D&D General Why Editions Don't Matter

[Thomas Shey]

I am probably recalling it from Amber Diceless, and I always took it as an admonishment to A) only detail things mechanically which are interesting and B) only have decision points if they are truly going to matter (you always have one of at least goal setting).

Its a pretty old principal at this point that only rolling when things will matter is good practice. The problem usually is that people can have radically different thresholds as to what constitutes "matter".

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

We're really going to do this? OK.

Sure. Let's.

This is the part you quoted-

Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two Critical Hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks—or worse, that you’re playing favorites.

And this is what you said about that-

Oh, it's just old-fashioned railroads and illusionism.

Of course, this is the beginning of Chapter 8, p. 235. From "Running the Game" (in the book that doesn't have anything about running the game, but only because ... NO ONE READS IT).

What does it actually say? Before that, it has a section about whether or not to roll in the open. "If you roll dice where the players can see, they know you're playing impartially and not fudging die rolls."

Does it address railroads? Yes, it mentions that players don't want to be railroaded (p. 71).

The book contains a lot of advice, for a lot of different playing styles. Claiming that it supports illusionism because that's your preferred narrative ... not cool.

The DMG actually provides a lot of advice, so it's kind of weird (and funny) to see all the people claim it doesn't. It just doesn't provide the advice that some people want, which is a different issue.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is a clear statement that the job of the DM is to create the world and steer the plot, as the main storyteller. Then, we get all the caveats about letting players' actions matter, and, yes, a whole menu of ways to roll, including outright lying and cheating (whose downside amounts to 'the players might see through the illusion'!). I don't want to say 'impossible thing before breakfast', but it seems you've made me do it.

I think you are offloading alot onto the term 'main storyteller' that isn't really there. To contrast, I would be comfortable describing myself in my Blades in the Dark game as the main story teller (I'm the GM). But that doesn't mean the players are just along for the ride that is my story or that I've predefined exactly how everything should go. It just means I'm providing most of the detail about the world.

Within this context, the caveats and alternate approaches are

(1) bad, vague, and contradictory, and

I think it's fairly hard to separate advice you dislike from bad advice. I think some advice seems vague and/or contradictory because it's intended to encapsulate a variety of playstyles.

(2) not truly supportive of multiple styles of play.

I think that depends on how you define multiple styles of play

All of this is, once again, before we get to the lack of actual procedures other than fiat for doing pretty much anything at all.

I'll challenge this as well. What is fiat? Because I think most of D&D is based on judgement calls, but judgement calls are not the same as fiat.

 

[Garthanos]

Its a pretty old principal at this point that only rolling when things will matter is good practice.

Sure but the devil is in the details. Do you always roll for combat and how much do your roll is the question? (the situation just mentioned was a narrated combat without more than one decision points).

It does not have to be binary ON/OFF

I was thinking of variable detail starting with the above with a subsequent graduated more detail and more resolution pts.

A single check per player might sometimes be sufficient. (even if the the combat was going to take 3 or 4 rounds if played in full detail).

Or a Skill challenge like mechanic might be a tool useable in place of the D&D elaborated combat with lower detail.

Shrug... only include the detail you need is a bit more of an idea than only roll when it matters or even when its interesting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure but the devil is in the details. Do you always roll for combat and how much do your roll is the question? (the situation just mentioned was a narrated combat without more than one decision points).

Absolutely. And of course there's middle cases like the baked-in mook rules in some cases where resolving fights with large numbers of trivial opponents is simplified in one or more fashions.

It does not have to be binary ON/OFF

I was thinking of variable detail starting with the above with a subsequent graduated more detail and more resolution pts.

A single check per player might sometimes be sufficient. (even if the the combat was going to take 3 or 4 rounds if played in full detail).

Or a Skill challenge like mechanic might be a tool useable in place of the D&D elaborated combat with lower detail.

Shrug... only include the detail you need is a bit more of an idea than only roll when it matters or even when its interesting.

Well, arguably that should be true with the system as a whole; but its also not a simple question because this is another case of "need" doing some heavy lifting.

 

[Oofta]

I also saw people screw it up substantially back then. So the fact some people can work their way through it is not an argument against having guidance. It just privledges people who happen to work it out themselves.

(Even back then I'd argue most people who didn't make a complete dog's breakfast of it did so because of oral tradition through other GMs rather than that could work out how to do it right completely on their own).

But the question is, did they continue to play? Everybody screws up. It's not the end of the world. I just don't think there's any way to guarantee success.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, arguably that should be true with the system as a whole;

There is a tendency for combat to be detailed and resource elaborated and skill use ummm vague kind of like to have that flexible detail be universal indeed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But the question is, did they continue to play? Everybody screws up. It's not the end of the world. I just don't think there's any way to guarantee success.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and even when they did, it sometimes carried through negative expectations for years afterward. And frankly, you can't guarantee anything, but that's a poor reason not to try.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There is a tendency for combat to be detailed and resource elaborated and skill use ummm vague kind of like to have that flexible detail be universal indeed.

Yeah, that's why I said "should". While there's some reason for it (the failure cost on an individual basis with combat can be pretty high), I'm not sold the tendency for games to be free and easy with everything else is exactly a virtue. Its just a case where deciding where your space and effort overhead is best served, but I think there's too much tendency outside of really rules-light games to cut that off at almost everything outside of combat.

 

[Umbran]

A problem with this whole discussion of whether the books actually teach you the game are missing a major element - contact with reality.

As in - folks, under the 5e books, the player base has apparently grown significantly. Like, to levels not even seen in the 80s. This is reality.

Either the books (or starter products) do the job way better than some people think, or there is no practical need for them to. One way or another, folks are learning to play.