a model of and for a system of rules, and its central notion of a single fundamental test for law…forces us to miss the roles of...standards which are not rules."

Per my non-formalist beliefs, that entails local right answers. On the grounds that any standards outside of rules will ultimately be settled locally. That does not make localities immune to the force of global standards.

But anyway, the concept of functional optionality is introduced by Baker, by reference to how it is that the mechanics depend upon the fiction in order to be applied and declarations resolved. This is not local; that's the point of his word functional. He talks about how local practices might mean that something that is functionally optional is nevertheless done. For instance, here:

There are a couple of places in the game where there are supposed to be rightward-pointing arrows, but they're functionally optional. I assert them, but then the game's architecture doesn't make them real. So it takes an act of unrewarded, unrequired discipline to use them. I suspect that the people who have the most fun with the Wicked Age have that discipline as a practice or a habit, having learned it from other games.​

No need to reference it. I've read that through several times. Baker is concerned to do something that I say is in the end unachievable.

 

[pemerton]

Your character being on 1 hitpoint is a cubes consideration, not a fictional one. There is no fictional frame here -- no story that describes what this means (or only a completely arbitrary one that has no real impact).

Right. I mean, there are versions of D&D where some characters have 1 hp when they are at full strength!

 

[Scars Unseen]

Right. I mean, there are versions of D&D where some characters have 1 hp when they are at full strength!

Having played games where taking damage makes you weaker (e.g. Legend of the Five Rings 2E IIRC), I'm perfectly fine with that. The alternative is basically a death spiral where the first combatant to take damage is at a severe disadvantage for the rest of the fight. It's a valid design, but it's not one that really fits the idea of heroic fantasy.

 

[pemerton]

your case isn't valid. No check should have been made without a meaningful consequence for failure. That is right there in RAW. If a DM reached a "nothing changed" result, the check shouldn’t have been called for.

The DMG does have this line, but the PHB says, quite clearly, that a failed check means no progress. Further, the very next section in the DMG talks about checks where a failure doesn't cost anything and how to speed things up by just assuming the character takes 10 times as long

<snip>

I also have the examples in the adventure paths published for 5e, where they abound with perception checks that have no effect on a failure.

This is before we get to the point that the idea of "meaningful consequence" is vague and unclear. What counts as a meaningful consequence?

It seems to me that, in a GM-secret-backstory game, not learning some of the GM's backstory is a meaningful consequence, because it reduces the players' opportunity to declare actions that are cleverly fictionally positioned.

Of course if retries are allowed, the consequence is blunted, and without wandering monster checks time ceases to be such a cost too - it's not a coincidence that classic D&D, as a quintessential GM-secret-backstory RPG, uses both wandering monsters and has various rules regulating retries. (Thus, in AD&D, opening doors, lifting gates, bending bars, picking locks, listening at doors, finding traps, and searching for secret doors - all the standard ways of learn the content of the GM's dungeon key - have their various baroque retry rules.)

Putting to one side the bigger question of how coherent 5e D&D is, there can't be an inference from meaningful consequence to change in the fiction without introducing additional premises (eg of a no-myth-ish sort) that are not necessarily the case.

 

[clearstream]

@pemerton perhaps I can say it like this. I advocate a radical interpretation of 5e. Let's call the game played my way 5e*. To be playing 5e* a DM must ensure that "narrate" means "say something meaningful". When it comes to ability checks they must prefer the plain rule about meaningful consequences. When it comes to combat, they must narrate results in ways that are meaningful. They're expected to use their power as an author of fiction to achieve that ("the orc winds its horn!")

5e* remains a fully consistent game system. I would say more consistent, but YMMV. [Or it may be better to say that 5e* is no less consistent than 5e' ]

Some might protest "You don't have to play that way." Seeing as I'm skeptical about knowing one right way to play 5e, that protest doesn't trouble me. If I had to, I could point to 5e' and 5e** and ask "How do those folk know that they have to play their way?" I point to the vast and growing body of unreconciled argument on what playing the right way means, to support my skepticism.

 

[pemerton]

Having played games where taking damage makes you weaker (e.g. Legend of the Five Rings 2E IIRC), I'm perfectly fine with that. The alternative is basically a death spiral where the first combatant to take damage is at a severe disadvantage for the rest of the fight. It's a valid design, but it's not one that really fits the idea of heroic fantasy.

