D&D 5E Was I in the wrong?

[pemerton]

Hence Galactus. Conjecture is just a fancy name for assumption. Assumptions are very often wrong.

When a mathematician makes a conjecture, s/he is not making an assumption.

Which is to say that conjecture is not at all a synonym for assumption. To conjecture means to guess, with reasons. Or, what is much the same thing, to hypothesise.

Thus, when Frodo said of the passage written above the door to Moria "It's a riddle!", he was conjecturing - making a reasoned guess. One could equally say that he was hypothesising. But obviously he was not assuming anything.

In this thread, based on the two relatively lengthy posts from the GM in question, and especially the second one which sets out the events of play in some detail, I am conjecturing that the ranger - who had just been "woken up" following the second melee - was on-hand when the items were bundled together.

I am also conjecturing - from the way the GM frequently talks about "the players" or "the PCs" in plural terms - that at this table there is a practice of, at least from time to time, treating the party as a gestalt. In my experience, this is a very common feature of D&D play. And in my view, at a table where this practice is adopted, it is unfair GMing to strongly enforce a disaggregation of PC knowledge and action just at the point where the loot is being sold.

For instance, why did the players have the ranger take the armour to sell, and not have the barbarian also go along? In post 134 we are told that the party splits up to undertake various tasks, but there is no indication that this was an important part of a party strategic plan. It just all looks like colour, not high-stakes decisio-making: these guys will do X, these other guys will do Y, we'll meet back at the tavern at the end of the day. It is the GM who retrospectively makes it high stakes by playing on the ranger player's uncertainty/ignorance. I don't think that is good GMing.

Also:

I feel that had he been paying attention he would have realized that the ring was still stuck to the gauntlet. I made sure to point it out (that the ring was stuck there) and they made no mention between putting the armor away and going to sell it of ever trying to remove the ring. They didn't even held an interest in getting a second look or trying to items out on their way to the city.
Seeing as they made no effort to remove the ring, I played it as the ring still being there, untouched and on the gauntlet's finger. The others all remembered and acknowledged the ring being stuck on the armor, yet the ranger somehow thought they had it stored somewhere else.
Simply put, I believe he just wasn't careful enough. This is also the same person that didn't even realize there was a set of magical gauntlets until we talked about it the next day.

[MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] and others - I believe that settles the question of whether or not the ranger knew there was a magic ring that had been affixed to the gauntlet.

I think it also illustrates my point about the GM unilaterally "disaggregating" the party's knowledge and intentions in a fashion which the table didn't seem to treat as a norm.

Anyway, I think that a GM who sets out to "punish" players by turning what the players are treating as mostly colour, "transition" scenes into high-stakes "action" scenes is likely to drive the game in a direction that s/he may later regret: it produces adversarial play and overly cautious action declaration. The players at least need to be told that the game is "always on". In this episode, it doesn't seem to me that they were.

 

[Maxperson]

When a mathematician makes a conjecture, s/he is not making an assumption.

Unless you're suggesting that 5+5=ranger was present, and 4+3=he wasn't, that's irrelevant. This is not a math problem.

Which is to say that conjecture is not at all a synonym for assumption. To conjecture means to guess, with reasons. Or, what is much the same thing, to hypothesise.

According to Thesaurus dot com, conjecture is a synonym for assume. Same with Meriam-Webster and others. When you assume something, you are usually using information to assume it, no different from conjecture. They are synonyms.

Thus, when Frodo said of the passage written above the door to Moria "It's a riddle!", he was conjecturing - making a reasoned guess. One could equally say that he was hypothesising. But obviously he was not assuming anything.

Incorrect. An assumption is usually also a reasoned guess. The only difference between the two is that conjecture will be reasoned, and an assumption, while this rarely happens, might not have reason as part of it.

In this thread, based on the two relatively lengthy posts from the GM in question, and especially the second one which sets out the events of play in some detail, I am conjecturing that the ranger - who had just been "woken up" following the second melee - was on-hand when the items were bundled together.

And using the same information and reason, I am assuming that the player of the ranger was aware of what was in the bundle.

For instance, why did the players have the ranger take the armour to sell, and not have the barbarian also go along? In post 134 we are told that the party splits up to undertake various tasks, but there is no indication that this was an important part of a party strategic plan. It just all looks like colour, not high-stakes decisio-making: these guys will do X, these other guys will do Y, we'll meet back at the tavern at the end of the day. It is the GM who retrospectively makes it high stakes by playing on the ranger player's uncertainty/ignorance. I don't think that is good GMing.

