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

[The Crimson Binome]

I suspect that Tolkien's Middle Earth was as consistent as any fantasy world, and Tolkien diesn't set it up using RPG mechanics. He set it up, and developed it, applying principles of history (including philology) and literature (especially myth and mediaeval romance). A D&D gameworld can be done the same way, with the mechanics like hit points, attack rolls etc being confined to the determination of action declarations made by the players for their PCs.

Right, but ... not quite. Tolkien can set his world up that way because he's writing a story, and he decides when someone dies in accordance with how he wants the plot to unfold (as makes best sense for the setting and genre). To contrast, someone in D&D dies in accordance with the game mechanics, like hit points and whether you used the 1W power or the 2W power; those game mechanics have a direct influence on the narrative.

In the gameworld the counterfactual, "Had Joe been attacked with Twin Strike rather than Biting Volley Joe would not have fallen unconcious" is not true, at least as I run my game.

I feel like we're getting closer with this, because it's a very simple statement and I have no idea how you can believe it. You the player and/or DM, as an omniscient observer, know for a fact that Joe would have fallen unconscious if he had been attacked with Biting Volley instead of Twin Strike. It literally is true.

How can you possibly claim that it is not true within the gameworld, when it is true within the game mechanics and the game mechanics determine what happens within the gameworld (at least as far as unconsciousness is concerned)?

 

[howandwhy99]

RPGing is not a shared fiction. It is a game. But it involves (among other things) shared fictions, in something like the way that chess involves (though is not identical with, or equivalent to, or an instance of) a board.

RPGing are games about performing a social role with most to all game design supporting that. As in all non-Storygames there are no shared fictions involved.

"Manipulating" here is clearly a metaphor, and an obscure one at all.

It is indirect manipulation via the DM's hands, but it is still manipulation. Word choice is crucial, just like the term role playing (instead of storytelling or acting) and fiction, which you are insistent is something that was actually used prior to Forge and WW Storygames.

"Stipulating" is probably not quite right, but is closer to the literal truth of what is going on. The permissibility of the stipulation is obviously governed by the shared fiction - eg what makes it permissible for the players to stipulate the presence of goblin dung in the dungeon is that it is already established (i) that goblins are present in the dungeon, and (ii) that goblins are biological, more-or-less anthropomorphic beings, who hence have digestive systems comparable to those of humans.

You or I cannot know the absolute truth of what is going on, but I say these things are actual, not fictional like pieces on a chessboard. The rest of your explanation is just one more time (of how many?) of reiterating the same Forge explanation over and over. What you're implying is not what is "truly" going on.

you can get "better" at D&D by, for instance, learning more about human biology and hence learning new things to ask about goblins, who closely resemble human. Similarly, you can get better at D&D by reading books about polearms, hence getting a better idea of what options are available to your PC equipped with a Bohemian ear-spork.

This is false in every version of D&D. Each game defines game components like "humans" and "biology" and "goblins". These are game terms relating to game constructs not the real world. Studying kings, queens, knights, and bishops will not make anyone better at Chess even though someone could try and construe it as a simulation. It isn't. It's a game to be played for what it is, not compared. At best, terms in D&D are clues to how game elements may work in those games. The actual elements operate as they are designed.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] I don't see us or much conversation in this thread going forward. You refuse to do anything but attack my "false" ideas and present the same theory over and over as the "true" way things are. It's an absolutist act that I'm ashamed to say provokes like response even in me. Do you have any other purpose in responding to me other than stepping on everything I post? If so, let's try that.

 

[innerdude]

To me, having the DM determine my success or failure without my engaging my character's mechanics is the least naturalistic way to experience events. I'm not succeeding or failing because of my character, I'm succeeding or failing because the DM wants a specific outcome. Again, it's not a game I have any interest in. I don't want to play in a game where the DM is telling me outcomes and I refuse to DM this way.

Appealing to the mechanics doesn't matter in this case. I don't care if the mechanics say you can do this or not. As a player, I'm not interested and as a DM I won't do it. It works for you, fine, but, for me, this is the opposite of what I want in a role playing game.

I think there's a big difference between having a GM inherently determine outcomes, and a GM framing a situation based on the character's fictional position, setting, cultural dynamics, and interrelationships with the other in-world participants. If, as a GM, I've framed a situation where a particular noble A) has clearly made it known through edict, "Wanted" posters, direct communication through underlings, etc., that he doesn't want anything to do with the PCs, and B) will instruct people under his influence to arrest the PCs on sight, then I don't think it's unreasonable to forcefully apply the effects of that fictional positioning should the PCs attempt to enter a location directly under the influence of that noble.

