D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[Ahnehnois]

We're not really talking about rule zero, though, we're talking about the fact that some DMs behave in a dictatorial manner whilst using the precise excuses you have been using. I'm not saying you do, at all. I'm saying those are the exact same approaches, which is why people are very skeptical of them.

I know that. I'm not contesting that. What I'm trying to do is draw a distinction between the system and the operator.

There may indeed be megalomaniacal DMs, and they may cite text as an excuse, but they'd be wrong to do so. There's plenty of other text in any DMG about not being a douche. The existence of DMs who abuse the game does not invalidate it, any more than the existence of police corruption invalidates the rule of law. The books are written with the assumption that the people using them will be reasonable, regardless of how true you or I think that is in practice.

By the way, I notice you used the word "judgmental" to describe fiat a number of times earlier - this doesn't make any sense, based on judgmental's meaning, but do you mean "subjective"?

It is subjective. It is also adding a value judgement that in my view is inappropriate.

I don't find this to be the case with reasonable adult players - indeed, if the DM is doling out the morals, something has gone wrong, I'd suggest. The DM just needs to present a reasonable world where actions have logical consequences - the rest will work itself out, unless you have players who have... problems (or are teenagers).

And yet, that's exactly what we're discussing. Someone proposes enchanting a royal agent, I set forth a reasonable consequence for such an act (probably ending the PC's career), and I get accused of depriving the players of something.

I wouldn't suggest that a DM should enforce unreasonable consequences to railroad the players, but merely that adding in reasonable ones creates a different set of choices for the players than the kind of laissez faire attitude apparently being promulgated. And that the reasonable ones are really the purview of the DM; the rules themselves are helpful but not sufficient.

I should also point out that if the DM himself has messed-up morals, strict DM authority can make things worse

No kidding. I don't dispute that at all. I simply state that I think that someone who behaves poorly is unfit to be a DM. I don't think they'd be any more fit to adopt an intermediate role like an indie game might propose.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I disagree here. Let 'em run rampant, then as DM bring on the logical in-game consequences. And if - for example - they murder the militia types who come to arrest them then so be it; they've declared as evil, to be sure, but if that's how they want to play it's a perfectly allowed part of the game...although (to haul in the other topic here) probably not at all what you-as-DM had in mind!

I've done that before and I'm not a huge fan of where it leads. Neither were the players, I might add. I won't come in and force players not to be evil, but I don't particularly like it when they are so I do think that encouraging them not to kill people at random is a worthwhile end.

Of course, as above, I think that logical in-world consequences are enough to do that, but not infrequently, people will cry foul over them given the sense of entitlement some players have.

 

[Ahnehnois]

That is not a true description of D&D as I play and experience it. Nothing in the guidelines pushes me towards the ordinary - for instance, Moldvay Basic tells me that a fighter can be Hercules and a magic-user Merlin

Can be, or is by default? Big difference.

- and I don't GM a game involving primarily treasure hunters, and haven't for over 30 years.

Which is fine, but if we're talking about what the game itself is for, isn't it about treasure hunting?

But this actually isn't true. There are plenty of people in Australia who can get cabinet ministers on the phone if they want them. That's not true of me, but there are some current and former members of Parliament whom I can walk up to and expect to have them interact with me. If the players' conception of their PCs is as having the requisite lineage, bearing and visible sense of urgency to make them worth talking to, I don't see any reason why that possibility shouldn't be resolved in much the same sort of way as we work out whether or not they are able to defeat a dragon in combat.

That's fine. Write what you know, as they say. Or worldbuild what you know. If some DM wants to have a more permissive culture, that's fine, and it does change the parameters of Diplomacy.

My point was never that every player trying to speak to every royal must fail, but that given one particular scenario where the DM has decided that this is an impossible check, the player has no recourse. Again, there's saying yes and there's saying no, what I'm talking about is who gets to say yes or no.

By the same token, I don't see that there is any virtue in the game focusing on fighting kobolds rather than demons - nor vice versa. They're all just made up. It's a fiction. There's nothing more self-aggrandising about playing out a fiction involving gods, or kings, than playing out a fiction involving children, or peasants.