My point is that it is not very plausible both to reject the death spiral and yet to assert that the fiction of necessity changes when a character takes hit point loss. What is the change in the fiction, when nothing about the character or their capabilities is any different?

That's before we get to designs that incorporate changes in the fiction and yet use other mechanical devices to avoid a death spiral, at least on the player side.

 

[Scars Unseen]

My point is that it is not very plausible both to reject the death spiral and yet to assert that the fiction of necessity changes when a character takes hit point loss. What is the change in the fiction, when nothing about the character or their capabilities is any different?

That's only a conflict if you're hung up on the idea that capability loss needs to be tied into taking physical wounds. That isn't a given in heroic fantasy. It's just as plausible for the fiction to be that the heroes take a beating, but push through the pain to be their best anyway. Not realistic perhaps, but again: fantasy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Having played games where taking damage makes you weaker (e.g. Legend of the Five Rings 2E IIRC), I'm perfectly fine with that. The alternative is basically a death spiral where the first combatant to take damage is at a severe disadvantage for the rest of the fight. It's a valid design, but it's not one that really fits the idea of heroic fantasy.

Right! There's no value statement about preference here. There's nothing wrong with something not generating an arrow from cubes to clouds, or from mechanics to fiction if you prefer. It can be preferable for this to be the case. 5e's approach here works just fine for it's purpose. The analysis that says "hey, 5e's combat system quite often has results that just stay on the mechanics side and do not require any change to the fiction side," is utterly neutral on if you should or should not like that it does this. I dislike most iterations of death spirals myself, but even there, a lot of those don't create fictional bits as a matter of necessity but are also keeping the spiral on the mechanics side. Anything that just generates a mechanical penalty without a required change to fiction does this.

Also, as a final point, there's no requirement that a system that reliably generates arrows from cubes to cloud, or where the combat system requires changes in fiction as an output of mechanics, create a death spiral.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's only a conflict if you're hung up on the idea that capability loss needs to be tied into taking physical wounds. That isn't a given in heroic fantasy. It's just as plausible for the fiction to be that the heroes take a beating, but push through the pain to be their best anyway. Not realistic perhaps, but again: fantasy.

There's no capability loss at all, though, which is the fundamental point. You've skipped ahead to where there's some capability loss and tied it to physical wounds. 5e combat does not create any capability loss though it's hp attrition model. This is why it doesn't create any changes in the fiction -- there's no change in the fiction, just in a non-fictionally represented tally.

 

[Ovinomancer]

@pemerton perhaps I can say it like this. I advocate a radical interpretation of 5e. Let's call the game played my way 5e*. To be playing 5e* a DM must ensure that "narrate" means "say something meaningful". When it comes to ability checks they must prefer the plain rule about meaningful consequences. When it comes to combat, they must narrate results in ways that are meaningful. They're expected to use their power as an author of fiction to achieve that ("the orc winds its horn!")

5e* remains a fully consistent game system. I would say more consistent, but YMMV. [Or it may be better to say that 5e* is no less consistent than 5e' ]

Some might protest "You don't have to play that way." Seeing as I'm skeptical about knowing one right way to play 5e, that protest doesn't trouble me. If I had to, I could point to 5e' and 5e** and ask "How do those folk know that they have to play their way?" I point to the vast and growing body of unreconciled argument on what playing the right way means, to support my skepticism.

What does meaningful mean? Let me give you some examples of play, and you tell me what meaningful resolution your 5e* demands. Note I'm asking what 5e* demands, not what you, as GM, arbitrarily insert. Because arbitrary insertion, while it can create plenty, isn't doing the work you're claiming that 5e* requires.

My PC is trying to climb a cliff. The outcome has been deemed uncertain and the DC is set at 15 (I may or may not know this). I have a +10 total bonus (stat+proficiency+other) to my check. I roll a 2 on the d20, and get a total of 12 on my check. What result is required and what meaningful narration results.

My PC is trying to climb a cliff. The outcome has been deemed uncertain and the DC is set at 15 (I may or may not know this). I have a +2 total bonus (stat+proficiency+other) to my check. I roll a 2 on the d20, and get a total of 4 on my check. What result is required and what meaningful narration results?

My PC is trying to climb a cliff. The outcome has been deemed uncertain and the DC is set at 15 (I may or may not know this). I have a +2 total bonus (stat+proficiency+other) to my check. I roll a 12 on the d20, and get a total of 14 on my check. What result is required and what meaningful narration results?