If the PCs simply roll into town without any thought given to what will happen, then yeah, they don't deserve to "interact with their player mechanics" when the bulk of the town guard descends on them to arrest them. Can they attempt to notice the ambush? Sure. Can they attempt to escape if the do notice it? Sure. If the players then want to interact mechanically through the use of powers, spells, negotiation, or combat to avoid the arrest attempt, hey, more power to them, that's why the rules are there.

If what you're saying you don't want to happen is, "Okay party, you roll into town, and oh, guess what, you're immediately beset upon by the guards, arrested, and detained," then I agree, that's hardly fun.

I get where you're coming from, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], I really do. It's clear from your posts here and elsewhere that in the past you've been subjected to some of the worst kinds of heavy-handed GM fiat, and it's something you never care to repeat or represent to your players.

I'm just really uncomfortable with the idea that a GM simply doesn't have the authority to say "No" under any circumstance.

It's a very precarious line, however. If you're saying "No" to some mechanical eventuality supported by the rules, and directly applicable to the PCs, there'd better be a very good reason to say it. I'm a little less forgiving when it comes to PCs having control over the scene framing itself, but even then, there's definitely times when you want to allow some player / PC control over the framing, and even instances where the rules assume that players have that control (as far as I can tell, the entire premise of Fate falls somewhere in this spectrum).

The opposite end of the spectrum, of course, are jerk players who do nothing but have their PCs run around and "poke holes" at the scene framing and rules, trying to find the exceptions that give them advantage. Or do it out of course of habit because eventually they think the GM will cave to the request.

 

[Ratskinner]

I feel like we're getting closer with this, because it's a very simple statement and I have no idea how you can believe it. You the player and/or DM, as an omniscient observer, know for a fact that Joe would have fallen unconscious if he had been attacked with Biting Volley instead of Twin Strike. It literally is true.

How can you possibly claim that it is not true within the gameworld, when it is true within the game mechanics and the game mechanics determine what happens within the gameworld (at least as far as unconsciousness is concerned)?

Because something is true for us at the level of player at the table with dice, doesn't mean that the characters in the world are aware of it. So, for example, the player hopes for a critical hit (a natural 20), however, the character is not imagined to be aware of the die roll at all. The character is (usually) imagined to only hope for a blow to strike home. If he should down his target, the character literally has no way of telling whether the player rolled a critical hit, just high damage, or it was the last HP that the target had.

Within the context of 4e and its re-skinnability, the character may not even be imagined as aware of what powers are or aren't on his character sheet. He just fights like this. In fact, with the fictional world that the character inhabits, "Biting Volley" and "Twin Strike" may not even be things-you-could-know. Heck, combat "rounds" are something the characters should only be aware of while watching a boxing match. If they exist as anything other than a tabletop mechanical contrivance to order the steps we take to resolve fictional conflicts....well then combats look very strange on that world.

This is what gives the lie to the premise that somehow characters can reverse-engineer the game rules from what happens in the fiction. The abstraction of the HP system and D&D combat mechanics in general prevent this, because truth at the dice-and-table level don't correspond very directly with truth-for-the-characters. So, line up 100 peasants in front of 100 lvl 1 fighters with longswords. The fighters all attack. Six seconds later (or possibly a minute?), in the fictional game world (what the characters will see); some of the peasants are cut down, others are merely wounded (but just as capable of doing anything as they were before), and still others managed to stay untouched. An important note is that the ones who dodged actually fall into two groups at the level of the players, but that are indistinguishable to the characters; some of those who dodged are a little less lucky than they were a few moments ago, others are just as lucky and likely to survive another attack. Those two groups correspond to a fraction of those who survived successful attacks, and those who were missed entirely. Some of the fighters swung once, others multiple times. Which means that even some of the dead peasants have differing numbers of wounds.

But, y'know what. Forget I wrote that last paragraph. Let's entertain the notion for a moment that everything mechanical corresponds 1-to-1 with something in the game world. Think about what that means for that world. An attack that we players see as a number on a die-roll now corresponds exactly to someone making a singular attempt to do harm in the game world. That means that clever characters (and remember, some of them are as smart or smarter than Einstein) could fairly quickly devise any number of tests and experiments to reverse-engineer what are (to them) the laws of physics, but are (to us) the rules of the game. Also, given the threat-laden nature of most D&D worlds, they are strongly motivated to do so. That quickly leads to a situation where you're playing a game with genre-saavy characters, making the world more Order of the Stick than Lord of the Rings. If that's what you're after, fine, but that's only one playstyle (and it ain't simulationist).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Because something is true for us at the level of player at the table with dice, doesn't mean that the characters in the world are aware of it.

