D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts

TiQuinn said:

Player: Wait a minute, but you let this other thing happen last session that isn't realistically possible either!

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35 years and I've never heard a player argue this in response to a DM disallowing some other unrealistic thing!

Indeed, it's conspicuous/notable that I haven't. Players, in fact, usually count their blessings that Unrealistic Thing X is allowed even if Unrealistic Thing Y is disallowed and stay silent. The closest I've seen was a strictly genre-based argument that because a game had a noir setting/vibe things should probably happen way B instead of way A, but that's not quite what you're describing.

So I gotta ask - is this something you theorize happening, or something you have seen happen? If the latter, what about specifically?

DEFCON 1 said:

As you'll see in my post that appeared right below yours where I was responding to someone else... I brought up the concept of the number line that runs between "board game" at one end and "free-form improvisation" at the other end, and that all manner of RPGs fall somewhere on that line.

I absolutely agree with your take on where you find the most enjoyment on that line and do not dispute anyone else's stated desires for their preferences of games on that line. I think everyone finds RPGs that land on that line in the places they gain most enjoyment, whether closer to the board game end, the free-form end, or any place in between.

My only disagreement would ever be with people who would dispute the existence of the line at all. Because I think they are just seeing their own definition of what an RPG is as the only definition and cannot conceive of another way of looking at what an RPG can be.

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Yeah I think this is a good way of framing it. I'm thinking through whether the 'implicit rules' idea is that we can complicate it beyond a single line, right? On one end we have board games. On the other we have literally 'anything goes' kind of free form, where a character can develop new superpowers if a player states that. (This is what kids do).

But somewhere else, we have play that is not truly improvisational, where there is a static ruleset, but where that ruleset is not fully enumerated, and that's where I think OSR games often lie. E.g., if I try to disarm a trap, the GM is not improvising in the sense of trying to create drama, or doing what sounds fun, or making a decision in the moment about how the trap is disarmed. They are making rulings based on a static world that follows established rules. "If I snip the wire, the trap is disarmed" doesn't require improvisation.

There may be improvisation in the sense of how actions interact with that implicit ruleset (e.g., if I throw a knife at the wire, can I cut it?). But that seems categorically different to me than improvising whether or not cutting the wire disarms the trap.

TiQuinn said:

Yeah, another great blog post.

"How to tell if someone is lying?"

Player: Well, I've seen this work all the time in movies and tv shows, and so this is a game where I'm a character from that genre, so this should totally work.

DM: I know that evaluations of lying based on expressions have no basis in scientific reality, and so I'm not going to let that work.

Player: Wait a minute, but you let this other thing happen last session that isn't realistically possible either!

And really, the only way that you get around that, I think, is agreeing upon the fiction of the world, and then giving both parties ample opportunity to walk back or alter their actions or descriptions after discussion, i.e. you can't turn a miscommunication or disagreement about what works in the fictional game world into a gotcha.

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The best way to avoid arguments in an RPG is to settle on the genre expectations you want to stick with. The best way to ensure that your group sticks to its genre expectations is to have rules that support them.

Ruin Explorer said:

35 years and I've never heard a player argue this in response to a DM disallowing some other unrealistic thing!

Indeed, it's conspicuous/notable that I haven't. Players, in fact, usually count their blessings that Unrealistic Thing X is allowed even if Unrealistic Thing Y is disallowed and stay silent. The closest I've seen was a strictly genre-based argument that because a game had a noir setting/vibe things should probably happen way B instead of way A, but that's not quite what you're describing.

So I gotta ask - is this something you theorize happening, or something you have seen happen? If the latter, what about specifically?

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Ohhhh, I have absolutely seen this at the game table.

I've seen people trying to use cloaks as makeshift parachutes, metal chain weapons with improbable reaches that grappled flying characters (this was probably because the DM was frustrated with characters that could fly), arguments over the distance and arc that someone could realistically jump, "Can I leap from branch to branch on treetops and completely circumvent this?", and so on. And as that blog that Mannahnin linked, it probably was more a result of "do we agree that's in the genre of what the game's trying to emulate", and friction with reality coupled with sometimes the DM really didn't want someone to get past an obstacle the way they thought up, aka the schoolyard make-believe arguments.

The Firebird said:

E.g., if I try to disarm a trap, the GM is not improvising in the sense of trying to create drama, or doing what sounds fun, or making a decision in the moment about how the trap is disarmed. They are making rulings based on a static world that follows established rules. "If I snip the wire, the trap is disarmed" doesn't require improvisation.

There may be improvisation in the sense of how actions interact with that implicit ruleset (e.g., if I throw a knife at the wire, can I cut it?). But that seems categorically different to me than improvising whether or not cutting the wire disarms the trap.

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It's rarely so cut and dry as your example. Players tend to do strange, and often ingenious, things - you can never eliminate improvisation with prep.