I think a fiction involving gods inherently conveys a greater sense of self-importance. Which can be fine, depending on one's individual preferences. Again, I'm not talking about all possible campaigns, merely an example wherein the players are conceivably exceeding their own place. What their place is can vary.

There is in my view a huge distinction. For a player, on my conception, at the heart of playing the game is declaring actions for one's PC, and then determining what happens via application of the action resolution mechanics. Those mechanics constrain what the GM is free to narrate as an outcome. Using the mechanics is inconsistent with the GM having a pre-defined result in mind.

It is a huge distinction. To my knowledge, there is no textual basis in any version of D&D for this type of sharing of narrative control. In other rpgs, there is. To my mind, the utter lack of shared narrative control is a-if not the-defining feature of D&D as such.

The culture and the books' recommendations on how to use that authority vary, but if there are explicit exceptions to the idea of DM authority in any version of the rules, I've yet to see them.

I prefer a game in which there is no such thing as the "real plot" distinct from what the players think is going on.

That doesn't much match up with the fantasy fiction I'm familiar with though.

This makes it hard to run certain sorts of mystery-driven or Call of Cthulhu-style scenarios. That's a cost that I pay. And it's not the case that mystery is impossible - it just has to be handled in a non-CoC-ish way.

I certainly wouldn't want to pay that cost. Even when the scenario is not explicitly mystery or horror, the players' uncertainty is a tremendously useful commodity (and, in my experience, a large part of where their enjoyment comes from).

The GM has an important role, undoubtedly, in managing fictional positioning and unfolding backstory. But it is not an exclusive role.

The 4e PHB tackles this issue in its description (on p 8) of the functions of the DM:

Referee: When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.​

Sometimes it is clear what ought to happen next. On those occasions, the GM's referee function is not required. And even when the referee function is required - eg in deciding whether or not a tough dwarf can hold down a hammer in the forge so the artificers can grab it with their tongs - there is no reason to suppose that the GM's role is simply to apply his/her own conception of the gameworld. At my table, that is not how it works.

And who decides whether or not it is clear?

The question I'm getting at is in cases where there is a genuine disagreement between the player and the DM on any aspect of applying the mechanics to the fictional world, and that disagreement can't be resolved by talking it out, is there any textual basis for the player's opinion explicitly overruling the DM's, with the DM having no recourse? Any intermediate case isn't relevant; most of the time people will be on the same page, and it won't matter who's in charge, or some amicable resolution will happen without the need to resort to these types of rules.

I would not run an encounter in which an outcome adverse to the players' desires is fore-ordained. To me it negates the pleasure in RPGing.
...
Another part of the reason is that exploration of the gameworld - for instance, learning what is and isn't possible - is not part of the pleasure of play, for me. The fact that the GM narrates the scene well, or that the players enjoy the experience of immersion in their PCs, is not sufficient, if in fact the whole appearance of choice, and of an attempt by the players to change the ingame situation, is in fact illusory.

Is that not a contradiction? If an adverse outcome can't happen, what choice can there be?

This really doesn't speak to my approach to RPGing at all.

The creature is an imaginary being in a fantasy game. It cannot be treated fairly or unfairly by the game players. (We can imagine it being treated fairly or unfairly by other imaginary people in the gameworld - in my gameworld they treated it unfairly, namely, by tricking it into running over a cliff.) Issues of fairness in gameplay arise between the participants in the game. On this occasion, I am utterly confident that I treated my players fairly. (And vice versa.)

One of the reasons I pointed this out is that my players have called BS on the simple rolling of Survival to find food and killing a creature in the process. The way I look at it, it's cheating. Creatures have hit points and saving throws, and they don't die unless those are overcome. They have free will, and won't do something suicidal unless it makes sense through their decision-making process (which is perhaps what you're suggesting; I can't tell). It's a perfectly fine sort of cheating of the sort most of us do all the time, but it's really against the, as they say, rules as intended.

 

[Hussar]

Careful Ruin Explorer, making a negative comment about anything less than a perfect DM means that you are a self entitled player who hates DnD.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's a perfectly fine sort of cheating of the sort most of us do all the time, but it's really against the, as they say, rules as intended.

