NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8505273" data-attributes="member: 16814">Strange non sequitur.  You respond to my questioning why there's an added easy part to the cliff when it wasn't established as such and really only features in the one response you had to ask if you also need to take on the part of the player?  Did you misunderstand the point of the statement -- you added some easy part to response 3, it's not present in your 1 or 2 or in the initial framing.  You then claimed all of the responses feature an easy part.  I'm asking 1) where it came from that was needed or necessary to answer the questions and 2) what on Earth is it doing in your 1 or 2 responses where it's not even present?DC 15 is a moderate challenge, not easy.  Still unclear where your framing originated or if it's at all relevant to two of your answers.You... need to move the goalposts because your thinking on the matter isn't rigorous enough to avoid being tripped up because other people ask questions of them?  There are no "traps" here.  I'm genuinely questioning your approach as you voluntarily put them forward.  You are making strong claims and I'm examining the reasoning and evidence you provide.  When I point something out, you move the posts.We started this latest by examining how the clouds and cubes model works to describe play.  You insisted that hitpoint loss in 5e mandates an arrow from cubes to clouds, or from mechanics to fiction.  This was questioned, and it was pointed out that no such mandate appears and that there's no directed fiction that results -- we can describe hp loss without death in the same way we can describe the attack missing!  You then pivoted to saying that the basic play loop step of the GM narrates the outcome forces the arrow, while not addressing the problem with ambiguity in that fiction (the description of misses and hp loss).  To this point, you moved from combat and hitpoint loss (because there's weak correlation to where you needed to go) to ability check results and now leveraged the line from the DMG that you shouldn't have a check (and no check means no problem) unless it has a "meaningful consequence" to failure.  This, you assert, has to drive the cubes to clouds arrow because a meaningful consequence means a changes to the fiction.  So, to answer the point that hp loss due to an attack doesn't drive an arrow back into the fiction (meaning it requires no change in fiction and, in fact, any such change in fiction will be entirely arbitrary) we swapped from combat rules to general rules, then from combat to ability check, and then to requiring and insisting that the only way to call an ability check is to first have a meaningful consequence to failure.  When this is met with the clear evidence that "no progress" is a called for an expected result, you equated the two and said no progress has to be a meaningful consequence.  And then you blame me for setting you traps because I've questioned this?Well, you're absolutely wrong, again, because you've built me into some strawman of beliefs because I'm challenging your statements.  My preferred method of play is to never use no progress as a result of failure because I feel it really doesn't add much at all to play.  However, my preference for this doesn't lead me to say that it's required by the rules rather than just how I prefer to play.  Nor does it convince me that I'm not enforcing this in play via my own discipline and effort rather than just following the rules.  The rules do not create this mode of play, I have to.  I'm not going to credit the rules for my hard work.  And, in that hard work, I absolutely recognize that the rules do not generate leftward arrows in many cases where I would think they should exist, so I add them.  I do this primarily by structuring the conflicts and making sure stakes are clear and evidence and on the table and also having clear principles of play as to how I will adjudicate things so that players understand the risks and rewards of their play.  Part of this is using 10/15/20 for DCs nearly exclusively (extraordinary situations can occur, but will always be notable as extraordinary to all at the table), with the preference for 15 overwhelmingly.  I don't care what PC bonuses are -- it's up to the PCs to align their action declarations to what their good at, not mine to make challenges fit what their good at.So, yeah, my arguments here aren't based on defending my preferences.  If anything, I'm challenging your formulation of my own preferences.  I don't find your arguments to be coherent or well supported for establishing my preferred method of play as either intentional under the rules or required by them or even as the best interpretation of the rules.  Play can easily exist outside my preferences that adhere to the rules as well and generate fun play for the participants.  This isn't a move of the goalposts, and whether or not you assumed you were safe in an unstated position it's fair to question it.  You're again relying on an interpretation of vague wording to insist that your interpretation of vague wording is the obvious and correct one.  "Meaningful consequences" MUST include no progress as meaningful or else it's in direct conflict with the PHB rules of play.  