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[Let's Read] Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, by Tom Moldvay
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6608129" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think the +2 does make a big difference. The +1 not so much, I agree.</p><p></p><p>See my reply to [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] above this one. The last paragraph in parantheses says a bit more about where I'm coming from, mindset-wise.</p><p></p><p>Vincent Baker made <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/456" target="_blank">this good comment</a>, a while ago now, about having to make moves in the fiction as part of action declaration and resolution:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Here's a quick resolution mechanism.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>1. We each say what our characters are trying to accomplish. For instance: "My character's trying to get away." "My character's trying to shoot yours."</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em></em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>2. We roll dice or draw cards against one another to see which character or characters accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. For instance: "Oh no! My character doesn't get away." "Hooray! My character shoots yours."</em></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>What must we establish before we roll?</strong> What our characters intend to accomplish.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>What does the roll decide?</strong> Whether our characters indeed accomplish what they intend.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"><strong>What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say?</strong> The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off.</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Maybe we CAN say what our characters do. Maybe the way the dice or cards work, there's a little space where we can pause and just say it. Maybe that's even what we're supposed to do. "Always say what your characters do," the rules say, maybe. "No exceptions and I mean it." It remains, though, that we don't HAVE to, and if we don't, the game just chugs along without it. We play it lazy . . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Most players are pretty lazy, and telling them to do something isn't the same as designing mechanisms that require them to do it. Telling them won't make them. Some X-percent of your players will come to you like, "yeah, we didn't really see why we'd do that, so we didn't bother. Totally unrelated: the game wasn't that fun," and you're slapping yourself in the forehead. Do you really want to depend on your players' discipline, their will and ability to do what you tell them to just because you told them to? . . . Inevitably, the people who play your game, they'll come to it with habits they've learned from other games. If their habits suit your design, all's well, but if they don't, and your game doesn't reach into their play and correct them, they'll play your game wrong without realizing it.</p><p></p><p>I think there's an argument that D&D combat rules have, and have always had, the issue that Baker describes - there is no need to describe moves in the fiction in order to find out who won the combat! More complicated manoeuvre rules are an attempt to compensate for this, but can lead to all the resolution happening at a purely mechanical level with no sense of the fiction at all (some people make this complaint about 4e); I think more complicated positioning and movement rules in post-TSR D&D are one part of an attempt to make D&D combat resolution have to engage (at least aspects of) the fiction.</p><p></p><p>On the skill side, especially the social skill side, I think that the way 3E's social skill system is presented (Bluff: opposed roll vs Sense Motive; Diplomacy: DCs to change attitude) can absolutely fall into the problem Baker describes, of checks being made without any actual move in the fiction having to be made.</p><p></p><p>That's what I meant when I said to Iosue that, used that way, the skills aren't action resolution at all but rather scene re-framing ("Now we're in a situation where the high priest believes my lie" or "Now we're in a situation where that guy is friendly rather than hostile" - but nothing in the play of the game explained <em>how</em> the characters got into that situation.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6608129, member: 42582"] I think the +2 does make a big difference. The +1 not so much, I agree. See my reply to [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] above this one. The last paragraph in parantheses says a bit more about where I'm coming from, mindset-wise. Vincent Baker made [url=http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/456]this good comment[/url], a while ago now, about having to make moves in the fiction as part of action declaration and resolution: [indent]Here's a quick resolution mechanism. [I]1. We each say what our characters are trying to accomplish. For instance: "My character's trying to get away." "My character's trying to shoot yours." 2. We roll dice or draw cards against one another to see which character or characters accomplish what they're trying to accomplish. For instance: "Oh no! My character doesn't get away." "Hooray! My character shoots yours."[/I] [B]What must we establish before we roll?[/B] What our characters intend to accomplish. [B]What does the roll decide?[/B] Whether our characters indeed accomplish what they intend. [B]What do the rules never, ever, ever require us to say?[/B] The details of our characters' actual actions. It's like one minute both our characters are poised to act, and the next minute my character's stuck in the room and your character's shot her, but we never see my character scrambling to open the window and we never hear your character's gun go off. Maybe we CAN say what our characters do. Maybe the way the dice or cards work, there's a little space where we can pause and just say it. Maybe that's even what we're supposed to do. "Always say what your characters do," the rules say, maybe. "No exceptions and I mean it." It remains, though, that we don't HAVE to, and if we don't, the game just chugs along without it. We play it lazy . . . Most players are pretty lazy, and telling them to do something isn't the same as designing mechanisms that require them to do it. Telling them won't make them. Some X-percent of your players will come to you like, "yeah, we didn't really see why we'd do that, so we didn't bother. Totally unrelated: the game wasn't that fun," and you're slapping yourself in the forehead. Do you really want to depend on your players' discipline, their will and ability to do what you tell them to just because you told them to? . . . Inevitably, the people who play your game, they'll come to it with habits they've learned from other games. If their habits suit your design, all's well, but if they don't, and your game doesn't reach into their play and correct them, they'll play your game wrong without realizing it.[/indent] I think there's an argument that D&D combat rules have, and have always had, the issue that Baker describes - there is no need to describe moves in the fiction in order to find out who won the combat! More complicated manoeuvre rules are an attempt to compensate for this, but can lead to all the resolution happening at a purely mechanical level with no sense of the fiction at all (some people make this complaint about 4e); I think more complicated positioning and movement rules in post-TSR D&D are one part of an attempt to make D&D combat resolution have to engage (at least aspects of) the fiction. On the skill side, especially the social skill side, I think that the way 3E's social skill system is presented (Bluff: opposed roll vs Sense Motive; Diplomacy: DCs to change attitude) can absolutely fall into the problem Baker describes, of checks being made without any actual move in the fiction having to be made. That's what I meant when I said to Iosue that, used that way, the skills aren't action resolution at all but rather scene re-framing ("Now we're in a situation where the high priest believes my lie" or "Now we're in a situation where that guy is friendly rather than hostile" - but nothing in the play of the game explained [I]how[/I] the characters got into that situation.) [/QUOTE]
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