On the precise contrary, it absolutely is the rules as intended. What you suggest is completely bizarre and certainly not the intention. I guarantee that your 3E trio of Mearls, Tweet and Cook would agree with me, based on their various writings about DMing.

EDIT - This is interesting because it takes us right back to the thread topic - the rules, in D&D, have not, generally, and particularly post-2E, been intended as a "simulation", but rather as a quite playable and functional game. D&D has been quite distinct from games that have gone down the path (some would say rabbit-hole!) of attempted simulation, tending to be less granular and more interested in workable approximations and playable, interesting systems than being "realistic" (HP and levels are perfect examples of this - neither is particularly realistic - both, especially the former, make the game very playable and enjoyable - HP, for example, prevent the sometimes-tedious but certainly realistic - in the broad sense - "death spiral" effect of many games). This is true of both 3.XE and 4E. PF attempts to tug 3.XE in a more simulationist direction with ultra-detailed rules on certain areas, but does so without much vigour or conviction.

OSR D&D-related games, too, have focused more on interesting and atmospheric play structures, rather than any attempt to say, force players to make combat rolls to kill a deer.

This isn't to suggest those who enjoy games which attempt a more simulation-y take are wrong, of course, it's a matter of taste, but I think it is pretty clearly wrong to suggest that, certainly post-2E, D&D's rules were written with the intention that you do things like play out, in detail, rabbit-hunting (as opposed to making it the appropriate result of a successful survival check in an area where rabbits are present and snares could be set, or rabbits hunted). Indeed, if we are to always give every living or unliving creature a roll against every threat, as Ahn appears to be suggesting, if snares were set, we'd be having to make perception checks for rabbits, then rolling to hit, then rolling to damage and so on (and would need stats for rabbits snares). Now that is, pun intended, quite the rabbit-hole!

Fun for some, for sure, but not "rules as intended", which we are "breaking" by not following!

EDIT EDIT: Further, that's not to say there's never a situation in which one might to use the combat rules to bring down a deer or the like (or even a rabbit) - it's just that it's not the default intention of the rules that in order to take a deer or the like, successful combat against it must be engaged in (indeed, pushing D&D's system like that often ends up with it in sketchy territory, where obviously physically possible things are mathematical impossibilities).

 

[pemerton]

To my knowledge, there is no textual basis in any version of D&D for this type of sharing of narrative control.

"Sharing of narrative control" is a very broad, even sweepingly broad, generalisation.

There absolutely is textual basis in many versions of D&D for sharing of narrative control in the following sense: if a PC is bitten by a giant spider, and hence (potentially) poisoned, and the player rolls a successful saving throw, then the GM is obliged to narrate the bite and its poison in such a way as to make sense of the PC's survival. (Gygax discusses this on pp 80-81 of his DMG, written in the later 1970s, and so somewhat predating Ron Edwards and other more contemporary commentators.)

I agree that the default, in D&D, is for the GM to fill in the details of the narrative. But the constraints on that - which is what I referred to in the passage to which you are replying - are established by the action resolution mechanics, in which the players participate as much as the GM does.

Even when the scenario is not explicitly mystery or horror, the players' uncertainty is a tremendously useful commodity (and, in my experience, a large part of where their enjoyment comes from).

In the actual play report that I posted, the players' experienced uncertainty. So did I as GM. My point was, in part, that there are other ways of achieving uncertainty then using hidden backstory as an element in resolution.

That's not to say that there are no things that can't be done in my preferred RPGing approach. I think the descent into insanity that exemplifies CoC one-shots is one of those things. But the notion of "player uncertainy" or even "mystery" is not precise enough to capture what can't be done. It's a very particular experience, based on a very specific sort of application of GM force. Which is also to say, it's a long way from being the "typical" or "generic" or "default" RPG experience.

And who decides whether or not it is clear?

The 4e rulebooks don't answer this question directly. By implication, from a wide range of passages spread throughout the PHB and DMG, it seems to be taken for granted that the table will work it out. It also seems to be assumed that many experienced RPGers will default to GM authority, and some reasons are explicitly given why other approaches might sometimes produce a better play experience.

If an adverse outcome can't happen, what choice can there be?