You're doing a dance where "no progress" is only allowable if and only if it counts as "meaningful consequences" where the definition of meaningful consequences is unclear and mutable.  This isn't stated, however, and it's only inferable when you start with an assumption about what meaningful consequences means in D&D play. Further, this interpretations requires us to read a rule in the PHB and know that we need to hold that rule as conditional without any such indication in the rule as presented that it is so.Honestly, all of the arguments that my preferred approach to play is actually exactly how the books tell you to play requires so many of these assumptions that a rule stated in one place must be understood to be conditional upon a rule stated in a completely different place and when neither of these rules expressly reference each other or explain how said conditionality works.  It's an argument from assumption that has no support other than the bald statement that it's "obvious" or the "most logical."  It's neither.  To be clear, you're not the poster that claims it's most logical.None of these deal with the points I was making.  The task is to climb the same cliff.  The goals differed.  You changed the first goal from stopping a ritual to end the world to one summoning Demogorgon, and so your result that Demogorgon is here is a softening of the situation because, as you seem to think, you can still deal with Demogorgon.  I fail to climb a cliff and the result is that I have to fight Demogorgon in a presumably winnable fight.  This doesn't engage any fiction regarding the cliff or the PC, just the goal.  But the resolution for the check ONLY engages the fiction regarding the cliff and the PC's ability to climb.  You've set up two different resolution loops and are saying that one directs the other, and it does, but by dint of not addressing anything about the other in resolution.  My goal is to stop the ritual.  To do that I want to climb the cliff because the ritual is at the top of it.  We resolve the attempt to climb the cliff, but the outcome of that has nothing to do with the attempt to climb the cliff (ie, I'm not falling, or taking damage due to a slip, or losing/damaging equipment in a climbing mishap).  Instead, the resolution of my attempt to climb the cliff is going back to the fiction of my goal -- I now fail to stop the ritual.  But nothing about the ritual or anything about my PC regarding the ritual went into what resolves the question of "can my PC stop the ritual."  These are not actually associated in that the resolution/fiction loops aren't referenced to each other.  This is actually a common complaint about story now games because the way these things are related and tested is not often appreciated in those rulesets because they're treated like how D&D does -- where goal and task are independent of each other.When we look at 2, you added additional fiction to create your consequence -- you added a rival that was not present and based the entirety of the resolution on this.  My intent wasn't to have a rival, but to present this example as something the PC wants but where it's truth value was uncertain (rumors).  You changed this intent with your addition, and created a resolution that has the same form as your 1 -- the inputs to the resolution of the climb isn't related to the outputs of that resolution.  The difference though is that the goal is not lost and a retry is possible.  Oddly, though, you presented a different path on a failure.And then we have the third response, where the result of the failure is just no progress.  The goal isn't threatened, there's no actual consequence other than you don't finish the climb yet, and a retry is asked for.  This result doesn't even adhere to the claims your making -- the result could have been obtained in every one of the cases because it's entirely independent of the goal.You said you could not adjudicate actions without a goal.  I provided a goal. You provided adjudication.  I'm pointing out that your adjudication isn't following the steps you've been preaching and that the ultimate point of the discussion -- showing leftward arrows resulting from cubes resolutions -- has been damaged because the rightward arrows to the cubes are not aligned with the goal statements you've insisted must be present.  My having a goal to stop the world ending ritual doesn't call a rightward arrow to cubes -- this isn't being resolved.  Instead, it's my declaration to climb the cliff that triggers the rightward arrow, and the cubes resolution of this arrow only cares about the fictional inputs that come from the cliff and my PC's ability to climb it.  The output from the cubes should be a leftward arrow, but the rules say that this arrow can be a null -- no progress.  Your assertion is that this isn't kosher, that there has to be a meaningful consequence.  So, here we are with the goals you insisted must be present to provide that meaningful consequence.  And so, the cubes output gets hijacked by this other fiction that wasn't tested to provide a failure state to the goal fiction.  Then you say that if I wanted the arrows and clouds and cubes to be important, is was my responsibility to say so -- in a discussion where those are the topic of discussion!</blockquote>

Verification