Maybe you skipped a few pages - and I really can't blame you for that - but the argument at hand has moved on from there. I was saying that it's my personal preference to play that way, because it makes the most sense to me, but I wouldn't claim that it's necessary for an internally consistent objective reality.

That means that clever characters (and remember, some of them are as smart or smarter than Einstein) could fairly quickly devise any number of tests and experiments to reverse-engineer what are (to them) the laws of physics, but are (to us) the rules of the game. Also, given the threat-laden nature of most D&D worlds, they are strongly motivated to do so.

This was a thing that real people actually did, in real life. At the abstract level, you would have real military leaders running simulations of military operations; except it was even more abstract, with each round being a week or month and each piece representing a military unit.

There were even people who ran scientific-style tests to determine the physical capacity of humans to sustain injuries, or resist diseases. This was pretty horrific, of course, but they justified their actions by saying that it was for the greater good, and that the people they experimented on weren't really human anyway (or at least, were somehow a lower class of human, somewhere between sub-human and outright monster).

That quickly leads to a situation where you're playing a game with genre-savvy characters, making the world more Order of the Stick than Lord of the Rings. If that's what you're after, fine, but that's only one playstyle (and it ain't simulationist).

I dunno, people in real life are pretty savvy about how the world works, and that seems more simulationist than anything else.

 

[Lanefan]

Out of curiosity why do you think 1e is a good jumping off point? Or a good model to emulate? The Rules Cyclopaedia, yes. But 1e is bulky enough that as far as I know no one ever plays it using all the rules as written - and has a nasty habit of squirreling away rules on obscure pages of the DMG so almost no one actually knows what the rules as written are. It's also awkward and inconsistent with such artifacts as Percentile Strength.

The first rule for the basis for a game should, in my opinion, be that the rules should be simple enough, clear enough, and unambiguous enough that the game works. We're talking Red Box not AD&D. And then there should be a chapter talking about house rules on top of this.

So why 1e? I just don't understand the love for it.

Simply put, because the Red Box is too simple, while (pre-UA) 1e already bakes in a lot of the relatively basic changes I'd add:
- class divorced from race - an Elf can be various classes, etc.
- more classes to support more archetypes
- all the levels of the game are there; where Red Box only has the low ones and BECMI splits them up.*
- a wider variety of spells, weapons, etc.

* - I can't speak to Rules Compendium at all as I don't own it and in fact have never even laid eyes on it.

From this jumping-off pont it's pretty easy to strip out the uglier bits and simplify some of the rest:
- drop weapon speed and weapon vs. armour type
- drop the initiative system and replace with something dirt simple e.g. everyone rolls d6 each round, ties are allowed
- open up what races can be what classes, and how far they can advance (though keeping some restrictions to taste is fine too)
- drop the grappling rules and replace with...well, whatever you can dream up; they've never been done right yet
- (personal peeve) drop psyonics
- streamline the combat matrix somewhat
- give monsters the benefits they'd get from their stats e.g. hit/damage from strength, h.p. from con, etc.
- organize the books better, failing that at least provide a good index

But keep the overall philosophies:
- the DM worries about most of the mechanics while the players worry about the exploration, story, and characterizations
- the game-as-designed starts out somewhat gritty and evolves into heroic fantasy as it goes along (obviously this can be changed to suit each table)
- the math is loose enough that a bit of messing with the system doesn't break the game
- character archetypes are well supported
- magic isn't always the answer, it's risky and easily interrupted
- the concept of character build a la 3e/4e is almost nonexistent
- multiclassing is disadvantageous
- characters are usually simple enough that playing more than one at a time is easily possible if one wants
- character generation is relatively easy
- level advancement is a result of play rather than the reason for it
- the general feel is open-ended and somewhat random rather than pre-packaged
- guidelines, not rules

There are some very elegant mechanics in 1e that have been lost - cleric-vs.-undead turning matrix, resurrection and system shock survival rolls, teleport has risks, polymorph self has limits and poly. other is always unwelcome, revival from death costs you a con. point meaning death (usually) has permanent consequences, etc., etc.

I'd be tempted to use 2e as a jumping-off point instead except that at release it was missing too many things (lots of classes weren't there, all the evil was stripped out, etc.) and later on it became too bloated and unwieldy.

Not the most coherent answer, I realize, but it's a start.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

The first four, I have no real problems with, although, I generally wouldn't do the first one either. Too much the player getting what he wants without actually engaging his character. But numbers 5 and 6 I have no interest in. Very much not to my taste.