I didn't say an adverse outcome can't happen. I said it's not fore-ordained. Whether it happens or not depends upon the mechanics which, at least in 4e, is typically a check of some sort.

my players have called BS on the simple rolling of Survival to find food and killing a creature in the process. The way I look at it, it's cheating. Creatures have hit points and saving throws, and they don't die unless those are overcome. They have free will, and won't do something suicidal unless it makes sense through their decision-making process

I find this hard to interpret. The things that have hit points and saving throws are game constructs - and the role of those mechanical properties is to contribute to resolution of "moves" in the game. If the rules say that sometimes you do it this way and sometimes this other way (whether that be Survival skill, or an AD&D assassin' chance to assassinate, or the rule that victims of a Sleep spell can be killed even by a 1st level MU at the rate of 1 per round, or by framing a situation as a skill challenge rather than a combat) then there is no cheating.

On the other hand, the thing that has free will is an imaginary being in an imaginary world. The way that we in the real world work out what it does with its free will is (or at least includes) the action resolution mechanics. Doing so isn't depriving the imaginary thing of its free will - its precisely a way of determining the content of the fiction which consists, among other things, in that free will's exercise.

 

[Ahnehnois]

That's not to say that there are no things that can't be done in my preferred RPGing approach. I think the descent into insanity that exemplifies CoC one-shots is one of those things. But the notion of "player uncertainy" or even "mystery" is not precise enough to capture what can't be done. It's a very particular experience, based on a very specific sort of application of GM force. Which is also to say, it's a long way from being the "typical" or "generic" or "default" RPG experience.

I think there are quite a few particular experiences that would fit into that category. Not that I'm not sure there are games that my style isn't conducive to as well.

The 4e rulebooks don't answer this question directly. By implication, from a wide range of passages spread throughout the PHB and DMG, it seems to be taken for granted that the table will work it out. It also seems to be assumed that many experienced RPGers will default to GM authority, and some reasons are explicitly given why other approaches might sometimes produce a better play experience.

Pretty much what I thought.

I didn't say an adverse outcome can't happen. I said it's not fore-ordained.

An impossible check, however, is well within the mechanics, and is a decision that is very likely made on the spot for naturalistic reasons, rather than through some type of railroading mentality.

Moreover, there are plenty of mechanisms by which outcomes might be established. A DM might trap the PCs in a pit that they can't climb out of, or transport them to another plane with no save, and so on and so forth, all well within both the intent and the letter of the rules.

 

[Ahnehnois]

EDIT - This is interesting because it takes us right back to the thread topic - the rules, in D&D, have not, generally, and particularly post-2E, been intended as a "simulation", but rather as a quite playable and functional game. D&D has been quite distinct from games that have gone down the path (some would say rabbit-hole!) of attempted simulation, tending to be less granular and more interested in workable approximations and playable, interesting systems than being "realistic" (HP and levels are perfect examples of this - neither is particularly realistic - both, especially the former, make the game very playable and enjoyable - HP, for example, prevent the sometimes-tedious but certainly realistic - in the broad sense - "death spiral" effect of many games). This is true of both 3.XE and 4E. PF attempts to tug 3.XE in a more simulationist direction with ultra-detailed rules on certain areas, but does so without much vigour or conviction.

Gee, I would have said the complete opposite on all of those points. I saw in 3e an attempt to model out of combat capabilities in a much more detailed and naturalistic way than NWPs. I saw arbitrary restrictions lifted (like race/class restrictions, and indeed 3e's multiclassing system is far more realistic than the predetermined character paths that came before it). I saw detail piled on to environment rules and similar minutiae.

Conversely, in PF I see incremental steps towards simplifying things or towards dissociating them; not futher steps towards reality at all.

HP are definitely not the model for realism in any version of D&D, I'd agree.

This isn't to suggest those who enjoy games which attempt a more simulation-y take are wrong, of course, it's a matter of taste, but I think it is pretty clearly wrong to suggest that, certainly post-2E, D&D's rules were written with the intention that you do things like play out, in detail, rabbit-hunting (as opposed to making it the appropriate result of a successful survival check in an area where rabbits are present and snares could be set, or rabbits hunted). Indeed, if we are to always give every living or unliving creature a roll against every threat, as Ahn appears to be suggesting, if snares were set, we'd be having to make perception checks for rabbits, then rolling to hit, then rolling to damage and so on (and would need stats for rabbits snares). Now that is, pun intended, quite the rabbit-hole!

