D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?

[clearstream]

The rule say that "The referee should set the throw required" and then gives examples. Page 20 of Book 1 (1977 version) also states the following general set of principles:

It is impossible for any table of information to cover all aspects of every potential situation, and the above listing is by no means complete in its coverage of the effects of skills. This is where the referee becomes an important part of the game process. The above listing of skills and game effects must necessarily be taken as a guide, and followed, altered, or ignored as the actual situation dictates. . . .​

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In order to be consistent (and a consistent universe makes the game both fun and interesting), the referee has a responsibility to record the throws and DMs he creates, and to note (perhaps by penciling in) any throws he alters from those given in these books.​

The throw required for the location of good guns at a good price is 9+. That suggest the throw to learn where the dirt is is probably 10+, maybe 11+ if it's extremely well-concealed dirt. To actually get the dirt would sound like 12+ to me.

Again, you choose the DM. That is what you are doing here. You take a principled approach to that choice, but nothing in the rules prevents you from deciding that getting the dirt is 15+ or whatever number the players can't hit.

This is not the same as the Traveller rules I've cited. Nowhere does it talk about getting what you want, only about getting a creature to agree. You can get a creature to tell you, honestly, what it believes. But who gets to decide what it believes, and whether or not those beliefs are true? The Traveller Streetwise mechanic completely bypasses those questions. Success doesn't mean This NPC tells you something they think is true. It means You know how to obtain the item/service in question - licences, illegal guns, or whatever it might be.

The location of the decision is in a different place, that's the only difference. Instead of "What is the DM?" it's "What does the accountant know?" Both are answered according to what has gone before, descriptions, principles. Players can take additional actions to improve things - insight or investigation can be used... an ongoing conversation.

 

[soviet]

Sure. I'd just add that in some instances the activity being done to 'make things happen' in the story has the result fictionally follow from being successful at the activity. Beating a bad guys face with a purse full of bricks using your inner strength with the intent of knocking him out till police arrive would be a good example of an activity where all the results directly followed from being fictionally successful at that activity.

However, one could use inner strength to bust open a safe with the intent of finding incriminating evidence against a particular NPC. In this case only part of your results directly follow from being fictionally successful at the activity. The part where you open the safe. What papers are in it doesn't fictionally depend upon your inner strength.

That's the difference I'm talking about.

I think what I'm trying to get at is that in a narrativist style game, that sense of logical cause and effect might not matter. Again, a skill is simply a way of making things happen in the story. Whether such an impact is 100% plausible is not relevant.

Clumsy Wholesomeness is an interesting example. I'm not quite sure the kinds of X you could fictionally justify doing with clumsy wholesomeness. Which I think is what's making it so hard to analyze.

Well, it can do whatever the player can stretch it to do. Things like attack people but appear to have simply stumbled into them by accident, or disarm the bomb by spilling your coffee on it.

Sure, but those approaches can either lead to results that all follow from being fictionally successful at that activity or as shown above, maybe one fictional result follows from the success of the activity and the other doesn't.

Again this kind of logical causality is not what's being looked for. In a story, would this work? is the threshold. Actually safes of this era are constructed of... is not.

 

[pemerton]

Again, you choose the DM. That is what you are doing here. You take a principled approach to that choice, but nothing in the rules prevents you from deciding that getting the dirt is 15+ or whatever number the players can't hit.


The location of the decision is in a different place, that's the only difference. Instead of "What is the DM?" it's "What does the accountant know?" Both are answered according to what has gone before, descriptions, principles. Players can take additional actions to improve things - insight or investigation can be used... an ongoing conversation.

You talk as if this is a trivial difference. Given that all RPGing involves establishing shared fiction, and that this is all about decision, the only difference between different approaches to RPGing is what decisions are made by whom, in relation to what, in accordance with what principles.

It may be good or bad GMing to set a throw required of 16+ - impossible without Streetwise 4+, which is a very high skill rating in Classic Traveller - but the player knows what has been done. They know that they cannot succeed on the check. They know that their PC does not know where to find guns, or licences, or dirt.

