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Xiahou Dun posted:To be fair, that is exactly what dating when you're really young feels like. I was having such a good time not remembering that.
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Jul 22, 2020 13:41
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| # ? May 3, 2024 21:21 |
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 14:56
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, you can definitely proceed in social "combat" until you are completely ostracized from society, but the very fact that that's possible sets limits on what you're actually willing to do, and if you're not, then that says something interesting (although not pleasant) about the character. Similarly, having death as a distinct possible result of combat can get you to realize that retreat might be necessary if things are going badly, or you can just not care and that tells you, the rest of the players, and the GM, something about your character. Of course, in D&D retreat is often mechanically infeasible (unless you're a  ) because everything moves faster than PCs do, so 'forced to retreat' isn't a meaningful failure state.
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Jul 22, 2020 15:35
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:03
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Yeah, if you want forced to retreat, you need a system that makes that work. You can go more crunchy for that or less crunchy, but D&D is the wrong level of crunchy for that. Less crunchy you just add a rule saying "when you try to retreat, roll and see what the result is" and skip the detailed task resolution stuff entirely. More crunchy and you have stuff like facing so that one character can cover the rest retreating because enemies that run past to chase the others are going to get shot in the back. But you have to worry with such a system that it is likely to accidentally enable poo poo like kiting enemies. Gets too hard to design and balance.
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Jul 22, 2020 16:09
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Stares longingly at a copy of Torchbearer while sad music plays.
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Jul 22, 2020 16:13
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:18
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, you can definitely proceed in social "combat" until you are completely ostracized from society, but the very fact that that's possible sets limits on what you're actually willing to do, and if you're not, then that says something interesting (although not pleasant) about the character. Similarly, having death as a distinct possible result of combat can get you to realize that retreat might be necessary if things are going badly, or you can just not care and that tells you, the rest of the players, and the GM, something about your character. Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:20
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Xiahou Dun posted:To be fair, that is exactly what dating when you're really young feels like. Elector_Nerdlingen posted:I was having such a good time not remembering that.
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Jul 22, 2020 16:23
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:25
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It isn't the only consequence, though. e: shove the word "meaningful" in there before most "consequences" Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:27
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:29
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Absurd Alhazred posted:This is really dumb and I'm not going to continue litigating D&D here. Splicer fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:30
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:33
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Absurd Alhazred posted:This is really dumb and I'm not going to continue litigating D&D here. Do you have a contrary example that mechanically supported and meaningful? Like it can happen in Burning Wheel derivatives and FATE and stuff, but a lot of games just have "you done got an owie boo boo" or "uh we'll make something up". And making something up is fine and cool, it's what a lot of RPG's are at the core, but it's a fundamental problem of game design to admit it if you're only meaningful way to "damage" the players with by literally hacking away at their don't-die points. Splicer posted:Your pain nourishes me and masks my own I'm not bitter, Lizzie. Not at all. 
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Jul 22, 2020 16:36
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 16:43
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There's no rules or support for any of that in D&D though. Like okay, let's say the PCs, having been severely hurt, surrender. What happens next? You pretty much have to fly entirely by the seat of your pants on this one, see if their enemy has any Use Rope skills, maybe look up the DC for manacles wherever the hell the they are in the Dungeon Master's manual... This is what people mean when they say that it's unsupported. And this is without mentioning how "stealing their poo poo and damaging their poo poo" is also strongly discouraged by all those "expected wealth per level" and the magic item treadmill that D&D seems to rely upon, although I must confess that I don't know if 5e still has that or not. There are also no rules for hireling morale or standing within various communities; all of this stuff is things the GM has to come up with on their own, with no support from the game itself.
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Jul 22, 2020 17:01
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I don't think the systems have that problem of not supporting you as the GM literally saying "hey, you've surrendered so these NPCs that I'm tasked with running make a decision to tie you up instead of slaughtering you all." Do you need a "being imprisoned" subsystem, do you need a "the process of surrendering" subsystem, do you need a finite state machine system with the possibility of accepting surrender by an NPC? What's missing, exactly? Let's look at the same fight with WFRP3E. No-one is going to die from this fight. It's mathematically impossible*. But if things go south then there's a decent chance someone is going to come out with a new critical wound or temporary insanity, or even rack up some corruption. And these consequences don't mean a new character, but they do have teeth. So jumping a couple of goblins is something you'll actually want to think about whether it's worth doing because there could be consequences, but not by turning the most mechanically supported part of the game into glorified russian roulette. *unless you're already loaded down with a bunch of crit wounds or insanities, in which case participating in the fight is tacit agreement to the potential of dying. Absurd Alhazred posted:Edit: "Traditional"? What, does Blades in the Dark require you or the GM to make a roll to have your NPCs accept that you've surrendered, and if not, you've failed to surrender?
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Jul 22, 2020 17:04
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Stepping back a little, most RPG players I know treat long term mechanical consequences like Rust Monsters as basically the start of an inescapable death spiral, or perhaps as punishment for playing normally.