The players have engaged with something and I, as the DM, feel that I am bound by the mechanics of the game that we have all agreed to play. I view 5 and 6 as pure railroading and have not interest in playing in that game.

But how are 5 and 6 (guaranteed "no") any more or less railroad-y than 1 or 2 (guaranteed "yes")?

I don't care if the DM thinks I have a chance or not. I really, really don't. As a DM, my opinion of your chances don't matter either. I could think you have no chance, but, because your character has skills that you do not, you can still succeed.

By the same token, I-as-DM could think you have no chance of failing...you could roll a '1' on whatever you're trying and still sail through with flying colours. But if that is possible then the opposite must also be: that you'll sometimes hit situations where even a '20' won't get it done.

If I am dictating outcomes, I might as well simply write a story. I want to be surprised and I cannot, as the DM, be surprised if I am dictating outcomes. The joy of DMing, for me, comes with reacting to the players, not telling the players what happens.

Except that you are constantly telling the players what happens. In fact most player-DM conversations during play boil down to essentially this:

DM: "Here's the scene and situation"
Player(s): "I (we) do, or attempt, this"*
DM: "Here's what happens"*

* - these two things repeat until and unless there's a significant change in the scene or situation e.g. the party goes to another room, or a combat breaks out, or new people join a conversation, etc.

It matters not whether the DM has decided what happens beforehand or whether the outcome is left to a roll of dice, the "Here's what happens" part still happens regardless.

Lan-"there's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear"-efan

 

[Bluenose]

Simply put, because the Red Box is too simple, while (pre-UA) 1e already bakes in a lot of the relatively basic changes I'd add:
- class divorced from race - an Elf can be various classes, etc.
- more classes to support more archetypes
- all the levels of the game are there; where Red Box only has the low ones and BECMI splits them up.*
- a wider variety of spells, weapons, etc.

* - I can't speak to Rules Compendium at all as I don't own it and in fact have never even laid eyes on it.

Taking those points in order.

Some of the Gazetteers and other supplements provided alternative classes for various races, such as Dwarf clerics. Several retroclones .also provide alternatives, ACKS for example, which could quite easily be employed if desired. Making a new class for BECMI is not hard. I would say that is one of the places I'd divorce class and race, and treat the various racial classes as something any race could take.

I'm not convinced that more classes does support more archetypes. Particularly with the approach I suggest above above. Frankly a lot of the "archetypes" are things that either aren't really something that occurs much, or are better presented in systems that don't use classes at all - the Grey Mousaer, for instance, hardly works in any D&D edition.

The Rules Compendium does indeed cover levels up to 36, though not Immortals.

Why is that a good thing?

 

[Neonchameleon]

* - I can't speak to Rules Compendium at all as I don't own it and in fact have never even laid eyes on it.

$9.99 for the pdf on D&D Classics - a bargain. Also there are reasons it's been in the top 10 for a loooong time (If you discount products produced this month, the only things beating it are the Moldvay Red Box and Vault of the Dracolich - first published preview of D&D Next).

And it's well worth that $9.99

From this jumping-off pont it's pretty easy to strip out the uglier bits and simplify some of the rest:

And this is why I consider it a terrible starting point. If I need to hack the game before I can play it I consider that I've bought a defective product. Further I consider that it is incredibly unfriendly to newbies to tell them they need to master the game before they can play it. I want something that runs out of the box.

There are some very elegant mechanics in 1e that have been lost - cleric-vs.-undead turning matrix, resurrection and system shock survival rolls, teleport has risks, polymorph self has limits and poly. other is always unwelcome, revival from death costs you a con. point meaning death (usually) has permanent consequences, etc., etc.

I'd argue about the turning matrix being elegant. The rest? Again I'm going to say Rules Compendium. Which also has the advantage of being a single volume. I certainly am in favour of limiting wizards as much as possible. And in favour of bringing back the lost endgame - at level 10 the game changes and you get e.g. a castle.

you can get "better" at D&D by, for instance, learning more about human biology and hence learning new things to ask about goblins, who closely resemble human. Similarly, you can get better at D&D by reading books about polearms, hence getting a better idea of what options are available to your PC equipped with a Bohemian ear-spork

This is false in every version of D&D. Each game defines game components like "humans" and "biology" and "goblins". These are game terms relating to game constructs not the real world. Studying kings, queens, knights, and bishops will not make anyone better at Chess even though someone could try and construe it as a simulation. It isn't. It's a game to be played for what it is, not compared. At best, terms in D&D are clues to how game elements may work in those games. The actual elements operate as they are designed.