Deciding what the accountant believes, and whether or not that belief is true, is opaque to the players. They don't know if what the accountant tells them is accurate. It's secret to the GM.

I mean that I read several of your posts up-threads, and principles like, don't say something implausible, and many more, are all applicable to those at the table. You were writing them with a specific purpose in mind, so you have to make the necessary changes while not affecting the main point at issue here.

What are the necessary changes?

I mean, it's plausible that the accountant is ignorant of the other documents in the safe. Or has been fooled by dummy documents. Or any other of an infinite range of possibilities.

 

[clearstream]

Given that all RPGing involves establishing shared fiction, and that this is all about decision, the only difference between different approaches to RPGing is what decisions are made by whom, in relation to what, in accordance with what principles.

Exactly. That is what I have been emphasising the whole time.

It may be good or bad GMing to set a throw required of 16+ - impossible without Streetwise 4+, which is a very high skill rating in Classic Traveller - but the player knows what has been done. They know that they cannot succeed on the check. They know that their PC does not know where to find guns, or licences, or dirt.

In 5e Social Interaction, the player knows what has been done. Frex - they know that the accountant has done as asked - e.g. truthfully told them all they know about the location of the dirt - but unfortunately does not know its location... if that would follow from the conversation up to now.

Quoting again for emphasis

The above listing of skills and game effects must necessarily be taken as a guide, and followed, altered, or ignored as the actual situation dictates. . . .

Referee can decide whether to alter or ignore skills and game effects.

 

[clearstream]

I mean, it's plausible that the accountant is ignorant of the other documents in the safe. Or has been fooled by dummy documents. Or any other of an infinite range of possibilities.

To check this, do you mean that wherever you wrote up thread anything to the effect that players would say what was plausible (or avoid saying what is implausible) you now say that the test of plausibility offers no value because the options are infinite?

I feel that I must be mistaking your intent. Can you say what value you saw in implying that players would avoid saying anything implausible?

 

[Campbell]

Here's my fundamental perspective :

Saying what follows as a group is what we do in every roleplaying game ever designed or will be designed. The question at stake here is how we are actually going about the conversation. What's the process? What are the animating forces? What are we permitted to do? What are we expected to do? Who decides what? How do they decide? What constraints are they under? How do we maintain accountability with each other?

This stuff doesn't just happen naturally. We have to make it happen. We do that in vastly different ways. I want to actually talk about those different ways and what their implications are.

@clearstream

Do you have something more specific in mind when it comes to saying what follows? What's the process? What are the constraints? What are the GM's duties? What are the player's responsibilities?

 

[Aldarc]

In some narrativist-facing games, having a high rating in a particular skill is less about measuring their observable ability in that activity within the gameworld and more about their ability to use that activity to make things happen in the story. The two things are orthogonal. My character might be visibly much stronger than yours in the gameworld, and we will reflect that trait in our general narration, but in a conflict I am a Clark Kent type and rely on my Clumsy Wholesomeness score. Your character is a fierce and independent single mom who might look small and non-threatening but in a crisis her Inner Strength trait comes out and she's lifting cars off children and smashing robbers to the ground with her brick-filled purse. The numbers are defining the character's approach to problems as a protagonist rather than their actual capabilities as a person.

This is fairly explicit in The Book of Hanz, which was written on Google+ as a primer for Fate:

One of the things I really appreciate about Fate is the idea that skills represent your final ability to influence a scene - not your base ability that's then modified by a gazillion other factors. This ties in pretty heavily with the charop point above.

A similar echo is found in Cortex. Characters in Smallville RPG, for example, are primarily defined by their Distinctions, Relationships, and Values. Clark Kent doesn't have a Strength score in the game, though he does have special abilities that represent his power set.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think what I'm trying to get at is that in a narrativist style game, that sense of logical cause and effect might not matter. Again, a skill is simply a way of making things happen in the story. Whether such an impact is 100% plausible is not relevant.

The best way I'd see to put it is that the die rolls in something like PbtA games are (in theory) not actually representing the skill of the character or other simulation factors; they're stand ins for how significant his actions are in how the story is playing out and who gets to decide in the moment what that is. That doesn't mean plausibility isn't a factor, but its a factor at a different level than what the die roll is doing.

