tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post5231066800739897694..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: Give Some Insight HereAlexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-74077554385506312322017-11-01T18:24:38.889-06:002017-11-01T18:24:38.889-06:00Yeah, neither could I. I'm almost OCD in my n...Yeah, neither could I. I'm almost OCD in my need to slam people in the game community.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-91983333693563707132017-11-01T16:46:47.720-06:002017-11-01T16:46:47.720-06:00I assumed as much, but I couldn't stop myself....I assumed as much, but I couldn't stop myself.J. Cormierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06775658681126093604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-23834384179945900602017-10-31T22:38:19.180-06:002017-10-31T22:38:19.180-06:00Oh, and in the interest of giving insight, Malilok...Oh, and in the interest of giving insight, Maliloki, the entire post is awash in sarcasm. That, too, was rather the point.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-23995617836315659482017-10-31T22:23:54.121-06:002017-10-31T22:23:54.121-06:00No issue, Maliloki. I figured that's what it ...No issue, Maliloki. I figured that's what it meant. But it's not exactly defined, being the point I was making.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-8745141878282093852017-10-31T21:49:24.103-06:002017-10-31T21:49:24.103-06:00Neither here nor there (and please forgive me, or ...Neither here nor there (and please forgive me, or don't bother posting this comment, if I missed the sarcasm), but trash monster is referring to, at its basic levels, random encounters or, at its most extreme, anything that is not viewed as "essential" encounters to the "story" being told - ie, "boss fights".<br />J. Cormierhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06775658681126093604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-78258722260748534832017-10-22T13:17:01.067-06:002017-10-22T13:17:01.067-06:00Silverman, offer them the choice before they make ...Silverman, offer them the choice before they make the trip: deal with each encounter (or event or random description or whatever you decide they see) individually or skip it all like a cutscene, excepting any event that isn't trivial. I've started doing this with my game and the players appreciate it. Sometimes they want to deal with the minutiae of exploring the wilderness; other times they have an agenda and prefer to ignore everything else along the way. Unless a particular encounter won't let them, I feel they have enough wherewithal to avoid anything.Ozymandiashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01065642299277380465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-59398487360436863272017-10-22T13:14:29.503-06:002017-10-22T13:14:29.503-06:00Yes, Ozymandias. It's habit for these fellows...Yes, Ozymandias. It's habit for these fellows to presume you have read through the tens of thousands of words; that's why they feel justified in loading the questions as they do. Everyone already knows what the answers ought to be, right? We're just trying to catch those people, with these questions, that don't fit our perspective and out them.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-6114682577111304172017-10-22T13:01:53.830-06:002017-10-22T13:01:53.830-06:00It seems to me that Team_Braniel's questions a...It seems to me that Team_Braniel's questions are part of a larger conversation playing out in the online D&D community. If the reader doesn't know the larger context, the questions break down under the slightest scrutiny, as demonstrated. But in order to know the conversation, the reader has to wade through literally tens of thousands of words on Reddit and D&D blogs, most written with the same logic as Hubbard's <i>Dianetics</i>.Ozymandiashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01065642299277380465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-83861460557703053592017-10-22T11:43:24.355-06:002017-10-22T11:43:24.355-06:00I agree with you wholeheartedly, Silberman (with y...I agree with you wholeheartedly, Silberman (with you too, Fuzzy, though I have nothing specific to add there). I would need it explained to me how this ~<br /><br /><i>"If only I could just say, 'Alright, it's ten days later when you stagger into the big city, barely alive. A messenger runs up and hands you a note from your contact. You're to meet her at the Golden Squire just off the market square.' For better or worse, that would cheer them up!"</i><br /><br />~ breaks the rules. So long as the bill comes due at the end, as you say Silberman, I haven't any issue with it from a player agency perspective or from a scarcity perspective.<br />Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-21844952335848745142017-10-22T10:50:17.323-06:002017-10-22T10:50:17.323-06:00Following your deconstruction lead, I'd say th...Following your deconstruction lead, I'd say these questions are trying to craft a freedom-constraint dichotomy out of what are really two different meanings of constraint. There's the constraint of "the rules" that say, "The die is cast, now deal with it," and there's the constraint of the DM's preconceived evening's entertainment for the players (so many unexpected events might unravel the proceedings).<br /><br />I can go further and invert the opposition: Does the DM's pursuit of her narrative liberate the game from the stodgy rules, or do the interactions of multiple die rolls and player moves liberate the game from the predictability of one participant's storytelling (most likely a pastiche of assorted genre fictions and past runnings)? <br /><br />The more I look at it, using rules to play out the consequences of decisions and chance seems like the open path, with the closed way being the DM judicious curation of all outcomes back to the Story. (Maybe this game isn't the proper platform for the DM's creative impulses. What the storyteller wants here isn't a world free of rules. It's authority and clarity.)