Probably because he was a barbarian. Barbarians tend to be coarse and blunt, which doesn't make for good negotiations.

Anyway, I think that a GM who sets out to "punish" players by turning what the players are treating as mostly colour, "transition" scenes into high-stakes "action" scenes is likely to drive the game in a direction that s/he may later regret: it produces adversarial play and overly cautious action declaration. The players at least need to be told that the game is "always on". In this episode, it doesn't seem to me that they were.

No punishment happened. Consequences don't equate to punishment. Something has to be intended to punish in order for it to be a punishment. Otherwise it's simply a consequence.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], do you actually use the word "conjecture" in your everyday life? Or are you just relying on the thesaurus without a sense for nuance?

A conjecture, or a guess, is something that is made at the end of a reasoning process - having noticed various salient factors, one then conjectures or guesses that such-and-such is the case.

An assumption, or a presumption, is something that is made at the start of a reasoning process - one takes for granted, or as given, that such-and-such is the case and then extrapolates from it.

A conjecture may also be an assumption, in the sense that one may conjecture that X is the case and then, relying on an assumption that X is the case, go on to make some further inference. This tells us that being a conjecture or being an assumption isn't an intrinsic property of some entertained proposition but rather is a relational property - ie it establishes the relationship of the proposition to the reasoning process in which it figures.

To return to my post: when I tell you that I am conjecturing that such-and-such a thing occurred, I am not telling you that I am assuming it to be so. I am telling you that I am guessing that it is so, and giving some reasons that support my guess. The fact that my conjecture might also figure as an assumption for the purposes of some other piece of reasoning is beside the point to what I have told you.

On another point: when you say "no punishment happened", did you not notice my use of inverted commas? I didn't use them by accident - I used the deliberately. I used "punish" in inverted commas because the interesting feature of the consequence is that it is adverse to the interests of the players, and not something they anticipated being in play, and appears to have been derived by the GM at least in part out of frustration that the player of the ranger had not remembered everything about the disposition of the ring and gauntlets. The GM appears to have been trying to teach the player of the ranger, and perhaps the players more generally, a lesson. Teaching someone a lesson by inflicting an adverse consequence upon them is something that is in the neighbourhood of punishment, even if not punishment in the most strict or literal sense. Hence my use of inverted commas.

And a side point: how do you know that punishment must be intended as such to be such. That is a relatively strong claim in the philosophy of punishment, and while accepted by most mainstream liberal philosophers, is in my view not self-evident. For instance, there are philosophical treatments of karma, for instance, that (i) analyse karma as a type of (self-inflicted) punishment, and (ii) analyse karma as a non-intentional process. Those treatments might be wrong, but they're not obviously self-contradictory.

 

[Aura]

I was thinking a bit about the 'ranger can't see details of objects in the armor bundle' scenario when I realized what felt so artificial about it: neither can the blacksmith. Now, granting the armor bundle could, theoretically, be turned this way and that to improve the view of any particular item so bundled, this is still not as good simply laying the individual items out on the counter where each individual item is in full view and can be seen in context of the others. Further, once laid out, each piece can be further moved, turned, examined from odd angles, etc.

Let us consider we are talking about plate armor. As mentioned, it is not a single item per se, we just view it as such for the purpose of game mechanics. To know if you have it all there, to know if some pieces fit properly to others, etc, will become more difficult (or even impossible for some questions, like proper fit) by heaving the items bundled as proposed. The individual condition (since the plate armor in question was damaged) of each item will be considerably more difficult to appraise. Add in the different styles of plate armor that are likely (almost surely, particularly if some plate armor has been around for a long time so there are ancient example as well) to exist in a game world, and the problem compounds if you try to appraise the item(s) while still bundled. Does this bundle have tassets? Should it have tassets? Does it have a right tasset and a left tasset, or two of the same? Or are they same left side and right? Questions, questions.

The blacksmith has too much to lose by not unbundling the presented items and laying them out so he can see them, so I have problems as seeing this scenario as likely.

As an aside, I don't see much value in pointing out how various people are making assumptions/conjecture/whatever as some sort of attempt to made all conjecture equivalent. It's not a matter of whether conjecture is made, it is. It's a matter of how good the conjecture is--how well it fits what we do know. In that context, well reasoned scenarios (even if they might have flaws, see above) encourage conversation and learning, and silly ones (Galactus springs to mind) don't have positive impact.

