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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8496712" data-attributes="member: 16814">I don't really think that "say yes or roll the dice" is compatible with D&D at all, with the noted exception of 4e.  [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] tagged me on this awhile back in this thread, but I was taking a break for the holidays (and may continue to do so), so I'll expound a moment using 5e.  SYORTD requires that there be a useful and consistent mechanic on the roll the dice side.  This is absolutely present in D&D, but only in combat.  In fact, combat is probably the closest to SYORTD that 5e gets -- it's almost always roll the dice but the resolution mechanic here is consistent and useful to resolve combat for the most part.  Very few instances exist where the GM is expected to deploy "no" to an action declaration.  So, here, mostly because the roll the dice aspect is robust, the approach works.The moment you get away from this, though, it breaks down and the system starts fighting you.  This is because 5e places the entire burden of how the mechanics works on the GM's judgement of the fiction.  Even if you allow for No Myth, it's still the GM's job to determine the DC of a challenge, and whether or not a single check is sufficient to resolve a conflict.  This means that the difficulty of a challenge is arbitrary and fluid and not consistent and further that the expected length of a challenge is similarly so.  You can establish rules and principled to lock these in, sure, but now you're adding layers to the game that go directly against it's design intent.  Still, this would be fine except that you now have to deal with the player side of the game, and that means how classes are built, how skill bonuses work, and, in general, how the entire character build section is aimed at providing player-side tools against arbitrary GM DC setting that, when the GM becomes constrained, suddenly erupt into player-sided overwhelming of the systems.  If I'm fixing DCs on the GM side to make them consistent enough that "roll the dice" isn't an arbitrary exploration of the GM's conception of the fiction, then things like bardic inspiration, expertise, guidance, and even just dis/advantage suddenly become outsized and disruptive.  So, now to do this in 5e I have to address this as well and now we're very far away from the designed game and into what I like to call "a different game altogether."  I struggle to understand how so many claim to be playing 5e with heavily modified games such that they're actually different games, but this seems to be a thing that's done.And, all of that above goes to another huge point about why SYORTD doesn't really work in most D&D, not just 5e, and that's how the characters are actually challenged.  D&D is built on an attrition model that's extended over multiple consecutive challenges (exception 4e, which was balanced to the encounter).  If I want to put pressure on a D&D PC, I have to do this consistently over a period of time, and that time period is pretty uniform within each edition of play.  This means that the GM must be able to control pacing in the game if this pressure is meant to come to bear, and if you're controlling pacing you're already outside of SYORTD.  The games that do best with SYORTD are ones that allow for short-scale high pressure play that isn't contingent on pacing.  BW, for instance, can go from zero to 60 very quickly, and PbtA is entirely structured on the snowballing effect of success at cost and failures being the majority of rolls.  These systems, through their very structure, create pressure during play without having to do anything outside of play to introduce it.  D&D lacks any real ability to do this.  4e allows for SYORTD because it's pacing mechanisms outside of an encounter/skill challenge are largely weak (with only healing surges being used) so that pacing isn't a thing that the GM needs to pay attention to much at all.  You can significantly challenge 4e PCs every single encounter without worry and, in fact, the game works best when you do this.  Thus, no need for the GM to control pacing and deal with how that directly confronts SYORTD as an approach.</blockquote>

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