D&D General The Great Railroad Thread

[EzekielRaiden]

It's actually very common. If the rules aren't just suggestions, then the DM can't change any of them. Yet he can, so they are just suggested rules. Most people I've interacted with here understand that the DM can change or add rules, which makes RAW just suggested rules to follow.

That said, the overwhelming number of the "rule suggestions" are followed by DMs. There aren't many DMs who want to write a whole new game or even most of one. They just going to follow the rules 95%+ of the time and make some house rules for the remaining few percentage points.

They also are not doing it on whims or unfairly pretending to follow them.

Suggestions are cobwebs. Ephemera. They're literally less than nothing--because if it were nothing, at least the players would know that there were nothing between them and the GM's whims.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Suggestions are cobwebs. Ephemera. They're literally less than nothing--because if it were nothing, at least the players would know that there were nothing between them and the GM's whims.

No. They mean that things will usually work in certain way, with the caveat that there might be some exceptions.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No. They mean that things will usually work in certain way, with the caveat that there might be some exceptions.

That's what a rule is.

That's literally what a rule is.

It tells you how things will work.

Exceptions--if justified--always exist for anything. Always. That's the nature of playing games.

Insisting that the rules are suggestions means they mean absolutely, positively nothing at all. They are ephemera that will be cast aside whenever, for any reason or no reason at all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's what a rule is.

That's literally what a rule is.

It tells you how things will work.

Exceptions--if justified--always exist for anything. Always. That's the nature of playing games.

Insisting that the rules are suggestions means they mean absolutely, positively nothing at all. They are ephemera that will be cast aside whenever, for any reason or no reason at all.

One might argue that rules of a game tend to be pretty inviolable. Like we cannot just decide in chess that a bishop can this time move diagonally because they do a cool stunt. But we allow that sort of exceptions with RPG rules all the time, which makes them more like guidelines rather than hard and fast rules.

In any case, seem like this is mostly a semantic issue.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One might argue that rules of a game tend to be pretty inviolable. Like we cannot just decide in chess that a bishop can this time move diagonally because they do a cool stunt.

Sure we can. It would be foolish to do so, but who are these Chess Police that are doing this?

Remember, the game we call "chess" today was a controversial house-rule in Medieval Europe, mocked for being "mad queens" chess--but the house rule was incredibly popular, and today, it would be impossible to envision "chess", as we understand it, without the incredibly powerful queen.

You have always had this power. It is something you have inherently by having will.

But we allow that sort of exceptions with RPG rules all the time, which makes them more like guidelines rather than hard and fast rules.

Those exceptions do not make them "guidelines". They make them rules that we understand are adopted at our will. We not only can, not only should, but must examine them as we use them and ask ourselves whether they serve. That's a necessary component of having rules.

If the rules are in fact actually designed well, we should need to intervene only extremely rarely. As in, intervention should be a surprise. The fact that anyone thinks intervention should be a constant, nearly-every-moment thing is, flatly, ridiculous. If any other interactive thing were as buggy, broken, stupid, and self-contradicting as D&D rules are, people would be screaming the creators/organizers into deafness!

In any case, seem like this is mostly a semantic issue.

Absolutely not. Because, even if we leave aside the use of "the rules are suggestions" to prop up actively deceptive and manipulative GMing, this specific thing is continually used to excuse and justify the rules being absolute trash. It is the Oberoni fallacy writ large; the Oberoni fallacy not used as an argument, but as the bloody founding stone of the design itself.

"The rules are $#!%, but that's fine because we'll just ignore them whenever they're $#!%."

It is the excuse constantly justifying the lack of effort on designers' parts to actually test and review the rules they make. And I am so, so sick of that. We not only can, but should, demand more.

 

[MrBeens304]

I think my words may have made it unclear.

Nearly all 5e games I've played have started at level 1. With the exception of Hussar's group, literally 100% of those games have failed to reach level 4.

I have never seen a 5e game that (a) started out at level 1 and (b) actually reached level 4.