 

[Maxperson]

On another point: when you say "no punishment happened", did you not notice my use of inverted commas? I didn't use them by accident - I used the deliberately. I used "punish" in inverted commas because the interesting feature of the consequence is that it is adverse to the interests of the players, and not something they anticipated being in play, and appears to have been derived by the GM at least in part out of frustration that the player of the ranger had not remembered everything about the disposition of the ring and gauntlets. The GM appears to have been trying to teach the player of the ranger, and perhaps the players more generally, a lesson. Teaching someone a lesson by inflicting an adverse consequence upon them is something that is in the neighbourhood of punishment, even if not punishment in the most strict or literal sense. Hence my use of inverted commas.

And a side point: how do you know that punishment must be intended as such to be such. That is a relatively strong claim in the philosophy of punishment, and while accepted by most mainstream liberal philosophers, is in my view not self-evident. For instance, there are philosophical treatments of karma, for instance, that (i) analyse karma as a type of (self-inflicted) punishment, and (ii) analyse karma as a non-intentional process. Those treatments might be wrong, but they're not obviously self-contradictory.

Whenever I've seen anyone use karma as an explanation for something bad happening, the context has been that the universe punished the person for something. It was an intentional act by the "universe", not some random thing or self-inflicted.

 

[Yardiff]

I was thinking a bit about the 'ranger can't see details of objects in the armor bundle' scenario when I realized what felt so artificial about it: neither can the blacksmith. Now, granting the armor bundle could, theoretically, be turned this way and that to improve the view of any particular item so bundled, this is still not as good simply laying the individual items out on the counter where each individual item is in full view and can be seen in context of the others. Further, once laid out, each piece can be further moved, turned, examined from odd angles, etc.

Let us consider we are talking about plate armor. As mentioned, it is not a single item per se, we just view it as such for the purpose of game mechanics. To know if you have it all there, to know if some pieces fit properly to others, etc, will become more difficult (or even impossible for some questions, like proper fit) by heaving the items bundled as proposed. The individual condition (since the plate armor in question was damaged) of each item will be considerably more difficult to appraise. Add in the different styles of plate armor that are likely (almost surely, particularly if some plate armor has been around for a long time so there are ancient example as well) to exist in a game world, and the problem compounds if you try to appraise the item(s) while still bundled. Does this bundle have tassets? Should it have tassets? Does it have a right tasset and a left tasset, or two of the same? Or are they same left side and right? Questions, questions.

The blacksmith has too much to lose by not unbundling the presented items and laying them out so he can see them, so I have problems as seeing this scenario as likely.

As an aside, I don't see much value in pointing out how various people are making assumptions/conjecture/whatever as some sort of attempt to made all conjecture equivalent. It's not a matter of whether conjecture is made, it is. It's a matter of how good the conjecture is--how well it fits what we do know. In that context, well reasoned scenarios (even if they might have flaws, see above) encourage conversation and learning, and silly ones (Galactus springs to mind) don't have positive impact.

One thing your missing is that when the smith saw the ring (which could still very easily be concealed) he stopped removing pieces from the bundle and then asked the ranger 'all of it'. This fit with the smith being shady.

 

[Maxperson]

One thing your missing is that when the smith saw the ring (which could still very easily be concealed) he stopped removing pieces from the bundle and then asked the ranger 'all of it'. This fit with the smith being shady.

Yeah. Gauntlets are a small part of a set of armor and easily concealed along with the ring.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

[MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] and others - I believe that settles the question of whether or not the ranger knew there was a magic ring that had been affixed to the gauntlet.

I think it also illustrates my point about the GM unilaterally "disaggregating" the party's knowledge and intentions in a fashion which the table didn't seem to treat as a norm.

Anyway, I think that a GM who sets out to "punish" players by turning what the players are treating as mostly colour, "transition" scenes into high-stakes "action" scenes is likely to drive the game in a direction that s/he may later regret: it produces adversarial play and overly cautious action declaration. The players at least need to be told that the game is "always on". In this episode, it doesn't seem to me that they were.

