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Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8512203" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I agree with this. Including, perhaps especially, with the remark about abstract descriptions of play dynamics.</p><p></p><p>Where the difference between 5e D&D and Torchbearer, for instance, or between either of those RPGs and Dungeon World, becomes evident is in their concrete processes for resolving declared actions and for feeding those outcomes back into the context for provoking further action declarations. For instance, does the declaring of actions <em>automatically</em> consume player-side resources[/i]?</p><p></p><p>In TB, as in Moldvay Basic or dungeon-crawling AD&D, the answer to that question is yes (in AD&D the system is baroque - turns spent on movement and searching running down torches and lanterns, spell durations etc and triggering wandering monster checks; in TB the game cuts to the chase and makes each check take a turn - a purely abstract unit of measurement of the progress of the game - and imposes an adverse condition on the PCs every four turns).</p><p></p><p>In a 4e skill challenge, the answer is "kinda", in that you either succeed and get closer to winning or fail and get closer to losing. You don't have unlimited checks to make.</p><p></p><p>In 5e D&D and DW and (most of the time) in Burning Wheel, the answer is no.</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying that the distinction I've just drawn is the only, or even the most important, across these various games. But it's an important one, that has a big impact on how they play and how they are experienced by the participants. The rubric of <em>GM describes situation</em>, <em>Players declare actions</em>, <em>GM narrates results including any change to the situation </em>is simply not fine-grained enough to capture the differences. Perhaps most fundamentally - on what basis, or using what methods, does the GM decide on the content of their 3rd-step narration?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8512203, member: 42582"] I agree with this. Including, perhaps especially, with the remark about abstract descriptions of play dynamics. Where the difference between 5e D&D and Torchbearer, for instance, or between either of those RPGs and Dungeon World, becomes evident is in their concrete processes for resolving declared actions and for feeding those outcomes back into the context for provoking further action declarations. For instance, does the declaring of actions [i]automatically[/i] consume player-side resources[/i]? In TB, as in Moldvay Basic or dungeon-crawling AD&D, the answer to that question is yes (in AD&D the system is baroque - turns spent on movement and searching running down torches and lanterns, spell durations etc and triggering wandering monster checks; in TB the game cuts to the chase and makes each check take a turn - a purely abstract unit of measurement of the progress of the game - and imposes an adverse condition on the PCs every four turns). In a 4e skill challenge, the answer is "kinda", in that you either succeed and get closer to winning or fail and get closer to losing. You don't have unlimited checks to make. In 5e D&D and DW and (most of the time) in Burning Wheel, the answer is no. I'm not saying that the distinction I've just drawn is the only, or even the most important, across these various games. But it's an important one, that has a big impact on how they play and how they are experienced by the participants. The rubric of [I]GM describes situation[/I], [I]Players declare actions[/I], [I]GM narrates results including any change to the situation [/I]is simply not fine-grained enough to capture the differences. Perhaps most fundamentally - on what basis, or using what methods, does the GM decide on the content of their 3rd-step narration? [/QUOTE]
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