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Jul 22, 2020 17:10
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 17:12
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Absurd Alhazred posted:You can steal their poo poo, confiscate their poo poo, damage their poo poo, or drastically limit their options by imprisoning them. You can close off paths to gain more poo poo. You can reduce their renown or standing or whatever you call it with a set of NPCs. You can harm the morale of their hirelings or henches to the point that they desert them. So you don't have an actual example of it being supported by the system. Like, take anything based off of Burning Wheel (I know it's not everyone's cup of tea but for the example). Literally everything you just listed has an actual, in-system mechanical thing it's doing and isn't just us making stuff up. And again, making stuff up is cool and good, but that's not the topic of conversation, you goof. We're specifically talking about having mechanical backing in the system that's neither just narration and isn't characters ouchie-points until they die.
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Jul 22, 2020 17:13
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It might help to state explicitly what is being assumed we all know here: Arguments for "there's no system to support a non-death consequence here" are taking as read that using up limited character resources doesn't count as a "consequence." I think the designers of D&D would disagree with that; the expectation for many editions is that a tough fight will cost you some potions, scrolls, arrows, spell components, or other bits and bobs that aren't free or unlimited. Many of us grew up playing in groups that more or less ignored those consequences (by having a GM who handed them out so readily that they might as well have been free), but that's not necessarily what the rules were assuming. We are also, conversely, ignoring the ease by which dead characters can be recovered in many editions of D&D, particularly when playing at levels above the very low ones. Some editions of D&D pretty much presume that the characters can pool together some gold and go get a character revived, which at least mitigates the consequence of death (a TPK is still really tough to come back from, the player whose character died may be locked out of play for a while, etc.). So what D&D seems to lack is explicit mechanics for things like loss of social standing, political power, influence; accumulation of favors or debts owed, or even just character morale, all of which could be consequences for losing (or winning-with-consequence) a fight or a mission or an adventure or a campaign. It's also true that there's a long tradition of GMs and groups adding in those things ad-hoc if they want them, and home-brewing a very simple set of consequences isn't too hard. You can apply a temporary morale penalty to a party if they had to retreat from a fight, for example; you can tell them the king is angry with them for failing to rescue his son from the enemy; the villagers can throw rotten vegetables at the assholes who burned down their only pub, and you can track those things on a chart if you feel like making a chart. But there's also games and systems that fold stuff like reputation, complications added to both successes and failures, rewards for cleverly avoiding combat, long-term consequences, etc. and D&D might be better if it had some of these built in and hooked into the other mechanics of the game.
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Jul 22, 2020 17:16
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D&D's hit point system generally works as a method of resource management through hp getting lower and lower. In Basic, two goblins is a winnable fight at level 1, but you're likely to take a hit, and that hit might mean you can't take on a lair, have to run from wandering monsters, etc. There's tradeoffs. The problem that crops up in 3e and 5e is that healing is too cheap, available, and decoupled from resource management. In 3e you go through wands of cure light wounds like candy, they cost very little and the time management doesn't penalize you for casting a 1st level spell a bunch of times. In 4e you can heal yourself on a short rest with healing surges, but healing surges become the resource that you're depleting throughout the day: healing without surges is very minimal, so running out of surges sucks. 1e and 2e don't have big gobs of healing, so hit points are important there. 5e has a lot of healing to spare out of combat. Leperflesh posted:But there's also games and systems that fold stuff like reputation, complications added to both successes and failures, rewards for cleverly avoiding combat, long-term consequences, etc. and D&D might be better if it had some of these built in and hooked into the other mechanics of the game. D&D used to have morale mechanics for both hirelings and enemies, but those got lost in 3e and the "every fight is to the death" paradigm began.
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Jul 22, 2020 17:23
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 17:23
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Tulip posted:Stepping back a little, most RPG players I know treat long term mechanical consequences like Rust Monsters as basically the start of an inescapable death spiral, or perhaps as punishment for playing normally. Splicer posted:Consequences have to be frequent and consistent for people to actually consider them. Success with Consequences should be the default for a game where combat is an expected major component
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Jul 22, 2020 17:27
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I have provided you with examples. They're right in the text that you're quoting. They're literally there. Address them. Do you not know what the word "mechanics" means? Am I in some kind of bizarro world?
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Jul 22, 2020 17:28
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 17:34
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I can trivially narrate some stuff. This is a game of make believe after all. But the thing we're talking about are parts of the actual system of the game that have an affect. Like in Burning Wheel I can tag someone as Angry or reduce their Circles or something. In something like D&D there is no such framework so you're just narrating things. This is the topic of conversation so you kramering in to mention that you could also do it with just narrative when we're specifically discussing how to do it outside of just narration is at best meaningless grey fog. When people ask for vegetarian recipes do you also start listing how to make a steak?
