The Trouble With Rules Discussions

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I used to be a stickler about needing to have magic items identified and researched before telling the players what they really have.

But after the nth time you hear "I hit AC xx...plus or minus any bonuses my sword might have, and I deal 11 damage, plus or minus any special abilities my sword might have" from a player, it's just far easier to say "it's a +2 sword that deals an additional d6 radiant damage to fiends".
 

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Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I used to be a stickler about needing to have magic items identified and researched before telling the players what they really have.

But after the nth time you hear "I hit AC xx...plus or minus any bonuses my sword might have, and I deal 11 damage, plus or minus any special abilities my sword might have" from a player, it's just far easier to say "it's a +2 sword that deals an additional d6 radiant damage to fiends".

You're missing out on all the dramatic tension of a player not being sure if it's +1 or +2!


...


I jest.

Personally I don't see that scenario being even remotely relevant to the discussion, except maybe as an illustration of why simple "+" magic items are boring and shouldn't even be in the game.
 

pemerton

Legend
I don't think the distinction between resolving a question by rolling on a table and letting the referee arbitrarily choose is enough to call one a game, and one not.
I'm not talking about resolving a question by rolling on a table. I'm talking about resolving a question by applying action resolution rules.

You've read some of my Torchbearer actual play, so I think you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.
 

Pedantic

Legend
I used to be a stickler about needing to have magic items identified and researched before telling the players what they really have.

But after the nth time you hear "I hit AC xx...plus or minus any bonuses my sword might have, and I deal 11 damage, plus or minus any special abilities my sword might have" from a player, it's just far easier to say "it's a +2 sword that deals an additional d6 radiant damage to fiends".
If you actually want that loop (and I'd argue it's better as a rare spice than a consistent thing) what you want us an item with traits that are empowered by a ritual, or a material that can be forged into a magic item, to delay the reward until they get back to town/finish the quest/have a day off to do the ritual or whatever.
 

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
You're missing out on all the dramatic tension of a player not being sure if it's +1 or +2!


...


I jest.

Personally I don't see that scenario being even remotely relevant to the discussion, except maybe as an illustration of why simple "+" magic items are boring and shouldn't even be in the game.
I forgot to quote Bill Zebub, since he mentioned how it's more interesting to have magic items be mysterious.
 

Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I'm not talking about resolving a question by rolling on a table. I'm talking about resolving a question by applying action resolution rules.

You've read some of my Torchbearer actual play, so I think you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Oh, interesting.

Sure, I do get that Torchbearer action resolution rules have a lot more depth and player engagement than rolling on tables, and I wasn't trying to trivialize that. I was just contrasting things that fall into the category of 'following rules' with things that are in the category of 'somebody just makes it up.' I wasn't trying to denigrate rule-following by using a shallow example, was just trying to simplify the argument.
 

Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
I forgot to quote Bill Zebub, since he mentioned how it's more interesting to have magic items be mysterious.

I see. That was generalizing my argument much too far. I wasn't trying to say that because unknown qualities of magic items can make the game more interesting, therefore all qualities of all magic items should be unknown. Nor do I believe that all qualities of all monsters should always be unknown. But for the same reason that we want some monsters (and non-monster NPCs, and dungeon layouts) to have some surprises, players don't always have to know the exact rules that their magic items follow.

I mean, that's basically the whole premise of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. "Since it makes you invisible it must be a Ring of Power, maybe even the One Ring, so you need to make sure you're at least 10 yards away from it every 24 hours to prevent it's corruptive power from affecting you." "The Halfling should get it; they only need to reset it once a week. It's a racial bonus." "I would have rather had the +2 Dex, tbh."
 

Bill Zebub

“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
If you actually want that loop (and I'd argue it's better as a rare spice than a consistent thing) what you want us an item with traits that are empowered by a ritual, or a material that can be forged into a magic item, to delay the reward until they get back to town/finish the quest/have a day off to do the ritual or whatever.

Or just make your basic +X weapons a function of quality, not magic.
 

pemerton

Legend
Oh, interesting.

Sure, I do get that Torchbearer action resolution rules have a lot more depth and player engagement than rolling on tables, and I wasn't trying to trivialize that. I was just contrasting things that fall into the category of 'following rules' with things that are in the category of 'somebody just makes it up.' I wasn't trying to denigrate rule-following by using a shallow example, was just trying to simplify the argument.
I get that, and am not meaning to impute any bad faith.

But I'm focusing on the issue (hopefully without harping on it too much!) because I think it picks up a key issue that, although it recurs in discussion, seems often to be ignored - or not to have its full significance recognised.

I was thinking of another (imaginary) example cycling home this afternoon: think of the example of play from Moldvay's Basic rulebook (B28, following on from B60 despite the lack of sequentiality), when the Hobgoblins turn up (due to a wandering monster role by the GM) and Silverleaf's player says that

Silverleaf steps forward with both hands empty in a token of friendship, and says "Greetings, noble dwellers of deep caverns, can we help you?"​

The example goes on:

The DM decides that Silverleaf's open hands and words in the hobgoblins' language are worth +1 when checking for reaction. Unfortunately the DM rolls a 4 (on 2d6) which, even adjusted to 5, is not a good reaction.​

Suppose that the GM had decided that open outreached hands are taken as an insult by hobgoblins, and so had applied a penalty to the roll. I think that would be pretty outrageous! Whereas suppose the GM had introduced that fiction to explain the poor reaction result, then that would be integrating the unfolding fiction, plus the result of the roll, in a way that produces something interesting, has the sort of surprise you talked about (albeit for a gesture rather than an item, but hopefully you can see the point nevertheless), but doesn't involve the GM just springing a hosing on the players.

The more general point is this, I think: declaring actions for their character is the most common and important sort of "move" that players make when playing a RPG. Having the GM just decide that things fail will tend to be a let down, or even experienced as adversarial. Whereas in a game that uses luck (ie dice rolls) to help determine whether moves succeed or fail, losing because you rolled badly is part of the game.

I haven't quite thought through how this would work in the context of a magic item - the obvious way would be for use of the item to require a roll, and then to build up the fiction around failed rolls, but that may not work for D&D.

Still, I hope you can see what I'm getting at, in contrasting play of the game with storytelling.
 

aco175

Legend
After the slippers of spider climbing initial argument we had another later in the campaign. I wanted to borrow another PCs ring of water walking to use with the slippers to walk up a waterfall and sneak into the bad guy lair. I thought I would be able to walk up the waterfall since the ring allowed one to walk across running water. His argument was that the water was flowing faster than my speed so I would not make any progress and later in the discussion, it was brought up that standing in a river would still push you downstream even though you were not touching it. I was thinking that not actually touching part meant that water would just flow under you.

I think it ended up with the point of the slippers needing to touch the wall and ceiling to stick to them and the ring not actually touching part meant they would not work together.
 

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