That's not what I'm suggesting, though. That is, I'm not saying a foraging ranger should roll every attack against a minor forest creature he's hunting. I'm saying that, in theory, said attack exists. If the creature died, it's because someone rolled attacks, hit its AC, and removed all its hit points, because that's how things work.

Whether we actually play that out "onscreen" as it were is an entirely different matter. I'd say that a lot of that stuff is checks that we don't bother rolling. It's in that category of rolling a Dex check to tie your shoes: you could, but why bother? Nor do I as a DM play out all the battles that have occurred in the world before the campaign started, even though I assume that they happened and that all the rules were engaged in determining their outcomes. In fact, I'd argue the appropriate resolution is for the DM to dictate the results of the hunting, with everyone understanding that the combat mechanics were in play if we really wanted to use them.

The part that is problematic to me is not the idea of forgoing the attacks, but of substituting a skill check for them. After all, if I can roll a Survival check to hunt for a deer and come back, why can't a roll a higher DC and bag a dragon? Or a human? The solution in my mind is that the skill check can't directly cause the outcome of some creature being dead. There are a variety of indirect mechanisms that could cause this outcome of course, but those weren't evident to me in the example under discussion.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not saying a foraging ranger should roll every attack against a minor forest creature he's hunting. I'm saying that, in theory, said attack exists. If the creature died, it's because someone rolled attacks, hit its AC, and removed all its hit points, because that's how things work.

As I understand what was said upthread,, [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] takes the same view as you.

I don't take that view in my game. I regard the rules around AC, hp etc not as models of how things happen in the gameworld, but as devices that we (the real people playing the game) use to determine, under certain circumstances, what happens in the ficiton of the game. They are rules for us, but not rules for (nor models of rules for) the gameworld.

My dispute with Saelorn was not over the merits of either approach (I have my way, you have yours) but over the claim that your approach is the only way to ensure an objective, consistent gameworld. It's not. Just as a novelist can ensure a consistent fiction without adopting or assuming the devices of AC, hp etc, so can a group of RPGers. Like the novelist, they simply make sure that action declarations, narrations of resolution, etc are all consistent with the estabished backstory and the broader constraints of genre and "common sense".

the skill check can't directly cause the outcome of some creature being dead.

This strikes me as, once again, running together ingame and metagame. The arrow/spear/whatever shot/thrown by the PC causes the creature to be dead. The skill check causes the players at the table to agree that that is what happened in the fiction.

if I can roll a Survival check to hunt for a deer and come back, why can't a roll a higher DC and bag a dragon? Or a human?

Well, if you're an assassin in AD&D you can do this. But that's obviously not a full answer to your question.

For my part, I can only speak to my own game. The appropriate action resolution mechanism depends upon what is at stake - both the fictional stakes (how important is this to the PCs?) and the more nebulous stakes of the play dynamics (pacing, likely interest of the resolution experience, etc). Killing a dragon via a skill check would be fine - in A Wizard of Earthsea Ged kills several young dragons in a manner that, in 4e, would be modelled either as skill checks or attacks vs minions - but the player is not going to get much out of it (it's not a high stakes encounter and so, for instance, isn't going to yield piles of gold).

If you want every encounter with a dragon to be high stakes then of course you wouldn't make them minions, nor frame the hunting of one as a skill check. But as I approach the game, that's a decision that is shaped by real-world concerns, not by imagined features of the gameworld.

 

[pemerton]

An impossible check, however, is well within the mechanics, and is a decision that is very likely made on the spot for naturalistic reasons, rather than through some type of railroading mentality.

An impossible check isn't typically within the 4e mechanics, where DCs are set on the spot based primarily on metagame rather than "naturalistic" reasons. (At high levels, as skill bonuses diverge further and further, impossible DCs do become possible. I regard this as a design flaw in 4e - it's mechanics fail to achieve what they are designed to achieve.)

There is also the further question of whether or not the players know the DC, and hence know that declaring the attempt would be futile. In 4e the default is that the players do know the DC. Whereas my impression is that, at your table, this is not so.