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Jul 22, 2020 17:39
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Literally in the 5E DMG. Renown pp. 22-23, morale p. 273.
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Jul 22, 2020 17:44
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Literally in the 5E DMG. Renown pp. 22-23, morale p. 273. I don't have 5e rules here and I'm not going to get them. Could anyone please summarize what these rules are and how they work? e. ok beaten lol
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Jul 22, 2020 17:44
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 17:49
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Absurd Alhazred posted:A vegetarian recipe I could provide you would involve me telling you "so, you soak a cup of lentils overnight, then strain them and let them sit in the strainer. Then fry some onions in a pot until they're easily breakable with your spatula, then pour in the lentils, mix them up and stir them for a few minutes, then add lots of spices, I usually use curry, cumin, and paprika, I do at least two rounds of adding the spices then mixing the whole thing up until it evens out, plus one teaspoon of salt, let it hiss for a bit while stirring occasionally, then add preheated water, bring to boil then let it simmer for probably 20 minutes although check once in a while, then add rice (about two cups with two teaspoons of salt), stir, add more water, then continue to come and stir occasionally, about every 5 minutes, until the rice seems soft enough, then check if it is ready, then you're good." I. Uh. What. No, it's literally the opposite of that. Learn to read. What the gently caress. (Also never spice something before boiling it what the gently caress is wrong with you. You're bad at reading and cooking.)
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Jul 22, 2020 17:56
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, and what temperature am I aiming at exactly, you haven't given me a SYSTEM for checking when it's done because you're just telling me to test and see, you're not giving me a SYSTEM LALALALA".
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 18:01
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Xiahou, Alhazred, please both of you find a way to communicate respectfully even if you very disagree on what is or isn't rules/mechanics/support for a thing in a game. Thanks.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:01
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Or just take it to DMs because we're well past the original question and back into "arguing about 5E with no additional value" territory.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:03
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Leperflesh posted:Xiahou, Alhazred, please both of you find a way to communicate respectfully even if you very disagree on what is or isn't rules/mechanics/support for a thing in a game. Thanks. I didn't think I was being particularly disrespectful but if I was I sincerely apologize. Absurd Alhazred posted:Am I the one who needs to learn to read, or is your red text really apt? I'm quite literally saying, "that's not the topic under discussion" and you're getting mad about it. After I asked you to give concrete examples and couldn't. Also I got the red text because I made fun of someone for thinking being multilingual was literally wizardry rather than the base state of most of the world since time immemorial. I regret nothing.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:05
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What does "mechanics" mean when you say it? Do you need the DMG to say "Move: Run NPC. Whenver the NPC has a situation in front of it where its ability to make decisions apply, use its characterization and/or alignment (blech) to make a decision that makes sense."? Is that the permission you're missing to use the tools provided to you, like NPCs, the immediate history of conflict, HP, GP, items, ropes? Absurd Alhazred posted:That doesn't sound right for 5E (which even added the Disengage action to let you skip melee without an attack of opportunity, and from what I've seen the vast majority of monsters had about the same speed as characters) The initiative structure also discourages mass retreats. Let's take the the turn order P1, M1, P2, P3, M2, M3, P4, M4. If things go badly south on M1's turn, how do they "retreat"? If P2 and P3 did successfully book it then you now have three monsters acting before P1 gets a go, with only two targets between them. For everyone to run away "at the same time" you need to completely break out of the combat system.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:08
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Fine, I'll stop "kramering" into conversations here.
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 18:15
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My person, I'm not like Pennywise stalking you from thread to thread as some kind of vindictive spirit. You just make lovely arguments. Calm down.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:18
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| # ? May 3, 2024 21:21 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:
While AA did give an incredibly inapt analogy for his participation in this discussion, when making dal it's best to put the turmeric in before the water even boils. Splicer posted:That's because This approaches what might ultimately be something of an intractable problem for RPGs. Most novels will only hit a major stakes moment a few times; I just read Temporary which is incredibly frenetic and even that only really hits "big changes" I think 3 times. The sort of high-drama we seek in stories is, by necessity, rare, and thus implicility inconsistent. For analogy purposes: I played a round of Spirit Island last night and there's a few mechanics that come up rarely, but because all players are enforcing them and there's abundant checklists, it's a little more visible, and perhaps more importantly the rare events are either win/lose conditions or preamble to win/lose conditions, and even more importantly a game is like an hour or two. It's not like you're going to go 20-30 hours between a mechanic coming up. A somewhat related example to bolster what you're saying - I'm running a Promethean game, and while the rules for Wasteland and Firestorm are a big deal mechanically, they've only come up twice - once in actual use and once because players were contemplating doing it on purpose - in so far about 30 hours of play. I've also made one rule that can in principle come up nearly every time you talk to somebody, Disquiet, very rare and I only invoke it when there's a dramatic moment, and interestingly this has lead to my players pushing back, even though I established that rules change.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:20
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