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With the Holy Trinity out, let's take stock of 5E
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6468737" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think you're right - and also that you state it much more clearly than [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] does.</p><p></p><p>I have three general responses (to the position; not to you in particular). First, please show me an example. For instance, show me just one room write-up (say, for the frictionless corridor with super-tetanus pits in White Plume Mountain) that illustrates this approach actually being put to work.</p><p></p><p>Second, and following on from (1), I don't think a complete write-up along these lines is possible. This is because of the lack of a practical limit on action declarations by the players. You can have more abstract guidelines (eg item saves in AD&D, skill challenges in 4e) but these more abstract guidelines inevitably require the GM to engage in ad hoc adjudications around the fiction (eg when a cup is knocked off a table onto a flagstone fall, does that count as "fall", "normal blow" or "crushing blow", each of which gives a different chance to save).</p><p></p><p>Third, and following on from (2), I don't feel the force of the "supposed" - as in "the DM is supposed to". Partly because it's not practically possible. And partly because it turns the game away from a game of skillful dungeon exploration (which is what Gygax presents the game as) to a game of working out what baroque systems and subsystems the GM might be implementing (which is not at all what Gygax suggested the game is about).</p><p></p><p>For me this is the biggest issue. D&D was never presented as a game of "guess the algorithm, with retries to make it easier over time". And I've never met anyone who plays it that way.</p><p></p><p>When the focus is on dungeon exploration (asis the case in the early D&D books, at least through Moldvay), the players aren't exploring or trying to learn the GM's resolution algorithms. They're exploring the dungeon that the GM drew up, and generally not by guess work but rather by delcaring actions that put their PCs into situations which oblige the GM to tell them true things about the dungeon (eg "We light a torch and look ahead" obliges the GM to tell the players the truth about what their PCs see of the dungeon, up to the limit of their torch light; "I expend a charge from my wand of secret door detection" obliges the GM to tell the player the truth about the existence of secret doors within a certain area of the dungeon; etc).</p><p>,</p><p>This is not very much like deciphering a code.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6468737, member: 42582"] I think you're right - and also that you state it much more clearly than [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] does. I have three general responses (to the position; not to you in particular). First, please show me an example. For instance, show me just one room write-up (say, for the frictionless corridor with super-tetanus pits in White Plume Mountain) that illustrates this approach actually being put to work. Second, and following on from (1), I don't think a complete write-up along these lines is possible. This is because of the lack of a practical limit on action declarations by the players. You can have more abstract guidelines (eg item saves in AD&D, skill challenges in 4e) but these more abstract guidelines inevitably require the GM to engage in ad hoc adjudications around the fiction (eg when a cup is knocked off a table onto a flagstone fall, does that count as "fall", "normal blow" or "crushing blow", each of which gives a different chance to save). Third, and following on from (2), I don't feel the force of the "supposed" - as in "the DM is supposed to". Partly because it's not practically possible. And partly because it turns the game away from a game of skillful dungeon exploration (which is what Gygax presents the game as) to a game of working out what baroque systems and subsystems the GM might be implementing (which is not at all what Gygax suggested the game is about). For me this is the biggest issue. D&D was never presented as a game of "guess the algorithm, with retries to make it easier over time". And I've never met anyone who plays it that way. When the focus is on dungeon exploration (asis the case in the early D&D books, at least through Moldvay), the players aren't exploring or trying to learn the GM's resolution algorithms. They're exploring the dungeon that the GM drew up, and generally not by guess work but rather by delcaring actions that put their PCs into situations which oblige the GM to tell them true things about the dungeon (eg "We light a torch and look ahead" obliges the GM to tell the players the truth about what their PCs see of the dungeon, up to the limit of their torch light; "I expend a charge from my wand of secret door detection" obliges the GM to tell the player the truth about the existence of secret doors within a certain area of the dungeon; etc). , This is not very much like deciphering a code. [/QUOTE]
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With the Holy Trinity out, let's take stock of 5E
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