I have seen 5e games that did reach level 4--they just didn't start at level 1. Specifically, I've had one that started at level 5 and another that started at 6, I think? Can't remember, that was a PbP game.

Wow - that just sounds utterly miserable. I'm surprised you are still playing.
Is this typical of the "playing with random people" experience? Puts some extra context behind some of the stuff you put in the "conservatism" mega thread
I'm lucky in that outside of convention one shots I've only played any TTRPGs with 2 long term groups of friends.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Wow - that just sounds utterly miserable. I'm surprised you are still playing.

The only reason I am is because another user here, Hussar, very kindly offered to let me join his group, and he has been nothing but a great GM, so I have no complaints.

And yes, my experience with 5e has been miserable (outside of Hussar's campaigns; again I want to stress how distinctly different he has been from all prior 5e GMs). A very large portion of it has come from either GMs being cavalier about the rules, GMs acting with impunity when they should have been more circumspect, or player characters being extremely fragile and ineffectual at low levels. And "low levels" (e.g. 1-3), prior to Hussar's games, were the only levels I ever got to experience.

The designers supposedly designed the game such that people were supposed to skip to level 3 and ignore levels 1 and 2 because they're so fast and don't add much gameplay value outside of new players or people who really really want that gritty feel. My experience has been that very nearly 100% of GMs demand that play start at 1st level merely because it is "first", because you start with the "first" thing, that's what being "first" means, regardless of the consequences that entails.

Is this typical of the "playing with random people" experience? Puts some extra context behind some of the stuff you put in the "conservatism" mega thread
I'm lucky in that outside of convention one shots I've only played any TTRPGs with 2 long term groups of friends.

I cannot say if it is typical or not. I have no good evidence to say that anything else is typical. I have been told by several that it is atypical, but that's really all I have, being told it.

And yes, this is a big part of why I am rather skeptical about some of the alleged value that comes from various elements of 5e's design. I was already skeptical and a bit of a sourpuss beforehand, having felt burned and mocked by the "D&D Next" playtest, since I really loved 4e. The few times I have in fact given 5e a try, it has...not gone well, despite my efforts to the contrary. (I did seek out 4e games first, to be clear, and then non-D&D games that were similar to 4e such as 13A, and then games that weren't even similar to 4e but were still non-D&D, and then even tried giving Pathfinder 1e--2e wasn't quite out yet--a space because at least I can kinda enjoy its gonzo rules. Then I finally said, "Okay, I guess the only way I'm getting to game at all is to play 5e", and thus genuinely tried to give it a shot.)

 

[AnotherGuy]

The designers supposedly designed the game such that people were supposed to skip to level 3 and ignore levels 1 and 2 because they're so fast and don't add much gameplay value outside of new players or people who really really want that gritty feel. My experience has been that very nearly 100% of GMs demand that play start at 1st level merely because it is "first", because you start with the "first" thing, that's what being "first" means, regardless of the consequences that entails.

I'm not convinced that starting 1st or 3rd or whatever is the reason your experience has been poor, unless you put it all down to the TPKs and the GMs were great otherwise until the combat fell apart.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@EzekielRaiden I'm not terribly interested getting deeper into guideline/rule semantic quagmire. But I agree with you that overriding the rules should be rare, and if one finds that they need to constantly do so to get the results they want, then the rules are bad — at least for the purpose one is trying to use them for.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm not convinced that starting 1st or 3rd or whatever is the reason your experience has been poor, unless you put it all down to the TPKs and the GMs were great otherwise until the combat fell apart.

I mean, I don't think it could have done anything to help, that's for sure. Whether they were great otherwise, I can't say. They never really got that much chance....but it certainly didn't feel great to have my warnings brushed off or, worse, met with (what seemed to me like) extreme hostility.

I'm personally more of the opinion that the weak design of the early levels (due to them trying to serve three masters and failing to actually serve any of them all that much), coupled with the radical, overweening dependence on GM skill, coupled with the painful dearth of actual guidance in the 5.0 DMG, is what led to this experience.

I have argued as much in many different threads over the years.