If you create, say, a concealed scything blade trap triggered by a tripwire, the PCs may try to disable it by cutting the wire. They also might try jamming the mechanism with scavenged ooze, blocking the blade with furniture from another room, pouring water into the gaps and freezing it, or releasing a bag of rats into the room to see if they can trigger it from a distance.

You will have to improvise and adapt to their actions and make a ruling from scratch, and you need to make sure that your understanding of the game environment matches what your players envisioned when they declared their action.

SpellObjectEnthusiast said:

It's rarely so cut and dry as your example. Players tend to do strange, and often ingenious, things - you can never eliminate improvisation with prep.

If you create, say, a concealed scything blade trap triggered by a tripwire, the PCs may try to disable it by cutting the wire. They also might try jamming the mechanism with scavenged ooze, blocking the blade with furniture from another room, pouring water into the gaps and freezing it, or releasing a bag of rats into the room to see if they can trigger it from a distance.

You will have to improvise and adapt to their actions and make a ruling from scratch, and you need to make sure that your understanding of the game environment matches what your players envisioned when they declared their action.

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I agree but I don't think this changes any of the implications. More creative ways to disarm the same trap are still improvisation within the bounds of the implicit ruleset. If you're jamming with ooze or pouring water, the referee will rely on their knowledge of the trap mechanism and physical reality. They are improvising, but improvising precisely so they can adjudicate the rules properly.

This is distinct from improvising outside the bounds of the ruleset. E.g., if I make up on the fly that my character has always had a fear of snakes and therefore would run in this situation (because I think that creates maximum drama), then I'm improvising without respect to the rules.

(There are some systems that would have mechanics for when and how I can introduce these facts into the narrative and how they manifest).

TiQuinn said:

I've seen people trying to use cloaks as makeshift parachutes, metal chain weapons with improbable reaches that grappled flying characters (this was probably because the DM was frustrated with characters that could fly), arguments over the distance and arc that someone could realistically jump, "Can I leap from branch to branch on treetops and completely circumvent this?", and so on. And as that blog that Mannahnin linked, it probably was more a result of "do we agree that's in the genre of what the game's trying to emulate", and friction with reality coupled with sometimes the DM really didn't want someone to get past an obstacle the way they thought up, aka the schoolyard make-believe arguments.

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I do specifically mean the player arguing "You allowed X, why aren't you allowing Y" rather than general shenanigans - but presumably that's what you mean - i.e. the DM allowed something silly like surfing down a river on a shield, and then a player wanted to use their cloak as a wingsuit or something, and argued precedent on the basis of the shield surfing or something?

I've seen plenty of arguments over jump distances and angles, but never on the basis that something else was allowed. Usually it just comes down to "does this odd jump attempt count as a standing or running jump", which is an easier ruling.

The Firebird said:

referee will rely on their knowledge of the trap mechanism

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Did you think of all of the physical details of every trap? Every creature? Every hazard? Every room?

At some point the game will require you to Invent something about the fictional space in the moment, you cannot possibly prepare for all eventualities.

SpellObjectEnthusiast said:

Did you think of all of the physical details of every trap? Every creature? Every hazard? Every room?

At some point the game will require you to Invent something about the fictional space in the moment, you cannot possibly prepare for all eventualities.

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Yeah, I think this kind of improvisation does happen in almost all games. My point is just that there are different kinds of improvisation. To the extent that I view RPGs as games, I think of this kind of improvisation ('improvisation outside the bounds of the rules') as a fail state.

If the referee doesn't know whether or not a certain strategy will disarm the trap and has to decide on the fly, then I'm not interacting with the world to make a certain thing happen--I'm interacting with the referee, and appealing to their sense of drama, or their idea of a cool solution, or their idea of "we have to get to the boss soon or there won't be time to finish this session". All of those are very different from me being able to interact with a fixed world in creative ways.



A nice way to avoid this fail state that a lot of OSR games rely on are random tables. Then the referee doesn't need to prepare everything--if the players explore a desert hex, they get a desert hex roll, if they explore a forest hex, a forest hex roll. These are different outcomes and reduce somewhat how much the referee is improvising.

The Firebird said:

If the referee doesn't know whether or not a certain strategy will disarm the trap and has to decide on the fly, then I'm not interacting with the world to make a certain thing happen--I'm interacting with the referee, and appealing to their sense of drama, or their idea of a cool solution, or their idea of "we have to get to the boss soon or there won't be time to finish this session". All of those are very different from me being able to interact with a fixed world in creative ways.

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I don't think its possible to have a perfectly neutral game session in which a player never takes an action or asks a question which requires their referee to make a judgement call according to their own biases.

You can mitigate it with rules heavy systems or extremely detailed modules. But you can't eliminate it.