Or the way I might think of it "I think this is the dramatically appropriate thing to happen at the moment; lets see if the die rolls and the assigned weight of that sort of thing to this character agree with me." That up-front assessment can very well factor in plausibility among its consideration (its going on inside someone's head after all) but there's no particular requirement for it to do so.

Again this kind of logical causality is not what's being looked for. In a story, would this work? is the threshold. Actually safes of this era are constructed of... is not.

Well, it might be if its the sort of story where the second is liable to be viewed as important. Its just not handled at the resolution level.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Maybe @clearstream quoted an inaccurate source, but the source he cited does use the word 'information'


Quote for all to see

Yeah, but the underlined part IS weaker in the 1981 version. In 1977 the throw will 'obtain any item specified by the players', and the 1981 version relates to 'various activities desired by the characters'. Now, I agree that the next part is identical, which is some examples that are all names, information, etc.). The previous paragraph in both also says "Streetwise allows contact for the purposes of..." and I think, based on the examples, that 'contact' is intended to mean that the skill involves making contact with people who supply or are 'shady or borderline'. I don't recall personally interpreting it as being a free ticket (in the 1977 text) to just be handed a gun, or a nuclear bomb(!) without any other intervening actions being required. If, using the 1977 text, the player rolled Streetwise with the avowed intent "I want a nuclear device" the check would produce, at best, some sort of cryptic indirect contact with some sort of very very shady and exceedingly dangerous people! Getting a bomb from them would undoubtedly be a very problematic undertaking. OTOH, as written, if the player succeeds in the check, which the GM is allowed to make very difficult, they ARE entitled to the information, the GM is not empowered by the text to invalidate the toss of the dice. In that sense I agree with @pemerton, and I'd even say that the 1981 version doesn't, in and of itself, really change that, though the bulk of the rest of the rules text may tend to do so.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It always feels more like you are talking past rather than truly understanding and engaging the criticism.

I mean we even have a concrete example of what we are talking about. A PC opens a safe with whatever 'skill' is fictionally appropriate for his stated method of doing so and he has the purpose of finding incriminating evidence on a particular NPC. The player rolls and succeeds with no complication. He both opens the safe using his method and gets incriminating evidence. The safe opening is tied to the skill used in the check but that's only tangential because this a conflict resolution check about the players intent for papers being found and finding those papers has absolutely nothing to do with the skill used to open the safe and absolutely nothing to do with any skill the PC has (other than perhaps 'Luck', if that's a skill in the game).

As always this assumes a few things not stated but that shouldn't be controversial.
1. The papers weren't already established as being in the safe via some process that alrady occcured.
2. The player is in a conflict resolution system and not a task resolution system.
3. Etc.

I assume you are addressing your concern with the DC of opening the safe and the idea that the PC's safecracking ability is determining the existence of the letters in the safe. This is addressed in a number of ways (I'm not going to go back and try to dig up places where posters have done this before, but I observe that they have done so several times). First of all, the existence of the letters in the safe is determined not by the results of the check, but by the character's intent. In terms of in-world reasoning we imagine that the character has reasons to believe this is the correct safe to crack. It turns out she is right! If the safecracking attempt fails, well, maybe its because the safe is too tough, or possibly something else (the GM will have to determine the consequences in most SN systems I'm familiar with). The point is, while the safecracking check may REVEAL the presence or absence of the letters, it isn't CAUSATIVE of it, certainly not in the fiction!

Secondly, the DC of the check is set based on the character's chances of cracking the safe because that is the proximate path to achieving the goal. The purpose of this design, as @pemerton just explained in 2171 is that it allows reasoning about the world. It also gives some teeth to the choices of 'skills' by the players for their PCs. The guy with good safecracking is, not surprisingly, going to have adventures where they crack safes and cool stuff happens! I mean, why else would I make a character that is a safe cracker? That's the whole thrust of this kind of agenda! As a player I get to decide what sort of stuff the story is about, safecracking, instead of, say, backstabbing, poisoning, or pick pocketing (just to name a few things that often get packaged together in FRPGs).