Well, when the various posts from the original poster are somewhat contradictory - I pointed out several quotes that made it seem pretty clear that the ranger didn't know about the ring or the gauntlets at all, I don't think we can ever really "settle" this. I agree with you that one possible read of the information presented would mean that the ranger probably knew about the ring at the very least. But another read can also come to a different conclusion. Unless the ranger, or the DM after verifying it with the ranger, reports back, we won't. But I also think it doesn't really matter.

But I'm not attempting to settle anything. As I've said before, whatever happened at that table is really between the folks at that table. I'm looking at it from a bigger picture as how I (or others) can determine whether a scenario like this is usable in my campaign, and how to do it in a way that won't result in there being a question of it being fair. For me, I think it's perfectly acceptable, and I have learned some things that will help with my game in similar situations, as well as other scenarios that have nothing to do with this particular circumstance. So I'm very happy with where the discussion has led. YMMV.

I don't disagree that it's important not to disaggregate the party's knowledge and intentions from the table norm. I really don't think we have enough info to know if that's what really happened at their table, but again I don't really care. That's their table and their problem. And again I've learned quite a bit to help ensure that doesn't happen at my table.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I was thinking a bit about the 'ranger can't see details of objects in the armor bundle' scenario when I realized what felt so artificial about it: neither can the blacksmith. Now, granting the armor bundle could, theoretically, be turned this way and that to improve the view of any particular item so bundled, this is still not as good simply laying the individual items out on the counter where each individual item is in full view and can be seen in context of the others. Further, once laid out, each piece can be further moved, turned, examined from odd angles, etc.

Let us consider we are talking about plate armor. As mentioned, it is not a single item per se, we just view it as such for the purpose of game mechanics. To know if you have it all there, to know if some pieces fit properly to others, etc, will become more difficult (or even impossible for some questions, like proper fit) by heaving the items bundled as proposed. The individual condition (since the plate armor in question was damaged) of each item will be considerably more difficult to appraise. Add in the different styles of plate armor that are likely (almost surely, particularly if some plate armor has been around for a long time so there are ancient example as well) to exist in a game world, and the problem compounds if you try to appraise the item(s) while still bundled. Does this bundle have tassets? Should it have tassets? Does it have a right tasset and a left tasset, or two of the same? Or are they same left side and right? Questions, questions.

The blacksmith has too much to lose by not unbundling the presented items and laying them out so he can see them, so I have problems as seeing this scenario as likely.

As an aside, I don't see much value in pointing out how various people are making assumptions/conjecture/whatever as some sort of attempt to made all conjecture equivalent. It's not a matter of whether conjecture is made, it is. It's a matter of how good the conjecture is--how well it fits what we do know. In that context, well reasoned scenarios (even if they might have flaws, see above) encourage conversation and learning, and silly ones (Galactus springs to mind) don't have positive impact.

Well, unless the smith sees a lot of plate armor, and he knows he can repair/replace any missing parts, and he can see it's somewhat beat up already, so he's just doing a cursory look-over to make sure the major parts are there.

Even if he was intending (or starting) to unbundle it, once he noticed the ring he stopped.

For example, you're running a gaming store, and somebody brings in a stack of Magic: The Gathering cards. Unless they indicate there is something of unique value, you'll just skim through the deck, look at the general condition and give a price based on the assumption that it's full of pretty common cards. If the seller objects, then you might dig deeper to see if it's worth more than you're offering. Otherwise it's just a quick transaction, and if you noticed a really valuable card in your cursory look that they didn't appear to know about, all the better for you.

So the assumption is that the smith is an expert in his field, knows more or less what he's looking at right off the bat, then just needs to poke around enough to make sure everything is there. Then it really depends on whether he's low balling it or not, but once he's noticed the ring he's confident he'll be able to make a profit and doesn't need to look any further.

Part of my point is that we all have different experiences. I've worked a lot in retail, among other things. I've done thousands of returns, and purchases as well. It just doesn't take much effort. Once in a great while I've made a mistake. So we can each read the OP and updates differently based on our experiences. Combine that with the fact that what each table finds appropriate for play, there's no way for us to all come to a consensus. I don't need to convince you, nor do you need to convince me. But it is a great opportunity for each of us to bring back to our table and learn from it. That is, to learn what works well for us.

Ilbranteloth

 

[pemerton]

Whenever I've seen anyone use karma as an explanation for something bad happening, the context has been that the universe punished the person for something. It was an intentional act by the "universe", not some random thing or self-inflicted.

I was talking not just about popular usage, or popular usage among Americans, but the more serious discussions in the philosophical literature.