Can I ask just why you think you can define Gygax and Arneson and the games they played and ran to be outside the canon of D&D. D&D arose because Dave Arneson took Braunstein by the short and curlies, and instead of playing his role played that of Student Revolutionary Leader Pretending To Be CIA. Something that required knowledge of the real world and the assumptions of fellow players. His inspiration for creating D&D was doing the opposite of what you claim D&D is about. He then went back to the Castles and Crusades society and started them subverting the game and stepping outside the predefined rules in a way that made Gygax very confused because they were busy stealing each others magic swords rather than going to war as you would expect to happen in a wargame when people are carrying out their assigned roles. Gygax then invited Arneson to visit to demonstrate just what exactly they thought they were doing. (Source: Playing at the World). So your "It is about carrying out your assigned role" is directly contradicted by the reasons Arneson invented the early versions of D&D.

Gygax on the other hand definitely produced examples that flat out contradict your claim that you can't get better at the game by knowing about the real world. An obvious one (there are others) is the invention of the Ear Trumpet in D&D. In Gygax's games people kept listening at doors, something that slowed the game down. They could do this because the doors were meant to be doors and so sound could pass through them; had Gygax been playing in a strictly gamist manner of the style you advocate he could simply have declared doors to be soundproof. But no - that would have been changing the paradigm of D&D where real world knowledge mattered. (For that matter the players before 1974 often didn't have access to their character sheets and it was all handled behind the screen - Source: Mike Mornard). So what did Gygax do to prevent players listening at doors? He invented the Ear Seeker (source: 1E DMG). A grub that lives in doors and leaps into peoples ears if they try listening at them (source: 1e Monster Manual). So what did the players do? They used their knowledge of real world physics to invent the ear trumpet with a grille in it to catch the ear worms - a solution Gygax found irritating but acceptable. (Source: Gary Gygax on these boards). Ear trumpets were not a game component put in by Gygax.

When your description of the bounds that D&D must fall in doesn't have the space to contain Gygax and Arneson you are doing something wrong. You can play D&D however you like (unless it ends up as FATAL) and no one cares. But when you try to redefine D&D the way you are and say that no other way is D&D everyone who plays it another way has a right to be upset.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't care if the DM thinks I have a chance or not
...
If I am dictating outcomes, I might as well simply write a story.
...
To me, having the DM determine my success or failure without my engaging my character's mechanics is the least naturalistic way to experience events. I'm not succeeding or failing because of my character, I'm succeeding or failing because the DM wants a specific outcome.

Whether the DM thinks you have a chance or not is deeply embedded in the mechanics. If you try something that is impossible, he's the one who makes the call as to where that is.

For example, if you try to cast Magic Missile on the darkness, he's the one who says that the darkness isn't a valid target for the spell. If you try to spot the aromatic vapor wafting off of a rose, he's the one who tells you that isn't visible to the naked eye. If the player tries to use a Craft check to create the first computer, that's probably not happening. In these types of cases, he may allow you to try the action, which may involve rolling dice, or he may not. He may actually decide on a DC number that is arbitrarily high and unmakeable, or he may just say that the action fails. All of this is perfectly transparent and within the rules.

And somewhere, there's a line between possible and impossible, and the DM is deciding where that is. What if a character wants to bluff a cleric into believing his god doesn't exist? The cleric is brimming over with proof of the deity's existence and has devoted his life to the cause, but it is at least conceivable to imagine such a thing happening. Is that check possible? Maybe. Maybe not. And what if it's simply a character trying to talk to someone who refuses to speak to him, which is certainly conceivable. Is that check possible? Maybe. Maybe not. Somewhere the impossible ends and the possible begins, but where that is will vary considerably by DM.

And again, this is how the rules were intentionally designed.

***

It doesn't follow, however, that the DM is enacting what he wants to happen, his motivations are up to him. Another part of leadership is not always being selfish and doing what you want. Sometimes you might have to make a decision that isn't appealing to you because you think it's for the greater good. If the DM is dictating an outcome, that does not tell you very much at all about what he wants (and indeed, it's probably in his best interest to keep you in the dark about that). It simply tells you what happened.

It also doesn't follow that this constitutes sole authorship of the narrative, since a narrative is composed of more than one event. If a session consists of the DM simply telling the players what happened for four hours, then this might be a concern. But if it consists of him telling the players various things that happened for say, three hours, interspersed with an hour of the players' choices actually having a meaningful impact, and no one is quite clear on where one ends and the other begins, well that's a (probably very player-driven) collaborative game. As with life in general, playing D&D is about making the choices in front of you, which rarely amounts to complete control.