<br /><br />But I have to acknowledge that players get frustrated--as DM, I get frustrated--when bad decisions and bad luck draw out the players' pursuit of a once-clear agenda to the point of stagnation. The fighter went asshole and killed that merchant who hired the party, so nobody knows who their contact is in the next town; the wizard is dying from an infected giant rat bite; it's been frigid and raining for the past week; everyone is out of food and starving. Around the table, every die roll is accompanied by a mumbled, "Whatever." <br /><br />If only I could just say, "Alright, it's ten days later when you stagger into the big city, barely alive. A messenger runs up and hands you a note from your contact. You're to meet her at the Golden Squire just off the market square." For better or worse, that would cheer them up!<br /><br />More and more, I've been thinking about these debates that get framed as The Rules vs. The Story as matters of scale or zoom distance. As you say, if I don't want to deal with a three-month journey, why am I only telling the players about interesting things going on in distant locations? But even if the next destination is a day away, I can quickly end it all in tears by beginning the trip, "You're ten feet out of town. There are dogwoods growing here. A squirrel stops in the middle of the path and looks at you nervously. The trail continues ahead. There's a robin's nest in a nearby tree." A mile or so of that and I can assure you my players will be spearing squirrels and burning down the forest.<br /><br />When the players desperately want to get from City A to City B, there is often this tension over scale and how closely we're zoomed in on the action. This can feel like a resistance to systems for supplies, wilderness survival, unexpected encounters. Maybe. But maybe the real problem is that I keep throwing squirrels in the path.<br /><br />There are some guidelines for this sort of thing in the various editions of D&D, but they tend to take the form of distinct "Dungeon" and "Wilderness" scales. I wonder if there's a place for a more flexible "Narrative" scale. What if, instead of setting the level of zoom based on the in-game length of the journey, I said, "Barring catastrophe, the players should reach City B by the end of tonight's running. The expenditure of resources, the appearance and resolution of threats, changes in the weather, will all be evaluated at that scale." <br /><br />Instead of narrating the trip at all, I could present them with a bill on arrival: 20 hp, 15 arrows, 2 healing potions, 13 rations. If they decide they want to forage for robin eggs and feed the squirrels along the way, fine, we'll do that, but if they want to get where they're going, maybe we can zoom out along the way without chucking "The Rules" out the window.Silbermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03634048670337733047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-50516263198142871632017-10-22T03:04:11.213-06:002017-10-22T03:04:11.213-06:00This is one of the biggest sticking points between...This is one of the biggest sticking points between me and some of my friends. They insist that I need to focus less on the rules in a roleplaying game, and just relax and have fun; I insist that games have rules, and adhering to those rules is what produces the game as such.<br /><br />That being said, when most people refer to "the rules" in an RPG, they mean the rules in the glossy and colorful, yet poorly made books sold at exorbitant prices by the "official" publisher of the game. No matter how unwieldy the scope of the "official" rules becomes, and no matter how many gaping holes exist that must be hastily corrected over Twitter (and that prior publishers were smart enough to patch over 35 years ago), the "official" rules are law. "House rules" are looked at suspiciously, and the very idea of running scenarios that aren't found in one of those brand-new books that are already falling apart is labeled "homebrew" and accompanied by the same raised eyebrows.<br /><br />Obeying the rules verbatim is good. Abandoning the rules altogether is good. But changing the rules, and playing by those changes, is bad. It's not surprising to me that, as you've accurately pointed out before, so much of the dialogue about the game goes in endless circles. Nor is it surprising that some of the people who "fudge" the rules at their tables tend to play fast and loose with real-world rules when given a leadership role; when a person gets [bored/frustrated/sarcastic/dissatisfied] with the leader and "goes all asshole" (by whatever yardstick that's measured), the Club Master feels well within their rights to "pull a deus ex machina to stop [them]".<br /><br />(Addendum: A player is more likely to "[get] bored and [go] all asshole" if they feel that their choices don't matter, or worse, that they actually have no choices. I've experienced this urge in campaigns where the party were run on rails into their roles as Chosen Ones, and even in video games where an entry took a steep dive in player agency from the previous entry in the series. But saying "The hippogriff over at X is stronger than normal, and has an extra Hit Die" is very different from secretly adjusting the to-hit rolls or AC of a creature mid-battle to prevent it from being killed - or from killing a party member, and I appreciate the distinction both as a player and as a Referee.)Fuzzy Skinnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10606454596061907461noreply@blogger.com